f 1000.00 Pl^IZE tSSAN? 1 1 GIFT 'OF i HOMAS F?(hTJERFORD ^AfcON >4i hlS^^ <> .,-vS^ <^ ylUryP"^^^^^^ y ^ . Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive in 2007 witii funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation littp://www.arcliive.org/details/cliristianunityofOOcadmricli [Green Fund Book, No. G.] THE CHRISTIAN UNITY OF Capital and Labor. $1000 PRIZE BOOK "LABORARE EST ORARK'* BY H. W. OADMAK For the laborer is worthy of his hire. . . . For, brethren, ye have been called nnto liberty ; only use not liberty for an occasion to the fleuh, but by love serve one another.— 7%« Bible. One of the noblest functions of Christianity in the world is to lie behind the class crysUllizations of mankind, like a solvent into which they shall return and blend with one another. — Phillips BroolM. In the ethical code you find the true root of economic laws.— £miZ« de Laveleye. PHILADELPHIA : THE AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION, 1122 Chestnut Street. NEW YORK; 3 ,A>fi' !0.BIBL;5. I^OUSE. ho^ ^^l^^ THE JOHN C. GREEN FUND BOOKS. This volume has been prepared and issued under the pro- visions of the John C. Green Income Fund. The Fund was founded in 1877, with the cordial concurrence of Mrs. Green, by Robert Lenox Kennedy, on behalf of the residuary lega- tees of John C. Green. Among other things, it is provided by the deeds of gift and of trust that one-sixth of the net interest and income of this Fund shalV be set aside ; and when- ever the same shall amount to one thousand dollars, the Board of Officers and Managers of the American Sunday- School Union shall apply the income "for the purpose of aiding them in securing a Sunday-school literature of the highest order of merit." This may be done ** either by procuring works upon a given subject germane to the objects of the Society, to be written or compiled by authors of estab- lished reputation and known ability, ... or by offering premiums for manuscripts suitable for publication by said Union, in accordance with the purposes and objects of its in- stitution, ... in such form and manner as the Board of Officers and Managers may determine." The premium plan is to be followed at least once out of every three times. It is further required that the manuscripts procured under this Fund shall become the exclusive property of the American Sunday-School Union, with no charge for copyright to pur- chasers of the book, it being the intention of the Trust to re- duce the selling price of wofks issued under the provisions of the Fund. Copyright, 'C8^8', by tbe\A.it)etib$.n^3unday-Scliool Union. (2) ' -— *^ ^ ' •' ' ^ PUBLISHER'S PREFACE This work received the prize of one thousand dollars offered by The American Sunday-School Union, under the provisions of the John C. Green Income Fund. The Society made the offer of one thousand dollars as a premium in the following terms : ONE THOUSAND DOLLAR PRIZE The American Sunday-School Union offers a premium of One Thou- sand Dollars for the best book, written for the Society, upon THE CHBISTJAN OBLIGATIONS OF PBOPeBTr AND lABOB. Each writer will he expected to suggest an appropriate title to his work ; and will be allowed the widest practicable freedom in the form and style of treatment, and in the phases of the subject emphasized. The Society, however, expects writers to present the Christian principles under- lying the general subject, free from the prejudice and bias of current Controversies. The book must be popular in character, of a " high order of merit,'* and consist of not less than 60,000 nor more than 100,000 words. The A/SS. must be submitted to the Committee of Publication on or before November i, 1887. Each A/S. should have a special mark, and the name and address of the author should be sent at the same time in a sealed envelope (not to be opened until alter the award) bearing the same mark, and both addressed, post or express prepaid, to the American Sunday-School Union, 1 1 22 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pa. The A/S. approved by the Committee is to become the exclusive property of the Union, and the premium will be paid when the copyright of the same is secured by the Society. The Society reserves the right to decline any and all A/SS. offered, if unsuitable for its purpose. Unaccepted A/SS. will be returned to the writers at their expense. This premium is oflfered in accordance with the terms and conditions of the John C. Green Income Fund. THE AMERICAN SUNDAY SCHOOL UNION, 1 122 Chestnut Street. Pliiladelphia, June 30, 1S86. (3) 269506 y 4 publisher's preface. As each competing MS. was received, a record was made of its title, date of reception, motto or private mark, and the number of words it contained. When all the MSS. were in (Nov. 2, 1887) the examination was promptly begun by the Committee, who found the general excellence of nearly all the MSS. offered in competition to be of such a high order as seriously to increase their labors. After a painstaking and conscientious examination the Committee decided that the MS. entitled "The Christian Unity of Capital and Labor," bearing the motto, ** Laborare est o?'are,'' was entitled to the prize of one thousand dollars. After the Committee had announced this decision, the sealed envelope accompanying the MS. was opened, and the name of the writer was found to be " Harry W. Cadman, of San Francisco, California." In the opinion of the Committee, the prize book forcibly presents a brief history of the labor problem, the present wrongs and rights of the laboring classes, the rights of property, and the Christian principles which should harmonize the obligations springing from both of these interests. It also presents an array of facts and statistics from governmental and other authoritative sources which are worthy of the at- tention of all persons having any interest in the great prob- lem of the relations of property and labor. iThe facts it presents are of especial value in connection with great ** strikes," and the best methods of settling and avoiding thenv JS@* While desiring to give the widest publicity to the vigorous arguments and the various theories given in these pages, the American Sunday-School Union wishes it to be understood that by publishing them the Society does not thereby adopt all the theories and opinions cited and expressed. They are presented as a thoughtful contribution towards the solution of one of the most difficult problems of modern society. CONTENTS AND ANALYSIS. CHAPTER I. ANCIENT INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS. Unrest a sign of progress — Antiquity of Labor problems — Ineffectual attempts to solve them — The magnificence of Ancient Rome founded on forced Labor — Hopeless condition of the slave popu- lation — Inhumanities practiced — Roman contemi^ for Labor — France before the Revolution — Degradation of the peasantry — Unjust exactions — The French Revolution a Labor upheaval — Ancient industrial conditions modified by Christianity . . . 1 1 CHAPTER II. MODERN INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS. The era of invention — Rise of the Factoiy system — Its early abuses — Cruelties to the child-laborer — Indifference of public opinion and the Church of England — Robert Oweu'a methods — The first Fac- tory act — National awakening — Efforts of the Christian Socialists — Chartism — Application of Christianity to industrialism — Its im- mediate effect — T he Law of Lo ve — The Factory system in the United States — Its current evils — Duty of legislators . . .27 CHAPTER III. PROGRESS. Benefits accruing from the Factory system — The constancy of prog- ress — General review of the industrial, economic and humanitarian advance of the century — Increase of commerce and wealth in the United States — The gains of Labor — In comfort — And social (6) 6 CONTENTS AND ANALYSIS. condition — By the cheapening of products — Increase of wages— And shortening of the working day — The reverse of the story — Difficulty of finding employment — Effect of Labor-saving machinery — The gain of fifty years— Labor in Great Britain — Increase of wages — Dminution in the hours of Labor — Increased purchasing power of money — Gain through savings — Lessened mortality — Improved educational facilities — Decrease of illiteracy — Crime — And pauperism — Effect of beneficial legislation— General Testi- mony as to the progress of the working classes — The Initial force due directly to Christianity — The present time the best the work- ing classes have ever known • • 43 CHAPTER IV. UNFAIR SOCIAL-INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS AND THEIR REMOVAL. Irremovable social difficulties — Inequality a natural and Divine law — Its effects on the acquisition of property — Justice of a man's claim to his own earnings — And for compensation for the use of his capital — Labor not the sole factor necessary to produce profit — The value of administrative capacity — The economic necessity for capitalists — Private property a natural right — Value of Labor de- pendent on profit — Low wages frequently beyond employers* con- trol — Removable social difficulties — Inherited wealth— Should the right of bequest be limited ? — The equities of the creator of prop- erty versus The Many — Unfixity of apparently permanent social conditions — The claim of the child for an inheritance — Pure sur- roundings — A decent dwelling — And a trade education — Techni- cal education as a solution for industrial problems — Hazardous occupations poorly compensated — Suggestion for national insur- ance — The example of Germany — Corporate relief societies — The employer's non-liability for accidents to his men — Absence of provisions for small savings — Underpayment — What the munici- pality can do for the improvement of social industrial life — The example of Birmingham — The duty of the individual and the State ............ 69 CX)NTKNTS AND ANALYSIS. 7 CHAPTER V. THE ETHICS OF OWNERSIHP. The duties of wealth clearly defined in the Bible — But slowly ac- cepted by the rich — The mission of wealth — Its origin in Labor — The power it exercises — And its tendency to foster selfishness — The silence of the classic writers on the ethics of ownership — Comparison with Christ's teachings — The applicability of the Di- vine rules to industrialism — Economic value of equity — The right use of wealth — Labor not a commodity — Unjust wages — Their effect — Liberality profitable — Cheap Labor not the cheapest — The obligation of mutual help — Success not always dependent on merit — The development of latent possibilities — Social obliga- tions and self-help — Man versus the State — The widening func- tions of government — Need of self-renunciation — Scriptural view of the tramp question — Wealth's duty of leadership . , . lOI CHAPTER VL r- THE HELPING HAND. Duty of fostering social-industrial improvements — Paternal care of some European employers — The true science of sociology the sim- ple rule of duty — Suggestions for help — Capital a gainer by the higher education of Labor — Decay of apprenticeship — Need for trade-schools — Handicraft as a preventive of crime — Reduction pf the hours of Labor — A beneficial influence — Importance of en- couraging provident habits among workmen — Relief during the winter season — Wealth's contributions to charity — The constant necessity for mutual aid I22 CHAPTER VII. VALUE FOR VALUE. The dispute between Capital and Labor stated — The ancient method of solution — And its new phase under Christianity — Its growing importance — The ethics of the question — Labor should be paid in 8 CONTENTS AND ANALYSIS. proportion to the added value it gives the product — Unfair distri- bution of profits — Why the rich grow richer — Common interest of Capital and Labor in making profit — The error of treating Labor as a commodity — Unfair reduction of women's earnings — The ad- vantages of capital in the dispute — The wage system not the most equitable method of distribution — And a better one must be found — Analysis of profits and earnings in stated industries — Labor fre- quently receives all capital can aflford — Suggestions for the deter- mination of fair earnings — Corporations — The next step in advance 137 CHAPTER VIII. THE UNITY OF FORCES. Social cohesion and affinity — The industrial partnership of Labor and Capital — A benefit to both — And a solution of the problemr— Failure of simple co-operation — From lack of the capital factor — Co-operative production in France and England — The employed their own employers — The co-operative union — Encourages equity — Good effects of joint-stock ownership — Profit sharing — M. Godin's " Familist^re " — The success of profit-sharing in various industries — Without reduction of profits to capital — Testimony on this point — The evolution of industry in conformity with progress 158 CHAPTER IX. INDUSTRIAL SOLUTIONS. Wage receivers must make the most of their earning — By distribu- tive co-operation — Temperance — Refraining from early marriage — And by provident habits — Should add to their capitalized value by education — And efficiency — The competitions of unskilled labor — Evils of juvenile labor — And general employment of mar- ried women — Continuous overtime a wrong — ^Just economic solu- tions based on Christ's teachings — The value of arbitration — England and the United States — The growth of materialism and its influence on the working classes — Danger Ahead — Duty of CONTENTS AND ANALYSIS. 9 wealth in the premises — The uUimate effects of materialism on industrialism IjS CHAPTER X. THE CONSOLIDATION OF LABOR. Antiquity of craft guilds — Laws respecting apprenticeship — Influence and power during the Middle Ages — Sequestration of the English guilds — Points of resemblance to modern unions — Their rise due to the factory system — Attempts at repression —The good effected . by unions — In placing Capital and I^bor on a plane of equality — Discouraging strikes — And preventing destructive competition — Lack of solidity in the United States — Growing influence — Well- ordered unions a gain to capital — Diverse views of their object — Educational value — Combination for industrial elevation a natural right — The Bible on fair payment — The combinations of capital coiners — Manufacturers' association — The demand for fair wages — The sin of cheapening Labor — Cheap goods — The consumer must pay fair prices — Summary of beneficial influences . .201 CHAPTER XI. THE DUTIES OF WAGE SERVICE. More than a letter fulfilment of the contract required — The workman must earn his wages — The decay of loyalty — The bad side of trade associations — Foolish declamations — Socialism — And its mistakes — Anarchism — Fulfilled duties as social safeguards — Wrong of creating an artificial uniformity of wages, not based on merit — Hostility to non-affiliates — The monopoly of Labor — Opposition to apprenticeship — Its effect on trades — Wrong ideas of liberty — How conflicting interests can be reconciled — Strikes — Their gen- eral futility — Resultant pecuniary loss — And social disorder — Their increase an evidence of recklessness — Often undertaken without due cause — Yet sometimes the only recourse against injustice — Christianity the protector of human rights . . . 227 10 CONTENTS AND ANALYSIS. CHAPTER XII. CHRISTIANITY AND LABOR. The adaptability of Christianity to human needs — Its influence on men's actions — And bearing on their industrial relations — The Bible as a book of work and business and politics — The rejection of the Christian ethics by industrialism — The Spiritual power that has guided material progress — What Labor owes to Christianity — The Bible on the Labor question — Industrial sociology the offspring of Christianity — The Christian remedies for social wrongs — Industri- alism the next fortress to be attacked — The fulfilment of Christian duty a gain to both Capital and Labor — The true key to the prob- lems of industrialism 245 THE Christian Unity OF Capital and Labor CHAPTER I. ANCIENT INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS. " The Lord will enter into judgment with the ancients of his people, and the princes thereof : for ye have eaten up the vineyard ; the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What mean ye //lat ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? saith the Lord God of hosts." — Jsaiah 3 : 14, 15. "Any given accumulation of commercial wealth may be indicative, on the one hand, of faithful industries, progressive energies, and productive ingenuities ; or, on the other, it may be indicative of mortal luxury, mer- ciless tyranny, ruinous chicane. Some treasures are heavy with human tears, as an ill-stored harvest with untimely rain; and some gold is brighter in sunshine than it is in substance." — John Ruskin. Every generation has its peculiar unrest, sometimes no more noticeable than the heaving of the swell on a calm sea, but at others, bursting into the wild storm and fury of the raging ocean. And as the law of physical motion is neces- sary to preserve the purity of the great waters, and to build up the world, either by the imperceptible upheaval of the land, or the more violent disturbance of the earthquake, thus making it better fitted for the habitation of man, so the moral, mental, religious, and even military restlessness of mankind are the ceaseless cause and evidence of progress, fashioning slowly, painfully, but irresistibly, the more perfect body politic from the material of the family unit. (11) 12 ANTIQUITY OF LABOR PROBLEMS. To say that there has always been a labor problem, is but another way of declaring that from remotest antiquity, even before the Egyptians set taskmasters over the Hebrews *' to afflict them with their burdens" and make " their lives bitter with hard bondage," there has been the inequality of master and slave, riches and poverty, health and sickness. ''The gigantic masses of the Pyramids tell us more emphatically than living speech or written words of the tears and the pains, the sufferings and miseries of a whole population which was condemned to erect these everlasting monuments of Pharaonic vanity." And the wailings in Egypt have been repeated by others in every clime, through all ages, in continuous and often vain protest against man's inhumanity to his weaker brother. Equally unavailing have been the efforts of the deliverers, those who, stronger in consciousness of injustice than their fellows, would urge them to resist the wrong and strike the oppressor. As with Spartacus, Wat Tyler, and Thomas Mun- zer, the leader of the Peasants' war in Germany, they only shared the inevitable fate of all who bear the sacred torch far in advance of their age. Nor in the nature of things could we have expected it to be otherwise with the Apostles of Labor. The social fabric had first to be built and its primitive conditions strengthened ; liberty had to broaden from apex to base ; from despotism, through feudalism and commerce, until it reached the people ; political and religious freedom had to be won, many a marvel wrested from nature's secrets, and the business of the race measurably changed from fighting to manufacturing, before the masses of mankind could expect even the rudest justice from those above them. For centuries the sway of might was the only one known. Right was for those who could take; security for those who could defend. The reciprocal obliga- tions of society did not extend beyond attack and defence against common enemies, and though the spirit of Christian- ity soon accomplished wonders, it took a long time to teach the wealthy and powerful that they were of the same blood as ITROTHERHOOD OF MAN. 13 the poor and the weak. The man who worked was despised ; the stigma of slavery was attached to every useful occupation, but he who killed was a hero, and there could be no attention to the appeal of the worker while such ideas prevailed. He might cry out and occasionally strike ; but it was a kicking against the pricks that availed nothing except to increase his burden and double his tale of labor. Rain comes in the desert to those who can wait, and the time has at last arrived when the worker is heard. Liberty is now his birthright, and its strength is vested in those who once vainly pleaded. The man in armor has gone. iTlie in- crease of that humanity which springs from the Gospel has tuned all hearts to a responsive chord. The highest and noblest endeavor of the leaders of thought is to-day bent on seeking the way for a closer brotherhood, a more percepti- ble blending between those whom social conditions and injus- tice have too long kept asunder; and a grander quest than this was never undertaken by belted kniglvQ If they seek rightly they will find ; for when those first words of " uncontrollable authority and omnific power " were spoken, "Let there be light," it requires no poetic imagina- tion to clothe the divine command with its largest meaning. Every revelation of the prophets and the evangelists, every discovery in the material world, every invention, every appli- cation of science has been but the fulfilment of its behest. From the beginning light has been pouring down upon us, not only in solar rays, but in that divine knowledge which includes a comprehension of nature and of nature's God. Galileo and Newton were its apostles as truly as Paul, Luther and Wesley, and it is certain that the outpouring which illumined their darkness, that has long since made plain all moral difficulties and is ceaselessly throwing its effulgence upon the obscurities of physical law, can shine with equal clear- ness upon the darkness of our economic problems, making the way for their solution so simple that all can understand. Let us therefore look for guidance to him who was and is ." the light of the world." 14 ROMAN MAGNIFICENCE. The historian who takes a survey of the condition of Eu* rope about the commencement of the Christian era, finds himself confronted by a power whose eagles dominated from the Tiber to the Euphrates on the east, to the Thames on the west, and from the Elbe on the north, across the Mediterra- nean, to be stopped only by the impenetrable barriers of the African deserts. This gigantic empire comprised within its boundaries most of the great nations of the modern world. Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Austria- Hungary, Switzerland, Italy, and Greece; Turkey, Asia Minor and Syria, the northern fringe of Africa, and the islands of the Mediterranean, were the provinces and dependencies of one city, from whose gates went forth armies of mighty conquest, from whose senate halls were issued laws and decrees that have ever since molded the world's social and political institutions, whose literature and material civilization have made an impress on mankind for all time, whose language is a foundation of many modern tongues, and whose contempt for labor, commerce, and even the arts gave direction to opinions that only lost their strength at the close of the i8th century. These "scourges and oppressors of the world," as Buckle called its citizens, enriched their capital with a magnificence of architecture that has been and still is the wonder and admiration of the earth. On every side were to be seen stately temples crowded with the statues of plundered Greece, palaces built of many-colored marble brought from the quar- ries of Numidia and Asia Minor; public buildings, baths, libraries, and theatres, decorated with all the costly material then known ; columns crowned with heroic forms ; fountains that in design were almost palaces ; grottoes from which gushed cool water brought in great aqueducts from the mountains; beautifully kept gardens, woods and groves of trees, and above all, in boldness, vastness, and splendor, that majestic amphitheatre whose ruins yet awaken the awe of those who behold them. "Rome was the centre of gravity that drew to itself the wealth of the whole world," says the ilOMAN MAGNIFICENCE. 15 writer from whose work this description has been in part outlined.* "Tiie metals of Britain and Spain, the silks of China, the gems of India, everything that was beautiful or precious of marvel or rarity was poured into its walls, so that he who had seen and tasted what Rome offered had seen and tasted the world." Nor were the residences of the wealthy, inferior to the grandeur of their surroundings. Though the externals were plain, the only indication of the owner's position being the chained porter at the doorway, the artist and painter lavished on the interior all their richness of material and artistic wealth, encrusting the walls with precious stones or covering them with bright garlands of painted flowers, birds of rare plumage, or graceful fancies of children and young girls, in such exquisite designs that kings would now delight to honor the hand that could reproduce them. The floors were of inlaid mosaics and the doors of ivory or colored wood, from which depended costly draperies woven by slaves who showed an aptitude for such employment. The sleeping-rooms opened upon a large court, on each side of which was a colonnade supported by high marble columns, and between these were placed statues of marble and bronze, the work of human chattels, while in the centre a sunken basin, adorned by fountains and shrubbery, added the freshness of nature to the beauty of art. A living annunciator, whose oflfice is better performed for us by a watch that can be purchased by a day's labor, stood near a sun-dial at the extremity of the hall to repeat the hour, and other servitors waited behind the richly inlaid chairs and benches, or fanned the occupants of downy couches, whose silken cushions embroidered with feathers and gold invited repose. Tables of the highly prized citrus wood, or marble, covered with striking bas- reliefs, and resting on carved silver tripods, held candelabra of beautiful workmanship, designed and made by slaves, while Oriental tapestries and the skins of wild beasts spread * " Greece and Rome, their Life and Art " by Jakob von Falke. 16 ROMAN MAGNIFICENCE. on the floor, and the bright woven fabrics of sumptuous material, that served for shade and curtain, joined their rich- ness to a decoration as perfect in harmony as the refinement of educated taste could devise. But it was in the banqueting-room that Roman luxury- expended its greatest care. Here were to be found the most beautiful mosaics and paintings, the richest hangings and designs, the brightest colorings, the subtlest chiselings of marble, the most cherished productions of the craftsmen. To supply the dainties of a feast, the forest and ocean of every subject province paid its tribute. The oysters of Britain, the barbel of Corsica, the ham of Gaul and game of Germany, the fish of the Atlantic, the delicacies of India and the date of Egypt mingled at his table with the hares and venison of his own Italy, or with the ducks and geese, fed with figs, that were forwarded from his country villa; or with strangely compounded dishes of native device, quaint conceits in confections, and sometimes with lampreys, occa- sionally fattened on an offending slave to give a special flavor. Wines, whose country and date age had obliterated, quaffed from cups of amber or chased gold, and cooled with snow or sweetened with honey, quenched the thirst of the guests, and during the dinner beautiful damsels scattered roses over them, while Nubians plied their fans; and in the ante-room, waiting the signal to enter, toward the end of the meal, were the juggler with his tricks, the actor with his latest productions, or lithe dark-eyed Spanish girls, who would presently vie with each other in voluptuous dances to the accompaniment of music. And all these ministers of pleasure and ease : the hand that could juggle so deftly, the actor whose dialogues, if preserved, might have been immortal, the musicians and the dancers, the muscles that procured, and the skill that prepared the dainties, the carver of the meat and the treasure of art in which it was served, the wine bearer and the flower strewers, were property, to be bought and sold in the market- place, scourged, given away, crucified, destroyed, without let or hindrance, at the will of the owner. ROMAN SLAVES. 17 The principal apartments of the house were on the ground floor, and in addition to those mentioned, comprise(i the sleeping chambers family rooms, and baths ; the muniment rooms containing the family archives, wax portraits, relics, and images of the houseliold gods ; the libraries filled with manuscripts enclosed in beech-wood cases j the master's room where he received his clients, transacted affairs and went over accounts with his slave secretaries, and another of larger dimensions answering the purposes of a modern drawing-room, where the mistress entertained her friends, and issued her edicts for the household. The quarters for the human cattle were in the rear. A few crowded pens, and wretched fare were their share of the wealth around them ; for slaves were plenty — the rougher sort could be bought in Asia for a sixpence ; and why should they have care when labor was so cheap ? The city house of a wealthy Roman contained hundreds of these unfortunate beings who were kept in order by the scourge, and had to attend to their duties in silence. Every room was in charge of some particular attendant. The kitchen had its cooks, carvers, confectioners, table- waiters, and bakers. Tailors, seamstresses, barbers, hair-dressers, per- fumers, and porters, employed their special skill for master and mistress; and weavers, sandal-makers, jewelers, and scribes were always at work in their various departments, so that the cunning of a thousand hands and minds were constantly min- istering from morning to night to the capricious wants of one or two. We are apt to associate our ideas of Roman slavery solely with that of a concpiering race subjugating far-off barbarians in Britain, Spain, Gaul, and Africa, and while such captures enormously recruited the Roman market, " all races furnishing their contribution to the greatest population of slaves that ever existed under one domain," * the servile classes were by no * Gibbon estimates that ihe population of the Roman empire during the reign of Claudius contained 60,000,000 slaves, or as many people as now inhabit the United States. See " The Decline and Fall of the Ro- man Empire," Chapter 2. 2 18 ROMAN SLAVERY. means composed exclusively of captured enemies and their descendants. In addition to the natural increase, some were stolen from countries with which the empire was at peace ; others were purchased from free parents in time of distress ; and poor debtors, alike with criminals, were often sold into perpetual servitude ; so that during the long period slavery- existed as a national institution, it is not surprising to find that many of the bondsmen were intellectually superior to their owners,*^hile others had a marvellous skill in those handicrafts which the Romans so much despised. f ' Slaves nearly always filled the positions "or" librarians, amanuenses, private secretaries, physicians and surgeons, architects, builders, engravers, painters, and silversmiths. Good doctors, artists, learned men, such as poets, gramma- rians, and rhetoricians were regularly offered for sale in the market place, with a tablet fastened to the neck, indicating the particular intellectual achievements for which they were famous, and artisans of ability, as was the case with our own negro slaves in the Southern States, always commanded more than a common laborer. " They construct all the great public ■works. They build the splendid roads over which the Roman legions follow their generals in triumph home to Rome. They make the aqueducts, dig the canals, and construct the build- ings, public and private, whose remains still attest their mag- nificence — the forum, the amphitheatre, and the golden house of the Caesars. They build the villas overlooking the Bay of Naples, in which the nobles lived in riot and wantonness; they cook the dinners given in those villas ; they make the clothes the nobles wear, and the jewels that adorn their per- sons. They cultivate the fields, follow the plow, train and * Cicero's manumitted servant invented short-hand, and the teachings of Epictetus, a slave of one of Nero's couriiers, are still read with interest for their idealistic morality. -Another celebrated literary slave was Ter- ence, the comic poet; and it is probable that Plautus was also one. The preceptor of Brutus and Cassius, Straberius Eros, was bought in the mar- ket place. - f " All mechanics are engaged in vulgar business, for a workshop can have nothing respectable about it." Cicqxo , de Officiis, ROMAN INHUMANITY. 19 trim the vine, and gather in the harvest." * Those who showed any aptitude for intellectual pursuits were often highly educated in order to increase their value to their owners, and the education of the young was entirely in their charge. They were in reality the pillars of the nation, the substructure on which the immense fabric of the empire was reared, and with- out whose aid, by liberation from labor, its military supremacy would have been impossible. - Over these men whom we now consider the pride and glory of a state, the master had an absolute possession. For 700 years he could inflict every form of death, torture or igno- minious punishment that passion or cruel caprice might sug- gest without any legal restraint to stay his despotism ; and Avhen after a life of service the bondsman's powers began to -fail, he could be abandoned to the lingering death of starva- tion, or sent into the arena to become the food of ravenous beasts, and afford by the agony of his dying moments an in- ,stant's pleasure for the populace. Every page of classic liter- ature is stained with such records of merciless inhumanities, related in a manner that proves them to have been mere common-places ; ordinary occurrences of the day, and only noted for their connection with some unusual incident. Ovid has drawn for us in detail a Roman lady at her toilet, preparing for a festival, the games, a promenade, or a social visit, and Juvenal f has added to it scatheful mention of the indifference with which she regarded the sufferings of her tire- women who were compelled to stand half stripped during the elaborate process of embellishment, so that the torturer might better lash while they were brushing her hair, enamelling her face, or holding the silver mirror with which she watched the varied operations. A Roman lady's garments were usually of silk, sometimes dyed with the precious Tyrian purple, or in one of the primal colors, and bordered with fringe of gold, or pearls and embroidery. They consisted of two tunics, the * " Manual Training the Solution of Social and Industrial Problems." Charles H. Ham, p. 265. f Sixth Satire. 20 ROMAN FASHIONS. under one short and reaching only to the knee, the upper one descending in long folds to the feet and fastened at the shoulders with a jeweled brooch. For street costume another garment was worn over these clasped with a belt of emeralds. Her sandals were of soft leather, held in place with golden buckles, and the hair was either crimped and permitted to flow in rippling waves, or else intentionally ruffled and con- fined with a golden band, or string of pearls. Peails, set in wrought gold, were the favorite ear ornament, matching neck- laces of similar material and design, though the emerald was still more highly prized, but too expensive except for those of great wealth. On the arms and wrists bracelets of incompar- able workmanship were worn, and cameo rings of enormous cost encircled each finger. On occasions of display, the modern value of a Roman lady's jewelry might exceed a mil- lion dollars. It is related that Caesar paid about ;^232,ooo for a single pearl, and the wife of Caligula appeared at her betrothal decorated in jewelry valued at a million and a half of dollars. As in other portions of her service, the dye, the robes, the embroidery, the setting of the jewelry were the work of her unpaid servants, or if their labor was of such excellence as to warrant a trifling favor in commendation, it was the gift of a tyrant, to be followed by blows and the lash. Her maids were only her automata. In them her eyes could see neither the grace of youth, the sweetness of womanhood, nor the sacredness of maternity. Their wants, pains, pleasures, hopes, aspirations, friendships, loves ; all the vibrations of the spirit within its temple, concerned her less than the moods of the changeful sky. They were only beings, fashioned indeed after the pattern of humanity, yet whose lives could have no other cause for existence than to do her will, to reflect her desires, to be instruments for her comfort, and the soulless ministers of her caprice. The toilet being completed, the hired torturer dismissed, and the shrinking girls despatched to other duties, their mistress will step into her waiting litter, borne by eight ROMAN FASHIONS. 21 Stalwart blacks, preceded by other attendants to clear the way through the thronged streets. Perhaps her destination is the temple of Serapis, or to call on some female friend, or join with the beauty and fashion of Rome in one of the many delightful gardens and parks which brought the verdure of the country into the heart of the city ; or she may prefer to loll with languid indifference on her silken cushions, list- lessly watching the swarming throng pass by, of whom the greater part are, in her judgment, not men and women, but such creatures as she has left at home. The well-known engraving of Boulanger*s somewhat me- chanical painting of " The Appian Way " conveys a definite and suggestive impression of the Flamian Road, which ran the whole length of the Campus Martius, and was the most conspicuous thoroughfare of Rome. Rome was not merely a city, but the city of the world. On its streets were half a million of idlers, shopping, talking, loitering, drinking, discussing the political incidents of the day, or the latest news of victories in Britain and Gaul. ** The gray-bearded Greek philosopher jostled the sons of the North; the Dacian, with his wide bracccB, the fair-haired German clad in skins; the black Nubian met the tattooed Britain, and the Gaul, in short tartan cloak, brushed by the Arab of the desert, and the wild nomad of the Sarmatian steppe." Here is a closely wedged crowd of litters, each one sur- rounded by quarrelling slaves endeavoring to force a path for their master through the mass ; here a legionary is telling to a group the wonders he has seen upon the Nile, who anon tiring of his recital leave to look at some new thing, may be a strange beast or bird sent by a distant consul from the confines of Asia, to swell the attractions of the approaching games. Now comes a funeral accompanied by flute players, wailing women with dishevelled hair, and a band of actors, reciting laudatory pa-ssages from the tragic poets in honor of the departed ; and this is succeeded by such a motley throng of slaves and freedmen, chair carriers, soldiers, and richly dressed youth ; men of wealth, attended by their obsequious 22. KOMAN AMUSEMENTS. clients, gymnasts, sword swallowers, languid idlers and itinerant vendors calling their wares, that it seems a never ending panorama; a microcosm of all costumes and all nations. Many are sauntering towards the baths, to enjoy amid rarest marbles, paintings, and mosaics, the mild exercise of the gymnasium, or the refinement of song and music, to be presently followed by sumptuous ablutions. Others are mak- ing for the forum, to take part in the political meetings, some to the courts of justice, and numbers to the wine shops, where they will throw dice for a jar of Falerian wine and exchange the current scandal of the hour. If these amusements are too trivial there is the Circus Maximus, with seats for 180,000 spectators, and the wild excitement of the chariot races, prefaced by a solemn procession of priests, as the statues of the gods are borne aloft. The charioteers of the Blue faction won last week, and if they can repeat the triumph, though some will be killed in doubling the Obelisks, the victors are to receive the honor of silver crowns. It may be a grand day in the arena, and from early morn all Rome has been astir. A hundred slaves, nay, we can say a thousand and not exaggerate, with features, limbs and souls like any of us, "hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer," have been carefully trained from childhood, until now, in the strength of their years, they shall slash, rip, break bones, transfix and strangle each other, with every device of hideous weapon, while those who have fed and nurtured them from tottering infancy, the old senator, the young soldier, the tender maiden, jest, woo, laugh, eat, make appointments for the night, and when the scene is over leave their servitors in their gaping wounds and dying agony, without another thought, to be the morrow's food for the lions. This is enough of the story. It is one of such barbarous cruelty, heartlessness, and selfishness, relieved only by a few martial virtues, and the splendor, pomp, and magnificence LABOR PKOBLEM IN FRANCE. 28 of wickedness, that it seems, more fitting for the tale of a dream than the daily drama of a people's life. And were it not for the testimony of its actors, and the evidences that still survive, we might join our doubts to our wishes, and reject it as the fantasy of an Eastern imagination, conceived among the fumes of the hashish smoke. For the magnificence was the magnificence of the sword and the blood of labor. We touch it with Ithuriel's spear, and the mighty buildings dissolve and show us the abodes of a million slaves and beg- gars ; the costly marbles change to the groans of the wretched captives in the mines ; the fabrics of luxury to the shrieks of the tortured hand-maidens, and the city itself into *' Babylon the Great, the mother of the harlots and of the abominations of the earth." — (^Rev. Fer.) With a change of costumes and actors, and modified by eigliteen centuries, how like is this luxury and indifference to suffering, to that of another city on the banks of the Seine, where a Louis the Well-Beloved is king, and a Du Barry, the courtesan of a gambling-house, has just succeeded De Pom- padour as queen. The king has 4,000 horses in his stable, and 295 cooks are scarce sufficient to provide for his royal palate, while in Nor- mandy the people are living, or dying, on bran.* His house- hold alone costs 68,000,000 francs f each year, being nearly one-fourth of the entire public revenue, mainly taken from miserable jjeasants; and for every franc thus expended, ten men toil, sweat, and are robbed. The princes of the blood own one-seventh of the soil, and like the nobility pay no taxes. In Champagne, 55 per cent, of the soil-tillers' income is seized for direct imposts; in some parishes as much as 71 per cent. Though marriage is declining in the country, because the women say it is not worth while to bring other unfortunates into the world, the court at Paris is a wild satur- nalia, and life with the nobility an orgy. They hunt, drink, * Taine's "Ancient Regime." f This amount represented more than double the value of present money. 24 THE FRENCH PEASANTRY. feast, and hold revelry, as if those things were the sum of existence, and justice on earth or after the earth, immortality, accountability, and God were only myths. In the provinces day-laborers and mechanics are dying of cold, and so great is their stress that they cannot wait for the grain to ripen, but cut it green and dry it in the oven for food. Yet the Golden House of Nero scarcely equalled in splendor the daily glory of Versailles, or Nero's slaves the number of its servitors, or Caligula's courtiers the corruption and elegance of those who surround its sovereign. It is true that the people, the peasants, the laborers, the artisans, if there can be a people in a land where* the king declares that he is the state,* are beginning to show discon- tent with their part of mere contributors to this magnificence, and complain because their once Well-Beloved speculates in corn and occasionally creates artificial famine to make money out of their hunger, bitterly calling it a famine-pact. They are not unwilling to be treated as beasts of burden (for so long has the mark of the Roman impress survived), and har- nessed with oxen to draw wagons, or live in dwellings whose walls consist of four posts, or clothe themselves in muslin rags with neither head covering nor foot covering, or see their little fields eaten up by the Seigneur's game, to kill which would bring them dangerously near the hangman's rope. All that matters not, for the taxes, dues, and tithes, each a third, will of necessity leave them nothing, and starva- tion seems to be their appointed lot, their only birthright. Against this devil-merchandising, however, they do protest, and ere long, too, against some other things, with a vigor that wrenches the world. So urgent, however, is the king's nee 1 for money, notwithstanding his famine gains, so liberal his bounty to his gentlemen in ordinary and extraordinary, his officers, grand officers, pages, governors, bed-keepers, butlers, table -waiters, equerries, grooms, captains, and other leeches innumerable, and especially to his ladies of honor * " L'etat c'est moi." TTPHEAVAL IN FRANCE. 25 and dishonor, that soon, despite of protest, the implacable tax gatherers begin to seize and sell everything, and Paris swarms with those from the country, who finding it useless to labor, resolve to beg. Here too there are mutterings ; for though the women are used to take up their little ones, crushed three or four hun- dred or more every year by the carriages of the rich, which diish without warning or care down the narrow streets, a fearful rumor has spread of late, that other liquid than water or milk and of a redder hue than wine fills their master's bath-tub, and at the mere mention of his name they run for their darlings and gather them as a hen gathers its brood when the hawk is nigh. The story may or may not have been true. We know that there was every conceivable foulness, every wrong that a few dare commit on the many, every burden that wealth could impose on labor, and it will lessen the infamy but a hair's breadth if this be false. That it should have gained credence at all proves the shameless depravity of the age as much as any well-established fact. Presently the murmurings grow louder, and the people standing at the corners in their rags and wretchedness, with haggard faces, look askance at the swift chariots, as chained and famished wolves might be supposed to look when a fat deer sprang by. One is heard to say that next year there may be a change of places, he of the gutter riding, and the rider on foot. It is a prophetic remark, though anticipating by a trifle of a decade or so what is to come. And the other shall yet ride — in a tumbril, to the beating of drums, the dance of the carmagnole^ and shouts of execration — to the guillotine. The time is not yet, though very near. A few more tears in the cup to fill it to the brim, a few more babes to die at the milkless breasts of their mothers, a few more to perish of the famine fever, as unregarded (thinks every one) as rain-drops falling into Atlantic waves ; then will God speak in the earth- quake, and shake the nations with the * ' fierceness of his wrath!'* 26" LABOR AND CHRISTIANITY. Thus the last vast fragment of the slavery built on the Capitoline hill is rent in pieces. Great masses still remain to be dissolved by gentler action, and, in one place, where it still dams the waters of progress, to be riven from its founda- tion by another whirlwind of wrath ; but no more shall its black shadow fall across a continent, no more shall it be writ- ten that toil is ignoble, no more shall the laborer's cry for bread fall as unheard as the dropping of a feather in an echoless hall. Chateaubriand truly says that " the regeneration of society commenced with the proclamation of the Gospel." When labor was synonymous with slavery its despairing cry to wealth was, *Met me have life." When Christianity laid its pitying touch on the bondsman, and smoothed the way to the qualified slavery of serfdom, the cry became, "give me food and shelter. "\ Now the humblest worker bears his part in the government of the state, the peer in all power and equality that law can confer, with the heir )f rank and fortune./ As men measure events it had taken a long tmie to accomplish the purpose. To our little lives it seems a great distance from the days of the amphitheatre to Augustine's noble declaration, *'Laborare est orare;" and a still greater one to that grander assertion, that "All men are born with equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Yet for eighteen centuries a mighty, unseen force had been at work. In an obscure village, in a distant province of the empire, was born one whose words and life was to dissolve not only the wrong of slavery and labor, but all other wrongs. Rome heard not of his birth or death till all was fulfilled. His was an unknown name to Augustus and Tiberius. But the humility of Bethlehem was to be stronger than the might of the Caesars, his words more powerful than their legions, and before the sunshine of his love imperial Rome and all its gods were to melt away. |For his gospel of Justice, Humanity, and Brotherhood was to possess the earth ; slowly as grows the oak, silently as moves the avalanche, and irresistible as the power of Go(^ CHAPTER II. MODERN INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS. " The rich and poor meet together, the Lord is the maker of them all." — Prov. 22 : 2. "Among the works of man, which human life is rightly employed in perfecting and beautifying, the first in importance surely is man himself." — yo/in Stuart Mill. While one nation in Europe was freeing labor from the shackles that had been placed on it by a privileged class, and another in America was dignifying the laborer by the inaugu- ration of a policy that was to throw open to him the prairies and forests of an unpeopled continent, with the assurance of a liberty possessed nowhere else, there dawned on mankind an era of mechanical invention which was so coincident with these other events as to combine with them to produce indus- trial developments without a parallel in previous history. The improvements made in the spinning jenny by Har- greaves in 1767 and Arkwright in 1769, were followed in 1774 by Watt's steam-engine, and in 1793 by Whitney's invention of the cotton-gin. In 1804 steam was first successfully applied to locomotion on land, and three years later tlie same result was attained by Fulton on water. The consequence of these discoveries was the foundation of the factory system, which revolutionized the industries of every western nation, in- creased their volume to an enormous extent, and rendered their distribution to distant consumers possible. Under this stimulus the units by which every department of manufactures, commerce, and agriculture are measured, leaped rapidly from thousands to millions, the centralization of labor and concentration of capital proceeded with amaz- (27) / 28 RISE OF FACTORY SYSTEM. ing rapidity; the shop employing a few men became the factory with a hundred hands ; the village forge a foundry, and the small town noted for some special industry, a maze of machinery. Spindles multiplied spindles, new industries were created, and a race for wealth was started which the tremendous outlay of the Napoleonic wars still further en- covraged. iThe industrial and social era thus inaugurated was not merely the turning of another page, or the imperceptible mingling of one generation's history with the next. It was the commencement of a volume, the beginning of a period with a stronger line of demarcation than any that had pre- ceded it since the Reformation. The long prevailing domes- tic system of labor was to pass away, and a more complex form take its pi ace J^ The relations of employer and employed were to be changed from that of fellow-artisans working to- gether in the same shop, with but little to indicate their difference of positions, to that of capitalist and wage earner; the latter, one of a hundred cogs in a machine, in whose welfare his former co-worker had for half a century less in- terest than in the unknown tribes of Central Africa/ A few years were to remove the thoughts and knowledge of modern nations as far from the time of Washington and the First Consul as these were from the age of chivalry. In its begin- ning it was to solve the intricate laws of force, the mysteries of chemistry, and inany of the secrets of physical life. It was to chain the elements to its bidding, conquer time, bring far Cathay and the islands of the sea into neighborhood with London and New York, make highways of the ocean and sever continents. It was to broaden and revolutionize the political, social, and industrial relations alike of individuals and nations, and so plumb, fathom, and pierce the surface of everything within reach as to make men compared with their old powers veritable Titans, and for the first time masters of the possessions which God had placed in their keeping. 'it cannot be a matter of surprise that an energy sufficient to do these things and many more should have brought with ITS EARLY ABUSES. 29 it unexpected evils. Very few great transitions in social, political, or economic conditions are effected suddenly and I)eaceabl^ '^ntil society adapts itself to the new order, there is the friction of war, suffering, and discontent ; the resistance of those who will not conform to new surroundings, the ignor- ance of others who do not understand them, and the rapacity of many who take advantage of that ignorance, combine to make a sudden innovation a time of Avrong. J The first con- structed design of a machine is also generally clumsy. It may work in accordance with its maker's intention, but the niceties of adjustment ; the perfect adaptation of lever, wheel, and valve to the motion sought; the minimum of consumption and the maximum of mechanical force, are only attained by repeated experiments and improvements. It was thus with the early factory system. Abuses sprang up with its birth, and while intricate, powerful, and adapted to its ends of dividing labor so as to extract wonderfully increased results; it was withal, a clumsy, crude, inhuman, relentless, money- making monster ; doing its work much better than had ever been done before, but with a wasteful expenditure that was appalling. For the expenditure was not merely iron, coal, and steam, but the bodies and souls of tender infancy, of children snatched from the cradle to become cogs and wheels for a few months in some huge building, and then thrown away, worn out and useless. It was the conversion of the blood of babes into capital, as the spider converts the hapless insect caught in its web into a power that enables it to spin other nets; or, as the tiger by its feast of flesh gathers strength for new forays. A cold, bare recital of the evils that were connected with the introduction of the new system into England ; of the wanton neglect shown by the em))loyer to his child-laborer, of his utter disregard for its rjatural rights, of his inhumanity, avarice, and selfishness, fills one even now with shame and indignation, as much for the apathy that allowed it as for the oppression. A moral myopia seems to have afflicted the British nation; for while it could not see the worst form of 30 CRUELTIES TO CHILD LABORERS. slavery in its own midst, it was keenly alive to the wickedness of slavery on its West India plantations, and in the United States. The first reform parliament could emancipate the negroes on the Sugar Islands, but with reluctance passed a small and ineffectual measure for the liberation of its own people. The discovery that children could do the work in many branches of textile manufacture as well as adults, and at a money cost of almost nothing, was the prime cause for more than a generation of the English operative's subsequent poverty, degradation, and wretchedness. Parents and legis- lators were ignorant of the economic law that cheaper labor will always displace the dearer, and in their anxiety to add to wages by what seemed a new source of income, permitted themselves to be dispossessed by the tiny fingers of their own babes. The consequences were that the poverty they sought to decrease gradually became the most abject destitution, and fierce adult rivalry for such work as there was, reduced wages to their lowest notch. The ensuing train of results, foul and non-sanitary dwellings, over-crowding, intemperance and vice, were the recognized sequences of juvenile competition, so that for the first thirty years the factory system seemed to have brought nothing but ill.* The demand for children commenced and kept pace with the whirling growth of the spindles. When the adjacent sup- ply was found insufficient, pens were established on the banks of the canals, into which hundreds of boys and girls were collected, from scattered cottages and villages, the poorhouse and street, and shipped by barge to feed the merciless mills, after which, in the pathetic words of one whose later life was spent in the service of labor, " they never were heard of more."f It seems incredible that in Christian England, where the church-spire ascends from every town and hamlet, * Mrs. Browning's " The Cry of the Children " was the thrilling appeal of a woman's heart to the world, on behalf of the victims of these cruel- lies. f Henry K. Oliver, of Massachusetts. CRUELTIES TO CHILD LABORERS. 31 ^nd is the central feature of every landscape, infants five years old were allowed to work in the cotton factories from five in the morning until eight at night, and that in the bleaching works uncomplaining little ones of eleven and under were kept continuously at labor during the same hours in a temperature of 120°.* In the unhealthy occupations of pin-making similar conditions prevailed. Children often walked twenty miles a day in the performance of their tasks. Mothers who lived near the cotton factories might be seen taking their crying innocents to work at dead of night. It was as if the days of Herod had returned ; but the sword used was unknown to him, nor did he turn its dripping point into pieces of gold. In the adjacent coal mines of Lancashire and Yorkshire, where the output had been greatly stimulated by the consumption of the mills, juvenile labor was in equal request, and the brutalities inflicted on it have been officially stigmatized as too terrible for description. Boys four years old were brought to work wrapped only in their night-clothes, *♦ where they had to toil naked, often in mud and water, dragging sledge-tubs by the girdle and chain," f for a longer time than we now permit strong men to work in the sunshine. The forms of women and girls were crippled into every dis- tortion by the weights of coal they had to carry, and their moral degradation was akin to their physical. It is not sur- prising that as a result of all this the mortality became alarm- ing. Half the infants of Manchester died before three years of age, and in some districts the death-rate under twenty was larger than in other parts of England under forty. In por- tions of the counties named, the youthful population was physically worn out before manhood, a notable decrease took place in the height of adults, and the eflect began to be rationally apparent in the physique of the recruits who offered themselves for the army and navy. ♦ "The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844," by Frederick Engels, affords a vivid and undouhtedly correct portrayal of the social neglect and misery that hnd grown up with the factory system. The work has recently been republished. ■)■ Report of ParliamenJary Committee of Inquiry, 1842. 32 METHODS OF iielip:f. We are told that in heredity there is an occasional tendency to revert to ancient types and predispositions. Surely all this was a reversion, not merely to Rome, or Sparta, but to Daho- mey, and a retrocession for which capital must be adjudged to bear the greater blame and the larger shame. It is difficult, indeed, to conceive how public opinion, the press, and par- ticularly the upper classes, who were in no way benefited by this new slavery, should have permitted it to continue so long without decided protest, and it would be still more inex- plicable why the church* did not raise her voice against it, if we did not know how negligently she has sometimes dis- charged her office. As Maurice wrote at a later date, the church had for a long time been looking upon herself ** merely as a witness for the principles of property," and from this neglect sprang that alienation between the Church of England and the town laborer which is not yet entirely removed. Thanks, however, to that faith which if only a name to some, is a vital impulse to others, there were not wanting witnesses to denounce these infamies from the begin- ning, and though it was difficult to arouse the nation to a right comprehension of them, that also came at last. One man, Robert Owen, as early as 1799 tried to apply the principles of Christianity to the relations of capital and labor. Having purchased the first cotton mills erected by Arkwright on the Clyde, he at once 'commenced to discountenance the employment of children, to improve the homes of his work- ers, check drunkenness and immorality, open schools, dis- tribute provisions at cost price, provide insurance funds against old age, and generally by every means in his power endeavored to elevate the social condition of his operatives. The results attained were such as to attract the attention of the world, and political economists, philanthropists, and even the heir to the throne of Russia, made pilgrimages to * The reference in this connection is to the Church of England, The dissenting bodies, and especially the Wesleyan Methodists, have always been in closer sympathy with the laboring classes than the established church. THE FIRST FACTORY ACT. 83 Lanarkshire in order to study his methods. They found about 2000 people living in sobriety, contentment, and morality, while ll)e neighboring mills were centres of intemperance and vitiation. They saw 500 children, brought by Owen's pre- decessors from the unpromising atmosphere of the "Edinburgh and Glasgow poorhouses, being instructed in the rudiments of knowledge, growing up in grace, health, and purity; and they returned to wonder what new moral law this man had discovered that enabled him to do such things. They need not have marvelled, for it was as old as the words of Christ, **Love one another." He believed that the spirit of this commandment was sufficient to eradicate all vice, crime and evil passion ; that it was the one and only influence needed for the government of mankind ; that from birth to death none other was necessary; and he may have been right. Right or wrong, his rule during a quarter of a century was a striking success, with an effect for good that cannot be meas- ured. As the father of co-operation, the founder of infant schools \\\ Great Britain, and the author of the first factory act, Robert Owen planted the seed of ameliorating influences that have borne glorious fruit, and his name will always shine in the grand list of those who have loved their fellow-men. The factory act of which mention ns here made was passed in 1819, through Owen's personal appeals to the Government, but was so restricted in its application and limited in its scope as to be barren of practical good. In the words of Lord Shaftesbury, *' the great movement which souglu the reduction of the hours of labor did not begin till 1830." A strong sentiment of opposition to factory inhumanity had been grow- ing for some time, yet legislators were afraid to interfere lest they should drive trade from the country, affect sujjply and demand, curtail the rights of cai)ital, and otherwise injure sundry economic myths that had been accepted as truths from the time of Adam Smith to Ricardo. Such a state of things, however, could not continue much longer without shaming the national conscience. The neces- sity for state intervention was too obvious, the "cry of the 3 S4 NATIONAL AWAKENING. children*' too loud to be repressed by the obsolete disserta- tions of old writers, on an old order of things, and in 1833 an act was passed which restricted the employment of young persons in a limited number of industries. This was the first installment of the ten-hour movement, and the commence- ment of that Christian legislation which has been such a powerful lever in raising the strata of labor from depths im- measurable, and which has done more for the workingman than all previous laws passed from the time of Justinian to George IV. j It is also memorable as being the first distinctive recognition m England of the moral obligations of capital to labor, and this the more so because it was enforced on capital by a parliament of capitalists^/ But while lawmakers were arguing, the weeds of neglect had been springing up very rapidly, for they will not wait on in- action. Cities and towns were a mass of pauperism. (De- gradation and intemperance were stamping themselves as national characteristics on the operative, and it looked as if his share in the age of steam was to be a weary s^ervitude to machinery, far more hopeless and depressing from its artificial surroundings than the open air slavery of other lands ; this, or the old alternative of the old appeal, which unbearable wrong always evokes, t , The coherence ofniat intricate social organization termed in its unity, a nation, has been effected in various ages by all kinds of force. Some have been welded by the hammer of war as the hammer of steam joins separate pieces of iron into a mass ; some have been kept from flying asunder by the cir- cumference of waters and circumscription of mountains. Others have been held together by national consanguinity, and community of interest and pursuit jybut a few men were now about to bring into play on a large scale, not a new but a neglected power, tlial power of love on which Owen so strongly insisted, and which wlTehever tried has been found as attractive and cohesive in the moral world as gravitation in the physical, and able to bind and blend the extremes of class in one harmonious whole, | EFFORTS t)F CHRISTIAN MEN. 86 The leader in this great attempt was Charles Kingsley, and he struck its key-note when he wrote, " the Bible demands for the poor as much, and more, than they demand for them- selves; it expresses the deepest yearnings of the poor man's heart far more nobly, more searchingly, more daringly, more eloquently than any modern orator has done, ... it is the thouglit that runs through the whole Bible, justice from God to those whom men oppress, glory from God to those whom men despise." * To this chord his whole soul vibrated, and others quickly gathered round him with whom it was also in unison. From the bosom of that church whose unconcern for the wrongs of the humbler classes had been its long reproach came Frederick Denison Maurice, Archdeacons Hare and Whateley, and at a later time Dean Stanley. Thomas Hughes, Arthur Helps, a John Malcolm Ludlow, George Anthony Froude, and others ^^■^^ with whose names this generation is less familiar, joined Kingsley in instant sympathy and added their voices to his in proclaiming that " all systems of society which favor the accumulation of capital in a few hands, which oust the masses from the soil which their forefathers possessed of old, which reduce them to the state of serfs and day laborers, living on wages and alms, which crush them down with debt and in any wise degrade and enslave them, and deny them a per- manent stake in the Commonwealth, are contrary to the king- dom of God." f Nor were they any too soon. It was a year of ferment, **an anxious critical time in modern English history, but * Article in " Politics for the People," May 21, 1848. t " The Message of the Church to the Laborinjjman." A sermon de- livered by Charles Kingsley, in 1 851, from Luke 4 : 18-21. The con- cluding portion of this magnificent denunciation was, " Woe unto you t'lat add house to house and field to field, till there be no more room left. Woe unto you that are full, for you have received your consolation already. Woe unto you who make a few rich to make many poor. Woe unto you that make merchandise out of the needs of your brother." The effect was electrical, and the congregation with difficulty restrained itself from oi>en approval. / AGITATION OF CHARTISM. above all in the history of the working classes." English discontent had culminated in the widespread agitation of Chartism ; Paris and Berlin were in actual revolt, and London showed all the signs of an approaching storm. The Duke of Wellington had filled the metropolis with troops for its defence, and the government strengthened the military- power by enrolling all the upper and middle classes as special constables. Business was suspended throughout the kingdom, a general alarm prevailed and the crisis of the great Chartist meeting onKennington Common was awaited with imconcealed forebodings. (Sir. Kingsley shared in the fear, but from a different cause. He knew that the national dis- content was the natural expression of great social wrongs, though crudely stated, and seeking remedies which, however just in themselves, were not applicable to the end sought. He knew it was a movement that under evil influences had immense possibilities for harm, and all his efforts were bent to give it proper direction by means of counsel and of burning Christian sympatlr^ On the night after the great meeting he wrote to his wife, *' I see the blue sky again and my Father's face ; " for God had guided him to open his mouth and speak boldly. The words that he spoke was that celebrated address to the *• Workmen of England," which did more to appease the angry multitude and save the country from turmoil and insurrection than all the martial forethought of the hero of Waterloo. It was the turning-point in the condition of laboi, the beginning of a peaceable revolution in the interest of toilers everywhere, the deposition of the sword, and the ele- vation of the loving power of Christ. Kingsley, Maurice, and their co-laborers, amongst whom were some of the most prominent Chartist leaders won over, now put forth all their strength to let the general public have a better knowledge of the shocking conditions under which the poor lived and toiled in the large cities, and they were greatly aided ,therettrb-y the timely appearance in The Morning Chronicle of !a series of articles on '' London Labor and Lon- APPLICATION OF CHRISTIANITY. 87 don Poor."* *'This," writes Mr. Hughes in his preface to *' Alton Locke," "startled the well-to-do classes out of their .' jubilant and scornful attitude, and disclosed a state of things which made all fair-minded people wonder.") Tliere was 1^%}^^ ^ hesitation now in admitting that labor had been wronged l^y ry*/^ capital, and that such an accumulation of poverty was a dis- grace to civilization. The eyes^ of those who cared to see were opened, and the indifferentism of Dives in the drawing- room to the wretchedness of Lazarus in the workshop was about to cease, let us hope forever. Christian England took off its coat and, in and out of parliament, bravely tried to bridge the gulf between wealth and poverty. The* church, completely aroused from its dormancy, joined with society at large in hastening the progress of Christian legislation and the consolidation of the social fabric, and even the employer began to see that he would not be a loser by those compre- hensive reforms which were intended to smooth the rugged path of his worker. This movement was the first that had been taken by one of the factors of industrialism in the ful- filment of its ordinary obligations to the other, since the inauguration of the factory regime ; and although a tre- mendous distance still separated the two great forces of pro- duction, they commenced thenceforth to draw nearerPwith a dawning perception of mutual need, a common purpose, and ultimate unity.J **If you suffer the poor to grow up as animals," Danton said, "they may chance to become wild beasts and rend you." Wiser than the generation of 1789, England dis- covered this, and compelled her factory kings to curb their race for wealth at the expense of humanity. The general application of Christian principles to industrialism was, at * Afterwards republished by its aulhor, Mr. Mayhew, under this well- known tille. , An exceedingly graphic article on "The Christian Socialist," by Edwin A, Seligman, Ph. D., appeared in the Political Science Qtiartfrly of June, 1886, and will give the reader who desires it further inioraiation on the movement inaugurated by Kingsley and Maurice. / 38 ITS IMMEDIATE EFFECTS. that time, revealed to but a few ; yet the true deduction to be read from the experience of the factory laws was rightly made by nearly all soon after their passage, and there was but little dissent from the opinion that, while in seeming violation of social economy, they had subserved the welfare of the com- munity, without injuring the rights of capital, disturbing the functions of industry, or curtailing the liberties of the indi- vidual. > Before concluding this necessarily brief synopsis of that class injustice which became so painfully acute during the rise of the manufacturing system, and of the remedies taken for its removal, it is important to dwell for a little while upon two points that must have suggested themselves to the swiftest reader. They are : {First. That the conditions of labor have been improved since the French Revolution, not by the earthquake of anarchy and the destruction of organic foundations, but by the comparatively silent exercise of the ethical forces inherent in Christianity.\ iSecond. TTiat those under whose direction this force was used were Christian men, believing in a Divine Revelation and its efficacy for all human needsJ There have been many times in many countries since the great overthrow of privilege when the wrongs of the masses, looking at those wrongs from the standpoint of to-day's moral altitude, seemed sufficient to warrant a recourse to the old method of remedy. But it must be remembered that they should also be viewed in the light of progression, that little more than a hundred years ago serfdom was an actuality even in Scotland, as well as in Germany and Russia, and that in the early years of the century labor was only bursting from its thrall. Christianity had first to prepare the ground and then water the seed. Her mission has not only been constructive, but destructive. She had to drain the foul marshes, level the mountains, fill up the chasms, and bridge the rivers of the moral world before it could be beautified. Having done this we now begin to see her flowers, recline in her resting-places, ITS IMMEDIATE EFFECTS. 8^ and behold in her landscapes an expanse of sunshine and joy. One of her brightest flowers is liberty within the law, and through it a revolution, as vast as that wrought by the French Storm of Terror, has been accomplished. No smoking towns and trampled plains marked its advance, no battle-fields are named after its victories, and no proud columns or heroic statues record its gentle conquests. Yet we have but to look around to see how the mighty have been put down, and "them of low degree" exalted by a force which is as ever present in morals as electricity in physics. Here is a lesson that those who toil for wages may take to heart for direction and encouragement. The time of the sword is over, the hour of reason has come, and if they who tliink they are wronged ask reasonably; who dare refuse? When Charles Kingsley said, " the business for which God sends a Christian priest in a Christian nation is, to preach freedom, equality, and brotherhood in the fullest, deepest, widest meaning of those great words," he stated an almost forgotten truth. But the long line of men and women who have believed that " the religious sentiment is the best means of reconciling and uniting together the rich and the poor," * commencing in modern times with John Wesley, and extend- ing from him through John Howard, Elizabeth Fry, Robert Owen, Lord Shaftesbury, I William Lloyd Garrison, George Peabody, Josiah Mason, Peter Cooper, Kingsley, Maurice, Dean Stanley, and many others, down to those who are yet with us, forms a chain of glorious strength and an un answe r- able testimony to the religion they have practised.] They have all been believers in that divine law of sym pathy wh ich is the esse nce of the spirit of Chri st. As we have seen, a few strong in their confidence that not property relations solely, but human relations combined with property relations should * M. Michael Gievalier. f Lord Shaftesbury, to whom the Duke of Argyle declared in the House of Lords, the social reforms of the last half century, in England, were mainly due, repeatedly said that the impulse on his own part was entirely a religious one. 40 FACTORY SYSTEM OF THE UNITED STATES. be the link between the employer and his workman, were able to kindle into a living flame the cold embers of formalism that had so long passed for Christianity. They showed that the teachings of him whom they served were potent to weld into brotherhood and take the sting from_opiiression. The separation between capital and labor has never been so wide apart under modern industrial conditions as when they en- tered on their task. What they did can be done again, what they accomplished at a critical period for labor and their country, can be accomplished by the same means to-day, wherever wealth and the worker are in antagonism, here and everywhere. The only requirement is that hand in hand with all economic laws, and all efforts to bring together those who have money and those who have the strength of their body, must be the law o f love ; for therein is the solution of all problems, the disentangling of all difficulties, the removal of all wrongs, y The illustrations and references in this chapter have been drawn almost exclusively from England because the system to which it relates had its origin and development there. The externals of labor in the United States have been essentially different, and in transplanting the factory system, as did other nations, from the place of its birth, it is not to our credit tiiat we brought its evils along, and suffered them to become accli- matized. If an excuse can be made for the mother country, it is that until 1815 all her energies were concentrated on the deadly struggle with Napoleon, and she had none to spare for domestic reform. In addition, the oldest constituted society in the world had to adjust itself to the age of steam. Its ability to do so with such flexibility is a strong proof that the constituent elements were sound, and that, if need be, the United States and every other country where modern indus- trial methods prevail, can again readily adapt themselves to such other advances in mechanism or sociology as the future may have in store. But any excuse that may be found for England will not avail in our case, and it is discouraging to see that in a new land, free from the precedents established ITS CURRENT KVUJB, 41 by centuries of imhistrial competition and feudal privileges, and where labor is supposed to be the first concern of the state, we are in some things not yet abreast of the humane legislation of foreign countries. Mr. Carroll D. Wright says tiiat in the textile industries the ten-hour system is a modern innovation as yet adopted only in Massachusetts, so far as America is concerned,* and it was not until 1886 that the great state of New York enacted a law sufficiently compre- hensive in its scope to cover all manufacturing establishments. A ** thread of misery runs through the whole manufiicturing system of the time," writes a Roman Catholic clergyman in a very forcible article f arraigning the prevalent long hours of labor. "The iron interests get in many districts twelve full hours from each man daily. The paper manufacturers get the same from their machine-men. The obscure towns and the obscure factories squeeze their work-people as an orange might be squeezed — flat, and to add to the whole pic- ture the last touch of wretchedness, it must be remembered that not alone are strong, healthy men called on to endure these things, but women and children are subject to the same unnecessary hardships." That such a statement should have more than the coloring of truth is an unflattering commentary on our civilization, and places a weapon in the hands of its enemies that is used to the utmost. A few such facts well dilated upon are as pestilential breeders of Internationalism and other forms of discontent as an undrained marsh of miasma, and they should be removed for the good of the body politic, as lowlands are made healthful for the sake of the physical body. In other matters our labor legislation, though occasionally wise and thoughtful, has not kept pace with that of Great Britain and Germany. J Mr. Ruskin once asked ^' whether among national manufactures that of souls of a good quality may not at least * Statistics of Labor. Mass., 1885, p. 166. f The Rev. J. Tallx)t Smith in VV/e Catholic WorU, Dec, 1886. % For Synopsis of Labor Le^^islatioM in the United States see " First Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor," March, 1886. 42 DUTY OF LEGISLATORS. turn out a quite leadingly lucrative one?" \ And as that is no longer open to question, the first essential of a good soul should be provided for by liaving a good body. Nature designed that the body's guest should have a fair housing, and to carry out the intention there must be plenty of oppor- tunity for recuperation and repair, j With faculties strained to the utmost, during an excessively lengthened, laborious day, this becomes an impossibility, and soul and body suffer alike. \ If, therefore, we would manufacture good souls, one of the best ways of proceeding is by attention to the physical man and removing his removable disabilities. Congress and the state legislatures appear to have forgotten of late that the majority of their constituents are working men and women, earning wages, and not hirers of labor. . It has been too much the policy to assume that working people can take care of themselves, and law makers have not been anxious to be reminded of the truth, that wealth is as potent as universal suffrage. Thus the very functions of our institutions have been lost sight of, and the 'Unalienable rights" on which they were founded have been obscured and eclipsed by a coercive that has taken the place of the iron sceptre, wealth seeking selfish increasQj One year of just enactment could change all this, but until our labor legislation is at least on a plane with that of foreign countries, it cannot be truly said that this is **a government of the people, for the people, by the people." CHAPTER III. PROGRESS. " Surely T will no more give thy corn to be meat for thine enemies ; and the sons of the siranjjer sliall not drink thy wine, fur the which thou hast labored: but ihey that have gnthered it shall eat it, and praise the Lord; and they that have brought it together shall drink it in the courts of my holiness." — Isaiah 62: 8, 9. " We know no well-authenticated instance of a people which has decidedly retrograded in civilization and prosperity, except from the influence of violent and terrible calamities, such as those which laid the Roman empire in ruins, or those which, about the beginning of the six- teenth century, desolated Italy. We know of no country which, at the end of fifty years of peace and tolerably good government, has been less prosperous than at the beginning of that period." — Lord Macaulay. \It is not to be understood that the evils which attached themselves to the industrial era were either inevitable or unavoidable; for there was no necessary connection between the system which introduced them and the system itself. They were simply injustices ; the growth of a soil undoubtedly fertile in abuses unless restrained by law, but as amenable to it as any other wron^sX When that control was applied, it became apparent that the transfer of work from the home to large establishments had been a decided element in the pro- gress of the industrial population, and that it was in fact a step forward in that consolidation of society, by which lasting inTjDrovements are alone effected. (in the monograph* embodied in the tenth United States census, the factory system is spoken of as one ** which has in it more possibilities for good for the masses who must work for day's wages, than any scheme which has been devised by * By Mr. Carroll D. Wright, the highest American authority on the subject. C43) 44 BENEFITS ACCRUING FROM THE FACTORY SYSTEM. philanthropy alone." And in recurring to the subject five years later the writer of the article referred to says that *' coeval with the change in the industrial system and the introduction of machinery the workman began to rise in importance as a social factor."*' Mr. Daniel Pidgeon bears similar testimony: "In spite of a bad beginning and early mal-administration, in spite of a low condition of labor and \ a lower conception of its claims, the factory system has bene- fited the English operative as no other form of industry has done."f The benefits which remained after its attendant abuses had been removed were the separation of the home from the workshop, thus laying the basis of sanitary improvements, greater fixity of earnings and payment, shorter hours of labor, better education and, above all, the opportunities it afterwards afforded for united and co-operative effort in unexpected directions. In addition to these must be included a long list of secondary benefits, secondary that is, in point of sequence, made efficacious by legislation, almost any one of which would in itself be a cogent answer to a detractive argument against the new methods of industry as compared wi4Ja.J:he old. VThere can indeed be little doubt that the factory system has been a strong wave in that ceaseless tide of advance which enables each generation to start on a higher plane than its preceding one, which makes the marvels of one age the commonplaces of the next, the luxuries of the past the necessities of the present, and the knowledge of the father the primer of the son. Were it otherwise, the outlook for those not born to wealth would be a dark one_^ What that progress has been might be almost condensed in ■^Bureau of Statistics of Labor, Massachusetts, 1885. f " Old World Questions and "New World Answers," page 225. J In those i)arts of Europe where home industry still prevails the bare subsistence that is yielded by the most unremitting toil is in striking con- trast to the better paid labor and shorter hours of factory life. See United States Consulate Reports, 1884, " Labor in Europe," pages 18, 19, 23. RfeVIKW OF THE CENTURY. 45 the one stupendous fact that since 1834 nearly 34,000,000 persons have been emancipated in Europe, the United States, and the possessions of Great Britain, either from direct slav- ery, or the soil-bondage of serfdom. In that year Great Britain had in her West India colonies 781,000 slaves. In 1840 there were 7,000,000 serfs in Austria.* The last relic of serfdom was abolished in Hungary in 1848. f In 1861 the crown set free 21,755,000 in Russia. In i860 there were 4,000,000 slaves in the United States. To-day all these vast numbers are free. By the reform bills of 1832, 1867, and 1884, the House of Commons became for the first time a direct reflex of the opinions of the people, and as nearly re- jiresentative of their views as the lower House here. Both bodies are certainly more pliant to the will of an electorate of which the working man forms by far the largest part, than any representative institutions that have existed since the foundation of parliaments. ** I confess it fills me with astonishment," said Professor Huxley, a little while ago, " to think that the time when no man could travel faster than horses could transport him, when our means of locomotion were no better than those of Achilles or of Rameses Miamum, lies within my memory." J How marvellous the change can be exemplified by no greater con- trasts than on this ct)ntinent. By getting up at three or four in the morning and prolonging the journey till late at night it was possible a century ago to make the trip from Boston to New York in six days.§ It took Lewis and Clarke from the 14th of May, 1804, to the 15th of November, 1805, to cross from the vicinity of St. Louis to the mouth of the Columbia. Now four lines of railway carry passengers from ocean to ocean in six days, in cars that equal in luxury the appointments of an eastern monarch. In 1807 Fulton's boat rode on the waters of the Hudson at * Mulhall's " Dictionary of Statistic;." f Appleton's tincyclopedia, article "Serf." X Ad«lress to the Roval Society, 1885. I McMaster, " A History of the People of the United States.'* ^ INCREASE OF COMMERCE. a speed of five miles an hour, an object of astonishment to the sloops from Albany whose run from that place to New York occasionally occupied two weeks.* In iSigthe "Savannah" sailed from the port of that name to Russia, the first instance of ocean steam navigation. By 1885, Fulton's crude proto- type had increased on our inland and coast waters to 5,000 stout vessels of iron and wood, each carrying an annual aver- age of 33,000 persons and 5000 tons of merchandise, and ships of 8000 tons make the passage from Liverpool to New York many hours quicker than it took to go from Boston to Philadelphia in 1810. Every emigrant steamer now arriving at New York brings " from Queenstovvn more human beings than a hundred years ago crossed the ocean in both directions in the space of a twelvemonth," f and the waterways of commerce are now better defined than the trails over which the early settlers followed Boone to Kentucky, or the pioneers of 1849 travelled in their journey to the Pacific. In 181 1 the average speed of news in Europe was seventy miles I a day. The first information of the result of the battle of Waterloo did not reach the British Government until fifty hours after Napoleon's defeat, and the news of the great vic- tory did not arrive at Calcutta until a few days before Christ- mas, or six months after the event. In 1791 it required on an average eleven and a half weeks to get intelligence at Paris from Washington ; now the resident of San Francisco can com- municate with the antipodes in an hour, or with London in a minute, and Mr. Cyrus Field lately stated that he could trans- act his business, by means of the telegraph, equally as well from the Pacific Coast or Europe as in his office at New York. Since that first exclamation of reverence and awe, ** What hath God wrought," was sent over the magnetic wire, these states have been crossed by more than 230,000 miles of lines, * McMaster, " A History of the People of the United Stales." t Ibid. X Mulhall's " Dictionary of Statistics." INCREASE OF WEALTH. 47 and 180,000 messages are forwarded over them daily. In the deplli of the waters lie 115,000 miles of those slender roiKJs of copper that bind nations together in a stronger union than formal treaties, and the length of rail by which the world transports its commerce, would now more than girdle its cir- cumference fourteen times. In 1774 Massachusetts had 14 post-offices and New Hamp- shire I ; * seven years later there were but 6 in New Jersey with a gross revenue of $530. The total number in the United States in 1790 was only 75, and the entire expendi- ture of the department, $32,140. By 1886 the number had reached 53,614, and the exjienditure to more than $50,000,000. ** In the mountains of New Hampshire, in the hill-country of Pennsylvania, in the rice swamjjs of Georgia and the Caro- linas letters were longer in going to their destination than they are now in reacliing Pekin. Letters sent out from Phil- adelphia spent five weeks in winter going a distance now passed over in a single afternoon. "f The mail from New York to Philadelphia was despatched five times a week and was easily carried in a saddle-bag. The rate of postage established in 1792 for that distance was 10 cents. In 1836 it cost 28 cents to send a letter from London to Belfast, and 52 cents to New York. Now the uniform charge to the most widely separated countries of the postal union is 5 cents, and for that sum a communication can be forwarded from Alaska to Egypt, Greenland, Ceylon, or Tripoli, with the assurance that it will be carried over land and sea as fast as steam can convey it. Since 1830 the ratio of commerce per inhabitant has risen in Europe from jQi ^. 8{/. to ;^6 gs. dd. (1880); in the United Kingdom from jQ^ \2s. od. to ;^i6 Gs. od., and in the United States from $10.00 to $30,254 For the ten years ending 1880 the set of every sun found the inhabitants of the British Isles $2,000,000 richer in houses, railways, shipping, * McMaster, " A History of the People of the United States." t Mulhall's " Dictionary of Statistics." 48 SOCIAL CONDITION. bullion, land, capital, etc., than they were at its rising.* From 1850 to 1880 the aggregate value of the manufactures of this country multiplied 5^^ times,"f and even the enormous addition of wealth by Great Britain has been exceeded here. Her increase during the ten years mentioned was from 6880 to 8410, each unit representing a million pounds sterling; ours from 7074 to 9495. J From i860 to 1880 the per capita wealth of the United States has risen from ^615 to ^940, § and Mr. Atkinson estimates that the net national savings or addition to capital during the census year (1880) amounted to $900,000,000. This story of increase in material prosperity might be con- tinued almost indefinitely and yet the half not be told. Books might be filled, as they continually are, with the records of discovery in science, art, and invention, the birth of new ideas and their application to the wants, conveniences and comforts of mankind, the growth of individual and cor- porate wealth, and the rise of industries recently non-exist- ent. || To do so even cursorily would be to recount the his- tory of civilization for three generations, in as many branches of achievement as there are sub-divisions of the industrial arts and sciences, and that would require volumes in itself. The only purpose of this recital is to ascertain if the bulk of the population, those whose hands guide the machinery of the world, who reap its harvests, distribute its commerce, and convert the raw material into saleable products, have shared in the general advance. For it will avail little to the man who drives the harvester that it cuts, binds, winnows and bags thirty times more grain than his father could cut with a sickle, unless his loaf of bread has been cheapened thereby. It will be of small importance to the weaver who * Mulhall's " History of Trices." f Mulhall's " Dictionary of Statistics." j MullialTs "History of Prices." I Ibid. II The single article of petroleum will suffice for an example. On August 26, 1859, the first flow in the United States was struck al Titus- ville. and in 1880 its product was valued at ^78,000,000. / BOCIAL CONDITION. 49 Stands at the spinning-mule if its 600 per cent, increase of l)o\ver over the old wheel has not somehow given him cheaper and better clothes. (Therefore, unless the blessing of wealth won by material progress has like the rain from heaven fallen on the poor as well as the rich, if it has only served "to make the poor poorer, and the rich richer," it would have been better if it had never been created, and the mass of civilized society would have been happier by remaining in the primitive bonds of the old conditions, with no general display of luxury to tempt, no new -born desires to be appeased^ iLet us see, therefore, if labor has gained by this prosperity; or if its recompense has been only the gleanings of the harvest, the few stray ears left for very shame from an abundant field after others have garnered the golden grain. Ten years ago a contributor to the Atlantic Monthly* wrote: ** Were it possible to bring to view a clear picture of the manner in which people lived a century ago, and con- trast it with the manner in which they live now, I think it would be found that the amenities of life have increased in a greater ratio than the power of production. The results of this increased -power of production are better general educa- tion, wider diffusion of intelligence, larger charities, and the general elevation of the condition of the whole people. Laborers have not only participated in these benefits, but have derived special advantages." puch a picture has since been graphically drawn,j with every detail filled in, and we now know how the laboring classes of the infant republic toiled, dressed, ate, and lived, what kind of houses sheltered them, how they amused them- selves, what were their habits of speech, their literature, social status, currents of thought, and manners and customs generally. \Ve learn from it and other sources, that the laborer at the close of the last century could only keep his children from * Mr. Erruitus E Bipelow, Octol>er 18, 1878. fM^Lister's " History of the People of the United States." 4 60 CHEAPENING OF PRODUCTS. Starvation and himself from the jail by the strictest economy. Those comforts and conveniences of life now common in the humblest homes were utterly unknown to him. His carpet was sand sprinkled on the floor. China, glass, and the com- mon prints that now adorn every wall were beyond his reach. Neither the iron stove nor the lucifer match had yet been thought of. His dingy rooms were warmed by an open fire of wood, the fragments of boxes and barrels, which gave out much smoke and little heat. ^'Anthracite coal, though for fifteen years in use in blacksmiths' forges in the coal regions, was unavailable for household purposes, and in 1806 the first freightage of a few hundred bushels was brought down to Philadelphia, and there used experimentally with indifferent success." * He rarely tasted fresh meat, and a pound of salt pork cost him two-fifths of a day's labor. A day's work now will buy half a barrel of flour. In 1784 corn was y. per bushel, wheat 8s. dd. His rude and coarse food was served in pewter dishes and eaten with the roughest implements. The products of every land, which can now be found in the markets of our cities at prices accessible to the poorest, were either unknown, or such expensive luxuries for the rich, that their purchase was only occasional. "Among the fruits and vegetables of which no one had even then heard are cante- loupes, many varieties of peaches and grapes, tomatoes and rhubarb, sweet corn, the cauliflower, the -^ Fifty years ago his position could not be compared wilh that of our artisans; since then the equalizing process has brought them very near together, and in the natural order of things it is to be expected that its operations will continue through- out all lands, until labor and commodities approximate in places far apart. As each Chinaman who arrives on the Pacific Coast pulls down wages in California, and in an infinitesimal degree raises them in his own country, so the immense migration from Europe has reduced the standard here and added to it there. Both continents have gained by the transfer, and both have been brought nearer equality, though many people are afraid that it is in the direction of pauperism. To this answer may be made, that if pauperism is the general condition of Europe it will soon be ours also, as labor, like connecting waters, ultimately reaches the same level unless restrained by artificial barriers. Anything, therefore, be it good or evil, that affects the workingman of Europe is immediately felt in the same influence on this side of the ocean, for commerce has interwoven an inseparable community of interest between the artisans of Chicago and Birmingham, the miners of Penn- sylvania and Belgium, the weavers of Massachusetts and Man- chester; and to divide those interests now is as much of an impossibility as to put time back into the eighteenth century. Selfish reasons, then, if no other, must make us rejoice in the prosperity of our working kin in other lands, as we are all members of the same industrial body. The most careful investigator of social statistics in Great Britain* states that the general wages of artisans and weavers in that country show an increase ranging from 20 to in most cases 50 to 100 per cent., or a mean increase of 70 per cent., * Mr. Giffeii, Statistician to the Board of Trade. REDOOTION OP WORKING HOURS. 69 within the last thirty years. Taking the three periods of 1840-60-84, and five representative occupations: Black- smiths* wages have risen from $5.10 to $6.75 and then $7.^0 l)er week ; masons* from 55.50 to $7.20 and $8.40; carpen- ters* from $4.80 to |6.oo and $7.20; pUimbers* from $5.25 to ^7.20 and $8.40; and cotton spinners' from ^4.30 to 54.80 and 55.75.* Witliin thirty years seamen's wages liave been raised 50 per cent., in addition to an improvement in food and lodgings at sea fully equal to the money equivalent, and the average gain of the once wretchedly-paid agricultural laborer has within forty years been 60 per cent. In speaking of the poverty of this class, Mr. Maurice mentions f that in 1830 a man was employed by a nobleman as hedger and ditcher for 50 cents a week. The same work would now command 62 cents per day, besides a small allotment on which to raise vegetables, and even in Ireland the improve- ment in the wages or earnings of small farmers and laborers has been at least 100 per cent, within the last half century. The statistics of diminution in the hours of labor are too diffuse to be presented here, and the various estimates differ somewhat in the results attained. A careful examination of an elaborate table prepared in 1884J shows a decrease amongst artisans of from about 60 hours per week, in 1859, to 56^ at the present time, and in some special trades to 54. Mr. Carroll D. Wright in a tabulation of 18 prominent industries, including textile, brings the reduction to 53 5^, § and Mr. Giffen's computation is, that in the textile, engineering, and building trades the hours of labor have been reduced 20 per cent, in 30 years, making with increased wages a net gain in money return of about 90 per cent. In Mr. Mulhall's "History of Prices *'|| he shows that * Mnlhall's " History of Prices " f " Life of Frederick Denison Maurice," vol. i, page 1 1 5. X Social Science Congress, 1884, '^y ^Ir. E. Van»ittant Neale, Secretary to the Central Co-operative Board. ^ Bureau of I>alv)r Statistics, Mass., 1885. II " History of Trices since the Year 1850," by Michael G. Mulhall. 60 GAIN THROUGH SAVINGS. " the condition of the working classes has so much improved that they now consume in all countries twice as much as in 1850." Textile fabrics are 11 per cent, cheaper than they were in 1850, books and newspapers, ^;^ per cent., and the same amount of labor will now buy the workingman of Europe 140 pounds of bread as against 77 pounds in the de- cade ending i860. The deductions of this eminent statisti- cian are that *' 15 shillings will now buy as much manufac- tures as 20 in the years 1841-50, but in matters of food we should require 22 shillings," and that taking increased wages and food values together, the English workingman is able to purchase 21 per cent, more of the necessaries of life in beef, butter, sugar, wheat, and coal than in 1840. Enhanced rent reduces his ability considerably, yet after allowing for this there is still a gain of at least 10 per cent. A confirmation of the improved conditions indicated by these authorities is found in other directions. In 1831 there were 429,000 depositors in the savings banks, having to their credit, $68,595,000.* By 1881 they numbered 4,140,000, with $401,670,000 in bank, which had further increased at the close of 1885 to ;^47o,ooo,ooo. The amount per inhabi- tant rose from $7.00 in i860 to $11.25 i^^ 1882, besides which the various friendly societies had in their possession at that date over $65, 000,000. f During the ten years ending 1885, the average accumulation of the working classes in savings banks and mutual societies has been $49,000,000 per annum ; the latter form of invest- ment showing an increase of 200 per cent, and pointing to the strides that distributive co-operation is making. In 1857 the building societies had a membership of 157,560, with re- ceipts of $38,337,570. By 1882 the registered membership was 345,661, whose payments for the year amounted to $65,259,195, and their assets to $185,000,000. With better food, improved sanitary appliances, and shorter * Giffen. •j- Mulhali's " Dictionary of Statistics." IMPROVED EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES. . 61 hours of labor, the mean duration of life among males has been raised since 1840 from 39.9 to 41.9 years, and in females from 41.9 to 45.3, and the larger i)ro|)ortion of increased duratron is at the useful ages. ** No such changes," remarks the compiler of these figures,* "could take place without a great increase in the vitality of the people." Tiie mortality in England and Wales has declined from 21.8 per thousand in 1857 to 19.2 in 1881-85, and as 70 per cent, of the popii- lation of those countries is made up of the so-called working classes, the gain in health thereby to them is obvious. In 1839 th.e first grant by Parliament for education amounted only to $150,000, and this small sum was inserted in the esti- mates at the immediate suggestion of the Queen. In 1885 the appropriations for this purpose were $22,945,995, and the number of children in attendance at schools aided by the public revenue rose in Great Britain from 271,000 in 1851 to 3,827,000 in 18S5. The ratio of adults able to write in- creased in the fifty years ending 1881 from 55 to 84 per cent, in England, from 77 to 88 per cent, in Scotland, and from 46 to 67 per cent, in Ireland. From 1871, the year after a national system of education was effectually introduced, to 1 881, the number of schools, and children in attendance on them, more than doubled, and the effect of this intellectual activity at once manifested itself in the post-oflfice returns by an increase in the number of letters per capita, from 24 per annum in 1861-70, to 37 per annum in 1881-85. f Nor have the efforts for better education been confined to the elementaries, or exclusively to children. A large number of universities and detached colleges have been founded, especially within the last ten years, to which workingmen are admitted on payment of nominal fees,! and where they can receive technical instruction adapted to their special indus- tries. These, with the magnificent free libraries, art galleries, ♦ Giffen. t Mulhall. I The best ]d doomed to \\x\^^f- Carlyle. There is a wonderful link of thought between the greatest of the ancient writers and the most distinguished of modern philanthropists, wherein both state the duty of the many to the individual. Nearly four hundred years before the Christian era, Aris- totle said that every community is established for the sake of some good end, and that a state truly deserving the name must be governed by such wholesome laws as to place a hap])y and virtuous life within the reach of all its citizens, and thus by cultivating the better parts of men raise them in the scale of being. Lord Shaftesbury, unconsciously following the same line of ideas, said, "all that society can do, it ought to do to remove difficulties and impediments, to give every man, to the extent of our power, full, fair, and free opportunity so to exercise all his moral, intellectual, physical, and spiritual en- ergies, that he may without let or hindrance, be able to do his duty in that state of life to which it has pleased God to call him." These removable difficulties and impediments constitute, therefore, those unfair social and industrial conditions or hindrances to a successful and virtuous life, which it should be the first object of society to clear away, and a primal Christian obligation of wealth, alone and in conjunction with government, to aid in so doing. (69) 70 INEQUALITY. rSut before defining these obstructions, it will be advisable to mention some things which though inequalities are not in themselves unfair; for there is both a preventable and a« un- preventable unfairness, the first being within the province of man's operations, and the second of nature's. ^One of these is mental and bodily inequality, which is a natural condition, a divine law, and consequently a law of love.^ We are born with unequal mental and physical powers; we pass our lives in unequal susceptibility to climatic changes, diseases, and emotions; with unequal powers of production, reproduction, and even of aspiration, and we die at unequal ages from un- equal causes. There are little brooks that refresh small pastures ; great rivers that bear on their bosoms the commerce of a state, and deserts unmoistened by a drop of water. (So there are some whose thoughts direct the workshop and the school-room, others whose statesmanship guides the course of empires, and again those who are almost incapable of formulating an idea unconnected from their bodily wants. To some is given strength, to others wisdom ; one can readily accumulate knowledge, and apply it to his purposes ; another with diffi- culty learns the rudiments of education^ iThere are insects and elephants, small islands and continents, shrubs and forest trees, pebbles and mountains, and '' one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon," everywhere diversity diversified, and diversity is inequality. ^Iriequality within the restriction of the law is the corollary of liberty. I A community of slaves or prisoners is a level plain ; one of freemen a landscape, with variation of hill, dale, river, forest, and cultivated field ; so that until every man is endowed with uniform health, strength, mentality, length of life and powers of sense, there must be a difference in human attainments and the results that flow from them ; for therein is the primal cause of disparity. \ One of these results is that some persons are able to acquire property with more facility than otliers. ' The great artist with a yard of canvas and a few dollars' worth of pigments can EFFECTS OF INKQUALITY. 71 produce a picture in a few weeks that will sell for a larger sum than a house painter can earn in half a lifetime. The great poet will be paid more for writing his thoughts in verse, on a piece of paper, than the ordinary clerk can get for a whole year's careful penmanship ; and the architect, by applying his knowledge of strains and forces, can design on a dozen sheets of card-board an imperishable possibility of ornament or utility, for which a community will willingly pay tlie price of a hundred workmen's earnings through many months. Similarly, by a fine expression of music or the passions, the musician and actor can convert such common things as sounds and emotions into the means of acquiring wealth, c-ind every /possessor of mental ability has the power, in accordaiice with \its degree and scarcity, of doing the same. The value of their work is supposed to be determined by their earnings, and that value is in nearly every case governed by their natural and unequal endowments, rendered available by cul- ture.'^ Others again, and they are by far tlie larger number, pos- sess only that ordinary attribute of health and manhood, bodily strength, and though it is a marketable commodity (to use the phrase of political economists), as much as any- thing else, its abundance, and the fact that its equivalent can be obtained through mechanical forces, makes it less valuable than the intellectual attainments. [ If strength were as rare as genius, strength would perhaps command the profit on its labor that genius now does, and the strong man and the great mind change places in the world's respect ; but while the contrary is the case it must continue to occupy a subordinate position and the relation to genius that granite does to gold. From all this it follows that if one person acquires wealth by personal ability, and another nothiiig beyond food, shelter, . and clothing, it is in many instances only an inequality resulting from the operation of natural laws, or otherwise-iin unpreventable unfairness, that institutions cannot remove.! \^While the justice of a man's claims to his own earnings is only controverted by a few, there is a larger class who deny 72 ADMINISTRATIVE ABILITY. his right to employ his accumulations in conjunction with others, so as to make a profit out of the combination. Yet if one man's savings afford fifty others the means of labor by furnishing them with raw material and tools (whether the most complex machinery, or a simple hammer and a keg of nails) ; and especially if after giving them immediate or deputed direction he takes the risk of subsequent profit or loss, it requires very little i>erception of equity to determine that he is entitled to some return above the ruling interest- rates. For labor is not the only element necessary to produce profit. Even where tools and materials are furnished, an administrative and distributive capacity is required, as well as a product creative one, before an advance over the cost of making can be obtained. On these, quite as much as skill in workmanship, depends the final returns, and the combination of such qualities is so scarce as to make them highly valu- able.* Indeed the possession of great administrative powers is as infrequent in proportion to the number engaged in busi- ness, as are the higher achievements in those who follow art, literature, music, medicine, or the la w. A It-is stated that out of one hundred firms on Long Wharf in Boston, in forty years, only five escaped failure; that out of one thousand accounts in a leading bank, in the same period, only six remained good, a large proportion of the balance being wrecked on some of the many rocks and shoals that beset the sea of mercantile adventure. Napoleon said he had plenty of generals who could manoeuvre 10,000 men, two or three who could direct ^0,000, but not one who could successfully command 80,000. V Large profits come to the men who suc- cessfully controL-Hie armies of labor, smaller profits to those who handle its divisions, and in a proportionate degree to its captains of companies; or, to change the form of expression, to those whose natural abilities are greater than their fellows'. * " If successful managers of cotton or woolen mills were as plenTiM in proportion to the demand for them, as ordinary artisans in the propor tion to the demand,for them, then the former would gti no higher reward" than the lUtterj^^^Prof. Laughlin. Mills' " Pclilical Economy,-' Book 2 Chapter 4, '^^ayn 2. COMPENSATION TO CATITAL. <3 CNor is it necessary to be deeply versed in wliat Carlyle caried *'the dismal science" to see tliat if tliere were no capitalists, industry would either revert to its most primitive conditions, or everything would have to be the property of everybody through equal i)articipation in state ownership, and- that the moment one man saved a part of his share, the accumulation of cajjital would commence again and the balance be destroyed, ^apital, seeking addition through labor, has furnished labor with the means of livelihood, and by stimulating material progress has so increased the comforts and conveniences of existence as to add to the well-being of the many and render modern society a possibility.^ Its wise employment has been such a manifest benefit, that any argu- ment holding to the contrary is not worth consideration, and the proposition is in no way invalidated by the fact that capi. tal has always retained an unjust proportion of the profit madei in conjunction with labor, and treated its co-ordinate unfairly.l Mr. Herbert Spencer has said: "A desire for property is one of the elements of our nature," * and that the right of private property " harmonizes with the human constitution, as divinely ordained." Every strike of workmen for higher wages is an expression of this desire, a demand for a larger share of the property they assist in producing ; and if it is laudable for them to seek a better payment for the use of their natural powers, it cannot be a sin for the capitalist- employer also to try and obtain a commensurate return for the ability which he displays in the employment of his sav- ings and talents. A condemnation would apply to both with equal force. It is true that there is a growing class who accept Proud- hon's dictum that "property is robbery," but this doctrine must not be taken as a serious affirmation of belief. It is rather a bubble of freedom, the effervescence of men unused to liberty, than the expression of a substantial opinion. fl[T it is correct, half the virtues would have to, be abolished",-^ - *" Social Statisiics," pages 151-2.^'^^^ VlAufl^ 74 FAIR WAGES. for *' to consume daily a little less than we produce is the only source of capital whether small or great,"* and if we consume all, self-denial (which provides for sickness, old age, children and dependent relatives by refraining from the grati- fication of the moment) must become extinct; active benevo- lence, which enables the giver to use his accumulations in good works, an impossibility; and every incentive that looks to the future for its reward, a vanishing motive in human conduct. Carried to its ultimate, it would make the world a carousal-hall for eating and drinking, enforce a consumption of each day's labor before the rising of another sun, and make the possessor of a second suit of clothes a robber.| If the possession of earned wealth, whether iii the shape of capital or property, is an admitted natural riglit^it follows that it is not incumbent on its owner to part wftTrit by the payment of wages to his laborer in excess of fair earnings, which may be defined as a just share of the additional value given to a product by the skill or labor bestowed on it. Thus, if the per cent, of unit cost of^a yard of cotton was 72.70 for materials, 20.53 for labor, 1.96 for expense of management, and 4.81 for rent, insurance, etc., and the selling price was only the total of these sums, an advance of wages would be a direct loss of capital to the amount of the advance. I ]5ut if the market value of a yard of cotton was 25 per cent, more than cost, the workman would be justified in asking better payment for his labor, or otherwise for a share of the profit through increase of wages. On all manufactures on which there is unrestrained competition, a moral determina- tion of the value of labor would adjust itself to profit, and it is not an unfairness for capital to refuse an advance when the returns only cover first cost and reasonable earnings for tools and administrative competency.) As an instance in point,. the gross profit on the labor and capital of 7782 persons employed in the manufacture of straw * E. About. *' Handbook of .Social Economy," page 272, English translation. INHERITED WEALTH. 7/ goods in Massachusetts was in 1882, after the payment of wages, ^822,749. Interest and expenses of management reduced this sum to $3911 net, or a little less than 50 cents for the year on each employ^; and, although their wages only averaged ;$243.72 each, the slightest increase would have imiJaired the capital fundlso that under the conditions of that particular industry $5.00 a week was fair earnings, thougii insufficient to support life in comfort. /The remedy for low wages was here evidently beyond the employer's control, and the inadequacy of remuneration an incident of trade in which capital was an equal sufferer with labor. In common with man)* other inequalities it arose from some natural cause that capital could not amend, and so was not a remediable unfair- ness within the meaning here used. Having thus disposed of some things which are frequently in themselves the foundation of differences in industrial con- ditions, and which on examination are found to originate in the unpreventable, there remain others to which that term cannot properly apply. QThe generalizations so far presented have been based on the supposition that every man is the creator of his own capital, either directly, by inherent powers, coupled with self-denial, or indirectly, by combination with those who possess other wealth-making qualifications^^ But as wealth is constantly accumulating, even faster in civilized lands than population, and it does not die with its owner, a larger amount is every day acquired by inheritance, and thereby comes into the pos- session of some one who has had nothing to do with its crea- tion. It is this consideration that makes the problem of possession a difficult one; for if every man had only what he earned, be it large or small, the discontent of the small owner would be as unreasonable as to inveigh against the day's variability of sunshine, the season's rains, or any other natural and irremediable inequality resulting from natural laws. There is much to be said in favor of the right of the creiator of just wealth to leave it to whom he pleases, and 76 <' EQUITY OF PROPERTY. much more for its limitation. It is impossible to limit the natural gifts or disabilities with which we are born/UDUt it might be possible, and without injustice, to restrict each one's individual share of the world's wealth^ " Wealth created by its owner is an index of his personal power, and the manhood necessary to the accumulation saves it from being contemptible, while it preserves its possessor from degrading vices."* But, to quote Mr. Froude's words, "if rich men, as is often the case, are contented to live in idle indulgence and do nothing to deserve it, the question will rise, and will force its way into politics, why should one man have so much and another so little?" For a child to be born to a life of poverty, to have to strug- gle for its bread almost from the cradle, to be doomed through youth and manhood to such a round of unremunerative em- ployment, that age finds him without any recourse from star- vation except the precarious gleanings of the street or the cold community charity of the poor-house ; to pass from birth to death, as millions do, engaged all the time in a sharp fight with his fellows for the bare necessities of existence, is an unfair social condition for which there is and must be a repjedy.t Aj/> (^Why should one child come into the world weighted so O tremendously, and another, perhaps his inferior in natural en- r>r -^dowments, have every step of his progress through life made ^ smooth and easy by a wealth he did not win? It cannot be answered by asking that other questiol^ Why is one^child * Belirend's " Socialism and Christianity," page 169. f " Notwithstanding all that has been done, and all that seems likely to be done, in the extension of franchises, a few are born to great riches, and liie many to a penury made only more grating by contrast. No longer enslaved or made dependent by force of law, the great majority are so by force of poverty; they are still chained to a place, to an occupation, and to conformity with the will of an employer, and debarred l)y the accident of birth, both from the enjoyments, and from the mental and moral ad- vantages, which others inherit without exertion, and independently of desert. That this is an evd equal to almost any of those against which mankind have hitherto struggled the poor are not wrong in believing. Is it a necessary evil ? " "Chapters on Socialism," by John Stuart Mill, *• Fortnightly Review," Feb., 1879, P^g^ 222. INEQUALITIES OF WEALTH. 77 blind, a mute, or a cripple, while another has the full use of all his senses? or, Why is one deficient in intelligence and strength, while another is strong in body and alert in mind? Laws give neither sight nor speech, but they can decree that the little grasp of the infant shall not clutch a hundred houses and thousands of acres of land ; it will make a bet- ter citizen if it contributes in some way to the work of its generation, and for the good of all there must be greater equality. As Mr. Thornton asks,* shall we not "question the propriety of a division of labor which devolves upon 'two- thirds of the community the whole duty of supporting, and leaves the other third with comparatively little to do but to ported?" lere can be no suspicion of communism therefore in in- quiring if these conditions of inherited wealth are inequalities founded on a natural and divine law, or on an unwise and human ordainment, which afflicts industrialism by intensify- ing the common antagonism between capital and labor; for if they are based on the former they are unalterable, but if on the latter it will be an advantage, and not a wrong to change themj The Bible says that a direct prohibition was delivered from Sinai against the transmitted accumulation of the source of all wealth, and as the Israelites, to whom this prohibition was directed, were a i)astoral i)eople and their wealth nearly all pastoral, the effect of such an injunction must have been the proscription of large flocks and herds under one ownership for more than fifty years, or otherwise deterrent not only to land accumulation but to the chief form of their personal property. At the expiration of every fifty years the land was to be returned to its original owners ; ** the land shall not be sold for ever; for the land is mine."f And in the year of the Jubilee every man was to be returned *' unto his posses- sion." The object of this law was evidently " to restore, as * Tliornton "On Labor," pnge 21. t Lfv. 25 : 23. See Prof. BisscU's " Biblical Antiquities," pp. 56, 230. 78 LAW OF ENTAIL. far as legislation could go, that equality in outward circum- stances which was instituted in the first settlement of the land by Joshua." It is impossible to cut off the tops of mountains to fill in the valleys, but when mountains stand in the path, a highway can be made through them. If the apparently insuperable obstacle of a continent obstructs the channel of commerce, it can be cut through. The mountain and the continent re- main practically intact, while an improved circulation of commerce and wealth ensues. Cannot the same be done with the obstruction of large properties by declaring that death shall dissolve a specific part of the accumulation of a life, for the good of those who are to follow? "The withdrawal of the man demands the disintegration of his fortune ; its speedy return to the vast industrial territory from which it was gath- ered is as much a law of nature as the burial of the body when the spirit has departed. The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead." * This redistribution is at present only slowly and partially accomplished within the family, and can be deferred for a long time by the wishes of the dead owner. In those coun- tries where the law of entail prevails it is frequently deferred indefinitely, or as long as there is a single lineal descendant to receive the transmission. Neither is there anything in our laws to prevent the continual passing of large fortunes from the individual to the individual, and although its prevention has not yet been an urgency, the rapid appropriation of land, by depriving labor of its great chance to escape from an initial condition of dependency as a wage-receiver, may soon make it one. That such a law would be in contravention of political and social economy as the mass of mankind now understands it, is true. It is so with any departure from what are considered established principles. If King John could have expressed himself in modern phraseology at Runnymede, his reply to the demand of the barons for a restriction of the * Behrcnd's " Socialism and Christianity," page 169. LEGISLATION. 79 powers of the crown would probably have been that it was a violation of the fundamental principles of ownership, a per- sistence in which would upset everything mundane and phmge the kingdom into disorder and anarchy. When Henry Vlll. made a distribution of the property of the church, it was an undoubted infraction of vested interests, unsupported by lawful precedent, and except for the English anteriority the same may be said of the Italian confiscation in recent years. If new conditions produce concurrent evils, they must be 11 new conuiiioiis prouucc coiicurreiit cviis, iiicy must i^c / met by new remedies. uEvery curb imposed on the few by the t^ many for the good of all has been an interference with cer- tain supposedJj5i^SJofJheJ£w. The restriction of the hours of labor, the compulsory ventilation of workshops, tlie inspec- tion of mines, the prohibition of juvenile labor, the reprcs- ision of the sale of intoxicants, were all at some time infrac- tions of ordinary conditions, interpositions against^ some particular class of property for the benefit of society* Yet such a conservative as the Duke of Argyle in his ** Reign of Law" calls the factory legislation of England one of the greatest discoveries of the century in the science of govern- ment, though it was as bitterly- opposed on the ground of its infringement on supposed private rights as any reform of the period. The land system of England and Ireland is even now melting away, and in its dissolution property will be a heavy sufferer. Owners are already preparing themselves for the inevitable, and if they can accept this, all other limita- tions will be comparatively palatable.!^ Circumstances are compelling them to admit that there is a higher law than that of inheritance, and though they may declare it unjust, they are yielding to necessity The genius of invention is one of the rarest of all faculties, but the right of the inventor to ownership in his discovery is limited to seventeen years, after which it becomes general property. The ripest scholarship, the most pregnant ideas, the liveliest intellectual fancies, when committed to print, ^ can only be held as the private property of the author for a period designated by the state (twenty-eight years for copy- 80 RIGHTS OF PROPERTY. right, fourteen years renewal), after which he is divested of them. Have the earnings of one kind of ability a greater nctity than that of another? And if the inventor's and , .iithor's heirs are totally deprived of participation in the \ ' resulting profits of their kinsman's talents, would it be wrong to take something from the legatees of the capitalist, mer- chant, and stockholder, and apply the unneeded surplus of extinct effort to the immediate furtherance of social wel- fare ? * A factor that is seldom considered has also recently come into play in the problem of accumulation. Until modern conditions of society gave security to tenure, property of all kinds was constantly changing hands either by seizure with- out the color of the law, or by proscription, escheat, and revolution. Mattliew of Paris tells us that King John took one-seventh of the movables of lay and spiritual peers for his own use. Edward II. stripped the Templars of their houses and lands, and the abuse of purveyance, or extortion of the goods of the people for the service of king or state, was not finally abolished until the reign of Charles II. The personal prop- erty of the Jews in the middle ages was always subject to seizure, and any unusual wealth was sure to arouse the avarice of the powerful, and result in a confiscation of some part of it. The Cromwellian settlement of Ireland carries with it its own meaning ; the terrible thirty years war actually destroyed all personal property throughout Germany; Napoleon effectu- •jr^ ally prevented its accumulation in Europe for twenty-five r\J years; and the slavery rebellion almost annihilated the pre- vious increase of our Southern States. Certainly these things may be of the future as well as of the past, though it can with reasonable safety be said that accumulation is not likely to be disturbed by such occurrences * This is done in Great Britain by what are generally called "the death duties," and it has more than once been proposed by men who were not socialists to fix them on an ascending scale. RIGHT OF INHERITANCE. 81 to as great an extent as formerly. That being admitted, it follows that one of tlie chief preventives against past increase has been largely eliminated. (^he question, therefore, as a whole resolves itself into a determination of tlie equities of the creator of pro[)erly ver- sus the many.* Has he absolute claim over it, or only a life- trust ?f Has not every child a just demand on some of the wealtlt increase of the past? He is the heir of all i)reserved literjfture, art, science, and invention ; he has an acknowledged . right to benefit himself by the treasures of all former intcl-/ lects; would it not be as fair to deprive him of the use of the steam-engine or the telephone, because he had no part in their | invention, as to deny a share of the world's wealth because he is born outside of its pale? Law and established usages say, No. Do nature and natural law say. Yes? Nature says, all things return to the earth or their original elements, to be again the common property of mankind. The accumulation of waters gathered by the rivers flows to the sea, to be distilled and scattered again in a myriad of drops over the land ; the leaves that fall from the trees are blown by a thousand winds to enrich other soils ; the bees store their magazine of honey for the general use of the hive's unborn larvae; the ant its granary for the coming community. Nature increases, but returns her increase to invigorate the future ; man accumulates and tries to hold for his personal descendants more than they can rightfully use. He has ** made property of things which never ought to be property, and absolute property where only a qualified property ought to exist Private property, in every defence made of it, is supposed to mean the guarantee to individuals of the fruits of their own labor and abstinence. The guarantee to them of the fruits of the labor and abstinence of others, transmitted to them without any merit or exertion of their * " We talk of rights ; but rights are al)stract and the world is prac- I tical. There are only so many concrete rights in the world as there is po wer to en force." — J, A. Froude, "The Poiilics of To day and Long Ago?' RIGHT OF INHERITANCE. own, is not of the essence of the institution, but a mere inci- dental consequence, which, when it reaches a certain height, does not promote, but conflicts with the ends which render private property legitimate." * Those who seek a true answer to the question presented here, . must not decide from the experience of the little isthmus on which we stand, but first ascend to **some peak in Darien," with the Atlantic a^^istory behind, and the inimitable Pacific of futurity beforeij From that summit they will see that the \ social formation oi the world has been as distinct as its geo- logical ; tliat the basis of Roman life and polity was to its citizens, an order of things that would never pass away; that slavery and serfdom seemed an unalterable law to millions of masters and slaves for centuries/ and that the figliting and freebooting of the Middle Ages appeared to baron and free- lance, as permanent and fixed a condition, as manufacturing and money getting does to the merchant of to-day. Yet the old order changed and gave place to the new, the new order I again became the old and another succeeded it, and it will be i so as long as man shall endure. What is to supersede the ' present cannot be answered by finite knowledge, but in the words of the author of " Gesta Christi,"f **It is not to be assumed, as is done by most writers on this subject, that the modern form of the distribution of wealth is the final and perfect one, and that society as it is now is substantially what it must be in all coming ages, or what our Lord contemplated in his future 'kingdom of heaven.' " The first natural right of the child being cared for, in pro- viding that he shall not be a disinherited brother, the next consideration is his encompassment. Is he getting his share of pure air and water ; of the golden beams of sunshine, of cleanly surroundings, influences, and healthful play ; for in * J. S. Mill, " Principles of Political Economy," Book 2, Chapter i, Section 3. f Brace, " Gesta Christi," page 93. y PURE SURROUNDINGS. 83 these as in other matters social and industrial obligations are intertwined too closely to be separated. CAs natural characteristics are determined by environment, so in a still greater degree is the moral status and well-being of the individual influenced by his domestic domicile. It is always difficult for a person to rise above tlie level of his sur- Toundin^s.j They imperceptibly assimilate him until he be- comes a part of them. If they are pure they will purify ; if vicious they will stain. A vessel may be plated with gold or copper, as either metal is placed in the battery. In both cases the action is unseen, but the precipitation commences as soon as the current is connected, and the result is very quickly visible. In the same way men are coated by pure or base influences. If they have to pass their non-working and sleep- ing life in wretched homes, with material filth and impurity on every side, in courts and alleys that reek with noisome- ness, in unwholesome rooms into which the sunlight and sweet air of heaven never penetrate, with nothing of beauty, noth- ing of noble desire for the eye to rest upon, it would be ask- ing a violation of natural laws to expect that they could be otherwise than their habitations. IJut if they have clean houses, with abundance of pure air, water, and light, if they are surrounded with the decencies of life, and as far as possi- ble, with the loveliness of nature's simple things, then they will unknowingly imbibe aspiration ; home, work, and the world, will have meanings never before understood, and the possibilities of life will bloom and unfold unceasingly. If such are the effects on the man, what must they be on the child? Its receptivity is incessant. Night and day it is thirstily drinking in all it sees, hears, and feels. Every sense is indiscriminately seizing and absorbing knowledge of good and evil. If there is little except evil to absorb, evil must be the product. It is hardly necessary to quote the statistics of foreign cities, or even such a startling record as that of Glas- gow, where in 1883 out of 114,759 families, 40,820 lived in single rooms, shared in about 7,000 cases by some other family, •while New York is close at hand with its thousands of crime- 84 DECENT RESIDENCES. breeding tenement houses and cellars, from which come 66 per cent, of the mortality, and 90 per cent, of the offences against property and person.* How can the state, or its wealthy citizens, be absolved from blame, when those who are deprived of every opportunity for decency, modesty, and purity, become impure? The state requires that the child shall receive a certain amount of education ; but what avail is it to teach him to read and write, if it neglects the higher education of his moral attributes? As it is impossible to un- derstand how any sincere believer in the teachings of Christ can devote his life to the accumulation of wealth, after having acquired sufficient for moderate needs and made a provision for his offspring, it is equally incomprehensible how a Chris- tian employer can return unconcernedly to the luxurious com- fort of the modern abode without giving a thought to the contrasted homes of far too many of the men and women in his employ. Both are moral inconsistencies irreconcilable with the faith professed, and in non-accord with its inculcationsi If the duty of wealth, government, or society, in this par- ticular involved a monetary loss there might be an answerable objection to remedial schemes, but the experience is that de- cent residences afford as good a return on the investment as other classes of property. The Improved Industrial Dwell- ings Company, of London, during an existence of 21 years, has invested ^4,750,000, owns tenements now occupied by 25,000 persons, which are models of comfort and privacy, and divides 5 per cent, among its holders. The Queen's Park estate consists of about 3000 houses, built on the cottage system, "designed with such architectural skill, and varied both in form and color with such fine taste as to give to the whole the appearance of an aesthetic city, rather than what is generally associated with the idea of an artisan's locality," and is understood to be satisfactorily remunerative. The Brooklyn tenement houses of Mr. A. T. White are stated by that gentleman to give a net return of 6 per cent., and even * Brace, " The Dangerous Classes of New York." TRADE EDUCATION. ^ the Peabody buildings, which are not managed with an im- mediate view to profit, return as much as if their cost had been capitalized in consols. Here then is a Christian obliga- tion the fulfilment of which jxiys about $}4 per cent, on the investment, in addition to a community dividend cf morality, cleanliness, and self-respect. The inalienable right of the child to the full development of its innate powers by education is so generally acknowledged, and the result in this country has so counteracted the effect of other demoralizing tendencies, that it would seem a natural step to continue the experiment in the direction of manual and technical training, extending the latter, when the material was encouraging, even to its highest branches. The economi- cal value to the community of such an education is now thoroughly admitted, but when it is only attainable by a few, and those not always the best qualified for achievement, its deprivation must be included in those removable unfairnesses for which many of the states are separately responsible. It is always possible that the very force designated talent or genius will of itself be sufficient to break through the barriers of poverty and want of opportunity. Yet it would be better if society would assist that force by removing impediments and affording facilities. The national government recognizes this obligation in its military and naval policy, and has found a fairly practical way of carrying it out, by taking the best fitted of its sons, without regard to birth or wealth, and plac- ing them in West Point or Annapolis, that their natural pro- ficiency may be further cultivated in its natural direction, and while thus careful to encourage the destructive sciences which are considered necessary to national preservation, it has pur- sued an equally enlightened policy on all matters pertaining to national education, from the primary school to the univer- sity. The central authority cannot be charged with any laxity of duty in this respect. Its gifts of public lands in 1862 for the purposes of higher education was the continua- tion of a principle that has been adhered to by Congress with steadfast liberality since colonial days. Had that and other Ob TECHNICAL EDUCATION. magnificent donations been duly husbanded by the states, the fund realized would have more than sufficed for both the manual and the advanced instruction of all who desired and were fitted for it. By mismanagement in the first instance, and subsequent misapplication of the endowment to other than the purposes intended, many of the commonwealths have not fulfilled the design laid down by Mr. Morrill when the land grant was made; that is, the foundation of practical "institutions accessible to all, but especially to the sons of toil." (Instead of being such, they are generally inaccessible except to those already in good circumstances, and scientific and technical instruction is in the majority of them a con- sideration secondary to literary.1 Such an eminent authority as Mr. Scott Russell considers a national system of technical education the chief remedy for the degradation of work and workmen, and a more recent writer earnestly and eloquently contends that in manual schools is to be found the solution not only of our social, but of our industrial problems.* "That systematic education," •)* observes Mr. Russell, "would lead to greater equality in the distribution of wealth, to a true appreciation of eachman's worth, and to a deeper interest of each man in his neighbor's well-doing is not difficult to recognize," and in continuing the argument on this proposition it is at least sufficiently demonstrated that society has at hand in technical education a most powerful means for diminishing the extremes of social inequality. " Without technical education or manual training the la- borer of the future cannot hope to rise above the grade of a piece of automatic machinery," J writes Mr. Ham; and on another page§ he says that "any hope of social reform is wholly irrational that does not spring from the postulate of a * Chnrles H. Ham, " Manual Training the Solution of Social and Industrial Problems." f "Systematic Technical Education," page 128 et seq. X Pajie III. \ Page 321. HAZAUDOUS OCCUPATIONS. 87 complete educational revolution." Whatever opinion there may be on this latter proposition, it is certain that the in- ability to obtain the mental or manual instruction l)est fitted to elevate the seeker to the extent of his natural aptitude is a condition for which there ought to be a remedy, and it is exceedingly likely that if a trial was made on a large scale and during a sufficiently long period, in the direction indi- cated, the experiment would result in the discovery of a powerful industrial solvent. Common education has done marvels; uncommon education might do still greater ones; but whether it did or no, a single Garfield or Roebling, West or Morse, developed from the undeveloped, would more than repay the educational expenditure of the state for a score of years. The name and fame of Lincoln will have a living value to Illinois as long as that commonwealth endures; Shakespeare has made of Warwickshire a memory in all lands; and as with these, the immortal sons of our posterity will by their example and influence compensate a hundred times, and yet again, the land that nourishes their expansive growth. There are certain hazardous occupations undertaken by tlie few for the many, the incidental risks on which give rise to a vast amount of preventable social unfairness. These pursuits may be spoken of as voluntary; to a certain extent they are, to a still greater they are not. The growing son of the Penn- sylvania miner or of the Gloucester fisherman will be put to the same work as hjs father, because these are the only avenues open to him. f'fhe competition of labor is so great every- where that parents, in city and coimtry alike, push their chil- dren into the first opening, be it store, office or workshoj).' When the only industries are mining or fishing there is prac- tically no choice, and the adaptability of youth fitting itself to circumstances continues in the direction of the given im- petus. So, theoretically, the risks are voluntarily assumed, and as there must be men to incur them, it should be a i)ara- mount duty to reduce the hazard, and when that has been done, and the apparently inevitable yet occurs, a systematic 88 HAZARDOUS OCCUPATIONS. alleviation of the suffering consequent thereon, ought to take the place of the present uncertain and spasmodic efforts for relief. If, as one would suppose, tlie compensation for the risk was in proportion to the danger, the two might counter- balance; yet such is far from being the case. The ordinary- pay of miners in Indiana is only $1.49 per diem; in Mary- land ^1.62; Missouri $1.58; Ohio lii.75, and Pennsylvania jgi.po; or less than craftsmen in any ordinary occupation receive, and even this is in many instances greatly reduced by various devices of the truck system. The payment of deep water sailors is notoriously small, and the earnings of coasters and fishermen can only be classed as a grade above that of unskilled labor ashore. During the ten years ending 1880 the annual average of accidental deaths from all causes, among the coal miners of Great Britain, was 1135. In 1881 there was one miner killed for every 170,000 tons of coal raised. A tax of 1-16 of a penny per ton on the output would have created a fund avail- able for the payment of about ;^44 to the bereaved family, and ^ of a penny would have been sufficient to provide a relief payment for a term of years. In 1879 ^^^^ number of deaths from drowning in the British mercantile marine was 2001, out of 193,000 seamen em- ployed.* The total from all causes was nineteen per thousand, or nearly double that of the corresponding rate for age in England. A very small percentage on the net value of im- ports and exports, or an infinitesimal tax on the tonnage car- ried, would have established a provision for dependents. Within the last fifteen years over 1200 Gloucester fishermen have lost their lives on the fishing banksjf leaving an amount of suffering and destitution behind that must have been doubly appalling from the limited community on which the disasters fell. Can that be called a triumph of civilization * Mulhall's " Dictionary of Statistics. " f In the winter of 1871, 140 were drownerl ; in 1873, ^74J ^" ^875, 123; in 1876, 212; in 1879, 249; and in 1882, 102. ACCIDENT RELIEF ASSOCIATIONS. 89 which permits these widowed and fatherless to struggle along as best they may, year after year adding to tlic death-roll and intensifying the distress, while commerce goes on with its wealth-getting utterly unmindful of them ? Is there not some remedy for a system which allows the owners of large un- earned income to pass their days in the unremitting pursuit of idle pleasure, while the bravest and hardiest toilers, who leave their bones to whiten on the drifting sands, have the added agony of knowing in the last supreme moment that the wife and little ones in the cottage at home are thenceforth penni- less? If the life-loss in hazardous pursuits is utterly beyond pre- vention, the consequences are still remediable. The ease with which state legislation could make compulsory provision for support in case of sickness is exemplified by Germany, where every j^erson who works for wages or salary is compelled to insure. Such a law in the United States would remove ** many of the terrors which encompass the life of a laboring man," and while it would be very desirable that a large por- tion of the premium should come from the insured, a probate tax would afford a ready means of making up the deficiency and of increasing the insurance, or failing that, the suggestion made in a succeeding page is worthy of consideration.* Relief associations have existed among the German miners for centuries. The employer and the miner each contribute one-half. Sick relief, medicine, medical aid and funeral ex- penses, or in case of permanent disability, an annuity, are paid out of these funds. Orphan and invalid asylums, hospitals, schools, etc., are also built, and support granted to widows and other dependents. The imperial law of Germany, passed June 15, 1883, makes insurance by all people who work for wages or salary compulsory. The premium must not, under ordinary circumstances, exceed i^ per cent, of the daily local wages, but under the stress of excessive sickness it may be raised to 2 percent. The benefits are: medical attend- * See page 91. 90 CORrORATE RELIEF SOCIETIES. ance, medicine, and one-half of usual wages, dating from the third day of disability and continuing for thirteen weeks, which ia some cases may be extended to three-fourths wages for one year. Employers are responsible for the collection of the premiums, and must themselves add to it one-third. In 1884 this measure was followed by further compulsory legis- lation for cases of accident, its special object being to take up the support of the injured workman in dangerous occu- pations ONLY at the fourteenth week, when the obligation of the first fund ends, and provide for continuous support during a term of years, if necessary, or if death should ensue, for the family. In the latter event the widow receives 20 per cent. of her husband's annual earnings, and each child an addi- tional 15 per cent., until fifteen years of age. Parents or grandparents who were supported by the deceased are also entitled to 20 per cent. The railroad system of Austria-Hungary has provided, since 1862, for pensioning the incapacitated, and for sick relief; and the general insurance of workmen has been made obliga- tory in Switzerland. In England, the principle of accident insurance has been applied by voluntary assessment in most of the mining districts; the Northumberland and Durham Miners' Permanent Relief Fund having a membership of nearly 1,000,000. All the large railroad companies have also made it obligatory on their employes to join the insurance societies attached to their respective lines; and in the United States, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company has had a similar institution in operation with very successful results since May, 1880; the directors munificently contributing ^100,000 from the corporate funds as a nucleus for the organization. While the trade-unions of the United States and Great Britain thus partly supply the legislative omissions of both nations, by taking upon -themselves the duty of insuring their members against sickness, they make little or no provision for [ the support of the family after death. It is true that other associations occupy this sphere, and to a large extent mitigate the pecuniary distress that follows the death of the head of a EMPLOYERS* LIABILITIES. 91 household, yet there is need of some legislation that will make the community at large partly liable for the insurance risk in hazardous avocations, and enforce insurance on others as in Germany. It might even be a question for consideration, whether some portion of the surplus national revenue could be better applied than to a system of universal insurance, cither by augmenting the value of the policy, or reducing the annual premium. In a more advanced society, this will cer- tainly be one of the functions of the state, and it would be difficult to propose a measure having greater promise of gen- eral good, at a smaller cost. Closely connected with the subject of accidents and insur- ance, is that of the employer's liability to his work-people for death or injuries resulting from the negligence of a co-employ6. After a conflict extending over many years, the English work- man in 1880 secured the passage of the well-known ** Em- ployer's Liability Act," the gist of which is that the employer is made legally responsible for personal injuries caused to his men by the neglect of sub-contractors* agents or fellow-work- men ; the pecuniary liability being limited to a total not ex- ceeding the average wages of the injured for three years. iThe inception of this obligation is found in the Mosaic law, \ ("Wlien thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make a I ■ battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thine 1 ( hou se, if any man fall from thence." * ^ lilxcepting in some eight or ten of the states and territo- ries,f no legislation on this important matter has yet found a place on our codes, and in the ones referred to it is only ap- plicable to railroad companies, so that the large number of workmen who are maimed every year from the carelessness of fellow-employes, without any contributory negligence of their own, and the families of those who are killed from the same cause, have no redress whatever. A faultily built scaflbld may * Deuteronomy. 22 : 8. t Among these si.aies and territories are, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, Missis* sipi i, Kliude Inland, Montana, and Wyoming. f 92 GOVERNMENTAL REMEDIES. fall and injure for life half a dozen bricklayers working on it, yet no suit for damage can be maintained, however negli- gent the carpenter who erected it, because he and the brick- layers were fellow-workmen. An incompetent engineer may kill or maim several factory operatives, but unless notoriously unqualified there is no compensation, because both parties were paid by the same master.* The anomaly and one-sided- ness of this rule of common law may be seen from the fact that if a third person is injured, no doubt exists as to liability. The legislation of the United States ought not to lag behind that of other nations in affording all the protection that can be given to the bread-winners. It should rather set the ex- ample than follow ; and above all things take care that the scale of justice does not, as in this case, incline toward capital and against labor. A national negligence that principally affects the working classes must also be designated a national inequality. Of this nature is the absence of any general provision for small sav- ings, and the cultivation thereby of provident habits^ This country is not altogether free from that superciliousness which is generally ascribed to those foreigners who write about its affairs, and notwithstanding its advanced governmental type, something can yet be learned from Great Britain and Germany, especially as to the Postal Savings Bank system of the one, and the insurance laws of the other. It is not hard for a man to save who can make a first deposit of fifty or one hundred dollars. There are plenty of institutions willing to take charge of his money. But when economy can only get to- gether as many cents, it becomes difficult to find a proper keeper for them. One of the formulated demands of the labor unions relates to this want, and surely it would not be a very onerous duty for Congress to pattern a law after the English original that would meet the requirement. The na- tion would welcome such a desirable bill to its statute book. * These are statements of law made in a broad sense. — Ed. GOVERNMKNTAL REMEDIES. 98 The success of the English postal-thrift system* has resulted in its adoption by most of the colonies, including the West Indies, and by Austria, Belgium, Finland, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Sweden, and Japan ; by the civilized world in fact, excepting the United States. A progressive nation in the Orient enables its poor to do what this government refuses, and the negroes in the West Indies are offered an incentive to prudence that our legislators will not allow. It is strange that self-help is not considered as worthy of encouragement here as elsewhere, but that such is the case is apparent from the listlessness with which the subject is regarded, and until one or other of the political parties adopts the proposal as a party measure it is evidently useless to expect a more active interest. ^ Although the possession of earned and a certain proportion of inherited wealth is not in itself an unfairness, if the owner uses it in such a way as to increase or intensify the social dis- advantages of others, it may easily become so. Under this rule is the withholding of large tracts of land from settle- ment, any monopoly by which the necessaries of life are made dearer, or their distribution prohibited except on payment of excessive toll, and even in some cases the taking -advantage of a redundance of labor to reduce wages below the workers* just earningsj: The hedger mentioned in the last chapter, who was paid only 2S. a week for his labor, was robbed of five-sixths of his toil, and if a capitalist or an association of capitalists make an exorbitant profit out of the laborer's necessity for work ; if they avail themselves of the fact that * In England the postal savings bank enables the people to save as small a sum as one |>enny at a time. Blanks are furnished free of charge at any post-office, with spaces for twelve stnmps, and this, when filled, is taken as a shilling deposit, interest being allowed at the rate of 2^ per cent, on all sums of £\ and its multiples. Not more than £y) must be deposited in any one year, nor more than ;^I50 in all, and when that sum with compound interest reaches j^200, interest ceases. There are now about 8000 postal savings offices open in the United Kingdom, and their utility may be gauged f^iom the fact that 40 per cent, of all depositors commence with one shilling. f " Rob not the poor, because he is poor." — Proverbs 22 : 22. ^jnis crying stomach, Ainshod feet, and helpless family compel GOVERNMENTAL REMEDIES. him to sell his labor at once, for anything that is offered, it constitutes one of the worst cases of moral unfairness that can be adducedjj The subject of land monopoly is already within the realm of practical politics, and the regulation of transportation charges has passed the experimental stage, but the grievance of under-payment, by concerted or even individual^tion, is one that it is impossible to reach by enactment. \Such an injustice is rarely attempted with skilled labor, because its place cannot readily be filled ; but, unfortunately, the plenti- fulness of unskilled labor is to the capitalist as water to those who live on the banks of a river, and, pitiless as the fiat may seem, there is no natural obligation either on the part of the state or the wealthy individuaLto hire labor at all, much more at a price fixed by its ownen^^^iere is a remedy for this as for many other evils, though it is one not subject to the be- hest of statutes or strikers, and can only be made effective by a slow and painful process, analogous to the conversion of a bar of iron into its higher products. Slit-iron for nails is lo per cent, more valuable than bar-iron, and horse-shoes are worth one and alialf times more than the un wrought commodity. Labor must convert its rough possibilities into higher effectives, and then it will no longer be a stream from which aTr~can-draw at will, but a well-guarded reservoir which those who use must pay for in fair value. Legislation cannot com- pel men to higher effort, but it can surround them with inducements to make the attempt. Legislation cannot com- pel employers to pay a fixed wage, be the necessity of the worker ever so great, but the laborer can by combination demand that his living cost be added to the selling price of the product. Human laws can rarely compel men to be just, but he who would foll-ow the great commandment will en- deavor to carry out the obligation of his brotherhood, and though there are five seekers for each day's work to be done, will yet remember the Master's saying that ^Uhe_ laborer is worthy of his hire.'/ EXAMPLE OF niRMIXGIIAM. 95 In the foregoing suggestions of social-industrial inequalities for which there are remedies, it has been intended to imply that the state must be the chief agent for their removal. What may be done by delegated municipal powers is shown by Mr. John Macdonald, in an article tliat appeared on Bir- mingliam,* "a city wherein the s[)irit of the new times is most widely, variously, and energetically assuming visible form and shape." .This English town early took the ground that it was a civic duty to remove unfair obstacles against individual develop^ ment, to inaugurate social activity and popular culture, and to elevate the general condition of its population of workers, not merely by adding to their "saleable knowledge," but by reducing their miseries, studying their needs, and ameliora- ting their lives by every method known to nineteenth century humanism. As Mr. Macdonald remarks, **no subject bearing upon the physical and spiritual welfare of society should be considered beyond the scope of local or national politics. . . . Whatever men in combination can do for the free growth of each individual, for the refinement, the elevation, the beautifying of human life, by art, by literature, by science, by 'recreation,* all that is 'Politics,' and the art of politics, the art of life in society, is the highest and greatest of all arts." The first magnificent experiment of this municipality was the purchase of the gas and water works for $2,000,000, with the immediate result that the price of water was reduced 30 i)er cent., and that of gas very largely, to say nothing of the additional profit of health and comfort gained by this general partnership in daily necessaries. Thousands of fever- haunted habitations were then swept away, 17,500,000 worth of land acquired in the heart of the town, and a line of streets and noble public buildings erected thereon which redeemed Birmingham from its ugliness, and made it archi- tecturally the finest city in the Midlands. One of these * " Birmingham, a Study from the Life." — Nineteenth Century^ Au- gust, 1 886. ci ^y^ ta/vdUJ^(K \i^^d»M.Lv \ "^"lo. 96 EXA.MPLE OF BIRMINGHAM. buildings is a municipal School of Art, giving instruction to 2000 pupils and showing ''that the city cares as much for the culture of her people as for the sweeping of her streets." Near it, in a continuous series, stand the Institute, where practical instruction on every useful subject from music to metallurgy can be had for a penny a lesson ; the Free Library and Museum, and that abiding monument of a noble life, the Mason College. The stimulus to culture resulting from these opportunities has been unprecedented, and instead of being confined to any particular class, or to a ** small minority of exceptionally intelligent men," has included more or less the whole community, directed and encouraged primarily by the municipality, but seconded by the active aid of its most prominent and liberal citizens. As an example of the general thoughtfulness that exists be- tween the corporate officials and the humbler classes, when the question of cheap food for poor children was mooted, the School Board at once co-operated with Mr. France, the founder of the half-penny dinner society, and arranged for the daily delivery of a wholesome meal at the elementary schools, and it is now as regular an institution as the ** cabi- net on wheels which accompanies the science headmaster on his rounds." The public good has always been the first con- sideration of the authorities, and the social characteristics engendered by such an enlightened municipal policy are shown in a homogeneity of sentiment, in the absence of caste, in the free mingling of employer and employed, and in the willing subversion of individual interests for the benefit of all that has made life for a very large number better worth the living. "I have never known a community which, as a whole, seemed to me to be so thoroughly imbued with honest public si)irit, and the true feeling of democracy," writes Mr. Wilson King, the United States consul at Birmingham, in the con- sular reports of 1884. ''Very many of the wealthiest and best educated and highest placed men here join with those of the poorer and humbler classes in working and advising for RESULTS AT BIRMINGHAM. 97 the general good. Private charity has taken many beautiful shapes, and the dingy town has grown far brighter even dur- ing the few years I liave lived here. Hospitals of every kind have been endowed, education in every branch from the low- est to the highest, in art, science, and letters, is possible to every one who cares to have it. Parks have been oi)ened, as well as a noble series of free bathing-houses and free libraries. Cheap concerts are given weekly, at least, in the town hall, and numerous courses of free lectures and other entertain- ments take place in the various board schools." fAll this is the very opposite of laisser-faire. It breathes into the indifference of town life the spirit of brolherhood, and makes every man a true member of society, society caring for the individual, and the individual reciprocating by an active interest and pride in his civic surroundings.*/ If a place of 400,000 inhabitants can do this, why not the state, and with such an example, can there be any excuse for the stupid corruption of our own cities? Or looking at the mat- ter through a reversed glass, if so many people can order their affairs with good will and enlightened sympathy for each other, people who represent every diversity of birth, position, and active pursuits, every variety of political and religious opinions, every grade of poverty and wealth, why cannot a small manufacturing establishment, with a common interest, work in equal harmony for a common good? The answer must be that /'/ can; and the promise is that /"/ a////, when, as there, individual selfishness is supplanted by those higher motives which are as reconcilable with the prosperity of the wealth-seeker as the well-being of the wage-earner, and which are equally consistent with a fair return to the capitalist for his capital, a fair reward to the laborer for his labor, and the greatest good of one and all. There can be no difficulty in separating the duty of the * Two years ago, in the whole of Birmingham there were only twelve cases known of one family living in a single room, while in Glasgow the proportion was 48 per cent, of ihe entire number of families. 7 \fb DUTY OF THE STATE. individual from that of the state in the application of all rea- sonable social correctives. The state, for instance, is the expressed will of the people, and through it and the powers delegated to its* lesser division, society has unanimously de- clared that those who fall injured by the way, the sick, wounded, and helpless in life's battle, must be provided for. To effect that purpose, hospitals, poor-houses, and orphan asylums are founded and supported by the coinmunity. Cold and unpitying as this help usually is, it crudely answers its object, but it does not prevent the warmer, kindlier hand of charity from doing its heaven-blessed task. The one is the field-hospital of an army in action ; the other the single bed of suffering, with pity and womanhood as ministering angels. So it is with any remedies that may be proposed to lessen the unevenness of social life. In matters that concern the vast aggregate of the modern commonwealth, only the many can act through the law. But those to whom wealth and indus- trial authority have been given can supplement its action by the more direct and noticeable examples of the individual, and thus in their respective spheres the state, the city, and the individual can help the general need. Nor do the suggestions so far made involve any radical changes. They are only extensions of principles already incorporated in our statute books, *'an endeavor," as Prince Bismarck told the German Parliament in his memorable speech on the introduction of his "Workman's Insurance Bill," "to reach a state of things in which no man can say, *I bear the burden of society, but no one cares for me.' " The duty of educating and providing for the moral well- being of both child and adult is maintained by the laws of every civilized nation. The duty of relieving those who are injured in the service of the state is especially affirmed by our pension lists. To widen the acknowledgment by its appli- cation to those who take special industrial hazardsjs a single progressive step, i The supposed inlierent rights of property are subject to constant legal encroachment. The people who of all others are most conservative of its privileges have. / DUTY OF THE STATE. 99 within the last ten years, declared that the owner in Ireland must take only such rent as the tenant can afford to i)ay. Our fiscal laws seize property remorselessly if it attempts any revenue evasions, and the leaders of economic thought are almost unanimous in their declaration that a limitation of inlieritance is one of the reserved powers of the state. All these propositions are looming on the morrow of civilized life as the tangible features of the new society. We view them to-day as shadows; but if, as there is little doubt, society is yet in its youth, the manhood of government will find them incorporated as realities and, like Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights, a fundamental part of institutions. /The fact that a careful examination of the social machine shows such few instances of unequal pressure in its working details, demonstrates that the world is on the right line of ad- vancementJ As Lord Macaulay says, in a striking passage in the "HisTCry of England ; " ♦* the more carefully we examine the history of the past, the more reason shall we find to dis- sent from those who imagine that our age has been fruitful of new social evils. The truth is that the evils are, with scarcely an exception, old. That which is new is the intelligence which discerns and the humanity which remedies them." Yet there will always be pessimists to think otherwise ; men who are continually crying " woe," " woe," who see in every innovation the destruction of the social fabric, who look upon the ancient times of ignorance and inhumanity as golden days, and view every attempt to remove present wrongs as ineffec- tual, and wasted endeavor. Unfairnesses in plenty there still are, but men are not ground down by oppression. We live in no era of the French Revo- lution. No classes, in this country or in England, rise above the law. There are no rights of seigniorage. The humblest person in the land is as secure in his life, liberty, and prop- erty as the highest. There is no discriminating taxation. The state is yearly extending the scope of its obligations. The press has a million eyes to notice, and a million tongues to denounce, any shadow of oppression. Public opinion is 100 DUTY OF THE STATE. irresistibly on the side of justice. Sympathy for labor, pov- erty, and misfortune hovers everywhere and only wants direc- tion to crystallize into a mighty effort. The century is im- pregnated with the divine virtues of love and charity; the vital principles of Christianity have at length leavened the lump, and to the growth of these principles, actively in the individual, and administratively in the state, we may look with confidence for a continual amelioration of unfair social con- ditions, risks, and inequalities, and for a closer bond of unity *' in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free." *' For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this ; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thysel f." j CHAPTER V. THE ETHICS OF OWNERSHIP. " He that despiseth the gain of oppressions . . . bread shall be given him, his waters shall be sure." — Isaiah 33 : 15, 16. " Heahh, beauty, vigor, riches, and all the other things called goods, o|>erate equally as evils to the vicious and unjust as they do as benehts to the just." — Plato. There is no portion of man*s duty more clearly defined in the Bible than that which pertains to/the ethics of ownership, and the bearing of the rich towards the poot, in every t^w—i cumstance and relation of their daily intercourse. The books of both the Old and New Testament are full of passages on this subject, but their spirit may perhaps be best summed up in those two* containing the advice of David, ** If riches in- crease, set not your heart upon theniy' and Paul's instruction to Timothy: ** Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy; that they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to dis- tribute, willing to communicate ; laying up in store for them- selves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life." Jrhese injunctions are in accord with the constant teachings of Christ and his apostles, who everywhere denounce the accumulation of wealth for its own sake, enjoin the obligation of sharing it with the poor, and inculcate by parable and warning the folly of depending upon riches for favor in God's judgment. Worldly possessions are always spoken of by them ♦ Psalms 62 : 10. i Timothy 6 : 17-19. (101) 102 TlffF .piK&F -A^'D WEALTH. as in the nature of a stewardshipJan additional responsibility, for the good or evil use of wWch the owner will be held to strict account, and the laying up of great treasures, the add- ing of house to house, and barn to barn, that the possessor may enjoy himself, without regard to others, is invariably re- ferred to as a sin. Even the selling of everything for the benefit of the needy is commended, as if to show how little worth is any temporary ownership, compared with the eternal gifts to which we are heirs through Christ; " for what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? " "The early" communism *' of the Apostles," Mr. Brace says,* ** is an evidence how deeply these instructions pene- trated ; but nothing in the words of Christ or his disciples show that they set forth this as a model for the future. Their great principles were, not to hunger for riches, to be content with moderate means, and if wealth came, to hold it rigidly as a trust for the good of humanity." Those who were blessed with increase were to recognize the obligation of their prosperity, and employ it to the advantage of the less fortu- nate, just as they were expected to use any other gift or nat- ural attainment for the general good. To fulfil the law of Christ was to bear one another's burdens (for as expressed by Paul in a sentence that contains a profound exposition of sociology, *' whether one member suffer all the members suffer with it"), and it is the spirit of the go?pel that in no better way could those burdens be borne than by sharing, with the needy and unfortunate, his dispensations of abun- dance. The ethics of Christianity have always found a swifter acceptance among the poor than among the rich. Reversing the process of political liberty, which penetrated gradually from the upper to the lower strata, its influence commenced at the base and worked upward. Those born to position and fortune have therefore been much slower in acknowledging * "Gesta Christi," page 96. MISSION OF WEALTH. ^ its sway than any other portion of the community, though it is daily becoming apparent tliat the principles of the gospel in regard to possessions have recently received a wider and readier recognition than at any previous time. \Men are be- ginning to understand that they are kin, that humanity knows neither creed, color, nor coat, tiiat it is more blessed to give than to receive ; and it is to a further and fuller ap[)rehension of these truths that the education of those who are intrusted with ownership must be direct ed.^ One of the offices of Christianity is to teach wealth its purpose, and as by it labor has been raised from unspeakable depths, and ennobled, so in the coming time the owners of the industrial harvest will be led to acknowledge with greater readiness than now that they are only custodians of whom **much will be required." pTliere is a higher school for the wealthy than the university, and more valuable lessons can be acquired from the study of the conglomerate life of a city than from shelves full of text- books. If the poor and uneducated are to derive benefit from written knowledge, wealth must round its instruction by con- tact with the worker, and yet more than this by learning the fulness of its missionj A cold compliance with the letter of the contract made with labor is not the acquittance that Christianity demands. The payment of wages on Saturday does not absolve the payer from his week's obligation. Above and beyond is a great stewardship of which none can divest themselves if they would ; for opulence in whatever form carries with it, as our Lord in effect declares, a greater responsibility than any other trust given to man. (Wealth is not self-creative. To acquire it some one h:is toiled, so that it is concentrated labor; to retain it some one has exercised self-denial, for it is the accumulation of savings. Every dollar represents, in the first instance, hours of hard work, sweat on the brow, tired muscles, a portion of some one's life given to its production, in the shop, in the mine, on the sea, wherever men barter and exchange what they have to offer, for their daily needs. It has to be won in the begin- ning by somebody from nature's strongholds. The crude 104 WEALTH BEGUN IN LABOR. material must be dug from the ground, or felled in the forest, or dragged from the sea. Then it has to be wrought into a desirable form for use, and every stage of the trans- mutation is a process of bodily exertion and skill. The present owner may have come by his possessions easily, but the first cost is always in the aggregate the same,* so that every unit on the assessment-roll of every state in the Union (excepting the unearned increment on land) is in truth the accumulated result of so many days' labor performed by laborers all over the world, ^ under tropic suns and arctic .snows, on river, plain, mountain, lake and ocean, Here or elsewhere, (^he man who possesses one hundred dollars con- sequently retains the gross results of some one's labor for about one hundred days, and has at his disposition so much stored energy, to be used at his will either as a blessing or a curse both to himself and to others. I Tliere is no exaggeration in the popular estimate of the tremendous power attached to large ownership, for as the world at present exists, wealth is the most irresistible force that the mass of mankind acknowledge. It moves senates to enact laws favorable for further acquisition, and controls the voice of the people; without it the engines of war are but lifeless monsters, and the brute momentum of armies and navies useless. Wealth wills, and the spoils of the earth are brought to its door; wealth desires, and the tongue of the orator, the pen of the author, the service of genius are at its bidding It can undertake *' enterprises of great pith and moment," or let them languish; it can start into activity the huge workshop, or draw the fires that furnish bread for a thousand men ; it can distil happiness and comfort, or embit- ter the lot of labor as with gall and wormwood; and it does these things so constantly, and has done them for so long, that they are conceded to be as much the natural attributes and inherencies of possessions as value to the gold which represents them.t * Even gold and silver mining tire in tTieir total unprofitable. It is estimated that every dollar's worth of precious metals taken out of the ground since 1850 has cost ^1.20. WEALTH AND SELFISHNESS. 105 As certain physical processes are best studied in vacuo^ sa the most striking exemplifications of the power of money are to be found in the effects resulting from its need. For lack of a small portion of the command it confers, to-day, since the rise of sun, some poor creature has sought the waters of eartlily oblivion, others have steeped their souls in deadly crime, and hundreds tarnished tlie brightness of their honor. Since the first gleam of this morning's light, for want of a trifling part of that which others have in superabundance, children have been dying in squalid hunger, women wring- ing their hearts in unutterable anguish, and men execrating themselves and their Maker. PMurder, suicide, starvation, crime of every dye, barter ot purity, debasement of con- science, tears, recklessness of evil, silent despair, everything ^ that can rack the soul and body, have somewhere, since"*^ ^jj dawn, been the portion of creatures like ourselves, children <| of our God, brothers of our Christ, heirs of salvation and / I eternity, because they had not the merest trifle of that storage •which they could see in a thousand tempting shapes on every side, but dare not touch except as criminals. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Saviour, knowing all, should have so often spoken words of solemn warning against the misuse of the strongest and most wide-reaching power that authority over material things has conferred on mankind. From the beginning to the end of his ministry there runs through his teachings the same grave tone of thought, advice, commendation and reproof in reference to the ppssession of riches, as if he had an ever present con- sciousness that in this matter, more than in any other, men but faintly saw the light, and so at all times and occasions it is presented to them, and apparently in and out of season they are bid to beware of the special temptations of wealth and the incrustation of selfishness. Apart from the divine character of Christ's teachings on this subject, they form at once the first, the final, the most perfect and unsurpassable moral code on the ethics of owner- ship that can be found in all literature. The collective 106 ETHICS OF OWNERSHIP. morality of the Grecian classics, wise in many things, is almost silent here. Theocritus does indeed say that wealth should be partly employed in benefiting one's kinsmen and others, but it is more in the spirit of good fellowship than from any moral convictions. Sophocles likevvise commends the ''glorious task of doing good," but with these exceptions and that of Aristotle, who in his practical advice for the gov- ernment of a democracy lays down the rule that it is "worthy of a sensible and generous nobility to divide the poor among them, and to induce them to work by supplying what is neces- sary," or failing this to permit the poor **to partake in com- mon of everything which is needful for them ; " active benevo- lence is ignored. There is no recognition of the obligation of property except as expressed through the bond of citizen- ship and the state, and apparently no consciousness that such an obh'gation existed. The Hellenic virtue was abstract, or bounded by political institutions and the family. It could scan the horizon with a penetrating eye, and also see what ought to be done close at hand, within the home; but the great middle-ground between tlie two was a blank. There are also splendid sentiments replete with ideas of justice scattered through Roman literature, but their applica- tion is seldom concrete. They are suggested platitudes rather than inspirations, and have more the air of moral musings than lessons intended to be taught and learned. They lack life, personality, the warmth of humanity, and read more like beautiful words put together than noble inspirations welling from the conviction of a full heart. In his work on " Manual Training" * Mr. Ham has occa- sion to remark on the shallow humanitarian ism of Roman philosophy at the commencement of the empire: ''Seneca's moral precepts are sublime, but his political maxims are atro- cious. Witness the pretence of an all-embracing love for man — * whenever thou seest a fellow-creature in distress know that thou seest a human being.' Contrast with this exalted * Page 268, et seq. CHRISTIAN TEACHINGS ON OWNERSHIP. 107 sentiment of the great stoic his political maxim, 'terror is the safeguard of a kingdom,* and reflect that he lived under the reigns of Claudius and Nero. The millions of slaves in the Roman dominions were * human beings,' but Seneca had no practical regard for them as 'fellow-creatures in distress.' His beautiful humanitarian sentiment was a barren ideality; it bore no fruit, but his brutal political maxim caused him to thrive." There is nothing indeed in the most refined aphorisms of the ancient classics that can for a moment be compared with the earnest simplicity of the gospel, and wherever reference is made in either to the duty of man towards his fellows, com- parison becomes an impossibility. They had no influence on their age, they touched no responsive chord, they woke no sleeping desires for good ; they were soulless sayings falling on deaf ears and dying as they fell. But the words of Jesus had the breath of eternity. Dropped here and there, appa- rently at random, from the mountain top, in the corn-field, and by the seaside, among Jewish peasants, publicans, and fishermen, there has sprung from them all that the world now holds high and holy, all that is noble and spiritual, all tliat transforms man from an intelligent animal into a being little lower than the angels, all that fits him for life here and here- after. As a writer who has himself tested the power of Chris- tianity to diminish poverty, crime, and misery, eloquently says,* ** With Christianity began the organized and individual charity of modern Europe, which for these eighteen centuries has wiped away so many tears, softened so much suffering, saved so many young lives from misery and sin, ministered at so many death-beds, made the solitary evening of life sweet to so many forsaken ones, and the morning glad to so many who would have been born to sorrow and shame ; which in so many countries has cared for the sick, the blind, the deaf, the crippled, the outcast, and the tempted ; the young, the orphan, the foundling, and the aged." And such in truth * " Gesta Christi," page loi. 108: APPLICABILITY OF DIVINE RULES. have been the fruits of the few recorded words of Jesus, so few in number that they scarce fill fifty of these pages, while the volumes that owe their existence to the stoics and rhetori- cians, the epicureans and philosophers, shining as they do with an intellectual light that has shed a far-off brilliancy, are so paled by his effulgence that even "the marvellous brightness of Plato and Socrates grows dim, the eloquence of Cicero and Demosthenes obscure, and the inspiring lines of Homer, the stately sonnets of Virgil, and the wise exhortations of Seneca, finite conceptions, tainted with the grossness, passion, and littleness of sinful natures. It is frequently urged, though not so often as formerly, that the divine rules for the governing of men's actions are inap- plicable to the ordinary business of life; that any one who comported his affairs, his factory, his store, or his professional career by them would certainly fail of material success, and admitting them to be highly good, that they are nevertheless v ery impracticable. \ If this is true, if they are too altruistic, too refined for the gross atmosphere of a material world ; if to do justice, to help the poor, to pay fair wages, to educate the laborer, to encour- age him in thrift and see that he is housed as a human being should be; if to assist by these and every other means of sympathy and mercy in ameliorating the lot of the worker, is incompatible with personal interests, it is an objection to them in a limited sense, and it would have to be conceded that he who would do these things must sacrifice all else ex- cept spiritual benefits. But if, on the contrary, every man's inteiests and duties are in harmony with those of every other man's, then instead of being as stated, they become the most profitable basis for human action, the surest and strongest foundation on which even commercial effort can be built, and as axiomatic as the moral code embodied in the ten command- ments. \ Leaving* moral and Christian obligations aside, and taking only the visible and solid ground of economic considerations, does it not, in the language of the street, " pay" to be a fair VALUE OP EQUITY. 109 master, to refrain from cutting down wages to their lowest notcli, to take an active interest in the workman, and to re- turn him something more than the agreed price for his labor, by api)ortioning part of the profit on it to his personal or community benefit? Is there not in fact "a distinct eco- nomic value attached to the practice of equity equal to its moral value ?" It is incontrovertible that those communities — large or small — are always the most tranquil, prosperous, and contented where capital recognizes its duties, and looks upon industrial establishments as other than machines for extracting the utmost amount of profit out of labor. CThe experience of ages proves that it pays the state to be just and humane.* Does it not also pay the corporation and individual employer? Unfair social conditions was one of the chief causes of the fall of the Roman empire. The cataclysm that culminated in the Reign of Terror was a result of a long continued disregard of they commonest duties of property. The strikes, riots, and labor troubles that afflict modern society, are attended by a loss of profit that a more conciliatory policy might obviate, and it is apparent that in most disputes the largest ultimate gain could have been attained by mutual concessions, or better still by such a recognition of mutual obligation in the first instance as would have removed all cause for irritation. Would it not therefore as a mere factor in profit and loss be wise to look upon [the acquirement of wealth "as power to be employed under the general law of love," instead of absolute person- alty,'in the further use of which no one but the owner has any interest ? In a paper read thirty years ago before the English Social Congress by a very large employer of labor,f its author said : ** I am fully convinced by the experiments I have made and their uniform success, that it is possible to make the people feel that their own and their employers' interests are identi- * " And the work of righteousness shall be peace ; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance for ever." — Isaiah 32 : 17. t Edward Akroyd, M. P. 110 VALUE OF EQUITY. cal, provided the latter, who may be considered the stewards under God of the commercial wealth of the nation, will acquit themselves of their responsibilities towards those who, unfler the ordei of Providence, are intrusted to their care." These views were much rarer a generation ago than now, but the ideas then promulgated have since been acted on by many, even to the details by which they were carried out. The interesting consular reports of 1884, on '' Labor in Foreign Countries," are full of such instances, all of which bear striking and unanimous testimony to the fact that the interest of the employer in his work-people is a paying in- terest, and that, where it prevails, the happiest relations exist ; to the manifest advantage of both. It is impossible of course to say what the difference in actual percentage of profit is in any given case ; but it is not an unfair inference to conclude that when the existing stability enables a firm to have simple i"egulations, an adherence to which will entitle an employe to a pension after twenty-five years service, the continuous average returns on the capital must be satisfactory, and numer- ous cases of this kind are mentioned in the papers referred to. It was said on the death of a great captain of industry that his more conspicuous gifts were* *'but the peaks, high eleva- tions, bearing but a small proportion to the whole mountain mass." So are the instances that occur to all whenever men- tion is made of those who have found worldly advantage in accepting their gain as a trust. They are signal landmarks whose transfigured summits are seen afar, while obscured by their shadow, yet governed no less by the influence that issued from the life of Christ is the ** mountain mass." The men unknown outside the village or town, whose thought is for the good of their fellows, whose office it is to combine the parental authority of love with that of the paymaster, and whose rule is honored by their workmen as a rule of justice. Like the little hills unmarked on the maps they are to be found everywhere, and their very number makes them name- less. * Funeral sermon on Sir Titus Salt. RIGHT USES OF WEALTH. Ill Saltaire, the Cooper Union, the Peabody Buildings, the Astor Library, Mason's Orphanage and College show some of the right uses of wealth when collected in bulk, not neces- sarily in the manner of giving, but in its spirit, ahd are justi- fications of great stewardships that will speak to coming generations in that universal language of friendship and com- passion which requires no interpreter but the soul. The men who made these names familiar in all lands "discovered that wealth-making is but a part of commercial and professional success," and that by the expression of (Christian sympathy in Christian deeds they were erecting a buttress for their own prosperity. They demonstrated that there is no incompati- bility between making and giving, that it is possible to become rich in material possessions and yet distribute, and that casting bread in this way upon the waters is as seed sown for increase. The monarch in purple, the merchant whose vessels are known on every sea, the lord of industry whose factories give bread to thousands, alike with the helpless cripple, the ped- ler whose stock can be borne on a tray, or the man whose art of earning is to carry bricks, are only short-timed guests in one of God's many worlds. Ifwe abuse his great hospitality by greed and selfishness, or wildly regretting that we cannot take away what he has lent, misuse his trust, or bestow it without caring for the needs of the humble ones whom he equally regards, how can we hope that when the gates unclose to the palaces on high that he will bid us enter and ])artake again ? The loving Father who has stored rain in the clouds, sun-heat in the coal, and a cake of bread in a kernel of wheat, that in due season they may be distributed, chooses his stew- ards with like purpose, and as they are faithful to their charge, so we may believe will be their reward. " But whoso hath the world's goods, and beholdeth his brother in need, and shutteth up his compassion from him, how doth the love of God abide in him?"* • ■ * I John 3:17, revised version. 112 LABOR KOT A COMMODITY. I One of the commonest mistakes of capital is to assume ^ that labor is a commodity to be purchased at the lowest mar- ket-rate like any other article, and, whenever possible, cheap- ened. This would be correct if the labor could be dissociated from the laborer. But in pursuits that are so mechanical as to be almost automatic, and in the commonest drudgery of toil, the man has to be considered as well as his hired muscles and time, and he cannot be reduced to the level of mechan- ism, be his work ever so mechanical, without a resulting injury to himself, to his -Employer and to society. As Mr. \ Hume told the House of Commons fifty years ago, "low wages tend to degrade the laborer," and it is easy to see that degradation of labor is insecurity for capital. There are two ways of treating men in the matter of wages ; the first is to pay them as little as they will take, the second as much as the profit on their labor will afford. ^ The one is the parent of anarchy, communism, smouldering rebellion, hatred, strikes and discontent. It robs the worker of his share in the glory of living and makes the world a prison. It is the breeder of crime and pestilence, the recruiting ser- geant for the penitentiary and the poorhouse, the foe of self- respect in men and chastity in women. It peoples the streets at night with the bedizened victims of its wrongs, and tempts them to go forth from garret and cellar, to shame. It turns the mold in the potter's field day after day for those whom it has killed by privation, and rejoices in squalor and intemper- ance as in a friend. Virtue, manhood, society, religion have no deadlier foes than those who '* oppress the hireling in his wages." ''No man," says President Chadbourne, "and corpora- tions must be held to the same accountability as men — no man has a right to carry on a business that destroys manhood, that destroys the conditions of manhood, or to permanently employ one who fails to act on the principles of manhood." And no man has a right to pay such low wages, if his products- Will afford better, that the worker can scarce keep aflame his own life or that of wife and child. It is a matter that con- UNJUST WAGES. 118 cerns others besides the payer and receiver, for the avaricious employer punishes society that he may make wealth fast, and in the uprcaring of his unrighteous prosperity casts on the community the task of undoing his mischiefs, repairing his omissions, and overcoming their evil efiects. In his pursuit of riches he leaves behind a trail of discontent and conscious injustice; his progress is marked by the disaffection of his workers, and as a " hard master " he does more to set class against class, disturb religion, and injure the well-being of his neighbors than many who overtly offend against the law. For he puts his trust in oppression and builds his pyramid like the Pharaohs from the half-requited toil of labor. The second method is theantipode of all this. It promotes national pride, manhood, contentment and religion, estab- lishes the home, encourages aspiration, temperance and thrift, represses crime and impurity, produces citizens whose citizen- ship is the pride of the state, and is in accordance not only with the teachings of the Bible, but with those most advanced principles of social econoipy which now recognize that well- paid la')or is the cheajiest.^'J* Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal," and "the husbandman that laboreth must be the first to partake of the fruit$,^ alone comprise a more practical exposition of the economics to which society must ultimately adjust itself, than half the books pertaining to labor and capital that have been or are likely to be written. They mean plainly that the joint creator of wealth must be paid first and be paid fairly, and that only after this has been done must capital take its increase. iThey mean, man first and money afterwards, and it will be found that this law of God is also the best law for industrial society and that duty runs in the same current with interest J If all employers were to pay no more than wouldJ furnish a bare subsistence, there would be little money to spend except for the cheapest articles of food and clothing, and two-thirds of the manufactories would have to close, while, on the con- trary^ the more equitably the products of labor are distributed by just payment, the more money will there be in the hands 8 114 EFFECT OF UNJUST WAGES. of the wage classes with which to purchase articles of manu- facture.! Thus, if the laborer who earns $9.00 per week is paid Jig. 00, and spends the addition rightly, the maker of some useful thing will have been benefited therefrom, and in a city of 10,000 wage-earners the general increase in business prosperity at the end of a month would be so marked as favor- ably to affect the profits of every one in the community. If other manufacturers in other towns did the same, the reversion of profit from the enlarged volume of business would probably nearly offset the extra payment, leaving the gain from added efficiency to make up a full compensation. The employer may ask: *'If I pay 10 percent, more to my clerks and shopmen, and to the fifty girls who run my sewing machines, will not competition undersell me?" Ex- perience replies: "No, you will get 25 per cent, better service, your clerks will be more careful of your property, sell more goods and work for your interests outside as well as inside the store, while your girls will produce an article so much superior to your rival's that even if the immediate profits are less, increased sales will certainly more than repay the difference." It is admitted as an uncontrovertible fact that in manual labor cheap workmen are unprofitable. Sir Thomas Brassey's ofl-quoted testimony in ''Work and Wages" as to his father's experience on this point was so unanswerable as to be accepted by every writer in England and America, and it was an experience based on the employ- ment of hundreds of thousands of men. Sir Francis Cross- ley, another large employer in the different field of textile manufactures, told his confreres in parliament, long before Sir Thomas Brassey's book was written, that it was a great mistake to suppose that the lowest-priced labor was always the cheap- est, and almost any one who has made the test can confirm it from personal observation. The efficacy of British labor over continental, arises prin- cipally from the fact that it is better paid, and the superiority of ordinary American labor over both comes from its still more liberal compensation, coupled with the higher intelli- LIBERALITY PROFITABLE. 115 gence that springs from universal education. The proposition is also true when reversed(""B5th English and American labor receive greater pay than that of other countries because they are more efficient , but this efficiency has its origin in habits of life which are induced by remuneration, so that each has a beneficial refle xaction oiij hejnherj^ The farmer who expects to do a good day's plowing will see that his horses are in proper condition from food and stabling. What oats are to the animal, wages are to the man. The employer who desires honest service of any kind must offer value for value, and he will then find, as others have done, that in the behests of the gospel there is not only increase of honor, but that the balance will also be on the right side of his ledger. Just liberality is never lost, and cannot be wasted. No one ever heard of a man ruining his business by giving overweight, or of a firm or corporation suffering in purse by doing a little more for its employes than the hiring contract required. Generosity is not confined to capitalists, and its recipient can in a hundred ways return good-will for good- will, consideration for consideration, frequently when least expected. **Ad valorem" has a double meaning. The re- ceiver can give full value as well as the seller and sometimes repay overpayment tenfold. Vriiere is a school of philosophy of which Mr. Herbert Spen- cer is the leader that would almost expunge the words ''social obligation" from the economic code and substitute for them the taking phrase " self-help." They base their premises on a supposed irreconcilable divergence between the duty of help- ing one's self and looking to others for help, much as if a man who had fallen overboard had no right to expect a rope from the busy hand on deck. With level, plumb, and rule they would accord to all a just equilibrium, but if any sway to the right or left, it is at their own peril, and for those who fall society must have no further concern. [ ** Those who have little or nothing," they say, *'are alwa5^ wanting something from others who have managed to acquire and to save," and 116 MUTUAL HELP. they protest against the constant enlargement of state duties as a wrong to the prosperous in the community, for the benefit of the careless and improvident. *' If you cannot take care of yourself, don't ask your neigh- bor to do it," was the answer probably made by the Levite as he passed the man who had fallen among robbers and lay half dead on the road from Jerusalem. /Such a doctrine is the apotheosis of selfishness, and the very opposite of the Christian behest that bids us to look upon the world as one great family.* There are two fallacies in this exposition of social relations. The first is that men are always responsible for their want of success. This would eliminate sickness, accident, and sudden 5eath7 commercial disasters, war, the destructive elements of nature, and all unforeseen contingencies, as a factor in human prosperity, and it would also assume that every person started in life with an exact equality of opportunity. It takes no account of human frailty and little of the individual, but like the ancient Hellenic republics considers only the supposed good of the state, neglecting the fact that the state is but an aggregate of units and that with universal suffrage, as the units are, so the state must be. jAs might be expected from such philosophy its adherents always sing the song of the victor. They tacitly imply that the winners in the struggle for existence are the most worthy and that the losers have been deficient in some virtue, whereas modern life is still very much like the conflict of modern armies, in which the strong, the brave, and sometimes the least exposed are laid low, while the weak, the skulker and the timorous are left to join in the shouts of triumph. At the commencement of a battle no one can tell who will survive, and at the commencement of a decade no one can predict with the slightest certainty who are going to be the successful * " The more Christianity becomes despoiled of doo;mas, the more the ideas of moral and social reform contained in Christ's teachings are brought forward as the chief aim, the more Mr. Herbert Spencer's prin- ciples will be shunned and avoided." — Eviile de Laveleye, Contempo- rary Review, April, 1885. MAN versus STATE. 117 men at its close; for it is as true to-day as when first written tliat the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. The latent possibilities of most people are much higher than their attainments. They are stunted and dwarfed by environment, or repressed by unfavorable conditions, and thus the better part of themselves, unaided by favoring opportu- nity, is either totally confined or expands to but a small por- tion of its capacities. It is these repressions that Christianity, through society, is seeking to remove by exalting the humble and weak to the full altitude of their manhood, and it is this compassion for frailty, misfortune and the repentant wrong- doer, that constitutes the great glory of the Christian religion .\ PThe second fallacy is, that men have no right to look 'to legislative interference for the prevention of removable unfair- nesses, and that the functions of government should be lim- ited to the protection of life, property, and the enforcement of contracts,! though one Spencerian disciple has even declared that the protection of life is beyond the true scope of legisla- tion. Tlie professor of Politj^cal and Social Science in Yale College has written that **The safety of workmen from machinery, the ventilation and sanitary arrangements required by factories, the special precautions of certain processes, the hours of labor of women and children, the schooling of chil- dren, the limits of age for employed children, Sunday work, hours of labor — these and other like matters ought to be con- trolled by the men themselves They ought to protect their own women and children.'"^ This is the very thing they have been trying to do for two thousand years, and now that they have succeeded, within the law, a cry is raised that **The fashion of the times is to run to Government boards, commissions, and inspectors to set right anything that is wrong. "f The i)eople are the state, and if they desire to regu- * " Ayhat Social Classes Owe lo Each Other," by William Graham Sumner, pages 94, 95. t /dit/., page 97. / 118 MAN versus state. late their own safety, the education of their own children, and the protection of their wives and daughters through "govern- ment boards, commissions, and inspectors," who is to forbid? They have been struggling for this power since the days of Egypt, and at last after the blood and battle of ages it is within their grasp. Shall A, B, and C relinquish it because D is not exposed to the danger of machinery, and can afford, perhaps through inherited accumulation, to pay for the educa- tion of his own son ? The function of a government is any- thing that the governed may depute to it for the general good, and is it not better to enact laws of general applicability than to make each shop or union a law unto itself? The lesser motive of worldly wisdom will answer this, even without appeal to charity or equity, and it has been answered on purely economic grounds by the legislation of every enlightened nation, for fifty years past. >The Spencerian philosophy is a direct application of Dar- winism to sociology. In its admiration of strength, it ignores those sentiments that make man something more than a gre- garious animal. The little human flower that comes into existence on impoverished soil must perish because it is no one's duty to tend it. J The sapling exposed to the wind must grow into a crooked tree, because it would be wrong to have a state gardener to tie it to the supporting stick. The feeble in the state must suffer for their weakness and the poor for their poverty. Its unrelenting attitude is, *'If you are not strong enough to live from your present strength you must die, and it is better for the community that you should." Had such a rule always prevailed, the world to-day would yet be a great habitation of slaves. Modernized Neros and Cali- gulas, conforming perhaps somewhat in fashion to the greater polish of "Louis the Well-Beloved," would be its masters, and our civilization as barren of humanity as when imperial Rome governing on these very principles had its murderous hand on the throat of Euro{)e. Christianity says otherwise. Its teachings are, "Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to STATE AID. 119 me.'* Its helping hand is ever extended to raise those who have fallen, to siip[)ort those who stumble, and bear the bur- dens of those who are heavily weighted in the journey. Which of these two opposing theories is going to exercise the better influence on human progress? Shall we give up our state-aided hospitals, orplian asylums and charities, close our schools and colleges, and tell wealth to keep its check-book in its safe because there is no room for its ministry, and that its only legitimate use is to get increase by productive em- ployment ? Or shall we admit that we are bound together so closely that the hurt of one is felt in some way by all, that property has duties differing from labor, and say with Christ, ** Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should daao you, do ye even so to them " ? (The Christian obligation of the wealthy to do all that they can for others, is a commandment that applies with equal force to all ranks in the community, to the laborer as well as to the capitalist.! Yet because the ability of one class is so much greater ilian the other, more is required of them. Wealth is a form of power, and the possessors of it are rightly held amenable for its exercise. Labor is power in another form, and until recently society hedged itself with safeguards against the strength of numbers. Christianity tells both to do their duty to each other, and only emphasizes it&_instruc- tions to the one because of greater responsibility. ' Nor does it in any way impair that dutyof^lf-help on which such stress is laid by the new school of reasoning. Every intelli- gent person will give a qualified assent to Mr. Smiles* propo- sition that "■ the highest patriotism and philanthropy consist not so much in altering laws and modifying institutions, as in helping and stimulating men to elevate and improve them- selves by their own free and independent individual action." * So if the man overboard will not seize the rope when thrown to him he must drown, but if men are constantly falling from the vessel because there are no bulwarrks, we ought to alter * "SelMIelp," page 23. 120 THE TRAMP QUESTION, and modify the ship's construction so as to render that par- ticular form of accident infrequen^. ) jThere is less need to preach the doctrine of self-help than is generally supposed. One of the dowers of youth is ambi- tion, and unless men become hopelessly entangled in diffi- culties, or a prey to destroying vices, it remains a part of their nature long after friends have seen the narrow bounds of their capacities. What the race is most in need of is not self-help but self-renunciation, or if this is too great a demand on or- dinary nature, mutual help. The one is of the man — human, and there will always be plenty of it in this world ; the other is the offspring of the divine, of which there can' never be enough. Many of the heroes of Mr. Smiles' well-known work would probably have come to nothing but for the help- ing hand at a moment when discouragement possessed them, as the author has pointed out,* and there is hardly an hour in any man's life from the cradle to the grave when he can truly say *' I depend alone on mys elf.'/ Idleness and shiftlessness nowhere find any countenance in the Bible. It is as plain spoken on these matters as on all others. t Christianity did not separate thrift and hard work from duty. The Lord of the poor in one of his twofold re- lations was a mechanic ; he selected his disciples from the ranks of toil and as constantly inculcated industry as the com- panion virtues. Even the question of wandering idlers, an evil that attracts so much attention to-day, was answered by the early church with a wisdom we have not yet approached, as maybe seen from that recently discovered compendium of Christian faith, the ** Teachings of the Twelve Apostles." J * " Although much may lie accomplished 4)y means of individual in- dustry and energy ... it must at the same time be acknowledged that the help which is drawn from others in the journey of life is of very great importance. . . . From infancy to old age all are more or less indebted to others for nurture and culture, and the best and strongest are usually found the readiest to acknowledge such help." — '• Self Help," page 45. f See Psalms 101-3 ; Prov. 6 : 6-1 1 ; Prov. 10 : 4, 5 ; Prov. 24 : 30-34; Prov. 26 : 13-16; Eccl. 9 : 10; 2 Thess. 3: 10-15. X " Let every one who cometh be received in the name of the Lord : but then ye shall prove him, and distingui«h the true from the false : for / WEALTH AS LEADER. 121 A great pulpit orator once said that ** if a man employs his prosperity as a garner in which are gathered the seeds of other men's advantages ... he will rob prosperity of its shari)cst danger."* Every selfish use of wealth for inordinate dis- play or startling luxury, every misuse through arrogant power, and every action that shows a cold indifference to the well- being of the masses who toil, as surely increases that danger, come in what shape it may, as the contrary course decreases it and strengthens the tenure. When rank was a law unto itself and superior to all the limitations placed on men of humbler birth, it yet acknowl- edged for the sake of honor a higher obligation to certain noble principles than was demanded of others in the state. The grand motto of ^^ fwblesse oblige ^^ has spurred thousands of sluggish souls to deeds of chivalry, who else would have spent their lives in the pursuit of pleasure. Impelled by it, the place of peril became the coveted one : the deadliest gap in the breach the most desired : the front rank in the forlorn hope a birthright. Once this duty of leadership by right of station was only fealty to a heroic ideal, now it involves the highest trust that God has placed in keeping. (Therefore if no other considerations prevail with wealth, if the words of the Master fall unheeded, if duty and self-denial are terms that shock the modern ear, if the gathering clouds cast no shadowy foreboding, let us again make that old appeal and say, ** if nothing else impels, nobility obliges.^ ye must have prudence. If he who cometh be a wanderer, ye shall help him lo the best of your power: but he shall not abide with you lonjjer than two or three days, and thnt only if it l)e needful. But if lie be will- inj» to remain among you, inasmuch as he is a handicrnft^^man, then he shall lalx)r and eat. But if he understandeth no handicraft, then take ye care according to your discernment, that no Christian live among you as an idler. But if he willeih not so to order his life, then is he one who speculates with Christ for gain : keep yourselves far froui such." — Chapter 12. * " Views and Experiences on Religious Subjects," by II. W. Beecher. CHAPTER VI. THE HELPING HAND. " They helped every one his neighbor ; and every one said to his brother, Be of wood courage." — Isaiah 41 : 6. "The men who have become rich in commerce must show themselves active in their sympathies for all just demands, benevolent and kindly in the presence of distress. The exercise of these excellent virtues, while it is in the first place a paramount duty, will undoubtedly bring with it to the state and the society in which we live the immediate and priceless blessing of social union and contentment." — Sir I'komas Brassey. Whatever differences of opinion there may be between the adherents of contending extremes, whether we incline to those principles of X^aissez-f aire which so endeared themselves to the earlier writers on sociology as well as to its later school, or to that cardinal doctrine of socialism, state responsibility for the conduct of every affair of life, none can object to the happy mean of fostering social or industrial improvements through that law of love which it has been well said, *' in its incipient form the race is now struggling to take up." Here is a neutral ground on which all can meet without fear of con- flict, and where the only arguments likely to be heard are as to the most effective methods of adopting means to endsf The views on this point will probably be as varied as the idiosyncrasies of the speakers, but it is of small import what line each one takes so long as they all converge at a common centre; because every material and moral aid to well-doing, whether effected through the agencies of temperance, thrift, co-operation, insurance, trades-unions, sanitation or education is for some a stepping stone to higher things. Under any circumstances society will be a gainer ; as the progress of a people like an army is merely the movement of individuals in a given direction. And whether we devote our energies to (122) CARE OF EUROPEAN EMPLOVERt. 123 encouraging the foot-sore and weary, picking up the sick and wounded, gathering the straggler, removing impediments, or providing healthful camping grounds and food, all alike ac- celerate the onward array and hasten its debouche from the sterile mountains to that land of promise, which once made visible by faith, is at this present to be clearly seen, though afar. Thus the employer can do many things for the benefit of his workers that would be beyond the scope of the capitalist whose income is derived from interest or land, and the capi- talist can inaugurate or assist in other heli)ful methods that are outside the immediate province of the busy merchant or manufacturer. ^ ^he paternal care of some foreign employers for their operatives is illustrated in the great linen factory of M. Rey, at Ruysbroeck, near Brussels, where 3000 persons are engaged. All food supplies are sold to them at first wholesale cost, with a small addition to cover expenses; and if any profit should accrue it is turned over to an invalid fund to which all are required to contribute 3 per cent, of their wages. From this fund every person receives half pay during sickness, in addi- tion to medicine and medical attendance ; and when a married workman dies his widow is pensioned for a term of years. Fifteen years continual service entitles the invalided workman to $5.77 per month for life. To encourage the young in thrift M. Rey pays 10 per cent, interest on deposits in the firm savings bank, when the amount is under $60.00, and 7^ on all above. Adults receive 5 per cent, interest, and when they have saved $200.00, a further sum is advanced, if de- sired, to enable them to build a home. Some 30 houses with gardens attached are also rented to the more meritorious em- ployes at about half the prevailing rates. The immense foundry and machine shops of the ** Societe Anonyme de Marcinelle et Couillet '* near Charleroi afford a similar striking proof of wise direction and encouragement on the part of a company. As in M. Rey's establishment the ** Assistance and Pension Fund" is a compulsory one, 124 CARE OF EUROPEAN EMPLOYERS. from which the sick and injured receive medical attendance and support for six months, after which if the infirmity is in- curable the sufferer is placed on a permanent pension, and at the age of 60, if the employe has been 25 years in the com- pany's service, he is retired on a fair provision. The widows and children of those killed in service are also provided for, and 5 per cent, interest is paid on savings deposited in the company's treasury. Seven schools, varying in grade from the Kindergarten to the technical, are established, and a gen- erous scheme has been in operation for some time by which any employe who owns the ground and can pay one-fifth of the cost of building a house, is provided with the necessary balance, and after 8 years habitation and the payment of pre- vailing rental, it becomes the property of its resident. The firm of Meister, Lucius & Bruning, engaged in the manufacture of aniline, near Frankfort-on-the-Main, has about 1300 persons in its employment. A few years ago it en- dowed an association for the support of the families of in- valided and deceased workmen, by a donation of $35,700. In addition there is a voluntary association for the support of the sick to which each worker contributes i per cent, of his earnings, and the firm adds a sum equal to 50 per cent, of this total. Besides regular wages, premiums are annually paid for exceptional industry, and these amounted in 1883 to over $4000. A workman once engaged is never dis- charged for age, infirmity or sickness. Comfortable dwelling- houses with gardens attached are provided for the men at low rentals, and dinner is furnished the employes at a nominal sum. The late Mme. Boucicault, of the well-known magasin Bon Marche, in Paris, was also successful in enlisting the hearts as well as the hands of the many thousands of people employed by this concern. The capital of the Provident So- ciety connected with the house is now $300,000, and two years before her death Madame Boucicault founded a home for her old and disabled employes at a cost of $1,000,000. The educational and other facilities for mental, moral and industrial elevation that were afforded to the workers by this CARE OP EUROPEAN EMPLOYERS. 125 lady's liberality has been a subject for frequent description, and the truly Christian management of the entire establish- ment (while in strict conformity with business principles) has constituted it one of the industrial wonders of the French metropolis. These instances can be paralleled by a large number in Belgium and Germany, as at a textile factory at Wustergiersdorf, in Silesia,* where the owners support an or- phanage and kindergarten, supply meals for two and three- eighths cents, and provide good dwellings for their people ; and in Bremen where it is customary in most concerns to pay the sufferers from accidents incurred in actual employment full daily wages, and in case of death from $500 to $700 to the widow. Indeed in many of the small manufacturing towns of central Europe the feeling between employer and employed borders on the patriarchal, but it is rather a survival of former ties, cultivated by the adoption of social improvements, than a development arising from modern efforts. The most prom- inent exception is that of M. Godin's wonderfully successful experiment at Guise, to be mentioned hereafter, in which a beginning was made without any existing prior conditions of hereditary regard, or the fixity of a limited population, that are found in the other cases. One or two of the parental methods adopted by continental employers might not commend themselves to the ideas of English or American workmen, but all can appreciate the wise generosity that places a home within reach, or provides for education and the encouragement of thrift. Mr. R. G. Hazard, the principal owner of the Peace Dale Manufactur- ing Company, of Peace Dale, Rhode Island, has always made a practice of extending pecuniary assistance in various ways, ♦ In Silesia " Nearly all large factories, iron mills, etc., have connected with them institutions for the improvement of the workpeople, among which may be mentioned invalid funds and savings hanks, hospitals, Sun- day-schools, libraries, cheap and comfortable dwellings, co-ofjerative stores, loan associations, co-operative kitchens and free medical attend- ance. The employer generally has a paternal regard for the moral and material welfare of the people." — U. S. Consular Reports : " Labor in Foreign Countries," page 35. 126 CARE OF AMERICAN EMPLOYERS. to enable his employes to live in their own homes. Some- times his firm has given possession of a piece of land on the agreement that the deed should follow payment, and in other cases money has been advanced to buy or build a house and the mortgage taken as security. There are forty houses in this small village owned by their men most of them paid for under this system. The company also pensions at discretion its superannuated workers, or continues them in nominal em- ployment at usual wages. The efforts of the Akroyds and Crossleys, of Halifax, the Marshalls, of Leeds, and the Pull- man Palace Car Company, in the thriving town near Chicago, all too well known to require detail, illustrate on a great scale that just mingling of authority with liberality that -.marks the judicious direction of the far-seeing employer. I By means of schools, co-operative stores, libraries, pleasant rdwellings and savings banks, they have combined the strictest I laws of commercial success with the largest duty and made / their own wealth-getting the prosperity of labor.* There has been no flavor of charity in the offer of aid and no sug- gestion of laclTing self-respect in its acceptance. They are notable instances because as yet occasional, but each year is adding to the number, and will add to it increasingly as fast as men discover that the true science of sociology is the simple rule of duty, interpreted by sympathy, f In discussing the ethics of ownership, fhe general proposi- tion was laid down that Christian duty, even when involving a loss of present profit, ultimately resulted in the highest ma- terii^l advantage, and the same rule applies to all those forms of assistance that enable the young to become self-dependent, that bring fair opportunity for usefulness nearer to its eager seekers, that encourage the weak to become strong in resist- ing the temptations of their condition, that reduce toil to a reasonable length, or that in any way brighten a dreary life * Mr. Pullman's investments, while directly tendinjr to the amelioration of the conditions of lobor, have been profitnble. Over $750,000 was spent at Pullman before a house was erected, yet everything pays 6 per cent., even the gas, which is furnished for 70 cents a thousand feet. TRUE SOCIOLOGY. 127 by improving the home, furnishing cheerful recreation and awakening an appreciation of the beautiful. There is abundant evidence at hand for those who care to seek it, proving that the hirer of labor is a direct gainer by the education of his employe, and that money invested for such a purpose yields good returns. In 1862 Mr. Chad wick told the Statistical Society of England that he had been '*at much pains to ascertain from employers the comparative efficiency of educated and uneducated laborers, and that all intelligent witnesses of wide experience and discretion unani- mously agree that education, even in its present rude and in many respects objectionable condition, is highly remunera- tive. Masters who have been at the expense of schools on high religious and social grounds concur in saying that suc- cess is great on economical grounds." In 1841 Horace Mann elicited, by means of a circular letter of inquiry addressed to the largest employers of labor in Massachusetts, the emphatic opinion that the educated operative was the most profitable, on account of the better quality of his productions, and that owners of manufacturing property had "a deep, pecuniary interest*' in primary instruction. Similarly Mr. Scott Rus- sell, in his work on ** Technical Education," conclusively demonstrates that that portion of national wealth dependent on trade is largely governed by the knowledge and intelligence of the working classes. The duty of the employer to educ ate his wo rkers need not trench on the province~otjth e stat e! State education even in its higher technical spheres must always be somewhat dis- cursive, while in the factory, foundry, or machine shop it can take the direction of those special branches and subdivisions of industry in which most establishments now engage. The system of apprenticeship had for its intent this very thing. It was an agreement that in return for a long term of service the master would teach the youth all that he knew of a cer- tain handicraft, and his pride and honor were involved in developing the untrained mental and bodily faculties of the learner to a skill equal to his own. This daily contact in the sV 128 HIGHER EDUCATION FOR LABOR. workshop with a community of objects, ideas and interests ultimately bound the two in a strong tie, and was the most commendable feature in that form of labor which the factory system supplanted. JThe apprenticeship of to-day, where it exists, is but a crude survival of the ancient system, because of the witlidrawal of the master. He now lives in a different world from the boy, and only knows him as one of so many hands on the pay-roll. The supervision of the workshop is left to foremen, while his own time is more profitably engaged in other ways. *' The modern apprentice is merely a hired boy,"* says a late writer, "who, while making himself use- ful about a workshop, learns what he can by observation and practice. If he sees the interior of his master's house, it is to do some work in no way connected with his trade, and wliich may not increase the idea of the dignity of labor in the minds of such of his associates as are employed in stores y. and offices." The new order of things seems to make such a divergence unavoidable, but unless we are to depend on immi- gration for our supply of craftsmen and mechanics, some- thing must be done to fill the void, or the j^ractical arts will fall far below the standard of other nations, with the result of an industrial loss that it will take years to recover. | Tlie question of employment for boys and girls is^so be- coming a pressing one. They leave school, knowing little that will gain them a livelihood. Every avenue of clerical employment is crowded with applicants, the doors of the workshop open only to skilled labor, or if the youth succeeds in entering, jealousy and indifference inside keep back all his opportunities. There is provision everywhere for professional training. The colleges of law, medicine, and dentistry stand with open portals; theology invites to its universities; the Normal School offers inducements to the aspiring ceacher ; the culture of the intellect is provided for by academies of various grades ; but any place where instruction in manual * Article l>y Riclmrd T. Auchmuty, " The Need of Trade Schools."— The Century, November, 1886. TRADE SCHOOLS. 129 craft can be obtained is a national rarity, even though the learner is willing to pay liberally for his tuition. The remedy for this comes within the direct province of the employer, esi^ecially in large establishments, and to ignore it is to neglect a duty. fWRere there are many lads employed work-schools ought to supplement the rougher practical labor of the shop by comparison, analysis, deduction, or illustra- tion, within the bounds of a subject drawn from or related to. the special industry conducted there, thus combining head-j knowledge with hand-knowledge."! This instruction might ber the equivalent for a certain portion of wages, and its general character so arranged as to make it an actual, if not a nomi- nal apprenticeship. Should trade union opposition render such a method impracticable, there is the recourse of trade schools outside the works, under the direction of the em- ployer, a course of training in which, could be made the pre- requisite for after employment. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company has partially adopted the first method in the Altoona shops, and the Cambria Iron and Steel Works* at Johnstown, in the same state, afford another example of what can be done in this direction. JThe arrogance of those in possession of trades bars the way against others who would learn them. Men who are con- stantly declaim.ing about their own wrongs, inflict a greater one on the boy who desires to become their associate in labor. They deprive him of the inalienable right of choosing his own employment, of fitting himself for manhood, for use to himself, his parents and the state. If he has a tendency to evil habits they adopt the very course that will confirm them, * Thi«j compnny has provided a science school, reaom and library, for ihe w^e of its 5000 workpeople. Chemistry, with laboratory practice, is taught in the ni^ht-school, and mechanics, mechanical draw- ing, mineralogy (with special attention to iron and steel and its processes of manufacture), the economy of steam and fuel, etc., offer a course of both practical and mental study that has resulted in many benefits to the e-tabii-ihment and its employes. The I'aUimore and Ohio Railroad has also appropriated S2S.000 lor the estaiilshment of a technical school for engineers, and intends to expend ^23,ooo annually for its maiute- nance. 130 SHORTER HOURS OF LABOR. and make a criminal of many an honest lad whose evil desires would have been kept in check by congenial industry.) In an exhaustive report on '' The State of FftSons and Child Saving Institutions in the Civilized World" Mr. E. G. Wines observes that '* want of a trade is a permanent and potent occasion of crime. Three-fourths of our convicts make no pretence to having ever acquired a trade, and of the remainder more than a moiety have done so only in a very imperfect degree." jEvery practical step that is taken in teach ijig^ handicrafts therefore removes temptation and pre- vents crime, and those who are more especially their brothers* keepers by reason of industrial leadership, as employers, or in the councils of labor, cannot render a greater service to the community than by enlarging the opportunities of youth and giving their successors and our successors an honest chance to earn their daily brea^d^j There is another way in which the helping hand ought to be more liberally extended than at present, and that is in re- gard to the hours of labor. In the pig-iron districts, twelve- hour shifts succeed each other, day and night, without Sunday or holiday, from January to December. In many industries, paper-mills, flouring mills, and gas-works for exarapl'e, twelve hours regularly constitute a day's work, and in breweries fif- teen hours is not unusual. Machinery has so increased pro- duction over the possibility of consumption, that it is nearly certain the world's supply could be completed in a shorter working day than at present, and probably this will be one of the chief measures adopted in the future for equalizing human conditions.^ It is true that the world is not greatly over- stocked with secondary commodities ; but it is for the reason that no one thinks of storing water near a river, and there is * One of the renderings of Paul's advice to Titus as to the best method of organizing the church in Crete is that the people are to learn honest trades. See Titus 3 : 14. f Under any circumstances would it not be better, as was asked by a participant in the " Industrial Remuneration Conference," that ten men should work six hours a day, and all be employed, than that six men shnuUl work ten hours a day and the other four men go about idle ? SHORTER HOURS OF LABOR. 181 always plenty of raw material available for the manufacture of any particular article in endless quantity should the demand arise. The immediate effect of a reduction in working hours would be a fall in wages, coui)led with an increase of ])rofus that under a just system would again revert to the worker. It is certain that the change from the old methods of 12 and 13 hours inflicted no injury on either of the factors in production, or on the consumer.* Wages are higher than when children of 9 to 15 worked 18 and 20 hours at a stretch in the Notting- ham lace mills, or when as at Paterson, N. J., the regula- tions required women and children to commence their tasks at 4.30 A. M., or when, as in certain Connecticut factories, 14 or 15 hours labor was not considered an unreasonable ex- pectation. f Judging, therefore, by direct experience and analogy, there is no reason to suppose that a reduction of one-fifth or one- sixth in the average working time would have more than a passing effect on the decrease of earnings. Nature has pro- mulgated no fixed law saying, " so many hours shalt thou labor." Once men did without a Sabbath, but the abstrac- tion of one-seventh of the year from toil has been the greatest blessing ever conferred on humanity. Few will contend that nations would be richer in material wealth for a reversion, and it is not a dangerous approach to Utopia, where " they bestowe but vi houres in woorke," to predict that the coming race will find its hours of toil much shorter than now. J It is unques- * " Every indication points us to the belief that such a further reduction in hours of labor, even below the ei*« B a scorn. /There has never l>een a question that concerned such vast numbers of people as the simple equities involved when one man exchanges the use of his skill or labor in return for some other consideration) Other questions pass away with their generation or are localized ; but this apparently easy problem of value for value will not down, and from time beyond reck- oning has cast a gloom on our feastings and stalked with un- bidden presence at inopportune seasons before the feasters. It must have presented itself, too, very early in the world's history. The first savage who agreed to assist in making a canoe, on condition of having its occasional use, and the first Indian who bargained with another to chisel an arrow-head as an equivalent for part of the game the weapon might bring down, must have found themselves confronted with the diffi- culty of determining how often the use of the canoe and how much of the game would be a fair repayment to them for their work. It is natural to suppose that the actual owner of the canoe and the hunter would be less liberal in their valuation of the services than those who were rendering them ; and if a dispute arose it would in simple form be analogous to the labor (137) \ 138 EARLY SPOLIATION OF LABOR. problem of to-day. If, further, the canoe-biiilder and the arrow-maker from one of a thousand possible circumstances were without food and dare not insist on all they thought was just, lest they should have to go supperless to their couch of leaves, the analogy becomes still more perfect. From the simplicity of such life, through every stage of evolution to the complexity of modern society, the labor question has been until recently not only the most constant, but the most readily solved problem of ages ; truly, not in accord with our ideas of moral arithmetic or social mathema- tics, but quick, stern, unanswerable, and effective. For what dispute could the captive make with the keeper, or how could the victim argue with a drawn sword ? It was impossible to determine the equation of an unrecognized quantity when the power of the sword meant absolute authority ; all that could be taken ; land, cattle, goods, men's lives, or the use of their lives to the very end. Two of equal weight will balance when the scales are rightly held, but with the mailed hand pressing down one side there is no equipoise. So the problem was solved by making labor the spoil of war, and very prettily was the quotient brought out minus , proving labor's offspring also debtor, for the merciful allevia- tion that had reduced the parent's penalty for capture from death to bondage ; and thus, though nations rose and fell, and oppressor conquered oppressor, the answer was always the same, until from reiteration both sides accepted it as the only true one ; the natural dividend of weakness when power was the divisor. Slowly that night of history passes away. Egypt, Persia, Phcenicia, and Greece fill its hours and there is no token of the dawn. Rome rises, and with giant strength possesses all the world her mighty hands can grasp. She rivets her shackles on Europe and holds in firm clutch the borders.of Asia and Africa, and yet there is no sign of the Sun of Righteousness, lislt appointed in his eternal purpose that it shall be forever so, and is the idea of brotherhood a fallacy, the exalted con- ception of a dreamer? Be patient, be trustful, O questioner. CHRISTIAN SOLUTION. 139 The Spirit of God that moved on chaos fashioned a perfect world, and from the chaos of evil there shall come the frui- tion of his will. He has fitted the earth fcr man, and will fit man for his earth. It has been promised, and he will fulfil. The coming of Christ gave to the labor question a new aspect. Men saw that the old answer did not harmonize with his precepts; that the blood-stained, tear-wet one, to which they were so long accustomed was in conflict with their aspi- rations and possibilities; and so guided by his life they pon- dered again and studied it with yet closer attent ion.) Standing in the morning glory of our own freedom we can look back and as Christianity silently penetrates from strata to strata, see their darkness fading before the dawn of knowl- edge. Slowly the vast mass is tinged with light, and its set- tled form changes to the unrest of progress. Century after century are reeled from the roll of God's design for his earth and man, and the increasing ligln dissolves the amphitheatre, modifies slavery into serfdom, adds numbers and strength to the unbonded, and ever widens the horizon of their desires. Now the gloom disperses : Out of the sliadows of night The world rolls into lijjlU; . It is daybreak everywhere. Those who are free from the shackles gather in burgher communities, and nourish their new found rights with quick- ened courage. But the mists still surround them, and many a fight must yet be made for liberty before its narrow boun- daries are enlarged. Sometimes triumphant, sometimescrushed, but, ever gaining a little, they hold on strenuously, until after unceasing conflict, the last vestige of night disappears, and as with one great rush the balance of society is changed, the first demand of the victors is that the problem be answered anew in the wisdom of his teachings. Thus the question has grown and matured since the days of Pharaoh, until it is now the most momentous one that this or 140 CHRISTIAN SOLUTION. many succeeding generations will have to meet. It affects all classes throughout civilization, touches capital and labor in every workshop in Ciiristendom, in every ship that sails the seas, wherever there is barter, trade, or exchange ; wherever one man pays, and another receives pay for his services. Its dim intangibility has materialized into ominous form ; the earth is girdled with its magnitude and a gigantic shadow falls on every land. The contemptuous silence of ancient and mediaeval Europe has been succeeded by a universal desire to avert further wrong. And now, wealth, learning, statesman- ship, law, and religion, as well as labor, are unceasingly seek- ing for a settlement that will be in accordance with the divine law, with the greatest good to all ; and that will give ])ros- perity to society, justice to the individual, and stability to the state. The supposititious arrow-maker asking for a portion of the game that his fellow-savage might slay is the problem in the germ. Without his skill in making the flint the hunter's craft would have been useless, and similarly but for the latter's strength and fleetness, the other, wanting these qualities, would have had his hunger unappeased. What was the fair proportion due to each, and if a heavy spoil rewarded the chase should the hunter have shown corresponding liberality in the division ? Each desires value for value ; but how is that value to be determined ? In like manner when the workman says, " I want a fair share of the additional worth my labor has given to your ma- terial j " and the employer replies, " Considering the outlay necessary, the risks I take, the skill I bring to bear in the con- duct of my business, and the many who are willing to work for what I pay, you are getting your due proportion," it is the old problem in a new dress. The arrow-maker has changed into the artisan ; and the hunter (after his successful expedi- tion) into the capitalist, but the problem in division is almost the same as before. Nor is the intrinsic justice of the question affected by LABOU AND ADDED VALUES. 141 material or numbers. It docs not matter whether the article to wliich labor gives additional value is a ton of coal yet hid- den in the mine, an acre of land ripe for the header, a skein of yarn on the loom, or a bar of iron ready for transportation by the machinery of a locomotive from Pennsylvania to Cali- fornia. Neither does it make any difference whether the capitalist is an individual employer, or a thousand share- holders each owning a part in one great concern. These merely change the figures, not the factors, whether the prob- lem be solved by right or wrong. But it is on another question of numbers that the great divergence between the moral and commercial law occurs, ('apital says that it is essentially a numerical problem, or as the formula runs, one of supply and demand; so many buyers and so many sellers of labor, and as the mass varies, so varies the recompense. In accordance with this theory, scattered through the books of nearly every social economist can be found the parable of two masters seeking the services of one man, or two men seeking service with one master. In the first case the master is bidding for the laborer by increase of wages; in the other the men are bidding for work by reduc- tion of wages, and we are told that this is a fair statement of the elements which govern the labor problem. Unfor- tunately the illustration does truly represent the competitive condition of modern production, and is a fair statement of the antagonistic position labor and capital generally occupy towards each other. When the former has the advantage it wants the largest share of profit to be had for the smallest return ; and when the latter, the largest amount of labor for the smallest pay. Thus selfishness begets its harrying brood, and its ill-favored progeny, grown up, vex and make discord, incite riots, strikes and lockouts, and foment war between those who should be friends. Yet this supposed elucidation does not contain the ethics of the dispute, and unless a settlement can be made on the basis of equity, all search for any other solution is worthless. By the rule of justice, an older one than competitive law, and 142 UNFAIR DIVISION OF PROFITS. destined to survive it, the service of the laborer, whether he is sought by one, two, or a dozen masters, cannot rise in value above his every-day efficiency, and by that . measure should he demand his wage. By the same rule he cannot sink beneath it, and if two hundred are seeking to exchange their toil for money, where only two are needed, those se- lected are entitled to fair pay as gauged by their normal ability. In either case the workman should demand and receive fair earnings, neither more nor less ; or, to define that term with exactness, a just share of the additional value given to an article by the labor he expends upon it. This is a very old law. Its inception can be found in the deliverance from Sinai, '*And if thou sell aught unto thy neighbor, or buyest aught of thy neighbor's liand, ye shall not oppress one another." Its fulness is in the saying of Christ, *' Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them ; " and its confirmation is of Paul, that '' no man go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter," and thougli a law so long revealed, it has been hidden from men's hearts until very recently. Labor therefore should be paid in proportion to the value of its work, and true wages would be those that were most nearly proportionate to the work done, or as Mr. Bigelow epitomizes it, " Equitable distribution consists not in an equal pro rata division of the produce of labor and capital, but in allotting to all a share proportionate to the degree in which they have respectively aided production, directly or indirectly."* By this just moral and economic law wages are an exchange of money for its supposed equivalent in labor, and the value of tliat equivalent is determined by the selling price of the pro- duct, less cost of material, administrative expenses (including the directive capacity), and interest on capital. If any residue remains after the deduction of these charges, under the con- ditions of ordinary competition, and it is appropriated by capital, labor is not getting its fair proportion, and the deter- * Atlantic Monthly, October, 1878, page 480. RICH GROW RICHER. 143 mination and distribution of that residue involves all the equities. How large this remainder is can be seen by the.increase of wealth. Mulliall says that in iSoo the income of the United Kingdom was $1,250,000,000, wliile in 1883 it was $6,335,- 000,000.* From 1 84 1 to 1881 the population of England and Wales rose 60 per cent., but the number of incomes between $2500 and 525,000 more than doubled ; those from $25,000 to $50,000 trebled ; those above $50,000 and under $250,000 quadrui)led, and the number with incomes above tiiis last sum increased eightfold. f In 1800, 36,000 families of the gentry had an income of $140,000,000; in 1883, 222,000 families of the same class were in receipt of $1,665, - 000,000, sliowing an increase of five and one-sixth times in ownership and of nearly eleven times in wealth. During the same period the working families about quadrupled, while their earnings were multiplied only five and three-fourths. | The attainable statistics of the United States relate only to gross increase in property valuation, and any attempt to ap- l^roximate its divisions would be guess-work. From 1S60 to 1S80 poi)ulation has increased about 59 per cent., but wealth about 170 i)cr cent., and notwithstanding the progress of the working classes, it is evident that the pace of wealth has been much faster than theirs.§ In England 222,000 families own between three-fourths and four-fifths *' of the total realized wealth of the country," and it is not long since one uian was able to show to his friends about 5^^ of the entire property estimate of the United States, and the wealth of another, accumulated in three generations, is believed to be double * " Dictionary of .Statistics," page 245. f " E>says on Finance," by Robert (jiHen. London, 1886. J Mulhall's "Dictionary of Statistics," page 246. I The Loudon Economist of November 6, 1886, says that within the last ten years Great Britain has saved and invested a thousand millions sterling, and in authenticating this The Spectator is able to trace invest* ments amounting to ;^ 938,000,000. Professor Leone Levi computes that from 1866 to 1886 the wealth of the United Kingdom increased ^ 180,000,000 j)cr annum, or $2,500,000 j)er diem. 144 RICH GROW RICHER. that enormous fraction. Nothing points to the statement so readily accepted by many that ** the poor are getting poorer and the rich richer," though everything does show that the rich are outstripping the poor, and have gained greatly on them during the present industrial epoch. That they have done so can only arise from three causes — eitlier they have profited very largely from the increased value of lands, or from the iniquitous system of stock-jobbing which yearly sweeps into the hands of a few the earnings of foolish thousands, or they have had a larger share of profits than was justly their due. The unearned increment of land, or of any other property, is a factor that has no place in a discussion on profits. That is the natural result of growth in population, and as private property in land is permissible by universal law, any increase in value must of right belong to the owner. Frequently this increment arises from things that are beyond ordinary prevision ; as the proximity of new railroad lines, the dis- covery of minerals, the extension of commercial facilities; or, as in the extreme instance of San Francisco, the finding of the precious metals. Within less than forty years, acres of the sandhills on which that city stands could have been bought for a few dollars, while now land on its principal streets often commands ;^2,ooo per front foot. Similarly the money made by stock-watering pools, market manipulation and other forms of legalized dishonesty, cannot be taken into consideration. It is not creative wealth, but a civilized fashion of freebooting, much more harmful than the occupation assigned by tradition to the feudal barons of the Rhine, yet wrongfully permitted on the assumption that it plays a necessary part in the machinery of exchange. Restricting the inquiry then to the third cause — produc- tional increase — it will be admitted a prioii that ethically profits belong to the capital invested and the labor employed, and not to capital alone, and that the one without the other is powerless. Capital may be compared to the stored energy in a lump of coal, labor to the water in the boiler. When COMMON INTERESTS. 145 the coal dissipates its heat in the furnace there must be water to receive it or the i)iston will not move. If the two co- operate in conformity with mechanical laws, the machine, throbbing with steam-life, will accomplish all its maker intended. Each has contributed its force in the desired manner, and the resultant power they have harnessed is the product of both. Ca[)ital and labor have therefore a common interest in using the results of their combination with the greatest effi- ciency ; that is, in obtaining the largest legitimate gain from their union, and on this ground alone, if just principles pre- vailed, there should be no antagonism between the two. Each ought to do its utmost to increase the joint product, because each is interested in the distribution of the proceeds, and harmonious efforts achieve a maximum of profit while dispute reduces it to nothing. Of course all this desirable conjunction is hypothetical. If just principles prevailed — but they do not and cannot un- der the present system of working — the employer, w ith all t he ris k^ takes all the profit, minus as little as he can pay his workmen ; and as the general average of profits more than covers losses, the net returns swell the wealth of capital, while the co-ordinate in production has to be content with what it can get in the shape of fixed wages. Hence it is that the rich grow richer. The division is unfairly made. Its basis is wrong, and until that is changed systematic remedy is an impossibility. As Mr. Mill wrote in his " Chapters on Socialism," " The very idea of distributive justice, or of any proi)ortionality between success and merit, or between suc- cess and exertion, is in the present state of society so chi- merical as to be relegated to the region of romance," * and unless we can find some method by which that ** propor- tionality " is maintained, in the ** region of romance" must it remain. The root of the difficulty is that labor has been made a * FortnigJuly RoficWf February, 1879, page 226. 10 146 LABOR NOT A COMMODITY. commodity, as the laborer himself was, in times not far re- moved. The abstract has been substituted for the concrete, but that is bought and sold like any other material at market rates. The quotations 'Mabor is dear," "labor is cheap," are applied with exactly the same meaning, and just as care- lessly as if they referred to the rise or fall in price of steel rails. So long therefore as it continues to be a merchantable article, the employer will have an apparent interest in buying it as cheaply as cotton, pig-iron, or any other raw merchan- dise necessary to the completion of his manufactured pro- duct ; and the cheaper he can buy, with a due regard to its economic value, the greater will be his apparent immediate profit. One result of this, as Mr. Thorold Rogers points out in his elaborate history of English labor, is that "in those callings where the labor of the employed is worst paid the profits of employers are abnormally high, as in the case, for example, of ready-made clothes,''* an illustration that is paralleled by seamstresses everywhere. f i " The Song of the Shirt " has not been hushed by the sewing machine, and never will be as long as the hands that adjust the cloth and the eyes that follow the deft stitch are only a *' commodity " in liberal supply. Encasements of human souls will continue to make shirts at eighty-five cents a dozen and sew their own lives into "seam and gusset and band" until tired nature re- fuses the strain and the only choice is physical or moral death. These things are concomitants of the principle, and there cannot be change or redress until the princii)le is reformed by treating labor as something more than mer- chandise. ^ It is a curious anomaly that while labor is thus considered * "Six Centuries of Work and Wages," by James E. Thorold Rogers, pnge 571. f " No one believes that if the London seanistres<^es, tailors and match- box makers received double the wages which they do at present there ■would be an appreciable difference in the price of the products sold." — • Ibid., page 572. women's earnings. 147 an *' article," and as such should be subject to the full rights of ownership, men who would think it a crime to take the smallest thing belonging to another do not hesitate to steal and filch this. The expression is a strong one, yet under- payment is virtually theft. Thousands of poor girls, whose only capital is their labor, and whose weakness, dependency, and honorable striving for self-support should commend them above all others to the charity of men, are robbed of their capital every week in every city of the United States and Great Britain.* Employers whose commercial probity is above reproach see nothing wrong in taking advantage of the competition of women for dry bread, to reduce earnings below a living minimum. They dare not do it with laboring men, because it would provoke denunciation, riot and com- bination. Women and girls suffer uncomplainingly, resort to no means that will make their grievances known, and have not yet discovered the art of resistance by union, so they are plundered of their labor without pity and redress. The law under which these unfairnesses are perpetrated is the accepted policy of the commercial world, fortified by custom, and the dicta of many standard writers. Thus Pro- fessor Perry says, ''In the whole field of exchange the just and comprehensive rule always will be, that when men ex- change services with each other, each party is bound to look out for his own interest, to know the market value of his own service, and to obtain the best terms for himself which he can make. Capital does this for itself, and laborers ought to do this for themselves, and if they are persistently cheated in the exchange, they have nobody to biame but themselves." Professor Walker, not in justification, but as an admission, writes that wage-laborers aref "unable to stand out against their employers and make terms for their services, or to seek a better market for their labor in another town or city, but must accept the first offer of employment, however meagre * See Mrs. Helen Campbell's " Prisoners of Poverty." f "Ihe Wage Question," by Francis A. Walker, page 297, 148 ADVANTAGE OF CAriTAL. the compensation." Mr. Jervis in his work on "The Ques- tion of Labor and Capital" sums up as a deduction of the views of the best known writers on industrial economy that the union of capital and labor involves a competition, and that capitalists (with many exceptions) take the advantage of their position to ** drive the closest bargain with the laborer that circumstances may permit." On another page the same writer adds as his own opinion that the worth of labor is pre- cisely what the market will command, and ''whatever senti- mentalists may urge, there is no escape from this position." If there is sentimentality in asking that the co-operative power in production should have its full sliare of the pro- ducts, the implied reproach must attach to all other dealings that are conducted with equity, and especially to those in which strength refrains from taking advantage of weakness. It may be excessive sensibility to say that the world's indus- trial system is not based on Christian morality, yet if the facts show that such is the case, it is much better to acknowl- edge them and try to reform our methods, than to continue on the same course because we have followed it so long. The departure v/ill at least lead us on the line of justice. The admission, however, is almost general that the wage system as at present conducted does not provide for the most equitable distribution of proceeds,* but many maintain that it is the only practical one. Leaving this for the moment aside and accepting the first portion of the proposition as tentative, one of two things follows: either the method of exchange between employer and employed must remain as it now is, and society can make no further advance in this * " There is not a figure or fact to show that the lower or middle classes are receiving their fair share of the advantages afforded by the new inthis- trial forces. The entire drift of the facts and figures goes to show that tliey are not receiving what is justly their due, according to tlie work they per- form." — " Cla?s Intere>ts, Their Relation to Each Other and to Govern- ment," page 155. D. Appleton & Co., 1886. " I think we may hope to discover some more snti'=;factory and equitable basis for the division of products, because such a discovery is essentiai to the further development of our Christian civilization," — Prof. Henry C. Adams, "The Labor Problem." Edited by Wm. E. Barns. ADVANTAGE OF CAPITAL. 149 direction, or some otlicr metliod of payment must gradually supplant the wage system, as it by degrees took the place of forced labor. To assent to the hopeless argument that man has reached the bound of his possibilities in the science of intlustrial rela- tionship, and that the problem of value for value is insolvable, is to relegate the industrial world to a condition of endless turmoil which must eventually result in the political consoli- dation of labor apart from capital, with unwise demands, and an attempt to enforce by law the concessions urged by reason. The wage receivers* vote, could, if cast in unity, elect State Legislatures, Congress, and President pledged to do its bid- ding, and though this control would be powerless to enforce laws in contravention of political and social economy, the re- sultant temporary demoralization of society would be fraught with more danger to the state than any experiments based on a departure from the wage system. In a thoughtful address at the '' Industrial Remuneration Congress," Mr. Frederic Harrison said, " It would be enough to condemn modern society as hardly an advance on slavery or serfdom, if the permanent conditions of industry were to be that which we behold." And why it is in this condition may perhaps be best dis- covered from the analysis of profits and earnings made by the Massachusetts Burean of Labor in its 1883 report.* Lowell, the third city of importance in the State of Massachusetts, has a population (1880) of 59,475. Its capitalists have invested in the various manufacturing industries of the place the sum of ^19,021,450, and they keep in employment 20,572 opera- tives, each of whom earns an average of ^^289. 00 per annum, * " If the question should be asked, has the wajje- worker received his equitable share of ihe benefits derived from the iniroduction of machinery, the answer must be no." — Fiisl Annual Report of the United States CotiH fuisuoner of Labor ^ 1886. " The present amount of wages usually paid does not give to the wage- worker comfortable means of support and enable him to lay by even a moderate fund to meet the exigencies he is almost certain to encounter." — Pennsylvania Commissioner of Labor, 1884, page 5. 150 ANALYSIS OF PROFITS AND EARNINGS. in exchange for the labor necessary to convert ;^ 15, 739,027 worth of raw material into products having a selling value of $28,6^6, icf6, or, debiting wage charges, ^6,962,290 more than original cost. Deducting from this gross profit 6 per cent, interest on capital, and 10 per cent, on the value of the product for administrative expenses, or ^4,006,907, a net profit re- mains of $2,955,383, or $143.00 for every person employed. Fall River, with a working population of 16,488, shows a yearly wage payment per worker of $261.00 and a net profit on each employ^ of $78.00. The employes of Northborough, 451 in number, earn only $276.00 each annually, and their employers realize from each one's industry a net gain of $714.00, which is again exceeded by Lunenburgh, where the enormous profit of $1138.00 is obtained from each one of 42 work people, who meanwhile earn for themselves only $286.00 each. In 1880 the average yearly earnings of 56,813 employes in Boston were $417.00 each, and the net profit on their labor $126.00 each. The average earnings of all within the state, included in these returns, was $364.00 per annum, and the gain $98.00 for each person engaged. In this com- pilation 14,560 establishments were represented, employing 352,225 people. An examination of the collective profits and earnings by industries shows a generally high return of profit. Thus, ** agricultural implements" give $450.00 net to the maker for every employ^ ; "dyeing and finishing textiles," $330.00; *Meather," $326.00; "paper" (employing 8375 persons earning $381.00 each), $156.00; and "clothing," $100.00. The three leading industries in the state, " boots and shoes," "cotton goods," and "woolen goods," show an average an- nual net profit per employe of $12.00, $78.00, and $169.00 respectively, and the net earnings of those employed were $397.00, $258.00, and $299.00. Mr, Carroll D. Wright thinks that the capital account is generally understated, and if such is the case, net profits would be lessened by deduction for additional interest, though /fer contra^ the allowance of 10 per cent, for running expenses seems too high. Be that ANAL^-SIS OP PROFITS AND EARNINGS. 151 as it may, the figures "stand as statements of facts," and be- fore they can be controverted equally weighty and careful statistics will have to be adduced. Taking Lowell as a representative city, it will be seen that after deducting 6 per cent, for interest on the capital used, and 10 per cent, on the gross value of product for insurance, rent, depreciation of machinery, salaries, and other adminis- trative expenses, there remained a profit, from the combina- tion of 20,572 work people and $19,021,450 capital, of $8,910,262, which should have been fairly divided betwee^i capital and labor, not in equal /r<7 rata^ but in "a share pro- portionate to the degree in which they had respectively aided production directly or indirectly." This amount was $432.00 for each person employed, of which in the division each em- ploy6 got $289.00 and capital retained $143.00; that is, the one received about 66.9 per cent, of the residue in the form of wages and the other about 33.1 per cent., after already making interest a first charge. Was this a fair distribution ? * The employer will certainly answer *' Yes," the wage receiver with equal certainty say " No ; " and the disinterested arbi- ter called upon to determine the dispute on the sole basis of equity can have little hesitation in agreeing with the latter. A fair distribution, assuming that wages were the normal average, would have about equally divided the profit remain- ing, after the payment of wages, between capital and labor, which would have raised the earners* share $71.00, giving them $360.00 instead of $289.00 for the year's labor, and the cap- italist's profit would still have been about $72.00 or ly^ per cent, on his capital. The sum fairly earned by labor was * " Capitalizing wages at the allowed interest — 6 per cent. — and each earner represents the sum of 54816.00. Multiplying this by the number of the employes and the total, $99,074,752, may f)e called labor's contribu- tion to production. The actual amount contril>uted by capital was $19,021,450. A fair division of profits on this basis would j^ive 8389 per cent, to labor and 16. 1 1 to capital, or $362.40 to the employ^ in^lca I of the $289.00 paid; and a profit of $69.60 on each operative to actual capital, in>tead of $143.00. It is not assumed tlial this is a correct foi- mula for a fair distribution, but it tallies very closely with the suggestion of what would have been an equitable division." 152 ANALYSIS OF PROFITS AND EARNINGS. therefore a little less than $7.00 per week, that being all that the profits on the industries of Lowell allowed, and the ^70.00 that it did not receive made all the difference in a large num- ber of families between comfort and discomfort, happiness and misery, provision for old age and after dependence, gloom and sunshine; all the difference in fact between everything that is comprehended in the words justice and injustice. The reverse of the illustration afforded by Lowell may be seen in other places. The competition of capital for employ- ment is so great in England that mill-owners engaged in the production of textile fabrics, Lowell's chief industry, and for which there is said to be an illimitable demand, are content to earn 5 or 6 percent. Mr. Mulhall says,* ''So far from capitalists defrauding workmen of their fair wages, it is mani- fest that in Europe, and especially in England, the share of profit accruing to the employer of labor has almost reached a minimum, and that manufacturing industry will not be worth carrying on if his share be further diminished." The earnings of British operatives, according to the same au- thority, range from 30 to ^^ per cent, of the value of pro- ducts, while in the United States the average is only 18 per cent., but other causes combine to make the American work- man ** better off than his English brother." The average returns upon an invested capital of thousands of millions sterling in Great Britain is only 4 per cent., and as just wages are dependent upon profits, it is evident that in the industries represented by these investments workmen are receiving all that can be expected. Sir Thomas Brassey lately pointed out that "the rate of profit in business is a subject of great importance to the laborer," and it is obvious from the illustrations here given that there is no paradox in the assertion so frequently made that the interests of labor and capital are closely allied. The endeavor of both should therefore be to work in harmony, to reduce the expenses of * "History of Prices," page 127. ANALYSIS OF PROPITS AND EARNINGS. 153 mannqcmcnt, to increase ilieir reciprocal eflficiency, and so add to prufit by reducing cost of production ; all of which again is in confirmation of the reiterated arguments previously presented, that the moral and the economic law, when rightly understood, are in effect one. It may be said that because labor has a preferred claim on capital, and that as wages are paid whether the enterprise in which they jointly engage is profitable or otherwise, capital, in taking all the risk, should, after payment of prevailing hire, have all the gain. But profits depend largely upon gd-^ mmjstratjve^biUtx and labor does not agree to furnish that. Yet to obviate all grounds of dispute a portion of the profits might be held in reserve to insure against depression, as is done in many establishments where the principle of profit- sharing prevails. Neither has labor any equitable right to prei)ayment before its products are sold, and capital, as Pro- fessor Walker has said, would be justified in charging interest on advances. The ordinary method of prepayment, without any original intention of making it so, is one of the strongest rivets that fastens labor to the wage system, because it is a payment before profits have been ascertained, and the dis- charge of an obligation in advance, for a smaller sum than its com])letion would equitably call for. If industries were everywhere uniformly productive, profits and wages could be calculated with the utmost nicety, and the strict law of value for value carefully applied by advance payment. As it is, the value of one factor in production is determined before there has been any accurate adjustment of results, and in the un- certainty that necessarily prevails, capital takes care to pro- tect itself by allowing the widest possil)le margin for loss. Is it not apparent then that the true method of determin- ing true earnings is to strike a profit and loss account at stated intervals, after the distribution of the product from its manufactory, and apportion the remaining balance on an agreed basis in accordance with the respective contributions of capital and labor, and not as now by making a first and final payment to labor while that balance is unascertained? 154 CORPORATIONS. This would be co-operation, not only in production, but in results. From that ultimate neither labor nor capital could with any reason appeal, and all other methods of determining value for value must be crude and unsatisfactory until the ap- portionment is thus made. Failing this, combinations of capitalists here and of laborers there, competition for work- men in one ])lace and for work in another, will alternately rise and depress the operatives' share of the proceeds ; miti- gating circumstances will constantly render the lot of the poor more bearable, but in the meantime the mountain of capital, growing apace, will become like a Pelion piled on Ossa, and so it will go on, as it goes on now, until the em- ployer finally admits that the laborer is worthy not of as lit- tle as he will take, not of as much as will make him for the moment loyal and satisfied, but of his hire in the fullest, largest and most liberal sense, gauged by his contributive ability as a workman. The centralization of industry will aid in bringing about this desired result. At present its efforts have been to make the capitalist look, upon the workman as part of a machine whose loss could be easily filled by a duplicate ; and espe- cially has this been the case with corporate employers. The concentration of several passably humane persons into a legal unit has seemed to eliminate the virtues they individually pos- sessed, while it retained in a pronounced form all their bad qualities, with the addition of some new ones. A single mas- ter may have a paternal care for his men. He may feel that there is room for a reciprocal interest ; but when the visible head of a concern is only a directory intent on earning divi- dends for shareholders resident in a dozen lands, and seeking for a further illegitimate profit by stock exchange variations, of which its members will have prior knowledge; to expect sympathy from such a source would be to endow machinery with cognition and a consciousness of moral responsibility. Ruskiti in one of his work speaks of a type of millionaire who uses **his breadth and sweep of right to gather some branch of the commerce of the country into one great cobweb, conroiiATiONS. 155 of which he liimself is to be the great central spider, making every thread vibrate with the point of his claws and com- manding every avenue with the facets of his eyes." Too many capitalists have been indoctrinated with a similar pur- pose. All rights, including those of manhood, have been made subservient to their monetary profit. They would exist as embodied mammons. The stock exchange has been their temple, and dividends their deity. As the successors of the factory kings they have endeavored to perpetuate a rule of injustice, and become lords over new kingdoms by seizing everything that could be seized, until by their persistence in overriding the popular will they have most worthily earned those attributes of greed and mcrcilessness with which they are commonly endowed. Such was, and to a certain extent still is, the general course of those imperial aggregations that have been developed by the requirements of modern life. They are the natural pro- duct of the enormous scale of modern operations ; their vast- ness is symbolical of the age, and the probability is that they will grow in magnitude until they reach the limits of human management. But it does not follow that the abuses they have engendered will increase with their growth. Judging from the analogy of the factory system and how easily its in- humanities were remedied as soon as a determined public will opposed them, an eradication is more likely. It is easier to remove a concentrated than a diffused evil ; a large body draws upon itself a closer scrutiny than a small one ; its de- fects are more visible, and if necessary it can be struck a sturdier blow. So there is no reason to believe that corpo- rations will ever be less amenable to state control than at present, or that they are likely to exercise a stronger political influence than now. On the contrary, there are indications that they will confine themselves more strictly to their legiti- mate functions, and even some evidences that they may even- tually be infused with that spirit of liberality which so fre- quently marks the individual employer. The evolution of the factory from domestic industry, and 156 AN ADVANCE STEP. of the corporation from the factory, renders possible the next step in advance, and that without the disorganization that generally attends a forward movement. A few adventurers have already blazed a path into the new ground, and indus- trial copartnership as applied to production is even now some- thing more than the hope of the future by being partially realized in the present. If therefore, as labor unanimously claims, and many capitalists admit, the competitive system by which the dealings between employed and employer have hitherto been governed has not afforded the best possible method of determining what proportion of the profits on production are fairly due to each, there is no reason why it should continue to regulate industrial relations a day longer than necessary. If, however, as Mr. Bigelow asserted some years ago, "Its universality is sufficient proof of being an expression of some natural law, and all experience goes to show that law is the law of supply and demand," those who tread the winepress must continue to suffer thirst, there can be no hope of change, and all propositions looking to one must either be chimerical or based on some hidden fallacy. Yet universality, outside the domain of physics, can scarcely be considered a tenable argument. Slavery, polygamy, re- curring famine, and the plague, were once universal, but society has outgrown these and other ills. Natural law found no expression in such things. They were, on the contrary, the results of non-compliance with the laws of nature, and the same must be said of the evils inherent in a system that forces men into destructive competition with one another ; a competition that is not a mere gentle passage of arms for noble motive, but a fierce struggle, with poverty and repres-, sion for the vanquished, and little more than a livelihood for the victor.* If we admit therefore that these conditions are irremediable, and that having struggled so far into an estate of freedom, * " Competition is put forth as the law of the universe. That is a lie. The time is come for us to declare that it is a lie by word and deed." — Letter of Frederick Denison Maurice to Chas. Kingsley, January 2, 1850. AN ADVANCE STEP. 157 we are bound in the meshes of a law from which there is no escape, tlie world has only excliangcd its primitive warlike attitude, when every man's hand was raised against every ctlier man, for a mitigated social status of the same kind. But the old condition was not in harmony with the moral law ; neither is the new one. We know that it is ordained that the earth shall bring forth its thorns and thistles, and that our bread must be earned with toil. These are the un- avoidable conditions of existence, figuratively and literally; yet God laid no bounds on the possibilities of moral progres- sion. Justice and judgment are the habitation of his throne, and he commands justice of man, be the cost what it may. ** Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin," says St, John, and in this saying there is an infinitude of expansion that includes all moral possibility. So there is and can be no limitation in the divine law to the progress of society, and if the modern industrial system is incapable of amend- ment, it will of a certainty be superseded by another with less friction ; which will allay instead of irritate social dissatisfac- tion ; which will approach nearer the principles of justice, and as a consequence nearer to the fulfilment of that law of love to which industrial society must ultimately conform. CHAPTER VIII. THE UNITY OF FORCES. " So then, neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that water- eth; but God that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth and he that walerelh are one : and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labor." — i Cor. 3 : 7, 8. " Every element of production must particijiate in all profits in propor- tion to the services it has rendered." — M. Godin. The elective attraction, known in chemistry as affinity, establislies a much closer combination between the original elements than cohesion. The latter merely binds together particles in molecular union without changing their indi- vidual properties, while the former, taking effect generally through solution, produces new compounds, having new and unlooked-for attributes, often radically different from their separates. These qualities of inorganic matter have higher correspond- encies. There has always been the cohesion of self-interest. It has formed the granitic basis of institutions; subject, like the rocks, to the attrition of time, and occasionally to the disruption of the earthquake, but holding together with a tenacity of resistance that has been difficult to overcome. And though cohesion is as necessary a property of the social as of the physical organization, yet there can never be in it that closeness of union or development of hidden possibilities that proceeds from affinity. From the latter has been evolved most of the forward movements of the world. It gave to Europe the Reformation, to England the Revolution of 1688, to the American colonies their independence, and it is to-day imparting to both capital and labor, surely if slowly, higher attributes than they have hitherto possessed. (168) SOCIAL AFFINITY. 159 As the affinity of chemical atoms is greatly promoted by light, so the coalescence of the social units is liastencd by the diffusion of knowledge pertaining to physical, social, and moral law. Under its influence apparent opposites that have been held together by cohesion, make harmonious conjunction and give birth to new forces and new results. Master and slave find that they are niutually dependent, and from thence is evolved honest labor. Kings and i)eople discover that they have common enemies and common ties, and from their councils parliaments are formed. Homogeneous elements blend together in nationality, and from tlie mingling comes a better type of manhood; and in the same way capital and labor, with interests supposed to be diametrically opposed, have only to submit themselves to the known laws of sociology and morals, as illuminated by divine wisdom, to find an affin- ity from which will come new influences, new forces, and a new society. The industrial partnership of labor and capital seems to afford a readier solution for a greater number of the disputes between the productive factors than any method yet proposed. It would immediately determine the wage question, together with its offshoot, the length of a day's labor; and these causes for dissatisfaction once out of the way, all subsidiary difficulties could be speedily adjusted, for the minor discon- tents revolve round them like satellites round a central sun, and without it could have no independent existence. Pay labor all it earns, and nothing more can be demanded of capital ; for fair wages arc a full satisfaction of the claims that labor has on wealth devoted to reproduction, and any- thing that capital gives beyond that will be of grace and not of right. The labor question is such a complex intermingling of economic and moral considerations, that any equitable settle- ment of the one will contain the other. Let the workman therefore only be satisfied that he is receiving the measure of payment to which he is entitled by his ability, and he will immediately perceive that any further advancement must 160 INDUSTRIAL PARTNERSHIP.. depend upon himself, by the exercise of those fundamental qualities which bring prosperity in other walks of life. From this would spring that inducement to higher effort which influences and tempers motive both within and without the daily vocation, with the result of greater industry, better care of property, the prevention of waste, the reduction of operating expenses, the attention to minor details of effi- ciency, and a general assiduity in the furtherance of profit that of itself would be largely instrumental in making gain. Labor is now a preferred creditor, and paid before capital receives any return. The inducements to economy of time and material are thus almost imperceptible. Earnings are apparently fixed, and the employe has only to conform to the standard of efficiency, economy and industry that prevails in the occupation to be acceptable. Conscientiousness in respect to the one or the other accrue to the sole profit of the em- ployer, and thus the immediate impulse for high efficiency is abstracted and the natural incentive that moves men in other pursuits is rendered nugatory. A settlement of the central question would in addition banish from the industrial sphere those grotesque counter- parts of civilized warfare with which we are now so sadly familiar. It is a trite remark to say that strikes and lockouts are as unreasonable as battle and siege, and prove nothing but the superior force of the victor ; yet they are constantly re- sorted to under the apparently honest conviction that a test of endurance is the only test of right. The equities between capital and labor are more nicely poised than formerly, and the weight of justice on either side of their disputes is rarely sufficient to counterbalance extraneous advantages. A fair determination of the matter at issue almost always involves judicial nicety; still such is the crudeness of our social science that hardly a day passes without a formal declaration of en- mity on a large scale, between the two mainsprings of civiliza- tion. If co-operation effected no other good, industrial peace at least must come from it, as men will not war on them- selves or reduce the value of their own property, and under CO-OPERATION. 161 any form of partnership the bitterness with which disputes between employer and employed are now charged would be unknown. The far-reaching effects of co-operation beyond the work- shop or occupation must, in their ultimate, embrace the well- being of the individual and society, and if further re-enforced by the divine law of love, by the freedom that comes with virtue, by the aspiration that immortality has implanted, by the true religion of faith in God and man, the world of the twentieth century will be as much in advance of the world of to-day as the distance that marks the American republic from that of Rome. For whatever changes experience may make in industrial systems, however much prosperity and just distribution may add to the material wealth of a people, what- ever opportunities increased leisure may afford for education and culture, whatever gifts science may have in store for the future, the real progress of this or any nation will be slow unless accompanied by the spirituality that proceeds from above. Profit-making can no more knit society together than art or literature ; for only the love which is of Christ closely unites. It touches the buyer and seller in the ex- change, and there is no concealment of defects, or attempted depreciation of values. It abides in the factory, and changes the din of machinery into a song of bread-winning for the little ones; it enters the counting-house, and transforms the relations of capital and labor, coldly assumed for mutual advantage, into the warmth of sympathy; it dwells in the houses of the rich, and charity issues forth, burdened with the gifts of compassion and comforting words; and wherever it is permitted to come, be it home or workshop or street, it gilds and haloes all things with a light divine that refines, purifies and makes glad, for it is of God and from God. There are several forms of productive co-operation and numerous variations in each form. One method is a simple partnership of workmen having their own capital, large or small, and operating on the basis " of each doing a full day's work on some kind of production," and dividing the gain 11 162 CO-OPERATION. therefrom. Another is the owning of capital stock by work- men in the concern that employs them, and thus, besides re- ceiving wages, becoming participators in the profits. Simi- larly, a sliding scale of wages adjusted to profit has in a measure the effect of profit-sharing, and the same may be said of any gratuitous benefits maintained by the employer out of his gain, for the well-being or enjoyment of his workers. But what is generally meant by the term is the direct alli- ance of labor and capital with an equitable apportionment to each of the results remaining after payment of agreed wages and interest; or failing this full division, a bonus paid out of profits to labor, in addition to customary wages. The first mentioned methods either isolate capital from labor, or estab- lish only a temporary cohesion, while true co-operation con- templates an affinity by the voluntary association of certain persons having capital with certain persons having labor, and a division of profits, should there be any, on the basis of the capital invested and the labor performed. It recognizes as an incontrovertible truth that *Mie that planteth and he that watereth are one ; and every man sliall receive his own reward according to his own labor." It seeks neither unfair advan- tage for the strength and skill of toil or the power of money, but combining both under the direction of administrative ability would return to both their reward in measure with their contribution, and in this distribution solve the problem that has troubled all ages by determining what is labor's true hire.* For divergence and antagonism, or at best cohesion, *" The workmen employed in an incUistrial eslablisliment are paid either by lime or the piece. In neither case is there any obvious connec- tinn l)etvveen the amount of the earnings and the prosperity of the employ- in;^ concern. They have no share in its direction ; in the case of private iinilertakings they are, as a rule, sedulously excluded from all knowledge of the state of its affairs. Further, the rates of their time or piece-work wages are avowedly fixed, not on any consideration of equity, but by the varying vicissitudes of a nevier ending struggle, in which one side strives to pay as little, and the other to obtain as much, as possible. It would almost seem as if the system had been deliberately planned to withhold from workmen all insight into the connection between effort and its natural reward ; or, should they attain such knowledge, at any rate to prevent its having any stimulating effect upon their conduct." — Mr. Sedley Taylor, FAILURE OF CO-OPERATION. 163 It would substitute industrial affinity, unity of forces and re- ciprocal obligation. It would clothe anew in nineteenth cen- tury garments the community of human interests, the frater- nity of all ranks and conditions of men, and realizing the dreams of past visionaries and enthusiasts show that society has fwi reached the limits of its moral attainments, that the equities of human relations ripen and broaden with the years and the progress of knowledge, and that the eternal fiat of the Creator, "Let there be light," can still be answered by the words, **and there was light." It is unfortunately true that simple co-operation has not accomplished what its promoters expected. As Mr. Frederick Harrison says, ** It has been a cruel disappointment to the noble-hearted men who forty years ago and since have hoped that they had found a new social machine, to see those hopes ruined by the indomitable force of personal interest and the old Adam of industrial selfishness." Christian socialism which did so much for the poor and oppressed in other directions must acknowledge a defeat in this, and Maurice's purpose of turning **a number of warring forces, each seek- ing the other's destruction, into harmony, by certain scien- tific arrangements concerning production and consumption," has been in England at least a notable though glorious failure. The reasons for this are not difficult to discern. Associa- tions of tailors and needlewomen, without experience, educa- tion or practical direction, possessing less than the average of ability, and with no capital except a bolt of cloth or cot- ton, could not possibly hold their own against well-organized competition with abundant capital, controlled by experience. The enthusiasm of those who launched these schemes com- mitted them to the mistake of dissociating capital from labor, while true co-operation no more contemplates production without capital than the factory-owner expects profit without '♦"Proceedings of the Industrial Remuneration Congress Conference," London, 1885. 164 FAILURE OF CO-OPERATION. the co-ordinates necessary to produce. " Workingmen in order to be qualified to engage in independent co-operation," Mr. Thornton says,* "must be provided with two things — capital and special training" — and neither of these has labor yet possessed. The opportunity to acquire the administrative science, without which profits are almost impossible, has always been wanting, so that even if sufficient capital had been forthcoming to conduct its early enterprises on a com- mensurate scale with others, it must have failed for lack of tliis, and in the absence of both elementary requisites, success was of necessity unattainable. Further we see how difficult it is for the smaller capitalist to hold his own against the larger. The great railroads absorb the little ones ; the mill with 25,000 spindles is able to under- sell the one with 5000 ; the palatial dry-goods store builds up its pitiless prosperity on the ruin of twenty smaller com- petitors. The power of capital, like the value of a diamond, increases in arithmetical proportion to its size. One hundred thousand dollars is more than ten times as efficient as ten separate sums of ten thousand dollars. These will probably be pulling in opposite directions.; but the momentum of the larger amount can, if desired, crush the others singly, so that to be successful under modern conditions, a large amount of capital is required. Industrial partnership contemplates this and piovides for it, while the first forms of co-operation did not. Yet even in its simple attempts the failure has not been ab- solute, though the rarity of success demonstrates that there is no palladium here for industrial difficulties. In 1870 the co- operative production societies of Paris, after all the et:/a/ with which they were founded twenty-two years before, numbered but twenty, though by 1885 they had increased to seventy- four, with a membership of 4920. One of these associa- \tions — the Jewelers' — has sometimes given its members a Wofit equal to a whole year's pay ; the Masons have had * " On Labor," page 390. CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETIES ABROAD. 165 dividends of J300 each per annum, in addition to prevailing wages; the Joiners (started since 18S0), with but 5600 capi- tal, doubled that amount during the first year, and, strange to say, neither the German war nor the Commune had any injurious effect on their prosperity. This is a very poor result to show for the high hopes of forty years, yet, small as it is, it surpasses the exhibit made by England, where some forty-two associations represent all that has been immediately accom- plished, and of tliese twenty have commenced operations since 1883.* At that date their annual production was less than 1 1, 000, 000, and the net profits of fifteen of the larger con- cerns (comprising co-operative printing, worsted, watch, nail, quilt, hosiery, cutlery, etc.) show a return of a little more than 12 per cent, on a capital of $357,605. A special feature of the English societies is that many of them, after declaring dividends of about 7)4 per cent, to capital, return nearly half of the remaining profit as a bonus to purchasers, leaving the balance for the workers, as an addition to wages. Thus capi- tal, consumer and labor are considered in the final distribu- tion, and beyond this equity certainly could not go. No one ever heard of a repentant manufacturer finding profits too large for his conscience and sending a pro rata check for the excess to each of his customers. Yet these printers, weavers, nailmakers and cutlers had such a sense of the prior claims of both capitalist and consumer that they were content to forego all extra remuneration until the others were fairly dealt with, from which it is a deduction that wlien workingnjen have been properly educated to manage their own industries, and have gained confidence by success, they will be actuated by juster motives than have hitherto prevailed. f * See tabulated statement in the Report of Bureau of Statistics of La- bor, Massachusetts, 1886. f Between 1870 and 1875 thirteen co operative manufacturinir associa- tions were organized in Massachusetts, but in 1884 only Iwo of them were in existence. Others sub.'-equently formed l^rought the number in opera- tion that year up to ten, comprising three foundries, one chair company, one furniture company, and the remainder boot and shoe manufacturing companies. Three of these enterprises have not yet paid a profit, and the 166 CO-OrERATIVE SOCIETIES ABROAD. It must be admitted, therefore, that, notwithstanding an occasional exception, the "new social machinery" of Mau- rice, Kingsley and the Christian socialists has refused to do its intended work. Yet the success of industrial partnership is largely attributable to the experience growing out of these abortive attempts, and though they have failed to make the simple co-operation of labor the basis of society, they have been instrumental in laying the foundation of the largest industrial reforms. To assert that the hope of industrialism largely rests on the adoption of some method by which capital and labor can associate for profit-making on an equitable basis,* is to affirm the entire argument. In Mr. Thornton's terse words, f "One- half of mankind will never submit quietly to have their main- tenance dependent on the other half's caprice, to be mere instruments of production, working mainly for the benefit of privileged customers. With such a state of things they can- not be expected to be content. While it endures there can be no social peace, and it would be humiliating to human nature if there could be. How to end it is the most pressing of social problems." One plan of ending it, by the- employed becoming their own employers, has been tried by many English associations ; that is, they have merged the functions of capital and labor stockholders working them have only received usual wages. Three others have paid very small dividends, and the remaining four have returned from 7.60 to 14.15 per cent, to working shareholders, in addition to wages. All have suffered more or less from the lack of capital, wliich the man- agers emphasize as most essential to success. See Bureau of Statistics of Labor, Massachusetts, 1886. Within the last two or three years productive co-operation can record several unexpected successes in the Western States, particularly in Minnesota. A very interesting account of the Min- nesota enterprises has recently been published under the title of " Co- operation in a Western City." * Mr. Babbage, the inventor of the once celebrated calculating ma- chine, is entitled to the honor of having made the first definite proposal for profit-sharing. In his work, " On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures," published in 1832, he suggests (pages 249-50) that "a considerable part of the wages received by each person employed should depend on the profits made by the establishment." f " On Labor," page 395. CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETIES ABROAD. 167 by providing both, and the system has been an overwhelming / success, though in reality it partakes more of the nature of ' joint stock ownership than co-operative production.* In * The Mitchell-Hay Co-operative Manufacturing Society, of Rochdale, Lancashire, made the first venture in 1854. A period of eleven years elapsed before it was repealed, and then, in iS65,the Sun Mill was stalled at Oldham, in the same county, the capital being raiNcd among the mill- hands by the sale of shares having a par vnlue of 525.00 each. In 1867 another concern was organized by the same method, followed by many more in the succeeding ten years, so that l)y 1882 seventy-one companies, with a i)aid-up capital of ;S27,8o6,ioo, were in flourishing operation. These enterprises were started under peculiarly favorable circumstances. The iKjpulaiion of Oldham was ihi rouglily familiar with the principles of co-operative distribution and also conversant with every detail of cotton mnnufaciuring, and in addition to these qualifications it had the further indispensable requisites of industry and temperance, together with a pru- dence that has long been noted in all the neighbormg t«)wns. The efl'ect of placing these industrial opportunities vfitliin reach of a class that was not only ready but able to use them has been forcibly described by a clever writer in the "Annual of the Co operative Wholesale Society " for 18S4: "The daily discussions which take place among the shareholders as to why dividends are small or otherwise have led almost every intelligent operative to become more economical with material, more industrious, and to see what effect his individual effoits have upon the material produced. The cotton trade could not in these days be conducted at all, if misman- aged so wastefully as was customary before the sjnnning companies were e-tablished. Profits now are not calculated by \d. or 2d. per pound on the yarn, as formerly ; much less than half these rates are now welcome and realize good dividends. The competition between the managers of one company and those of another, and between the directors of different companies, and the pride which each body of shareholders takes in its own mill is constantly leading to improvements in machinery and economy in every kind of manufacture, so that it is almost impossible for the man- agement of any mill owned by workingmen to be seriously defective fi't any length of time. Almost the entire population of wage-receivers and shopkeejTcrs carry on the spinning business in Oldham. Women are ad- mitted as well as men, and attend the quarterly meetings. Probably 90 i^er cent, of the shareholders have equal voles; there is no jTopeily qualificatic^n, except in a few concerns principally promoted by the middle classes. The number of shares held by a sharehohlerneither helps nor hinders his election to a directorship ; generally speaking his knowledge of the trade and the confidence placed in him governs his election. 'I'he buyers, salesmen, or managers of one mill are frequently directors of another mill, and find at the latter that their previous directors are now their servants. We need scarcely say that the result of this is that di- rectors aad workmen consider themselves equal and treat each other as equals. There is no town in Lancashire where as much average wages are earned per week as in Oldham, although there are other towns paying as high rate per pound for the work done. Still this saving of wages, and making and saving of profits, does not lead the working classes to seek 168 CO-OPERATIVE UNION. 1884 the co-operative societies of England operating on this basis comprised 355 spinning companies alone, and these with their kindred associations are bound together in a co-operative union, which meets annually for the discussion of all matters pertaining to their interests. The declared principles and objects of this confederation deserve to be widely known. The preamble to what we should term its constitution says: *' This Union is formed to promote the practice of truthfulness, justice and economy in production and exchange : " I. By the abolition of all false dealings, either by repre- senting any article produced or sold to be other than what it is known to the producer or vendor to be, or by concealing from the purchaser any fact known to the vendor, material to be known by the purchaser, to enable him to judge of the value of the articles purchased. ** 2. By conciliating the conflicting interests of the capi- talist, the worker, and the purchaser, through an equitable division among them of the fund commonly known as profit. " 3. By preventing the waste of labor now caused by un- regulated competition." This is certainly a stronger recognition of the duty of ab- solute equity, and a more decided attempt to carry the teach- ings of the gospel into the factory and the mart than has hitherto been made. For the old legal maxim ''caveat emptor " it substitutes perfect honesty between buyer and seller; the usual method of giving labor as little as possible less enjoyment and care only for saving. The Derbyshire hills are perhaps belter known and enjoyed by these Oldham shareholders than by the Derbyshire residents themselves; their holiday trips extend to London, the lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland, North Wales, Paris, and other places on the Continent Yet no operatives are more indus- trious during w^orking hours— ^-industrious not from compulsion, but from choice — than these Oldham operatives. There are few towns where the temperance party is more respected, and probably none in which the bulk of the workmen spend less upon hurtful indulgences, Considering their means, than they do." In 1884 the net annual profits of seventy-one Oldham joint stock mills was ;gi,369,68o, or about <^yi per cent, on a paid-up capital of ^14,882,780. PROFIT-SHARING. 100 out of profit is replaced by a proportionate distribution of wliat each has justly earned, and the destructive and unneces- sary competition which reduces profits is superseded by an organized effort to keep them at a fair medium. If these principles are to be taken as auguries of the new develop- ment, they indicate that with it there will also be evolved a higher type of truth and probity, of regard for the interests of others as well as the interests of self, and these are the best certificates of real progress that industrialism can ex- hibit. This mode of profit-sharing by joint stock ownership is one that is always open to thrift. Nor is it necessary to combine the functions of employe and stockholder in the same establishment, but of course unless that is done there is no distinction between the holding of shares in a joint stock enterprise and any other form of active capital ; for in both cases profit is sought from secondary labor. And although the effect of ownership is good, it cannot be said to solve even remotely the question of equitable distribution. Its chief use is as an educative force. It interests the stockholder in both factors of production. It brings within his observation many matters pertaining to social and industrial economy of which he would otherwise be in ignorance. He learns some- thing of the employer's perplexities, and understands the fiill meaning of bills payable, falling markets, rising staples, bad debts, changes of tariff and foreign competition. It presents to him some of the causes of success and failure, the diffi- culties of management, the competitions of capital ; and thus his views are broadened on one side and modified on the other. Yet all this is only a neutralization. It gives labor no distinct, direct, substantial and conjunctive interest with capital in daily toil, and it is in such conjunction, as far as our little knowledge can predict, that the speediest possi- bility of an affinity between the elements of capital and labor, between the golden rule and industry, between prac- tical Christianity and the productive powers is to be found. A history of that form of productive co-operation which is 170 PROFIT-SHARING. generally understood by the terms "profit-sharing" or ''in- dustrial partnership" would simply be a lengthy description of well-known industrial experiments, differing largely in de- tail, but agreeing in the general idea of allotting the workman a share of the profits in addition to his wages. The only new facts that have been recently adduced on the subject are a confirmation of its applicability to all kinds of industrial pursuits, the slow but steady acceptance of its principles by capitalist-manufacturers in Europe and in the United States, and the growing consensus of sociologists, employers, laborers and divines that our industrial system must ultimately de- velop into this form.* In Mr. Sedley Taylor's book on ''Profit Sharing," more than one hundred instances are given of the success that has attended this method of co-operation on the European conti- * " Co-operation has been urged as the only satisfactory sohition of the labor problem; and there can be no d()ul)t that in the one form or other it will yet be the predominating influence in the production and distribution of economic goods," — Professor Ely in "The Labor Prob- lem," edited by Wm. E. Barnes. " What is known as industrial copartnership, involving profit-sharing and embodying all the vitality there is in the principle of co operation, offers a practical way of producing goods on a basis at once just to capital and to labor, and one which brings out the best moral elements of the capitalist and the workman." — Mr, Carroll D. Wright, *' First Annual Re- port of the Commissioner of Labor," 1886, page 280. " The wage-laborer ought to have not only the market rate of wages, under competition, but a stipulated share in the profits of business. He ought to be identified in interest with his employer; and he must be before there is any peace between them. The system of profit-sharing or indus- trial partnership saves and enlarges the gains of private enterprise, and permits the workman to participate in them. There is good reason to hope that this simple readjustment of the economical relations of employer and laborer would put a new face upon industrial society. Peace would take the place of strife, confidence of distrust, hope of despair. The effi- cacy of labor would be promoted, and the gains of civilization for all classes indefinitely increased." — " Applied Christianity," Washington Gladden, pages 96-98, " A question arises here, whether in some ulterior, perhaps some not far distant stage of this 'Chivalry of Labor,' your master- workman may not find it possible and needful to grant to his workers permanent in- terest in his enterprise and theirs ? So that it becomes in practical re- suit what in essential fact and justice it ever is, a joint enterprise; all men, from the chief master down to the lowest overseer and operator, economi- cally as well as loyally concerned for it." — Carlyle, PROFIT-SHARTNQ. 171 nent,* from its inception in 1842 by the famous experiment of the Parisian house painter, Leclaire. to its extrcne devel- opment by M. Godin in his equally famous social palace at Guise. The Maison Leclaire has now been in existence for forty-five years, and since 1871 the benefit of participation in profit has been extended to those who work for even a single day. These bonuses have varied from 12 to 18 i)er cent, on the amount of wages earned, with a general average of 15 per cent., and in addition to this material advantage, 20 years of service and the attainment of the age of 50 ensures a life-pen- sion of $200 per annum. The same amount is also paid at death, the money being provided by a segregation of a por- tion of the profits to the " Mutual Aid Society," which as a sleeping partner owns one-half of the $80,000 which consti- tutes the capital of the concern. M. Leclaire was able to say almost as soon as he had inaugurated his plan that the in- creased earnings of his employes was not an abstraction from the profits of capital, but a legitimate result of hard work, greater care of materials and industrial zeal. He thus became a sharer in the gain of his workmen, and that unconsidered factor, society at large, must also have been silently benefited to quite an appreciable extent by a satisfaction of the claims of labor and the consequent substitution of content for antag- onism. " I am the humble disciple of him who has told us to do to others what we would have others do to us, and to love our neighbor as ourselves ; it is in this sense that 1 desire to remain a Christian until my last breath," f wrote Edme Jean Leclaire upon his death-bed ; and his applicability of this rule to what has been considered the most difficult of practical problems again illustrates how readily the Christian ethics blend and harmonize with commercial interests, and how easily they can adjust the seemingly conflicting claims of classes in a manner acceptable to all. It was the absence of equity in distributing the results of ♦ Over fifty French firms now share profits with employes (August,!* 1887), including tlie Hon Mnrche, of Paris. H I Quoled in '• Applied Christianity," page 99. 172 godin's familistere. capital and labor that first drew M. Godin's attention when a workman, to the crudities of the industrial system. *' Supply and demand," he wrote in 1870, * '* the inexorable and heart- less law of commerce, often gave me, when I had accomplished a work that procured the master exaggerated profits, wages that barely sufficed for the necessities of life, and at other times higher wages for labor affording little profit to the em- ployer." In seeking a remedy for these conditions he came to the conclusion that it must be discovered in a conciliation of interests, and that society needed strengthening by giving labor a larger ])ortion of its industrial exertions. But with a vision born of enlarged sympathy, he saw that beyond this it ^ was necessary to foster social relations by converting individ- 1 ual into collective efi"ort, and that industrial association could ( thus be made an available power for social development. He therefore combined his workmen into a social as well as an industrial partnership, forming of them one large family in community of interest with the employer and with each other. So much has been written about this Associated Home, where 1500 people living under one roof as one household are enabled by a unity of purpose to enjoy advantages other- wise unattainable, that the wonder excited by its social fea- tures overpowers the interest in its industrial aspect. Yet it is as an experiment in co-operative production that the in- terest chiefly centres; for however successful the Familistere has been it is only a triumph in the easier field of distributive co-operation, where success has long since been assured, when the conditions necessary to obtain it were obeyed. f * "Social Solutions," by M. Godin (English translation), page ii. •j- " To every member of that human family is secured from birth to death the equivalent of riches : in childhood all have equal chances of physical, mental, and moral development; the fruit of every man's labor is secured to him through mutual service rendered; study and recreation are within the reach of all, for the joy of life is not crushed out of their existence; in sickness there is all needful help at hand ; and old age finds the workers living in honorable independence. There, too, the freedom of all is en- larged; bolts and bars unneeded, because all have learned to respect the rights of others, consequently flowers and even ripe fruit are exempt from 173 To describe in detail the method of profit-sharing adopted by M. Godin would require many pages, and the plan is too complicated for outline. The management of the iron-works was vested in a committee of workmen under the superintend- ence of the founder, although the capital of the concern ($1,320,000) was at the time of his death gradually passing to his work people. In five years the profits amounted to more than $1,000,000, of which $66,000 went to M. Godin as Director, $201,000 as interest at 5 per cent, on his capi- tal, and the remainder, $756,000 (after deducting payment to individual stockholders), in varying proportions to the laboring members in accordance with their classification. By the articles of association, M. Godin retained the right of appointing his successor for life, it being presumed that before this succession terminates the entire establishment, industrial and social, will have become the property of the operatives. Those to whom this trust will eventually be confided are now little children, surrounded by the purest influences that thought can devise. Their lives are the realization of the conditions laid down by an earnest writer* as a necessity for the solution of our economic problems, viz. : " industrial education for the children of to-day ; co-operation as the end to be attained by the workers into which the children will grow." If these coming men and women are able to carry out M. Godin's principles of social democracy and associate industry, if they can demonstrate to another generation that the material pros- perity of the capitalist is not affected by his alliance with labor, and that labor can make a blessing of toil without infringe- ment on the property rights of the wealthy and without ren- juvenile depredation in the extensive pleasure-grounds that are the prop- erty of all. The ori)jinal sole proprietor, without impoverishing himself, has enriched all, and that too without patronage to the workers or help from the state ; and moreover we hear no cry there about * helpless women an 1 children,' because men and women are helping one another." — "Obstacles to Industrial Reform," paper read by Miss Mary II. Hart, "Industrial Reform C«mference," page 331. For an illustrated descripiiou of the Familist^re, see Harpers^ Maga- tinf. Vol. XLIV, page 701. * Mrs. Helen Campbell. 174 SUCCESSFUL PROFIT-SHARING. dering a toiling life the equivalent of dirt, discomfort, and ignorance, the question of social and industrial progress will have been answered for millions of others besides themselves, and the answer will furnish the key to many another hidden solution, political and religious, as well as industrial. Profit-sharing has been successfully introduced into a large variety of manufacturing industries,* into agriculture,t and the administration of such public enterprises as railroads (American and foreign), canals, banks and insurance offices. The Paris and Orleans Railway Company has divided a cer- tain percentage of net receipts among its staff for many years, and the directors express themselves well satisfied with the results. The Suez Canal Company provides in its statutory organization for a distribution of 2 per cent, of the profits annually among participating employes, and in 1883 this sum amounted to $125,000. '* We have been in a position to receive proofs of the zeal and devotion of our agents," says M. de Lesseps, referring to this division, **and have only to congratulate ourselves on what we have done." J Similarly the managing director of the joint-stock company of Billou & Isaac, musical box manufacturers, Geneva, Switzerland, wrote in December, 1884, *' We have so identified ourselves with participation that we no longer understand industry carried on without the participation of this beneficent prin- ciple," and after enumerating its advantages he concludes * This list comprises iron smelting, type and iron foundries, cotton spinning, flour milling, mining, quarrying and cabinet-making ; the manu- facture of woolens, tools, paper, weighing scales, boots and shoes, tin- ware, musical instruments and chemicals, soap, card-board and cigarettes; the business of dry-goods dealing, stock broking and bookselling, printing, engraving and publishing, house painting and plumbing; and every month adds to the number. f Co-operaticn has been successfully applied to wine and fruit produc- tion in California. An Italian-Swiss colony has had 1352 acres of choice land under cultivation for the last six years. Its grape crop this year (1888) will exceed looo tons and next year 2000 — equal to 3,ooo,ocx) gallons of wine. A co-operative farm at Delavan, Minnesota, has re- turned a dividend of 10 per cent, for several years. X This and several of the following statements are collated from a paper on Profit-sharing by Mr. Sedley Taylor, read at the Industrial Remunera- tion Conference, London, 1885. fiUCCESSFUL PROFIT-SHARINO. 175 with the observation tliat " the sliare in profits which wc allot to our workmen is no sacrifice to our house, since we find it made up for by the good quality of the work obtained and the economies of time and materials, a source which yields incontestable surplus profits." * A thorough confirmation of this important point is afforded by many other employers. ** I am fiiUy persuaded," writes M. Marquet, the managing partner of the Maison Leclaire, " that if we had not had profit-sharing our balance sheet (for 1883) would have shown a diminution at least equal to the reduc- tion imposed ; whereas instead of that we have obtained an enhanced result." | The managing director of a leading French insurance company has declared as the result of thirty years* experience that profit-sharing is an unvarying success, ** excellent for the employes and excellent for the company," and in testifying before a committee appointed by the French Minister of the Interior, in 1883, M. Laroche-Joubert, the proprietor of a large paper mill at Angouleme, said, "It is not to be supposed that the master has in consequence of, adopting participation given away a part of his profits." M. Besselievre, the owner of an important calico manufactory, also told the committee that " it is to the interest of the em- ployer to take his workmen into association. The measure will cost him nothing ;" a statement which coincides with that made by Messrs. Charles A. Pillsbury & Co., of Minne- apolis, Minnesota: **We doubt very much whether we have lost anything by the extra money we have distributed among our men, ... we think we get the very best, most loyal, and faithful help in the world, and by inducing our old men to stay by us that we are getting back largely, if not entirely, * The tes'imony of their workmen is equally emphatic. " We are con- vinced that, admitted generally, pariicipation will be a powerful means of breaking down the harriers between masters and men, and of thus solving, in a certain measure, the social question." f Referring to an order of the municipal authorities advancing the wages of painters 5 centimes per hour, without any increase of the em- ployers' compensation. 176 SUCCESSFUL PROFIT-SHABING. all we pay out to them." * Mr. Nelson, of the N. O. Nelson Manufacturing Company, of St. Louis, wrote (March, 1887) that after one year's experience of profit-sharing the experiment has been an entire success ; and in the official report of the pro- gress of the Social Palace of Guise (March 30, 1884) an em- phatic declaration is made that " the portion given to labor has been obtained without sacrificing the remuneration of capital." As a practical business movement therefore, and entirely divested from moral principles, the results have been so pro- fitable as to commend them to the careful consideration of all employers who wish to increase the returns from their capital and administrative skill without subtracting from the earnings of labor. It is true, as Mr. Sedley Taylor wisely says, that profit-sharing and industrial partnership, ** valuable as they are in themselves, constitute no self-acting panacea," and that " their best fruits can be reaped only by men who feel that life does not consist in abundance of material posses- sions, who regard stewardship as nobler than ownership, and who see in the ultimate outcome of all true work, issues reach- ing beyond the limits of the present dispensation, and who act faithfully and strenuously on these beliefs ; " yet for those who seek in their dealings the lowest plane of profit and loss, it affords a method by which they can reconcile their desires without conflicting with the other elements of production, and without increasing that disparity of condition between rich and poor which is the most startling feature of modern civilization. Co-operation has been defined as the practical application of Christianity to the purposes of trade and industry. Its desire is to establish equity as the commercial basis of ex- change, and replace the sword-drawn system of unnecessary competition by one that will permit and- encourage fraternity. * It is understood that this firm has distributed to its employes during the last three years about jg 100,000, in addition to the payment of the highest prevailing wages. SUCCESSFUL PROFIT-SHARING. 177 It is socialism divested of impossibilities, separated from its dangerous elements and stripped of its false theories. It is the consistent evolution of industry in conformity with pro- gress, tending to tlie conservation of human and natural forces in the direction of larger sympathies, greater content and lessened social divergence. It substitutes peace for war, and from unsympathetic units generates affinity, rich with kindliness, warm with charity, and fragrant with religion's sweetest fruit, good deeds.! (Herein then are the elements of unity, and capital seeking how it may best discharge its obligations to toil, and toil anxious to reconcile its interests with capital, can read the answer to their quest in that now familiar word rei)lete with such significance of allied power. ** Profit-sharing," says a late writer, ** is simply the incorporation of good-will into the industrial system as a working force; and the scores of great companies on the continent of Europe that have won magnificent success on tliis basis prove it to be no visionary scheme, but one of the solidest of accomplished facts." * The long separation that commenced when man enslaved man ends here. The parallel warfare that runs through all history merges here. The cry from the pyramids, from the ami)lu- tiieatre, from the field, loses its echo here. Tiie once im- passable distance between Pharaoh and his brickmakers, Cali- gula and his lion-destined slaves, Louis the Well-Beloved and his starving peasantry, is annihilated here, and in place there is a mingling from which has proceeded and will proceed an enlarged and active humanity, quick to recog- nize that we are all equal in the fat»herhood of God, in the heirship of the present and in the possibilities of the coming ages.J ♦ "Applied Chiisiianily," Washington Gladden, page 177. 12 CHAPTER IX. INDUSTRIAL SOLUTIONS. " Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things a?-e honest, whatsoever things ore just, whatsoever things a7e pure, whatsoever things are hively, whatsoever things are of good report; if f/ie7-e he any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." — /'////. 4 : 8. "If all employers were as thoughtful of the general welfare of those they employ as they are now eager to get the most out of them; if all producers were as anxious for good, sound, and useful production as ihey are for paying production; if those who lend money consiilered not only the security and the interest, but the purpose for which the money was sought; if those who develop new works thought more of the workers than possible profits, industry would not be what we see it. In other words, the solution of the industrial problem is a moral, social, and religious question." — Frederick Harrison. From some of the statistics presented on a previous pnge it will be seen that many industries yield all that is possible to the wage-worker even with co-operation, and that the only immediate way of increasing earnings would be by adding to the selling price of the product. Extra efficiency might raise wages a little, but with capital content to receive 5 per cent. O-s a return from industrial investment, there is not much room for further advance.* The only recourse for the wage- receiver in such cases is to make the most of earnings, by turning them into better value, and if he can effect a saving of 8 or 10 per cent, in the purchase of necessaries it is in effect that amount added to incou.e. The British and Continental workmen understand this, and thus it is that distributive co-operation has been such a suc- * "At the present lime any safe business will attract all the cnpital re- quired in it, which will yield 6 per cent, net profit, and also 4 per cent, for such a sinking fund or reserve as is necessary for the repairs and main- tenance of the capital." — Edward Atkinson, in the Century, April, 1887. (178) WAGES AND EARNINGS. 179 cess with them.* In the northern manufacturing counties of England it is stated that one-fourth of the town population purchase their supplies from co-operative stores, and that in the mining counties of Durham and Northumberland the proportion applies to the entire population. In 1886, 1356 f associations making returns showed a membership in Great Britain of 911,797, and reported a business for that year of more than $150,000,000, from wliich, after payment of about 5 per cent, interest on capital and the donation of some $85,000 for educational purposes, they were enabled to divide a profit of 8 per cent, among purchasers. Since 1862 the enormous sum of $162,333,000 has been returned by them to members, all of which would otherwise have gone into the hands of middlemen and been lost to the consumer. The principle of distributive co-operation is growing very rapidly in the British isles, an average of more than one new society having been officially registered every week for the past eight years. From 1883 to 1886 the membership in- creased over 230,000, and as each member represents a single family, the actual addition to those who support the associa- tions is considerably more than a million. When practicable, * Mr. Lloyd Jones has summarized in a forcible manner the good results these societies have already accomplished: "The cooperative organization includes about two and a half millions of the most thouj^ht- fui and provident of the Briiish people. They have removed the disad- vantages attending the ordinary distributive system by a plan of their own, and this in a limited way is now placing in their hands somethinjj over two millions sterling a year as profit. They have made this j^rofit because they have found the way to use their own capital, made fruitful by their own consumption, for the carrying on of their own distributive business. They entertain like views in reference to productive industry. They have, so far as they have gone, got possession of the instruments of distrdjiition ; and as they find their own capital, the profits of their busi- ness belong to them. They have carried this idea to a certain extent into the work of production, and with such results that they become day by day more convinced that, as time passes and experience increases, and a knowledge of the best principle on which to struggle for success becomes developed among the geneial body of thcnr members, success will be found as practicable in production as in distribution." — •• Industrial Re- muneration Conference," page 40. f This includes sixty-six societies for production, which were not seg- regated in the returns. 180 DISTRIBUTIVE CO-OPERATION. the societies manufacture their own goods, and the *' whole- sale co-operative," from which most of the supplies are pro- cured, owns five steamers, has purchasing-depots in Ireland, France, and the United States, has just invested ^400,000 in the projected Manchester ship canal, and publishes a weekly- newspaper of large circulation. No attempt is made by the retail associations to compete with private dealers by under- selling; the advantage of practically unadulterated articles, the absence of misrepresentation, and a return to the pur- chaser of nearly the total net profit in semi-annual dividend being of themselves sufficient inducements to attract custom. To these substantial benefits must be added others ''which no statistics can adequately portray," and which, though in- tangible, have had a moral value surpassing the material. Thus it has discouraged the credit system, fraught with so much evil to those of small means. It has stimulated thrift and self-reliance, and after converting waste into capital has returned it to the class who were most in need of it. By promoting union for a common and wise purpose it has exer- cised an educative and ethical influence that must make the desideratum of productive co-operation nearer attainment than it could possibly have been from any other preliminary training, and it has taught the poor how much their physical and social elevation is dependent on self-exertion, and how powerful they can become through association. These are great results from such an unpretentious beginning, and again serve to point the lesson how little we can determine the effect of minute effort when circumstances are favorable for its development. There is no apparent reason why a system that has added one-tenth or one-twelfth to the wage-receiver's income with- out any trouble on his part should not be as successful in some of our cities, as in Great Britain, Switzerland, Denmark, and Sweden. We certainly cannot afford to neglect the aid of any economic devices, whether industrial or social, that long experience has shown to be beneficial under analogous conditions elsewhere, and in co-operative distribution there TEMPERANCE. 181" is a splendid and almost unoccupied field for the display of those qualities of adaptability and originality which are so characteristic of Americans.* *' No one who knows the workingman, so to speak, at home," said Mr. Harrison, in discussing the subject of ** social distress," '*can doubt how great an advance in well-being and independence is the possession of a little capital, a bit of land however small. Only those who do know him at home can truly judge how great an advance it is. The workmen of such cities as Roclidale, Halifax, Hud- dersfield, Leeds, Newcastle, and Oldliam, where the unions, the co-operative, building, and benefit societies are in strong force, are in an altogether different world from that of the average town and country laborer, who on a Friday niglit is the owner at most of a few shillings and five pounds worth of old furniture." How many more could transport themselves to this "different world" if they would make the attempt can be discovered from the statistics of liquor selling and intemperance. Mr. Harrison estimates that only 5 per cent, of the total English working population is in the comfortable position he describes, but it is certainly no exaggeration to say that this number could be trebled within five years by a reduction of less than one-half in the money sj^ent for drink. \Jl'he humblest manual labor is compatible with the higliest moral dignity, though it is the motive for wliich the laborer works that dignifies the toil and not the labor itself. There is no dignity in a man working hard for six days to spend his earnings on the seventh in debauchery or selfish gratification, wliile a neglected wife and children suffer in a miserable dwelling. But if the worker has for his ambition the fencing of his home from poverty, the education of his children, and ♦ A strong movement was made a few years ago in favor of distributive co-operation by the grangers' associations, but of the hundreds of stores then started nearly all have retired. New England has been the mot congenial field. Tliere were in August, 1887, about fifty-three co-operative establish me nts in that section of the country, doing an annual bubiness exceeding ;$2,ooo,cxx>. 182 TEMPERANCE. the general fulfilment of his duty to the family, then, and only then, is he dignifying his labor, and no matter how menial it may be, is adding dignity to himself and to the society and state of which his family is a part. The connection between poverty and intemperance is too obvious to require the slightest enlargement. That the ex- ceedingly wretched, who are cut off from all enjoyment and have no further hope in life except to seek as each day comes forgetfulness of their many miseries, should find it in one of the few animal pleasures left to them, is a subject more for pity than declamation. For these poor creatures social solutions come too late. Like that other grand army of outcasts that treads the streets at night, bedecked in allurement, a few may here and there be snatched from the abyss; but all humani- tarian effort has so far failed to reach the majority and we can only leave them in sorrow to One who will righteously judge with mercy. For those who create their own poverty by a persistent in- dulgence in drink there is already too much sympathy. Mak- ing what allowance can be made for supposed hereditary ten- dencies and the temptations of good fellowship, the fact yet remains that except in a very few cases it is a cultivated vice, petted and nurtured despite the warnings with which every one is familiar from childhood, and allowed to grow until, with stealthy strength, it becomes a tyrant. There is little enough of sympathy in the world for weakness and wrong- doing, yet quite too much for this. Let condemnation and denunciation try their part ; let the man who disregards his duties to his family for the sake of his own indulgence be shunned in the workshop and on the street ; let society put its mark of disapprobation as strongly on these as it wrong- fully does on those who in a fatal moment fall from virtue; let it be considered disgraceful to be drunk, disgraceful to spend money in drink as an indulgent, and doubly disgrace- ful to shirk the responsibility of parentage and destroy the home by the slavery of liquor. Great Britain annually spends $750,000,000 on intoxicants, or an average of about $18.00 TEMPERANCE. 183 for every man, woman and child on its islands. It has been estimated that if this amount could be applied to useful pur- poses it would pay the national bread bill more than twice over, or that an annual surplus of $20,000,000 would remain after paying the house rental of the United Kingdom, and purchasing all the woolen and cotton goods consumed by its inhabitants. The amount wasted on liquor in the United States during the twelve years ending 1882 averaged $860,- 000,000 annually,* or about $14.50 per capita, a very large l)ortion of which inflicted the direst social injury as a pro- ducer of crime, poverty, insanity, vice and disease. If, as previously said, therefore, only one-half of this total could be devoted to proper purposes a "different world" would speedily come to others besides the operative. There would be more social elasticity, healthier moral surroundings, and a general increase in comfort and prosperity as marked as that which exists between the poles of any opposites, and the poison that now runs through the system of nations would be displaced by a wholesome flow that would invigorate industry to its remotest artery. *' The destruction of the poor is their poverty," said Solo- mon. Yet while the poor elect to remain poor, who can help them ? There is a very large class of men belonging to the ranks of unskilled labor to whom the utmost economy is a necessity. Having neither natural nor acquired ability, competition has put them beyond industrial promotion and they cannot escape from their condition. Yet. without thought for the future, and while barely able to earn their own living, they have burdened themselves and others witli wife and family, and so are compelled to pass their lives manyieagues beyond the ' sterile border land of poverty. Improvidence literally begets improvidence, and competition is intensified in the classes least able to compete, thus aggravating every form of social dis- turbance. By taking on themselves responsibilities that ought ♦ The expenditure in 1886 is estimated by the Bureau of Statistics, Washington, to have been $700,000,000. 184 TOO EARLY MARRIAGE. not to be incurred they cast on the community half the duties of parentage and furnish the largest percentage of those pre- datory recruits who so tax the energies of reformatory move- ments. "Were there no drunkenness, no extravagance, no reckless multiplication, social miseries would be trivial," says Herbert Spencer. ** Due limitation of the numbers of the community," wrote John Stuart Mill, '* would be a remedy for many existing evils." But while the evils of drunken- ness and extravagance are everywhere condemned in fitting words, there is a diffidence in speaking of the other that natu- rally arises from its innate delicacy, though the bolder course of frankness would be far the better one. Marriage and paternity ought to imply something more than physical maturity. There should be ability to support, clothe and educate the offspring; a home in its true sense for its tender years, and all the moral and material surroundings for healthful growth. Yet these matters are rarely considered, though a right apprehension of them would very largely reduce the ills of which the poor so bitterly complain. On the con- trary, the natural conditions are reversed, and a large family is looked upon as a means for parental support, and as a claim on society through the children. It is perhaps hopeless to expect any direct legal restrictions on improvident marriages, and the matter is surrounded by so many sentimental and actual difficulties, that it will be a long time before social opinion sufficiently ripens to exercise any perceptible re- straint; for here morality and prudence seem to run counter. A little can be done though, by bringing the subject under educational influences until its gravity is more widely appre- ciated, and marriage, with its entailed obligations, less lightly entered into than now. The marriage laws of the nation and public sentiment on marriage need thorough correction, for marriage is the inception of every social and industrial problem, and in it may be found the inception of many social and industrial solutions. There is another large class whose steady and fixed re- munerative employment during the working years gives them PROVIDENT HABITS. 185 abundant opportunity to provide for tlie future. Thrift would enable them, if they considered tlie object worthy of attain- ment, to take on themselves the functions of capitalists, and like the Oldham operatives become their own employers. All honestly acquired capital, be it large or small, comes from savings, and is but the residue over expenditure. If wage-earners therefore prefer the enjoyment of to-day to that self-denial which looks forward to the morrow for reward, the best institutions can avail them little, because they refuse the only general opportunity that can be offered of becoming capitalists. **The strongest of workers," says an eminent Frenchman, **is he who saves for the sake of his children," and, it may be added, that he best fulfils his duty to society when he fulfils it to himself and family. Frugality is the first principle of all self-help. Waste never accomplished any- thing. The saving man is the independent man. He can wait for seasons and occasions. He is not at the mercy of an arbitrary employer. He can transfer his labor to a more re- munerative field. He can purchase cheaper. He adds to his own self-resi)ect, and feels the dignity, unknown to thriftless- ness, which comes from a consciousness of the energy at his command. Waste of money is waste of power in its most concentrated form, and diligence in money-making without wisdom in its use is simply a loss of labor to the laborer, as he is parting with his present capital and neglecting to store it in another shape for future need. It is earning wages "to put it into a bag with holes." Improvidence makes him the sport of every adverse wind, and, like a ship without rudder or ballast on a strong sea, he is driven not where he wills, but where tlie winds list. Each dollar that labor can save lessens the dis- tance between itself and capital. A dollar in the bank is a day's labor at interest, a day gained for ease when the mus- cles can no longer respond with their wonted readiness, a day's holiday for the autumn of life, a sack of flour in the granary, and a little sur])lus of present strength garnered for the time of weakness. These are very simple truisms, yet 186 PROVIDENT HABITS. when workingmen act up to them they will have started on the high road that all earned capital has previously traversed, and every step in advance lessens the inequality between wage-payer and wage-earner. The duty of saving involves neither stint nor meanness, but only such curtailment of un- necessary expenditure as is implied in rational economy. It is, for instance, an immediate and pressing obligation, though its performance may entail the sacrifice of harmless enjoy- ment, to i)rovide for the seasons of sickness, and that inevi- table beyond that some day comes to all.* There are few men above the grade of common laborer who cannot do this, since co-operative insurance has so reduced the cost. About ^24.00 a year will now insure a provision of $2000 to wife and children in any one of half a dozen beneficiary organiza- tions; a further sum of about $12.00 will provide for benefits during sickness, and thus for 70 cents a week the temporary incapacity of illness and one of the most dreaded fears for those we love can be largely guarded against. It is useless for workingmen to talk about the moral ac- countability of capital while they disregard such self-obliga- tions as these. Indeed, all the arguments of labor in behalf of labor are weakened by the want of prudence and control exhibited by the unworthy and ignorant. They impose on themselves an enormous taxation for a destructive indulgence, they rush into responsibilities that others defer until their financial position is more firmly established, and they largely neglect the cultivation of those provident habits which are indispensable to accumulation. Insurance among those who can afford it is still the exception, improvidence among our city population still the rule, and though heedlessness and waste are confined to no class, yet these faults are a greater detriment to laboring men than to the rest of the com- munity. * " But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel." — I Tim. 5:8. ^^. LABOR CAPITALIZED. 187 So wliile it is the unquestionable right of labor to strive by all fair means for betterment, and no valid argument for capi- tal to point to opportunities misused, as an excuse for defer- ring justice, it is only human nature to do so. How largely the* mass of want, anxiety and discontent would be reduced if the surplus earnings went into the savings bank instead of the saloon ! how quickly the sharp struggle of unarmored combatants for bread would become a gentler striving for the best of a sufficiency, if prudence oftener restrained animalism and love ! and if the army of toil proved itself fitted for higher duty by thus withstanding its special temptations of selfishness, not all the capital in the world could stay its ad- vancement for a single month, or restrain it from obtaining to the utmost farthing the just value of its services. A workingman earning $10.00 per week, and the interest on capital being 5 per cent., represents to himself a capital- ized value of $10,400, which sum he can measurably increase or decrease by education or debauchery. The education that "wage-earners most need is not as accessible as it ought to be, yet books on any technical subject are readily procurable, and every craftsman and operative who desires can extend his knowledge, usefulness and value by self-education. Death is always thinning the ceaseless procession of life, and as the ranks close up it is the best fitted who are selected to lead. The difference in economic value to an employer between two men, one of whom spends his spare time in a saloon, and the other in acquiring knowledge with reference to his vocation, will be very perceptible at the end of a twelve-month, and when a vacancy occurs, or dull times make it necessary to reduce the force, it is needless to say which of the two will be favored. The power of a directing mind can manifest itself in the humblest occupations. An eminent authority, speaking on this subject, once said that an intelligent stoker would run the same engine with from one-third to one-half the amount of coal that a less intelligent one would consume, and that it required from one-fifth to one-third fewer seamen to work a 1S8 VALUE OF SKILL. vessel when they were selected from comparatively educated men than it did when manned by an unintelligent crew. The greater the attainments of an employe the more valuable he becomes to himself as well as to his employer. He needs less superintendence and so decreases the item of unproductive outlay. His efficiency manifests itself in his methods of labor, in his economical expenditure of time and effort, in the ease with which he comprehends new instructions, and generally by the application of intelligence to the end in view. These qualifications add to his capitalized worth and enable him to obtain the highest current wages, just as their absence reduces his industrial value and consequently his wage-earning power through life. It is this that makes one lawyer or physician more valuable than another, both to himself and to the community; it is this that enables the manager to make larger earnings than the foreman, the foreman than the ordinary artisan, and the artisan than the apprentice. The world is full of men who have acquired honor and wealth by constantly adding to their store of knowledge and learning how to apply it ; for God rarely leaves us without some endowment, the proper cultivation and exercise of which will make us useful to our- selves and others. If any are so unfortunate as not to find their particular gifts, the least among them can even then so order his daily life as to add to its intrinsic utility. Moral qualities have a marketable value. Trustworthiness, temper- ance and zeal are ratable commodities, and these are within ready attainment. The humblest worker can eschew- those offences which detract from his industrial desirability. He can be promptly in his place with strength unsapped by drink. He can perform his duty without requiring a watch- ful eye, can concentrate all his intelligence upon his labor, and by thus being faithful in small things surely increase that capital the interest on which is paid in the form of earnings. Mention has been made of the competition to which labor — unskilled labor more particularly — subjects itself by reck- lessness of increase, and there is another factor which tends MARRIED WOMEN. 189 to sharpen the struggle for bread directly traceable to the same cause, viz., juvenile labor and the employment of mar- ried women. When the early factory operatives of England found that there was a demand for their children in the cot- ton mills, those who had families liiought that tiie new source of income would greatly increase the general earnings, and that the larger the family the more would be the weekly pay. Instead of these anticii)ations being realized the children, by working for a pittance, deprived their parents of employment, with results that have already been referred to. The same conditions yet prevail in many occupations not controlled by legislation, and parents are still engaged in putting tjie half- a-dollar earned by their boys and girls into ofte pocket and losing dollars from another, by competing with little ones who should be at their rudimentary studies. If it were an established principle of industrial society that the proper place for the married woman was the home, and for the child, in the first instance, the ordinary public school, and afterwards the trade school, there would be no such un- comfortable statistics as those lately presented, of a million men, strong in their desire to work, yet vainly seeking it. The effect of lengthening the school-life by a single year would be immediately perceptible by a diminution of the number unemployed; and if the practice of married women and mothers going out to work was discontinued, nearly all these seekers would be readily absorbed by industry. Here as in many other things labor is its own foe. Weighted at the beginning of the industrial life by improvident marriage, the wage-earner soon finds his means altogether insufficient for the support of an increasing family, and before its mem- bers are of proper age they are sent out to join the throngs that crowd the avenues of occupation, where they are pres- ently followed by the mother. The social consequences of all this is deplorable, and from it springs more evils than can well be counted. If juvenile labor was eliminated from the industrial problem, there would at once be such an increase of wages as better to enable the father to resume his proper 190 COMPETITION OF. LABOREHS. place as the sole provider ; if it was considered wrong for the wife to join in the work of the factory, the children would receive their due of natural care, and home would be the gainer, while the young, by reason of the physical and edu- cational advantages thus obtained, would be more likely to become efficients in the world's rank and file. The unnecessary competition of workmen with each other can also be seen in the matter of over time. Every man who works longer than the regular hours of his trade deprives some fellow-craftsman or operative of his share of labor and adds to the number of unemployed. Excessive hours have the same result, and if we assume that under normal condi- tions production and consumption are nearly on a level, it would only require a decrease of 7^ per cent, in the working day to provide abundant employment for that proportion of the working population said to be idle. Whether this de- crease would cause a general reduction in earnings is not quite certain, but the probability is that the extent of the derangement would at most only amount to 2 or 3 per cent., against which must be placed many compensations, one of which, the increased consumption of the newly employed, ought quickly to offset every other loss. Excluding the question of co-operation, which can only be generally adopted with the concurrence of capital, in peace- ful alliance with labor, it must be abundantly evident from the foregoing that the wage-earning class can greatly improve its own condition by clearing away the minor obstructions to progress, and thus hasten the solution of its world-old dispute with capital. The removal of these impediments involves no cloud-capped possibilities, so high above attainment as to be insurmountable, or, if won at all, to be gained only by per- sistent and exhaustive effort. They do not even require ad- herence to an exalted qioral code, or a sacrifice of anything but a little unprofitable selfishness. They are plain, practical, commonplace and common-sense measures that each one can adopt for himself without waiting for his neighbor. Every man can set up a higher standard of providence ; every man ECONOMIC SOLUTIONS. 191 can increase his own capitalized value and refrain from need- less competition ; and supplementary to these, every man can, if he so will, beautify his life and import into all his re- lations, spirituality and love. It is well said that " the golden rule is a protest against selfishness, and selfishness, cleaving as it does to the innermost core of our being, is the besetting sin of the world." The faults of omission and commission, for which labor is alone responsible, like all forms of selfish- ness, are a detriment to social as well as soul growth. Chris- tianity could be eliminated from the discussion of every social problem, and it would yet be found, universally, and with no single exception, that the just economic solution was in every case only the practical application of the Christ way. Equity in every department of human intercourse was the basis of Christ's teachings, and though he stands immeasurably be- yond our moral attainment, we can yet strive for a nearer approach, and in doing so the problems that confront both capital and labor, however formidable they may appear, will resolve into empty nothings — mere shadows of our (ears, f A practical method of deciding disputes* between em- ployer and employed before they reach the aggressiveness that leads to conflict is very much needed in this country, and, as in many other things i:)ertaining to industrial interests, might have been adopted long ago had we been content to learn from the experience of other nations. The i)rinciple of arbitration has been incorporated in the statutes of several states, but for some reason its application has not been a suc- cess. Wiiether this arises from a want of confidence in the possibility of settling labor disputes by the reasonable meth- ods of disinterested and conciliatory adjudication, or that the organizations of labor are yet too poorly disciplined to sub- * The Scriptural rule for the seUlement of disputes is by arbitration. f**If ihy brother shall trespass ajjainst thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and liini alone; if lie shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear ///^^, ///en take with thee one or two more; ... if he shall neglect to hear them, tell iV unto the church./ — Mat/. i8 : 15-17. / 192 ARBITRATION. mit to the strain of an adverse award, or that capital, in full assurance of independent sovereignty, is afraid it might abro- gate its position by negotiating with labor, the fact remains that arbitration plays little or no part here in simplifying the relations of the productive foctors ; while in England and France it has as much superseded strikes and lockouts as tlie courts of law the duelling pistol. In Mr. Daniel J. Ryan's valuable treatise on arbitration* it is stated that its effect in France, Austria, and Belgium has uniformly tended to the elevation of labor, and that the 800,000 members of trade unions in England have unani- mously declared it to be an essential feature of industrial progress. In corroboration of this opinion it is evident that the relations of employer and employed show a marked change for the better during the last quarter of a century in that country. Twenty years ago the enormous coal mining and manufactured iron industries of the north of England, ** representing millions of capital and armies of labor," were threatened with absolute ruin in consequence of the persistent strivings of labor with capital. Conflict after conflict para- lyzed trade, *' crowds of hunger-smitten workmen begged for bread in the streets, or savagely denounced the capitalists who were trying to starve them into submission;" mines and iron works were closed down and anarchy seemed to be settling over the district. When not in actual strife a profound feel- ing of distrust and ill-nature intervened ; master and work- man surveyed each other as natural enemies, and were equally ready to commence hostilities whenever the occasion promised an advantage. During a revival of trade in 1869, when both sides stood to arms waiting for the expected storm, a board of arbitration was proposed, and with a vivid recollection of recent suffering and pecuniary loss, the proposition was ac- cepted. Inadequate as the means seemed, its effects have been astonishing. Mr. Locke, the United States consul at Newcastle-on-Tyne, in commenting on the change, says:f * " Arl)itration Between Cnpital and Labor." f See United Slates Consular Reports, " Labor in Foreign Countries," pages 783-4. ARBITRATION. 193 *' Employers are always accessible to even the humblest of their men. If any one has a grievance he may state it clearly and freely, without any fear of prejudice, and it will be in- vestigated. All questions affecting the rights of workingmen are discussed in the most friendly manner by representatives of the workmen and of the employers, and if they cannot arrive at an understanding, arbitration almost invariably fol- lows, thus doing away with the long and disastrous strikes that were formerly used to force a settlement of difference." Thus in one or two counties alone more than 100,000 wage- receivers are now, and have for a long time been, absolutely exempt from loss of earnings in consequence of dispute with their employers, and those employers have been able to insure their capital from enforced idleness and some risk, by the simple adoption of voluntary arbitration. The history of the Nottingham hosiery trade is a repetition of the same story, though in point of date, as marking the introduction of industrial conciliation, it ought to have been told first. Until i860 employers and men worked, figura- tively speaking, sword in hand. In Mr. Mundella's words, the men ** took every advantage of us when we had a demand, and we took every advantage of them when trade was bad, and it was a system mutually predatory." This state of things so seriously affected industry that Mr. Mundella re- solved, if possible, to apply a remedy, and having some knowledge of the manner in which the conseils des prud^- homtnes worked in France, conceived that a modification of the method might be found adaptable for England. His plans were at first received with suspicion by the men, while the masters deprecated attempts at conciliation as humiliating and degrading, but notwithstanding these discouragements, a board of arbitration was launched, and proved from the start such a safe, simple, and speedy way of obviating industrial disputes that the only wonder was, as in all other great dis- coveries, that it had not been thought of before. Ten years after the formation of the board the Contemporary Review was enabled to say that strikes in Nottingham were at an end, 13 194 ARBITRATION. and although since then there have been a few of minor im- portance, the old era of warfare has been succeeded by one of peace and friendship.* Permanent boards of arbitration have since then been es- tablished in most of the prominent industries, and their uni- form success demonstrates "that all the difficulties which arise between capital and labor are capable of a just and inexpensive solution." Although the proceedings are entirely- voluntary and have no legal status, it is to the honor of the parties concerned — rough workman and polished capitalist — that hardly a case can be mentioned where the awards have not been accepted and carried out in good faith, even when they involved a material fall of wages on the one hand or loss of profit on the other; while confidence and mutual respect have taken the place of enmity, and a nearer approach has been made to a determination of what constitutes fair value for fair labor. The Hocking Valley coal region of Ohio was for years a very hotbed of labor troubles, accompanied by an intensity of violence that attracted the attention of the whole country. Yet the change that has been lately effected by arbitration is almost miraculous; the old lawlessness has given way to in- dustrial peace, and chronic dissatisfaction to comparative contentment. Contrasting this present with the stormy past, the divine words, "Blessed are the peacemakers," recur in- voluntarily and with a living meaning seldom ascribed to them. One man's suggestion that the wretched strife between industrial equals for an undue share of profit might be calmed by an application of the great law of love and conciliation. * Speaking of Nottingham trade disputes, Mr. Ryan says in his work on "Arbitration," pages 57-8 : •' For years, almost centuries, the struggles of violence were common events between employers and employed. A not unusual weapon of retaliation used by the workingmen was to destroy the machinery of the manufacturer. The violence growing out of the disputes of labor and capital made it necessary for Parliament to punish machine-breaking with death. In the year 1816 six persons suffered the death penalty for this offence. From 1810 especially, up to i860, the condition of the relations of labor and capital was that of contending military forces." ARBITRATION. 105 acted like oil on troubled waters, and showed the neglected way to unity of interest through concord. Surely there are many others among our masters and men who, preferring peace to war, have it in their power to promote peace by instituting the safeguards that have been found so effective in England and France. Earnest work in this direction will deserve the thanks of all, whether capitalist, laborer or con- sumer, re-enforced by the voice of grateful womanhood and the benediction uttered by him whose mission on earth was to accomplish the great reconciliation. To the complex intermingling of economic and moral con- siderations that make up the labor question must be added another; for there is one point where belief comes so strongly in contact with the whole sphere of human action as to impart to it an influencing factor, not only in indi- vidual morality, but in the science of society and of govern- ment. Religious enthusiasm no longer, as formerly, shapes the destiny of nations, yet the religious motive, in its widest sense, was never so potent an inspiration to right-doing, in the parliaments of nations, in the civic chambers, in the di- rection of the family, or the guidance of the individual, as now. But there has also been another dissemination not openly nor actively antagonistic to any of the primitive moralities, yet naturally and inevitably opposed to that higher culture of them effected by religion, and while this new element, known as materialism, by no means implies the absence of active morality, it seeks to rob life of hope, mankind of its brother- hood, and the human race of a divine Father. It relegates the dead into nothingness and shipwrecks the living on an island of the universe cut off from all aid except their own, and, as outcasts, makes them amenable to no law but that of expediency. If expediency involves justice it is only an in- cident, and the same rule might some day involve the sacri- fice of a minority for the good of the majority, as in the reversal of humanitarian considerations in order to promote the survival of the fittest. 196 MATERIALISM AND WORKINGMEN. This subject has not been introduced for polemical discus- sion, but as an integral portion of tlie dispute between capital and labor; for as love or selfishness are the guiding motives of the controversy, so will the hope of a settlement rise or fall ; and as selfishness is always blind to its real interests, if men's actions are to be governed by materialism, labor will have to win victories on other fields, aided by or aiding re- ligion, before its final freedom can be attained, ^he danger that specially threatens society at the moment is not the re- fined unbelief of scientific agnosticism, but the coarse ma- terialism that has saturated the lives of the fermentable masses, and left them without any other restraint than the actual force of law as asserted by the policeman's baton and the soldier's muskety Whatever dissatisfaction has previously existed with human institutions among those who indeed have had more than good grounds for active discontent, society has until recently always found a powerful ally in the religious sentiment. While it was an uncontroverted article of faith among those who knew little else, that this world was but the vestibule to the eternal one ; men bore their ills as patiently as they could, believing that in some other place they would attain justice from the great Redressor. ** Vengeance is mine; I will re- pay," has held many a hand prone to revenge and stilled the rising blood of many an evil passion, though the words them- selves may have been as unfamiliar as a quotation in an un- known tongue. The trust was there, as the Christian teach- ing of centuries, and frequently as all that had been learned of Christianity. It was a mitigation of the present by an appeal to the future, and a transfer of hope from this world to God. Similarly, the divine parable of Lazarus, as an expression that runs through the gospel of an ultimate equalization after judgment, made present inequalities less bitter, the rich poorer and the poor richer than was manifested by the out- ward signs of earthly condition ; and again hope tinged, what must otherwise have been the darkness of despair, with the glory of the hereafter. DANGER AHEAD. 197 All this materialism has withdrawn, and more. It has not only dispossessed Christianity where Christianity was most needed as a comfort and support, but likewise that belief in immortality and God which is the common" keystone of all faith and all prayer, whether uttered in Christian cathedral, Mohammedan mosque, or Buddhist temple. That there is no life except our brief sojourn on this little speck whirling in space is now the accepted tenet of a very large number, who, if such is the truth, have both good cause and reason to take what they can, how they can. It was this idea that led to the awful excesses of the French Revolution, and it permeates to-day an immense portion of Germany, France, and the pulsing heart of London, with a pregnancy of evil never before known. ** A deep, half-confessed sense of the injustice of life is becoming the living creed of men who curse the God of the churches and the rich," writes an English clergyman in an article on "Outcast London."* No longer *'du]l, awfully passive and infinitely patient," but with ** the red cap of continental revolutionary thought, pass- ing along like a spectre of scenes not a century old," they have reached a conclusion the promulgation of which would send a shudder of fear through empires, kingdoms and com- monwealths, and arrived at a solution for all problems the working out of which would overthrow, if not rebuild, the entire social fabric. Statesmanship has nothing to offer them ; property stands dumb, or strengthens its bolts and bars, and the religion of the churches is refused with open scorn. Are we to let things take their course and trust in the general co- herence of the crust that has formed above the seething lava to restrain a volcanic outbreak, or shall statesmanship, | fop^ ert)^ and religion in triplicate alliance, seek by steady, patient and unwearying effort to do and undo, to project and to re- move, until the lowering temperature shows that the danger- ous pressure is again reduced ? Government and religion have done not nearly all they could, but nearly all that has * The Rev. G. S. Reany in the Fortnightly Review ^ December, 1886. 198 DANGER AHEAD. been accomplished in the past to remedy social conditions, br.t wealth, holding back its hand, has looked to the others for pres- ervation, and with rare exception warranted the saying that cowardice and selfishness are its natural attributes. It has been the first to appeal for protection and the last to protect, and whether it was a nation struggling in the throes of civil war, industry taking on itself a new form, or society, through gov- ernment and religion, seeking to mitigate and redress social evils, wealth has dlung fast to its purse until it has bargained for interest and security, and then, unless closely watched, shirked its share of the taxation necessary to pay the bond. What government, impelled by Christianity, has done for la'bor, the legislation of the century abundantly shows. What Christianity, unaided, has effected is also recorded in every forward, saving, and deterrent movement since the birth of Christianity. The page on which is written the fulfilled ob- ligations of property is yet nearly a blank and its great stew- ardship unaccounted for. If there is to be a change for the better in the undercur- rent of life in our great cities, wealth must be a more active instrument in bringing it about than hitherto, and it can best effect that object by strengthening vital religion. It must aid Christianity to subdue materialism and anarchy in their strongholds, not by the preaching of theology and dogma, but by and through the power of the simple logic of Christ, by the exercise of the inexhaustible love he taught, by the wise distribution of superabundance in helpful ways, and by the active sympathy of an acknowledged brotherhood be- tween those who are rich in God's material gifts and the poor and miserable. It is too late to cope with the aggressive materialism of our populous centres by any other method. Preaching and teaching can follow in due time when the heart is readier to receive than now, for neither the moral nor the religious standard of the depressed can be raised until their social condition has been improved by the means that wealth should gladly aid Christianity in fur- nishing. INFLUENCE OP MATERIALISM. 199 The influence of materialism on other ranks of society, though not so deeply impressed as on the very lowest, is still apparent in the general desire to extract all the enjoyment that life offers, careless whether the pleasure be pure or deadly. The frivolities that invariably mark modern fashion- able life have always had their counterpart, yet the past can justly plead that its conceptions of duty were much narrower than now, and the exercise of it restricted by laws, customs, and conditions that no longer prevail. The excuse for taunt- ing or indifferent luxury ceased, if it ever had a reason, with political equality, the diffusion of education, and the era of invention. Before then, as the clothing and symbol of power, it was considered inseparable from rank. Tlie uses of wealth were so limited that a large portion of it could be de- voted to pageantry, display, and rude individual gratification, not only without challenging opposition, but with the con- currence that every man had a right to do what he willed with his own. No one thought of asking either how i t was obtained, orhov^_s]2£aU and both opinion and law sanctioned devices m getting and spending that modern enlightenment has stamped as criminal. All this is of the past ; the quicken- ing conscience of the world now holds that money must rightly come and rightly go, and though few conform to this idea, it is rapidly crystallizing into an unwritten law, to which some day will be added "with honor." In Massillon's magnificent discourse on Immortality he justly says that if we wholly perish with the body, the entire system of laws, manners and usages on which human society is founded is an imposition, obedience to them an insensate servitude, justice an unwarrantable infringement upon the liberty of men, and the harsh epithets attached to crime merely words that the policy of legislators has invented and imposed on the people. And though we assume that under any form of belief the restraint of law will be accepted by the majority as a necessity for the general protection, and further admit that the gentler life of polished and humane culture is to be a rule with that majority, materialism can at 200 INFLUENCE OF MATERIALISM. the most make out of such a system a refined selfishness, from which pity, love and sympathy will have been abstracted, and in their places substituted a politic charity, when charity is politic, as a sop to Cerberus. Yet even this is to assume too much and to predict without yt^lcnowledge. The world has only once had the experience of a nation of materialists, and that but for a day. Judging ?^*\& from the example it afforded, the foundation of all institu- «P tions would be broken up and society relapse into a moral fK chaos, the disorder of which would exceed conception. Life is already colored by this negation of hope and aspira- tion. It is manifest in the exaltation of riches, in the haste to be rich at any price, in the devotion of every energy to wealth-getting and pleasure-seeking, and the sacrifice of the spiritual to the material. fvVe may rear temples of art, literature, and science, and adorn them with all the trophies of human achievement ; we may open colleges and institutions of learning in every con- gregation of men ; we may teach liberty, equality, and frater- nity at every corner, banish disease and poverty, and so aug- ment and distribute nature's bounties as to give to all a sufficiency for a trifle of labor; but without the belief in a life beyond the grave, without the acceptance of the brother- hood that springs from a universal Father, sin and passion will assert themselves in newer forms, and the last condition of society will be worse than the firs^ CHAPTER X. THE CONSOLIDATION OF LABOR. "So the carpenter encourafjed the goMsmiih, <7We of the laborer from his industrial servitude an impossibility. Evep after the old laws were repealed in i824,f nearly fifty years elapsed before trade unions had any status in a court of justice, and they were still hampered by all kinds of vexatious discriminations until 187 1, when the last unjust prohibitions were removed. From this brief historical summary it will be observed that the guilds were the parents of both modern friendly societies and trade unions. The progress of the former has only an indirect bearing on the labor question, inasmuch as they foster kindly feeling and encourage provident habits. It is to the latter that both capital and labor must look for an authorita- tive statement of labor's desires, for the accredited represent- * Thorold Rogers, •♦ Work and Wages," page 439. f The chief one of these was a statute of Edward VI., by which "all confederacies or promises of workmen concerning their work or wages, or the hours of the day when they should work," was prohibited. 208 GUILDS AND TRADE UNIONS. atives through whom negotiations must be conducted, and for the executive ability honorably to carry out all agreements. As the Hon. Abram S. Hewitt said in 1878, *'It is not to be disguised that, until labor presented itself in such an attitude as to compel a hearing, capital was not willing to listen ; " * and one reason of its unwillingness was the absence of respon- sible heads with whom to discuss the subjects at issue. A committee representing a few hundred disaffected men is an impotent body compared with one accredited by a trade at large, and when the entire membership of that trade speaks through its chosen delegates it must command respect, if only from the magnitude of the numbers for which it acts. The first good result of trade unions has therefore been to bring capital and labor on a plane of equality as regards their forces. It is no longer possible to govern labor on the prin- ciple of the Roman maxim, "Divide et impera." Strength is opposed to strength, and an alliance is much more likely to result from this array than when one is at the mercy of the other and dare not ask for justice. Such associations as the English Amalgamated Society of Engineers, whose authority extends to the United States and the colonies, are not going to risk their accumulated funds and the waste of their skill by making unreasonable demands on their employers, and are certain to take a more conservative view in any dispute that may arise than an irresponsible body of workmen swayed by local irritation and grievances. This view of the consolidation of labor is amply supported by facts. As Mr. Trant observes in his treatise on "Trade Unions," f "economy, if nothing else, would dictate such a policy. The executories of trade unions have been taught by experience that whenever an object is worth striving for, a strike is often the worst, and always the most expensive way of obtaining it. Strikes as a rule are a dernier resort, and * Quoted by Professor Ely, " The Labor Movement in America," paije 146. f " Trade Unions, their Origin and Objects, Influence and Efficiency," by William Trant. TRADE UNIONS. 209 are more frequently discountenanced by the General Secretary than approved by him. Indeed it is the boast of most trade union secretaries that they have prevented more strikes than they have originated."* Of the great English associa- tions the Amalgamated Engineers, with an income in 1882 of $620,000, spent only $4450 in this way. In 1885, out of an exi)enditure of more than $832,380 (most of which was beneficiary), but $48,365, or about 5.8 per cent., went in strikes. During the last thirty-five years the percentage of expenditure in trade dispute has been only 3.86 per cent, out of disbursements amounting to $ 12, 459, 000. f The Iron- founders, with an income of $290,000, expended $1070; the Amalgamated Carpenters $10,000 out of $250,000; the Tai- lors $2805 out of $90,000 ; and the Stonemasons, with a membership of 11,000, notliing. In 1882 seven of these societies had an income of $1,650,000, and cash balances to credit of $1,800,000, yet their entire expenditure in support- ing disputes was only about $25,000. It is estimated that 99 per cent, of union disbursements have in late years been beneficiary, and that only i per cent, has been used in indus- trial warfare. Indeed it may be said generally that the Eng- lish artisans, miners, operatives, and many classes of unskilled laborers have virtually abolished strikes in that country, and that this has been accomplished solely by the influence of their associations, exercised in opposition to such action and in favor of arbitration. J ♦ The Grand Master of the Knij^hts of Labor said. March 8, 1886, that since the ist of January precedinj^, the Executive Honrd of the Order had settled 350 cases by arbiiraiion, which otherwise would have resulted in strikes. f Edward W. Bemis, in the Political Science Quarterly^ June, 1887. X In 1884 ten of the leading English unions, with a membership of 154,000, expended more ihan 51,250,000, of which sum but 6 per cent, was in supix)rt of strikes. In 1877 ihe President of the English Trades Unions' Congress (which then represented 700,000 members) said, in the course of his address to the assembly : " The principle of ap|)eal to facts and reasons instead of brute force is rational, and ^t once commends itself to the judgment of men," and this official declaration of the views of the lal)oring classes has been since accepted as a cardinal point of their policy. 14 210 LABOR UNIONS. Thus the strongest trade societies in the world have been enabled to prevent strikes, to inaugurate a system of concilia- tion, and to assume a restraining control over their members, under adverse decisions on matters of importance ; from which it is evident that when they choose to exercise it they can wield a vast influence for good, both within and without their organizations, and that, should they accomplish nothing else, there is sufficient reason here for their existence.* The chaotic condition of labor unions in the United States is but the repetition of a process through which the English orders had to pass. They are not so well organized here as there, and consequently neither control their members as effectively nor command such a ready recognition from em- ployers. Yet their efforts in this country have been largely directed to the abatement of disputes. • The President of the Cigarmakers' International Union testified before a committee of the United States Senate, that in the three years preceding 1883 his union had prevented more than 300 strikes. The great Hocking Valley contest was undertaken against the advice of the unions, and every labor organization in the United States, with the exception of the Amalgamated Asso- ciation of Iron and Steel Workers, whose constitution seems rather to favor than to suppress conflict,f has declared for arbitration, in preference to the older method of a trial of strength. The unsatisfactory condition of American labor unions arises from many causes, chief of which are lack of organization and compactness, the large number of able workmen who will not subject their freedom to such control, * "That trade unions protect capital as well os labor is attested by the fact that nearly all the disputes between capital and the well-or<,'anized unions are characterized by an entire absence of violence and destruction of private property, and where such ouiragcs have occurred it can be traced directly to the unorganized and uneducated, of whom it may with truth be said, 'they have no past to conserve, nor future for which to pro- vide.' " L. McIIugh, Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of Ohio, in "The Labor Problem." New York, 1886. t See appendix to Professor Ely's 'The Labor Movement in America." LABOR UNIONS. 211 and the neglect to make admission equivalent to a certificate of competency. The one million men — such is the estimate — belonging to industrial associations in tliis country are at best an undrilled army, unskilled in either the science of attack or defense, badly officered, and without efficient leadership. There are, it is true, many well-drilled brigades in the vast concourse, and these have given tlie only stability that its ranks possess. A large majority of the remainder are simply marshalled mobs, strongly in earnest, predominated, for the most part, by good purposes, but with an ethereal coherence that is constantly being dissipated and reformed, and with none of the wise and cautious direction so necessary for vic- tory. These are matters that can only be remedied by time, patience, and hard work. Veterans are not made in a day. Principles do not win in a decade, and so much material may require years for its consolidation. It is scarcely six years since the first confederation of organized trade and labor unions assembled at Pittsburg, and since then there has been a great gain of solidity to the older societies, though rendered less apparent by the unexampled rush of recruits. The bulk is still formative, but its plasticity shows a constantly harden- ing tendency, and it might as well be accepted now as here- after by capitalists, employers, legislators, and the nation at large, that notwithstanding disruptions and withdrawals, internal dissensions and a babel of clamor, trade unions and labor federation are with us to remain, and act a part, and the controlling part in the industrial government of the future. It is probable, however, that this incoherency will prevail for a considerable period until two-thirds or three- fourths of the working population are mustered into the ranks. How long this will take no one can say, but the rapidity with which even the odds and ends of industry are organizing, premises that the day is not so far off as many suppose. It is a pertinent inquiry whether it would not have been better for the unions to have placed more dependence on 212 LABOR ORGANIZATIONS. material than numbers. A membership in the ancient trade guilds was an assurance to the world of proficiency in some particular skill, to a greater degree perhaps than a physician's or lawyer's diploma is now. Tiiey were enabled to maintain their industrial status by requiring a high standard of work- manship, and it is noticeable that such societies as the Typo- graphical Union, and the Brotherhoods of Locomotive Fire- men and Engineers, where efficiency is one of the tests for admission, wield an influence wholly disproportionate to their numerical aggregate. Eventually every organization where a test can be applied must come to this, and if in the higher trades the qualifications for membership are made to include faithfulness, good conduct and sobriety, as they well can be, that moral advance to which the best industrial progression ever tends must receive an impetus that will be felt far be- yond the ranks of labor.* Labor organizations have necessarily a twofold import, as they are viewed by the employer or the laborer, and it is but natural that the former should look upon them chiefly as arbitrary associations, bent on interfering with his business, making demands that would reduce his profits, and generally resolved on inciting industry to disorder. This opinion has unfortunately had much to sanction it, and is sufficient to account for the opposition of many employers; but, on the other hand, the capitalist has unwittingly shared in the ad- vantages of union, in a way that he seldom considers, and to a much greater extent than is supposed. For example, the individual employer may lose something by having his work- people placed on a parity with him in making wage contracts, * Many of the unions have already strict rules against drunkenness, and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen will not permit its members to deal in intoxicants on pain of expulsion. The Brotherhood of Loco- motive Engineers expels from membership for intoxication, refusal to pay just debts, destroying company's property, failure to provide for family, or any other charge of parental neglect. Liquor dealers are not admitted into the Knights of Labor, and no local assembly is allowed to have a social gathering where liquor is sold. The United Labor Age, one of the leading organs of the Knights of Labor, will not receive advertisements from brewers or in any way countenance the liquor traffic. LABOR OKGA^•IZATIONS. 213 but if the movement is general, as it must be wherever there is unity, he will only have to pay standard rates, all or a part of which has to be repaid by the consumer, while in simplify- ing negotiations, supplanting strikes by arbitration, and de- veloping through esprit de corps even a minimum standard of efficiency, he becomes no inconsiderable participant in the benefits of labor alliance. Mr. Thorokl Rogers has expressed this idea in a clearness of diction which it would be difficult to surpass.* ** Employers," he says, **have constantly predicted that ruin would come on the great industries of the country if workmen were better paid or better treated. They resisted, and have resisted up to the present day, every demand which workmen have made for the right of association, for the limitation of children's and women's labor, for the shortening of hours, for the abolition of truck, for the protection of their workmen's lives and limbs from preventable accidents This misconcep- tion as to the consequences that would ensue from just and, as events have proved, wise concessions, has not been due to a cunning selfishness, but to the natural disinclination which all men have to make those efforts which have always com- pensated the loss wliich they thouglit they foresaw, and have frequently turned it into a gain. For it is a remarkable and an indisputable result of these interferences with what is ap- parently free action, that when their justice or necessity has been demonstrated, and the change or reform or restraint has been adopted, benefit instead of injury to the imperilled interest, strength instead of weakness, have been the conse- quences. The concession of the right of combination was thought to be an infinite peril, and the workmen have gradu- ally learnt their proper strength, and what is far more im- portant, the strength and solidity of tiie calling in which they are engaged, and the profits which arc required in order to secure its continuity and their employment. They are getting to know what is the point at which cost will cripple * " Work and Wages," page 506. 214 . TO PREVENT UNDUE COMPETITION. production, and may be safely trusted not to destroy by excessive exactions that by which they live." The main object of trade unions is of course to limit the competition of the laborer for employment, and either pre- vent the reduction of wages that might be occasioned by the underselling of competing manufacturers, or to obtain for their members a larger share of the realized value of the pro- duct through increase of wage payment. An absolutely fair share could only be allotted on the principle of co-operation, but putting that aside, there is nothing unreasonable in the workman's demands for a living sufficiency of wages when the selling price of the manufactured article .permits it, or that the advance should come from the profits of capital when those profits are excessive. In making such a demand he is but exercising the natural right of self-preservation, and it ought to be granted as freely without combinations as un- der the semi-duress of unionism. Assuming too that labor is a commodity subject to sale, purchase and barter, and that wages are a mere matter of contract, the individual possessors of the labor commodity are fully justified in combining to enhance its selling value price, or to withhold it from market, if they can, until their valuation is obtained ; for if it is to be treated as merchandise, its owners are entitled to mercan- tile rights. There is yet another warrant for fair payment in the ele- mental principles of Christianity, and the words of Scripture. " Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn," has a trenchant significance when coupled by Paul with the saying of Christ, *'The laborer is worthy of his hire," and the great apostle evidently deemed this moral and Christ law in reference to the laborer's prior and full recompense of such importance as to call for its repetition in several different ways.* There can, indeed, be no misunderstanding of the plain and direct inculcations of the Bible on this matter ; its tender regard for the poor and the oppressed is extended in * Sec I Cor. 9 : 9, and 2 Timothy 2 : 6. TO GAIN FAIR SHARE OF PROFITS. 215 every book to the toiler, and one of its most terrible denun- ciations is uttered against those who keep back the hire of the laborer. The whole tenor of the sacred volume in relation to dues for service is that of broad-handed liberality. ** What- soever is right I will give you," said the lord of the vineyard, and this is the foundation of the Christian equities between employer and employed. Neglect of these principles on the one side has made trade unions necessary; pushing the demand beyond the extremity of justice on the other has brouglit manufacturers' associations, armed for resistance, into being, and from this condition has proceeded a hostile feeling that will require years of honest endeavor to convert into friendship. In combining to obtain a share of the profits on produc- tion, and in restricting competition by fixing a standard for wages, workmen have the example of capitalists and em- ployers, who have seldom hesitated to organize for the same purposes. It is an universal rule on the stock exchange of the world to prevent competition for business ainong mem- bers by having a fixed scale of commission, and not many years ago an associate of a western stock board was fined and had to pay ^^5000 for executing orders one-eighth per cent, below the stipulated rates. This was a practical blow at freedom of contract among capitalists. The United States is dotted with manufacturers' associations whose ruling mo- tive is the exaction of profit on their wares by shortening the laboring year, preventing competition and limiting produc- tion, and the formation of enormous trusts which aim to con- trol the selling price of articles of prime necessity is now of constant occurrence. The Western Wrapping Paper Com- pany keeps many of its mills idle to enhance the value of the remaining product. The Central Manufacturing Company of Boston, a combination of forty-one tackmakers, runs its mills at half time for the same object. A sugar refinery in San Francisco for years paid a rival concern subsidies, vari- ously stated at from ^75,000 to ^100,000 per annum, as an inducement to close down, and the same firm, by arrange- 216 COMBINATION OF MANUFACTURERS. ment with the Central Pacific Railroad Company, secured such a prohibitory freight rate on eastern sugars as to obtain entire control of the Pacific coast market. It is generally believed that the Vulcan Steel Mill of St. Louis received several hundreds of thousands of dollars from a pool interested in rail-making to stop manufacturing rails; the Screw Manu- facturers' combination pays an English firm ^80,000 per year to withhold its productions from the United States ; the Nail Makers* Association recently discharged 8000 workers for five weeks in order to keep up prices ; and the school-book pub- lishers not only combine to double the prices of their educa- tional wares but force them on the public by means quite as questionable as the purchase of a Broadway franchise. A president of the Reading Railroad told a committee of the Pennsylvania legislature in 1875 ** that every pound of rope we buy for our vessels and for our mines is bought at a price fixed by a committee of the roi)e manufacturers of the United States. Every keg of nails, every paper of tacks, all screws and wrenches and hinges, the boiler plates of our loco- motives, are never bought except at the prices fixed by the representatives of the mills that manufacture them. Iron beams for our houses or our bridges can be had only at the prices agreed upon by those who produce them. Fire-bricks, gas pipes, terra-cotta pipes for drainage, every keg of powder we buy to blast coal, are produced under the same arrange- ment. Every pane of window glass in this house was bought at a scale of prices established exactly in the same manner. White lead, galvanized sheet-iron, hose and belting, and files are bought and sold at a rate determined in the same way." This list might be extended to almost every article of produc- tion where combination is possible, and to others where ad- vantage is taken of the consumer by relentlessly destroying opposition, as in the well-known cas^e of the Standard Oil Company, the coal combinations of Pennsylvania, and the gas and water companies in many of our cities; or as with rail- road companies, where the small stockholders are despoiled by *' contract and finance" rings; or as with gold and silver COMBINATION OF MANUFACTURERS. 217 mining companies, notably those of Nevada, where tlie mines are continuously assessed during unjjroductive periods for the benefit of millionaire quartz mill owners, until a new ore body is discovered, when it is simultaneously found that a majority of the shares are in their hands. Nor is this all. A worse form of combination among capi- talists that has always had the sanction of commercial moral- ity, and without which stock exchanges would be shorn of more than nine-tenths of their business, is to "corner" food, fuel, and the raw materials of industry in order to give them a fictitious value. If the price is by this means made higher than the supply warrants, the consumer is robbed, and if lower, the producer. Yet although forestalling has for years been branded as a legal offence, one never hears of its condemna- tion by the moneyed powers, and seldom by the judicial. The difference between combinations of masters and of work- men is in fact as radical as any two things can be that have the common motive of profit in view. With the former the gain inures to the sole benefit of the employer who pockets all the profit at the expense of the public, while it is a mani- fest injury to his men, as they are frequently subjected to en- forced idleness in order to restrict production, though they receive no better pay when at work. The latter seek to prevent body and soul from being crushed by competition, to save the insignificant and heli)lcss human unit from being overwhelmed by the power of capital, to make life worth living to their wives and children, and to get as much of a fair and just re- turn for the additional value their labor has given to the sell- ing price of a product as circumstances will allow. When these two interests conflict it is unnecessary to ask, whether it is for the benefit of the world, of society, of religion, that labor or capital should prevail. It is not intended to convey the impression that all manu- facturers* associations are formed with the object of keeping down wages, or unduly to increase the selling price of goods. Many have no other purpose than rightful self-protection against legislative interference and dishonest customers, or to 218 CHEAP GOODS OR FAIR PRICES. collect information concerning foreign markets and legiti- mately adjust selling prices to cost. At a meeting, for exam- ple, of the sewing silk and machine twist manufacturers of the United States, held in New York, January, 1887, and representing a capital of ^30,000,000, a production of $60,000,000, and the employment of 50,000 men, it was re- solved that in consequence of the advance in raw silk, 10 per cent, should be added to the selling price of products. This was a judicious step in the interest of both capital and labor, rendered necessary by uncontrollable causes, and very different from a resolve to put an additional 10 per cent, on products for the sake of a profit in which the operative was not to share. Similarly the Potters' Manufacturing Association, and the Coal and Iron Masters' Association of England, are types of organizations representing hundreds of millions of dollars in capital and the employment of tens of thousands of workers, which are kept up for the sole purpose of looking after matters that are of greater importance to these employers than any question of wages. Their special sphere is the economy of processes and of distribution, and in it they perform a service to labor as well as to themselves. It is obvious, therefore, that unions of men and of masters, each distinctive from the other, have ample oi)portunities for usefulness ; but that when actuated by a desire for undue profit, either at the expense of the public, or their co-factor, or by tyranny of any kind, they can just as readily be made engines of oppression. There is room for both in harmony, but for neither in selfish conflict, and ere long the judgment of the world will hold them responsible for the attainment of unity, and a cessation of the reproach to industry, government, and Christianity, that the disputes between Capital and Labor have so long involved. The preface to the revised constitution of the National Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers of the United States, the strongest of all the American Trade Unions, contains a pregnant paragraph, which has a more direct bearing on the economics of the labor question, as it FAIR PRICES. '219 affects the laborer, llie capitalist, and the consumer than any other purely industrial subject that could be mentioned, and it is moreover one that is rarely considered either in the voluminous pages of writers on industrial economics, or in the contemporary discussions of employer and employed. After claiming that there is no good reason why employers should not pay a fair price for labor, the preamble says, ** If the profits of their business are not sufficient to remunerate them for their trouble of doing business let the consumer make the balance," that is, to put the matter as plainly as possible, labor has a right to fair wages, capital a right to fair remuneration, and the public purchaser no right to buy any article at a price that will not afford these producers a just compensation. It is a declaration against the crying sin of cheapening labor below its living possibilities, against the de- sire to profit by some one's toil and capital, and against the policy that would make competition between the laborer, competition between the capitalist, and competition between the laborer and the capitalist the ruling industrial law. It sets no limitation on the cheapness that results from the bounty of the earth, or the fruits of invention ; it would create no artificial scarcity of products to the injury of the community at large, but simply declares that whatever addi- tional value man's labor gives to a material must be added to the selling price, and that the value must be computed in ac- cordance with the natural requirements of the man as a man, and not as a machine-being of muscles, thews, sinews, and nerves, detached from his soul-self. This is a subject that has attracted little attention from either capitalist or laborer, and it is rarely that a protest is evoked by the most unfortunate market conditions against the wrong of underselling. Competition, with its inevitable consequences, has been accepted for so long a period as the necessary condition of industrial existence, that labor is ground between the upper and lower millstone of money seek- ing profit and the public demanding cheap goods ; and in many instances the capitalist is incurring a similar danger 220 FAIR PRICES. from his workmen on the one hand, and the buyer on the other.* ** So far as I know," writes John Ruskin in his noble essay **Unto this Last," " there is not in history record of anything so disgraceful to the human intellect as the modern idea that the commercial ,text, * Buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest,' represents, or under any circum- stances could represent, an available principle of national economy." And elsewhere, "Whenever we buy, or try to buy cheap goods, goods offered at a price that we know can- not be remunerative for the labor involved in it ; whenever we buy such goods, remember we are stealing somebody's Vlabor." ^2>.V Tl^is evil has silently grown to such a magnitude that in England, the profits accruing to the employer of labor have been reduced to a minimum, while in France, Germany, and the United States, the workman, through imperfect organization, has so far had to bear the brunt of the pressure. Take for instance the boot and shoe industry of Massa- chusetts: statistics show that in 1882 the average earnings of over 65,000 employes, three-fourths of whom were men, amounted to only $7.63 per week, while the profit returns on a capital exceeding ;g2 2,600,000 is computed by the State Commissioner of Labor, after allowing ruling interest rates, to have been but 3.61 -|- per cent. The basis on which this computation is made, viz., a deduction of ten per cent, from gross products for expense account, is probably, as Mr. Carroll D. Wright suggests, too large for this particular industry, but it will serve just as well " to point a moral " as if the figures were absolutely correct. That moral is that the workman could not fairly look to his employer for an advance of wages, because an increase in that item of exj)enditure would have turned profit to loss, and had the entire stated profits of capital been added to labor's reward, it would have only raised the workman's annual earnings some ;^i 2.50, or from \ * " If ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another." — Galatians 5: 15. FAIR PRICES. 221 ^397 to ^409-50 per capita. But a slightly higher market value would have made an enormous difference. Had the factory price of the boots and shoes produced by the 65,552 people included in this return been 5 per cent, more than it really was, the net profits remaining after payment of $397 to each for wages, and 6 per cent, to capital for interest, would have been $5,549,000 instead of an actual $818,900, so that capital could have had 10 per cent, additional for profit and each worker nearly $38.00 more per annum in w;iges. It is not suggested that this would be a fair division, and is only illustrative of the argument that when industiial capital is insufficiently remunerated, and the wage-earner insufficiently paid, the difference to make a fair profit and fair wages must come from the consumer, by an addition to the selling price of the manufactured article. Every pur- chaser of a pair of boots made in Massachusetts during the year embraced in this exhibit — assuming tliat $7.63 per week is not a sufficient remuneration for adult labor in that state — therefore got better value than the amount he paid warranted, and some one had to supply the deficit. Here is a weighty motive for the harmonious association of the productive forces. The retail purchaser has little knowledge of the actual cost of an article, and his cheapen- ing efforts are nearly always based on the idea of reducing the middleman's profits. He has been naturally educated to this by a perception of the mountainous growth of implied value that occurs in many wares between the time that they pass from the hands of the workmen and their lodgment on the storekeepers* counters. He never thinks of cheapening a standard article. There are brands of goods in every de- partment of industry for which the asked price is willingly paid, so that while the desire for cheapness is constant, it arises nearly altogether from ignorance of values. If the joint producers fix that value so as to cover a reasonable profit on the capital, and living expenses for the workman, the objection will not come from the consumer, when the matter is properly represented to him. A very large majority 222 GOOD GOODS AND FAIR PRICES. of consumers are themselves wage-earners, and have such an immediate personal interest in the right of just compensation that they will readily perceive how necessary it is to pay a fair price for manufactured products in order to sustain the principle and practice of better remuneration in their own pursuits. Associations of capitalists, as we have- seen, find no diffi- culty in establishing the selling value of goods so as to obtain a predetermined profit — often an enormous one — and a gen- eral alliance of capital and labor in any particular industry could effect a similar purpose with equal ease. In some cases production would have to be limited, but that any evil eff"ects would follow from a limitation that regulated supply by de- mand is not obvious. Glass-blowers in the United States cease work regularly for two months every year, in order to keep up wages by cutting down production, yet it probably never occurred to any one that he was paying an unreasonable price for glassware in consequence of this regulation. If they worked the entire year, and the demand for the manufacture remained stationary, the result would necessarily be a glut by the production of about one-sixth in excess of consumption. Prices would then have to be lowered, and afterwards wages. Ultimately large quantities of the product would be forced on the market at a trifle above cost, so that neither capital nor labor would receive an adequate compensation for their efforts. This is an instance where trade unions benefit the employer by giving stability to prices, while they at the same time establish a fair remuneration for all who are engaged in the occupation, without laying a burdensome tax on the buyer. **A partial rise of wages," says John Stuart Mill,* *'if not gained at the expense of the remainder of the working class, ought not to be regarded as an evil. The consumer, indeed, must pay for it ; but cheapness of goods is desirable only when the cause of it is that their production costs little * "Principles of Political Economy," Book V,, Chapter X., Section 5. INTELLIGENT ACTION. 223 labor, and not wliea occasioned by that labor's being ill re- munerated." A practical application of this doctrine requires that fair wages be added to the cost of production, whether in the field, the mine, or the factory; and that when the value of any material is enhanced by transportation — as is universally the case — the labor so employed shall be ade- quately remunerated in the transi)ortation charges. This is the contention of the iron and steel workmen, and they are supported therein by that natural law which makes the wel- fare of the man a first consideration, and all else subsidiary to it. The smallest living entity has inherent rights, and the most minute creature a personality that makes it, to the ex- tent of its powers, a lord over the inanimate world; and man, crowned with glory and honor and with all things in subjection under his feet, must not be pushed from his high estate by his own handiwork, and become a secondary con- sideration to coal, cotton, iron, or any of the complicated mechanism which his genius has invented for their transmuta- tion into other forms of use. The educational value of labor organizations need not be considered here, nor is it necessary to make more than a passing reference to those economic and beneficiary features % which are now a part of the older unions.* In the former category are included, besides the prevention of destructive competition, the adjustment of disputes with employers, and the protection of wages, together with the tendency that must ultimately result from combination, in the direction of indus- trial partnerships, and toward both forms of co-operation, distributive and productive. The reduction of the hours of labor, partial as it yet is, has been largely aided by the unions, and is a necessary preliminary to moral reform and higher education. The advanced state of public opinion on the sanitary supervision of factories, the prevention of acci- * For full information on these points see Professor Ely's " The Labor Movement in America." 224 INTELLIGExNT ACTION. dents from machinery and in hazardous occupations is also largely due to the influence of trade societies, and it is cer- tain that when the wage question is measurably adjusted these matters will receive closer attention. The migration of labor to more promising fields, generally assisted to do so by society funds, often renders the congestion of the unemployed in any particular place less acute, and in protesting with reiterated persistency against the undesirable flood of immi- gration that has been pouring simultaneously into the eastern and western gates of the Republic, labor unions have per- formed a service that will one day be gladly acknowledged by men of all parties and all creeds. Finally, by voluntary and compulsory insurance, the payment of sick and death bene- fits, and the extension of relief to the needy, they have incor- porated the ethics of charity with the principles of social and political economy, and elevated the standard of humanitarian obligation throughout all civilized lands. The friends of trade unions, in common with the opponents of those organizations, can point to a long list of mistakes, follies, and crimes for which they are directly responsible. In tliis respect they differ in no way from other aggregations. Legislatures and Senates selected from the sons of promise of the State, by the deliberate opinion of their fellow-citizens, assemblies composed of men who from conspicuous ability are leaders in their sections, and governing bodies whose mem- bers are educated from birth to rule, have committed and are constantly committing errors, stupidities and wrongs that fill the historians of their actions with a perpetual wonder at the little wisdom that is required to conduct the affairs of a na- tion. "All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people," said President Garfield, and it is an axiom that neither the Executive, the Judiciary, nor the Legislature of a State, under representative institutions, can be better than the source from which they receive their autho- rity. It is unfair therefore to expect that an assembly of workingmen, impelled by a deep sense of real or supposed in- justice, half-educated, uninformed and composed of many BENEFICIAL INFLUENCES. 225 nationalities, should l)e conservative, free from passion, wise and deliberate. 'I'hcse qualities arc not to be found in the Senate of the United States, the House of Commons, or the Reichstag. When labor organizations are properly mobilized they will outgrow many of their present faults. Experience will make them wise in things as yet but feebly understood, and they will then be strong to repress lawlessness, with a severity born of the knowledge that it is their worst and dead- liest enemy. The use made of the boycott by the unions is scarcely less objectionable than the "blacklisting" by corporations; both are opposed to the spirit and to the law of righteousness. Tlie mobilization of labor and capital, especially in this country, is proceeding swiftly, and the power of trade unions, for good or for harm, is being constantly manifested by a suc- cessive increase of movement. Tracing the course of these bodies from their earliest history and carefully weighing their influence upon society, the verdict must be as of all human institutions. Nevertheless there are very few where the pre- ponderance ^ benefit has so largely outbalanced the loss, or where the gain has been so evenly distributed among the sons and daughters of toil. " The labor movement, as the facts would indicate," says Professor Ely,* " is the strongest force outside the Christian Church making for the practical recog- nition of humin brotherhood; and it is noteworthy that, at a time when the churches have generally discarded brother and sister as a customary form of address, the trade unions and labor organizations have adopted the habit. And it is not a mere form. It is shown in good offices and sacrifices for one another in a thousand ways every day, and it is not confined to those of one nation. It reaches over the civilized world ; and the word international as a part of the title of many unions, and the fact that their membershij) is international, are quite as significant as they appear to be at first sight. Since the labor movement became powerful, the laborers of ♦ " The Labor Movement in America," page 138. 15 226 BENEFICIAL INFLUENCES. Germany, France, America and England, and of other coun- tries, too, feel that they are members of one great family, and that they must work together for their complete emanci- pation." The possibilities suggested by this idea of a universal brotherhood are almost too vast for words. Should it ever be practically or even partially realized, wars of aggression would cease, and the victories of the nations become those of peace. Industry in alliance with capital would give law to mankind and our streets no more be filled with complaining workers, starved in mind and in body. With this satisfaction of man's external needs, his inner nature would so ripen as to be a ready recipient of spiritual truths, for Christ is oftener rejected from the bitterness of poverty and friendlessness than from the conviction of the intellect. Those who are forsaken of man believe they are forsaken of God. Cold will blister as well as heat, and indigence is as favorable a soil for materialism as luxury. Thus secure in the brotherhood of man, and joyfully acknowledging the great Fatherhood, millions of dwarfed souls who now pass through the vestibule of eternity in shiv- ering wretchedness, would develop their latent possibilities for glory, and, joining in the acclaim of the universe, thank the Maker of all for the breath of their existence. It is grand to live if we feel that we are to live forever, forever rejoicing in the Creator's eternal bounty ; but it is terrible to live in doubt or indifference when crushed by the calamities of life's surroundings. If the brotherhood of man implied in a true alliance of labor will relieve this weight so as to permit a little seed of God's truth to fructify, it will, through Christ, throw open the portals of heaven to imprisoned multitudes, and with the beloved disciple they can cry aloud in the ecstasy of a soul revelation that they see a new heaven and a new earth, and that the old ones are passed away. CHAPTER XI. THE DUTIES OF WAGE-SERVICE. "Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to he ashamed." — 2 Tim. 2:15. ** It seems very certain that the world is to grow better and richer in the future, however it has been in the past, not by the mngniticent achieve- ments of the highly gifted few, but by the patient faithfulness of the one- talented many."- 'Phillips Brooks. The first and principal duty of any one who is paid to do a thing is to do it ; the next to do it as well as the ability at his command will enable him. " Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do /■/ with thy might," or, as Paul says, " not with eye service as men pleasers ; but in singleness of heart, fearing God." These simple rules comprise the whole duty of personal service, but the widening relations of industry have so en- larged the reciprocal obligations of the human family that to the injunction of the apostle must be added all the other fun- damental principles of Christianity that have been given for our government, as they are applicable to the conditions they were intended to cover, and without any distinction of per- son or class. The obligation of the worker therefore, like that of the employer, includes the entire moral code, though his temptations, shortcomings and offences will naturally vary in kind and degree from those to which the master is subject, as a consequence of the difference in their worldly positions. In the same way also that a real Christianity requires of the employer more than a letter fulfilment of his contract, so the mere faithful exchange of a certain number of hours' labor for so much pay does not cancel the general obligation that (227) •k 228 CONTRACT AND OBLIGATION. the wage-receiver owes to the person who hires him, nor ex- clude his moral accountability in other directions. Yet the first duty of an employe must always be to earn his day's wages, and if he wilfully falls short of this, it is a breach of the command, " Thou shalt not steal." Similarly if he shirks his labor, others will have to make it up and thus suffer from his unfairness by unrecompensed exertion, besides sharing in the general discredit that will attach to the many for tlie fault of one. It is true that these, forms of neglect are not very common under the modern system of divided industry, and that they generally carry with them speedy detection and punishment, but a modification of them is very prevalent and manifests itself in the absence of the old-fashioned loyalty of purpose that bent every energy to the duty in hand ; that took a great pride in noble workmanship and made the em- ployer's interests for the time the workman's. It is signi- ficant too that the word " loyalty " has nearly been expunged from our modern vocabulary, and that the allegiance to per- son and ideas, the constancy to duty, the heart-service as well as the hand-service it implied, appear also to have vanished from the industrial world with their verbal equivalent. In their place is a looseness of bond that may sit easy on the worker, but which can never really supply the principle it has superseded. In the hurry and rush of affairs faithfulness has become a neglected quality, or if regarded at all is considered akin to that despised virtue, humility.* Could more of it be imparted to the ranks of toil there would be fewer inconsid- erate masters, a stronger cohesion of capital and labor, and a much greater personal interest taken by employers in their workmen than at present. The magnitude of modern indus- trial operations forbids the return of the individual relation- * " The total absence of regard for justice or fairness, in the relations between the two, is as marked" on the side of the employed as on that of the employers. We look in vain among the working classes in general for the just pride that will choose to give good work for good wages; lor the most part their sole endeavor is to receive as much, and return as little in the shape of service, as possible." — " Mill's Political Economy," Book 4, Chapter 7, Section 4. UNREASONING HOSTILITY. 229 ship existing under the old form of domestic labor, but atten- tion to duly will always be noticed in the large as well as the small establishment, and those who have deserved it will with equal certainty hear as many words of approval as when master and man lived under the same roof-tree and ate at the same table. It is no doubt true that a very large majority of wage- receivers perform their allotted work in a satisfactory manner, and that in many occupations they do it under merely nomi- nal supervision. And as the harsh employer of fiction exists more frequently in fiction than in actual life, so the untrust- worthy workman, dishonest as to his labor, wasteful of his material, and generally careless of his charge, cannot by any possibility be accepted as a type. The competition of skil- ful and experienced men for employment forbids this, and if that alone were insufficient, fellow- workmen will not i)ermit their own interests to be jeopardized by continuous disregard of duty. It is not within but without the shop that the wrong- doing of the wage-earner takes its most culpable form. While working at the bench he may be, and nearly always is, a fair- minded man, honestly doing his duty to the full extent of his ability, cheerful, compliant, obedient to instruction, and free from the animosity of class. But when he has laid down his tools and lost his individuality by association, he may, and often does, become arbitrary and unjust, exacting in de- mand, and regardless of the rights of others. Selfishr.ess asserts itself, and his own interests assume gigantic dimen- sions while those of his employer shrink into impercepti- bilities. This twofold character is a peculiarity of human conduct. The business tyrant may be liberal and exemplary in his home life ; commercial dishonesty can coexist with scrupulous domestic probity, and the family despot may leave most of his bad qualities behind as he steps into the office or on 'change. We all have more paradoxes in our natures than can be reasonably accounted for, and the workman in his industrial relations is no exception to this rule. It is outside 230 UNREASONING HOSTILITY. of the shop that the troublesome ideas of right and wrong grow dim, and the equity that governed unchallenged within is dethroned by the monarch of trade caste, trade privileges, and trade tyranny. Then labor, now million-numbered, de- claims against capital with little knowledge and many words, and magnifies its own office at the expense of all things else. Its co-factor in production is rhetorically relegated to the position of absolute uselessness, or utterly condemned as the natural foe of labor and all the virtues. The man who, for reasons of his own, refuses to join the union is denounced as an enemy of society, the right of other laborers to earn a living is taken away, and the willing boy who seeks to learn a trade is told that he is- asking a greater privilege than the freedom of choice in a free land entitles him to do. These it must be observed are not merely the opinions and actions of that small minority aptly termed ** impossibilists," but are general expressions on the labor problem in the labor journals and at labor meetings, resulting either from a very one-sided study of industrial questions or utter ignorance of the laws on which industrial equity is based and produc- tion rendered profitable. These opinions, too, honestly held, are daily gaining strength in the propaganda of socialism. It is unfair to class socialism with anarchy, yet it is unfor- tunate for its adherents that every anarchist is a socialist. Both would effect a complete change in the social system, the one by peax:eful revolution, the other by fire and carnage; but we must not let our abhorrence of the tiger-thirst of anarchy prejudice us to some of the truths that underlie the strivings of socialism. It can never solve the economic diffi- culties that confront mankind. It would redeem man through society, instead of society through man.* It is destructive of individualism and personal liberty.f It wrongly assumes * I* Socialists do not sufficiently realize that, in order to arrive at-a bet- ter ofder of things, the men who are called to establish and maintain it must themselves be made better, and that the first step is to purify and elevate current ideas as to duty and right. '^—^. de Laveleye. f " The land of ancient wealth, of poets, painters, sculptors, philoso- SOCIALISM. 231 that labor is the only source of value. It converts the state into an industrial bureaucracy. In restricting private owner- ship and concentrating the productive mechanism under state control, it eliminates every incentive to ambition and im- provement through the hope of gain. In its strange alliance with materialism — doubly strange, because its own motives are altruistic — it is one of the most active opponents of Christianity; but notwithstanding all this, and even stronger indictments, there still remain behind those great realities, the claim of the individual on society and the natural brotherhood of man. Nor must we hold socialism responsible for the wild crimes of anarchy. Its aim is indeed to change the existing order of things, and in the different shades of opinion maintained by its advocates they may merge at the lowest point into the redemption of society by bomb and torch. These, however, are not the views of its most numerous followers. Saint- Simon's ** New Christianity," Fourier's " Theory of Uni- versal Unity," Louis Blanc's *' Organization of Labor," and Lassalle's ** System of Acquired Rights," far outweigh in their teachings the violence of Prudhon and Karl Marx. The better fruits of Owen's and Maurice's labors remain with us, and more than compensate society for the poison of inter- nationalism. Nor is it likely, notwithstanding the unthink- ing talk of many otherwise sober-minded men, that the doc- trines of ultra-proletarians will ever gain sufficient ascendency to control the actions of responsible trade unions. The bal- lot-box is an effective safeguard in the two Anglo-Saxon nations. Bismarck has voluntarily conceded some of the points that socialism has sought to obtain in Germany, and a government that for the first time is in accord with the best sentiments of France, will no doubt find a peaceful way to phers, was Athens with her individualism and her |5ersonal freedom, not Sparta with the repressive barbarism of her socialism. Wealth, power, progress, the greatest good of the greatest numl>er, all material prosperity and intellectual vigor, are the children of a true individualism." — " Studies in Modern Socialism and Labor Problems," by T. Edwin Brown, D. D. 232 ANARCHISM. Still the cry of her impractibles. When the state can safely extend its functions, it will be done. Governments every- where are carefully and slowly undertaking new duties, as evidenced in three different lands by state insurance, postal telegraphs, and the gradual extirpation of the saloon. Rapid- ity of communication makes centralized authority more po- tent than formerly, and wherever experience shows that the general good is largely advanced by new provinces of state control, we may anticipate that they will be assumed without any disturbance of the general social system. Charti§m seemed very formidable in its day, yet nearly all of its once thought revolutionary demands have been peacefully con- ceded and society still exists in England, stronger than before. JThe substitution of the principle of association for competition, provided that it is done by conviction and not by arms, by the free will of the majority and not by forcible revolution, involves none of the terrors to civilization that many impart to it, and practically that is all there is in the ideas of state socialism.* So while the methods by which it would attain this end are delusive and come in such a ques- tionable shape that the timid may well fear, strong men, who examine reasonably and thoughtfully, are not likely to blanch and tremble.* After making this distinct separation between socialism and anarchism, it must be admitted that there is cause for fear in the latter. Through past neglect, carried down almost to the verge of the present, the cities of civilization have become breeding- warrens for a class of hereditary prole- tarians, whose condition is such as to incite and almost justify a natural warfare on all human institutions. Hunger and disease, cold and misery, the absence of every comfort that they see others enjoy, the suppression of spiritual motive, and the cultivation of the lowest animalism, all this for gen- eration after generation, with the results intensified by trans- * The United States Consular Reports show very conclusively that socialism is prevalent in Europe in proportion to the want of education and lowness of moral tone. ANARCHISM. 233 mission, has raised a foe within our walls to whom revolution may bring amendment, but can scarcely further impoverish, or steep in deeper hopelessness. Here is the soulless monster of our own creation, born of indifference and neglect, of formal religion, and disregard of God's command, at which society has reason to tremble. Here is the fruit, in due and proper season, that commerce and governments have har- vested of their materialism, and those who have examined closely say it will be fortunate if we can uproot our crop without a return of the tocsin days of Paris, ere the master- slaughterer of Corsica had learned to mow with his artillery. And were it not that honest, contented labor stands as a shield between the upper and lower classes, our fears would have still more urgency. Therein is the safeguard. Rank shades so evenly into rank as to present a uniform gradation, without lines of separation, and though the divergence, measured from the extremes, is that of primaries, the blend- ing is continuous. The small farmer, the employed artisan, the homesteader, the school, the library, the savings bank and the meeting-house stand between the men who have nothing and those who have all, keeping them apart, and thus the fulfilled duties of the community become its pre- servers, as the neglected ones are its menace. The wage- earner who can put his industrial knowledge to good account knows that he has nothing to gain by a violent upheaval, and when fairly remunerated looks for further improvement in his condition solely through his own ^personal effo rts. He knows that the only contest between labor and capital is for the share of profit each shall receive, and though he may inveigh more than the occasion requires, he is not going to declare war on all existing institutions because the division is not made with absolute equity. His arraignments are not in- tended for literal interpretation, but many do read them so, and a sympathy with lawlessness is thus ascribed to him that is as foreign to his real ideas as to his real interests. It is the immediate duty of labor to curb its utterances on this subject, and repress a violence of speech that is an incentive to vio- 234 ARBITRARY MEASURES. lence of action. It should show itself worthy of the new powers it has attained by allaying instead of exciting class antagonism, and by making common cause with capital against an enemy who would destroy all liberties in one general ruin. The hostility of associated labor to non-affiliates, and the bitterness with which the quarrel is pursued into the workshop so as to make the employer a party to it, is the onus of a grave and true complaint by capital against labor organizations. It is the tendency of trade unions to create an artificial uni- formity by driving men of unequal ability into the ranks, and then not content with compelling the employer to pay all alike, require him to engage only unionists. Should he attempt to exercise freedom of choice by selecting the best workmen irrespective of their affiliations he is too frequently answered by boycotting and strikes, while those men who are willing to work are dispossessed of their right to do so by actual violence. This arbitrary domination has done more than anything else to bring trade unions into disrepute, and to antagonize employers, who in the first instance were not perhaps un- friendly to the principles of association. It is a course op- posed alike to common sense and justice, and while we all have much to learn, not only in regard to our duties, but also as to our interferences, the very first lesson that labor should commit to heart is that every man is at perfect liberty to make what contracts he will for the legitimate use of his ability, without any consultation with others of the trade as to the extent of his remuneration. Craft association carries with it no privileges opposed to individual liberty. The legal, politi- cal, and industrial status of all who prefer to remain outside, is precisely the same as those within the unions, and the in- dividual is entitled to every protection that society can give whether he battles for bread singly or in company. The old time tyranny of wealth and rank seldom showed itself more abhorrent than does this new discovery of labor in the art of oppression, and it could seek no surer way of destroying its LABOR MONOPOLY. 235 own influence and losing the position it Has attained, than by persisting in its foolisli policy of force towards neutral workers and neutral employers. Another point to be considered in this connection is the attempt to make a monopoly of labor. The monopoly of capital is on everybody's tongue, and though it is easy to see that there is no analogy between the rights of men and the rights of money, there is a line beyond which self-protection becomes selfishness. To associate for de- fense is one thing ; to associate for oppression or greed, another. When the unions say to skilful men, *' If you do not belong to us you shall not work with us;" to the employer, ** If you hire any one who is not a member of our organization we will neither work for you nor allow others to do so," and to the boy expectantly waiting for a chance to take his first step to independence and manhood, "We will not let you learn this trade," they assume prerogatives that even the state does not claim. No serious justification has ever been attempted even by the unions of their position in this matter towards employers and non-unionists, but a plausible argument is sometimes urged in favor of a limitation of apprentices, on the ground that it is necessary to control the supply of skilled labor in accordance with what the demand may be. This is in reality a plea for a monopoly of labor and one that might be advanced with equal reason by the professions. The supply of lawyers and physicians is far in excess of the demand, yet it would be con- sidered a gross attack on both community and individual rights if the members of these vocations were to close the colleges of law and medicine lest past graduates should be ex- posed to a future competition that might reduce fees. If we accept the presentation made by labor in this behalf, it must also be admitted that the owners of manufacturing establish- ments are empowered by natural law to crush out every new competing enterprise, and so the reign of industrial war would be perpetuated indefinitely. As Mr. Bolles says in his work 236 LABOR MONOPOLY. on **The Conflict between Labor and Capital," * ''To de- clare these associations to be for the benefit of the working population, when they are only for the benefit of a class, is a cheat. They are not unions at all. They are merely class societies instituted for the benefit of a particular class of work- men. All workmen are equally entitled to a living, and no one has a right to say that another shall remain idle. This is directly contrary to the object of creating trade-union socie- ties. The state, indeed, may claim a paramount right over apprentices for purposes of education or public defense, but so far as the working classes are concerned, no one has a right to control the work of another ; in other words, no one has a better right to monopolize work than a manufacturer has to monopolize the production of a particular thing." The avowed purpose of the trade unions to restrict skilled labor has been so far successful that the American boy is now almost out of the field and the place he should occupy is filled with foreigners. Certain trades are entirely in their hands. Cabinet-makers are nearly all Germans, so are working jew- elers ; carpenters are generally of foreign birth, yet so great is the demand for first-class workmen that good artisans find it profitable to take advantage of the busy seasons in both Europe and America by crossing the ocean every year.f Thus while the rights of labor are promulgated from every corner and a thousand thunderbolts of oratory are daily hurled against monopoly in every shape, the most precious of those rights is systematically violated, and a heartless injustice is deliberately elevated to the position of a cardinal principle. It is evident from all this that the unions are greatly astray in their ideas of what constitutes liberty and equity. They do not yet understand that every man has a right to labor for whom he will, at what price he will, and that the employer has the corresponding right of determining whom he will em- ploy and upon what terms. They need enlightenment on * Pages 107, 108, 109. •j- Report of New York Commissioner of Labor, CONFLICTINQ INTERESTS. 237 the indefeasible privilege that appertains to young and old of selecting an occupation, and engaging in it without any other restriction than the law imposes. They require to be taught that it is unfair for inferior ability to exi)ect the same pay as higher skill, and that the only influence they must use to gain adherents is moral suasion. Finally, in common with other divisions of society, whether in units or in hundreds of tiiousands, they need the lesson that self-interest is rarely the best interest, and that it is well to " Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others." We are to ** Let nothing be done through strife." If in- terests apparently clash, there is a remedy in the moral law. ffriie foundation of the gospel is the reconciliation and union of man with God ; the foundation of the law, the harmony and union of man with man. I For this was the law given, for this were the commandments through Moses, and for this the great commandment of Christ. It is their separation from human conduct that makes our actions contentious, selfish and tyrannical, our thoughts intolerable and our lives unlov- able. Therefore if trade unions, manufacturers' associations and other societies endeavor to order their affi\irs on any prin- ciples that ignore the duty of man as contained in the Scrip- tures the result will inevitably be discord and enmity, envy- ing and strife, confusion and evil work. **But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. And the fruit of right- eousness is sown in peace of them that make peace." Were it not a constant experience in the history of nations, of associations, and of the family, it would seem incredible how little the painfully acquired knowledge of the past is ac- cepted by the present. The warning ** dangerous" may be displayed at every corner of the old pitfalls; the parent, wise from experimental trial, may point out to his son with the earnestness of bitter remembrance how slippery the foothold on certain paths, and, in despite, a new generation will re- peat the national follies of former times, and the boy un- 238 STRIKES. mindfully seek to test himself against snares that none escape harmless. If any one fact has been established by the experience of ninety years, it is the uselessness of strikes as a means of obtaining a desired end.* Not their absolute futility; for some strikes succeed and others indirectly accomplish their object, but their general uselessness as a weapon of aggression, their costliness and the disproportionate results achieved com- pared with the sacrifices involved. A writer who has made a special study of this subject says that " The path of Eng- lish industry is strewn with tom.bstones marking ruinous and ineffective struggles of labor," and that "the bread-winners of America never made a dollar by striking." f Mr. Carroll D. Wright, whose official province it has been to examine the question in detail, affirms that " strikes generally prove power- less to benefit the condition of the wage classes," | and Mr. Thorold Rogers says, " Strikes have so seldom been success- ful that a doubt has been expressed whether the rise in wages, fortunately an accomplished fact, has not been due entirely to demand, and in no case to the combination." § These opinions agree with Mr. Thornton's judgment that in "severe and protracted struggles the masters have invariably come off conquerors," yet "in all the intervals between their victories the masters have been continually giving way." || If figures are ever eloquent as pleaders or deterrents, the array which tells the story of labor's conflicts with capital ought to be considered so. In 1877 out of 191 strikes in the United States nearly all were failures. In 1878 out of 277 * " Millions of dollars of wages have been sacrificed in the United States during the last five years by unionists without any corresponding gain. What is the conclusion to be drawn from these facts? Clearly this : that strikes do not pay. In the most favorable event they are a very costly remedy. When a strike proves ineffectual the loss is total, without any saving. Even when the end is gained, often the advantage is not equal to the loss incurred. The victory is a barren one." — Bolles, " The Conflict Between Capital and Labor," page 140. f Daniel J. Ryan. X Report of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor, Massachusetts, 1880. ^ " Work and Wages," page 41 1. II " On Labor," pages 229, 230. STRIKES. 239 only 4 were successful and 17 were compromised. Of 159 strikes recorded as having occul-red in Massachusetts during a jH-'riod of 55 years only 18 absolutely succeeded, while 109 were utterly resultless. * A similar investigation by the Penn- sylvania Bureau of Labor covering 46 years shows that out of 152 strikes in that state 45 were successful, 66 a failure, and the remainder eitlier comi)romised or undetermined. Of 610 investigated by the Census Commissioner during the year 1880 the results of 369 were ascertained, and of these the unusually large proportion of 143 were successful, 156 unsuc- cessful, and 70 compromised. During the ten years ending 1879 there is a record of 2352 strikes in Great Britain, and though the result is known in but a small number of cases, it is sufficient to confirm the rule of ill success. Bradstreet's tables show that in 1886 59 strikes, lasting one week or more, involved 374,000 employes in an average idleness of four weeks, and that estimating earnings at $9.00 per week, the wage loss amounted to $13,460,000. Thirty-seven of these strikes were total failures, the men returning to work at former wages and under the pre-existing conditions ; of the remainder many were temporarily successful in effecting a time reduc- tion, but within six months the length of the laboring day had been restored in nearly every instance. The United States' Commissioner computes that the loss of wages from this cause in 1880 — figured on the basis of so many days* idle- ness — was about $13,000,000. The New York coal-handlers' strike, which commenced in January, 1887, by the resistance of 200 men to a reduction of 2^/^ cents an hour in their pay, involved at the height of the trouble fully 40,000 workmen. About $3,000,000 was lost in wages, the city's export trade suffered to the amount of $3,380,000, and the consumers of coal were taxed $700,000 by its rise in price. The men who struck were replaced by others, and the original wage reduc- tion was carried out.f ♦ See Report of Bureau of Labor, Massachusetts, 1880. f The loss by strikes to the productive industry of Great Britain since 1870 is stated to have been ipore than $200,000,000. 240 STRIKES. It is estimated that when the question at issue involves an increase of 5 per cent, in wages, and the strike succeeds, it requires one and three-fifths years of work at the extra rate to make up the loss of one lunar month's wages, and many strikes that are memorable in industrial annals have extended over several months.* Nor does the financial injury inflicted on capital and labor comprise the sum of the disaster. With the exception of war there is no single thing under human control that produces such general demoralization, for in the train of its attendant evils may nearly always be found intem- perance, violence, riot, hatred, and a bitterness of feeling that is kept alive by defeat and unallayed by success. " What- ever good is accomplished by these struggles," Mr. Ryan ob- serves,f " is paid for at a cost and sacrifice which never brings adequate returns." They are microcosms of national bel- ligerency conducted with the animosity of civil warfare. "Every large strike in this state," Mr. Wright says,J 'Mias increased the criminal lists of the city or town where it has occurred During the first twelve weeks of the last Fall River strike one hundred and four spinners were arrested for various offences, of whom about seventy-one were actual strikers." The great labor outbreak of 1877, which spread like an epidemic over the country, was followed by robbery, arson, riot, and a massing of vagabondage hitherto unknown in America, and since the introduction of dynamite as a * The loss of I lunar month's wages will require to make it up i| years of work at the extra rate. The loss of 2 lunar months' wages will require to make it up 3|^ years of work at the extra rale. The loss of 3 lunar months' wages will require to make it up 4^ years of work at the extra rate. The loss of 6 lunar months' wages will require to make it up 9| years of work at the extra rate. The loss of 12 lunar months' wages will require to make it up 19^ years of work at the extra rate. The loss of 12^ lunar months' wages will require to make it up 20 years of work at the extra rate. — "Journal of the Statistical Society," vol. 24, page 501. •j- "Arbitration," page lo. I Bureau of Statistics of Labor, Massachusetts, 1880. LOSS FROM STRIKES. 241 factor in the solutioi) of political and social difficulties, it rarely happens that a settlement is effected before its use has been invoked. With such a history and such results it certainly seems that labor ought to be under heavy provocation before resorting to its last ap|)eal. Yet many strikes are as causeless as that of the English coal-miners against a better safety-lamp, or that of the chain-makers of Staffordshire in defiance of an Act of Parliament requiring ships' cables to be of stronger straining power. The enormous increase of strikes is also suggestive of precipitancy and recklessness. In the state of New York alone they jumped from 222 in 1885 to 1900 in 1886, not all or nearly all of which could have been pro- duced by legitimate grievances. Ignorance, distrust and tyrannical motives must have been the incentive for a large number of them, and many were evidently undertaken with- out the simplest regard for expediency, to say nothing of right. From 60 to 70 per cent, of all labor disputes have their origin in wage disagreement. The men frequently agitate for an advance without knowing anything of the conditions of trade, and oblivious of the fact that when there is competi- tion the manufacturer does not determine the price at which he sells his goods, and therefore cannot fix his profits. A strike for more wages than the selling price of the manufac- tured article warrants, or for the purpose of preventing others from obtaining employment, or to depose the employer from the management of his capital, is as much an infringement of Christian law on the part of the laborer as the withholding of fair wages by the master. In all such instances there is a failure to apply the principles of Christian obligation, and as moral like physical transgression entails its own retribution, the result is that society is constantly fretted by a disordered industrial system. Although most strikes are from their inception bad in policy and inefficient as remedies for the real or supposed unfairnesses in which they originate, there can be no doubt 16 242 LOSS FROM STRIKES. that, like war, they are sometimes the last and only resort of labor. When arbitration fails, or is rejected, when the injustice is so glaring that a continued submission would be to forfeit manhood, the only recourse is to cease work ; but even then there is no reason why it should be more than a severance of industrial relations, and not an act of open hos- tility as at present. During the great strikes of 1877 a Pennsylvania coal- worker said : ** We have for a year done men's work on two meals of mush per day, and a bit of dry bread for our din- ners, and we have learned to endure a great deal. We will eat the grass in the fields before we will go to work again for less than we demand."* At that time few of the coal- laborers were earning more than $25 per month, many not more than $10, and even these small sums could not be laid out to the best advantage, because the men were compelled to purchase their necessaries at the company stores. Tlie coal- handlers at Bergen Point, N. J., were only able, by the most exhaustive toil, to earn from 60 to 70 cents per day. The Weehawken stone-quarriers, in the same state, complained that with the utmost endeavor they could make but 50 cents per day ; and in the Newark silk mills, men who after work- ing twenty years at their trade were in receipt of ^7 per week, had that pittance cut down 15 per cent. The coal- laborers employed by the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad stated that many of them were making but ^5 for fifteen days* labor, that some veins were being worked which yielded absolutely no pay, and that their families had not tasted meat for a year, the only food they could afford being Indian meal. A later parallel to these cases is that of the English chain- makers' strike in the "Black Country. "f In this particular trade most of the masters admitted that the wages paid were needlessly unfair, but as others refused to concede an advance * See "Appleton's Annual Cyclopedia," 1877, page 427. t May, 1887. REASON FOR STRIKES. 248 the operatives were compelled in self-defense to call out all hands until a new scale of payment was accepted. The special commissioner of an English newsi)aper, sent to in- vestigate the dispute, reported tiiat "a single woman in the pride of her strength, by working twelve hours per day, * might ' make seven shillings a week, out of which she would liave to pay for fuel — say three shillings; leaving four shillings for net earnings. 15ut to make tliis tremendous sum she must make one hundred-weight of short-link chain, that is, 3600 links for four shillings. A dog-chain that sells for eighteen pence is made for one penny." The ad- vance desired would have enabled a muscular woman to earn eight shillings in a working week of sixty hours and a man from thirteen to fifteen shillings; yet though ** employer after employer acknowledged the inadequacy of their earn- ings and signified his adherence to the amended scale,"* the heartlessness of a few nullified their concession and made a continuation of the struggle imperative. As slavery is worse than war, so an acceptance of the con- ditions of life imposed by these master chain-makers of Worcestershire and mine-owners of Pennsylvania would be a greater ^ralamity to the community than the evils that fol- low industrial strife. The right of withstanding oppression can never be taken away, and though its exercise may not always be wise, when the alternative is submission to slow starvation, when a long day's strength and skill are insuffi- cient to procure the primary requirements of the body, self- defense is impelled by self-preservation and becomes a duty. The Christian obligation of labor to capital does not require the sacrifice of any natural right. It is an order of nature that each one shall strive for his own advancement, and if that advancement is promoted by abstention from labor until toil is fairly remunerated, there is no infringement of the divine law. In this, as in all other matters, Christianity is a protector of human rights. It checks the power of wealth, ♦ Birmingham Daily Post, 244 CHRISTIANITY THE PROTECTOR OF HUMAN RIGHTS. subjects authority to the control of justice, and accords to the poorest laborer the same claims on the opportunities of exist- ence that are given to those born to riches and command. Its assignment of stated duties contemplates no forfeiture of inlierent claims, no obedience to tyranny, no abatement of manhood. On the contrary one of its objects is to reveal certain beneficent rules applicable to human conduct, a con- formity with which will increase the sum of happiness, be- sides tending to social freedom and the truest forms of man- liness. It tells the toiler that his condition is not to be bet- tered by idleness, strife, or forcible takings from wealth; that though inequality is a primordial law, devised for man's benefit and necessary for his progress, aspirations and happi- ness, the difference between rich and poor is but a temporary condition, to be regarded by neither as of undue importance, and finally it desires that remembering this they should meet together in unity as brethren of one father, having common interests, common weaknesses, and a common inheritance. CHAPTER XIL CHRISTIANITY AND LABOR. "And there was delivered unto him ihe hook of the prophet Esnias. And when he had opened the book, he found the phice where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, liccause lie halh i^nointeri me to preach the gospel to the poor; he halh sent me to heal nie broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised : to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. And he closed the l)ook, and he gave //again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all them thai were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, This day is this scrip- ture fulfilled in your ears." — Lu^f 4 : 17-24. " It was from Judea that there arose the most persistent protests against inequality, and the most ardent aspirations after justice that have ever raised humanity out of the actual into the ideal. We feel the effects still. It is thence hxs come the leaven of revolution which still moves the world. Job saw evil triumphant and yet believed in justice. Israel's prophets, while thundering against iniquity, announced the good time coming." — EiniU de Lavcleye. In the adaptability of Christianity to the ever-changing con- ditions of human existence those who need such proof may find one of the strongest confirmations of its divine authority. JWhile the other great religions of the world have encased their wearers like coats of mail, preventing industrial growth, moral enlargement and spiritual expansion, the gospel of Christ, fitting itself to every incidence of man's necessities, has been sufficient in its fulness for the constant advancement of civilization, and has demonstrated that it is as conformable to every righteous requirement of the age of industrialism as it was to that of ancient slavery and mediaeval chivalry! The followers of other faiths are in the same material and moral condition to-day that they were twelve centuries ago. They have been repressed by an inflexible garment of human make; their philosophies have stood still so long that manners and morals have become petrified, and their present differs in no (245) 246 CHRISTIANITY AND LABOR TROUBLES."' important particular from those pictures of the past that have been preserved to us by their earliest literature. Creed has crystalized custom into an iron barrier against which progress beats in vain, and the tideless waters of placidity which sur- round them are, in contrast with the notable current of Chris- tian lands, as the motionless depths of the Dead Sea to those of the surging Atlantic. A great writer, whose subject necessarily led him to examine closely the influence exercised by the gospel on society, has, in an eloquent passage, noted how completely it conforms to the varying demands of time and circumstance. ''It was reserved for Christianity," says Lecky, in his ** History of European Morals," "to present to the world an ideal char- acter, which through all the changes of eighteen centuries has inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned love; has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, tempera- ments and conditions ; has been not only the brightest pattern of virtue but the strongest incentive to its practice, and that has exercised so deep an influence that it may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to soften and regenerate mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the exhortations of moralists." It is this earthward aspect of Christianity that chiefly con- cerns the statesman and political economist, because of the immediate bearing it has on the relations of men to each other. Christianity is a religion for life as well as for death. It inculcates not only love to God, but the duty of man to his fellows, and in addition to rules for his religious guidance furnishes him with counsel for his government in those in- tricacies of affairs and of the family that are daily presenting themselves for a solution. Besides preparing the individual for that vaster sphere qf existence which lies beyond the grave, it seeks to direct the community in all that pertains to its social and political well-being, in all that will promote the healthful advancement of the race, and in all that will con- tribute to the happiness and welfare of humanity. Its aim is POWER OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 247 to infuse industrialism with the spirit o f love ; to breathe into it the living breath that will raise it above selfishness, sordid- ness and the vanity of wealth-getting, and in thus dignifying and purifying the material associations make of them a means for the elevation and ennoblement of those who engage in their pursuit. As Maurice said, the Bible is " a book of work and business and politics," and the glorious words of Milton, *' There are no songs comparable to the songs of Zion, no orators equal to those of the prophets, and no politics like those which the Scriptures teach," have been confirmed by the experience of all the generations that have lived and died since Milton wrote. It is in the application of those poli- tics as taught by the Scriptures that the remedy for social evils must be sought, and it will be found that when the economic laws are tested by the divine they will take on a new interpretation and subordinate themselves to the one ever-rul- ing principle, that running through the universe sways alike the material and spiritual domain — the pr imal _law of love. It is useless to conceal the fact that the two great divisions of the industrial world have until recently regarded the Chris- tian ethics as wholly inapplicable to their dealings with each other and with the consumer. They might have given re- luctant assent to a proposition embodying their applicability to some impossible and non-existent community of ideal beings, removed by education, station and riches from the interests and temptations of ordinary life, but capital and labor would have in accord declared that they could not be carried into the street, the mart, and the workshop; into manufacturing, buying and selling; the hiring of service and the performance of contracts. These things by common con- sent constituted a kind of mundus diaboli lying beyond the pale of morals. Within it one might be indifferently honest, an oppressor of labor, untruthful, regardless of implied obli- gations, cruel, and a doer of injustice, and his character would suffer no descent in the general esteem, for was it not the kingdom of selfishness whose only law was self-interest, care- less of the hurt done to others, and whose only creed was to 248 POWER OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS. get money^ let the soiil-cost be what it might ? Such was the view generally taken by capital, and though labor looked at it more in tlie liglit of indifferentism ; as something too abstract, too unsubstantial to have any bearing on rough toil, the price of wages, the hours of labor, the safety of the work- shop, the well-being of children ; they equally agreed that the commands and precepts of the Bible were unfitted for the strain of daily usage, and that as rules of conduct they were valueless, or had at best only a sentimental utility, appre- ciated perliaps by sensitive women, but useless for men. That this until lately should have been the opinion of the toiling millions in Christian lands is not to be wondered at. En- circled by unfair conditions, they knew not how many others had been removed ; ignorant of the past, they were unable to compare it with the present ; and conscious of the evils yet endured they wera.incapable of discerning tliat as De Tocque- ville expresses it,/Christianity has been theft companion of liberty in all its conflicts, the cradle of its infancy and the divine source of its claims.'? The enormous advance made by the working classes since the commencement of the century is however now as apparent to themselves as to others. It is visible without the prior requirement of a knowledge of history ; for men can mark the change within the span of their own lives, and if they seek its cause, observation and reason will have no difficulty in recognizing a deeper origin for it than mere material pro- gress. Behind the aid of countless invention, the applications of science and the diffusion of information, there has been a controlling impulse, guiding the new acquirements of man's mastery to his own higher development, and drawing him nearer to the Supreme Ruler of nature's mysteries. That im- pulse has been the counsel of love , which when permitted to operate through the simple truths of the gospel is as irresist- ible in its sphere as those" other laws by which He determines the silent growth of the quickened seed, the changeless se- quence of day and night, and the orderly movement of the immensities that forever rush through the infinity of space. GROUNDS OP rROGnEBS. 249 A brilliant statesman whose i)liilosoi)hy denied the divine origin of Christianity was yet compelled to admit that " no religion ever appeared in the world whose natural tendency was so much directed to promote the peace and happiness of mankind; " and if in the si)irit of Bolingbroke we trace its history as a mere ethical movement, apart from its inspired source, it will be found to have been almost the sole influence in reforming the condition of labor and bringing it into ac- cord with the elements of justice. For ten centuries the church stood alone in her protection of the toiling poor against the tyrannies of the powerful, and when, having fos- tered liberty in parliaments and institutions, these first re- enforced and then received her transmitted strength, the forces of Christianity silently continued their work until labor had been dignified in all her estate. From the slow amelio- ration of the early Roman i)eri{)d ; the repression of licentious- ness, the inculcation of humanity, and the gradual elevation of labor; through the more rapid changes of the Middle Ages, the mitigation of slavery by serfdom, the growth of personal rights, and the thousand indications that marked the emergence of a new civilization ; down to the latest social reform of yesterday ; every growth, every evolution, has been a gift to labor through Christianity, and a con- quest of the ethical over the apparently insurmountable eco- nomic law. Regarded therefore purely as a moral force, and resting its claim to consideration solely on its historical achievements, Christianity is entitled to the spontaneous allegiance of every working man and woman, for on its current they have been borne from bondage to freedom, from ignorance to knowledge, from the animalism of the undeveloped being to the expansion of spiritual manhood ; and the drift is still on- ward to larger liberty, higher attainments, and a more per- fect growth. Commencing with the overthrow of the ancient temples and the rescue of their worshippers from the bonds of cruelty, it placed on high as a model for human. conduct an absolutely i>erfect conception of purity and self-sacrifice, 250 GROUNDS OF PROGRESS. whose every word was in sympathy with the poor and toil- ing, and whose life was a constant protest against their op- pression. Uttering its command of duty to the state, the family and the individual, the grossness of the early types became beautified by the expression of love, and labor stood before the world transfigured. Here destroying a wrong by attrition, there building up liberty by slow upheaval, and now overturning gigantic evils as by an earthquake, the largest sharers in its beneficence have been the slave, the serf, and the villein ; the peasant, the laborer and the artisan ; so that however much those who work for wages may be imbued by the prevalent taint of materialism, they can never divest themselves of the gospel fruits; for these are now incorpo- rated with and form part of their daily lives. Therefore, as Lord Bolingbroke says, even supposing Christianity "to have been purely a human invention, it had been the most amiable and the most useful invention that was ever imposed on mankind for their good." The Christian religion is so inseparably connected with the joys and sorrows, the temptations and triumphs, the struggles and aspirations of the toiling masses, that it would naturally be supposed that the most earnest advocacy for the adoption of its principles by the industrial world would come from them. No literature lies so close to the hearts of the common people as the books of the Bible, because, for one thing, in no other volume is the dignity of labor so exalted. It enters into the thoughts of workingmen from their own standpoint. It requires fair wages,* prompt payment, f and * " Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbor's service without wages, and giveth him not for his work," — yereviiah 2.1 : 13, f " The wages of him that is hired shall not abide with thee all night until the morning." — Leviticus 19 : 13. " Thou shalt not oppress art hired servant that is poor and needy, •whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy strangers that are in thy land within thy gates : at his day thou shalt give him his hire ; neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it : lest he cry against thee unto the Lord, and it be a sin unto thee." — Deut, 24 : 14, 15. THK FUHI.K ON TIIK LABOR ISSUE. 251 Stated periods of rest. It commends and honors labor well performed, and encourages perseverance in faithful doing. Through the pens of poets, prophets and evangelists, and the words of One greater, it denounces all who deal unjustly with the laborer. It sanctifies his toil against the might of wealth and rank,* and, breaking the silence of all other moral codes, enforces his protection as the basis of just government and the corner-stone of society. Remembering that inequality of natural condition must spring from inequality of natural endowments, it provides the only possible remedy, by enjoin- ing on those whom God has made the custodian of his gifts the duty of sharing them with others. And finally, when oppression prevails, and the struggle for bread becomes so severe that even patience cries out, it teaches as a solace that this is only the beginning of an endless journey, and that notwithstanding temporary injustice, those who bear them- selves well and prove worthy to be heirs of the kingdom which he promised, are surely laying up earnings which will be repaid in the future, with an added recompense beyond the conception of our mortal imagining. Thus while the moralities of the Bible appeal with special force to those who belong to the great armies of industry, its central figure, a workingman, and in his earthly relation the son of a workingman, yet standing out as the converging point of history, religion and philosophy, ought also to com- mand the absorbing reverence of those whom he proclaimed were equals in the sight of the universal Father with the proudest patricians of the state. The every-day reality of his life, his humble companionship, his personality and divine humanity, his condemnation of the misuse of wealth, and his ♦ " He that oppresseth the poor to increase his riches^ . . . shall surely come to want." — Frov. 22 : 1 6. " I will be a swift witness against . . . those that oppress the hireling in his wajjes." — Malachi 3:5. " Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth ; and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaolh." — Jiimes 5:4. 252 REMEDY FOR WRONGS. elucidation of social problems that have a nearer concern for the working classes than others, should furthermore, apart from still higher claims, enshrine him in their affections. His mission was to rescue. He came to free them from every form of social enslavement, as well as from bondage to the inferior elements of their own nature, from limb thrall as well as from soul thrall, and his gospel was, and ever will be, a more potential proclamation of liberty to the captive, of social amelioration to the neglected, of hope for the miser- able, and of justice to the injured, than any remedy devised of man. Industrial sociology may be said to have had its origin in Christianity, and the social problems of to-day are essentially religious problems. It has become therefore in its most profound sense the science of applied duties, tlie co-operation of scientific method with religion, the alliance of faith in God and faith in man with the industrial occupations, and a pro- jection from Christ into the active life of an active world. In this way Christianity, when unopposed, promotes the ad- vance of society without those outbursts of violent energy that otherwise accompany the movement. It offers to social dis- content a more efficient remedy than revolution, and to unfair social and industrial conditions the gradual alleviation of helpful sympathy. It extirpates poverty and distress, not by filching from wealth, but by a correct understanding of the laws of nature, by self-reliance, and the loving aid of others. Recognizing the ills inseparable from human existence, it would, by making ownership a trust, reduce them to their smallest proportions, and by removing the curse from the or- dainment of labor (the sting of which is to-day not implanted of God but made by man), transform it into a necessary means for the attainment of happiness and a motive power for enlightened progression. It seeks to replace the cruelty, greed and selfishness, that now poison industrialism, with kind- ness, honesty and consideration, and after converting ancient enemies into allies, bring competition under the restraint of the higher law. Indicating the method by which the labor REMEDY FOR WRONGS. 253 factor can be admitted to a larger participation in the profits of production without loss to capital, it would, by maintain- ing equilibrium in the industrial world, give stability to every other portion of the social fabric. Finally, Christianity de- sires to complete its triumphs by changing combinations for disorder into bonds of conciliation, and having thus carried the principles of its obligations into every relation of capital and labor, emphasize by the stilled waters, tho resultant har- mony of opposites and the growth of a purified society, that the gospel is a religion fitted for to-day, and that /'/ will answer the social problems of to-day, whether pro- pounded by workman, employer, or consumer, with a wis- dom that, surpassing worldly knowledge, partakes of its source — the Infinite and Divine. It is no reply to turn from these social idealisms and point- ing to the jarring factions of industrialism; to the bruised bodies and souls that it flings from out its giant wheels ; to the multitudes that it yearly hurries to death, abstracted and bereft of spiritual elements ; to the heartlessness with which it crushes the weak, and the glory with which it exalts success, and ask of religion, "Is this thy victory?" It is no reply to trace the falsehoods that in its realm pass current for verities; the ignoble strivings for gain, the deeds that make light of honor, and the daily gamblings with the har- vests of God, that but for the counterforce of other gamblers would result in famine pacts a thousand times more extensive and equally as infamous as those devised by Louis the Well- Beloved. It is no reply to point to the human wreckage ; to the worthless drift that floats aimlessly from city to city; to courts clogged by dispute ; to the combinations of labor for the oppression of labor ; to the ill-paid hazard of the worker, and the luxurious lounging of the idler ; to the subversion of all the higher attributes of man by the false commercial prin- ciples that govern the rush for wealth, and ask of Christianity, *'Are these thy accomplishments, these thy reduced strong- holds, these thy conquests? " They are neither victories nor defeats, fields won or lost ; but fortresses as yet unbesieged, 254 CHRISTIAN UNITY. provinces as yet unattacked ; an enemy's country, in truth, but one that has not yet heard the trumpet demand for surrender. " To say that Christianity has proved a failure is indeed to trifle with the truth of history," * and to announce defeat while her forces are yet being marshalled for the assault. In the comparatively few cases where business affairs have been conducted on the basis of the Christian ethics the re- sults have served to show that there is no conflict with the laws that govern industrial success. On the contrary, they indicate that as the fulfilled obligations of society to the in- dividual favor social and industrial well-being, so a recogni- tion and acceptance of the inherent duties of capital to labor increases the gain of both, and a conformity to moral require- ments in the relations of labor to capital conduces to the best interests of the worker and his employer. It is apparent from them that competition can be tinged with humani- tarianism without abatement of profit, and that the sensitive register of the relative preponderance of capital and labor, production and consumption, known as supply and demand, can be regulated without infringing the rights of producer or consumer. It is further manifest that the commercial spirit is not of necessity opposed to altruism, and that there is no reason why labor and capital should not so order their asso- ciate affairs as to make them accord with the Christian mo- tives. In addition, practical experience confirms the propo- sition, reiterated in so many of these pages, that the only satisfactory solution of the problems of industrialism is con- tained in that master law to which all others are by the di- vine ordinance ultimately subject, and which was enunciated in its fulness by Christ when he said, ''A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another." The many-sided endeavors of social science, the amend- ment of civil decree, the attainment of the substratum of * See article by Mr. George Frederick Parsons, " On the Decline of Duty," Atlantic Monthly, May, 1887. KEY TO TIIK PUOIJLIMS. 255 tnith underlying socialism, and all industrial reform, to be successful, must start from this basis. It has elevated the social life of man from a condition of instinct, dominated by passion, to a humanity that encompasses the world. It has nurtured his moral life from infinitesimal beginnings until the dcveloj^mcnt has evolved a type of manhood and woman- hood as distinctively superior to their primitives as the flower to the seed. It has strengthened and broadened his national life, and added to the beauty and joy of his physical vitality. It has given a new meaning to his intellectual being, and breathed into his flickering spirituality the breath of a new existence. To say that while these portions of man's nature are brought within its rule the industrial motives are exempt, would be to claim that in the immensity of ocean one wave rolled imperturbed by current, wind or tide, and unbound by laws to which the myriad orbs of the universe give heed. Reason tells us this is an impossibility, and in the same man- ner Christianity, sent forth conquering and to conquer, per- mits no waves of human volition to range beyond the mystical influence expressed by it as love. It is this influence that like a living spring waters the fields of our sciences and philosophies, making them fruitful for humanity. It is this emanation from the religion of Jesus that gives us not only " the light of the knowledge of the glory of God,** but the light and knowledge necessary to meet the exigencies of mortal life in its daily requirements; placing in our hands the key to all industrial problems, the solvent for all class distinctions, the law for all righteous elevation, the remedy for all remediable social evils and the method of ad- justment for all conflicting interests. We have in it a cer- tain preventive against the dangers that menace society I'rom the indiff*erentism of wealth, the pressure of poverty, the recklessness of anarchy, and the blindness of materialism. It is this that reconciles a divided humanity, and makes rich and poor, employer and emploj'ed, joint participants in that triumph of dominion which God in these latter days has i>er- mitted us to assume over nature. Of him and from him, it 256 KEY TO THE PROBLEMS. Streams in ceaseless flood, illuminating our troubled igno- rance, making our dark places plain, and guiding both the in- dividual and society towards a realization of his kingdom. Suffused by it the landscape of our lives emerges from the shadow, neglects and apathies become obligations, and obli- gations pleasant duties. Economic laws, relieved of their harshness, take on the form of salutary behest ; our deadly conflicts for the gifts of God's bounty are tempered to the gentler strivings of emulation, and the vexed seas of indus- trialism subside from their stormings into peace. INDEX. About, E., on the origin of capi- tal, 74. Administrative ability, value of, 72, Akroyd, Edward, quoted, 109. Apprenticeship, the decay of, 1 27, 128; the craft guilds and, 203; opposition of trade-unions to, 235. Anarchy, the dangers from, 232. Arbitration, practical value of, 191- 195- Argyle, the Duke of, on factory legislation, 79. Atkinson, Edward, on the im- proved condition of Labor, 53 ; on the purchasing power of wages, 54 (note); on railroad labor, 57. Auchmuty, Richard T,, on trade schools, 128. Augustine on Labor, 26. Behrends, Dr. A. J. F., on trans- mitted wealth, 78. Bible, the, on transmitted wealth, 77 ; on the ethics of ownership, loi ; on wages, 113, 142, 214, 215; on settlement of disputes by arbitration, 191 ^note) ; the politics of, 247 ; Labor exalted by, 250, 251. Bigelow, Erastus E., on social progress, 49 ; on equitable dis- tribution, 142. Birmingham as a municipal exam- ple, 95, 96. Bismarck quoted, 98. Bolles on land monopolies, 236 ; on strikes, 238 (note). Bolingbroke on Christianity, 249, 250. Brace, C. Loring, on distribution of wealth, 82; on dangerous classes, 84 ; on apostolic com- munism, 102 ; on the human- itarian influence of Christianity, 107. Brassey, Sir Thomas, on cheap workmen, 114; on social reforms, 135; on rate of profit, 152. Brentano '♦ On Guilds," 204 (note), 206. Brown, Dr, T. Edwin, on social- ism, 230 (note). Buckle quoted, 14. Campbell, Mrs. Helen, quoted, 173. Capital and Labor, the dispute be- tween, 140, 141 ; common in- terests of, 145, 221 ; relative profits of, 150-152. Capital, necessity of, to Labor, 73; the advantages of, over Labor, 148, 149 ; entitled to fair profit, 220. Carlyle, on profit sharing, 170 (note). Chadbourne, Professor, quoted, 1 12. Chadwick on the education of Labor, 127. Charitable bequests, total of, 134, i35. Chartist agitation, 36, 37. Chateaubriand quoted, 26. Cheapening of goods, undue, 22a- 222. Cheapening of products, 50. Chevalier, Michael, quoted, 39. Child-labor, early inhumanities of, 29-31 ; economic results of, 30, 189 ; Parliamentary report quoted, 3»- (267) 258 INDEX. Christian ethics of ownership com- pared with pagan, io6, 107 ; applicability of, to industrialism, 108-112, 116, 247, 248. Christianity, effect on social prob- lems of, 26, 37, 67, 191, 248; an upholder of Labor, 35 ; the ethical force of, 38, 39 ; its in- culcations to wealth, 105-107 ; teachings about wage payment, 113, 142, 214; idleness not countenanced by, 120; gave La- bor new aspect, 139; arbitra- tion inculcated by, 191 (note); human rights protected by, 244 ; industrialism and, 246 ; the guiding power of, 248; the remedies offered by, 253 ; the mission and triumphs of, 254-256. Cicero quoted, 18 (note). Commerce, increase of, 46. Competition of laborers, 190. Conflicting interests, how to recon- cile, 237. Consumption, increased powers of, 52, 60. Corporate relief societies, 90. Corporations, moral responsibility of, 112; vices of, 154, 155. Crime and pauperism, decrease of, 62, 65. Co-operation, the birth of, 62 ; the ethical effects of, 159- 161 ; dif- ferent forms of, 162; early fail- ures of simple, 163, 164; Eng- lish and French experiments in, 165, 166; distributive, 178-180. Co-operative union, the, 168. Danton quoted, 37. De Tocqueville on Christianity, 248. Duty of legislators on Labor ques- tions, 42, 92. Earnings, method of determining true, 153. Educational facilities, improved, 61 ; the need of better, 128. Ely, Professor, on profit sharing, 170 (note) ; on the ethical force of the Labor movement, 225. Employer and employed, friendly relations of, 123-126. Employer's liability for accidents, 91,92. Equity, economic value of, 108-1 10. Factory acts, ^^. Factory system, rise of the, 28 ; its early abuses, 29 ; current evils of, in the United States, 40, 41 ; benefits arising from the, 43, 79- Fair prices, 219-222. Fair wages, 74; definition of, 142. Froude, J. A., on human rights, 81. Fulfilled duties the social safe- guard, 233. Garfield, President, quoted, 224. Gibbon quoted, 17 (note). Giffen on the progress of the working classes, 58, 61, 65. Gladden, Rev. Washington, on profit sharing, 170 (note), 177. Godin's Familistere, 172, 173. Governmental remedies for social defects, 90-94. Guilds (see Trade-unions). Ham, Charles H., on slave labor in ancient Rome, 19 ; on technical education, 86 ; on Roman ethics, 106. Handicraft, a knowledge of, a crime preventative, 130. Harrison, Frederick, on modern industrialism, 149 ; on the failure of co-operation, 163 ; on social distress, 181. Hazardous occupations, 87; com- pulsory insurance in, 89, 90. Hours of Labor, decrease in, 53, 59, 130; Ruskin on, 131 (note). Hughes, Thomas, quoted, 37. Huxley, Professor, quoted, 45. Industrial partnership as a solvent of the Labor question, 159. Industrial sociology originated with Christianity, 252. Inequality, a natural law, 70; so- cial-economic effects of, 71. Inheritance, inquiry as to rights of, 81. Inherited wealth, 75. INDEX. 259 Insurance, laws of Germany, 89 ; value of, 186. Intemperance and poverty, 182. Invention, the age of, 27. Jervis quoted, 179. Jones, Lloyd, on co-operation, 179 (note). K ingsley, Charles, quoted, 35 , 36, 39. Labor and Christianity, 26, 35, 37, 38, 139, 140, 246-254. Labor in ancient Rome, 14-22; in France before the Revolution, 23 ; Augustine on, 26; improved condition of, during the century, 49-60 ; effects on beneficial leg- islation, 63, 64 ; Lalxjr not a commodit]^ 112, 146; cheap Labor unprofitable, 114; earn- ings of, 150-152; Labor not en- titled to prepayment, 153; capi- talized value of, 151 (note), 187 ; repeal of laws against combina- tions of, 207 ; the equitable de- mands of, 219; cheap goods and, 220 ; unfair hostility of, to capital, 229, 230 ; socialism and, 230, 231 ; Anarchism and, 232; attempt of trade-unions to make a monopoly of, 254-256 ; Christi- anity and, 248-252. Labor problem, antiquity of the, 12; sympathy as a solvent for the, 34, 126; vast importance of the, 137 ; the ancient methods of solving the, 138 ; the Chris- tian solution of the, 139; the problem formulated, 140, 141 ; temperance and the, 183 ; im- provident marriages and the, 184 ; influence of materialism on the, 195 ; the* final solution of by Christianity, 254-256. Labor-saving machinery, effects of, 56. 57» 130. Lavaleye, Emile de, on the Spen- cerian philosophy, 116 (note); on socialism, 230 (note). Lecky quoted, 246. Leclaire's success in profit-sharing, 171. Liberality [vofitable, 115. Ludlow, John Malcolm, on Guilds, 204. Macaulay quoted, 99. Macdonald, John, on the welfare of society, 95. Man versus the State, 117, 118. Manufacturers' combinacions, 215- 218. Marriage, improvident, 184. Materialism, influence of, on the Labor question, 195-198; ulti- mate effects of, 200. Maurice on the neglects of the Church of England, 32 ; on pov- erty of agricultural laborer, 59; on co-operation, 163; on the politics of the Bible, 247. McMaster, Professor, quoted, 46, 50- Mill, John Stuart, on inherited wealth, 76; on property rights, 81 ; on distributive justice, 145 ; on social miseries, 184; on undue cheapening of goods, 222 ; on the neglected duties of Labor, 228 (note). Miners' wages, 88. Mulhall on the progress of the working classes, 65 ; quoted, 45, 46. 59, 65, 88. Mundella on arbitration, 193. Mutual help, 116, 136. Newcomb, Professor Simon, quoted, 64. Organized charity, 133, 134. Owen, Robert, social-industrial re- forms introduced by, 32. Oldham, co-operation in, 167, 168 (note). Overwork, evils of, 29-31, 41, 130- 132. Parson, Geo. F., quoted, 254. Pidgeon, Daniel, quoted, 44. Postal Savings Banks, 92. Profit-sharing, educational value of, 169; general applicability of, 170; I^claire and Godin's suc- cess in, 171-173; European and American success in, 174-176; ethical value of, 177. 260 INDEX. Profits and earnings, analysis of, 150-152, Progress and poverty, not associate terms, 51. Progress of the working-classes, 64-66. Property, private, a natural right, 73- Provident habits, 185, 186. Reany, Rev. G. S., on materialism and the Labor question, 197. Rich growing richer, 143, 144. Rogers, Thorold, on cheap Labor, 146 ; on laws against combina- tions, 207; on trade-unions, 213; on strikes, 238. Rome, extent of the Roman Em- pire, 14; magnificence of an- cient, 15; Roman luxury, 16; slavery, 17; Labor in, 19; Ro- man inhumanity, 19, 22 ; con- tempt for Labor, 20; street scenes in, 21 ; the Amphitheatre, 22. Ruskin, John, on hours of Labor, 131 (note); on monopoly, 154; on cheap goods, 220. Russell, Scott, on technical edu- cation, 62, 86, 127. Ryan, Daniel J., on arbitration, 192 ; on strikes, 238, 240. Sanitary dwellings, 83, 84. Saving, importance of aids to, 123, 133; value of, 185; Savings Banks, 92. Savings, increase of, 55, 60, 65. Self-help, duty of, 119, 120. Serfdom, 38, 45. Shaftesbury, Lord, quoted, 33, 69. Skill, value of, 188. Smith, Rev. J. Talbot, quoted, 41. Social affinity, 159. Social questions, duty of the munic- ipality, 95-97 ; of the State, 98- 100, 117-119; of the individual, 122. Socialism, Emile de Laveldye on, 230 (note); Dr. T. E. Brown on, 231 (note) ; the mistakes of, 230, 231 ; Anarchy and, 232. Spencer, Herbert, on the natu- ral right to property, 73 ; on " Self-help," 115 ; on social mis- eries, 184. Strikes, discouraged by English trade-unions, 209 ; general fu- tility of, 238 ; statistics of failures, 239 ; attendant evils of, 240 ; losses resulting from, 241 ; the occasional justice of, 242, 243. Sum.ner, Professor, quoted, 117. Sympathy, a social solvent, 34, 126. Taylor, Sedley, on the wage sys- tem, 162 (note) ; on " Profit Sharing," 170. " Teachings of the Twelve Apos- tles" quoted, 120 (note). Technical education, 62 ; social inequality diminished by, 86 ; economic value of, 127. Thornton on social inequalities, 77 ; on the requisites for co- operation, 164; on the indus- trial system, 166 ; on strikes, 238. Trade schools, 129. Trade unions, incomes of English, 64 ; origin of, 201 ; features of early, 203 ; mediaeval, 204-207 ; benefits resulting from, 208 ; dis- couragement of strikes by, 209 ; arbitration favored by, 210; formation of American, 211 ; the gain of capital from, 212; Tho- rold Rogers on, 213; preven- tion of undue competition by, 214; summary of the good ef- fected by, 224-226 ; arbitrary measures of, 234; opposition to apprenticeship of, 235 ; wrong ideas of liberty held by, 236. Trant, Wm., on trade-unions, 208. Unemployed, the, 55. . Unrest a sign of progress, 1 1 . Wage-service, the duty of, 22. Wages, increase of, dViring the cen- tury, 51-59; effect of unjust, 112; the teachings of the Bible on, 113 ; just wages profitable to employer, 114; what constitutes fair, 142 ; effect of undue cheap-* ening of goods on, 220. INDEX. 261 Walker, Profc«isor, nuotcd, 147. Wealth, increase of, 47, 48, 143 ; ine<{uaUties of, 77 ; transmission off 78 ; present form of distribu- tion not final, 82 ; ethics of, loi ; the mission of, 103 ; I^'il)or the source of, 104 ; the jH>wer of, 105; right uses of, no, ill; wealth's duty of leadership, 121 ; the gifts to charily by, 134, 135 ; selfishness of, 198. Wines, E. G,, quoted, 1 30. Women's earnings, 147. Working cla»es, progren of the, 64-66; J. S. Mill on the ne- glected duties of the, 228 (note) ; value of faithfulness to the, 229. Wright, Carroll D., on the ten hour system, 41 ; on the benefits of the factory system, 43 ; on the increased power of consumpHion, 52 ; on average earnings, 53, 54 (note) ; on reduction in working hours, 59 ; on capital account, 150 ; on profit-sharing, 170 (note) ; on strikes, 238, 240. L' iA^ '//t-/ 9<^ i ft. / ^v» I. rf ^<_n .l1 ^ THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST tjATT! ^ DUE AS SIAMPED BELOW YB 26890 f«a '•* ■r<:- 269506 tJNIVERSITY OF CAIvIFORNIA LIBRARY , 44.^*^*^^«»tfo U.C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES