INDUSTRY 
 AND HUMAN WELFARE 
 
THE SOCIAL WELFARE LIBRARY 
 EDITED BY EDWARD T. DEVINE, PH.D., LL.D. 
 
 A series of volumes for the general reader and the 
 social worker, designed to contribute to the under- 
 standing of social problems, and to stimulate critical 
 and constructive thinking about social work. 
 
 1. SOCIAL WORK: by Edward T. Devine. Price 
 
 $3-00. 
 
 2. THE STORY OF SOCIAL WORK IN AMERICA: by 
 
 Lillian Brandt. In preparation. 
 
 3. COMMUNITY ORGANIZATION: by Joseph Kin- 
 
 mont Hart. Price $2.50 net. 
 
 4. INDUSTRY AND HUMAN WELFARE: by William 
 
 L. Chenery. 
 
 5. TREATMENT OF THE OFFENDER : by Winthrop D. 
 
 Lane. In preparation. 
 
THE SOCIAL WELFARE LIBRARY 
 
 INDUSTRY 
 AND HUMAN WELFARE 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM L. CHENERY 
 
 INDUSTRIAL EDITOR, "THE SURVEY** 
 EDITORIAL WRITER, "THE NEW YORK GLOBE" 
 
 jf3eto 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1922 
 
 All riahts reserved 
 
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
 jJ 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1922, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and printed. Published February, 1922. 
 
 Press of 
 
 J. J. Little & Ives Company 
 New York, U. S. A. 
 
To 
 
 IDA BURNLEY CHENERY, 
 
 MY MOTHER, 
 
 WHO, ALOOF FROM THE LARGER MANI- 
 FESTATIONS OF INDUSTRY, HAS EVER 
 BEEN ALIVE TO THE RANG- 
 ING IMPLICATIONS OF 
 HUMAN WELFARE 
 
 574262 
 
INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR 
 
 The Social Welfare Library is notably enriched by 
 the present volume on Industry and Human Welfare. 
 Its author is a specialist, but he has not written for 
 specialists. He is a journalist, but this is not, strictly 
 speaking, an attempt to "popularize" a technical sub- 
 ject. It is intended for that already large and increasing 
 number of citizens who are concerned that industry 
 shall be productive and not destructive ; that it shall pro- 
 mote the general welfare, without injury to workers; 
 that the work of the nation shall be done by the natural 
 and legitimate workers, not by children or invalids, and 
 each part of it by those physically and mentally qual- 
 ified for it. 
 
 This Library is designed for those who are interested 
 in promoting the conditions which favor a happy and 
 useful life for all people. Among the most important 
 conditions are those which affect income. Knowledge 
 of the effect of industry itself on the worker and his 
 family, his wages, his hours of labor, the regularity 
 of employment and the hazards of industry, is there- 
 fore fundamental. The public official, the church vis- 
 itor, the private citizen interested in family welfare 
 or in child welfare, has to understand what has hap- 
 pened as a result of the industrial changes of the past 
 century if he is to get the elementary satisfaction to 
 which he is entitled from his efforts. At the present 
 
 vii 
 
viii Introduction by the Editor 
 
 moment the effect of industry upon the individual 
 with which this little volume especially deals is of 
 paramount interest and importance. 
 
 Like the text-book on Social Work by the Editor of 
 this Library, and Professor Hart's Community Organ- 
 ization, the two volumes which have preceded it, the 
 present volume is intended as a contribution to an 
 understanding of the social problems in a particular 
 field, and of their relation to the human welfare in 
 general and to consciously directed social progress. 
 
 EDWARD T. DEVINE 
 September, 1921. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The inspiration of this small book has been a desire 
 to ascertain and to state the major effects of the rise 
 of the factory system upon the welfare of the Amer- 
 ican people. To achieve such a result adequately calls 
 for time and resources far beyond those at any com- 
 mand. I am conscious of the hazards of undertaking 
 to do briefly during the all too rare leisure hours and 
 days at the disposal of a working newspaper writer 
 a task worthy of the undivided attention of a group 
 of scholars. Perhaps, however, the very brevity of 
 this work will suggest to others the desirability of por- 
 traying the scenes and the changes upon a truly gen- 
 erous canvas. 
 
 I have endeavored first to describe the condition of 
 the American people during those years when factories 
 were but prophecies. In doing this I have been actuated 
 by the belief that it would be difficult to understand 
 the results of the factory system until the way of 
 life of those who came before the industrial revolu- 
 tion had been envisaged. In piecing together this pic- 
 ture of the condition of the people at the beginning of 
 the nineteenth century I have utilized the researches 
 of many students. Where references would seem to 
 serve the purposes of readers I have in footnotes indi- 
 cated my authorities. The sources used have been both 
 prim.ary and secondary. Chief reliance has been placed 
 
x Introduction 
 
 in the historic governmental reports and in the mono- 
 graphs of various students. But I have been at all 
 times aware of the heavy obligation which all workers 
 in this field owe to such men as Professor John R. 
 Commons, John B. McMaster, William B. Weeden, 
 Victor S. Clark, and others whose researches are now 
 the classics of American industrial history. 
 
 As I have followed this study I have been driven 
 irresistibly to the conclusion that the well being of the 
 people of this country lies within their own choosing. 
 Throughout the history of the nation social control has 
 been exercised through the national and state govern- 
 ments. Industry has been directed in accordance with 
 the purposes of those who happened to be dominant at 
 the time. Laissez-faireism has been a doctrine useful 
 to the owners and managers of industry. It has seldom 
 been appealed to as an argument to defeat the wishes 
 of those who possessed property and political priv- 
 ileges. It has been chiefly a rein upon legislation de- 
 signed to alleviate the condition of the poor. This has 
 not been wholly a conscious process. The advocates of 
 economic anarchy, which is an uncharitable translation 
 of the French phrase laissez-faire, have seldom been 
 aware that they were practicing social control in behalf 
 of the owners of factories while they preached industrial 
 drift to workers. But for all the unconsciousness 
 of the development the record is not the less convinc- 
 ing. 
 
 In making this study many inviting by-paths have 
 been crossed. American industrial history is richly sug- 
 gestive. Unworked fields are many. One of the most 
 promising is a study of the hazards which working 
 
Introduction xi 
 
 people historically have encountered. A fruitful chap- 
 ter of such a work would recount the fortunes of the 
 debtor prisoners. The change from a system of im- 
 prisonment for debt to public insurance against the 
 hazards of industry measures a social revolution. Of 
 necessity this matter had to be excluded from detailed 
 consideration. Other questions of equal and even of 
 greater importance have had to be pushed aside. 
 Among the most tempting of these is the problem of 
 the migration of people which has followed the prog- 
 ress of factories. The population of the country has 
 been redistributed by industrial need. An agricultural 
 people has been moved to towns and cities. A wide 
 range of issues has been created by the shift. Con- 
 gestion, transportation, housing, recreation, community 
 organization are some of the unanswered questions 
 occasioned by the movement of people from the country 
 to the city in response to factory demand. Considera- 
 tion of these matters would, however, lead too far afield 
 from the proper limits of this book. So, too, the allur- 
 ing questions of industrial control have been avoided. 
 These are germane to the central problem of stating the 
 consequences of the rise of the factory system upon 
 human welfare. The question of space has again been 
 imperative. A brief volume cannot infringe upon the 
 -prerogatives of an encyclopedia. Industrial govern- 
 ment with all its related problems, so charged with sig- 
 nificance for the future of society, has accordingly been 
 avoided. 
 
 I wish here to acknowledge my obligation to Miss 
 Mary Van Kleeck, director of industrial studies of the 
 Russell Sage Foundation, John A. Fitch of the New 
 
xii Introduction 
 
 York School for Social Work, Professor William E. 
 Dodd of the University of Chicago, and Miss Lilian 
 Brandt, all of whom generously read my manuscript 
 and who saved my book from slips which it would 
 otherwise have carried. I do not wish, however, to 
 suggest that any of these friends bears any responsi- 
 bility for the opinions herein expressed. Finally I 
 would express my appreciation to the editor of this 
 series, Edward T. Devine; and to Paul U. Kellogg, 
 editor of the Survey, for that generous treatment of 
 an associate's time without which this work could not 
 have been performed. 
 
 WILLIAM L, CHENERY 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I THE PIONEER NATION i 
 
 II THE RISE OF INDUSTRY 24 
 
 III THE WORKER'S FAMILY 44 
 
 IV WAGES IN INDUSTRY 77 
 
 V HOURS 95 
 
 VI REGULARITY OF EMPLOYMENT . . . 114 
 
 VII THE HAZARDS OF INDUSTRY .... 134 
 
 VIII THE STATUS OF WORKERS .... 145 
 
r 
 
 INDUSTRY AND HUMAN 
 WELFARE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE PIONEER NATION 
 
 THE history of industry in America calls to mind 
 Goethe's ironic saying : "Whatever one desires in youth 
 one has in age in abundance." For to a remarkable 
 extent the growth of mechanical production in the 
 United States has fulfilled the desires of some of the 
 founders of this republic. Responsive to a request 
 from the House of Representatives in 1791, Alex- 
 ander Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury wrote a 
 brilliant argument alf of f he development of 
 
 manufacturing. He set forth advantages which the 
 United States might get from manufactures. As a 
 nation we have attained much of what Hamilton fore- 
 saw. Some of the benefits forecast became the serious 
 social evils which in subsequent generations threatened 
 the health of the republic. Only too adequately did 
 the rna* ,re nation leach the goals of its youth. The 
 aspir:;V>i:s of the fathers fulfilled in the lives of the 
 children created conditions which now call for states- 
 
2 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 manship not less alert and vigorous than that of the 
 original great advocate of American industry. 
 
 In Hamilton's judgment the independence and pros- 
 perity of the new republic would be furthered by the 
 national protection and stimulation of a variegated 
 industry. The steam engine had not then become a 
 practical tool and only the new inventions in use in 
 the English textile mills had begun to make clear the 
 outlines of modern industry. But Hamilton saw lucid- 
 ly the enormous potentialities of rr <nufacturing. He 
 was eager to persuade the feeble federal government 
 to nurture industry and mechanical invention. He was 
 willing to do this at a time when even the most popu- 
 lous and influential states were still predominantly 
 agricultural. 
 
 The effectiveness with which Hamilton's policies 
 were put into practice by his countrymen became the 
 admiration and wonder of later travelers from 
 Europe. The United States built rapidly according to 
 the plans designed by the first Secretary of the Treas- 
 ury. The thing which the great protagonist of indus- 
 try and his immediate successors did not see, however, 
 was that the social organization ar.-i the political prin- 
 ciples which were adapteJ to handicraft industry and 
 to agriculture might prove grievously inaQv^uate in that 
 complex, impersonal, industrial society whose attrac- 
 tions he set forth with logic and with eloquence. Ham- 
 ilton sought to change the method of production, but he 
 was not aware that mechanical industry involved the 
 creation of entirely new human relationships. Conse- 
 quently, while he pleaded for the nurture and for the 
 protection of industries which then had hardly been 
 
The Pioneer Nation 3 
 
 conceived, he did not know that the people of the 
 country also required protection against the devastat- 
 ing influences of the new order. Because he did not 
 know this, because generations passed before America 
 became conscious of it, because even to-day the full 
 reality is not commonly accepted, the industrial prob- 
 lem exists. 
 
 "The expediency of encouraging manufactures in the 
 United States, which was not long since deemed very 
 questionable, appears at this time (1791^ to be pretty 
 generally admitted," Hamilton was able to say. He 
 pointed out what now seems almost too obvious for 
 Utterance, namely, that the employment of machinery 
 forms anTtem of great importance in the general mass 
 of the national industry, and then he turned to some 
 of the details of the progress he proposed. The fol- 
 lowing paragraphs show the line of his reasoning as 
 plainly as they foretell some of the evils which even 
 to-day are unconquered : 
 
 "The cotton mill, invented in England within the last 
 twenty years, is a signal illustration of the general propo- 
 sition which has just been advanced. In consequence of 
 it, all the different processes of spinning cotton are per- 
 formed by means of machines, which are put in motion 
 by water and attended chiefly by women and children; 
 and by a smaller number of persons, in the whole, than 
 are requisite in the ordinary mode of spinning. And it 
 is an advantage of great moment that the operations of 
 this mill may continue with convenience during the night 
 as well as during the day. The prodigious effect of such 
 a machine is easily conceived. To this invention is to be 
 attributed, essentially, the immense progress which has 
 been so suddenly made in Great Britain in the various 
 fabrics of cotton. 
 
 "This is not least valuable of the means by which 
 manufacturing institutions contribute to augment the 
 general stock of industry and production. In places where 
 
4 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 those institutions prevail, besides the persons regularly 
 engaged in them, they afford occasional and extra em- 
 ployment to industrious individuals and to families, who 
 are willing to devote the leisure resulting from the inter- 
 missions of their ordinary pursuits to collateral labors, 
 as a resource for multiplying their acquisitions or their 
 enjoyments. The husbandman himself experiences a new 
 source of profit and support from the increased industry 
 of his wife and daughters, invited and stimulated by the 
 demands of the neighboring manufactories. 
 
 "Besides this advantage of occasional employment to 
 classes having different occupations, there is another, of 
 a nature allied to it, and of a similar tendency. This is 
 the employment of persons who would be otherwise idle, 
 and in many cases a burthen on the community, either 
 from the bias of temper, habit, infirmity of body or some 
 other cause, indisposing or disqualifying them from the 
 toils of the country. It is worthy of particular remark, 
 that, in general, women and children are rendered more 
 useful, and the latter more early useful, by manufacturing 
 establishments than they would otherwise be. Of the 
 number of persons employed in the cotton manufactories 
 of Great Britain, it is computed that four-sevenths nearly 
 are women and children; of whom the greater propor- 
 tion are children and many of them of a tender age." * 
 
 This line of argument was touched again when Ham- 
 ilton was urging the development of the iron indus- 
 try. Thus he said: 
 
 'The United States already in great measure supply 
 themselves with nails and spikes. . . . The first and most 
 laborious occupation in this manufacture is performed 
 by watermills; and of the persons afterwards employed, 
 a great proportion are boys, whose early habits of in- 
 dustry are of importance to the community, to the 
 present support of their families, and to their own future 
 comfort." 
 
 These conditions deemed so desirable by the great 
 constructive statesman of American industry and fin- 
 ance have been in part the evils against which subse- 
 
 * Works of Alexander Hamilton, Volume 3, Manufactures, page 
 207 and following. 
 
The Pioneer Nation 5 
 
 quent generations have waged increasing warfare. 
 Hamilton, in fact, advocated industry as a means of 
 creating the circumstances" which as soon as manufac- 
 turing was firmly entrenched were recognized as peril- 
 ous to the national well-being. He reckoned among - 
 the advantages of industry the list of what the present 
 day regards as wrongs. Child labor, employment of 
 women and children at night, the regarding of manu- 
 facturing employment as a source of supplementary 
 income rather than as the basis of living for those 
 employed by it, continuous industry, these are a vital 
 part of the social problem created by the development 
 of manufactures.^ Nevertheless, they are precisely 
 what Hamilton advocated. Only too well in these 
 respects has the republic fulfilled the ambitions of its 
 youth. 
 
 The essential advantage which Hamilton sought was 
 the labor-saving utility of machinery. To save labor 
 hYs In fact been the one and persistent object of indus- 
 trial invention everywhere. The intensity of the early 
 American desire for labor-saving methods of produc- 
 tion is attributed to the partially occupied condition of 
 the land and to the temptation of a superlative abun- 
 dance of unexploited natural resources. Every man 
 saw riches in sight if he could obtain labor. To under- 
 stand plainly the salient effects of industry upon human 
 welfare it is therefore needful to take this fact into 
 consideration. It was a^determming national motive,^ 
 To comprehend the~effects the new industry engendered 
 in the United States, it is also necessary to recall to 
 mind the state of the American people during the 
 years immediately preceding the establishment of the 
 
6 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 factory system. Unless in fact the work and life of 
 the people for whose well-being Hamilton and others 
 urged the fostering of manufactures are pictured it 
 is difficult to see in perspective what have been the con- 
 sequences of industry for human welfare in this 
 country. 
 
 QqQ hundred and twentVrLve-vears ago the factory 
 system had hardly been conceived in the United States. 
 To-day we are the greatest manufacturing nation.. At 
 thniawn of the nineteenth century the United States 
 was a sparsely settled strip bounded by the Atlantic 
 and by the Appalachian ranges, a pioneer country sup- 
 ported chiefly by agriculture. The century which ended 
 with the outbreak of the World War saw the rise and 
 maturing of the factory system under a government 
 which through the Monroe Doctrine claimed primacy 
 over two continents. Within the space of those few 
 Y generations the isolated colonial settlements of Napo- 
 
 : Icon's time had become the continental citadel of 
 
 strength to which the Great Powers turned for aid in 
 time of need. In this cosmic drama the rise of the 
 factory system in America has played a notable role. 
 Worshippers of power and of magnificence may find 
 indeed an altar for their prayers and their thanksgiv- 
 ing in industrial America. The multiplication of 
 riches, the development of luxury, and the growth of 
 might, attributable to machine manufacture, are the 
 familiar products of our industrial revolution. But 
 what has happened to the individual American by reason 
 of these vast changes? How has industry affected 
 human welfare? Is life happier and more carefree 
 for the majority of men and women and children in 
 
Pioneer Nation 7 
 
 this land because of the new industry? Is the day of 
 the skilled artizan more rilled with satisfaction? And 
 how has the common laborer fared ? How, again, have 
 women and children of the working classes been af- 
 fected? Is work under the factory system a better 
 regime for them? Does life offer more to them than 
 their great-great-grandparents secured? What are the 
 outstanding changes in human welfare occasioned by 
 the rise of mechanical industry? 
 
 During the years between the_end of the American 
 revolution""and.. the beginning-oL-the-^era of railroad - 
 tignsppjrtationjn 1830, factories took firm root in the-, 
 United States^ The necessities of the colonists, suxL. 
 denlvjcuf^ff^by^ the war of independence from_J;he_ 
 customary English supplies, caused men of Alexander _ 
 Hamiitgrfs ouflooiri^realize~the need for the estab- 
 lishmenirbf manufactures in the new nation. The ex- 
 pefienceTbf the jrountry --during- the War of 1812 em- 
 phasized the lesson. 
 
 sectionat,~naT:ional, and internatipnatrtended to.. .refer 
 force~the~~arguments made in behalf 
 
 industry. In an amazingly short time the United States 
 f rom Massachusetts to Baltimore became an industrial , 
 nation. The^jfiTsjt_^pltOJi-factQr-y was established in 
 Rhode Island in i7^by_Saii^l_^later. Thfi_rapid 
 developmenf^came a f ter 1815, and by 1830 the new in- 
 dustrial order wa^_ejUre.richeiL!L What then was the 
 statcroFthe American people during the first decades of 
 the nineteenth century? In particular, what was the 
 condition of the working classes ? 
 
 At the beginning of the nineteenth century the 
 * Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1885, page 162. 
 
8 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 people of the United States, it has been observed, 
 neither believed nor practiced their political professions 
 of human equality. Politically the United States was 
 a government of, by, and for the property holders. A 
 man could not vote in most states unless he owned 
 property, and in many states unless he complied with 
 certain religious tests. A woman could never vote 
 save by an oversight, as in New Jersey, where a hast- 
 ily drafted constitution had neglected to exclude 
 women. Citizenship in the colonies was like mem- 
 bership in a corporation. The possession of stock or 
 property was a prerequisite to voting and to holding 
 office. The ownership of fifty acres of farm land or 
 of equivalent property was the customary test. Prop- 
 erty voted; men did not. T^xatipj3_3^iihoutj^epresen- 
 tation, was^ the revolutionary war cry. The political 
 revolution which preceded the change in our industrial 
 system tended, it is true, to eliminate the property 
 qualifications for the_sunrage. But it was not until 
 the eigHteelPEwenties tKait the greatest battles were 
 fought for manhood suffrage. As late as 1837 the 
 attitude of property holders toward the extension of 
 the ballot was expressed as follows in the Pennsylvania 
 Constitutional Convention : 
 
 "But, Sir, what does this delegate propose?" said a 
 defender of franchises for the upper classes. "To place 
 the vicious vagrant, the wandering Arabs, the Tartar 
 hordes of our large cities on a level with the virtuous 
 and good man? . . These Arabs, steeped in crime and 
 vice, to be placed on a level with the industrious popu- 
 lation is insulting and degrading to the community. . . . 
 I hold up my hands against a proceeding which confers 
 on the idle, vicious, degraded vagabond a right at the 
 
The Pioneer Nation 9 
 
 expense of the poor and industrious portion of this 
 commonwealth." * 
 
 The right was merely that of suffrage, and the men 
 termed Tartar hordes steeped in vice and crime were 
 only those whose property was insufficient to qualify 
 them for the ballot. Political power throughout the 
 United States, during the years when the present in- 
 dustrial system was being created, was exercised by 
 a minority of property owners. How small that 
 minority was may be estimated from the vote on the 
 constitutional convention in Massachusetts a conven- 
 tion called to extend the franchise. In that state only 
 men who owned real estate which brought in an income 
 of three pounds annually, or who had other property 
 to the extent of sixty pounds, were permitted to par- 
 ticipate in elections. In 1820 the population of Mas- 
 sachusetts wasr 523,287. There were 142,588 free 
 white males over sixteen years of age.f Only 18,349 
 men voted on the question of holding a constitutional 
 convention. J The men who could not vote, who 
 had no real share in the determination of public affairs, 
 were vastly more numerous than the voters. 
 
 In the New England Magazine of January, 1890, 
 Dr. J. F. Jameson reported his computations of the 
 early voting in Massachusetts and elsewhere. He says : 
 
 "Taking all the excluded together, we may venture to 
 bring our own figure down to 16 or 17 per cent, and may 
 conclude that in round numbers about one-sixth of the 
 
 * Penn. Con., 1837 : Debates 2, 487. Quoted in "Suffrage in the 
 United States," by Kirk H. Porter, University of Chicago Press, 
 1918. 
 
 t United States Census, 1820. 
 
 t Nile* Weekly Register. 
 
io Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 population of old Massachusetts, or say 55,000 men, 
 50,000 of them in Massachusetts and 5,000 in Maine, were 
 entitled to vote in 1776. . . . About 16 per cent of the 
 inhabitants could vote if they chose. How many of them 
 did so? ... The number of those who actually did vote 
 in those ten years (1780-1789, inclusive) amounted to 
 just about three per cent." * 
 
 The property and other qualifications for voting in 
 Massachusetts were near enough like conditions in the 
 other states to give a fair picture of the degree of polit- 
 ical self-government exercised by the American people 
 in the decades prior to the development of mechanical 
 industry. 
 
 The qualifications for holding office, furthermore, 
 were stricter than those for voting. In spite of the 
 assertion of state constitutions that all men are born 
 equally free and independent and that therefore all 
 just government originates from the people and is in- 
 stituted for the general good, the holding of office was 
 in practice of, by, and for privileged property holders. 
 McMaster well says: "The poor man counted for 
 nothing. He was governed, but not with his consent, 
 by his property-owning Christian neighbors. He was 
 one of the people, but he did not count as such in the 
 apportionment of representation. In short, the broad 
 doctrine that governments derived their just powers 
 from the consent of the governed was not accepted 
 by the 'Fathers.' The most they were ready to admit 
 was that all governments derive their just powers from 
 the consent of the taxpayer."! This condition had 
 an enormous influence on the development of industry 
 in this country. 
 
 * No change for some decades. 
 
 t "Rights of Man in America," Cleveland, Ohio, 1893, page 21. 
 
The Pioneer Nation n 
 
 Political power was utilized to 
 
 __ 
 
 of maj^fa^tujduigjndustry and thajLpower was wielded 
 strictly in^ the interest oj the _^opejtx:holdii5g_grgu 
 wteThad historically possessed the franchise. "L'etat, 
 c'est moi" was, and to a considerable extent still is, 
 the emblem of American property owners, just as truly 
 as it was the startled expression of an indiscreet French 
 king. 
 
 ^ndustriaUyJhe populationjwas predominantly rural 
 and agricultural. As late as 1820 less than five per 
 cent of the American people lived in cities of 8,000 
 population and over.* In 1790 there were but five 
 cities in the United States having a population of 
 8,000. Their combined population was less than 
 100,000, forming only 2.4 per cent of the population 
 of the country. The great majority of Americans, 
 perhaps 95 per cent, were countrymen at the time that. 
 the~Touhdations joi the industrial _system were lajd. 
 7^r~fna"Jority now live in the cities. Farmers were of 
 many classes. The richest were masters of principali- 
 ties. They were aristocrats whose lives and whose 
 views were fashioned upon European ideals. The 
 republican court which President Washington himself 
 maintained at Philadelphia satisfied the punctilious re- 
 quirements of visiting French nobility. From the 
 estates of gentlemen who sought to develop in this 
 country an old world social order the holdings of 
 farmers varied in size and value to the poor clearing 
 of the pioneer. Manufacturing was a hojnejndustry__ 
 carried on chiefly byfarmers and their^wives ^nd chil- 
 
 * "A Century of Population Growth in the United States Gov- 
 ernment," Census Bureau, Washington, 1909, page 14. 
 
12 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 dren and servants, and by wandering mechanics^ The 
 jirtizan was sometimes a freeman and .often an inden-^ 
 ture3 servant or aTsiave Yet his was the ingenuity 
 wBicHj^ented many of the technical processes upon 
 which the factory system was later built. 
 
 ^Skilled workers in Maryland and southward were 
 largely slaves and indentured servants. In Penn- 
 sylvania at the beginning of the nineteenth century it 
 has been estimated that one-half of the artizans were 
 redemptioners, so-called. The redemptioner was the 
 immigrant who was bound to serve a term of years in 
 payment for his passage overseas. During his servi- 
 tude he or she could be sold from master to master 
 after the manner of slaves. The indentured servant and 
 his variant, the redemptioner, were always potentially 
 free men and seem to have been counted as such in the 
 first censuses. Yet while he served the bondsman's 
 status was close to that of a slave. The system of 
 servile labor was furthermore as old as the colonies. 
 It had grown out of the apprentice system. From the 
 very beginnings of Maryland and of Virginia men and 
 women had been imported to do the work of the 
 plantations. The capture and enslavement of Africans 
 tended to supplant white servitude in the South but the 
 system of indentured servants was continued well into 
 the nineteenth century. Men and women willing to 
 settle in the United States and lacking the price of the 
 passage were induced to sign papers of indenture. The 
 master of the ship or some merchant who had advanced 
 the transportation expenses would dispose of these im- 
 migrants on the arrival of the ship at Philadelphia or 
 Baltimore, or at some other port. This trade was 
 
The Pioneer Nation 13 
 
 carried on in full force until 1817.* Isolated cases 
 were mentioned as late as 1835. 
 
 These white contract immigrant laborers were an 
 important section of the productive population. Effec- 
 tually the redemptionersf were slaves for a limited 
 period of time. Englishmen, Irish, Scotch, and later 
 Germans and Swiss, were all the material of the sys- 
 tem. Curiously enough, too, most of the German re- 
 demptioners were brought in after the War of In- 
 dependence. In 1817 three small sailing vessels left 
 the Dutch port Helder with 1,100 redemptioners for 
 New Orleans. During a passage of about four months 
 503 perished. The survivors were sold to work out 
 their passage. The number of years served by these 
 immigrants in order to redeem their freedom varied. 
 They might work only four years. But if they were 
 indentured while children they might be compelled 
 to serve until the twenty-second or the twenty- 
 fourth year was passed. While still in bonds the in- 
 dentured man or woman had few rights which the 
 master was bound to respect. A redemptioner could 
 not marry except with the permission of his owner. 
 The bondsman could be arrested and imprisoned where- 
 ever found if he traveled without a permit. He could 
 be beaten cruelly by way of discipline. 
 
 On March 21, 1817, the following advertisement 
 appeared in the Baltimore American, and it was re- 
 peated daily until April 7: 
 
 * "White Servitude in Maryland," by Eugene Irving McCormac, 
 Johns Hopkins University Press. Page 109. 
 
 t "History of the German Society of Maryland," by Louis P. 
 Hennighausen, Baltimore, Md., 1909. 
 
14 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 "GERMAN REDEMPTIONERS. 
 
 "The Dutch ship 'Johanna,' Capt. H. H. Bleeker, has 
 arrived before this city and now lies in the cove of 
 Wiegman's Wharf; there are on board, desirous of 
 binding themselves for their passage, the following single 
 men : two capital blacksmiths, a rope maker, a carrier, 
 a smart apothecary, a tailor, a good man to cook, several 
 young men as waiters, etc. Among those with families 
 are gardeners, weavers, a stone mason, a miller, a baker, 
 a sugar baker, farmers and other professions."* 
 
 Prior to the Revolutionary War the only skilled 
 laborers in the province of Maryland had come as inden- 
 tured servants from Ireland and England, f Light on 
 the position in society of such mechanics is cast by 
 such newspaper advertisements as the following, which 
 appeared in The Maryland Gazette and Baltimore 
 Advertiser of January 25, 1785: 
 
 "Ran away from the subscriber, living on Monocacy, 
 Carroll's Manor, in Frederick county, six miles from 
 Frederick- Town, on the 2/th of December last, an in- 
 dented Irish servant-man known by the name of Patrick 
 Quigley, a shoemaker by trade, of middling stature, well 
 set, of ruddy complection, short black hair, about 5 feet 
 2 or 3 inches high, 24 years of age ; had on and took 
 with him when he absented a felt hat half worn, short 
 blue sailor's jacket, red waistcoat, pair of white cloth 
 breeches, a pair of white and black speckled milled stock- 
 ings, and a pair of old shoes with steel buckles. Who- 
 ever takes up said servant and brings him to the sub- 
 scriber or secures him in any jail so that his master may 
 get him again shall have, if taken 20 miles from home, 
 Twenty shillings ; if 30 miles, Thirty shillings ; if a far- 
 ther distance, Three pounds, including what the law 
 allows and reasonable charges if brought to Daniel 
 Hardman, January 8, 1785." $ 
 
 So far reaching was this system that tradesmen, 
 clerks, schoolmasters, and even ministers were adver- 
 
 * Hennighausen, op. tit., page 59. 
 
 t "White Servitude in Maryland," page 35. 
 
 \Idem, page 51. 
 
The Pioneer Nation 15 
 
 tised for sale. Ballagh relates that "Colonel William 
 Preston of Smithville, Virginia, bought at Williams- 
 burg about 1776 a gentleman named Palfrenan as a 
 teacher for his family; he was a poet and a scholar, 
 a correspondent and a friend of the celebrated Miss 
 Carter, the poetess, and also of Dr. Samuel John- 
 
 son." 
 
 The apprentice system of which the redemptioners 
 were so signal an expression broke down, it is true, 
 during the first decades of the nineteenth century. But 
 the industriaj_revolution K the change from manual to. 
 mechanical production, came about while the ideas and 
 ~QUstqms_oFthat jservile egoaomir system .-still- lingered. 
 Labor had still something of a slave status when New 
 England and the Middle Atlantic States began to erect 
 factories. 
 
 Freedom and independent status came ultimately to 
 these redemptioners because of the abundance of the 
 land. After their periods of service had passed the 
 majority set up establishments for themselves on the 
 edge of the wilderness. Many of them founded well 
 known families. Some of the signers of the Declara- 
 tion of Independence were former bondsmen. The 
 self-made men, so-called, were common in colonial 
 days; and yet, even though every redemptioner was 
 potentially a free man and a citizen, the gulf between 
 the bond and the free was wide. 
 
 Such was indentured labor. But beyond the bonds- 
 men were the free artizans to the North and the Negro 
 
 * "White Servitude in the Colony of Virginia," by James Curtis 
 Ballagh, Johns Hopkins Studies in Historical and Political Sci- 
 ence, 1895, page 83. 
 
1 6 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 slaves in the South. What was the status of the free 
 artizan at the beginning of the nineteenth century? 
 He was inconspicuous south of Mason and Dixon's 
 line, and to the north as far as Pennsylvania he was 
 in active competition with the redemptioner, who had 
 what was for the period of his service a slave status. 
 The artizan worked from sunrise to sunset. His wages 
 were low. He was esteemed of little significance in the 
 social scale. Nowhere is the position of the property- 
 less working man in the early years of the republic 
 described more vividly than in a debate in Congress 
 over the pay of soldiers. The Annals of Congress, 
 January 6, 1794, tell plainly what the "Fathers" 
 thought of common folk. 
 
 The House was debating the military bill. The 
 United States paid its soldiers three dollars monthly. 
 The bill proposed to raise this to four dollars. A mem- 
 ber of the House offered an amendment which raised 
 this figure to five. Then in truth Congress was agi- 
 tated. The official reporter says: 
 
 "Mr. Wadsworth did not see any reason for the pro- 
 posed additional dollar per month. If he had thought 
 it necessary he would have been very ready to mention 
 it. In the States north of Pennsylvania, the wages of a 
 common laborer were not, upon the whole, superior to 
 those of a common soldier. . . . Mr. Boudinot said that 
 he should be very sorry to recommend the augmentation, 
 if he thought that it would induce farmers and sober, 
 industrious folk to quit their families and professions in 
 exchange for a military life. . . . America would be in 
 a very bad situation, indeed, if an additional pay of twelve 
 dollars a year could bribe a farmer or a manufacturer 
 to enlist. . . . Originally troops had been raised for less 
 than two dollars per month. The pay had been aug- 
 mented to three, and was now on the way of being raised 
 to four. He wished to make its advance gradual. . . . 
 Mr. Smith said that, as to the rate of labor, good men 
 
The Pioneer Nation 17 
 
 were hired to work in Vermont for eighteen pounds a 
 year, which is equal to four dollars per month, and out 
 of it they find their own clothes. He thought it a very 
 dangerous plan to raise the wages of soldiers at this 
 time, when every article was above its natural price; 
 because, when things return to their old level, it would 
 be impossible to reduce their wages. . . . The members 
 of Congress had six dollars per day, and it would be no 
 easy matter to alter that, which he seemed to hint might 
 not be quite improper. He thought that high pay would 
 only serve to make the soldiers get drunk." 
 
 Mr. Smith's views seemed to find support, for in 
 the end the amendment was rejected. This debate 
 shows at least how the political representatives of the 
 socially and economically privileged classes viewed 
 ordinary workmen during the early years of this re- 
 public. But the nation is not always as drab as a 
 debate in Congress would indicate. The life of the 
 skilled artizan in New England, at any rate, compared 
 favorably with that of men of other classes. , _Mechan- 
 
 In 1789 Dr. Franklin said of 
 
 New England:* 
 
 "Calculations carefully made do not raise the propor- 
 tion of property or the number of men employed in 
 manufactures, fisheries, navigation or trade to one-eighth 
 of the property and people occupied by agriculture even 
 in that commercial quarter." 
 
 Most mechanics seem to have followed many voca- 
 tions. The career of Thomas B. Hazard, "Nailer 
 Tom," as set forth in his diary f was apparently of 
 wide and entertaining variety. The entries of a few 
 months picture a way of living which socially is richer 
 than the condition which the wage-earning or even 
 the lower-salaried classes find to-day. Hazard was 
 
 * Quoted in New England Magazine, January, 1890, page 487. 
 t "Historical Narragansett," Volume i, page 32, and following. 
 
1 8 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 brief but apparently accurate, and his mind was con- 
 stantly taking note of what passed. As his nickname 
 indicates, he was a nailmaker by trade, and yet, accord- 
 ing to his own account, nailmaking seems to have 
 been reserved for days and evenings when other labors 
 were not pressing. Among the entries are such as 
 these: 
 
 "Making bridle bits, worked a garden, dug a wood- 
 chuck out of a hole, made stone wall for cousin, planted 
 corn, cleaned cellar, made hoe handle of bass wood, sold 
 a kettle, brought Sister Tanner's goods in a fish boat, 
 made hay, went for coal, made nails at night, went 
 huckleberrying, raked oats, plowed turnip lot, went to 
 monthly meeting and carried Sister Tanner behind me, 
 bought a goose, went to see town, put on new shoes, 
 made a shingle nail tool, helped George mend a spindle 
 for the mill, went to harbor mouth a gunning, killed a 
 Rover, hooped tubs, caught a weasel, made nails, made 
 a weasel cage, opened the cow's hoof, split wood, made 
 a shovel, went swimming, staid at home, made rudder 
 irons, went an eeling," 
 
 By iiis^jown a^c^unt^HazarcL who was a famous 
 ,imicjiajiic__^iid_j^ highly ia Jus 
 
 region, was thus^ajman of odd jobs. He was farmer, 
 gardener, fisher, hunter, boatman, veterinarian, tool- 
 maker, bridle-bitmaker, nailer, cooper, woodworker, 
 boat builder, to cite only a few of the crafts which he 
 followed. AJe^ajiics_oiJiis_skill and ingenuity_were 
 the type whose Jnventions made possible much of the 
 ')!!^^ in theLJmted 
 
 Such men often became the heads_pf manu 
 turing establishments when later power machinery was 
 set at work. Many of these men enriched themselves 
 an3~Became the founders of wealthy families. Eree 
 mechanicsjn New .England were not citizens in a full 
 
The Pioneer Nation 19 
 
 __sense unlessjhey had property, but they had a respect: 
 able status ancTan interesting life during the early 
 years of the republic. In attempting to estimate the 
 major effects of the industrial revolution in the United 
 States it is important to consider what has happened 
 to the vocational descendants of "Nailer Tom." Some, 
 of course, like Henry Ford, have found opportunities 
 imperial in their scope, while others with whose for- 
 tunes this book has concern have a very much less 
 interesting life. Hazard's wages seem to have varied 
 from $1.50 to $2 a day and upon occasion he took his 
 pay in kind. Thus on December 2, 1778, he notes 
 that his work at Oziel Wilkinson's has come to "three 
 oxen which he has paid me." 
 
 Womea_jand children were constantly employed. 
 For the most part they wgrgjgiggggd in tht> hnirip_nr 
 in jhefield. but they were nonejthe_less_busy. The dis-^ 
 cipline_i?f hard wnrkjaras_esteeme.d the .best-educative 
 inflngrirfi fnr children. Where the apprentice system 
 continued young children were bound out to learn their 
 trades. Because of the predominance of agriculture 
 in the colonies and because of the greater development 
 of home manufactures the apprentice system was, how- 
 ever, never so common in the United States as in En- 
 gland. But the need for some variety of employment^ 
 to take th^^a^ej^^pprentjceship was felt :_ apH~sfTthg- 
 Manufactory House, established in Boston not long 
 iBetore the Revolutionary Wjar^jwas esteemed to be a 
 'schootr '~ WitliainTIoTinei57 a PlgrabgJLof Jh.fi-SQcie.ty- 
 responsible for the building of the establishment,. 
 
 ' 'Learned at Jea^^^QQ chil3imlaad women to spin in 
 
2O Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 the most compleat manner."* The first nine operatives 
 ^ngagieSn^rSarnuel "Slater, the British mechanic whose 
 experience^ rnade jpossible thejestajblishment of the first 
 cotton mill irj_J^JL^nitedL States, _were_seven boys 
 and^Fwo"gTrTs between the ages of seven and twelve 
 years. Moses Brown, the cotton merchant, who before 
 his venture with Samuel Slater had been engaged in 
 supplying coarse cotton cloth to southern plantation 
 owners for the use of their slaves, considered the em- 
 ployment of children to result in "near a_ total saving 
 of labor to the country." 
 
 The hour.s__of lajborjln_n_early_ all industries "were 
 measured ^jthe_suri, jrom sunrise to sunset constitut- 
 r lrig r ^EHe~working day/1 Although there were a few 
 earlieF'Hurries, n^jmjdLj^4__was__the subject of 
 shorter hours __senpj[islv___ag[itated t and, not untiL_the 
 period of 1835 anc ^ I ^4 were shorter hours adopted 
 to any extentf It~was several years after that date be- 
 fore ten hours became the rule in the mechanic trades, 
 while in the textile industries the ten hour system is 
 "a modern innovation," as yet adopted only in Massa- 
 chusetts, so far as America is concerned, Carroll D. 
 Wright, Chief of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statis- 
 tics of Labor, reported in 1885. The hours of labor 
 at the beginning of -the -industrial age were in fact 
 those of agriculture. The textile mills at Lowell 
 were the pride of^J^ew^jEn^landL during the early dec- 
 ades of the nineteenth century, and yet it seemed en- 
 tirely right ancT natural that little girls not over ten 
 
 * "The History of Manufactures in the United States," by Vic- 
 tor S. Cfarlc,"page.r88r .-. 
 f "History 'of LaBor in the United States," Vol. I: 393. 
 
The Pioneer Nation 
 
 years of, age should work fourteen and fifteen houi 
 daily alonggidg^their elders.* From five in the morn- 
 ing untiTseven in the evening were the customary hours 
 in the early mills, and" even this was shorter than the 
 working day in the country during the busy season. 
 Doffer girls were paid two dolfors ajjveek at Lowell, 
 but these wages w^erjeje^t^m^dLjvery high, so high 
 that the daughters of professional men were drawn to 
 the mills, just as during the World War the wages 
 paid in munitions plants attracted classes of workers 
 who ordinarily do not enter factory work. During the 
 
 J!@^ - a^tJhc^Aj^MM6SWhBt9k^ea-w0^ was scarce 
 
 and trade tnnk the form of barter) Wages were paid 
 in clothing^ or groceries, or in orders for such com- 
 modities. This.__sysieni, afterwards known as the 
 truck system, and_still one of the lingenngL.eyils.JiL 
 outlying^ industrial establishments, was almost uni- 
 versal at the beginning of the nineteenth century. "Of 
 actual money the workingman had little/' says the 
 Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor,f and 
 "when cash became absolutely necessary, they were 
 often obliged to exchange store orders therefor at a 
 considerable discount. Employers kept stores of gro- 
 ceries, clothing, boots and shoes, and particularly 
 liquor and tobacco, and it is evident from the inspec- 
 tion of old account books that a liberal share of the 
 wages of labor was paid in rum and gin." The almost \ 
 universal result of this method of payment was that / 
 
 ,JH^Early Factory Labor," by Mrs.JIarriet _^3 
 AnnuaI^epOft,'MassacmisetEs"Bureau of Statisti 
 
 OP- .-- . - ~" """"'"' ' - ' ' -'-' --'- 
 
 ~l$3. 
 
 fAnhual Report, 1885. 
 
Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 the workingman was continually in debt and effectually 
 bound to his employment. 
 
 Wages were certainly not high. In Massachusetts, 
 for example, the same general level, with considerable 
 minor variations, seems to have been maintained be- 
 tween 1800 and 1815. A laborer got from 35 cents 
 to 75 cents a day or $13.33 a month. Carpenters were 
 
 id from 80 cents to a dollar a day. A shoemaker 
 earned about $5.52 a week or 23.4 cents per pair of 
 shoes when on piece work. A teacher was paid from 
 $30 to $50 a month, while a painter got about 62 cents 
 a day. A mason got as much as $1.66 a day. Boys 
 employed in agriculture were rated at 16 2/3 cents a 
 day in 1808. In 1815 blacksmith horseshoers were 
 paid 90 cents a day, or if they had board in part 
 payment, 45 cents. The same year boat builders were 
 paid at the rate of $1.13 daily or 50 cents with board. 
 Clockmakers and coopers each had the rate of $1.13 
 daily. Women employed as domestic servants re- 
 ceived their board and 50 cents a week. Skilled foun- 
 drymen earned $1.13 and their unskilled associates 
 87^4 cents daily. Harnessmakers were paid from 
 45 cents to 88 cents a day, depending on whether or 
 not they boarded themselves. Laborers that year 
 varied from $8 a month with board to $1.50 daily, the 
 high mark. Millwrights, machinists, and house paint- 
 ers were paid $1.13 a day. Ship and sign painters, 
 however, got $1.38. Tailors earned $3 a week with 
 board, or $6 without. Printers were on the basis of 
 $1.13 a day. Patternmakers had the same. Ship 
 riggers got $1.25 and ship carvers $1.38.* 
 
 * "Wages and Prices : 1752-1860." Sixteenth Annual Report, 
 Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. 
 
The Pioneer Nation 23 
 
 Thg employment of women and children was uni- 
 jversal during th^yparg prior to the "estaSfishment of 
 the f actorj_system4n^4he^l^ From_the 
 
 very_beginnings of this^^)untr_y_JHLOmen an^jchildren 
 had workecT That their toil wasjimited to the home 
 and to agriculture and to domestic industry was mere- 
 ly cfoe-frrthe fact that there were no other opportunities 
 for employment. The beTTef curferTt recently that the 
 establishment of the industrial system drove women 
 and children to work is without foundation. The 
 mechanical revolution changed only the kind of work 
 done. The fact of work itself was assumed. In any 
 effort to recall the social and economic background of 
 the industrial system in this country it is vital to re- 
 member this. A farmer could hardly hope to live 
 without the cooperative employment of his wife and 
 children. 
 
 The ideas which gained sanction during the centuries 
 prior to the beginning of power production were car- 
 ried over into the new era. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE RISE OF INDUSTRY 
 
 IN such a world the foundations of modern industry 
 were laid. Labor was essential but not in all grades 
 dignified. Powerjnjmost of the states was in the 
 hands- a-a_seleclive few t . The possession or acquisi- 
 tion of property was the common test of fitness of 
 the resident to become the active citizen. Government 
 was the expression of the will of property holders. 
 Slaves, indentured servants, women, men without suf- 
 ficient holdings and income to vote, had no voice in the 
 framing of public policies or the making of laws. Gov- 
 ernment, the expression of the will of property hold- 
 ers, was therefore naturally utilized to nurture, protect 
 and develop manufacturing industries as new sources 
 of wealth to individuals as well as to the state. 
 
 Prior~4a-ihe -Revolutionary War the power of the 
 British government had been used to retard the devel- 
 opment of manufacturing industries in the American- 
 Colonies. After the Revolutionary War the federal 
 government and, to an extent, the states, used their 
 powers to build up an American manufacturing sys- 
 tem. Without interruption, from 1789 to the present, 
 the^ government. liaFlIoiterlEcCmaiiufacturinglindu^try. 
 ChieHyJ>y ^tariffs and ^patent laws, in part by embar-. 
 and_to_a_iesserjexteiit. by .bounties and other spe- 
 24 
 
The Rise of Industry 25 
 
 cial advantages,^ manufactures have been consistently 
 aided. I TEese facts, familiar enough, throw light on 
 the doctrine, long prevalent and still powerful in this 
 country, that-the state must not inter f ere__with_lhe_: 
 rnanagernentjDf industry^ What is meant^pJLcDiirse, 
 *C3^LS^ gover.nmenL_state^or national, must not in- 
 tervene in order tajsaieguard the health and 
 
 oTj^ge-workers in industry, or of consumers. For 
 few of those who resent so-called government inter- 
 ference in behalf of either workers or consumers object 
 in the slightest to governmental activity in the inter- 
 est of the owners and managers of industry. On the 
 contrary, such support has been courted from the very 
 earliest days. Laissezj,aireism, jthe hands-off_policx 
 in its American version, was developed not toJEend off. 
 the "friendly offices of governments from Jnf_^t jjndus.- 
 tries, but to^reven^tho^e_goy^niments frpiiL exerting 
 themselves^iir the" interest of consumers and workers 
 when the infant industries had grown great. 
 
 In eyery_way~ which- the builders of this republic. 
 could conceive the government has been led to .nurture 
 manufactures. Mechanical industry was from the out- 
 set seen to be a national enterprise of boundless im- 
 portance to_ jhe_United States^ The experiences of the 
 Revolutionary War, of the War of 1812, and also of 
 the intervening period between those struggles, induced 
 statesmen to take public measures to aid in the creation 
 of manufacturing establishments. Although at first 
 the seafaring interests of New England and the plant- 
 ing interests of the South opposed national aid to 
 manufactures, to advocate protection for private in- 
 dustry was not during the early decades to be politi- 
 
26 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 cally partizan. Despite their differing politics Albert 
 Gallatin and Alexander Hamilton were both zealous 
 friends of American mechanical industry. Tench Coxe 
 and Thomas Jefferson were friends and correspond- 
 ents.* 
 
 States as well as the federal government exerted 
 themselves. Thus in his address to the New York 
 Senate on January. 2Cj J _i8n, Governor Daniel D. 
 Tompkins expressed a common view when he observed 
 that "The^astpni.sJh^ been made 
 
 in thejmproyemeat and extension" of domestic manu- 
 factures was a source of lively satisfaction. .7. "; and 
 when he added, "Let us~extend to thenT^I. e., manufac- 
 tures) the utmost encouragement and protection which 
 our finances will admit." The encouragement and pro- 
 jcdonjirjd^ The gen- 
 
 eral court of Massachusetts, for example, directed that 
 the sum of two hundred pounds be paid out to Robert 
 and Alexander Barr, "to enable them to complete cer- 
 tain machines for carding, roping, and spinning cotton 
 and sheep's wool." Iliejinajc^jn^s^wyeh^these artizan- 
 inyentors devised were put^n^exhjbitijpn for the bene- 
 fifjSjS3^ t Thomas Somers 
 
 was given twenty pounds by the general court of Mas- 
 sachusetts in order to enable him to build certain mach- 
 ines for the carding, spinning and roping of cotton 
 wool. Somers had learned how to construct the ma- 
 chines while in England. Many other incidents of this 
 nature were recorded. The states, as well as certain 
 
 * "Memoir of Samuel Slater," by George S. White, Phila- 
 delphia, 1836. 
 t Op. cit., page 295. 
 
The Rise of Industry 27 
 
 cities and private organizations, were willing to expend 
 public money to stimulate the development of manu- 
 factures. That policy has its contemporary parallel in 
 the aid given by chambers of commerce to new manu- 
 facturing enterprises in some communities, and in a 
 larger way to the aid given war industries by the 
 national government during the struggle with Ger- 
 many, and more recently in the loans accorded the rail- 
 roads. While this form of state aid may not have in- 
 fluenced the subsequent development of manufactures 
 in any important way,* it at least recorded the atti- 
 tude of public authority toward interfering with in- 
 dustry. 
 
 Perhaps the most potent influence of state legisla- 
 tion upon the development of industry, however, is to 
 be found in the liberal incorporation laws. The earl- 
 iest corporations chartered by the states were gener- 
 ally semi-philanthropic, and some of them received 
 gifts of public land. But far more important than such 
 donations was the building up of the legal fiction that 
 the corporation was a person. The specific powers 
 granted to groups of individuals and the limited lia- 
 bility which each individual thus incurred gave to thef 
 corporation an enormous opportunity for development^ 
 It may well be that not otherwise could manufacturing 
 industries have been so rapidly rooted in this country, 
 but it is nevertheless true that the form of incorpora- 
 tion devised in the United States has had a lasting in- 
 fluence upon the varying prosperity of the men and 
 women and children who fill the ranks of industry. 
 
 ^History of Manufactures in the JJnited_tates^ 1607-1 860," . 
 
28 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 The need for protecting industry and commerce was^ 
 in truth one of the determining motives which led to 
 the consolidation of the thirteen independent states. 
 Alexander Hamilton said that the suggestion of giving 
 Congress the power to make uniform regulations for 
 commerce in all the states was first made at a conven- 
 tion held at Hartford.* A committee was appointed 
 by Congress in 1 784 to consider the matter. Jefferson, 
 Gerry, and three others were members of the commit- 
 tee. It recommended "to the legislatures of the sev- 
 eral states, to vest the United States in Congress as- 
 sembled, for the term of fifteen years, with a power 
 to prohibit any goods, wares or merchandise from 
 being imported into any of the states, except in vessels 
 belonging to and navigated by citizens of the United 
 States or the subjects of foreign powers with whom 
 the United States have treaties of commerce." f Indi- 
 vidual states did enact tariff and non-importation laws. 
 Among these were Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and 
 Massachusetts.^ Immediately after the end of the 
 Revolutionary War an extensive importation of manu- 
 factured products from Great Britain was begun. 
 Among the effects of this movement were the stimula- 
 tion of luxury and the draining of coin from the 
 country. Merchants and mechanics suffered especially, 
 and the papers were filled with complaints even from 
 farmers. The merchants, mechanics and tradesmen 
 of Baltimore, New York, and Boston, as early as 1789, 
 
 * Hamilton's Works, 2 : 26: "Early Stages of the United States 
 Tariff Policy," by William Hill. Publications of the American 
 Economic Association, 1893, page 95. 
 
 t Journals of Congress, 9 : 185. 
 
 $ Hill, op. cit. f page 145 and following. 
 
The Rise of Industry 29 
 
 began to petition Congress for relief from the compe- 
 tition of foreign imports. The New York committee 
 appeared to the first Congress on April 18, 1789, say- 
 ing in part, "Wearied^by their fruitless exertions your 
 petitioners have long looked forward with anxiety for 
 the establishment of a government which would hayj 
 power to check the growing evil (i. e., the importation, 
 of foreign goods), andjgxtend a protecting hand to the 
 interests of commerce ^ndjte jirts* Such a govern^ 
 menjt iliQw established. On the promulgation of the 
 constitution now just commencing its operations, your 
 petitioners discovered in its principles the remedy they 
 had so long and so earnestly desired." The mechanics 
 and manufacturers then added a list of articles which 
 they said could be profitably made in New York pro- 
 vided the general government gave them the protection 
 sought in their petition.* When the Constitution had 
 actually been adopted, among the first acts of Congress 
 was the passage of the tariff law of 1789. Although 
 the purpose of this was in part to raise revenue, by 
 its very terms it proclaimed the protective principle. 
 
 The Annals of Congress f show how generally ac- 
 cepted was this principle of protection. Representa- 
 tives of every state which had industries desired tariff 
 barriers against foreign competition, but at the same 
 time many sought the free importation of the raw ma- 
 terials used in their own industries. James Madison, 
 who introduced the original bill, sought only five per 
 cent duties for revenue although he readily accepted 
 the protection principle. Fitzsimmons of Pennsylvania 
 
 * American State Papers: Finance, Vol. I, page 9. 
 1 1 : pp. 173-174. 
 
30 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 introduced a substitute bill and stated clearly the pur- 
 pose in the following words : 
 
 "The tax is meant not only for revenue but as a regu- 
 lation of commerce, highly advantageous to the United 
 States. . . . The legislature of Pennsylvania granted aid 
 by discriminating in the manner proposed and with like 
 aid from the government of the United States, the mer- 
 chants may no longer fear the machinations of the 
 opulent companies of Europe."* 
 
 There was not the slightest tinge of laissez-faireism 
 in the doctrines preached by the early Pennsylvania 
 representatives to the Congress of the fathers. Nor 
 was there any hesitancy on the part of the Congress 
 of 1789 to grant the protection desired by the early 
 merchants and manufacturers who were at that time 
 chiefly mechanics dependent on the favor of the better 
 established merchant class. Even rum was protected. 
 Massachusetts demanded this, while Madison argued 
 that an industry so pernicious needed no protection. 
 Madison was defeated.f William Maclay, senator 
 from Pennsylvania, records in his notes the course of 
 the debate in the Senate : 
 
 "I set out with naming over the greater part of the 
 articles on which the protective duties of Pennsylvania 
 were twelve and one-half and thirteen per cent in New 
 York. I reasoned from the effect of these duties on the 
 promoting the manufactures. But by the present law the 
 manufacturers would stand on worse ground by five per 
 cent than they had done under state laws; and although 
 the United States were not absolutely obligated to make 
 good the engagements of states to individuals, yet as 
 the individuals had embarked their property in these 
 manufactures, depending on state laws, I thought it 
 wrong to violate those laws without absolute necessity." t 
 
 * Annals 1 : 141. 
 
 t Ibid. 1 : 173. 
 
 $ Sketches of Debates, page 68, quoted by Hill. 
 
The Rise of Industry 31 
 
 Protection was thus evidently HepmpH a sound prin- 
 ciple by the lawmakers_cif 1789^ Laissez-faireism cer- 
 tainly did not then arise to denounce government inter- 
 ference with industry or commerce. 
 
 The practical differences of opinion as to protection 
 were mainly those of degree. Free traders, so-called, 
 were content with low duties, while protectionists 
 have demanded higher ones. There have, however, 
 been divergencies of desire as to the interests to be 
 protected. The_New England commercial and marine 
 groups were for a long time opposed to the national 
 development of manufactures. But their opposition 
 on their belief that the .government 
 
 should not ajdjheir_riyjljntej^sj^ The tradition of 
 theTetghTeenth century sanctioned the closest relation- 
 ship between governments and industry. Alexander 
 Hamilton in his statement to Congress listed eleven 
 different methods of fostering industry "which have 
 been employed with success in other countries" : pro- 
 tecting duties, embargoes on importation, embargoes 
 on exportation of raw materials to rival nations, pe- 
 cuniary bounties, premiums, exemption of raw mater- 
 ials from duty, drawbacks of the duties which are 
 imposed on the materials of manufactures, encourage- 
 ment of new inventions, judicious regulations for the 
 inspection of manufactured commodities, the facili- 
 tating of pecuniary remittances from place to place and 
 the facilitating of the transportation of commodities. 
 Most of these methods have at one time and another 
 been used either by the states severally or by the United 
 
 *^Xhe_Tariff History of_the United States," by F. W. Taussig, 
 page 70. , 
 
32 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 States. Often enough the action taken has been jus- 
 tified. The point is that the interference and assist- 
 ance of the government have been consistently sought 
 by those concerned with building up private business. 
 This unbroken custom is of the utmost significance 
 in reckoning the influence of mechanical industry 
 upon the welfare of the American people. 
 
 It is enlightening from this point of view to recall 
 briefly the trend of argument on the tariff contro- 
 versy. From 1789 until the present that issue has 
 never been long dormant in this country. The vary- 
 ing positions taken with reference to it, moreover, in- 
 dicate with definiteness the changing condition of the 
 people. In following the early discussions it is neces- 
 sary to keep in mind some of the customary and, at 
 the time, unchallenged, assumptions of the founders of 
 American industry. First of all, as has been indicated 
 by the statements of Alexander Hamilton and Tench 
 Coxe, the labor of women and children was taken to 
 be a part of the natural order. Again, mechanical 
 power, it was thought, would so lighten labor that 
 women and children could easily bear the burden of 
 manufactures. Finally, the early American industrial- 
 ists, in contrast with the English factory owners, were 
 very much concerned about the shortage of labor. In 
 England, in spite of the Napoleonic wars, there was an 
 undoubted surplus of workers both in the rural dis- 
 tricts and in the towns.* In the United States the 
 -West were constantly attracting set- 
 This set up a competition 
 
 Jbetween the agricultural interests^ of the West 
 
 ^"TEe Village Laborer," by J. L. and Barbara Hammond. 
 
The Rise of Industry 33 
 
 had a long and important influence on the development 
 of the nation. Because of the relative ease with which 
 the adventurous laborer might become a pioneer 
 farmer, wages of labor in Eastern manufactories were 
 fixed by the level of Western agricultural earnings. 
 Of necessity they had to be high enough to prevent 
 too ready migrations if the labor force were to be stabil- 
 ized. As compared with the wages paid in England 
 the earnings of mechanics and laborers were high in 
 the United States during the first decades of the nation, 
 because of the abundance of unsettled land. 
 
 The problem which the advocates of the establish- 
 ment of American industry confronted was accord- 
 ingly the discovery of a method of meeting the compe- 
 tition of British manufacturers who employed cheap 
 labor and at the same time of preventing migrations 
 westward. British competition was as serious after 
 the War of 1812 as it had been at the conclusion of 
 the Revolutionary War. American industrialists 
 turned to the tariff. Then developed one of the most 
 interesting phenomena in American industrial history 
 the labor argument in the veering tariff discussion. 
 Hamilton, with characteristic perspicacity, had seen 
 previously that the difficulty of high wages could in 
 part be remedied by stimulating immigration as well 
 as by the use of women and children. "We shall," 
 said he, "in a great measure trade upon foreign stock, 
 reserving our own for the cultivation of our lands 
 and the manning of our ships, as far as character and 
 circumstances shall incline.* Stimulated immigration 
 
 *Page 34, Taussig reprint, State Papers and Speeches on 
 the Tariff. 
 
34 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 since the very beginnings of industry, as a matter of 
 record, has tended to lower what have ever been called 
 the high wages of American workers, but the fact of 
 this continuous recruiting for the industrial armies, 
 with its tendency to lower wages, strangely enough 
 has been ignored when tariff protection was being 
 sought for industry. The high wages of American 
 workers were, furthermore, from the first, frankly 
 regarded as disadvantageous. Protectionists urged the 
 wage scale as an additional reason for levying high 
 duties on imports. The motive in the early decades 
 at any rate was not to make possible the continuance 
 of high wages but to compensate American employers 
 for the wages which they were compelled to pay. 
 
 The great tariff discussion which followed the War 
 of 1812 occurred before manhood suffrage had been 
 widely established. There was accordingly no polit- 
 ical pressure to induce members of the government 
 to act in the interest of laborers. During the tariff 
 campaign the labor argument in behalf of the tariff 
 took two distinct forms. The tariff was urged because 
 of the unemployment due to the shut-down of certain 
 mills, and it was also advocated in order to compen- 
 sate employers for the high wages which were reputed 
 to be paid. "The increasing unemployment following 
 the year 1816 and culminating in the great crisis of 
 1819-20 gave a powerful impulse to our tariff policy 
 and popularized protection in many parts of the union," 
 says Mangold.* Mathew Carey, who was one of the 
 first Americans to attempt to attract public attention 
 to the condition of the poor, was an active advocate 
 
 * "Labor Argument in the Protective Tariff," page 29, 
 
The Rise of Industry 35 
 
 of protective tariffs. After 1831 eastern manufac- 
 turers opposed liberal land laws in order to prevent 
 the migration westward and at the same time de- 
 manded duties on imports which would enable them to 
 pay the wages demanded by laborers who might other- 
 wise go west. After 1830 about the time when labor- 
 ers and other propertyless men began to vote the labor 
 argument of the tariff advocates changed in character. 
 Less was said about compensating employers for the 
 high wages they felt impelled to pay. The unemploy- 
 ment argument, the assertion that the imposition of 
 import duties would stimulate employment, was re- 
 newed. At the same time it was argued that the pro- 
 tective system itself tends to make high wages.* This 
 was a complete change of front. This argument cul- 
 minated in the theory that tariffs were to be laid in 
 order to protect the American workingman from the 
 pauper labor of Europe. 
 
 In connection with the elaboration of the labor 
 argument for protective tariffs it is relevant to remem- 
 ber that an immigration policy designed to overcome 
 any benefits which laboring men and women might 
 have, in fact obtained, from the imposition of tariffs 
 was being steadily applied. That policy was the stimu- 
 lation of immigration. It was an entirely natural ex- 
 pression. There was an actual shortage of workers 
 in the United States. Unsettled lands did invite human 
 energy. From Hamilton onward the leaders of the 
 rising industrial interests strove to increase immigra- 
 tion just as strenuously as they sought to have a tariff 
 wall built to save them from the competition of 
 
 * Op. cit., page 70. 
 
36 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 Europe. They were full of zest in keeping out the 
 products made by the pauper laborers of Europe, and 
 they were equally enthusiastic in facilitating the im- 
 portation of these pauper laborers themselves. The 
 reason was in part assuredly to be found in their belief 
 that immigration would tend to reduce wages to a 
 more satisfactory level. John Pickering * said in 
 1847: 
 
 "If the working classes will promote the 'protective 
 system/ their first object should be to prevent the impor- 
 tation of foreign 'pauper operatives'; it will then be 
 time enough to think about preventing the importation 
 of the goods they make; till then it would be perfectly 
 useless." 
 
 The labor argument in the tariff was an interesting 
 concession to the times. The principle of protection 
 itself, a principle which has been applied in varying 
 degrees but without interruption from the very birth 
 of the republic until the present, reveals clearly the 
 attitude of the state toward industry and of industry 
 toward the state. Consistently throughout the history 
 of this nation the owners and projectors of industry 
 have desired public aid and their desire has ordinarily 
 been fulfilled. To a great extent this has been true also 
 \pi transportation. The record of municipal, county, 
 state, and national aid to railroad building is a litera- 
 ture in itself. It reaches far beyond the proper con- 
 fines of this study. None the less, it shows as lucidly 
 as does the history of the tariffs how willing public 
 authority was to cooperate in construction of the means 
 of transportation as an aid to agriculture, commerce 
 
 *"The Working Man's Political Economy," page 150; quoted 
 by Mangold, page 101. 
 
The Rise of Industry 37 
 
 and industry, and how welcome was such cooperation 
 so long as it was directed to the assistance of the priv- 
 ate possessors of the property. 
 
 Since the cooperation between statesmen and the 
 promoters of industry has been historically so close 
 it is important to examine the purposes and the social 
 ideals of those who were the founders of the American 
 manufactures. What has been the historic purpose 
 of statesmanship in this respect, and what were the 
 ideals of those formative years? How has the sub- 
 sequent development of industry been influenced by 
 those ideals? First j)f_all, ^American leaders from the 
 very outset have believed that f arniersjwere the back- 
 bone o f 'fHe_natJQjL. Even Hamilton regarded manu- 
 factures as a supplementary source of wealth. "It 
 ought readily to be conceded," he wrote,* "that the 
 cultivation of the earth as the primary and most cer- 
 tain source of national supply; as the immediate and 
 chief source of subsistence to man; as the principal 
 source of those materials which constitute the nutri- 
 ment of other kinds of labor ; as including a state most 
 favorable to the freedom and independence of the 
 human mind one, perhaps, most conducive to the 
 multiplication of the human species; has intrinsically 
 a strong claim to preeminence over every other kind 
 of industry." 
 
 The permanence of that sentiment in American life 
 was curiously exhibited when the Senate Committee 
 investigating campaign funds in 1920 examined certain 
 industrial leaders. The witnesses naively expressed the 
 opinions that farmers, especially Middle Western 
 
 * American State Papers, Finance i, 123. 
 
Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 farmers, were the best Americans. Tte^radition of 
 that^belief runs as an unbroken strand through tKe 
 texture of American development. It has had far- 
 -^leachjng results. One of thejirst of these was the 
 , principle accepted by Hamilton/Tench Coxe, Gallatin, 
 /and others, thatjnanufactures were subsidiary. The 
 I labor employed wasTcTBe that of women and child- 
 ' ren, immigrants, and the sons of farmers during the 
 frozen winter. "The husbandman himself," said Ham- 
 ilton, "experiences a new source of profit and support 
 from the increased industry of his wife and daughters, 
 invited and stimulated by the demands of the neigh- 
 boring manufactories." Women and children, par- 
 ticularly those of a tender age, were to be recruited. 
 Immigration, attracted by manufactures, would in 
 Hamilton's words be "an important resource, not only 
 for extending the population, and with it the useful 
 and productive labor of the country, but likewise for 
 the prosecution of manufactures, without deducting 
 from the number of hands which might otherwise be 
 drawn to tillage; and even for the indemnification of 
 agriculture for such as might happen to be diverted 
 from it." The importance of this belief that industry 
 was to be treated as a subsidiary enterprise in the 
 national economy developed later. Inadequate wages, 
 long hours, unwholesome'working conditions, devas- 
 tated family life, bad housing, periodic unemployment, 
 were in part made immune from public interference by 
 this belief that agriculture was the main business and 
 industry the supplementary avocation of American 
 workers. 
 
 The belief that manufactures were subsidiary to 
 
The Rise of Industry 39 
 
 farming had also the effect of imposing_the_ agricul-^ 
 tural system of labor in the factories. The hours of 
 labor were from sun to sun in agriculture. It was ac- 
 cordingly entirely natural to establish the summer 
 routine of the farms in the cotton mills. Mrs. Harriet 
 H. Robinson, one of the young women who worked 
 at Lowell when the factory system was getting estab- 
 lished in this country, recorded her memories in a paper 
 published in 1883 by the Massachusetts Bureau of Sta- 
 tistics of Labor. Lowell was the model factory town 
 of early America, and yet little girls not over ten years 
 of age there worked fourteen and fifteen hours daily. 
 "The working hours of all the girls extended from five 
 
 o'clock in the morning until seven in the evening, with 
 one-half hour each for breakfast and dinner. Even the 
 doffers (the youngest children) were forced to be on 
 duty nearly fourteen hours a day," said Mrs. Robin- 
 son. On occasion the working day was lengthened 
 until eight, nine or ten o'clock at night and sometimes 
 
 it began at four in the morning. The factory girls 
 came from New England farms. They returned ordin- 
 arily to their country homes where similar hours pre- 
 vailed. It was not extraordinary, therefore, that the 
 farmers' working habits should have been adopted by 
 early industry. 
 
 Another ideal which was taken over bodily was the 
 conception of personal relationship between employer 
 and employes. That ideal still persists in many places. 
 It was valid in the eighteenth century. The apprentice 
 system was never elaborated in this country as it was 
 in England and in Europe generally, but none the less 
 the tradition of the relation between apprentice and 
 
4O Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 master was strong. The colonial manufacturer was the 
 mechanic or artizan who had gathered about him a few 
 journeymen and a few apprentices. The first factories 
 were spinning rooms. These establishments were de- 
 signed to utilize the energies of petty offenders or to 
 instruct children in the textile arts. The remaining 
 records of apprentices always portray relationships 
 which were intimate and personal even though they 
 were not always pleasant and just. Following the ex- 
 ample of Arkwright and Strutt in England, whom he 
 had served as an apprentice, Samuel Slater, the founder 
 of cotton manufactures in the United States, estab- 
 lished Sabbath schools for the moral instruction of his 
 employes. The rules and regulations in the Lowell 
 factories are suggestive of the regime of girls' board- 
 ing schools of the time. Board and lodging and cloth- 
 ing were the pay of the apprentice who was content 
 to work because of the instruction he obtained. Simi- 
 larly the first factory workers were given their board 
 and lodging by many employers. 
 
 Long hours of labor and the employment of women 
 and children were accepted because of the general be- 
 lief in the virtuous discipline of steady toil. Yet the 
 establishment of manufactures was sought also because 
 of the labor-saving potentiality of machinery. A 
 sparsely settled country needed the application of labor. 
 Mechanical industry promised to save labor. The 
 advocate of manufactures accordingly delighted to 
 calculate the savings which would result from the use 
 of machinery. In contrast with hand processes the 
 burden of watching the machine seemed light. Of 
 the number employed in the British cotton industries 
 
The Rise of Industry 41 
 
 Hamilton noted that four-sevenths were women and 
 children, that the greater portion of these were chil- 
 dren, and that the majority of the children were of a 
 tender age. The textile machines seemed so great a 
 liberator of mankind from the curse of toil that only 
 the strength of infants was thought to be required 
 to perform the work of men and women. That idea 
 was carried on. In 1810 Albert Gallatin, the brilliant 
 Secretary of the Treasury, again reported to Congress 
 on the state of American manufactures. At that time he 
 was compelled still to report that by far the greater 
 part of goods made of cotton, flax and wool in the 
 United States "are manufactured in private families, 
 mostly for their own use and partly for sale." Tench 
 Coxe, the most active advocate for the establishment 
 of manufactures in the United States, calculated in 
 1814 that 58,000 operatives could spin the entire 
 amount of cotton then exported from the United 
 States. With machinery Coxe reckoned that only one- 
 eighth of this working force need be adult males,* the 
 remaining seven-eighths women and children. One 
 hundred thousand women working on a half -day 
 schedule could weave this cotton. It could be printed 
 by about 60,000 men and children. The labor of 
 210,000 persons, chiefly women and children, could by 
 the subtlety of machines increase the value of this ex- 
 port cotton from eight or nine million dollars to sev- 
 enty-five million dollars. Coxe reported that the dim- 
 inution of manual labor in Great Britain by means of 
 machinery in the cotton business was estimated at 200 
 to I in 1808. He, pioneer leader that he was, with the 
 * American State Papers, Finance 2, 669. 
 
42 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 enthusiasm of a crusader in advocating industry, 
 described "wonderful machines working as if they were 
 animated beings, endowed with all the talents of their 
 inventors, laboring with organs that never tire and sub- 
 ject to no expense of food or bed or raiment or dwel- 
 ling," which "may justly be considered as equivalent 
 to an immense body of manufacturing recruits, enlisted 
 in the service of the country." It was estimated that 
 a hand-wheel spinner could produce about four skeins a 
 day in 1800. In 1815 a mule spinner could attend to 
 about 90 spindles, which produced daily 180 skeins. 
 Twenty years later each mule spinner watched 200 
 spindles, each of which turned out as many as eight and 
 one-half skeins daily.* 
 
 Fundamental to the entire movement which sought 
 the governmental nurture of industry was finally an 
 admirable desire to enable the American people to fab- 
 ricate comforts and luxuries for themselves and ren- 
 der the nation self-sustaining. Simple men as well 
 as the great leaders whose names have become historic 
 united in this enterprise. Among the group of Boston 
 merchants who petitioned Congress for protection on 
 June 5, 1789, were spokesmen of wheelwrights, black- 
 smiths, rope-makers, hatters, pewterers, soap-boilers 
 and tallow-chandlers, wool cardmakers, ship carvers, 
 sail-makers, cabinet makers, coach makers, tailors, 
 cordwainers, glue and starch makers, brass founders 
 and coppersmiths. These men had the vision of nation 
 builders. They lived at a time when a new and revo- 
 lutionary era in human history was unfolding and they 
 
 * "History of Manufactures in the United States," page 432. 
 House Doc. 146, 24 Congress, I Session, page 52. 
 
The Rise of Industry 43 
 
 desired ardently to see the great forces which invention 
 promised set to work in the service of their country. 
 Political traditions they had broken. Social stratifica- 
 tion they were beginning to challenge. In the midst 
 of these two revolutions, political and social, came the 
 prospect of even deeper changes in the productive life 
 of the new nation. The power which the new industry 
 proffered early Americans eagerly sought and attained. 
 The consequences which followed, the manner in which 
 human welfare was affected by the machine era, must 
 now be considered. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE avowed purpose of Congress in stimulating the 
 .development of manufactures was to add to the 
 national prosperity. Variegated industry, it was 
 thought, would render the country independent of 
 foreign nations for military and other essential sup- 
 plies. At the same time, through the division of labor 
 and the use of mechanical power, the total sum of 
 national wealth would be vastly increased. The fore- 
 casts of the early advocates of manufactures have been 
 abundantly fulfilled in this respect. By many tests 
 an enormous multiplication of national wealth and 
 productivity has been shown. Tench Coxe in 1812 
 estimated the value of all the manufactures of the 
 United States at $172,762,676.* In 1919 the value of 
 American manufactured products was placed at more 
 than sixty-two billions, f Within that 107 years the 
 value of the products of American industrial estab- 
 lishments had thus been increased approximately three 
 hundred and sixty fold, while the population had in- 
 creased sixteen fold. The value of manufactures had 
 accordingly been augmented more than twenty times 
 as rapidly as had the population. None of the bold 
 
 * "Digest of Manufactures," page 676. 
 
 t "Census of Manufactures," Press Release, May 24, 1921. 
 
The Worker's Family 45 
 
 promoters of a century ago dared dream of such a 
 growth. The actual material achievement of American 
 industry has surpassed enormously the wildest hopes 
 of the forefathers. 
 
 How has this great augmentation of national pro- 
 duction, and how, in particular, have the various in- 
 dustries through which this new wealth is produced, 
 affected the working class family? It has been cus- 
 tomary, first of all, to accuse manufacturing industry 
 of having broken down the worker's home by taking 
 women and children out of it. The charge is only in 
 part justified. Women and_children worked * long 
 before the steam engine was invented although work in 
 the "home was very different from the later service_jn^ 
 factories. In fact it has been said that during the 
 seventeenth century English women provided clothes 
 and food for the family while the men supplied shel- 
 ter. Every member of the American artizan or farmer 
 family was busily employed. A farmer complaining 
 of the extravagance and waste of the times wrote a 
 letter which was published in the Connecticut Courant 
 of August 1 8, 1788. He was born poor and became 
 rich. In recounting the vicissitudes of his own life 
 he painted a picture which has been considered typical 
 of the age and region. He recalled : 
 
 "My parents were poor and they put me at twelve 
 years of age to a farmer with whom I lived until I was 
 twenty-one. My master fitted me off with two suits of 
 homespun, four woolen shirts and two pair of shoes. 
 At twenty-two I married me a wife, and a very good 
 young woman she was. We took a farm of forty acres 
 on rent. By industry we got ahead fast. I married my 
 
 * "Women in Industry," by Edith Abbott. 
 
46 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 eldest daughter to a clever lad to whom I gave one 
 hundred acres of my out land. This daughter had been 
 a working, dutiful girl, and therefore I fitted her out 
 well and to her mind: for I told her to take the best 
 of my wool and flax and to spin herself gowns, coats, 
 stockings and shifts nay, I suffered her to buy some 
 cotton and to make into sheets as I was determined to 
 do well by her. At this time my farm gave me and my 
 whole family a good living on the produce of it and left 
 me one year with another one hundred and fifty silver 
 dollars, for I never spent more than ten dollars a year 
 which was for salt, nails and the like. Nothing to wear, 
 eat or drink was purchased as my farm provided all 
 with this saving I put my money to interest, bought 
 cattle, fatted and sold them and made great profit." 
 
 Prosperity led this particular family into what the 
 farmer deemed luxury and also into extravagance and 
 debt, whither it is unnecessary to follow them. The 
 system of work in which all participated, even the very 
 young children, was, however, well nigh universal 
 throughout New England and the Middle Atlantic 
 States. All were expected to work. Industry was, 
 in fact, the only school open to the great majority of 
 the population. It was universally deemed to be the 
 best influence in the formation of character. Boys 
 and girls for the good of their souls, as well as for 
 the profit of their parents, were put to work almost as 
 soon as they passed the frontier of infancy. Little girls 
 of six and seven and younger began the tasks theirs 
 for life of spinning wool and flax and cotton.* A 
 Massachusetts law of 1642 provided that children who 
 tended cattle "be set to some other employment withal, 
 as spinning upon the rock, knitting, weaving tape, etc." 
 Portable hand looms were taken into the pastures by 
 the boys and girls in order that their small hands might 
 
 *"The Family as a Social and Educational Institution," by 
 Willystine Goodsell, page 401, 
 
The Worker's Family 47 
 
 be kept busy. Boys wove garters and suspenders on 
 tape looms while girls assisted in the gardens. Both 
 boys and girls were apprenticed, although the appren- 
 tice system was never so common in the colonies as it 
 was in England. A "Spinning School House" was 
 established in Boston in 1720 for the purpose of teach- 
 ing the art to children of the poor. Some masters 
 seem to have regarded apprenticed children lightly, as 
 may be gleaned from the following advertisement 
 which appeared in the Connecticut C our ant : 
 
 "Run away from the subscriber on the evening of the 
 thirteenth of this instant July, an apprentice boy about 
 17 years old and about five feet high : said boy did belong 
 to New Haven, named Elisha Turner. Who will take up 
 said boy and return him to his master shall have two 
 pence reward and no charges paid by 
 
 SAMUEL CLARK, 
 Winchester, July 28, 1788." 
 
 Under the system of domestic industry practically 
 all textiles were spun and woven by women and chil- 
 dren. Historically spinning and weaving and the mak- 
 ing of clothes were duties which women, their 
 children, and their servants, where servants were 
 available, had generally performed, [ghe first factories 
 thus were^competitors of the family manufacturers. 
 WEenTench Coxe prepared the Digest of Manufac- 
 tures for 1810 * home production was seen to exceed 
 the output in manufacturing establishments enor- 
 mously. For every yard of cotton made in a factory 
 upwards of 112 yards were fabricated by families in 
 1810. Wool showed similar conditions. More than 
 nine and a half million yards were woven in families, 
 
 * American State Papers : Finance 2 : 690 and following. 
 
48 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 while only some seventy-one thousand yards were 
 turned out by the twenty-three woolen factories re- 
 ported in the 1810 census. The disproportion was 
 overwhelming. It was entirely to be expected, there- 
 fore, that the ambitious promoters of manufactures 
 should have accepted industrial conditions as they 
 found them. Women and children had been employed 
 in the fabrication of cloths. The invention of power 
 looms, the utilization of water power first and later 
 of steam, appeared to render far more facile the work 
 they had traditionally performed. Machinery seemed 
 at first sight to make things very easy of accomplish- 
 ment to lighten their historic burden and not to im- 
 pose new duties. The textile factories were, moreover, 
 the pioneer manufactures. The conditions which 
 obtained in them, conditions sanctioned by immemorial 
 usage in domestic life, were extended generally into 
 industry. As factories grew in number and importance 
 women and children left the home for new industrial 
 duties. 
 
 (Work in factories was not, however, like that of 
 homes. This was clearly seen by a few in England, 
 and Americans who advocated the establishment of 
 manufactures had to defend the project against 
 charges that such work was demoralizing. Tench 
 Coxe took up the imputation and in reply said :* 
 
 "Opinions have been advanced in some countries un- 
 favorable to the morals of the manufacturers. But it 
 does not appear that there is more vice among the 
 description of persons indicated in the preceding para- 
 graph than in some other extensive classes of our popu- 
 lation. . . . The system adopted at Humphreysville, in 
 
 * "Digest of Manufactures," page 689. 
 
The Worker's Family 49 
 
 Conaecticut, with respect to education, manners, disci- 
 pline, morals and religion, is an interesting evidence that 
 the people of the United States may quicken and increase 
 the virtues of the rising generation, and reform the 
 degenerate of later years by a humane and politic system 
 in the large manufactories. It may correctly be observed 
 that while no commotions have dishonored the reputation 
 of manufacturers in this country, from this class of our 
 citizens there have arisen Nathaniel Greene, Benjamin 
 Franklin, and David Rittenhouse, respectfully conceived 
 to be comparable without disadvantage to their respective 
 memories and to their manufacturing brethren with any 
 equal number of ornaments and benefactors to their 
 country of any other single profession or occupation. 
 The field of manufacturers, represented in other parts 
 of the world, to be fruitful in mischief and turbulence, 
 has produced here a body of firm supporters of our 
 constitutions and laws and the most respectable examples 
 of civic virtues." 
 
 But beyond the vague suspicion that factory life 
 made for loose morals, there was hardly a trace of un- 
 easiness concerning the effects of industry on the wel- 
 fare of the people. No question of health, of fatigue, 
 of compensation for accidents or unemployment, of 
 control, of a possible rift between classes, seems to have 
 occurred to the inaugnrators of the industrial system. 
 Early American promoters of industry were concerned 
 chiefly about increasing the resources of the country. 
 Children were means to this end. How fully absorbed 
 the nation was in acquiring wealth is shown by an 
 ingenious estimate of the value of the unused child 
 labor, similar to that made by Sir William Petty in the 
 seventeenth century. This was published in Nilesf 
 Weekly Register on October 5, 1816. The corres- 
 pondent calculated for one town that the value of 200 
 unemployed children between seven and sixteen years 
 old, working 45 weeks a year, would be $13,500. Chil- 
 dren were rated at from $1.25 to $2 a week. The 
 
50 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 computation was carried out for the nation. It was 
 reckoned that there were then 317,000 children whose 
 time was not fully employed and who might be utilized 
 in textile industries. The employment of all these 
 children would, however, call for the establishment 
 of factories with nearly 8,000,000 cotton spindles a 
 plan too large to seem immediately attainable to this 
 enthusiastic estimator of the unharnessed energies of 
 the nation's children. 
 
 These promoters had the same attitude toward un- 
 employed children that later Americans have expressed 
 toward unutilized water power. Both thought that a 
 great material resource was being wasted. The earlier 
 generation failed as completely to sense the needs of 
 childhood as did its successor, when brought face to 
 face with the problem of natural resources, seem un- 
 able to understand the value of beauty and of fore- 
 sight for future generations. The failure to appre- 
 ciate the necessities of children was, however, in char- 
 acter with the times. Thus citizens living on the 
 Brandy wine remarked in 1815, in a petition to Con- 
 gress, that "More than eight-tenths of the persons 
 employed in the manufactories in the United States 
 are women and children, by which the latter are earlier 
 trained to industrious habits than they would other- 
 wise be."* 
 
 During the formative years of industry few dis- 
 puted the propriety of employing children. Samuel 
 Slater, the pioneer of the American textile industry, 
 started in Rhode Island the English custom of employ- 
 
 * "Woman and Child Wage Earners," Vol. 6:28; Senate Docu- 
 ment, 6ist Congress, Second Session, No. 645. 
 
The Worker's Family S 1 
 
 ing entire families in his mills.* The first records of 
 the Slater mill mention prominently the names of four 
 small lads. The letter of one of the early operatives 
 who began work himself at ten years of age indicates 
 that during 1790 and 1791 the operatives in the first 
 cotton mill were almost exclusively children of from 
 seven to twelve years of age. The Committee on Man- 
 ufactures in 1816 estimated that 24,000 boys under 
 seventeen and 66,000 women and girls were included 
 in the total calculation of 100,000 operatives in cotton 
 mills. f A considerable period of time elapsed before \ 
 there was any general recognition of the menace of ; 
 child labor. The principle that work was the "mother ,- 
 of virtue" was deeply rooted. So prevalent was this j 
 idea that free traders such as Condy Raguet were com- 
 pelled to argue that there was work enough for children 
 in agriculture.^ 
 
 The first recorded stirring came in Rhode Island, 
 where the employment of children was most exten- 
 sive. In his message to the legislature in 1818 the / 
 governor called attention to the need of educating | 
 factory children. "It is a lamentable truth," said he, 
 "that too many of the living generation, who are 
 obliged to labor in those works of almost unceasing 
 application and industry, are growing up without an 
 opportunity of obtaining that education which is neces- 
 sary for their personal welfare as well as for the wel- 
 fare of the whole community." A resolution provid- 
 ing for the establishment of schools for the benefit of 
 
 * "Women in Industry," page 338. 
 
 t "The Textile Industries of the United States," page 159. 
 
 t 'Woman and Child Wage Earners," Vol. 6, page 29. 
 
52 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 the 2,500 children between the ages of seven and four- 
 teen employed in Rhode Island factories was reported 
 in 1824 by Tristan Burges, who proposed to make the 
 employers bear the expense of the schools. The reso- 
 lution failed.* Massachusetts first made a state inves- 
 tigation. A joint committee of the legislature was 
 ordered on January 14, 1825, to report on the exped- 
 iency of establishing a system of education for children 
 employed in factories. The committee reported that 
 it was inexpedient, but suggested an investigation. Al- 
 though manufacturers were still petitioning for public 
 aid whenever they desired it, the notion of the impro- 
 priety of governmental intervention in behalf of any 
 class other than the owners of industry was so strong 
 that the selectmen were instructed to investigate only 
 child labor found in "incorporated manufacturing 
 companies." The dislike of corporations then gen- 
 eral, and too, the legal fact that the corporation was a 
 creature of the state, were sufficient to bring them 
 within the scope of the inquiry, although unincorpor- 
 ated manufacturers escaped. The legislature was 
 subsequently informed that the boys and girls investi- 
 gated worked twelve or thirteen hours a day, a system 
 by which they have "little opportunity for daily in- 
 struction." Not until 1842, however, was Massachu- 
 setts willing to pass a school law, the first legislative 
 milestone in the history of the liberation of American 
 childhood. 
 
 For a long time the children continued to take a 
 very important part in American industry. Pennsyl- 
 vania in 1848 passed the first law forbidding children 
 * "Woman and Child Wage Earners," Vol. i, 6:31. 
 
The Worker's Family 53 
 
 under twelve years old to work in cotton, woolen, silk, 
 and flax factories.* The law also pronounced ten 
 hours to be the legal working day in such industries. 
 But children over ten years old could be employed 
 longer than ten hours, if special contracts were made 
 with their parents. Moreover, no proof of the age of 
 the child workers was required. When the law went 
 into effect manufacturers in the vicinity of Pittsburgh 
 stated that the ten-hour working day would be ruin- 
 ous to them so long as manufacturers in other states 
 had a twelve-hour day.f A strike ensued, participated 
 in by children, lasting from July 4 to August 28, at the 
 end of which time it was settled, the employees winning 
 their legal ten-hour day but losing sixteen per cent 
 in their wages. In the course of the strike a number 
 of girls were arrested for riots. One of them, a child 
 of thirteen, was sent to jail for want of bail. Thir- 
 teen girls were found guilty and four were acquitted. J 
 Before Pennsylvania forbade the employment of chil- 
 dren under twelve at work in these textile mills, laws 
 had been passed in other states limiting the hours of 
 child labor. Connecticut in 1842 had forbidden chil- 
 dren under fourteen years old to work more than ten 
 hours a day in cotton and woolen factories, and the 
 same year Massachusetts had prohibited children under 
 twelve from working more than ten hours a day in 
 any manufacturing industry. 
 
 But in none of the earlier laws was a special method 
 
 * Op. dt ., 6 : 207. 
 
 t J. Lynn Barnard, "Factory Legislation in Pennsylvania," 
 University of Pennsylvania Publications, Political Economy No. 
 19, page 20. 
 
 $ "Woman and Child Wage Earners," Vol. 6, page 124. 
 
54 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 of enforcement provided. In consequence, as later 
 inquiry showed, the laws intended to limit the hours of 
 child labor and to keep children out of factories seldom 
 served their purpose. The most effectual of the early 
 efforts in behalf of children were the school laws. In 
 these Massachusetts was the pioneer and other indus- 
 trial states followed. The first act of this character 
 was the Massachusetts Statute of 1836, which pro- 
 vided that children under fifteen years old must at- 
 tend school three months out of twelve. Here again, 
 however, no special means of enforcement were pro- 
 vided and in consequence the school laws were only 
 partially enforced. The report of the Massachusetts 
 Labor Commission in 1866 gives conclusive and strik- 
 ing evidence on this point. Edward Harris of Woon- 
 socket, according to the report made to the legislature, 
 "desires to call attention to the labor of children in 
 the mills. Represents that, from eight years old and 
 upwards, they work full time rise at four and a half 
 a.m., having thirty minutes for breakfast, forty-five 
 minutes at dinner, and leave work at seven p.m., four- 
 teen and a half hours. Thinks manufacturers in Mas- 
 sachusetts and in Rhode Island pay little regard to the 
 law respecting the employment of children." In spite 
 of the fact that he belonged to the manufacturers' 
 group, Mr. Harris held that a ten-hour law for women 
 and children, enforced with penalties, would increase 
 the intelligence of the community. Another spokes- 
 man of the manufacturers urged that if the hours of 
 labor were reduced, manufacturers would leave the 
 state. This gentleman, J. E. Carver, of Bridgewater, 
 was certain also that the workers would suffer if the 
 
The Worker's Family 55 
 
 hours were reduced. "No legislation/' said he, "can 
 make his receipts for eight hours more than four-fifths 
 of what they would be for ten hours." A different 
 view of the power of politics to control prices was ex- 
 pressed, however, when the manufacturers sought the 
 protection of friendly import duties in order that they 
 might escape foreign competition. 
 
 Vivid pictures of the customary effects of early child 
 labor were given by witnesses from industrial towns 
 to the commission. T. J. Kidd, of Fall River, testi- 
 fied in part as follows : 
 
 "Question : Was there any one who ever tried to cause 
 the children to be sent to school ? 
 
 Answer: Not since old man Robeson died. 
 
 Question: Why do not the parents send them to 
 school ? 
 
 Answer: Small help is scarce; a great deal of the 
 machinery has been stopped for want of small help, so 
 the overseers have been going around to draw the small 
 children from the schools into the mills; the same as a 
 draft in the army." 
 
 John Wild, also of Fall River, threw light on the 
 child labor situation as it existed in Massachusetts the 
 year after the close of the Civil War. Wild testi- 
 fied that children seven years old were employed in the 
 mill. His own children worked because his earnings 
 were not sufficient to support the family. Said he to 
 the Labor Commission: 
 
 "I don't know that I have any more to say, except 
 that I have two little boys, one eleven and the other about 
 eight and a half. I am no scholar myself because I have 
 always been working in the mill, and I am sorry for it. 
 I don't want my children to be brought up the same way. 
 I wish to get them to work a little less hours so that I 
 can send them to night school. I want, if it is possible, 
 to get a law so that they can go to school and know 
 how to read and write their own names." 
 
56 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 During the half century prior to the close of the 
 Civil War the system of child labor was fully devel- 
 oped. Not until after the Civil War was child labor ef- 
 
 . fectually challenged in this country. Even to-day the 
 
 """evil is not remedied. It is the opinion of many that 
 conditions in this country never became so serious 
 as they were in Great Britain, which however, it is 
 fair to say, began earlier and worked with more vigor 
 and intelligence in eradicating the evil than have the not 
 always United States. Before it was possible to liber- 
 ate children from the burden of factory labor, society 
 
 * had to be slowly enlightened. The old Puritan prin- 
 . ciple that work is the mother of virtue had to be modi- 
 fied by a new passion for learning and for the liberty 
 which workingmen believed during the first half of the 
 nineteenth century could only be attained by an edu- 
 
 ^cated generation. Many good and some great citizens 
 served the republic well in this long struggle. Not 
 least powerful was Horace Mann, who as secretary of 
 the Massachusetts Board of Education came boldly to 
 plead the cause of the children. Mann declared in his 
 report for 1848 that "those who employ other people's 
 children for profit could not entrench themselves be- 
 hind the sacredness of parental rights. Their object 
 is their own personal gain, a lawful and laudable ob- 
 ject, it is true, but one which cannot sanction for a 
 moment the infliction of a positive injury upon any 
 child, or the deprivation of any privilege essential either 
 to his well-being or to the permanence and prosperity of 
 the state." The pioneer educator asked: "How can 
 any man seek to enlarge his own gains or to pamper 
 his own luxurious habits, by taking the bread of intel- 
 
The Worker's Family 57 
 
 lectual and moral life from the children around him?"* 
 The answer to Horace Mann's appeal was made by 
 many and it has been repeated down to the present gen- 
 eration. The first and most important response to a 
 demand for the protection of children has usually 
 been that the manufacturers did not desire it. The 
 early Massachusetts legislators found it " inexpedient'* 
 to pass school laws, and three-quarters of a century 
 later and more the legislators of North Carolina were 
 finding the opposition of cotton manufacturers an in- 
 surmountable obstacle to the passage of adequate child v 
 labor laws. The state has no right to interfere with) 
 private business, it has ever been argued by textile y 
 manufacturers. A North Carolina manufacturer said 
 in 1905, when one of the losing fights for a child labor 
 law was made, that it was an insult to manufacturers 
 to take the management of their property away and 
 vest it in the superintendent of schools. The law pro- 
 vided that no boy under twelve and no girl under four- 
 teen should work in the mills. A boy under fourteen 
 was excluded from the factories unless he could read 
 and write. The superintendent of schools was author- 
 ized to approve the school certificates. That was what 
 the manufacturer meant when he said the bill "takes 
 the management of their property out of their hands 
 and puts it in the hands of the county superintendent 
 of education, who knows as much concerning the needs 
 or the best interests of a factory as a billy goat knows 
 about fishing." A veritable fury of opposition has 
 contested the progress of public control over child 
 labor. Public interference, north, west and south, has 
 * "Woman and Child Wage Earners," Vol. 6, page 72. 
 
58 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 been unfailingly resented as an unwarranted intrusion 
 on the part of the government by the very men who 
 have consistently sought governmental interference 
 whenever public aid seemed to promise nourishment for 
 their profits. 
 
 During the early decades the campaigns to take 
 children out of factories found success when based on 
 a demand for education and on a demand for the pro- 
 tection of the health of the future citizen. Broadly 
 speaking, that is still true. The great sanction of laws 
 preventing the premature employment of children lies 
 in the now acknowledged duty of society to coming 
 generations. The state cannot permit the health of 
 children to be dwarfed by toil during years when growth 
 is the normal function. Nor can the state allow the 
 next generation of citizens to grow up unschooled and 
 in ignorance. These two principles have the approval 
 of all except those who desire to exploit the energies 
 of the young, and this is now a minority which decade 
 by decade becomes less potent. A further principle, 
 the right of the child to the pursuit of happiness, is 
 now reinforcing the older doctrines. It is now known 
 that children like their elders will play; and woe 
 betide that society or that community which suffers 
 the natural impulses of youth to be thwarted by indus- 
 try or by any other artificial barriers. In any adequate 
 consideration of the effects of industry upon human 
 welfare, however brief, this factor should be taken 
 into account. For, besides drafting the juvenile 
 energies of the nation as into an army, industry has 
 in many places taken away most of the natural oppor- 
 tunities for play, even among those children who are 
 
The Workers Family 59 
 
 not absorbed into factories and mills. This state of 
 affairs is apparent in any industrial city. It is most 
 obvious in the working class quarters of larger munici- 
 palities. In the congested districts of New York City, 
 for example, little children learn while they are still 
 toddling infants to gamble upon the streets. Because 
 they have no normal outlets for their play energies* 
 they are driven to abnormality. When the full ac- 
 counting of what industry has done to childhood is 
 made, these things which have such great consequences 
 in the wasting of opportunities for sound development 
 and in the stimulation of criminal tendencies must not 
 be forgotten. 
 
 Child labor is not an obsolete issue. In 1910 the 
 census showed that two million children between the 
 ages of ten and fifteen were still employed in gainful 
 occupations in the United States. The federal tax on 
 the products which involve the work of children affects 
 only fifteen per cent of the full number of juvenile 
 workers, according to an estimate made by the National 
 Child Labor Committee.* The children protected are 
 those who would be employed in factories, mines, and 
 quarries. Children employed in agriculture, domestic 
 service, street trades, stores, messenger and delivery 
 companies, tenement homework, and in restaurants and 
 hotels, are not touched by the federal act, unless they 
 make articles which are shipped in interstate commerce. 
 State laws have improved greatly during the last 
 decade, but even at the present time they permit the 
 continuance of much child labor. Most states have 
 adopted at least a fourteen year age limit for the in- 
 
 * Pamphlet 303, page 4. 
 
60 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 itiation of children into industrial life and a few have 
 higher limits. Child specialists now think, however, 
 that sixteen should be the minimum age limit and many 
 regard even that too low.* The manufacturing indus- 
 tries are, it should be said, now distinctly not the 
 chief offenders against children. Agriculture, which 
 provided ready-made the system of child labor which 
 industry so greedly took to its own purpose, still 
 retains its hold upon childhood in many parts of the 
 country. The National Child Labor Committee in 
 recent surveys has found children, four, five and six 
 years old picking cotton in the Imperial Valley of 
 California. In Oklahoma, children as young as five 
 were found regularly picking cotton while the average 
 school attendance was only a little more than half of 
 the enrolment. In Colorado five thousand children 
 between five and fifteen years old were found to be 
 regularly engaged in the beet industry. 
 
 Industry did not begin child labor but industry, in 
 a unique sense, did use children for its own profits. 
 Manufacturers entered the worker's home and took his 
 young children out and made them labor for his en- 
 richment, without thought of their future or of the 
 country. In time the society which created industry for 
 its own ends saw that child labor was a means of 
 race deterioration and consequently public intervention 
 still far from completed was inevitable. For the 
 most part, however, if the record of a century be 
 taken, industry has lightened rather than added to the 
 burdens carried by children. Childhood is more free 
 and happier than it was a century ago. The rise of 
 * Standards of Child Welfare, Children's Bureau, 1919. 
 
The Worker's Family 61 
 
 industry has been coincident with this humanitarian 
 development, and while manufacturers have in their 
 day and generation on the whole sought to retain 
 children in bondage, it is still true that mechanical 
 industry has supplied the wealth which has really lib- 
 erated childhood. The period during which industry 
 has developed has taken work away from children 
 save in agriculture and in a few other branches and it 
 has established universal education. The child of the 
 worker to-day has in these respects a very much better 
 chance than the child born a century ago. 
 
 But what about women? It has already been 
 observed that manufacturers did not first set women to 
 work. Family manufactures, domestic industry which 
 preceded mechanical production, were very largely in 
 the hands of women, servants, and children. The tex- 
 tile industry was almost overwhelmingly a woman's 
 industry. The effect of the establishment of manu- 
 factures was accordingly chiefly to change the nature 
 of woman's work. Women followed their familiar 
 tasks out of the home and into the factory. Women 
 were employed in the early factories because men were 
 needed for heavier occupations. The pioneers of in- 
 dustry believed quite sincerely that woman's place 
 was the home. They were not willing to let her stay 
 there because they were practical men who thought 
 more of their profits than of their prejudices. Women, 
 moreover, were cheaper than men. They still are. 
 
 There can, however, be but little doubt that em- 
 ployment in factories has offered certain clear advan- 
 tages to women. It has defined their work more pre- 
 cisely. Instead of the endless round of domestic 
 
62 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 duties definite performance during specified hours has 
 been demanded. These hours were at first overpower- 
 ingly long. They began at 4:30 in the morning and 
 they ended at seven in the evening or later. Fourteen 
 and a half hours was not an unusual stint. But after 
 all those were the hours which women and men 
 then worked on the farms during the summer. When 
 hours became shorter the definiteness of industrial work 
 was undoubtedly a factor which counted in its favor. 
 But more than that, even the low wages of women have 
 meant a step toward economic independence. Before 
 manufactures came most women worked, but without 
 pay. After manufacturing was established women 
 continued to work, but for pay. The first textile mills 
 in Rhode Island paid men for the work they per- 
 formed, and also for the labors of their women and 
 children. Dennis Rier contracted on January 27, 1815, 
 to work for the Poignaud and Plant Mill at Lancaster, 
 Massachusetts. His agreement provided that he should 
 be paid for himself, his daughter, aged twelve, his three 
 sons, his sister, and her son and daughter. The fam- 
 ily system was carried over into the factory in certain 
 places for a time, but generally women were paid their 
 own wages.* Industrial work has accordingly brought 
 to women a measure of economic independence. That 
 is a very great gain in the development of human lib- 
 erty. But other effects of industry upon women have 
 not been always happy. Women have been underpaid 
 and overworked. Fatigue and strain have become so 
 great a menace to the health and strength of women, 
 and through them, as mothers, of the future genera- 
 * "Women in Industry," page 268. 
 
The Worker's Family 63 
 
 tions, that in self-defense the states began to regulate 
 the conditions under which women might be employed. 
 During the century and more since industry began 
 to take shape in the United States the government has 
 been compelled to intervene in behalf of the women 
 who were employed in industry. Action of this char- 
 acter has been taken grudgingly. Legislators who have 
 never hesitated to grant the favors demanded by the 
 promoters of industry, commerce, and transportation 
 have been more than reluctant to take any public ac- 
 tion in the defense of the women of the nation. Law- 
 yers on the bench and at the bar who have built up 
 legal sanction for novel varieties of impalpable prop- 
 erty, by logic which rivals in subtlety the polemics of 
 medieval casuists and theologians, have looked askance 
 at the rise of new teachings concerning the duty of the 
 state to protect the health and vigor of women. Manu- 
 facturers and business men who have demanded and 
 who have received gifts of public money, public credit, 
 public lands, and who have insisted that the public 
 power of taxation be diverted to their own enrichment, 
 have presented an almost unbroken front against any 
 public action in the interest of women workers. This 
 has been true largely because at the time that manufac- 
 tures were developing, political power was in the 
 hands of those who possessed property. As has been 
 observed, the privileges of voting and of holding 
 office were the exclusive prerogatives of those who 
 owned property. As the industrial revolution came 
 on political barriers were torn down, but before work- 
 ers learned how to use their new ballots the theories 
 of laissez-faireism had become a bulwark of property 
 
64 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 holders against the demands of the workers. It is one 
 of the paradoxes of our industrial history that the 
 same men who insisted upon receiving public aid for 
 their own enterprises should have so long been able 
 to prevent their employes from obtaining assistance 
 from the public authority. In time, however, the states 
 began haltingly to take action in the interest of women 
 workers. Along three different lines this development 
 has proceeded. Hours of work, wages, and conditions 
 affecting health and safety, have all been the separate 
 occasions of what is now a large, if incomplete, body 
 of legislation. The first enactment passed in the in- 
 terest of women was the New Hampshire ten-hour 
 law of 1847. This was passed largely as a result of 
 the campaigning of "The Female Labor Reform Asso- 
 ciation of Manchester" and it actually preceded the first 
 British act on the subject. The act of Parliament, 
 however, was enforced, while the pioneer American 
 enactment was disregarded.* 
 
 Very early in the development of the factory sys- 
 tem women workers began to protest against the long 
 hours exacted of them. The first factory operatives 
 were daughters of New England farmers, artizans, 
 tradesmen, and even professional men. Many of them 
 worked in order that brothers might be educated. 
 They were independent of spirit and confident of the 
 respect of the community. As early as 1828 girl work- 
 ers in cotton factories in Paterson, New Jersey, went 
 on strike in order to voice their protest against a 
 change in the dinner hour and to express their desire 
 for the ten-hour working day. Six years later girls 
 
 * "Woman and Child Wage Earners," 10:80. 
 
The Worker's Family 65 
 
 employed in the textile mills of Lowell, the model fac- 
 tory city of early New England, assembled to hear an 
 address on the necessity of organization for the purpose 
 of securing the eight-hour day* From these pioneer 
 days of industry the question of working hours has 
 never become quiet. Constant improvements in ma- 
 chinery were made and the production expected of the 
 individual worker became accordingly greater. In 
 March, 1836, the girls of Amesbury were told that 
 they must tend two looms in the future without any 
 increase in pay. They went on strike.f In spite of 
 the success of a number of their historic efforts at trade 
 organization it soon became plain that alone and un- 
 aided women could not hope to obtain a reasonable 
 adjustment of their working hours. In consequence, 
 relief was sought from legislative rather than from 
 union activity. The first demands for state action 
 came, however, almost exclusively from the organized 
 workers themselves, who at that time sought protective 
 laws for men as well as for women. J It has been noted 
 that New Hampshire passed the first ten-hour day for 
 women. The next year Pennsylvania and Maine 
 passed similar laws. The Pennsylvania Act of 1848 
 established the ten-hour day as the legal working day 
 in textile and paper factories. But special contracts 
 requiring a longer number of hours could be made. 
 Seven cotton factories in Allegheny City stopped work 
 on July 4, on the ground that they could not continue 
 profitably on the ten-hour basis. On August 28 they 
 
 * Op. cit., page 27. 
 t Idem, page 35. 
 $ Idem, page 80. 
 
66 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 resumed operations, but with wages reduced sixteen 
 per cent.* On the whole, moreover, it is true that 
 these first laws were not enforced. The states were 
 not entirely aware that special machinery was essential 
 to the enforcement of industrial legislation. They 
 imagined that local authorities could enforce factory 
 laws. Furthermore, the popular American doctrine 
 that laws might be effectually repealed by a failure to 
 provide for their observance was also at work. Then 
 as now the interests which could not prevent the pas- 
 sage of a law found the power to prevent its enforce- 
 ment. Not until 1879, when Massachusetts showed 
 the way, had an American state passed an enforceable 
 law for the purpose of limiting the hours of labor 
 of women. f In 1908 the Oregon ten-hour law for 
 women was upheld by the United States Supreme 
 Court. By 1920 there were only six states which had 
 failed to place restrictions on the hours of labor per- 
 mitted women in industrial employment. An admir- 
 able statement of the present liberal attitude toward 
 such legislation was formulated by the President's In- 
 dustrial Conference, which in its final report dated 
 March, 1920, said: 
 
 "Women cannot enter industry without safeguards 
 additional to those provided for men, if they are to be 
 equally protected. The danger of exploiting their phys- 
 ical and nervous strength with cumulative ill effects upon 
 the next generation is more serious and the results are 
 more harmful to the community. Specia 1 provision is 
 needed to keep their hours within reason, to prohibit 
 night employment in factories and workshops, and to 
 exclude them from those trades offering particular 
 dangers to women." 
 
 * "Factory Legislation in Pennsylvania," page 20. 
 t "Principles of Labor Legislation," page 233. 
 
The Workers Family 67 
 
 The number of employments included in the prohi- 
 bitions of the laws are those which the legislatures 
 regard as dangerous to health. Domestic service and 
 agricultural labor are not limited in the United States. 
 The laws of Pennsylvania, for example, include "any 
 place . . . where work is done for compensation of any 
 sort with the exception of private home and farm- 
 ing."* 
 
 In one aspect of this limitation of the working hours 
 of women the United States has been notably 
 backward. That is the failure to prohibit night work. 
 Night work, injurious to all, is peculiarly dangerous 
 to women because, as repeated investigations have 
 shown, women in addition to their factory labor carry 
 on the responsibilities of homemaking. Many who 
 are employed during the night by industry care dur- 
 ing the day for their homes and their children. So 
 notorious is this evil that as a result of a conference 
 of fourteen leading European powers held at Berne 
 in 1906, the abolition of night work for women was 
 recommended. By 1912 the principal European na- 
 tions which were party to this conference had enacted 
 legislation outlawing night work for women, f Some 
 forms of night work for women were forbidden by 
 the laws of thirteen American states by 1920, but gen- 
 erally speaking the United States is in this respect a 
 backward nation. 
 
 In addition to laws limiting the hours of labor for 
 women and children society has been compelled to pro- 
 
 * "Principles of Labor Legislation/' page 236. 
 
 t Idem, page 273 ; also "The Employment of Women and Chil- 
 dren and the Berne Conventions of 1906," Harrison & Sons, 
 London, 1919. 
 
68 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 vide other means of protection. Some industrial 
 processes are so inherently dangerous that it has been 
 deemed advisable to exclude women and children from 
 them. Striking examples of legislation of this kind 
 were the effectual prohibition of the use of phos- 
 phorus in match manufacturing and the prohibition 
 of the employment of women and children in mines. 
 Phosphorus caused one of the most terrible of occu- 
 pational diseases "phossy jaw" a disease to which 
 men also are subject, but unlike European countries 
 the United States was able to end this evil only by the 
 indirect method of imposing a prohibitive tax on 
 matches containing white phosphorus and forbidding 
 their import or export.* Some European countries 
 have also prohibited the use of white lead in industrial 
 processes, but in this matter the United States has 
 failed to act. Regulation of dangerous industrial proc- 
 esses was built up on laws designed to protect women 
 and children, but at the present time many of these 
 hazards are recognized as equally dangerous to men. 
 In one way the necessity of safeguarding women 
 against destructive labor in factories has been used 
 unfairly against them. The Women's Bureau of the 
 United States Department of Labor has pointed out 
 that women are excluded from a number of industrial 
 processes which are quite as dangerous to men as to 
 women. f Thus, for example, women are not per- 
 mitted by the laws of some states to be employed on 
 polishing and grinding machines because of the danger 
 
 * "Principles of Labor Legislation," page 355. 
 t "The New Position of Women in American Industry," page 
 32. 
 
The Worker's Family 69 
 
 of tuberculosis. The reasonable public policy in a 
 case such as this is to devise methods of removing 
 the dust hazard, which is quite as much a menace to 
 men as to women. Women have been excluded from 
 trades on the specious ground that their health was 
 especially jeopardized when as a matter of fact men 
 desired merely to escape their competition. In con- 
 sequence the present tendency is toward reconstruct- 
 ing the industrial process so that it may be carried on 
 without danger to either sex rather than excluding 
 women from it. 
 
 In another respect society has intervened to protect 
 women. Massachusetts in 1911 passed a law forbid- 
 ding the employment of women two weeks before and 
 four weeks after childbirth in industry or commerce. 
 Four other states have enacted similar laws, but the 
 United States as a whole is far behind European 
 countries in this respect. The minimum standards as 
 to these matters formulated by the International Labor 
 Conference held at Washington in 1919 are more- 
 over in advance of any legislation which has proved 
 acceptable to an American state. One of the tests 
 both for the number of hours during which women 
 may safely work and for the industrial processes in 
 which they should be permitted to participate is ob- 
 tained as a result of scientific inquiry. It is now to 
 a certain degree possible to measure fatigue and hazard 
 and to fix standards on the basis of observation, al- 
 though in these affairs social philosophy is still a more 
 important guide than physiological science. A num- 
 ber of states, and also the federal government in so 
 far as it participates in industry, have, however, begun 
 
7O Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 to approach such questions by the road of scientific in- 
 vestigation. 
 
 Women's wages have been traditionally low. 
 Women were employed in industry because they were 
 cheaper than men. In the home they had worked with- 
 out payment. In domestic service their wage was ridic- 
 ulously small. In New England during 1808 servants 
 were paid seventy cents a week on the average and fifty 
 cents a week in 1815.* The competition of textile 
 factories raised the level of wages so that by 1849 the 
 wages of servants ranged from $1.25 to $1.50 a week.f 
 The wages of domestic servants were supplemented by 
 board and lodging, however, and that was of first im- 
 portance. Manufacturing industries did not create a 
 low wage system : they merely took advantage of the 
 system which already existed. The clothing industry, 
 which as early as 1828 began to establish "sweat 
 shops/'J was one of the worst offenders. Mathew 
 Carey reckoned in that year that of the eighteen to 
 twenty thousand working women in Baltimore, Phila- 
 delphia, New York, and Boston, at least twelve thous- 
 and could not earn by constant employment, sixteen 
 hours out of the twenty- four, more than $1.25 weekly. 
 Carey estimated in 1831 the annual income and ex- 
 penses of the average sewing woman as follows : 
 Forty-four weeks' wages at $1.25 $55-00 
 
 Lodgings, 50 cents per week $26.00 
 
 Fuel, 25 cents per week, but say only i2 l /2 . . 6.50 32.50 
 
 Remains for victuals and clothes $22.50 
 
 * Sixteenth Annual Report, Mass. Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 
 pages 228, 238. 
 
 "Woman and Child Wage Earners, Vol. 9, page 179. 
 $ Idem, page 127. 
 
The Worker's Family 71 
 
 The wages paid in the textile mills were a distinct 
 advance. The average weekly wage in Massachusetts 
 cotton factories in 1831 was said to be $2.25. At the 
 same time the average wage in New York and New 
 Jersey was placed at $1.90. At Lowell, where condi- 
 tions were esteemed especially good, women's wages 
 were said to be from $i to $3 weekly in addition to 
 board. The wages paid in the textile mills, low as they 
 were, were higher than the customary rates in familiar 
 vocations. They tended, moreover, generally to raise 
 the rates at which women were compensated. None 
 the less, industry, after having drawn women out of the 
 home, failed on the whole to provide equivalent sup- 
 port for them. The wages of women were not in- 
 tended generally to maintain them. They supplemented 
 the support provided in the family, although often at 
 times, as in Lowell, the rate of factory pay was actual- 
 ly sufficient for the independent support of the women 
 employed. But, commonly, industry has paid women 
 less than their maintenance. It has been parasitic to 
 that extent. During the winter of 1908 and the spring 
 of 1909 the field work for the study of the Condition 
 of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the United 
 States was done. The situation in twenty-three indus- 
 tries in seventeen states was investigated. A compre- 
 hensive picture of the wages paid women was obtained. 
 At that time nearly seventy-three per cent of the women 
 employed in industry, eighteen years old and over, got 
 less than $8 a week, and nearly ninety per cent got less 
 than $10 a week.* At that time $8 a week was the 
 least at which an American woman could support her- 
 
 * "Woman and Child Wage Earners," Vol. 18, page 23. 
 
72 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 self in health and decency. In spite of this two-fifths 
 of the women investigated earned less than $6 a week. 
 One-eighth earned less than $4 a week. Industry 
 which employed women was obviously parasitic. 
 
 Women employed in industry, taken in the mass, 
 have never earned living wages in this country. The 
 textile industry notably has paid family wages, that is, 
 each worker has been paid so little that only the united 
 efforts of all available workers sufficed to support the 
 family. Women seemed unable successfully to chal- 
 lenge this state of affairs and consequently, beginning 
 in 1910, a few American states have intervened. Min- 
 imum wage laws were passed. The minimum wages 
 set for different industries have usually been higher 
 than what was previously paid but low in themselves. 
 The year 1919 is counted a period of extremely high 
 wages. During the first four months of that year 
 an investigation of the wages paid in the corset indus- 
 try in Massachusetts was made. "Of the adult work- 
 ers, those eighteen years of age and over, 62.1 per cent 
 earn less than $12 a week."* In spite of the fact that 
 the inquiry was made at a time when wages generally 
 were reputed to have attained unprecedented levels in 
 this country, the Massachusetts Minimum Wage Com- 
 mission was compelled to state in its decree "that the 
 wages supplied a substantial number . . . were inade- 
 quate to supply the necessary cost of living and to 
 maintain the workers in health." The commission ac- 
 cordingly fixed a wage of $13 a week for experienced 
 employes. Thrift is preached to the poor. The figure 
 allowed for saving was 37 cents a week. If the women 
 
 * Massachusetts Minimum Wage Commission, Bulletin 21. 
 
The Worker's Family 73 
 
 were employed every week in the year, a condition 
 altogether rare, they would not at this rate be able to 
 accumulate $20 annually. Minimum wages, in spite 
 of the greater liberality of some commissions, such, 
 for example, as the District of Columbia body, are , 
 indeed minima ! They are designed to maintain physi- 
 cal life in more or less discomfort and that is all. 
 
 But the employment of married women is far more 
 serious in some of its effects. Industry transferred 
 woman's work from the home to the factory. Much 
 of industry did pay men such small wages that it was 
 necessary for women to continue at work in the fac- 
 tories in spite of the burden of childbearing. That 
 was a partial result of the family wage system. It 
 has had good effects as well as bad ones. The em- 
 ployment of women after marriage has done much to 
 dethrone the tyrant husband and father who was so 
 prominent a figure when the first feminists were dream- 
 ing of the liberation of women. Nothing has been of 
 greater importance in the social and economic enfran- 
 chisement of woman than her capacity to earn wages. 
 Industrial necessity accomplished what could have 
 hardly been achieved in any other manner. It brought 
 good in its train. When factory owners began to 
 attract women to their establishments, human freedom 
 took a step forward. Not that the industrial promoters 
 had any desire to help the cause of liberty. So far 
 as their writings show, they were not even aware that 
 their conduct had such an effect. But while women 
 were more free because of their industrial employment, 
 children suffered from the lack of maternal care. How 
 serious a factor this has been was first indicated with 
 
74 Industry and Human W 'el fare 
 
 clarity in the studies made by the federal Children's 
 Bureau. 
 
 Inadequate wages paid men have been shown by 
 the Children's Bureau studies to bear a very clear re- 
 lationship to the infant death rate. In Manchester, 
 New Hampshire, for example, a textile city, among 
 families in which the fathers' earnings were less than 
 $494 a year, the infant death rate was 262.4 per 
 thousand. When the fathers' earnings had risen to 
 $1,092 or more a year, the infant death rate had fal- 
 len to 53.2 per thousand. In other words, the child 
 of a man who earned at least $1,092 a year had five 
 times a better chance at life than the child of the man 
 in the lowest wage group.* The low wage groups, 
 moreover, comprise by far the largest number of fam- 
 ilies. It is therefore fair to say that the children of 
 the men employed in industries die needlessly because 
 of the scanty incomes of their fathers, or because of 
 conditions generally accompanying such small earn- 
 ings. It was found f that "the babies of working 
 mothers in Manchester had a higher infant mortality 
 rate than the babies whose mothers were not gainfully 
 employed." Furthermore, it was found that "insuf- 
 ficient or low earnings on the part of the father appear 
 to be the most potent reason for the mother's going 
 to work. Where the fathers earned less than $450 a 
 year, 73.3 per cent of the mothers were gainfully em- 
 ployed during some part of the year after the baby's 
 birth. With each rise in economic status, the propor- 
 
 * U. S. Children's Bureau, Infant Mortality Series No. 6, 1917, 
 page 16. 
 
 t Op. cit., page 47- 
 
The Worker's Family 75 
 
 tion of babies with mothers gainfully employed falls 
 but does not really reach a small proportion, 9.6 per 
 cent, until the group with fathers earning $1,050 a 
 year and over is reached." When women were gain- 
 fully employed during the year before the baby's birth, 
 the death rate was 199.2 per thousand. One child in 
 every five died. When women were not gainfully 
 employed, taking all wage groups, low and high, the 
 mortality rate was 133.9 per thousand.* When the 
 employment the year after the baby's birth was stud- 
 ied even more striking results were found. The death 
 rate for the babies of those gainfully employed was 
 220.9; f those who did not have to work, only I22.o.f 
 Other studies made by the Children's Bureau in this 
 country and by the Local Government Board in Great 
 Britain give a more general basis for these conclusions. 
 The forced employment of women in industry has 
 taken an enormous toll of child life. How great this 
 loss has been is incalculable, but the rates learned by 
 the most scrupulous study show that it must have been 
 vast and appalling. That great source of waste indi- 
 cates a part of the effects of the industrial system on 
 the worker's family. 
 
 This takes no account, however, of underfeeding 
 and the stunted development which comes therefrom. 
 Studies made of urban children have indicated that as 
 high as fifteen to twenty per cent of the entire child 
 population are underfed or are suffering from defects 
 attributable to imperfect nutrition. J How many chil- 
 
 *0p. cit., page 50. 
 t Op. cit., page 52. 
 
 t Standards of Child Welfare, U. S. Children's Bureau Pub- 
 lication No. 60, page 238. 
 
76 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 dren were underfed during the years before factories 
 congregated people in cities no one knows. It is, how- 
 ever, hardly probable that so many actually suffered 
 the pangs of hunger. Studies of health among rural 
 children of the present time show on the other hand 
 that country children suffer from more remediable ills 
 than do the city bred. It is probable, therefore, that 
 defects which arise from an imperfectly balanced diet- 
 ary were more common prior to the industrial revo- 
 lution. This is to be attributed to the fact that all 
 classes are now able to obtain a far more varied diet 
 than was possible before the development of cold stor- 
 age and rapid transportation. 
 
 Industry has thus had divers effects upon the home 
 of the worker. It has taken his wife and his chil- 
 dren and through their toil with the aid of machines 
 created fabulous wealth. It has given the worker's 
 wife and daughter an income, but not sufficient to sup- 
 port them. It has been a parasite on the labor of 
 women and children. It has killed babies by depriv- 
 ing them of a mother's care. It has depressed child- 
 hood by taking away the opportunity for life out-of- 
 doors. But the same industry has contributed might- 
 ily to the social and economic enfranchisement of 
 women. It has broadened woman's life and given her 
 greater independence of man. It has provided the 
 wealth through which later generations are freeing 
 childhood of the immemorial burden of production. 
 In its promise, at any rate, it has been gain for the 
 family. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 WAGES IN INDUSTRY 
 
 INDUSTRY transferred the work of women and chil- 
 dren from the home to the factory. The workingman's 
 wife and children perforce forsook their home in order 
 to obtain employment. To the extent to which women 
 and children were drawn from domestic industry to 
 factories it is accordingly fair to say that machinery 
 entered and broke the circle of the workingman's home.) 
 Industry has also augmented vastly the sum of national 
 wealth and income. It is important, therefore, to as- 
 certain how these changes have affected the standard 
 of living, the earnings and the comparative wealth of 
 the manual workers of the nation. Have employees 
 of industry been paid a living wage? Have wage 
 earners had a fair share of the increased income made 
 possible by the factory system? Have mechanics and 
 laborers been able to obtain justly proportionate shares 
 of the wealth in whose creation they have played so 
 essential a part? 
 
 In attempting to answer these questions it gives per- 
 spective to recall the way of life of mechanics and 
 laborers during the decades prior to the industrial revo- 
 lution. In spite of the rising tide of political democ- 
 racy, social distinctions were well fixed at the begin- 
 ning of the nineteenth century. As late as 1773 students 
 
 77 
 
78 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 at Harvard had been rated according to their social 
 status.* The differences between the rich and the poor 
 were wide and deep. The clothing of the workingman 
 is known from the descriptions given by those who ad- 
 vertised for the return of their run-away servants and 
 redemptioners. Workingmen and boys generally wore 
 leather breeches. These as well as the rest of his 
 apparel were made at home or in the neighborhood. 
 Professor Bidwell quotes a manuscript prepared by 
 Governor Treadwell of Connecticut in 1802 or 1803, 
 which discussed clothing in detail. f Men commonly 
 had two suits, one for work and the other for society. 
 For summer the working costume consisted of a 
 "check homespun linen shirt, a pair of plain tow cloth 
 trowsers, and a vest generally much worn, formerly 
 with but more modernly without sleeves; or simply 
 a brown tow cloth frock and trowsers, and sometimes 
 a pair of old shoes tied with leather strings and a felt 
 hat, or an old beaver hat stiffened and worn white with 
 age. During winter wool and buckskin were sub- 
 stituted for linen and tow cloth. Shoes were of the 
 roughest sort, home-made from the hides." Clothes 
 and food were provided by home manufactures. 
 Weeden relates the story of Mrs. Mary Moody Emer- 
 son, aunt of the great Emerson and herself a woman of 
 culture and distinction. She was born about the time 
 of the Declaration of Independence. She had ten 
 dollars a year in cash. It was used for food and 
 charity. Salt, molasses, rum, tea and coffee were the 
 
 * "Economic and Social History of New England," by William 
 B. Weeden, page 739. 
 t "Rural Economy in New England," by Percy Wells Bidwell. 
 
Wages in Industry 79 
 
 principal articles purchased by small farmers at the 
 beginning of the industrial revolution. Life was hard. 
 The pioneer cabins are perpetuated in the rude huts 
 now frequently seen in the Appalachian mountain 
 ranges. These were built of logs or of slabs. They 
 were cold, ill-ventilated, dark and wretchedly crowded. 
 Privacy seems to have been a luxury unknown among 
 the poor. It still is, to a lesser extent. H. N. Slater, 
 the son of Samuel Slater, told William B. Weeden that 
 when his father was recruiting labor for the first cot- 
 ton factory he had found a man named Arnold with a 
 family of ten or eleven living in a rude cabin chiefly 
 of slabs, with a chimney of stone. Yet Mrs. Arnold 
 liked her home. She stipulated that Samuel Slater 
 must provide a house equally good for her. 
 
 The chief articles in the diet of one family whose 
 record has been obtained were milk, corn bread and 
 bean porridge.* That family was far above the aver- 
 age in intelligence. Two of the sons became profes- 
 sional men of wide distinction. Felt,f who is quoted 
 by Bidwell, said: "For more than a century and a 
 half (i. e., up until almost 1800) most of them had 
 pea and bean porridge, or broth made of the liquor of 
 boiled salt meat and pork mixed with meal, and some- 
 times hasty pudding and milk both morning and 
 evening." Beef, pork, and mutton were supplied by 
 the farmer's own herds. Most of the meat was dried, 
 salted or pickled. The common bread of the country 
 was a mixture of rye and cornmeal. Fruits and vege- 
 tables were fairly abundant. Apples furnished cider, 
 
 * Weeden, 862. 
 
 t "Rural Economy in New England," page 350 ; "History of 
 Ipswich," page 30. 
 
8o Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 the favorite beverage of colonial New England. Maple 
 sugar and honey were obtained on the farm. 
 
 The wages paid those first Slater employees 
 varied from 80 cents to $1.40 a week, according to 
 H. N. Slater's memory. In 1801 carpenters were paid 
 about a dollar a day in Massachusetts.* Laborers 
 were paid from sixty to ninety cents a day. Painters 
 seem to have had about sixty cents. Some teachers 
 were paid $30 a month. Substantially the same wage 
 level was maintained between 1800 and 1815, accord- 
 ing to the late Carroll D. Wright's summary of this 
 report. In the Memoir of Samuel Slater an article by 
 Z. Allen intended to show wage levels in 1825 is in- 
 cluded. The wages quoted are designed to show the 
 high rates paid in the United States in comparison with 
 those which then obtained in England and France. 
 This was a part of the tariff argument, and the figures 
 given are accordingly perhaps high. None the less, 
 the wage rates are fairly significant. The table for 
 the United States, abbreviated, is as follows : f 
 
 A common laborer earns per day about $1.00 
 
 A carpenter 1.45 
 
 A mason 1.62 
 
 A farm laborer (per month and found) 8.00 to 10.00 
 
 A servant maid (per week and found) i.oo to 1.50 
 
 Best machine makers, forgers, etc., per day. . 1.50 to 1.75 
 Ordinary machine makers, forgers, etc., per 
 
 day. 
 
 Common mule spinners in cotton mills 
 
 Common mule spinners in woolen mills 
 
 Weavers on hand looms 
 
 Boys of 10 or 12 years of age, ditto, per week 
 Women in cotton mills, per week, average. . 
 Women in woolen mills, per week, average. . 
 
 to 1.42 
 1.40 
 
 1.25 to 
 i. 08 to 
 1.08 
 .90 
 1.50 
 2.00 to 3.00 
 
 2.50 
 
 * Wages and Prices: 1752-1860 i6th Annual Report, Mass. 
 Bureau of Statistics of Labor, page 219. 
 t "Memoir of Samuel Slater," page 340. 
 
Wages in Industry 81 
 
 The figures reported in McLane's documents * 
 vary somewhat for different establishments and dif- 
 ferent parts of the country. A Philadelphia cotton 
 mill reported for 1832 that 15 men averaged $7 a 
 week and that 65 women and 46 boys averaged $1.50. 
 
 But before the industrial revolution the laborer and 
 artizan seldom lived by wages alone. If he was a re^J 
 demptioner, his master was responsible for his support. 
 If he was a freeman he tilled the soil as well as fol- 
 lowed his trade. The villages of the New England 
 towns were homes of artizans who were also farmers. 
 The villagers had lots of from two to ten acres and in 
 addition more distant fields. The mechanical trades 
 carpentry, cobbling, tanning, blacksmithing, and mill- 
 ing were, in the words of Professor Bidwell, "usu- 
 ally only auxiliary occupations, by-industries of agri- 
 culture." The connection between agriculture and the 
 mechanical trades was well described from his own 
 observation by Tench Coxe f as follows : 
 
 "Those of the tradesmen and manufacturers who live 
 in the country generally reside on small lots and farms, 
 from one acre to twenty; and not a few upon farms 
 from twenty to one hundred and fifty acres, which they 
 cultivate at leisure times, with their own hands, their 
 wives, children, servants and apprentices, and sometimes 
 by hired laborers or by letting out fields, for a part of the 
 produce, to some neighbor who has time or farm hands 
 not fully employed. This union of manufactures and 
 farming is found to be very convenient on the grain 
 farms ; but it is still more convenient on the grazing and 
 grass farms, where part of almost every day and a great 
 part of the year can be spared from the business of the 
 farm and employed in some mechanical handicraft or 
 manufacturing business. Those persons often make 
 
 * "The Manufactures in the U. S.," Vol. 2, 1832, page 220. 
 t "View of the United States," pages 442-443- 
 
82 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 domestic and farming carriages, implements and utensils, 
 build houses and barns, tan leather and manufacture hats, 
 shoes, hosiery, cabinet work and other articles of clothing 
 and furniture, to the great convenience of the neighbor- 
 hood. In like manner some of the farmers, at leisure 
 times and proper seasons, manufacture nails, potash, 
 pearlash, staves and heading, hoops and hand pikes, ax- 
 handles, maple sugar, etc. The most judicious planters 
 in the Southern States are industriously instructing their 
 negroes, particularly the young, the old, the infirm and 
 the females, in manufactures: a wise and humane 
 
 Professor Bidwell concluded from his investigations 
 that as late as 1810 practically none of the employees 
 of the New England factories depended exclusively 
 for their living on their income derived from manufac- 
 tures. The industrial population was even then only 
 beginning to be differentiated from the great mass of 
 agricultural workers. In the undifferentiated industrial 
 life nearly everybody had enough to eat. The variety 
 was narrowly restricted and many of the things eaten 
 were doubtless hard to digest. At times pioneers are 
 reported to have been near the starvation line. Travel- 
 ers who called at such cabins in the wilderness brought 
 back word that they had been refused food because of 
 the scarcity. But on the whole the testimony points 
 in the other direction. Of the food they had, they had 
 enough. There was probably little underfeeding, al- 
 though there was undoubtedly if modern surveys of 
 regions which reproduce colonial conditions may be 
 taken as guides much malnutrition. The cheap land, 
 however, gave men a sense of freedom if it did not 
 always raise their level of living, and therefore it gave 
 them contentment with a comparatively low standard 
 of life. Measured by the quality and variety of housing, 
 
Wages in Industry 83 
 
 of food, of clothing, the workers of days before fac- 
 tories had been developed in this country were worse 
 off than are their descendants. On the other hand, 
 if instead of quality and variety, quantity and regular- 
 ity of income are the measuring rods, the workers of 
 1800 were vastly more prosperous than are their suc- 
 cessors who live during the first decades of the 
 twentieth century. For as long as men raised sheep, 
 and women spun and wove wool, clothing was attain- 
 able. Farmers do not face the hazard of unemploy- 
 ment in the degree of industrial workers. The farmer 
 may lack a market for his products but he is never 
 without the need to provide crops for himself, his 
 household, and his livestock. In so far, therefore, as 
 industrial workers were also agricultural workers, they 
 had a security of life at a low scale which is quite be- 
 yond the grasp of modern industrial workers. Horace 
 Bushnell, however, who remembered the earlier per- 
 iod, said of it : 
 
 "No mode of life was ever more expensive : it was life 
 at the expense of labor too stringent to allow the highest 
 culture and the most proper enjoyment. Even the dress 
 of it was more expensive than we shall ever see again." 
 
 Because of this undifferentiated industrial life wages 
 actually paid at the beginning of the industrial revo- 
 lution are hard to compare with the present levels. So 
 long as artizans had even small plots of land, so long 
 as it was usual to possess a cow, a pig and chickens, 
 and to tend a garden, the blacksmith or the tailor or 
 the shoemaker was not solely dependent on his wages. 
 He had supplementary sources of income. Modern 
 industry with its congestion in cities has taken away 
 
84 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 these perquisites. The nominal wages now paid must 
 purchase many things which the predecessors of the 
 present wage earners "found" for themselves. Nom- 
 inal wages in 1830 must accordingly have been far 
 lower than the apparent rates in 1921 before they could 
 be equal. Nominal wages have clearly increased. The 
 rates from 1840 to 1891 were calculated for the Aldrich 
 Committee.* Relative wages were calculated in gold 
 for all occupations of which the investigators had 
 records. Taking five-year intervals the table is as fol- 
 lows, using the wage rates paid in January, 1860, as 
 
 the base : 
 
 Average According 
 
 Year Simple Average to Importance 
 
 1840 87.7 82.5 
 
 1845 86.8 85.7 
 
 1850 92.7 90.9 
 
 1855 98.0 97.5 
 
 1860 100.0 loo.o 
 
 1865 66.2 68.7 
 
 1870 133.7 136.9 
 
 1875 140.8 140.4 
 
 1880 141.5 143.0 
 
 1885 150.7 155.9 
 
 1800 158.9 168.2 
 
 1891 160.7 1 68.6 
 
 The changes from 1890 to 1903 were reported in 
 the Nineteenth Annual Report of the United States 
 Commissioner of Labor, published in 1904. This re- 
 port computed the average for 1890-1899. Reckoning 
 from that as a basis the changes in weekly earnings 
 per employee are as follows: 
 
 1890 101.0 
 
 1895 98.4 
 
 1900 104.1 
 
 1903 112.3 
 
 *U. S. Senate Doc. 52, Congress 2d Session Report 1394, 
 Part i, page 14. 
 
Wages in Industry 85 
 
 An index number of wages was also published in 
 the Monthly Labor Review of the U. S. Bureau of 
 Labor Statistics for February, 1921. This table was 
 figured on a currency basis during the Civil War. Farm 
 wages are excluded. The rates quoted for 1920 were 
 taken during the summer months and ' 'probably repre- 
 sent the wage peak of the year." It is as follows, 
 using five-year intervals: 
 
 Year Index Number 
 
 1840 33 
 
 1845 33 
 
 1850 35 
 
 1860 39 
 
 1865 58 
 
 1870 67 
 
 1875 67 
 
 1880 60 
 
 1885 60 
 
 1890 69 
 
 1895 68 
 
 1900 73 
 
 1905 82 
 
 1910 93 
 
 1915 103 
 
 1920 234 
 
 t 
 
 It is obvious from these calculations, based as they 
 
 are on wage rates without any reference to annual 
 earnings, that the nominal wages paid have increased 
 greatly during the industrial revolution. It is fairly 
 safe to assert that real wages have also been aug- 
 mented. The change from hand production to the 
 factory system, however, it must be remembered, has 
 been contemporaneous with a social revolution. In 
 1800 the employment of children was counted a disci- 
 pline leading to virtue as well as a source of proper 
 profit for their parents and guardians. At present the 
 
86 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 employment of children in industry or agriculture is 
 known to be a serious handicap to their normal de- 
 velopment as workers and as citizens. Similarly, in 
 1800 the wife and mother was supposed to perform 
 certain duties. A part, a very heavy part, of the bur- 
 den of family support rested upon her. At the pres- 
 ent time the employment of the mothers of young 
 children outside the home is known to be evil. Because 
 of the changes which the factory system has entailed, 
 mothers and children can no longer safely share to the 
 same extent in the maintenance of the family. Con- 
 sequently society has been impelled to formulate a new 
 standard in measuring wages. The wage earner to- 
 day is supposed to earn enough to support in health, 
 if not in comfort, himself, a wife, and three children 
 under fourteen years of age. That standard of aspir- 
 ation has seldom been realized in the United States 
 so far as the great majority of workers in industry 
 are concerned. Nominal wages have increased enor- 
 mously, and real wages have advanced considerably, 
 but at no time in the history of the United States have 
 a majority of the male workers been able to support 
 themselves and their families. It has never been pos- 
 sible for working-class mothers to remain in their 
 homes since the factory system was entrenched. Not 
 only is that true, but also, as was previously noted, 
 numerous inquiries show that women employed in in- 
 dustry have been paid less than the minimum sum 
 required to support the worker alone in health. Real- 
 ization of this fact has resulted in the striking devel- 
 opment of minimum wage laws for women during the 
 last few years. 
 
Wages in Industry 87 
 
 The Senate Immigration report printed in 1911 * 
 offered illuminating evidence concerning the insuf- 
 ficiency of the earnings of male heads of households. 
 Studies were made of different industries. The aver- 
 age annual earnings of the husbands at work in silk 
 goods manufacturing and dyeing were reported to be 
 $668 for native white Americans and $426 for the 
 foreign-born. At that time the cost of supporting a 
 family in New York City was between $800 and $900. 
 It is manifest that on the average neither American 
 men nor foreigners employed in the silk industry were 
 able unaided to maintain their families. More than 
 three-quarters of the male heads of families employed 
 in this industry got less than $600 a year, and more 
 than ninety-five per cent got less than $800, the mini- 
 mum sum reckoned at that time to be needful for the 
 support of a family of five in health. The manufac- 
 ture of cotton goods affords interesting data for the 
 reason that textile factories were the pioneers of the 
 industrial revolution in the United States. The aver- 
 age annual earnings of the white American husbands 
 in this industry were found by the Immigration Com- 
 mission to be $585, while the annual earnings of the 
 foreign-born husbands amounted to $461. The find- 
 ings of various governmental reports has been sum- 
 marized by W. Jett Lauck and Edgar Sydenstricker 
 who undertook the study for the United States Com- 
 mission on Industrial Relations. In "Conditions of 
 Labor in American Industries," f a study recapitulating 
 
 *6ist Congress, 2d Session, Senate Document 633, Vol. 73, 
 page 43. 
 
 t Page 61. See also U. S. Bureau Labor Statistics, Bulletin 75, 
 pages 23 and 24, and Immigration Commission Reports, Vol. 19, 
 page 226. 
 
88 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 the important federal and state investigations into 
 wages, the authors said : 
 
 "An examination of all authoritative data on annual 
 earnings of workers during recent years appears to 
 indicate that the following are warrantable conclusions: 
 
 "i. That fully one-fourth of the adult male workers 
 in the principal industries and trades who are heads of 
 families earned less than $400, one-half less than $600, 
 four-fifths less than $800, and less than one-tenth earned 
 as much as $1,000 a year. 
 
 "2. That fully a third of all male workers 18 years of 
 age and over in the principal industries and trades, 
 whether heads of families or not, earned less than $400, 
 two-thirds earned less than $600 and about one-twentieth 
 earned over $1,000. 
 
 "3. That approximately a fourth of women workers 
 18 years of age and over who are regularly employed in 
 the principal manufacturing industries earned less than 
 $200, and two-thirds earned less than $400 a year." 
 
 This summary was made during 1914 and 1915 and 
 it was designed to portray conditions which obtained 
 at that time. The actual inquiries were made prev- 
 iously. The field work of the Immigration Commis- 
 sion, for example, was carried on during 1908 and 
 1909. None the less, wage rates collected by the 
 United States Bureau of Labor Statistics and by some 
 of the state labor boards indicate that the picture is 
 fairly indicative of the facts in 1914. The war time 
 changes in wages were so great, however, both in the 
 United States and abroad, that it is essential to take 
 into consideration the gains made since July, 1914. In 
 some industries these have been notable. The aver- 
 age weekly wage for male wool sorters was $14.97, 
 according to the accounting of the U. S. Bureau of 
 Labor Statistics in 1914. In 1920 the average wage 
 became $41.90.* 
 * Monthly Labor Review, March, 1921. 
 
Wages in Industry 89 
 
 Since 1920, however, wages have been sharply re- 
 duced in the wool industry and elsewhere. Card tenders 
 were paid on the average $8.26 weekly during 1914. By 
 1920 their average had risen to $24.88, but this too 
 has been subject to the same general reduction. Dur- 
 ing 1919 a wage of slightly more than $40 weekly was 
 the least sum at which a family could be supported 
 in health under urban conditions. A report of the 
 Industrial Commission of Ohio shows the wages of 
 employees of all the manufacturing industries of that 
 state for 1919. Out of 932,808 male wage earners 
 over 1 8 years of age, only 153,040 were above the $40 
 mark. The vast majority got less than enough to sup- 
 port a family in 1919 at high price and wage levels, 
 just as they had gotten too little for family support in 
 1914 on a lower price scale.* A rapid survey f of the 
 wages and hours of labor during the year 1919 was 
 made by the Bureau of Labor Statistics at the instance 
 of the War Industries Board. This study summarized 
 facts concerning more than 400,000 wage earners. It 
 is accordingly one of the most extensive, if not one of 
 the most detailed, researches ever made in this field. 
 The average weekly earnings of men employed in 
 industry amounted to $25.56 during the two weeks 
 studied. The average wage of women in industry was 
 $13.56.$ The inquiry, however, was limited to a single 
 payroll period and it was made at a time when some 
 of the industries reported were maintaining high pro- 
 duction while others were reducing their output. The 
 
 * Monthly Labor Review, February, 1921. 
 
 t Industrial Survey in Selected Industries in the U. S., 1919, 
 U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, No. 265. 
 $Idem, computed from Table 5, pages 37-38. 
 
9O Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 figures collected by the National Industrial Con- 
 ference Board, an organization of industrial associa- 
 tions, designed to present the point of view of em- 
 ployers, depict a similar situation.* 
 
 The National Industrial Conference Board reported 
 that its inquiries showed that the wage level of March, 
 1920 which has been considerably lowered was 
 "from 82 per cent to 163 per cent higher than that of 
 September, 1914, as measured by the full time weekly 
 earnings." But percentage increases reveal less than 
 actual figures. The following table, based on the tables 
 of the Conference Board's report, shows the average 
 full-time weekly earnings of the male employees of 
 the industries cited : 
 
 September, ip id, March, 1920 
 
 Boot and shoe $14.51 $28.70 
 
 Chemical 13.07 35-72 
 
 Cotton 9.91 24-87 
 
 Furniture 10.78 22.87 
 
 Hosiery and knit goods... 11.25 27.65 
 Leather tanning and finish- 
 ing n.oi 30.18 
 
 Metal 13.99 29.79 
 
 Paper 13.10 28.82 
 
 Printing and publishing.. . 18.33 31.67 
 
 Rubber 14.99 36.32 
 
 Silk ... 11.10 28.98 
 
 Wool ii. ii 28.70 
 
 The Conference Board, an agency of the manufac- 
 turers who gave these figures, noted in summary that 
 the "average actual weekly earnings of male workers 
 increased from $11.11 in September, 1914, to $28.70 
 
 * Changes in Wages During and Since the War, Research 
 Report 31, September, 1920, National Industrial Conference 
 Board. 
 
Wages in Industry 91 
 
 in March, 1920." This was indeed a rise to the extent 
 of 176 per cent, but it was almost as difficult for a 
 husband and father unaided to support his wife and 
 children on his own earnings in 1920 as it had been 
 in 1914. Never, in fact, so far as is shown by the 
 records which have been obtained, has the factory 
 system in this country paid the average male worker 
 a sum sufficient to support a family in health and com- 
 fort. Yet with the rise of industry the wealth of the 
 country has increased beyond imagining. This is 
 shown vividly by the following table : * 
 
 Year Population Total Wealth Per Capita 
 
 1800 
 
 1830 
 
 1850 
 
 1860 
 
 1870 
 
 1880 
 
 1890 
 
 1900 
 
 1904 
 
 1912 
 
 Per capita wealth has been increased manifold but 
 it has not brought ease to the workers in factories. It 
 has been concentrated in the hands of a relatively small \ 
 proportion of the population. The income of the nation 
 has, in fact, come into the possession very largely of a 
 numerically insignificant minority of people in eight 
 industrial states. Together, New York, Massachusetts, 
 Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Mich- 
 igan, and Illinois reported for 1918 more than 
 half of the income of the United States. f About 
 
 * Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1919, page 750. 
 
 t Statistics of Income, Compiled from the Returns of 1918, 
 under the Direction of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 
 Washington, 1921; page 7. 
 
 5,308,483 
 
 12,866,020 
 
 23,191,876 
 31,443,321 
 38,558,371 
 50,155,783 
 62,947,714 
 
 75,994,775 
 82,466,551 
 
 95,410,503 
 
 $ 7,i35,78o,ooo 
 16,159,616,000 
 30,068,518,000 
 43,642,000,000 
 65,037,091,000 
 88,517,307,000 
 107,104,212,000 
 187,739,071,090 
 
 $ 307-69 
 513.93 
 779.83 
 870.20 
 
 l,l&i.79 
 
 1,318.11 
 1,965.00 
 
92 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 160,000 people admitted incomes of $10,000 or more. 
 They constituted 3.61 per cent of those who had in- 
 comes large enough to make returns to the govern- 
 ment, but they secured more than a quarter of all the 
 income taxable. Under the old agricultural system in 
 the South the economic distinctions between the classes 
 were as great as those which have been achieved by the 
 factory system, but they were no wider. So, while in 
 this country that mechanical revolution which Alex- 
 ander Hamilton and others sought with such enthu- 
 siasm has undoubtedly increased the sum of national 
 wealth beyond all dreams, it has not hitherto provided 
 the means for a comfortable or good life to those who 
 bear its heavy burdens. 
 
 rf* Furthermore, not until recent years has there been 
 ^any considerable demand in this country that industry 
 jpay living wages to its workers. The cost of living 
 ^doctrine began to emerge first as a preachment of social 
 workers who needed an economic standard to apply to 
 their "cases." Later it got the attention of legislatures 
 when minimum wage laws for women were under con- 
 sideration. Finally it received an ambiguous sanction 
 from the government after President Wilson formally 
 proclaimed the principles of the National War Labor 
 Board as the basis for industrial adjustments. Dur- 
 ing the war the War Labor Board, the Shipping Board 
 and other public agencies utilized the principle of the 
 cost of living in fixing wages. In writing the rules 
 for the Railroad Labor Board, Congress also enjoined 
 the federal adjusters to take the cost of living into 
 consideration, although at the same time Congress said 
 that the market rate must also be a factor. The market 
 
Wages in Industry 93 
 
 rate, the price paid in similar industries, is often below 
 the cost of living level, as the Railroad Labor Board dis- 
 covered when during the summer of 1921 the wages of 
 unskilled laborers were readjusted downward. Even 
 then in the case of the railroad workers, which so 
 far as the federal law is concerned is unique, the rule 
 of the living wage has been mitigated by the pitiless 
 principle of supply and demand. 
 
 In a condition as changing as that of the late au- 
 tumn of 1921 it is impossible to reckon with any pre- 
 cision the general level of wages. Reductions have 
 been so numerous and unemployment is so widespread 
 that earlier estimates are rendered obsolete. The ex- 
 ecutive of the American Federation of Labor has 
 guessed that the total wage reduction during the season 
 of depression which began in the autumn of 1920 
 reached by August, 1921, a total of a billion dollars. 
 The calculation may be well made. No one is in a 
 position to deny it. Certain is it that the unorganized 
 workers have been unable to resist wholesale wage 
 revisions and that in those trades where unions were 
 not powerful, readjustments were made without any 
 clear reference to the sum required for the support of 
 a family under American conditions. Trade unions 
 furthermore have not generally been strongly en- 
 trenched in the trades affected by the mechanical revo- 
 lution. Factory workers have accordingly especially 
 suffered from the consequences of the depression of 
 1920 and 1921. 
 
 Those trades which were well unionized were on 
 the other hand able to insist that the cost of living 
 be used as one criterion of wage adjustments. The 
 
94 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 clothing makers, who were powerfully organized, 
 secured an investigation of wages and prices and ob- 
 tained a settlement which took full account of the neces- 
 sary expenses of living. But they were exceptional 
 among factory workers. During prosperous times the 
 clothing workers and other vigorous unions have gone 
 a step further in demanding not only living wages but 
 a share in the profits of their industry. The locomotive 
 engineers in their contention with the Western rail- 
 roads were notable exponents of this point of view. 
 But in recent times, except for a period during the 
 World War and immediately thereafter, workers have 
 been more numerous than jobs in most industries. The 
 market rate and not the cost of living has been the 
 chief influence determining the level of wages. Abund- 
 ant immigration from Europe, however valuable its 
 social and political consequences may have been, has 
 tended to keep full the reservoir of "surplus" workers 
 and has made possible the continuance of a low wage 
 system. Even with the losses of the period of hard 
 times, there seems, however, not to have been a com- 
 plete return to the conditions of 1914. Some of the 
 advances were retained as increments to the slow pro- 
 gress of earlier years toward the economic enfranchise- 
 ment of the working population of America. 
 
 ! 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 HOURS 
 
 MEN, women, and children worked at least twelve 
 hours a day in the early factories. The routine of 
 agriculture was followed by industry.* M. Plimpton 
 of Southbridge, Massachusetts, reported to the Secre- 
 tary of the Treasury that the regular shift of work 
 was on the "average 12 hours a day, 11^2 months in 
 the year." This was widely the custom. Stephen 
 Randal, Jr., of Randal's Mills, North Providence, re- 
 ported "12 hours each day the year through." W. A. 
 Andross for the Eagle Manufacturing Company, Hart- 
 ford county, Connecticut, replied, "Twelve hours a 
 day, all the year." Reed & Watson, of Livingston, 
 New York, said, "Twelve hours per day the whole 
 year." In Pennsylvania, even in early days, the work- 
 ing hours were especially long. Roland Curtin, who 
 owned the Eagle Iron Works of Centre county, West 
 Pennsylvania, reported that the "monthly hands work 
 during the whole year except at meal hours." 
 
 These bits of testimony are thoroughly typical. The 
 working day everywhere was at least twelve hours, ex- 
 clusive of meal times, although this was sometimes 
 shortened to ioj4 hours during the winter. Whatever 
 
 * Documents Relative to the Manufactures in the United States. 
 Executive Documents, ist Session, 22d Congress, 1831-1832. 
 
 95 
 
g6 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 its other sins may be the factory system did not inau- 
 gurate the long working day, which is an inheritance 
 from other times. But without mitigation the new 
 order of "labor saving" industry continued the work- 
 ing hours of the farms. James Montgomery,* 
 superintendent of the York factories at Saco, Maine, 
 estimated in 1839, almost a decade after the reports 
 previously quoted, that at Lowell the factory hours 
 averaged 73 J4 a week during the year and that in the 
 Middle and Southern states the shift was longer. 
 
 The rebellion against long hours of toil began, in 
 fact, before the industrial revolution. In 1791 the 
 Journeymen Carpenters of Philadelphia struck against 
 the master carpenters. By agreement they decided : 
 "That in the future, a Day's Work amongst us, shall 
 be deemed to commence at six o'clock in the morning 
 and terminate at six in the evening of each day." f 
 This demand for a twelve-hour day in place of the 
 shift from sun to sun seems, albeit, to have been re- 
 ceived with no more favor in 1791 than the eight-hour 
 day is accorded by many employers at present. The 
 movement for the shorter work day was historically 
 an attempt of a politically and socially disfranchised 
 class to obtain leisure and comfort. During the early 
 decades of the nineteenth century the political fran- 
 chise was extended to men who had previously been 
 without vote. They found, however, that without 
 education they were hardly able to utilize the political 
 power which seemed to have been bestowed upon them. 
 Consequently they passionately sought education and 
 
 * "History of Labor in the United States," i : 172. 
 t Op. cit., i : 69. 
 
Howrs 97 
 
 the leisure which is prerequisite to learning. "Must 
 a man, because he is poor and a mechanic, go through 
 the drudgery of day labor in the hot and weary days 
 of midsummer without respite?" asked the Boston 
 Transcript in 1832.* Answering its own question, 
 the paper continued : "But let the mechanic's labor be 
 over when he has wrought ten or twelve hours in the 
 long days of summer and he will be able to return to 
 his family in season and with sufficient vigor, to pass 
 some hours in the instruction of his children or in the 
 improvement of his own mind." 
 
 The character of the opposition to the ten-hour 
 day at that time was set forth by the merchants and 
 shipowners of Boston during the ship carpenters' 
 strike of 1832, when they said in an address to the 
 public that "the time thus proposed to be thrown away 
 would be a serious loss to this active community" and 
 "the habits likely to be generated by this indulgence 
 in idleness in our summer mornings and afternoons 
 will be very detrimental to the journeyman individu- 
 ally and very costly to us as a community." They 
 feared also that if the carpenters obtained the ten-hour 
 day the example "will probably be followed by thou- 
 sands who are now contentedly and industriously 
 pursuing their avocations, and thus produce incal- 
 culable injury to the whole people." The essence of 
 their reasoning was to be found in the fact that the 
 merchants and shipowners, who, as representatives of 
 the property holders, had always governed Massachu- 
 setts, could not understand that common working men 
 
 * February 20, 1832 ; quoted in "History of Labor in the United 
 States," 1:324- 
 
98 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 were rising to a new status. They feared also that if 
 the carpenters secured their demand the factory 
 workers would be disquieted and the long day there too 
 would be jeopardized. 
 
 It is significant of the industrial development of this 
 country that the first protests against the long working 
 day came not from the employees of factories but from 
 the members of old crafts, who developed trade union 
 organization. The New York City bakers * thus in 
 1821 led a movement for the abolition of Sunday work 
 in their trade. Members of the building trades were 
 prominent in the earlier campaigns for the shortening 
 of the work day, as in recent years they have been 
 conspicuous among the beneficiaries of the movement. 
 Occasionally there were stirrings among the factory 
 girls of New England or Pennsylvania, but the agita- 
 tion for shorter hours was chiefly in the hands of 
 social reformers and of trade unionists who did not 
 represent workers in factories. Steadily throughout 
 the nineteenth century the demand for a shortening 
 of hours of labor, however, grew in strength. The 
 progress of legislation regulating the hours of labor 
 of women and children employed in industry has been 
 touched in a previous chapter, f As early as 1832 the 
 New England Association of Farmers, Mechanics and 
 Other Workmen pointed out that since "a large pro- 
 portion of the operatives in our factories are and must 
 continue to be a helpless population, it is indispensable 
 that they be put under the unremitted supervision and 
 
 * "History of Labor in the United States," 1:162; quoting 
 American Federationist, XX: 518. 
 t Chapter III. 
 
Hottirs 99 
 
 protection of the law of the land." The factory owners 
 who through tariffs and by other devices had so consis- 
 tently sought and obtained the protection of the law for 
 themselves were able to thwart this and similar efforts 
 to extend the protection of the state to factory workers. 
 In time, however, the organized trade unionists, hav- 
 ing created the American Federation of Labor, and 
 having adopted a new philosophy, decided against the 
 policy of seeking a shortening of their own working 
 day by legal enactment. The unionists preferred to 
 obtain their demands by direct negotiations with their 
 employers, on the theory that progress in that manner 
 would strengthen their organization while legislative 
 aid might weaken unionism. Since May i, 1886, the 
 eight-hour day has been one of the primary objectives 
 of the American Federation of Labor.* 
 
 The argument for the shorter working day has 
 changed in form through succeeding generations, but 
 essentially it has been the same. The negative argu- 
 ment has been the need to protect workers against the 
 physically devastating effects of too long hours of 
 work. On the positive side the goal has been to pro- 
 vide enough free time to enable workers to develop as 
 normal human beings. As long as the great majority 
 of workers were disfranchised it mattered little to the 
 state whether they possessed the unoccupied time in 
 which to become intelligent citizens. Disfranchised 
 folk need not think about public affairs. But that posi- 
 tion no longer applied when universal manhood and 
 womanhood suffrage obtained. More persuasive with 
 the courts, when the short working day was under con- 
 * "History of Labor in the United States," 2:376. 
 
ioo Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 sideration, has been the health argument. This has 
 been enormously developed by recent scientific re- 
 searches.* In his introduction to Miss Goldmark's 
 classic study Dr. Frederic S. Lee summed up the scien- 
 tific attitude when he said : 
 
 "Industrialism has been quick to accept the achieve- 
 ments of science in inanimate things, but slow to recog- 
 nize the teachings of physiology with regard to man 
 himself. Methods and machines have been revolutionized 
 but the human element has not been eliminated. The man 
 or the woman or the child is still essential to the method 
 and the machine, and while the inanimate agent demands 
 more and more of him, his fundamental physiological 
 powers are probably not so very different from what they 
 were when he built the pyramids and made papyrus. He 
 may sharpen his attention, shorten his reaction time, and 
 develop manual skill ; scientific management may step in 
 and direct his powers more intelligently, but sooner or 
 later his physiological limit is again reached on a new 
 plane. Try as we will, we cannot get away from the 
 fact that so long as machines need men, physiological 
 laws must be reckoned with as a factor in industrialism." 
 
 Fatigue is the new element which has entered the 
 discussion of the short working day. The cause of 
 fatigue is a toxin,f the subject is still largely a terra 
 incognita of science which, unless eliminated by nor- 
 mal rest, eventuates a number of evils, including dis- 
 eases, accidents, economic waste, probably industrial 
 unrest if that be counted an evil and possibly racial 
 degeneration. The factory system was sought by the 
 pioneers because it was "labor saving," and yet it has 
 entailed new and more harassing strains than those 
 ordinarily experienced under the old manual scheme 
 of production. Among these Miss Goldmark pointed 
 
 * See "Fatigue and Efficiency," by Josephine Goldmark ; "The 
 Human Machine and Industrial Efficiency," by Frederic S. Lee. 
 t "Fatigue and Efficiency," page n. 
 
Horns ioi 
 
 out speed, complexity, monotony,.pjec<i work and over- 
 time, and such influences as noise and mechanical 
 rhythms. The long day of agriculture was probably 
 an evil. Certainly the last few generations have wit- 
 nessed the efforts of millions in every industrial 
 country to escape from country life. But harmful as 
 twelve hours and more are in rural labor, their fatigu- 
 ing effects are greatly accentuated in factories because 
 of these new stresses of industrialism. Any one who 
 has ever seen the inside of a textile factory, a machine 
 shop, or even a telephone exchange, must be at least 
 dimly aware of the increased intensity of work due to 
 modern mechanical methods. The more progressive 
 states and the labor unions have sought to mitigate 
 this by establishing the eight-hour day, and some, with 
 the Saturday half -holiday, have inclined to the forty- 
 four hour week, while a rare pioneer has experimented 
 with the six-hour day. Strictly from the standpoint 
 of health there is perhaps no unvarying formula which 
 may be applied. Dr. Lee, who on these matters is as 
 well qualified as any, has said : 
 
 "One is treading on dangerous ground if he attempts 
 to predict an optimum working day without an analysis 
 of the work itself. The fact is unmistakable, however, 
 that most of the reliable evidence at present points toward 
 an approximation of the eight-hour working day as 
 affording for a considerable variety of occupations and 
 for conscientious workers the best condition for high 
 productivity." * 
 
 American states have regulated the hours of labor 
 for three different groups. f First of all, the working 
 
 * "The Human Machine," page 36. 
 
 t Harvard Law Review, Vol. 29, pages 353-373, by Felix 
 Frankfurter. 
 
Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 hour? -of women, and children were shortened by legal 
 enactment. Later, the hours of all workers employed 
 in dangerous or peculiarly unhealthful employments 
 were determined by the law; and finally, a beginning 
 has been made toward the state regulation of the hours 
 of work in industry generally. 
 
 The state's right to interfere in behalf of workers 
 has been grudgingly conceded by the courts after long 
 struggles and many contradictory decisions. The pro- 
 cedure in many of these cases has been extremely inter- 
 esting. One of the historic episodes was the invalida- 
 tion of an eight-hour law for women by the Illinois 
 Supreme Court in 1895.* The court there held that 
 the attempt of the state to protect women against a 
 working day which the legislature thought to be dan- 
 gerous to their health was a "purely arbitrary restric- 
 tion upon the fundamental right of the citizen to con- 
 trol his or her own time and faculties." The suit which 
 resulted in the annulment of the law was in fact 
 brought, however, not by women who wished to work 
 long hours but by paper box manufacturers who wished 
 to employ them for longer periods than the law sanc- 
 tioned. That method of attack upon legislation de- 
 signed to safeguard wage earners has been thoroughly 
 characteristic of the long struggle. Manufacturers who 
 insisted upon protection for themselves by way of tariff 
 measures and with other legal devices have continued 
 to contest the right of their employees to the safeguards 
 of the law and by an ironical extension of the prin- 
 ciples of liberty have sued in the name of workers for 
 a freedom which in fact was oppression. 
 * Ritchie v. People, 155 Illinois 98. 
 
Hours 103 
 
 For years after legislatures were first persuaded of 
 the need to protect workers against hours of labor 
 which jeopardized health, and which denied the leisure 
 prerequisite to normal social and political life, the 
 courts continued to offer a refuge for those employ- 
 ers who by an amazing inversion of reality essayed to 
 preserve for their employees such fictitious rights. 
 Courts trailed legislatures. Now, however, the United 
 States Supreme Court has in notable cases affirmed the 
 power of legislatures to regulate working hours. The 
 California Act, limiting the work of women in certain 
 industries to forty-eight hours per week, was upheld 
 by the Supreme Court, which thereby marked a period 
 in this development.* One of the most significant 
 aspects of this change in the positions taken by courts 
 is to be found in the increasing reliance put upon scien- 
 tific testimony concerning the actual consequences of 
 industrial employment upon workers. The shift in 
 method was manifested in the nature of the arguments 
 offered by Louis D. Brandeis when the United States 
 Supreme Court sustained the constitutionality of the 
 Oregon ten-hour law for women employed in any 
 mechanical establishment, factory, or laundry. Courts 
 previously had been relying on what was called "com- 
 mon knowledge" concerning the effects of industry 
 upon workers, as they applied the principle of the free- 
 dom of contract and determined the application of the 
 police power in these affairs. But it has been ob- 
 served that this "common knowledge" was often 
 "popular error," and accordingly in the Oregon litiga- 
 
 * Miller v. Wilson, 236 U, S. 373 J Bosley v. McLaughlin, 236 
 U. S. 385. 
 
IO4 Indttstry and Human Welfare 
 
 tion Mr. Brandeis later Justice of the United States 
 Supreme Court assisted by Miss Josephine Gold- 
 mark, publication secretary of the National Consum- 
 ers' League, summarized the extant scientific literature 
 upon the issue before the court in order to set forth 
 what was in reality the world's experience.* Again in 
 1914, by similar reasoning, the United States Supreme 
 Court sustained the Oregon ten-hour law for labor in 
 factories.! Regulation of the hours of men's labor 
 by legislation is developed far less than that for women. 
 The explanation of this is to be found in the attitude 
 of the American Federation of Labor, which has gen- 
 erally opposed the state regulation of men's hours of 
 labor because of the fear of weakening union organ- 
 ization, and in the further fact that public opinion is 
 not awake to the desirability of restricting men's hours 
 of work.J 
 
 One of the illuminating discoveries concerning the 
 effects of fatigue has been that workers often produce 
 more in a short working day than in a long one. The 
 most interesting finding of this nature was obtained 
 in consequence of an inquiry by the United States 
 Public Health Service. Two plants, one working on 
 the ten-hour system and the other using the eight- 
 hour shift, were the basis of perhaps the most pains- 
 taking study ever made in this field. In summary it 
 was reported that "a comparison of the eight-hour 
 and the ten-hour system leads to the conclusion that 
 the eight-hour system is the more efficient." This 
 
 * Miiller v. Oregon, U. S. 412, 1908. 
 
 t Bunting v. Oregon, 243 U. S. 246, 37 Supreme Court 435, 1917. 
 
 t "Principles of Labor Legislation," 248. 
 
Hours 105 
 
 greater efficiency was evidenced by a steady mainte- 
 nance of output during the shorter day as contrasted 
 with a declining output during the ten-hour day, the 
 reduction of lost time to a minimum under the eight- 
 hour system, and the prevalence of an artificial re- 
 striction of output under the ten-hour system, and also 
 by other data obtained in the course of the inquiry.* 
 
 This conclusion, which is supported by some of the 
 findings made by investigations carried on by the Brit- 
 ish government, has been challenged by the National 
 Industrial Conference Board, an organization of Amer- 
 ican employers' associations. In a study entitled 
 ''Practical Experience with the Work Week of Forty- 
 Eight Hours or Less," the Conference Board stated 
 that more than 87 per cent of the plants which reported 
 showed that a reduction of the work week to forty- 
 eight hours or less was accompanied by a decrease in 
 the weekly output per worker. It should be noted that 
 the Conference Board merely asked questions of manu- 
 facturers, while the United States Public Health Ser- 
 vice made a long and scrupulous study of two estab- 
 lishments using the eight-hour and the ten-hour shifts. 
 The Board, however, drew attention to the fact that in 
 many of the factories concerning which it made inquiry 
 "the output was limited almost entirely by the speed 
 of machines." In such a case it is inevitable that a 
 reduction in running time be followed by a reduction in 
 output. The Board gave support to the conclusions 
 of the Public Health Service investigators, on the other 
 hand, by reporting that where handwork predominated 
 
 * Public Health Bulletin No. 106, page 26. Comparison of an 
 Eight-Hour Plant and a Ten-Hour Plant. 
 
io6 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 that is, where the human worker was more nearly 
 free to express himself "it was possible to increase 
 the hourly output of workers, in some cases to the ex- 
 tent of entirely compensating for the loss in working 
 time or even of exceeding the previous weekly pro- 
 duction." 
 
 It is impossible to say generally whether the eight- 
 hour day, so long the goal of union labor and social 
 reformers, is economically more productive than the 
 longer working day. Experience seems to differ wide- 
 ly. It must, albeit, be remembered that the public 
 argument for the short working day is not grounded 
 in the belief that men and women and children produce 
 more in eight hours than in nine or ten or twelve. It 
 does not matter from the standpoint of social states- 
 manship whether eight hours produce more or less than 
 ten or twelve. As a consequence of the experience 
 of this country in the war incidentally it became appar- 
 ent that, given the motive, the productive capacity of 
 the country could be enormously increased without 
 condemning industrial workers to live in evil condi- 
 tions. Enough can be produced. The need to shorten 
 hours arises from the necessities of workers as indi- 
 viduals and as members of the community. Normal 
 family life is not to be attained when men and women 
 pour all their energies into the tasks of industrial pro- 
 duction. No more are men and women stripped by toil 
 of every resource of intelligence and energy able to 
 share in the social and political activities of a free re- 
 public. The feeling of the public in this matter was 
 stated by the President's Industrial Conference in its 
 report of March, 1920, as follows: 
 
Hours 107 
 
 "The problem of hours has undergone a fundamental 
 change through the introduction of large scale factory 
 production and the growing concentration of our popu- 
 lation in cities. Men and women can work relatively 
 long hours at work which is interesting, which calls upon 
 their various energies, which gives some opportunity for 
 creative self-expression. Work which is repetitive, 
 monotonous and conducted under the confining indoor 
 conditions of even the best industrial plant, especially 
 where the plant is located at a distance from the homes 
 of the workers, makes much more exacting physical and 
 nervous demands. If the inevitable conditions of mod- 
 ern industry do not offer variety and continuing interest, 
 the worker should have hours short enough for more 
 recreation and for greater contact with his fellow work- 
 men outside of working hours."* 
 
 The changes made subsequent to the Armistice have 
 been so widespread that it is difficult to estimate cor- 
 rectly what are the prevailing hours of labor in Amer- 
 ican industry. In the highly organized trades the 
 eight-hour day generally obtains. This is character- 
 istic of the mines, of the railroads except in the 
 operation of trains and of the building industry. In 
 the manufacturing industries only slightly affected by 
 unionism the nine- and ten-hour working days are 
 popular. In a few trades such as the men's clothing 
 industry the forty-four hour week has been established. 
 Some light was thrown on the question of working 
 hours by an industrial survey made by the United 
 States Bureau of Labor Statistics during the first 
 months of 1919.! In the twenty-eight industries 
 studied it was reported that for the payroll period in- 
 vestigated the average hours worked per day were 7.6 
 
 * Report of the Industrial Conference called by the President, 
 'March 6, 1920, pages 32 and 33. 
 
 t Industrial Survey in Selected Industries in the United States, . y* 
 1919, Bulletin No. 265, U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 
 
io8 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 hours for male workers and 7.5 hours for female 
 workers. But this average reveals almost nothing of 
 the normal working day in any industry, for the reason 
 that the total number of hours worked by an individual 
 during a week was divided by the number of days and 
 the result was given as the average. This took no ac- 
 count of lost time. A man might have been employed 
 twelve hours a day for the three days during which 
 work was given him and his average would have been 
 six hours daily, a totally misleading indication of his 
 real routine. This is shown by the tables given for 
 individual industries and processes, where the average 
 working time varies widely. Ethelbert Stewart, 
 United States Commissioner of the Labor Statistics, 
 used to quote a colored preacher whose children were 
 afflicted with badly deformed legs. Some were bowed 
 inward and some outward. But the sensitive preacher 
 resented sympathy and argued that his children's legs 
 averaged as well as any. So, too, do the working 
 hours of the establishments covered in this extensive 
 industrial survey. But the individuals are not bettered 
 by that. Male blowers in the blast furnaces of the 
 Eastern district were thus shown to have been em- 
 ployed 13.9 hours on the average during the period 
 studied while male door operators employed in the 
 open-hearth furnaces of the same industry on the 
 Pacific Coast averaged only 7.2 .hours a day. With 
 such variations it means little to say that the male em- 
 ployees of the iron and steel industry in the United 
 States were employed, during the short time investi- 
 gated, 7.8 hours per week day. 
 
 The last great industry which has retained the long 
 
Hows 109 
 
 working day of a century ago is steel. The twelve- 
 hour day and the seven-day week as recently as the 
 spring of 1921 have measured the working periods 
 exacted of a large number of the employees of the steel 
 industry.* In the study of the entire industry made 
 by the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1911, it 
 was found that nearly fifty per cent of the workers 
 were employed on the twelve-hour shift. The study 
 made by John A. Fitch during 1920 indicated that not 
 much change had been made during the years following. 
 In the spring of 1921 the United States Steel Corpora- 
 tion announced that it hoped and expected the twelve- 
 hour day would be abolished. 
 
 Not less serious than the long working day is night 
 employment. This existed from the very beginning 
 of the factory system in this country and to some ex- 
 tent before the mechanical revolution, but unlike the 
 twelve-hour day it was not borrowed from agricul- 
 ture. In the draft of his proposal for the establish- 
 ment of a powder factory in the United States, in 1801, 
 E. I. du Pont mentioned to his French backers that 
 four powder mills then in operation in Pennsylvania 
 worked night and day.f Night work has grown 
 greatly with the factory system. In some so-called con- 
 tinuous industries, such as certain steel processes, it 
 is perhaps inescapable. In the steel industry it has, 
 however, been accompanied by enormously long hours 
 of work. Often the men on the night shift have been 
 engaged thirteen hours, while those on the day work 
 
 * See The Survey, March 5, 1921, page 783 and following. 
 t E. I. duPont de Nemours & Company, page 168. 
 
no Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 were employed eleven. Night work in itself is a ser- 
 ious menace to health. 
 
 Admitting the probable necessity of night work un- 
 der various circumstances, Dr. Lee insists that: 
 
 "It should be borne in mind that from the standpoint 
 of the human machine night work is always abnormal. 
 Man is a diurnal, not a nocturnal, animal, and any at- 
 tempt to change his innate habits in this respect are 
 bound to interfere with his physiological processes. 
 Man's body needs the stimulus of sunlight and is 
 adapted to the atmospheric conditions of the day. Some 
 of his physiological processes exhibit a regular curve 
 of variation through the twenty-four hours, one of the 
 best known being that of bodily temperature, with its 
 gradual rise during the day to a maximum in the late 
 afternoon, and a gradual fall to a minimum in the early 
 morning. . . . 
 
 "There is a general consensus of opinion that night 
 work is more deleterious to health than is day work, 
 and this opinion is supported by incontestable evidence; 
 but at the present state of our knowledge it is hardly 
 possible, nor indeed for our present purpose is it neces- 
 sary, to differentiate between the deleterious effects per se 
 resulting from such conditions as the attempted imposi- 
 tion of an unphysiological rhythm and the lack of bene- 
 ficial sunshine and the deleterious effects resulting from 
 the fact that under our social conditions the day's re- 
 cuperation of the night worker is rarely equal to the 
 night's recuperation of the day worker. Night worV 
 entails a diminution of sleep." * 
 
 Most European industrial countries forbid night 
 work for women and some American states have taken 
 the same course. The first International Conference 
 on Labor Legislation expressed the general conscience 
 of the civilized world as follows : 
 
 "Women, without distinction of age, shall not be 
 employed during the night in any public or private 
 undertaking or in any branch thereof, other than an 
 
 * "The Human Machine and Industrial Efficiency," by Frederic 
 S. Lee, pages 61 and 68. 
 
Hours in 
 
 undertaking in which only members of the same family 
 are employed." * 
 
 Children are more generally safeguarded from the 
 effects of night work, but so far almost nothing has 
 been done in this country to protect men. 
 
 The factory system also developed enormously the 
 habits of Sunday work. In continuous industries seven 
 days' work are not to be avoided. In other lines pub- 
 lic convenience insists upon uninterrupted service. 
 Transportation cannot now be stopped for Sabbath 
 observance, although for a number of years the rail- 
 roads did not operate on Sunday. In an estimate made 
 in 1913 on the basis of reports made by the Massachu- 
 setts, New York, Minnesota, and the United States 
 Bureau "of Labor Statistics, John A. Fitch reckoned, 
 taking the entire country and including the non-indus- 
 trial as well as the industrial population, that a total 
 of over 4,500,000 people were engaged in seven-day 
 labor, f Sunday work deprives this vast number of 
 people of leisure and at the same time, through creat- 
 ing excessive fatigue, is a menace to health. J The 
 trade unions have in numerous instances sought laws 
 providing one day's rest in seven. In the United States 
 the federal government and six states had by January, 
 1920, made enactments embodying this principle. Only 
 the statutes of Massachusetts, New York, and Wiscon- 
 sin apply to factories and mercantile establishments 
 generally, and even these exclude numerous classes. 
 
 * The American Labor Legislation Review, 9, P a ge 535- 
 
 t "Rest Periods for Continuous Industries." Op. cit., 3 : S3- 
 
 i'The Human Machine and Industrial Efficiency/' page 47- 
 
H2 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 The laws of the other states and of Congress on this 
 subject are narrowly restricted. 
 
 The early Sunday laws in this country, of which 
 there were many, were designed to protect the Sabbath 
 from man. The more recent laws have been aimed 
 at the protection of man from industry. Both types 
 have been sustained by the courts.* The practical con- 
 sequence of such a law in the case of the really con- 
 tinuous industries is to enlarge the working force by 
 one-sixth so that all may have one free day a week 
 and at the same time the establishment be kept fully 
 manned. The advantage of a weekly day of rest even 
 from the material standpoint of production was made 
 apparent by the inquiries of the British Health of 
 Munitions Workers' Committee, which in the midst of 
 the war reported : 
 
 "If the maximum output is to be secured and main- 
 tamed for any length of time, a weekly period of rest 
 must be allowed. Except for quite short periods, con- 
 tinuous work, in their view, is a profound mistake. On 
 economic and social grounds alike this weekly period of 
 rest is best provided on Sunday." t 
 
 Machinery, the labor saving invention, thus through 
 the exactK'i.s it has levied upon human nature, has con- 
 vinced public opinion of the need of shortening the 
 hours of toil. During many decades, however, the dur- 
 ation of work was not shortened by the factory sys- 
 tem. Instead, to the long hours of agriculture were 
 added night work and Sunday work. Now the tide 
 has turned and while adequate leisure and even suffi- 
 
 * "Principles of Labor Legislation," 1920 edition, page 278. 
 t U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin 221, page 8. 
 
Hows 113 
 
 cient rest for the great majority are objectives still to 
 be realized, already science has provided the sanction 
 and industry itself has supplied the means for the es- 
 tablishment of a more wholesome and happier way of 
 life. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 REGULARITY OF EMPLOYMENT 
 
 NOT less important in the lives of workers than the 
 fatiguing and destructive effects of excessive and un- 
 physiologic hours of labor, is the periodical denial of 
 
 4 the opportunity to work at all. That is a distinct prod- 
 uct of the mechanical revolution. Industry makes 
 irregular demands for human labor. Seasonal needs, 
 the cycles of business, changes within industries, 
 these and other factors tend to make the employment of 
 workers in industry seem to be almost capriciously un- 
 certain, Unemployment for wage earners means a 
 cessation of income and dire anxiety. Changing sea- 
 sons and cycles of business are obviously, however, not 
 new phenomena. "Manufacture" was irregular in its 
 demand for workers before the first power factory 
 was established. Business cycles were not unknown 
 to the economic observers of the eighteenth century. 
 Nevertheless, in reality machine industry did of itself 
 give rise to the modern phenomenon of unemploy- 
 
 , ment. 
 
 The explanation of this is in part to be found in 
 the fact that the factory system demanded specializa- 
 tion and a division of labor among its workers and 
 that it segregated operatives in cities. As has been 
 observed previously, early American artizans in so 
 
Regularity of Employment 115 
 
 far as they were freemen were not dependent upon a 
 single vocation. Tench Coxe described workers who 
 were gardeners and small farmers when they were not 
 following their trade. When the demand for shoes 
 failed, the shoemaker, for instance, was not totally 
 unemployed. He had other work. The produce of 
 his garden, his chickens and pig and cow, the posses- 
 sion of a home for which he paid little or no rent, 
 gave him a security which his great-grandchildren en- 
 tirely lack, unless they, too, dwell in small villages. 
 "Hard times" oppressed the land long before factor- 
 ies were founded, but the American laborer and 
 mechanic was certain of shelter, of food, and of clothes, 
 poor in quality as these often were. Poverty of course 
 existed. Never, perhaps, has been the time when there 
 were no poor, but it was chiefly the poverty of the 
 sick, of the widowed, of the unfit. Enormous varia- 
 tions in the opportunity to work did not then curse 
 the great mass of the population. Agriculture, by 
 which the overwhelming majority of the people lived, 
 is seasonal, but in this country it knew little unemploy- 
 ment. For most life passed at a low but unvarying 
 level. Conditions were endured which would appear 
 intolerable to-day to the descendants of those who were 
 pioneers, but life was secure and if there was for the 
 majority small hope of attaining ease there was less 
 anxiety over sudden economic disaster or over the con- 
 tinuance of life itself. 
 
 Unemployment and the fear of unemployment are 
 twin evils created by the factory system. Industry, 
 destroyed man's old sense of safety, and in the United 
 States little has been done to make good this great 
 
n6 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 loss. The possibility of being workless and without 
 income hangs over the great majority of wage earners. 
 The factory worker of to-day knows only a fractional 
 part of the trade he pursues. He knows little else that 
 he could turn to account. He must live by his trade or 
 not at all. In order to obtain employment he must 
 ordinarily reside in congested cities, where the possi- 
 bility of subsidiary means of support are denied him. 
 Usually he does not own the house or the tenement he 
 lives in. He neither cultivates nor harvests the vege- 
 tables and fruits which his family consumes. If he is 
 able to eat eggs or to drink milk he obtains these articles 
 from dealers who are themselves far removed from the 
 scene of actual production. His clothes are bought, not 
 made at home. The modern factory worker must re- 
 tain his job if he wishes to continue alive, and yet he 
 knows from bitter experience that at recurrent inter- 
 vals, regardless of zeal or fitness, many men and 
 women will not be employed. His constant question is 
 "Am I next to go?" That condition, unemployment 
 and the more harassing dread of unemployment which 
 it engenders, are among the most serious reproaches 
 which the conscience of humanity must level at modern 
 industry. 
 
 The conventional attitude toward unemployment 
 regards it as one of the inescapable evils of mankind. 
 It seems to be a blight sent to distress the race, an ill 
 inevitable because it appears to be the result of some 
 obscure law of nature. That position, never rational, 
 has now few informed defenders. In his distinguished 
 book "Unemployment: A Problem of Industry," Sir 
 JVilliam H, Beveridge (page 14) made it apparent that 
 
Regularity of Employment 117 
 
 unemployment is a normal and not an abnormal mani- 
 festation of industry. Irregularity of production is a 
 part of the expected routine. This conclusion is ren- 
 dered plain enough by a consideration of the varying 
 sums of the products of industry. Studies recently 
 made show the fluctuations in the actual physical vol- 
 ume of the products of American manufacturies during 
 the years from 1899 to 1919. These decades were, on 
 the whole, marked by tremendous expansion, but year 
 by year there were violent ups and downs. The figures 
 giving these variations are not merely indices of pro- 
 duction. With as great vividness they show the course 
 of employment and unemployment. As Professor Day 
 points out, "The years 1902, 1905-7, 1912, 1916-17, 
 were years of especially large production; 1900-01, 
 1908, 1911, 1914, 1919, years of particularly low pro- 
 duction." * A tremendous slump in production oc- 
 curred during 1908. This threw millions of men and 
 women out of work. In his interesting attempt to 
 reckon the ebb and flow of employment in American 
 cities, Hornell Hart,f speaking of the period between 
 1902 and 1917, said: 
 
 "The number of unemployed in cities of the United 
 States (entirely omitting agricultural labor, for which no 
 reliable data are now available) has fluctuated between 
 1,000,000 and 6,000,000. The least unemployment oc- 
 curred in 1906-1907 and in 1916-1917, while the most 
 occurred in 1908 and in 1914 and 1915. The average num- 
 ber unemployed has been two and a half million workers, 
 or nearly ten per cent of the active supply." 
 
 * Edmund E. Day, "The Review of Economic Statistics" 
 January, 1921 ; page 20. 
 
 t "Fluctuations in Employment in Cities of the United States, 
 1902 to 1917," by Hornell Hart. Helen S. Trounstine Foundation, 
 Cincinnati, Vol. i, No. 2. 
 
n8 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 This conclusion is similar to the opinions of most 
 students of the subject. The number of employees in 
 New York state factories at the time of inspection 
 were, for example, compiled for the years 1901 to 1909 
 inclusive. Marked differences are found. The decade 
 was one of remarkable growth but there was a large de- 
 crease in employment during 1908. Fewer workers 
 were employed in New York factories during 1909 
 than during 1906. More than eleven per cent of the 
 factory population, or 128,874 individuals, was thrown 
 out of work in 1908.* These variations are charac- 
 teristic. "We find in the industrial centers of this 
 state," said the New York State Commission on Em- 
 ployers' Liability and Unemployment of 1911, "at all 
 times of the year, in good times as well as in bad, 
 wage earners able and willing to work who cannot 
 secure employment." The Bureau of Labor Statistics 
 study made during March and April, 1915, showed 
 that in sixteen Eastern and Middle Western cities 15 
 per cent of the families having policies in the Metro- 
 politan Life Insurance Company were suffering from 
 unemployment. A similar study made during June 
 and July, 1914, in twelve Rocky Mountain and Pacific 
 Coast cities had reported 15.3 per cent unemployed, a 
 striking demonstration of how widespread the condi- 
 tion of unemployment was during those years.f Unem- 
 ployment by its undulations registers the movement of 
 the business cycle, with its veering swings from pros- 
 perity to depression. Industry may in time be stabil- 
 
 * Report of New York State Commission on Employers' Lia- 
 bility and Unemployment, Third Report, 1911, page 4. 
 t U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin 195. 
 
Regularity of Employment 119 
 
 ized so that these cyclical fluctuations cease to deny 
 the opportunity of work to millions, but for the imme- 
 diate future at least this process must be expected to 
 continue. At the beginning of 1921 the United States 
 Employment Service sent out questionnaires and on 
 the basis of the information thus obtained estimated , 
 that 5,000,000 wage earners were unemployed during 
 the summer of 1921. The American Federation of 
 Labor made a similar estimate. 
 
 Not only do these cyclical fluctuations of business 
 and industry deprive millions of the opportunity to 
 work and to earn but there are also seasonal varia- 
 tions in the demand for workers which result in an 
 enormous burden of underemployment and unemploy- 
 ment. Certain occupations are inherently seasonal. 
 Agriculture is the perfect example, but better far than 
 industry, agriculture, except in the harvest fields, cares 
 for its own. The seasonal character of many industries 
 diminishes the actual earnings of the people employed. 
 The number of wage earners employed in the manu- 
 facturing industries of the country varies greatly by 
 months. The Census of 1910* recites the figures for 
 1909 and 1904. During 1909 Hornell Hart estimated 
 that there were on the average 2,100,000 persons, ex- 
 cluding agricultural workers, unemployed. The vari- 
 ations for the months among those who had jobs were 
 great. The census showed that November was the 
 month of high employment. January was the low 
 month. In November the manufacturing industries 
 gave employment to approximately 800,000 more 
 workers than in the preceding January. From month 
 
 * "Manufactures," Vol. 8, page 276. 
 
120 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 to month there were violent changes in the demand for 
 workers. A difference of more than thirteen per cent 
 marked fluctuating requirements of the manufactur- 
 ing industries during 1909. During 1904, when ac- 
 cording to the Hart reckonings 2,400,000 workers 
 were on the average unemployed, the difference be- 
 tween the high month and the low month, October 
 and January in this year, was upwards of seven per 
 cent. The census figures for principal industries show 
 with even greater clarity the seasonal demands for 
 human service and the accompanying unemployment. 
 The iron and steel trade has been called the barometer 
 of industry. During December, 1909, certain estab- 
 lishments in this industry employed 283,629 workers. 
 In March, however, nearly a quarter fewer, or only 
 215,076 had been hired. In foundry and machine prod- 
 ucts there was a difference of nearly twenty per cent 
 in the number of those employed in January and De- 
 cember. These, moreover, were the more stable indus- 
 tries. Others showed very wide variations. Brick 
 and tile manufactures employed 104,930 in July, 1909, 
 but only 38,312 in January. Glass manufactures em- 
 ployed 40,222 in July and 81,665 m December. Feb- 
 ruary, March, April and May are the heavy months 
 in the tanning industry in New York.* Fluctuations in 
 advertising reduce the sizes of newspapers and the 
 numbers employed. These are not the extreme cases. 
 The sugar and molasses industry, which shows the 
 widest differences, employed only 3.5 per cent of the 
 people in February who were on its payrolls in Novem- 
 
 * New York State Commission on Employers' Liability and 
 Unemployment, page 4. 
 
Regularity of Employment 121 
 
 her. These differences month by month are not ab- 
 normal expressions. Seasonal demand is character- 
 istic. Thus it happens that in fat years as well as in 
 lean, there are week by week vast numbers of workers 
 who are unable to secure employment. 
 
 Industry is subject to other variations, not attribu- 
 table to business cycles of prosperity and depression 
 or to seasonal demands. Industries rise in importance 
 and then go down. The experience of the war exem- 
 plified this perfectly. When the Armistice came thou- 
 sands of workers were engaged in making gas masks. 
 Vast numbers were employed in other forms of the 
 munitions manufactures. Suddenly the need for gas 
 masks stopped and all those whose lives had been de- 
 voted to that purpose were suddenly cast adrift. Less 
 dramatically this process continually recurs. The 
 automobile industry grew enormously during the 
 decade ending in 1910, but the census of that year 
 showed 71 industries which decreased their labor force 
 during the decade. This waxing and waning of pro- 
 duction is one of the persistent facts of industrial 
 organization. 
 
 Unemployment and irregular employment result in 
 low and variable earnings. The earnings of cotton 
 mill workers, even during years when the factories 
 work relatively regularly, vary widely. A family of 
 six wage earners together thus earned $32.75 one week 
 and the following week only $17.70.* The greatest 
 irregularity of earnings was found to be experienced 
 both in the Southern and Northern mills. The ex- 
 perience of a Fall River family, consisting of three 
 
 * "Woman and Child Wage Earners," Vol. 16, page 156. 
 
122 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 wage earners, epitomizes the situation. The period 
 from May i, 1908, to April 30, 1909, was covered by 
 the inquiry. During the first week of this period the 
 joint earnings of this family were $7.66. The second 
 week the total income was $2.30. The third week it 
 had risen to $22.02. The last nine weeks of the year 
 studied there was no income at all because there was 
 no work. The average weekly income was $19.52, 
 and the total for the year was $839.51.* The textile 
 industry, however, is counted among the more stable. 
 Figures obtained from New York trade unionists 
 showed that on the average union workers were losing 
 about a fifth of their normal earnings because of un- 
 employment and underemployment, f Theoretically, 
 for instance, stage hands at that time earned on the 
 average $720 a year. Their actual average earnings 
 were some $432 annually. Trade unionists in the 
 clothing and textile trades worked at pay rates which 
 normally would have produced an average income of 
 $975.66 a year. The actual average was $710. 
 
 This marked reduction of annual earnings is one 
 of the outstanding consequences of irregular work. 
 These decreases and the fluctuating earnings entail 
 many serious consequences. Undernourishment of 
 the worker and his family, harassing anxiety, enforced 
 idleness and drifting these are some of the influences 
 which rack millions of workers. No more pathetic 
 figure is to be found than the strong, skillful craftsman, 
 eager for the opportunity to work and to earn, and 
 
 * "Woman and Child Wage Earners," Vol. 16, page 246. 
 t New York Commission on Employers' Liability and Unem- 
 ployment, page 8. 
 
Regularity of Employment 123 
 
 yet sentenced to idleness while his dependents suffer. 
 The picture of such men skulking in their own homes 
 after futile searches for employment, while their wives 
 go out in pursuit of odd tasks as domestic servants in 
 order to keep the family together and avoid the dread 
 appeal for charity, is desolate beyond words. Pre- 
 cariousness of existence for wage earners is one of 
 the clear consequences of the industrial revolution. 
 The premature work of children and the forced em- 
 ployment of mothers these, too, are the gifts of 
 irregular industry. The strong endure anxiety and 
 deprivation while the weak and the less fortunate are 
 forced to seek public aid. Involuntary unemployment 
 was a factor in the situation of more than one-fourth 
 of the cases closed by the New York Charity Organ- 
 ization Society during the year of the report of the 
 New York State Commission on Unemployment of 
 1911. 
 
 Migratory and casual workers existed long before 
 the factory system. In a certain sense, of course, the 
 pioneers were themselves migratory workers.* Wan- 
 dering gangs of navvies were employed clearing the 
 forests in the South, digging canals and building 
 levees,f at the very moment when the factory system 
 was being developed. The itinerant Irishmen, inci- 
 dentally, were counted of less economic value than the 
 negroes owned on the plantations, and they fared far 
 worse. Their status was assuredly lower than that 
 of the casual who is to-day employed in building a 
 
 *"One Thousand Homeless Men," by Alice Willard Solen- 
 berger. 
 t "American Negro Slavery," by W. B. Phillips, page 301. 
 
124 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 factory or a railroad. None the less, in a peculiar 
 way modern industry has created a new class of 
 wandering workers. Construction work, specialized 
 agriculture, itself a by-product of modern industry and 
 highly seasonal occupations, have enlarged this class of 
 laborers who are employed from day to day and often 
 only by the hour. The logging industry demands 
 its casuals, as do the various branches of construction. 
 In ordinary years thousands of workers pass many 
 months of idleness in cheap hotels and lodging houses 
 of the great cities. Seattle, Chicago, Kansas City, 
 New York, are the great gathering places for this 
 unfortunate class of semi-employed workers. 
 
 The human cost of irregular employment is incal- 
 culable. The purely economic loss is also enormous, 
 as studies of "labor turnover" have shown.* In ad- 
 dition to the direct cessations of employment, a constant 
 change of workers adds its burdens to the waste of 
 industry. Ninety shops in the New York cloak, suit 
 and skirt industry employed on the average 1,435 
 workers for the year ending July 31, 1913, but during 
 that time a total of 4,858 persons were hired. An 
 incessant stream of workers passed through these estab- 
 lishments. Various estimates of the incessant loss 
 from labor turnover have been made. A study of costs 
 of electric railway service showed that the expense of 
 training a trainman on a Milwaukee electric railway 
 was not less than $217.29. The Jeffrey Manufactur- 
 ing Company reckoned that the cost of breaking in 
 a new man averaged about $100. The Dennison Man- 
 ufacturing Company reckoned the cost of replacing 
 
 * "The Turnover of Factory Labor," by Sumner H. Slichter. 
 
Regularity of Employment 125 
 
 experienced workers in its establishment at $50 each.* 
 The amount of actual damage which inexperienced 
 workers do combines with their smaller productivity 
 to augment the cost of labor turnover from the stand- 
 point of the employer. The difference in the accident 
 rate of experienced and of inexperienced workers, 
 as shown by a number of street railway studies, is 
 great. The total cost to American industry of labor 
 turnover must approximate a sum comparable to the 
 German indemnity. The endless ' 'hiring and firing," 
 an essential part of the insecurity of the present, af- 
 fects workers in various ways. Earnings are stopped 
 during the time of unemployment before a new job is 
 obtained; the finding of work involves expense, and 
 earnings are apt to be low while the new tasks are 
 learned. In addition the worker is demoralized by 
 the constant shifting. 
 
 The unending movement of men and women in and 
 out of establishments is in part the cause and in part 
 the result of a constant excess of workers. A group 
 of woolen mills employing between 11,000 and 13,000 
 hired 18,214 workers in 1907; in 1908, 12,932; in 
 1909, 18,225; in 1910, 15,188, the size of the force, as 
 Mr. Slichter has pointed out, undergoing relatively 
 little change during these years. This turnover is the 
 motion which measures the extent of the reservoir of 
 labor. Exclusive of farm laborers this unemployed 
 reserve ranges year by year from one million to six 
 million workers, according to the reckonings of Hor- 
 nell Hart. The army of available workers is increased 
 
 *"The Turnover of Factory Labor," by Sumner H. Slichter, 
 page 132. 
 
126 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 through immigration. The migration of European 
 peoples to the United States has been largely an ill- 
 regulated response to America's industrial demands. 
 In part it has been a movement stimulated by employ- 
 ers of labor, who have generally been discontented 
 with the higher level of wages paid in this country. 
 Immediately after the Civil War, for example, the 
 American Emigrant Society was organized to supply 
 American employers with imported workers. The ex- 
 pression of the purpose of this original society was 
 more frank than is now customary. An employer de- 
 siring workers had only to make his needs known. The 
 company charged a fee of $i on application for work- 
 ers and on their delivery charged $10 for each skilled 
 worker, $6 each for agricultural workers, $5 each for 
 house servants and $5 each for boys learning a trade.* 
 Congress was induced as early as the Civil War period 
 so to frame laws as to attract immigrants to this 
 country. The history of most of the great industries 
 is a history of successive waves of immigration. 
 
 Real need for workers to man the growing industrial 
 establishments has competed with the desire of em- 
 ployers to have a full reserve of labor. From the days 
 of the American Emigrant Society until the Immigra- 
 tion Act of 1921 was passed there was no break in 
 this effort to pour new workers into the reservoir of 
 American industry.! Between July i, 1900, and June 
 I, 1918, 14,298,018 immigrants came into this country; 
 
 * "Social and Industrial Conditions in the North During the 
 Civil War," by Emerson David Fite, page 192. 
 
 f Statements of Inter-racial Council, 1920, estimating a need 
 of 4,000,000 additional workers in the United States and urging 
 renewed immigration from Europe. 
 
 f 
 
Regularity of Employment 127 
 
 and yet, as Professor Lescohier has observed, in every 
 day and month when these millions were coming idle 
 men and women have vainly sought work in every city 
 and town of the United States.* This reserve labor 
 has rendered employment irregular at all times for 
 many; it has kept earnings low for the reason that 
 the law of supply and demand steadily operated against 
 wage-earners once the free lands were exhausted, re- 
 moving the competition which the early manufacturers 
 had faced; and it has increased the sum of unemploy- 
 ment during hard times. "Extra" workers are the 
 characteristic expression of a system of industry which 
 demands a supply of idle men and women to be held in 
 waiting for the time of maximum production. In the 
 cotton mills work is irregular, among other reasons, 
 because ordinarily there have been more workers than 
 jobs. Consequently, as previously noted, the average 
 weekly income of the worker is seldom or never the 
 same, and the Commissioner of Labor was impelled to 
 report to the United States Senate in 1911, following 
 the investigation at Fall River, Massachusetts, that "in 
 the entire study there was not one individual found 
 whose earnings were sufficient to support a normal 
 family according to the fair standard." 
 
 The measures proposed to deal with the numerous 
 evils and maladjustments summed up in the term ir- 
 regular employment are many. They are of three 
 varieties ameliorative, informational, and preventive. 
 Until comparatively recently, little statistical data con- 
 cerning employment in the United States existed and 
 even now precise information is available only for a 
 * "The Labor Market," by Don S. Lescohier, page 9. 
 
128 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 few states and cities at specified intervals. The great 
 effort has been to obtain facts so that on a diagnosis of 
 reality valid social statesmanship might be built. The 
 only sound means of obtaining a continuing picture of 
 the fluctuations of employment are to be found in the 
 establishment of a public employment service. For 
 public employment offices serve the dual function of 
 connecting workers with opportunities for employment 
 and of obtaining current knowledge concerning the de- 
 mand for workers and the supply of those in search 
 of employment. In this country the national labor 
 exchanges of Great Britain have been the general 
 model although opinions differ as to whether the work 
 should be done by the states or by the federal govern- 
 ment. Prior to the World War the United States had 
 made no real effort to create an employment service. 
 During the summer of 1918 the United States Em- 
 ployment Service was established. The primary object 
 of the organization was to supply workers to the war 
 industries, and when the war was over Congress re- 
 duced the service to impotence. It marks a begin- 
 ning, however, and through the stimulus it gave to 
 state and municipal employment offices, advanced 
 greatly the idea of a system of public employment ex- 
 changes. Valuable contributions to the knowledge of 
 employment conditions in this country were obtained 
 through the federal service,* especially of the waste in- 
 volved in a hapless distribution of migratory workers 
 to the harvest fields. The public employment service, 
 whether national, state, or municipal, is of value also 
 
 * See Annual Reports of the Director General, U. S. Employ- 
 ment Service. 
 
Regularity of Employment 129 
 
 in that it removes the heavy toll exacted by private 
 employment agencies upon those seeking work. The 
 tax upon the opportunity to earn, levied by those who 
 make a commodity of jobs, has been a serious evil in 
 the industrial life of the nation. 
 
 The establishment of public employment offices has 
 been the first long step in the abolition of unemploy- 
 ment, for although an employment service cannot in- 
 crease the sum of work in existence at any time, it does 
 render more available the existing jobs and it sup- 
 plies data on which policies may be built. The methods 
 used to regularize industry and so to modify fluctua- 
 tions in employment differ according to the industry. 
 From the standpoint of the public the most promising 
 program has been that of postponing public works from 
 times of prosperity to seasons of depression.* In a few 
 cities and states the policy of deferring public im- 
 provements until hard times, in the belief that such 
 a policy would tend to mitigate some of the effects of 
 the depression, has been developed. This program 
 calls for foresight but it involves no extraordinary ex- 
 penditures on the part of the public. Unnecessary im- 
 provements are not undertaken, but needed work is 
 postponed and reserved for the time of want. 
 
 Industries, and especially individual firms, have in 
 places made efforts to stabilize employment and to 
 create unemployment insurance funds. One of the 
 first instances of this* in the United States was the ex- 
 periment made by a Boston shoe factory, where pre- 
 viously workers had been employed on an average about 
 100 days a year. By means of a selling campaign and 
 
 *See The Survey for January 8, 1921, page 530. 
 
130 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 through other devices the demand for shoes was more 
 widely distributed throughout the year. A Cleveland 
 clothing firm also was conspicuously successful in stab- 
 ilizing the production of clothes. The Dennison Man- 
 ufacturing Company, of Framingham, Massachusetts, 
 has also been a notable pioneer in the stabilization of 
 employment. The method used in this case was to de- 
 velop certain standard articles which could be manufac- 
 tured far in advance of their time of sale. Efforts are 
 now being made to devise a system of removing irreg- 
 ularity from the coal industry. The country was 
 shocked in the autumn of 1919 when the United Mine 
 Workers in the bituminous fields demanded a six-hour 
 day and a five-day week. The demand seemed less 
 preposterous, however, when it was learned that never 
 in the history of the industry had the miners had the 
 opportunity to work as many days and hours as their 
 demand involved.* By the development of storage and 
 marketing facilities and in other ways it is possible 
 for the more intelligent industrial manager largely to 
 reduce irregular employment. Detailed suggestions 
 were formulated for a number of industries by the 
 President's Conference on Unemployment during Oc- 
 tober, 1921, and an interesting proposal for modifying 
 the extremes of the business cycle was offered. 
 
 Less intelligent and more selfish employers have, how- 
 ever, little native interest in the human consequences 
 of underemployment and unemployment and conse- 
 quently it is not possible to rely solely upon the initia- 
 tive of the managers of industry. Methods have to be 
 devised both to stimulate employers to reduce un- 
 
 *See The Survey for November 22, 1919, page 151. 
 
Regularity of Employment 131 
 
 employment and to relieve the necessities of those for 
 whom work is not provided. One of the most interest- 
 ing attempts to create stimuli of this character was ex- 
 pressed in a bill introduced in the Wisconsin legisla- 
 ture during 1921. This measure frankly was modeled 
 on the insurance principle which has been found useful 
 in the reduction of work accidents. Each industry and 
 each business would by this proposal be compelled to 
 insure against unemployment just as insurance against 
 industrial accidents is now exacted. Workers actually 
 unemployed would be given relief in accordance with 
 the familiar principles of the British unemployment 
 system. The insurance rate which the individual con- 
 cern would pay would be based on the risk it presented. 
 The natural desire of the insurer to reduce the pre- 
 miums would accordingly induce him to endeavor to 
 decrease unemployment in his own establishment. The 
 Wisconsin bill would create a board competent to 
 advise individual establishments concerning the most 
 effectual means of stabilizing production and employ- 
 ment.* 
 
 The goal to be reached is the elimination of irregular 
 work or, at least, of irregular income. The road to 
 be traveled is plain and still the distance to be over- 
 come is great. Consequently during the future, im- 
 mediate and perhaps distant, much reliance must be 
 found in a system of unemployment insurance. Great 
 Britain has in this field the largest amount of expe- 
 rience. In this country neither the individual states 
 nor the United States have actually created unemploy- 
 ment insurance systems although a growing public 
 
 * See The Survey for March 19, 1921, page 880. 
 
132 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 opinion supports the proposal. Every individual has 
 in American theory hitherto been able to provide per- 
 sonally against the irregularities of work. The long 
 rolls of the charity organization societies during 
 times of depression show how fallacious that assump- 
 tion has been. Nor is the belief that trade unions 
 are able adequately to assure their members against 
 unemployment well founded. Out of in national 
 organizations affiliated with the American Federation 
 of Labor only the Cigar Makers' Union has developed 
 an extensive national system of unemployment insur- 
 ance.* It is inconceivable that workers as individuals 
 or as members of trade unions should be able to pro- 
 vide adequate insurance against the emergency of un- 
 employment. Earnings are too low and too irregular 
 to sanction such a hope. 
 
 Unemployment must be relieved by the agency 
 which created large-scale industry. Each industry 
 must bear its own burden. The government which 
 has so consistently aided the managers and owners of 
 the factory system must give its own guidance and 
 direction to the healing of this chronic disease of con- 
 temporary civilization. The belief of practical states- 
 men on this matter, so long neglected m the United 
 States, was clearly expressed by the first International 
 Labor Conference held under the auspkes of the 
 League of Nations at Washington, during 1919, in 
 the recommendation that every member nation of the 
 league establish "an effective system of unemployment 
 insurance, either through a government system or 
 through a system of government subvention to asso- 
 
 * "Principles of Labor Legislation," page 442. 
 
Regularity of Employment 133 
 
 ciations whose rules provide for the payment of bene- 
 fits to their unemployed members." Insurance will 
 not of itself eradicate unemployment, but it may sup- 
 ply the stimulus to action without which relief might 
 be indefinitely postponed. The resources with which 
 to provide for the needs of the individuals unemployed 
 are abundant. Through mechanical industry society-' 
 has been enabled to produce more than can be con- 
 sumed normally. ' The factory system has with its 
 storehouses brought a security to society. But the 
 individual worker has not been permitted to share in 
 this cessation from anxiety concerning positive want. 
 Statesmanship surely owes to the workers whose ef- 
 forts have made possible the creation and the accumu- 
 lation of material possessions, so characteristic of mod- 
 ern society, a program of remedial action which will 
 render economic security a common possession. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 HAZARDS OF INDUSTRY 
 
 INDUSTRIAL accidents and diseases are, paradoxically 
 speaking, among the most hopeful indications of the 
 factory system. This is true because the recent neces- 
 sity to pay even though inadequately for the dam- 
 age done workers by industry has showed the almost 
 unsuspected potentialities of social control. Insur- 
 ance against work accidents gave, and continues to give, 
 enormous impetus to a positive movement for safety. 
 This effort to achieve safety by avoiding the condi- 
 tions which result in mishaps has foreshadowed the 
 range of society's power to determine an environment. 
 Workmen's compensation laws created the force which 
 induced men to seek to discover ways of reducing the 
 frequency of accidents. The insurance rates paid so 
 vary that the factory which is safe for workers had 
 low premiums, while a dangerous plant must pay 
 highly for its hazards. This money stimulus has be- 
 come a genuine incentive whose social product is the 
 modern safety movement. Humanitarianism has 
 also, of course, been a factor in the prevention of acci- 
 dents, but the superior influence has been the insurance 
 rating. 
 
 The development of industry greatly increased the 
 number and variety of work accidents and diseases, 
 
 134 
 
Hazards of Industry 135 
 
 although industrial hazards existed long before ma- 
 chinery was first put to work. Seafaring, fishing, 
 pioneering, historically were conspicuously dangerous 
 enterprises. The work of laborers on canals and public 
 roads and in other large-scale construction was tre- 
 mendously costly in human health and life. It has 
 been observed that wandering gangs of navvies were 
 at times hired to perform heavy labor in the South 
 because the owners of negro slaves were unwilling to 
 risk their property at such dangerous labor. Service 
 in the line of duty maimed and killed men a hundred 
 years ago, or thousands of years ago for that matter, 
 but the injuries done were probably less frequent or 
 less obvious than those which result from present-day 
 industry. At any rate, the situation gave rise to no 
 considerable body of literature. Until recent years, 
 moreover, accidents suffered or diseases developed in 
 the course of employment were purely individual dis- 
 asters for which neither employers nor the state were 
 legally responsible. The hazards of the sea were tra- 
 ditional. A mishap there to a man or a ship was 
 euphemistically termed "an act of God" by way of in- 
 dicating possibly the lack of legal liability which the 
 owner of the vessel felt for the victims of the disaster. 
 Traveling even on land was extremely dangerous. To 
 go from New York to Charleston in 1800 was as risky 
 as exploration of remote regions of the world to-day. 
 Workmen suffered injuries in the course of employ- 
 ment, but during the early years of the republic, in- 
 stead of compensating for their trouble the state was 
 more inclined to punish them for their misfortunes. 
 About the time the factory system was getting its 
 
136 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 roots well planted in this country, the jails were filled 
 with debtors. Upwards of a thousand were in the 
 New York bridewell during the course of a single year. 
 The man who was injured and who suffered unem- 
 ployment thereafter almost inevitably fell into debt. 
 Society had no mercy for him. If an unfriendly cred- 
 itor chose to have him imprisoned, such a victim of 
 industry had no other recourse but to go to jail. The 
 hundred years and more which have bounded the in- 
 dustrial revolution have also measured a complete 
 change in public sentiment so far as these matters are 
 involved. The change is probably due in no small 
 way to the fact that the workers, unenfranchised a cen- 
 tury ago, have now risen to a new political and social 
 status, in which they refuse to endure the iniquities 
 of the former era. 
 
 Until 1837 the legal relationship between an em- 
 ployer and an employee did not differ from the rela- 
 tionship between strangers. No especial liability for 
 injuries to his workmen was borne by an employer. 
 "If A was hurt solely by B's neglect (and not by his 
 own fault), B was bound to compensate A whether A 
 was an employee or not." * As industry was created 
 r .in larger units, and as man's safety became more de- 
 pendent on the conduct of others over whom he had no 
 control, the menace of industrial accidents became in- 
 creasingly recognized. The old common law principles 
 suggested by the legal rules of contributory negligence, 
 fellow servant's negligence, and the assumption of risk 
 became inadequate. Men began to see that just as 
 
 * First Report New York Commission on Employers' Liability, 
 1910, page n. 
 
Hazards of Industry 137 
 
 unemployment was a witness of the fact that industry 
 is irregular in its demand for human service, so, too, 
 industry year by year inflicts a certain number of in- 
 juries and deaths upon those employed. The imper- 
 sonal system of production, and not a fellow worker, 
 became in the eyes of the public and finally in the minds 
 of the legislators and courts the moving cause of the 
 injury. Having understood this, the public followed 
 its logic and began to create a system of insurance 
 against work accidents designed to lift a part of the 
 burden inflicted by industry from the shoulders of 
 the wage earners. This principle has been widely ac- 
 cepted in the United States and very interesting prac- 
 tical consequences have followed from it. The 
 Illinois Supreme Court has, for example, lately held 
 that a heat stroke may be an industrial accident within 
 the meaning of the state compensation act. An en- 
 gineer employed at a municipal pumping station died 
 on a very hot day from heat stroke. The excessive 
 heat of the engine was declared to be a contributory 
 cause of the man's death and compensation was paid. 
 Another recent case involved a man who was killed by 
 one of his fellow workers. The fact that the killing 
 occurred during the course of employment brought 
 the episode within the scope of the compensation law 
 and induced the court to uphold the payment of in- 
 surance to the widow.* 
 
 The change marked by such decisions as these is one 
 of the most notable in the history of the United States. 
 It is doubtful whether any new policy was so rapidly 
 
 * Proceedings of the Casualty Actuarial and Statistical Society 
 of America, November, 1920, page 112. 
 
138 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 accepted once a beginning of success had been at- 
 tained. The first permanent compensation legislation 
 was enacted by Washington and Kansas on March 
 14, 1911. Wisconsin, whose law was the first to be- 
 come effective, acted on May 3, 1911. Within the 
 decade following 42 states and 3 territories have en- 
 acted workman's compensation statutes and the United 
 States government has amended the federal act to 
 include all civil employees.* The rapidity of this de- 
 velopment was almost revolutionary but the causes 
 which produced it were great. A familiar comparison 
 collates the number of those killed and injured by in- 
 dustry and by wars. Cumulatively, the casualties of 
 industry are incomparably more numerous. Frederick 
 L. Hoffman reckoned that the probable approximate 
 number of fatal accidents among American wage 
 earners during 1913 could be conservatively placed at 
 25,000 and the number of injuries involving disability 
 of more than four weeks at 700,000. f This was the 
 estimate of an insurance statistician. One of the most 
 recent accountings is that of the American Red Cross. J 
 A study of insurance tables and of government figures 
 led to the conclusion that industrial accidents now 
 cause the deaths of more than 22,000 persons annually 
 in the United States. Of every 10,000 Americans em- 
 ployed during 1918, seven were killed. The fatalities 
 in industry during that year alone thus were forty- 
 five per cent of the number of Americans killed in 
 
 * Comparison of Workmen's Compensation Laws of the U. S. 
 and Canada, by Carl Hookstadt, Bulletin 275, U. S. Bureau of 
 Labor Statistics. 
 
 t U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin 157, page 6. 
 
 $ American Red Cross News Release, June 5, 1921. 
 
Hazards of Industry 139 
 
 battle during the World War. The number of serious 
 injuries suffered in the course of service is appallingly 
 large. During 1919, for example, the American Red 
 Cross calculated that some 3,400,000 disabilities due 
 to industrial accidents were suffered by workmen and 
 that during the year over 680,000 workers were laid 
 up for four weeks or longer from non- fatal industrial 
 accidents. The reckoning of the Red Cross was re- 
 duced to the following table, showing the number of 
 industrial accidents resulting in death during 1918 : * 
 
 INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENT DEATHS IN THE UNITED STATES, 1918. 
 
 Men Total Rate per 10,000 
 
 Industry Group Employed Accidents Employed 
 
 Total 30,106,256 21,356 7.1 
 
 Coal Mining 762,425 2,580 33.8 
 
 Metal Mining 182,606 646 334 
 
 Iron and Steel Employees 527,150 603 11.4 
 
 Quarries 68,332 125 18.3 
 
 Smelting (not iron) and 
 
 Ore Dressing 61,708 77 12.5 
 
 Steam and Street Rail- 
 ways 1,839,229 3,569 19-4 
 
 Fisheries 67,036 201 30.0 
 
 Navigation 147,478 457 31-0 
 
 Lumber Industry 635,638 953 15.0 
 
 Building 2413,283 3,039 12-5 
 
 Watchmen, Police, etc... 176,974 *33 7-5 
 
 Telephone and Telegraph 134,071 67 5.0 
 
 Electricians 134,071 102 22.5 
 
 Draymen, Teamsters, etc 407,557 408 10.0 
 
 Agriculture 10,613,083 3,715 3-5 
 
 Manufacture 5,145,656 1,286 2.5 
 
 Other Employed Males. . 6,789,939 3,395 5-O 
 
 This estimate is subject to the criticism applicable 
 to all attempts to portray precisely the general situation 
 in this country. As the Bureau of Labor Statistics 
 has pointed out, the records of deaths and injuries are 
 
 * Estimates based on the U. S. Labor Statistics Reports and 
 accident rates of large industrial groups in insurance companies. 
 
140 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 so variously tabulated by different state authorities 
 that it is difficult, if not impossible, to combine state 
 reports with any certainty that the sum will be statis- 
 tically exact.* For single industries and individual 
 states, however, the facts are well known. Accidents 
 in coal mining are, for example, reported by the Bureau 
 of Mines, while railroad casualties are recorded by the 
 Interstate Commerce Commission. Uniform reporting 
 by the states is prerequisite to an adequate compre- 
 hension of the full implications of industrial accidents, 
 but even now the situation has been explored sufficient- 
 ly to render plain the things which must be done in 
 order to repair in so far as is possible the damage in- 
 flicted. Nothing obviously requites a man for the 
 loss of a hand or a leg or an eye, or of his skill. Still 
 less can money make good the loss of a life. But in- 
 surance can compensate in part for the money losses 
 which result from industrial accidents. 
 
 At the last survey it was reported that about sev- 
 enty per cent of the employees of the country were 
 protected by compensation insurance. About eight 
 million employees, including agricultural laborers, are 
 not covered by such insurance, and in addition to these 
 about 1,400,000 interstate railway employees are with- 
 out protection. Agricultural workers are scarcely pro- 
 tected at all, despite the fact that while their rate of 
 casualty is low the absolute number of deaths due to 
 farming pursuits is estimated to be greater than that 
 attributable to any other division of labor.f The de* 
 
 * Monthly Labor Review, January, 1921, page 159. 
 
 t Comparison of Workmen's Compensation Laws of the United 
 States and Canada, up to January, 1920, by Carl Hookstadt, 
 page 33. 
 
Hazards of Industry 141 
 
 gree of protection accorded by the laws of various 
 states also differs widely. Although no two states have 
 identical compensation provisions, Mr. Hookstadt has 
 pointed out that two factors generally operate in de- 
 termining the amounts to be paid. These are the loss 
 of earning capacity suffered and the resultant social 
 need. The old conception of punitive damages which 
 was involved in the common law has been completely 
 wiped out. Compensation plans, ignoring the moral 
 question of negligence, seek impersonally to provide 
 for contingencies which may be foreseen. The actual 
 scale, varying with the degree and duration of the 
 disability suffered, is usually based on the earning 
 capacity of the injured worker. It ranges from 50 
 to 66 2/3 per cent of the wages paid at the time of 
 the accident. 
 
 In all of the United States, except in a few Southern 
 states, workmen's compensation is now well estab- 
 lished. Many of the laws are inadequate, but the prin- 
 ciple has at least been asserted. Provision against in- 
 dustrial disease is much less advanced. In many ways 
 industry gives rise to disease among workers. Specific 
 poisons, such as lead compounds, are absorbed and pro- 
 duce disability, disease, and even death. Physical con- 
 tact with other classes of substances result in specific 
 affections, such, for example, as anthrax. Fumes and 
 dust incident to work eventuate in tuberculosis and in 
 other respiratory diseases. The constant use of par- 
 ticular muscles occasions other maladies. In addi- 
 tion to these a wide miscellany of sicknesses, such as 
 caisson disease, must be attributed to industry. The 
 very scope of production under modern conditions has 
 
142 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 exposed workers to new perils. In addition to these 
 ills, which can be clearly traced, fatigue and strain pre- 
 pare the way for many other diseases not inherently 
 connected with an occupation.* Fatigue, it has been 
 suggested, may be accounted as one of the chief causes 
 of disease. f Speaking from this point of view, Sir 
 George Newman, the distinguished public health au- 
 thority, observes that "whilst at first sight accidents, 
 poisoning, and a high occupational death rate are im- 
 pressive, it cannot, I think, be doubted that the less 
 dramatic side of the problem is the more important 
 namely, the lost time and incapacity due to ill health. 
 For this is so widely prevalent as to be almost univer- 
 sal, in all districts, at all ages, in all trades. There is a 
 vast mass of wasted life and energy due for the most 
 part to preventable maladies in their turn largely at- 
 tributable to remediable conditions of industry or to 
 the neglect of hygiene." J What Dr. Newman says of 
 England probably portrays fairly the conditions in 
 this country. A study made by the Bureau of Labor 
 Statistics of workmen's sickness and death benefit 
 organizations of New York showed that the entire 
 membership averaged 6.3 days ? sickness. The 
 United States Commission on Industrial Relations said 
 in its final report that "each of the thirty-odd mil- 
 lion wage earners in the United States loses an aver- 
 age of nine days a year through sickness." || The 
 
 * "Fatigue and Efficiency/' by Josephine Goldmark. 
 
 t'The Human Machine and Industrial Efficiency," page 79. 
 
 i "The Health of the Industrial Worker/' by Collis and Green- 
 wood. 
 
 Report of the Illinois Health Insurance Commission, 1919, 
 page 13- 
 
 (I Final Report, Commission on Industrial Relations, page 202. 
 
Hazards of Industry 143 
 
 Illinois Health Insurance Commission, whose report 
 is one of the best American studies in this field, re- 
 marked concerning this estimate that "the data ob- 
 tained from our various investigations warrant the 
 conclusion that this is only a slight overstatement of 
 the average time lost." * 
 
 Disability due to disease which arises out of occu- 
 pation is accordingly probably far more common even 
 than industrial accidents. Still, it has been found 
 extraordinarily difficult to give protection against the 
 full range of industrial diseases in workmen's com- 
 pensation sy stems, f Only a few states attempt to 
 compensate workers disabled by sickness and these 
 have been able to reach only a few individuals. The 
 benefits of the law are extended chiefly when the dis- 
 ease manifests itself in some sudden bodily derange- 
 ment or if it can be traced to a definite time and place, 
 or if the employer has neglected to provide safeguards 
 which might reasonably have been expected to have 
 prevented the injury.J The measures proposed to 
 combat the human suffering and the national losses 
 due to occupational diseases are general health insur- 
 ance, and preventive and protective health activities by 
 individual plants and industries, and by the various 
 branches of the government. 
 
 It should be possible with the growth of public opin- 
 ion to extend compensation insurance systems or else 
 to ally them with health insurance so that the human 
 wastage of industry may be prevented. To do this 
 
 * Illinois Health Insurance Report, page n. 
 t "American Labor Legislation Review" by John B. Andrews, 
 8: 311. 
 $ Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin 275, page 53. 
 
144 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 effectively, as Dr. Royal Meeker, chief of the scien- 
 tific division of the International Labor Office has 
 pointed out, workers injured in any way by industry 
 must be restored as completely and as quickly as pos- 
 sible ; money benefits must be paid so that the worker 
 and his family may live during the enforced idleness; 
 retraining must be provided those who cannot be re- 
 turned to their former tasks ; the opportunity for work 
 should be sought through a proper public employment 
 system ; and facilities for continuing medical care must 
 be accorded the injured worker to the end that recov- 
 ery may be attained. When these things are done, 
 society, which created the modern industrial system for 
 its own comfort and service, will have begun at least to 
 atone for the injuries done millions of workers by the 
 incidental grind of a machine system of production. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE STATUS OF WORKERS 
 
 THE rise of the factory was coincident with a political 
 and social revolution. In attempting to estimate the 
 effects of mechanical industry upon the well-being of 
 workers, it is accordingly necessary to distinguish be- 
 tween these two influences. It is manifestly impos- 
 sible to say what might have happened to workers had 
 waterpower and the energy of steam never been har- 
 nessed to machines, but it is entirely clear that even 
 prior to the invention of the basic machines which 
 served to create the beginnings of the factory age the 
 position of wage workers in society had begun to be 
 altered. Political and social tendencies were con- 
 spicuous, even though they had not already borne 
 their full fruit when the first factories were built. 
 These liberating political and social movements fol- 
 lowed the logic of their own nature in spite of the 
 sometimes conflicting influences generated by the new 
 industrial system. The position of workers to-day is 
 consequently the resultant of these diverse forces. 
 
 Artizans, mechanics, and laborers were largely unf ree 
 when the foundations of the first factories were being 
 dug. No wage earner, unless he was also a property- 
 owner, could vote. South of Mason and Dixon's line 
 artizans were slaves or indentured servants. In Penn- 
 
 H5 
 
146 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 sylvania much work was done by the so-called redemp- 
 tioners, the German immigrants who paid for their 
 passage overseas by giving four years' labor or more 
 to employers who advanced the funds required for emi- 
 1 gration. Industrially the United States was half slave 
 and half free at the end of the eighteenth century and 
 the first President of the new nation was himself the 
 master of an establishment where under the ancient 
 handicraft system cloth was fabricated by bonds- 
 women.* Artizans of various crafts were offered for 
 sale, the black men as slaves and the white as inden- 
 tured servants. The unfree worker who quit his ap- 
 pointed tasks could be disciplined, and the man who 
 ran away might be arrested and returned. The free 
 workers of the Northern states were not represented 
 politically and, if one may judge by the expressions 
 of members of Congress and of delegates to consti- 
 tutional conventions where suffrage was being consid- 
 ered, they were not highly regarded. The social and 
 political status of workers has been revolutionized. 
 Universal manhood and womanhood suffrage obtain 
 and while in practice casual laborers and negroes are 
 often deprived of the vote, race and a wandering life, 
 rather than caste or property distinctions, maintain 
 the barriers. 
 
 In the North the first manufacturers were often ar- 
 tizans who with money loaned by merchants or farm- 
 ers were able to begin business in a small way. 
 Reporting for Connecticut in 1832, H. L. Ellsworth, 
 for example, informed Louis McLane, Secretary of 
 
 *"A Documentary History of American Industrial Society," 
 2: 324- 
 
The Status of Workers 147 
 
 the Treasury, that "many of the manufactories are 
 small and carried on by the owner and his family, 
 with little additional help." * The figures submitted 
 by Mr. Ellsworth substantiated this statement. Estab- 
 lishments employing three, four, five and six operatives 
 were characteristic. In the north, merchants in the 
 larger towns were the chief possessors of wealth. The 
 rise of factories created a new and property-holding 
 class, who in time were to dispute the supremacy of 
 the merchants. The artizans who became the proprie- 
 tors and managers of factories were obviously enor- 
 mously bettered by the mechanical revolution but it 
 is not with the well-being of those who rose to afflu- 
 ence that society is now chiefly concerned. 
 
 The fortunes of the men and women who did not 
 emerge, and who in the mass have no prospect of 
 emerging, are immediately significant. Not only, how- 
 ever, do the artizans and laborers of to-day enjoy 
 political and social rights which were denied their 
 forefathers, but also for them education has become 
 general. A hundred years ago workers yearned vainly 
 for the dignifying influences of a system of public 
 schools. To-day attendance at school is compulsory, 
 and certainly in the larger cities the opportunity for 
 education is all but universal. The laborer of to-day 
 thus not only exercises political privileges which were 
 denied his predecessors four generations ago, but also 
 through education he has been assisted in utilizing more 
 intelligently the political opportunity accorded him. 
 In saying this one does not forget the confusions and 
 
 * Executive Documents, ist Session, 22d Congress, "The Manu- 
 factures of the United States," Vol. i, page 977. 
 
148 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 imperfections of the political and educational systems 
 which have been created. Each falls far short of the 
 desires of generous men and women, but each marks a 
 vast advance over what existed at the beginnings of 
 the factory age, and each has had a potent influence in 
 determining the status of workers. In truth, it may 
 be added that, with all their defects, the public schools 
 and the democratic political system occasion much of 
 the hope of the present. In them lies the inspiration 
 and the avenue to release from unredressed evils. 
 These gains, however, are mainly attributable to the 
 political tendencies which exploded in the American 
 and French revolutions. Had there never been a fac- 
 tory system, it is possible that manhood, if not woman- 
 hood, suffrage would have been established, and even 
 popular education might have come. Such a leader as 
 Thomas Jefferson was an advocate of these things. 
 But how did industry itself affect the position of those 
 workers who continued to be laborers and artizans? 
 
 In general it is fair to say that the factory system 
 has depressed the economic status of artizans and 
 elevated the position of laborers. The experiences of 
 the shoemakers or of the iron molders illustrate this. 
 The extension of markets and the gradual adoption of 
 machinery both tended to degrade the quality of the 
 work done by journeymen cobblers. Prices were 
 reduced in a competitive market and artizans found 
 themselves in an impossible rivalry with factory-made 
 goods and with the products of semi-skilled workers 
 who were able and willing to live at a lower standard. 
 Machinery hastened the process of substituting laborers 
 
The Status of Workers 149 
 
 for artizans.* This has been accomplished unequally 
 and at various times in different industries. As late 
 as 1851 all labor on shoemaking was handwork. The 
 McKay sole-sewing machine, introduced in 1862, 
 however, did in one hour what the journeyman had 
 required eighty hours to accomplish. At a stroke 
 the skill of the shoemaker for manufacturing purposes 
 was rendered obsolete. The spectacular develop- 
 ment of the labor organization known as the Knights 
 of St. Crispin, following the Civil War, was the protest 
 of these craftsmen against the loss of a market for 
 their skill, the substitution of laborers for craftsmen, 
 and the consequent reduction of wages. The artizan 
 able to perform all the operations of his craft has 
 tended to disappear in many trades. Shoe factories 
 ultimately divided the cobbler's work into many opera- 
 tions. Yet the manufacturing system itself created a 
 demand for a new kind of skill. Specialized opera- 
 tions, such, for instance, as cutting, require an expert- 
 ness in a limited field scarcely attained by the general 
 workers of the handicraft days. The iron molders are 
 an example of belated transfer from a handicraft to 
 a machine basis of operation. The long and bitter 
 struggle between the Iron Molders' Union and the 
 National Founders* Association arose over the question 
 of the installation of machinery and the resultant wage 
 changes.f 
 
 With a few exceptions, such as printers, artizans 
 
 * "American Shoemakers, 1648-1895," by John R. Commons, 
 Quarterly Journal of Economics, November, 1909. 
 
 t"The National Founders' Association," by Margaret Loomis 
 Stecker, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 30 : 352. 
 
150 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 whose trades have been revolutionized by the invention 
 of machines have been unable to maintain their relative 
 position in the industrial community. It is indeed a 
 curious and significant fact that the craftsmen of to-day 
 are very largely men whose trades have not been seri- 
 ously affected by the introduction of machinery, and 
 that these handicraft workers compose the backbone 
 of organized labor. The building trades workers have 
 nearly the same skill as that attained by their fore- 
 fathers, and the building trades workers are the most 
 powerfully unionized. Other groups which have ob- 
 tained great power are chiefly those who under machine 
 conditions have still been able to acquire skill. The 
 railroad brotherhoods are among the most potent labor 
 organizations in the country. The strength of the 
 railroad unions is to be found in the fact that loco- 
 motive engineers and trainmen are possessed of a 
 peculiar skill which is not quickly imparted and which 
 is not widely distributed. The miners are another 
 instance of men securing skill and solidarity under new 
 conditions. The clothing makers have completed a 
 cycle. Tailors originally ranked in the aristocracy of 
 artizanship. The introduction of machine methods 
 and the extension of the competitive market made con- 
 ditions worse for the workers, who largely lost their 
 skill as journeymen to become specialists in particular 
 operations. Trade union organization has in their 
 case very recently restored much of the dignity and of 
 the economic advantage which belonged to journeyman 
 tailors. The textile industries, which first felt the 
 influence of the factory system, show from the stand- 
 point of craftsmanship as well as from that of reward 
 
The Status of Workers 151 
 
 a striking degradation of labor. The workers in the 
 cotton and woolen and silk mills have never been able 
 to effect a powerful organization for their own pro- 
 tection. New groups of workers have successively 
 invaded this field. The skilled workers who first as 
 craftsmen and afterwards as machine tenders were dis- 
 placed by immigrants and others willing to work for 
 lower wages suffered seriously by this change. Yet 
 both for the daughters of American farmers who were 
 attracted to the early mills and for the peasants of 
 Europe who were subsequently drawn into the textile 
 factories, the shift in the basis of the industry from a 
 hand to power-machine process meant an advance. < 
 Again and again this contrast is found. Journeyman 
 artizans were injured by machinery, while laborers were 
 lifted to a higher level of living when they were drawn 
 into new work. The reluctance of skilled workers to 
 submit to changes which implied the sacrifice of the 
 cunning of their hands as well as losses in income has 
 been one of the tragic phases of the industrial revolu- 
 tion. It has been a struggle in the main to preserve 
 status, and it has been a losing struggle. Old values 
 were ruthlessly destroyed and those who suffered saw 
 for themselves too often no compensation. 
 
 Men and women became machine tenders. Imper- , 
 sonal motors determined the speed of human effort. 
 The leisurely quality of handwork was lost. Special- 
 ization at endlessly repetitive tasks performed at a high 
 speed injected a new factor into the toil of men andj^ 
 women. Repetition of a single process eliminated the ; 
 joy of the worker who has a sense in creation in his J[; 
 work. For most machine tenders the craftsman's 
 
152 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 pleasure of performance does not exist. Some trade 
 union leaders and some manufacturers, however, now 
 regard the matter without misgivings. They assert 
 that repetitious work can never be rendered truly inter- 
 esting. Happiness, accordingly, must be found outside 
 of work. Consequently, they contend that hours should 
 be shortened so that leisure may exist, and wages 
 should be raised so that leisure may be enjoyed. That 
 
 : idea is in itself a child of the machine age. So far as 
 men can now see there is in truth no prospect of a 
 change from repetitious labor. The most productive 
 factories are those in which standardization is furthest 
 advanced. Such was the experience of the World War, 
 during which much progress was made toward placing 
 industry more completely on a foundation of machinery. 
 With mechanical processes the United States can now 
 produce more than it can consume, as was shown during 
 1918, but with a return to manual production it would 
 be impossible to provide for the necessities of the popu- 
 lation. It is improbable that the kind of pleasure in 
 work of which William Morris was the prophet can 
 ever be restored in factories where men and women 
 spend their days and nights in the continual repetition 
 of a single set of operations. The normal human mind 
 is wearied by monotony. Hence it is true that relief 
 and recreation, as well as rest, must be had beyond the 
 
 ^working hours.^ 
 
 From this standpoint it can hardly be argued that 
 
 the factory system has brought joy or dignity to 
 
 workers. The hours of labor were longer before 
 
 machinery imitated the deftness of human hands, and 
 
 ^ many tasks had almost infinitely to be repeated from 
 
The Status of Workers 153 
 
 the days when galley slaves propelled the vessels of 
 their conquerors. But the impersonal beat of ma- 
 chinery has made demands, never before approximated, 
 upon the men and women who serve it. In the textile 
 industry, for example, the rate of production is deter- 
 mined by the speed of machines. It is impossible for 
 the workers tending the separate operations to influence 
 the rate.* Human beings are subordinated not im- 
 mediately to the will of other men although, of course, 
 some human will decides the rate at which the engines 
 move but to the motion of machinery. That this has 
 deleterious effects on the body as well as upon the 
 spirit of man seems probable from the researches of 
 Philip Sargent Florence and others for the United 
 States Public Health Service. f The rhythm of such 
 machines as lathes in certain operations appears, fur- 
 thermore, to drive workers onward regardless of the 
 accumulating poisons of fatigue, and regardless even 
 of their ability in some such cases to alter the speed 
 of the machine. 
 
 Not less influential than power machinery itself in 
 affecting the status of workers has been the corporate 
 form of organization which industry, trade and trans- 
 portation have taken. In 1830, when the factory system 
 was well established, industry seems principally to 
 have been in the hands of individual owners whose 
 establishments were small. Certain Lynn shoe manu- 
 facturers reported in 1832$ that their real estate and 
 buildings varied in value from $200 to $2,000. Fac- 
 
 * National Industrial Conference Board Report on Working 
 Week of 48 Hours or Less. 
 fU. S. Public Health Service, Bulletin 106. 
 t "The Manufactures of the United States," Vol. i : 232. 
 
154 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 tories with only two or three employees were common. 
 An establishment with a hundred workers was large. 
 In such circumstances the relationship between the 
 manufacturer and his employees was similar to that 
 which subsisted between the old master workman and 
 his journeymen. The enactment of legislation designed 
 to facilitate the growth of corporations tended to de- 
 stroy this relationship. The corporation, and later the 
 trust, created a new industrial environment, which 
 influenced powerfully the position of workers. In the 
 report to Secretary McLane in 1832, the accounts of 
 ninety Pennsylvania iron manufactories are listed. 
 Altogether they represented an investment of $3,- 
 200,000. The United States Steel Corporation alone 
 was valued at $2,430,546,962.56 on December 31, 
 1920.* S. Smith & Company's rolling mill and nail 
 factory at Pittsburgh employed twenty-five men and 
 six boys in 1832. The United States Steel Corpora- 
 tion had 267,345 on its rolls in 1920. The rolling mill 
 of 1832 was managed by the owner. There were more 
 than a hundred thousand stockholders of the United 
 States Steel Corporation during 1921. Most owners 
 can have little share in management. 
 
 In 1914 nearly a third of all wage earners engaged 
 in manufactures worked in establishments employing 
 500 or more persons. Only about 13 per cent of the 
 wage earners were employed in factories using twenty 
 workers or fewer, according to the 1914 census of 
 manufactures. The number of these small factories 
 is large, composing as it did in 1914 upwards of 70 
 
 * Nineteenth Annual Report, United States Steel Corporation, 
 Report to Stockholders, 1920. 
 
The Status of Workers 155 
 
 per cent of the entire number of industrial establish- 
 ments in the country, but the proportion of workers 
 employed is very small. On the other hand, enormous 
 organizations are common. Corporations employing 
 as many as 10,000 workers excite little comment, while 
 the more conspicuous concerns utilize the energies of 
 thirty, forty, fifty, and even a hundred thousand men 
 and women. 
 
 Great power over the lives and fortunes of the men 
 and women employed is possessed by the directors 
 of such enterprises. Many large corporations have,., 
 created cities, in which their factories are situated and / 
 their workers are housed. Often the corporation owns 
 the entire community.* In many of the "satellite" 
 towns, workers employed by the dominant industry 
 occupy houses owned by their employers, buy food and 
 clothes and other necessities of life at stores owned by 
 the employers, send their children to schools maintained 
 by the employers, worship in churches established by 
 their employers, and finally are buried in cemeteries 
 located upon their employers' land. Many of the com- 
 munities in which employers have provided the essential 
 utilities of living, it must be admitted, are on the whole 
 far more comfortable and decent than the localities 
 which have been neglected. But while one is scrupu- 
 lous in refraining from suggesting censure of those 
 who have come into this great industrial power, it is 
 impossible to refuse to observe the fact. The relation- 
 ship between such companies as the United States Steel 
 Corporation, the General Electric Company, the United 
 
 * Testimony before United States Commission on Industrial 
 Relations, dealing with Lead, S. D. 
 
156 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 States Rubber Company, the Ford Motor Company, the 
 International Harvester Company, American Woolen 
 Company, to cite only a few, and their employees, is 
 a new social phenomenon. In theory the humblest 
 citizen worker enjoys all the political and social rights 
 of the richest and most potent industrial magnate. But 
 the economic status of the employee of a large cor- 
 poration is not, save in the industries where trade 
 unionism has reached maturity, one of independence. 
 A new stratification, without albeit the loyalties of 
 the older feudal system, has been created by the factory 
 system. A few men, often one man, can exercise a 
 determining influence on the lives of tens of thousands 
 of his fellow citizens.* In the case of the United States 
 Steel Corporation a small group of men having mem- 
 bership on the board of directors were able, during 
 August, 1919, to compel 66,711 men to work twelve 
 hours a day and to conform their entire existence to 
 that obtrusive fact. A few directors and their local 
 representatives in the management can, through their 
 political affiliations, deny to their employees the con- 
 stitutional rights of free speech and free assemblage.! 
 That is not an unparalleled development in history, but 
 ' it throws light on the changes in the position of workers 
 accomplished by the rise of the factory system. The 
 political revolution which tended to liberate the en- 
 thralled workers of the eighteenth century has been in 
 part checkmated by the industrial revolution whose 
 unconscious drift has been toward servility instead of 
 freedom. 
 
 * The Survey, March 5, 1921, page 811. 
 t Idem, November 8, 1919. 
 
The Status of Workers 157 
 
 In part this has been the inevitable consequence of 
 the system of incorporation with limited liability. 
 Nearly three-quarters of the industrial workers of the 
 country are employed in establishments owned by 
 corporations. Only about five per cent work in fac- 
 tories owned by individuals.* It is difficult for any 
 except the largest stockholders to exert any influence 
 upon the policies of the companies in which their money 
 is invested. The ownership of many of the most 
 important corporations is widely distributed. The 
 American Telephone and Telegraph Company, for ex- 
 ample, reported over 150,000 stockholders in 1921. 
 Corporations are often managed by officers who are 
 responsible to distant owners. Absentee ownership 
 has, so far as industrial conditions are concerned, 
 resulted in irresponsible ownership. Some of the most 
 serious industrial controversies of recent years are the 
 consequences of this system, f Discussing the copper 
 strikes which were prevalent in Arizona during the 
 summer of 1917, the President's Mediation Commis- 
 sion observed that "distant ownership, wholly apart 
 from its tendency to divorce income from the respon- 
 sibility for the conditions under which it is acquired, 
 creates barriers against the opportunity of understand- 
 ing the labor aspects, the human problems of industry, 
 and solidarity of interest among the various owners 
 checks the views of any one liberal owner from pre- 
 vailing against the autocratic policy of the majority." 
 
 The Arizona copper mines presented during the war 
 
 * Abstract of the Census of Manufactures, 1914, page 374. 
 
 t Report of the President's Mediation Commission and of the 
 Congressional Investigation into the Colorado Coal Strike of 
 1913-1914. 
 

 158 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 an aggravated case, but it is widely true that the irre- 
 sponsibility of owners under a system of corporate 
 production has menaced greatly the welfare of the 
 workers employed. Men and women are employed by 
 overshadowing corporations whose widely scattered 
 owners lack influence, and too often interest, in the 
 conditions of work and of life created. Nothing has 
 happened in recent years to justify any belief that 
 industry would be operated in smaller units and that 
 ownership would become identical with management. 
 The tendency for the immediate future seems fixed in 
 the opposite direction. So far as the material condi- 
 tions of work are concerned, the escape lies through 
 ^governmental regulation, as already partially developed 
 in safety codes, and to an extent through trade union 
 agreements. The liberty of the individual worker 
 employed in such enterprises cannot be secured except 
 through the agency of unions. The benevolence of 
 the good employer may provide better material con- 
 ditions than any union could exact or any government 
 compel, but in the face of the overshadowing size of 
 modern corporations nothing except a banding together 
 of workers into associations competent by their num- 
 bers and the intelligence of their leadership to meet 
 their employers upon equal grounds can nourish that 
 freedom and independence characteristic of farmers 
 who are secure in the possession of their own lands. 
 Economic security is the prerequisite to political lib- 
 erty, and unionization is the only apparent refuge of 
 the workers who are unwilling to trust their fortunes 
 to others. 
 
 This conclusion arises from the very nature of 
 
The Status of Workers 159 
 
 modern large scale industry. Light was thrown on the 
 matter by the remark of Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., 
 at the first industrial conference called by former 
 President Wilson. The younger Rockefeller said: 
 "Surely it is not consistent for us as Americans to 
 demand democracy in government and to practice 
 autocracy in industry." The statement is true, but 
 it is also true that present industrial organization is an 
 offshoot of the family system rather than of govern- 
 mental forms. The early factories, it has been noted, 
 were family affairs. A master workman, assisted by 
 his family and a few outsiders, comprised the entire 
 personnel of the organization. To Mary Wollstone- 
 craft, the pioneer of feminism and of suffrage, the 
 husband and father was in the home the spiritual 
 equivalent of the tyrannical king in the nation. Women 
 and children had few legal rights which the male head 
 of the household need respect. That family life was 
 not on the whole unpleasant when Queen Victoria was 
 a child is, incidentally, perhaps to be explained by the 
 fact that human customs are often more amiable than 
 laws. The almost absolute power which the father 
 and husband possessed in the household at the end of / 
 the eighteenth century has been the model upon which 
 American industry was unconsciously organized. In- 
 stead of having a few workers, a somewhat enlarged 
 family, the modern manager, who is the heir of the 
 master workman, may, in such an extreme case as that 
 of the United States Steel Corporation, control the 
 lives of well on to a million people. While it is true 
 that workers, even in the largest establishments, are 
 employed upon a contract rather than upon the status 
 
160 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 basis, it is also not to be denied that in its power to 
 impose conditions such a corporation exerts the same 
 kind of authority exercised in other generations by the 
 male head of the house. 
 
 Yet it may be conceded that at its worst this over- 
 weening power which the modern employer has obtained 
 as a joint product of the old family system and the new 
 integration of industry is not more difficult to endure 
 than was the petty tyranny of many a master mechanic 
 in the old days. The occasional memoirs of appren- 
 tices both in this country and in Europe, whence the be- 
 ginnings of our civilization were borrowed, betray no 
 trailing clouds of affection for the old order. Rous- 
 seau assuredly was as keenly irritated by his master as 
 any modern workman is likely now to be by an incon- 
 siderate foreman. Nevertheless, an industrial system 
 which results in organizations employing as many as a 
 quarter of a million workers manifestly cannot operate 
 on the plan of an eighteenth century family. Good 
 employers are, of course, preferable to bad ones, but 
 whether the head of a great organization is good or 
 bad, workers need the protection which only the pos- 
 session of recognized rights assures. Industry is thus 
 a battlefield on which the ideas embodied in the older 
 family system are contesting for supremacy with that 
 other group of principles which are incorporated in the 
 American theory of self-government. The logic of the 
 family has ruled industry to a large extent, but in- 
 creasingly the logic of politics is demanding recognition. 
 If self-government is right on the political field, self- 
 government is right in industry, for the same arguments 
 arise in each case. Self-government, the logic of poli- 
 
The Status of Workers 161 
 
 tics, means among other things the recognition of trade 
 unionism. 
 
 Society has been reluctant to concede the right of 
 industrial self-government because of the double social 
 standard. In an enlightening bit of testimony before 
 the United States Commission on Industrial Relations, 
 John H. Walker, then president of the Illinois State 
 Federation of Labor, set forth the situation from the 
 standpoint of the trade unionist. Mr. Walker said that 
 the double economic standard was the fundamental 
 cause of industrial unrest. Asked what he meant he 
 replied : 
 
 "A workman is not supposed to ask anything more than 
 a fair day's wage for a fair day's work: he is supposed 
 to work until he is fairly tuckered out say eight hours 
 and when he does a fair day's work he is not supposed 
 to ask for any more wages than enough to support his 
 family, while with the business man the amount of labor 
 furnishes no criterion for the amount they receive. 
 People accept it as all right if they do not do any work 
 at all, and accept it as all right if they get as much 
 money as they can. In fact, they are given credit for 
 getting the greatest amount of money for the least 
 amount of work. . . . The average worker feels that he 
 is a nonentity, a tool to be used by those who own 
 industries." 
 
 The condition to which the union leader pointed is so 
 much a matter of custom that few are ever aware of 
 the diversity of standard. The working man is still 
 to many a thing to be used. That he should aspire to 
 the sort of life enjoyed by the more fortunate seems 
 astounding to some. The dignity of labor is a common- 
 place, and yet when, the other day, a street cleaner in 
 his white uniform entered a large hotel in New York, 
 he was arrested for disorderly conduct. It mattered 
 
1 62 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 not that his mission was a perfectly proper and lawful 
 one that of obtaining a theater ticket. His clothes 
 were against him. The man was taken to a police 
 station, and, strangest of all, not a single newspaper 
 which recounted the episode appeared to find anything 
 extraordinary in it. Apparently it is so much a matter 
 of custom that men in working clothes must not obtrude 
 themselves upon the attention of the residents of a 
 metropolitan hotel much less entertain the same de- 
 sires that no commentator saw in the event anything 
 worthy of remark. 
 
 The double standard is a relic of the old inequality. 
 As long as some men had a servile status, others more 
 privileged were able successfully to assert that dual 
 principles must be applied. Servile workers were not 
 measured by the same tests which more fortunate folk 
 applied to themselves. That idea of inequality, of a 
 duality of standards, has lingered. As much as any- 
 thing else it retards the acceptance of the logic of 
 politics by industry. 
 
 Trade union organization is itself, however, a meas- 
 ure of the present position of workers. In the strictly 
 manufacturing branches labor organization is relatively 
 not powerful, although the garment-making industry 
 is thoroughly unionized. The railroads, which are both 
 a product and a cause of the industrial revolution, are 
 almost completely unionized. This also is true of the 
 coal mines, which bear a similar basic relationship to 
 industry in general. On the other hand, in such a 
 fundamental industry as iron and steel, unionism hardly 
 exists. The automobile industry, likewise, is singu- 
 larly free of unionization. In general, it is accurate 
 
The Status of Workers 163 
 
 to say that between four and five million American 
 workers are enrolled in trade unions,* and that these 
 workers, although only a minority of the total industrial 
 population, are so distributed that they are able to 
 exert great influence upon industry. In most trades 
 the state of the labor market is the measure of the 
 power of unions. If labor is scarce, the unions are 
 able to exercise considerable power ; on the other hand, 
 when workers are abundant the unions are scarcely able 
 to retain the advantages they gained during the fat 
 years. So far, no industrial code to temper this 
 struggle has been developed. The nearest approach to 
 a code was the statement of principles adopted by the 
 employers and the trade union leaders who formed 
 the National War Labor Board. This was a war-time 
 expression and patriotism moved the leaders to more 
 generous action than has ever been recorded during 
 peace. The President's Industrial Conference of 
 March, 1920, attempted less formally to crystallize 
 current ideas concerning industrial justice. Congress 
 in the Esch-Cummins Transportation Law also ap- 
 proached the subject. 
 
 As to the growing or disappearing cleavage of the 
 classes it is difficult to form a balanced conclusion. 
 The old barriers separating the classes have been 
 broken down, but new barriers have been erected. 
 Alexander Hamilton would feel at home in the New 
 York of to-day. He would observe social contrasts not 
 less marked than those with which he was familiar. 
 The theory of the rights of workers and of employers 
 has radically changed, but the distance between the 
 
 * Annual Report of the American Federation of Labor, 1921. 
 
164 Indiistry and Human Welfare 
 
 humblest tenement dweller and the family living on a 
 hundred thousand dollars a year is still sufficiently 
 great to satisfy the aristocratic tastes of many of the 
 founders of the American republic. The ideas con- 
 cerning the separation of the classes have changed, but 
 the distances are not less marked. Industry has created 
 great wealth. The total value of the products of 
 American manufacturing establishments in 1919 was 
 upwards of sixty-two billion dollars.* The number of 
 industrial establishments had not comparably increased. 
 For all industries, 288,376 were counted in 1919. In 
 1850, 123,025 establishments were recorded, with a 
 total output estimated to be worth slightly over a 
 billion dollars. The products of manufacturing estab- 
 lishments increased in value sixty- two- fold during those 
 years, while the number of establishments was hardly 
 more than doubled. That change the enormous in- 
 crease in absolute wealth, and comparatively slight 
 increase in the numbers of establishments gives an 
 index of the change in status which the workers have 
 experienced as a result of the industrial revolution. 
 
 That very fact, however, has produced a far-reaching 
 result. Because of the vastness of the size of industrial 
 organizations the individual worker is dwarfed into 
 insignificance, but so many workers have become con- 
 scious of personal impotence that great mass movements 
 have come into existence. Workers have a solidarity 
 now which is unprecedented in the history of Western 
 civilization. Trade unionism, socialism, and a score 
 of variant doctrines have welded together millions. 
 Unity, even for the vaguely defined purposes which 
 
 * Census of Manufactures, Press Release, May 24, 1921. 
 
con- 
 is an 
 n the 
 
 The Status of Workers 165 
 
 are the ends of trade unionism, has made an enormous 
 difference in the position of workers. Industrially, the 
 individual artizan counts for less than did his great- 
 grandfather in a New England village, but in the mass 
 artizans count for more than ever before. The con- 
 sciousness of power, even of dormant power 
 emboldening and dignifying influence. Success in the 
 World War admittedly was within the reach of that 
 group of nations whose working people were most 
 determined upon victory. Every statesman realized 
 that and in the end the workers understood it. The 
 crisis crystallized what had before been dimly perceived 
 and at the same time it bred a new spirit. The worker 
 of to-day knows that he has obtained insecurity in 
 exchange for the comparative assurance which belonged 
 to his forebears. He knows that when he is employed, 
 however, he lives more comfortably than did his 
 ancestors, and he is convinced that security is also 
 within his reach. Labor is no longer docile. Political 
 recognition has been gained, but it seems to be an 
 imperfect tool, since final power appears to rest in the 
 economic rather than in the political realm. For that 
 reason unrest does not abate with the passage of years. 
 Workers in the United States have not clearly defined 
 a program of action for use during a long period, but 
 they cherish a fundamental purpose. Through union 
 on the industrial and political fields they evince a deter- 
 mination to win for themselves, their women and their 
 children, a share in the better life which the mechanical 
 revolution has brought within view. Few who con- 
 template the present fruits of the factory system will 
 challenge the faith that it is possible to lift high the 
 
1 66 Industry and Human Welfare 
 
 level of living of those who now with such inadequate 
 rewards bear the heavier burdens of production. The 
 people who, by the use of sovereign power, created a 
 new industry, can, by that same sovereignty, distribute 
 more equitably the wealth obtained. How that is to 
 be accomplished is not entirely clear. Counter cur- 
 rents still surge and add confusion to an era of tran- 
 sition, but of the general movement there is no uncer- 
 tainty. Factories were built to increase human wel- 
 fare, and it lies within the hollow of the hand of this 
 nation to fulfill that historic desire, 
 
 THE END 
 
INDEX 
 
 Agricultural labor, 67 
 Aldrich Committee, 84 
 American Emigrant So- 
 ciety, 126 
 American Federation of 
 
 Labor, 99, 104 
 American Red Cross, 138 
 Annals of Congress, 16 
 Annual earnings, 88 
 Apprentice, 39, 47 
 Artizan, 16 
 Assumption of risk, 136 
 
 Beveridge, William H., 116 
 Brandeis, Louis D., 103 
 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 
 
 89, 107, 118 
 Bushnell, Horace, 83 
 Business Cycle, 118 
 
 Carey, Mathew, 34, 70 
 Childbirth, 69 
 Child labor, 4, 44, 55, 59 
 Children's Bureau, 74 
 Clothing, artizan's, 78 
 Compensation legislation, 
 
 137 
 Continuous industry, 140 
 
 Contributory negligence, 
 
 136 
 
 Corporations, 154 
 Cost of living, 92 
 Coxe, Tench, 41, 48, 81, 
 
 Dangerous trades, 68 
 Debtors, 136 
 Doffer girls, 21 
 Domestic service, 67 
 Du Pont, E. L, 109 
 Dust hazard, 69 
 
 Education, 52, 96 
 Eight-hour day, 55, 65, 99, 
 
 106 
 
 Enforcement, 54 
 Esch-Cummins Law, 163 
 
 Factory laws, 66 
 Family Manufactures, 61 
 Family System, 159 
 Fatigue, 69, 100, 142 
 Fitch, John A., 109 
 Forty- four hour week, 
 
 107 
 Freedom of Contract, 103 
 
 167 
 
i68 
 
 Index 
 
 Gallatin, Albert, 41 
 Goldmark, Josephine, 104 
 Governmental Interference, 
 25 
 
 Hamilton, Alexander, i, 28, 
 
 3i,37 
 
 Hart, Hornell, 117 
 Hazard, Thomas B., 17 
 Health, 64 
 
 Health Insurance, 143 
 Hoffman, Frederick L., 138 
 Home manufactures, 78 
 Homespun, 83 
 Hours of labor, 20, 64 
 
 Immigration, 33, 36, 125 
 Immigration Report, 87 
 Incorporation laws, 27 
 Indentured servants, 12 
 Index number, 85 
 Industrial accidents, 134, 
 
 138 
 
 Industrial Commission of 
 Ohio, 89 
 
 Industrial disease, 141 
 
 Infant mortality, 74 
 
 International Labor Con- 
 ference, 132 
 
 Knights of St. Crispin, 149 
 
 Labor turnover, 124 
 Labor union, 98, 158 
 Laissez faireism, 25, 63 
 
 Land laws, 35 
 Lauck, W. Jett, 87 
 Limited liability, 157 
 Living wage, 72, 92 
 
 Mann, Horace, 56 
 Manufactory House, 19 
 Married women, 73 
 Mechanics, 17, 28 
 Meeker, Royal, 144 
 Migratory workers, 123 
 Minimum wage, 72 
 Molineux, William, 19 
 
 National Industrial Confer- 
 ence Board, 90, 92, 105 
 National War Labor Board, 
 
 163 
 
 Night Work, 66, 67, 109 
 
 Oregon Ten-hour law, 103 
 Output, 105 
 
 Pay of soldiers, 16 
 
 Phossy jaw, 68 
 
 Pioneer cabins, 79 
 
 Play, 58 
 
 Police power, 103 
 
 President's Conference on 
 Unemployment, 130 
 
 President's Industrial Con- 
 ference, 66, 106 
 
 President's Mediation Com- 
 mission, 157 
 
Index 
 
 169 
 
 Prohibition of employment, 
 
 68 
 
 Property holders, 8 
 Protection, 2, 31 
 Public schools, 147 
 
 Railroad Labor Board, 92 
 Real wages, 85 
 Redemptioners, 12, 78 
 Regulation of commerce, 
 
 30 
 
 Reservoir of labor, 125 
 Rhythms, 101 
 Robinson, Mrs. Harriet H., 
 
 39 
 Rockefeller, John D., Jr., 
 
 159 
 Rural children, 76 
 
 Safety, 64, 134 
 School law, 52 
 Seasonal demand, 121 
 Self-government, 160 
 Servility, 156 
 Seven-day week, 109 
 Shoemaking, 149 
 Slater, Samuel, 7, 20 
 Social control, 134 
 Stabilizing production, 130 
 Standard of living, 77 
 Status of workers, 148 
 Strain, 142 
 Strike, 53, 64 
 
 Suffrage, 8, 34, 99 
 Sunday laws, 112 
 Sunday work, no 
 Sweat shops, 70 
 Sydenstricker, Edgar, 87 
 
 Tariff, 24, 29, 33 
 Ten-hour day, 65, 66 
 Textile factories, 71 
 Tuberculosis, 69 
 Twelve-hour day, 109 
 
 Underfeeding, 75 
 
 Unemployment, 83, 114 
 
 Unemployment insurance, 
 114 
 
 United States Commission 
 on Industrial Relations, 
 161 
 
 United States Employment 
 Service, 128 
 
 United States Steel Cor- 
 poration, 109 
 
 United States Supreme 
 Court, 103 
 
 Wages, 19, 33, 71, 80 
 Walker, John H., 161 
 War Industries Board, 89 
 Wealth, 44 
 Working mothers, 74 
 Workmen's compensation, 
 141 
 
\ST DATE 
 
 ?; 
 
 IOAN DEPT. 
 
 MAY 2 9 1969 JT 
 
U. C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
 574262 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
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