AMERKM PAUPE1 AND THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY BY IS ADO R LADOFF THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES AMERICAN PAUPERISM AND THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY BY ISADOR LADOFF AUTHOR OF "THE PASSING OF CAPITALISM," ETC. WITH A SUPPLEMENT JESUS OR MAMMON" BY J. FELIX CHICAGO CHARLES H. KEER & COMPANY 1904 COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY ©HXKLB8 H. KERR & COMPANY JOHN P. Hiaams PRINTER, BINDER SO . tee-108 OI.ARK (T. CHICAGO, ILUNOK HV U25a CONTENTS PAGE An Appeal to the Reader 5 Pauperism and Poverty in the United States. ... n The Children of Poverty in the United States. . 50 Pennsylvania Child Labor 93 The Causes of Poverty in the United States. . . . 103 The Industrial Evolution of the United States, iog The Abolition of Poverty 167 SUPPLEMENT: Jesus or Mammon? 217 13SS217 AMERICAN PAUPERISM AN APPEAL TO THE READER. You know that we live in an age of great prosperity ; that the United States exceeds Great Britain in the totals of her domestic export ; that the foreign business of the United States passes beyond two billion dollars; that her profits — that is, the excess of exports over imports- reaches more than four hundred and seventy-six million dollars. You know, in other words, that the United States is able to provide sufficient food, clothing and shelter, foreign and domestic goods for comfortable and even luxurious living for her people, and sells abroad goods at the rate of a million and a half dollars in cash for every work- ing day. You know that the United States has ceased to be a nation-debtor and has become a creditor- nation ; that the bank clearings have increased immensely, while the number of receiverships steadily decline; that there never was such an expansion in the various manufacturing indus- tries ; that never before has so much money been in circulation in the country, either in volume or in per capita distribution ; that never before were 5 6 AMERICAN PAUTERISM. the totals of the people's savings in the banks so enormous. You know that the United States grows about eighty per cent of the entire cotton crop of the world ; that it is the greatest producer of wheat among all countries ; that we own about one-third of all the swine in the world : that we are the greatest cattle raisers among the nations. You know that of the food-staples, bread, meat, butter, milk, vegetables and fruits, we are the most extensive producers. You know that as a clothing producer America is abundantly able to clothe her population with- out any assistance from foreign nations ; that the United States' output of iron and steel products was in 1899 about forty per cent of the world's total ; that we are the greatest coal producers, fur- nishing more than one-third of the world's sup- ply ; that the annual supply of our petroleum makes up one-half of the total output of the world. You know that the United States has the great- est mileage of railroads, the greatest amount of freight-transportation, the most extensive marine- traffic. You know, in short, that the economic growth and material development of the United States, the growth of wealth of the entire nation, has no precedent in the history of humanity. However, do you know who actually enjoys this marvelous material prosperity? Do you know what price is paid for this prosperity and who foots up the bill? Do you know that a little less than one-half of the families of the United States are property- less ; that seven-eighths of the families hold no AN APPEAL TO THE READER. 7 more than one-eighth of the national wealth, while one per cent of the families hold more than the remaining ninety-nine per cent? Do you know that the wealthiest ten per cent of American families receive approximately the same income as the remaining ninety per cent? Do you know that the average family's income from labor cannot be put higher than five hun- dred dollars in towns and three hundred dollars in the rural districts? As three-fifths live in rural districts, the average should be three hun- dred eighty dollars annually for all. Do you know that more than five-sixths of the income of the wealthiest class is received by a hundred twenty-five thousand richest families, while less than one-half of the income of the working classes is received by the poorest 6,500,- 000 ; in other words, that one per cent of our families receive nearly one-fifth? Do you know that in fact the smallest class of wealthy property owners receive from prop- erty alone as large an income as half of our peo- ple receive from property and labor? Do you know that the number of officially rec- ognised paupers in the United States is not less than three millions ; that the direct and indirect loss in money due to pauperism is conservatively estimated to reach at least one hundred million dollars annually ? Do you know that the State of New York, the richest state in the Union, carries the heaviest burden of pauperism, not merely proportional to its population ? Do you know that the number of inmates in various charitable institutions of the State of New York reaches 300,000; while the total mini- AMERICAN PAUPERISM. ber of persons relieved annually by these institu- tions reaches the figure of two and a half mil- lions? Do you know that one in four of the entire tenement population of the city of New York (about 300,000 or 350,000) are treated free of charge annually by medical charitable institu- tions? Do you know that in no city of the United States will the number of children supported at public expense compare in proportion to popu- lation with the number of those cared for in New York City? Do you know that one person in every ten who dies in the City of New York is buried in Pot- ter's Field? Do you know that the increase of female and child-labor in the United States is quite pro- nounced in comparison with the increase of adult male labor? Do you know that child labor increased in a single decade more than two hundred per cent in the South ? Do you know that nearly one-sixth of all the employees in the hard coal mines are children ? Do you know that the increase of child-labor in the iron and steel industry shows 216 per cent ? Do you know that there are about seventeen hundred and fifty thousand children between the ages of ten and fifteen years employed in the mines and factories of the United States ? Do you know that child-labor is employed to a very much greater extent in the North than in the South Do you know that children are deformed, AX APPEAL TO THE READER. 9 maimed, weakened and made diseased for life in many of the trades flourishing in every industrial community? Do you hear the cry of the chil- dren: "How long," they say, "how long, oh cruel nation, Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart — Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation, And tread onward to your throne amid the mart? Our blood splashes upward, oh our tyrants, And your purple shows your path ;" But the child's sob curseth deeper in its silence Than the strong man in his wrath. Are you aware that child-lahor is one of the bitterest and greatest tragedies of our commercial age? Do you know all that? If yes, what are you going to do about it? If not — is it not your sa- cred duty to investigate matters and to decide what to do about it? Are you not responsible for the prevailing conditions as far as you fail to improve them to the extent of your abilities and as far as you help to perpetuate them ? The present book is an attempt at a sane, fair and impartial treatment of the most important social economic problems of our age from the highest ethical point of view, from the point of view of the true interests of the entire human race. We do not attack personalities or classes, who apparently at least are benefited by the pre- vailing abnormal conditions of social-economic life and strife. However, we analyse and con- demn social-economic institutions that accord- ing to our sincere conviction have outlived their utility. IO AMERICAN PAUPERISM. The fundamental thought of our hook may he summarised in the following single sentence: "There is no crime but parasitism." To eliminate social-economic parasitism means to abolish the very root of all social economic evils. The poet says : "Truth is eternal, but her effluence, With endless change, is fitted to the hour; Her mirror is turned forward to reflect The promise of the future, not the past. He who would win the name of truly great Must understand his own age and the next, And make the present ready to fulfil Its prophecy, and with the future merge Gently and peacefully as wave with wave. The future works out great men's purposes : The present is enough for common souls, Who, never looking forward, are indeed Mere clay, wherein the footprints of their age Are petrified forever : better those Who lead the blind old giant by the hand From out the pathless desert where he gropes, And set him onward in his darksome way. I do not fear to follow out the truth Albeit along the precipice's edge. Let us speak plain : there is more force in names Than most men dream of; and a lie may keep Its throne a whole age longer, if it skulk Behind the shield of some fair seeming name. ********** For men in earnest have no time to waste In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth." PAUPERISM AND POVERTY IN THE UNITED STATES. We have to distinguish between charity and mutual helpfulness. Under charity we under- stand the material assistance extended by the parasitic "higher" classes to the slum-proletari- ans. Charity is an artificial and vicious code, by which one class of people regulates a part of its conduct toward other classes, considered as some- thing lower than men, because the last happen to be poor. St. Crispinus used to steal leather from the rich in order to make shoes for the poor. The parasitic classes of our commercial civilisa- tion appropriate the lion's share of the results of the labor of the toiling masses and then sancti- moniously contribute an infinitesimal part of their ill-gotten wealth to the lowest dregs of the ex- ploited class. The ethics of such generosity is on a par with that of a highway robber who, after having relieved his victim of his well-filled purse, returns a nickel for car- fare out of the spoil to the robbed persons. The idle rich indulge in giving alms because it tickles their vanity, because it hypnotises their guilty consciences and enhances the consciousness of their economic power. Char- ity is indeed a very convenient institution for the ruling plutocratic minority. It helps to keep the so-called lower classes in a state of slavish hu- mility and canine dependence on the bitter crumbs falling occasionally from the overladen tables of the "valiant possessor of the valuable." Besides this, methodical organised charity by II 12 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. proxy saves the rich from disagreeable personal contact with the unsavory poor. Organised pri- vate charity allows the rich to treat professional beggars like criminals without appearing brutal. Organised private charity makes it possible to classify the poor people into two categories — one labeled worthy, and the other unworthy of sup- port. Charity this way helps to keep the irregu- lar reserve army of unemployed just on the brink of semi-starvation and in constant readiness to accept a proposed "job" on any terms, to act as strike-breakers in case of necessity, and, mainly, to press down the scale of wages for labor to the lowest possible level. These poor, namely, who, on one hand, still possess some class conscious- ness, or who are, on the other hand, too deeply demoralised to be relied upon by the employers of labor in times of industrial disturbances, are la- beled as unworthy of support. Quite a different moral aspect is presented by the unostentatious mutual helpfulness among the poor. Here the gift of a penny means actually that the giver has to deny himself something of the necessaries of life. Unfortunately, there is no way of ascertaining either the number benefited by or the amount ex- pended in mutual helpfulness of that kind. The New York Times (Nov. 19, 1902) esti- mates that in the State of New York alone there is spent annually on private charity not less than $20,000,000 by more than ten thousand organised private institutions. Public charity, so called, ought to be, by right, considered as belonging to the category of mu- tual helpfulness. Indeed all charitable state, city, and countv institutions are maintained at the ex- PAUPERISM IX THE UNITED STATES. 13 pense of the taxpayers ; and the wealth out of which taxes are, in the last instance, paid is pro- duced by the toiling masses, and not by the para- sitic classes, all outward appearances to the con- trary. And yet the stigma of "charity" remains attached to these institutions. In the public opin- ion every person applying for and getting aid from public charitable institutions is stamped a pauper. Only exceptional distress compels the respectable poor to apply for public charity. If we use data about public charity as an indication of poverty we shall not run the risk of exagger- ating the actual existing poverty, but rather of underestimating it. It must be stated however at the outset that even the data about public charity in the United States are rather fragmentary and incomplete. The following table will show the number of applicants for charity in 1891 : Per cent Appli- of pop- Cities. Population. cants, ulation. New York City 1,515,301 2,836 0.18 Boston 448,417 2,391 0.53 Baltimore 434,439 2,250 0.51 New Haven 81,298 551 0.67 In other words, of each ten thousand inhabi- tants there were recognised paupers, eighteen in New York City, fifty-three in Boston, fifty-one in Baltimore and sixty-seven in New Haven. The eleventh United States Census puts the number of paupers in alms-houses alone at 73,- 045. This figure represents obviously only a small fraction of the actual number of paupers. Professor Ely and Mr. Chas. Kellog, secretary of the New York charity organization, both esti- 14 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. mate the number of paupers in the United States at not less than three millions. ( North American Review, April, 1891.) Professor Ely and Amos G. Warner both estimate that hundred millions of dollars annually is a conservative figure of the total direct and indirect pecuniary loss to the country on account of pauperism. Professor Ely puts the direct expenditure of the United States on this account at twenty-five million dollars. From this sum the State of New York alone spends for charitable purposes thirteen million dollars per annum. In connection with these figures the following data of the eleventh census will be of interest. The true valuation of the total wealth of the United States was estimated at sixty-five mill- iards, thirty-seven millions, ninety-one thousand and hundred ninety-seven dollars. The true valu- ation of the total wealth of the State of New York was estimated at eight milliards, five hun- dred seventy-six millions, seven hundred one thousand and nine hundred ninety-one dollars. The wealth of the State of New York represents therefore about one-eighth of the total national wealth. The State of New York is therefore by far the richest State of the Union, having a true per capita valuation of one thousand four hun- dred thirty dollars while the true per capita valuation of the United States reaches only one thousand and thirty-six dollars. The State of New York, representing more than one-eighth of the entire wealth of the nation, carries about one- eighth of the burden of pauperism of the United States, a burden that is not nearly proportionate to its share in the population of the Union. As we shall devote considerable attention later PAUPERISM IX THE UNITED STATES. 15 on to the distribution of wealth in the United States, we will leave the just related data of the census without further comment. We will, however, point out here that these data add a special significance to the data about pauper- ism and poverty in the State of New York. In 1880 there zvere 66,203 inmates in almshouses in the United States, or one inmate, one recognized pauper to each 758 inhabitants. In 1890 there were (as we related above) 73,045 almshouse inmates or one pauper to every 857 inhabitants (Eleventh Census, bulletin 90, p. 3). The aver- age age of almshouse paupers in 1880 was 45.1 years, while it was 51.03 years in 1890. This change was due to the removal of children pau- pers to special institutions. The New York State Board of Charities in its tenth annual report (table on pp. 99-107) fur- nishes data respecting 12,614 inmates of alms- houses. Of the total, 422 were born in the alms- houses and of others 1650 were admitted when less than ten years old. At the time of the ex- amination nearly 13 per cent were under ten years of age and nearly the same proportion was over seventy. The average time of previous de- pendence for all inmates amounted to 4.88 years. This gave a total of 61,595 years of almshouse care for the benefit of the persons examined. In all the poor-houses there were found a great number of inmates whose ancestors were pau- pers and who also had other relatives who were paupers. The State of New York consequently cared for about one-sixth of the total number of all officially recognised paupers in the Union, or one pauper to each 82.1 in i8po — that means about l6 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. ten times the average for the United States in general. The wealthiest State thus appears to have the greatest number of paupers in propor- tion to its inhabitants. The following is the num- ber of State paupers admitted into the alms- houses of New York each year since October, 1873: Male. Female. Total. September, 1874 513 50 563 1875 566 88 654 1876 514 ii9 633 1877 707 165 872 1878 930 190 1,120 1879 1.326 261 1,587 1880 1,023 320 1,343 1881 1,046 327 1,373 1882 1,024 368 1,392 1883 1,033 393 1,426 1884 i,378 514 1,892 18S5 1,409 439 1,848 1886 1,252 354 T,6o6 1887 1,247 370 1,617 1888 1,317 348 1,665 1889 1,369 388 1,757 1890 1,133 307 1,440 1891 1,026 339 1,365 1892 1,095 272 1,367 1893 1,057 349 1,406 1894 1,490 484 1,974 1895 1,669 502 2,171 1896 1,589 513 2,102 1897 1,448 539 I-987 1898 1,300 504 1,804 1899 1,582 467 2,049 30,043 8,970 39,013 (XXXIII Report of the State Board of Charities of the State of New York— VI, p. 972.) Mr. Byron M. Child in his paper, presented to the New York conference of charities and cor- PAUPERISM IN THE UNITED STATES. lj rections held November 20-22, 1900, at Albany, gives the following brief review of the growth of organized charity in the State of New York. (XXXIV Report, pp. 85-95.) Thirty years ago the State Board of Charities reported that the counties of the State had ex- pended in 1870 "for support and relief" $1,330,- 776.64 and the cities $1,265,0^0.41, besides which the state, cities and counties had appropriated $157,780.51 toward maintenance of twenty-nirffe hospitals, the total expenditures of which were $560,801.77. These hospitals treated 15,713 beneficiary or charity patients. In addition the orphan asylums of the State were maintained at an expense of $2,531,915.88 of which $591,570.88 came from public funds; 10,134 persons were in these asylums at the close of the year. The State supplemented its appropriations in this direction with a further gift of $50,000 for educational purposes. This is the substance of the statistics of that year. The institutions for the care of destitute adults are now of three classes: those maintained and controlled wholly by the public; those partly maintained by the public, but controlled by pri- vate corporations ; and those wholly maintained by private funds and under private control. In 1895 there were 13,658 inmates in the alms- houses, exclusive of classified cases, besides 8,131 aged and friendless persons elsewhere provided for; 1,100 disabled soldiers and sailors and 6,655 hospital patients of the destitute class. To these should be added the 380 adult females in reforma- tories. In that year the inspector of charities reported the total expenditures as over nineteen millions l8 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. of dollars for all purposes — of which the State, counties and municipalities contributed nearly five million dollars — but these figures did not include the hospitals for insane. There were sixty-four homes for the aged and friendless, and they received $135,982.15 from the public treas- ury, their total expenditures being $1,292,663.60. During the same period $3,128,842.78 were spent for the support and care of the inmates of almshouses. In these institutions there were cared for in 1898, 7,119 persons, of whom 370 were supported by public funds, and over 6,336 by private funds. As many of the institutions failed to make reports, these figures are not com- plete. Reports show, however, that at least 755 men and 684 women, in addition to those cared for the preceding year, were received into the institutions. During the same period 1,262 were discharged from the rolls for various causes. At the close of that year 2,648 men and 3,211 women, a total of 5,857 inmates, remained in the institutions, and the expenditures were $1,832,625.82, so far as reported. For the following year, ending September 30, 1890, there were in the homes for aged persons, and in the reformatories, 7,015. During the same period 82,974 persons had received relief in the almshouses of the State, and 6.853 had been in other State institutions. The total expenditures for all classes of adults in institutions repre- sented about the same sum expended the preced- ing year, forming a large portion of the grand total of $29,447,177.32 expended in the State for charities. Of this grand total $8,042,720.53 were PAUPERISM IN THE UNITED STATES. 1 9 from public funds and $21,434,456.79 were dis- bursed from private treasuries. The statistics of 1899 show that our institu- tions caring for adults and subject to State su- pervision had in their charge a very large num- ber of persons, and that altogether were sup- ported by the people of the State a vast army of dependents of all kinds, over 300,000 strong. The year began with 32,249 adults under care, but to these have to be added the classified in- mates of the State institutions. In view of the general facts just related about public charity in the State and City of New York, it will be instructive to examine in detail some official reports of the New York State Board of Charities for recent years. The report of the Board of Charities of the State of New York for the year 1897, for in- stance, contains the following data of general interest : The real and personal property of all institu- tions, societies and associations reporting to the Board was estimated to be worth $103,384,- 554.21, of this sum $77,455,064.20 were in real estate and $29,929,490.01 in personal property, divided among the various classes of charities as follows : State institutions $ 5,450,953-68 County alms-houses 2,993,930.00 City and town alms-houses 6,842,000.00 Charity organization societies 346,082.01 Day nurseries 271,416.46 Dispensaries 1,613,98317 Eleemosynary educational institutions . . 850,569.07 Employment societies i7 I > 2I 7-76 Fresh air charities 479,035-96 General out-door relief societies 2,274,544.49 20 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. Homes for the aged 17,845,107.17 1 1 omes for the blind 244,400.00 Homes for children 25,581,750.33 Homes for discharged prisoners 161,997.78 Homes, temporary, for men and boys . . 124,340.01 Homes, temporary, for women and chil- dren 223,214.45 Homes, temporary, for women and girls. 177,230.00 Homes and hospitals for consumptives . . 583,000.00 Homes and hospitals for convalescents . . 527,000.00 Homes and hospitals for epileptics 120,000.00 Homes and hospitals for incurables 1,611,855.60 Homes and hospitals for inebriates 488,307.70 Homes and missions for emigrants 2,441,600.00 Hospitals 29,068,051.55 Humane societies 6,600.00 Legal aid societies I9>7 1 5°° Reformatories for children 165,578.13 Reformatories for women and girls 1,618,172.24 Relief for sick poor, societies for 335>5o8.oo School for deaf 1,224,691.65 Total $103,384,554.21 Commenting upon this report the New York Morning Sun's (August 7, 1898) remarks run as follows : "It is to be remembered that the Board's fig- ures do not include the large amount expended bv the thousand of minor charitable organiza- tions, such as the King's Daughters, Ladies' Aid Societies, Helping Hand and sewing circles, nor the vast and incalculable assistance rendered through purely personal benefactions. Large as these figures of the report of the Board appear, there are various good reasons for believing that they are rather under than over-estimated of the value of property devoted to charitable uses in this State. The chief of these reasons is that charitable societies do not care to appear too PAUPERISM IN THE UNITED STATES. 21 wealthy, especially when they derive support from donations of the charitable. The receipts of the institutions for the year aggregate $23,100,880.50, received from the fol- lowing sources : The State $ 1,527,231.06 Counties 2,450,628.04 Cities 5,628,277.24 Individuals for the support of inmates .... 1,292,852.65 Legacies 860,437.27 Membership fees 424,189.20 Entertainments and benefits 394,744.23 Donations and voluntary contributions ... 2,632,440.14 Interest and dividends 1,118,232.46 Investments (Loans, bonds, stocks, etc.) . 1,184,133.26 Money borrowed 1,422,047.80 All other sources 2,356,526.23 Total $23,100,880.50 It will thus be seen that the aggregate amount of public funds granted for the relief of the poor through these institutions was much less than the aggregate amount received from private sources, the figures being respectively $9,606,136.34 from the State, counties and cities, as compared with $13,494,744. 16 received through the medium of private benefactions. The total expenditures for the year amounted to $21,448,362.03, classified as follows : Indebtedness upon real estate (principal and interest) $ 721,325.29 Other indebtedness 773,123.66 Rent 151,209.12 Salaries and wages 4,147,880.61 Provisions and supplies 4,331,342.72 Printing and stationery 128,214.06 Clothing 616,421.00 Fuel and light 850,339.65 Medicine and medical supplies 495,903.16 22 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. Furniture, beds and bedding 328,404.11 Ordinary repairs 534,881.31 Insurance . . . 102,909.40 Buildings and improvements 3,263,315.00 Interest on loans 84,855.27 Investment 1,642,863.00 Services of collections and soliciting funds 27,532.38 General out-door relief to the poor with homes 226,860.68 Meals and lodging for the homeless 28,227.68 Fresh air relief 20,185.29 All other purposes 2,972,468.20 Total $21,448,362.03" Quite remarkable is the amount of money spent on salaries and wages, an amount almost equal to the expenditure on provisions and supplies. The four millions of dollars spent on salaries and wages show that the officials of charitable insti- tutions absorb for their services about one-fifth of all the entire sum of expenditure on charities ; in other words, that it costs 19 cents in salaries and wages to spend each dollar of money. The number of inmates in the institutions sub- ject to the supervision of the Board was, in Octo- ber, 1897, 74,664. The New York Sun adds to these figures the following comments: "Large as these figures are, they do not of course begin to approach the statistics showing the total number of inmates supported some part of the year, for there is a continual movement of population in most of the institutions, especially in the hospitals, and the beneficiaries of the year number of course many more than those to be found in the census of any given date. The tables of the State Board show that the number of inmates received and cared for in the above mentioned classes of institutions during the past fiscal year aggregates 269,147. PAUPERISM IN THE UNITED STATES. 23 "But these were by no means all that received charitable assistance, the tables showing that in the dispensaries of the State, most of them being in New York City, 1,523,699 persons were treated practically free of charge, the number of prescriptions dispensed being 2,257,075. Fur- ther than this, general out-door relief was given by. superintendents and overseers of the poor re- lief societies, missions, and other charities to 758,609 persons, making the number relieved by institutions {including hospitals and dispensa- ries), societies, associations and public officials aggregate 2,551,455. "It is not to be supposed by any means that these figures correctly represent the actual num- ber of individuals assisted during the year, for there must have been an unavoidable amount of duplication in the figures given, which cannot even be estimated. Notwithstanding this, it must be clearly apparent that uncommonly large num- bers of people of this State are more or less de- pendent upon charitable relief, and those well in- formed upon the subject are inclined to the be- lief that the unregistered and unreported charity which is bestowed by private benevolence will more than compensate for any duplications that may exist in the official figures." Such is the opinion of a great capitalistic paper of New York City. The report for 1897, just examined, is typical of all the rest of the reports of the Board of Charities for the following years, as we will see from the following data. The Sun then proceeds : "The receipts of the State institutions and sev- eral institutions under State control and private management for the year 1899 reached a total of 24 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. $1,747,799.54. The expenditures of these insti- tutions for the same year were total $730,461.37. The number of tramps assisted was 19.073. The number of persons temporarily assisted was 118.- 560. In almshouses were 16,160. The total number of supported and relieved was 134,720. "The number of dependents under institutional care in the State of New York, including the in- sane, on October 1, 1890, was 86,893. The num- ber of beneficiaries in charitable institutions, re- ceiving public moneys in the State of New York and subject to visitation by the Board of Chari- ties and Corrections, were in 1901, total, 61,997, among them 27,262 (or about 44 per cent) being children." The receipts of fourteen of the State charit- able institutions for the fiscal year ending Sep- tember, 1 901, including balance on hand at the beginning of the year ($91,506.71) amounted to $1,401,520.37. Their expenditures aggregated to $1,335,211.95, $919,894.73 being for mainte- nance, $384,370.96 for improvements. (Rept., p. 29.) The total number of beneficiaries was 7,756, or about $118.07 per each inmate for maintenance alone. The schools and institutions under private management, but mainly supported by the State appropriations, had the "following receipts for the fiscal year ending September, 1901 : Cash on hand $ 43,907-52 From pulilic sources 685,623.92 From private sources 210,784.78 Total receipts were 940,316.22 Their expenditures aggregated 883,483.32 The appropriations for maintenance and for extraordinary e> s by the legislature of 1901 PAUPERISM IX THE UNITED STATES. 2$ to the various State institutions subject to the Board of Visitation and Inspection summed up to $1,175,900.59 for maintenance and $598,- 851.87 for extraordinary expenses. The rate of payment to charitable institutions by the City of New York, unless otherwise spe- cially provided, are fixed for various classes of inmates as follows : Infants under two years, and in hospitals be- tween ages of two and five, 38 cents per day. Dependent children, two to sixteen years, $2 per week. Delinquent children $110 per annum. Adult inmates of reformatories, committed by court, $110 per annum. Inmates of homes for fallen and friendless women, $110 per annum. Maternity cases, $18 per case. Homeless mothers and nursing infants, $12 per month. , To hospitals for medical treatment, 80 cents per day. Total for charitable institutions, $2,776,714.12. (New York City Budget.) The expenditures of the State institutions for the fiscal year ended September, 1901, were itemized as follows: Total average expenditures for maintenance for fourteen institutions .$1,080,967.34 Total average of inmates for fourteen in- stitutions 429 Average annual cost of support 276.51 Average weekly cost of support 5-88 Expended for salaries of officers, wages and labor 452,432.28 Average annual cost per capita expendi- ture for salaries, management, etc 127.67 — Rep., p. 2,7. 25 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. The report of the State Board of Charities for 1902 contains among others the following in- structive data. There were persons remaining in the institu- tions receiving public money, subject to the visitation and inspection of the State Board of Charities, at the close of the fiscal years from 1898 to 1902 inclusive: In 1898 62,215 In 1899 61,570 In 1900 60,637 In 1901 61,461 In 1902 60,804 Fourteen of the State charitable institutions are subject to the visitation and inspection of the Board. The receipts of these institutions for the fiscal year ending September 30, 1902, including bal- ance on hand at the beginning of the year ($66,- 577.22), amounted to $1,374,886.21. Their ex- penditures aggregated $1,265,775.01. Private institutions receiving State appropria- tions had total receipts $1,060,497.63. Their ex- penditure aggregated $917,259-63 and the total number of their beneficiaries was 3,324, or about $275 for each beneficiary. (Rep., p. 32, 1902.) If the poor receiving so-called indoor relief in various public charities are hopeless, officially recognized paupers; the poor receiving outdoor relief have to be classified as an intermediary class between the paupers and respectable poor. The poor receiving out-door relief, especially those who receive it only temporarily, under the stress of some exceptional calamity, are strug- gling violently against pauperism and make all possible efforts to keep up at least the appearance of a home of their own. PAUPERISM IN THE UNITED STATES. 2"/ We will take here the data of the report of the Board of Charities of the State of New York for the year 1902. According to the census of 1900 the popula- tion of the State of New York was 4,919,190, while the population of the City of New York was 3,437,202. (Rep., p. 27.) The number of poor persons receiving tempo- rary relief was in the State of New York 51,- 873, while the number of poor persons receiving temporary relief in the City of New York was 1,038. In other words, 0.03 per cent of the en- tire population of New York City and one of each 95 of the inhabitants of the State of New York received out-door relief in 1900. (Ibidem.) In 1901 the number of poor persons receiving temporary relief in the City of New York was 1,161, while in the State it was 48,365. In 1902 the number of poor persons receiving temporary relief in the City of New York is not given, while for the State of New York the fig- ure of 31,441 is given. The per capita expenditure for temporarily re- lieved in the City of New York in 1900 reached $38.75, in 1901 $37.24. Following are data about out-door relief in five leading States of the Union in 1893, 1892, 1891 and 1889, respectively: Number Popu- Year. relieved. Expense. lation. New York State . .1S92 I3M39 $ 681,934-99 5,497,853 Pennsylvania 1892 25,027 474,347.78 5,258,014 Michigan 18S9 39,115 420,829.13 2,093,889 Ohio 1891 67,927 442,282.51 3,672,316 Wisconsin 1892 4,492 148,671.45 1,686,880 California 1893 304,790.00 1,208,136 Total $2,472,875.86 19,917,082 28 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. It is interesting to note that the two richest States in the Union, having approximately the same population, occupy the first two places in the table in respect to expenses on out-door relief. Each one of 45.6 inhabitants of the State of New York received outdoor relief in 1892. In the same year each one of 210 inhabitants of the State of Pennsylvania received outdoor relief. Pauperism was consequently about 4.6 stronger in New York than in Pennsylvania in 1892. About outdoor relief Seth Low said in his re- port to the national conference of charities as follows : "Outdoor door relief, so-called, began in Brooklyn in 185 1 -1852. For the year ending July 31, 1852, the number of people helped was 6,754, at a cost of $7,139.99. With some varia- tions this had grown in 1864 to 20,743 persons helped at a cost of $25,921.47. In 1865 the gen- eral demoralization grew worse uninterruptedly as a result of the war. In 1865, while only 1,500 more people were helped than in 1864, it cost the county $72,708.97 against $25,921 in 1864, an in- crease of $46,000 in a single year. In 1877 help was given to 64,350 persons or nearly one-tenth of the population at an average cost of $114,- 943.72. The total outlay for this period of six years by King's County is estimated in round numbers to have been, for outdoor relief, $689,- 662.35. To such an item at last had grown the kindly and apparently harmless thing. The population of King's County is estimated in round numbers to have been in 1852, 150,000; in 1864, 320,000; in 1877, 55°> 000 - I" 1875 the Commissioners of Charity employed paid visitors to investigate the cases of applicants for relief, PAUPERISM IN THE UNITED STATES. 20, and it cost sixty dollars to distribute every dol- lar's worth of food and fuel. This was so mon- strous that public clamor compelled a change. In 1876 the visiting system was abandoned, and all the applicants were compelled to take an oath that they were paupers. As may be imagined, the result was horrible. In 1878 the outdoor relief appropriations were stopped." This seems to us a very curious page in the history of public charity in the United States. As an indication of extreme poverty next to indoor and outdoor public charity the data on medical charity deserves our attention. The fol- lowing table contains interesting figures as to the extent of medical charity in ten representative cities of the United States, according to Amos Warner : Population (census Per City. 1890). Fiscal year. Amount. capita. Brooklyn 806,343 1889-1890 $196,115.61 0.2432 St. Louis 451,770 1890 140,77343 0.31 16 Boston 448,477 1891 188,177.88 0.4195 Baltimore 434,439 1890-1891 111,790.00 0.2593 Cincinnati ... 296,908 1891 110,160.92 0.3710 Buffalo 255,664 1890 67,650.00 0.2646 Minneapolis . . 164,783 1890 17,842.00 0.1083 St. Paul I33J56 1891 27,269.02 0.2074 Indianapolis . 105,436 1890-1891 29,170.00 0.2767 Washington . . 230,392 145,625.00 0.6320 Total 3,327,323 $1,034,576.50 0.31693 Dr. Savage estimates that in the City of New York there are between 300,000 and 350,000 pa- tients treated free of charge annually in the va- rious dispensaries, or one in each four of the entire tenement population or one in each 11.45 of the entire population of the City of New York. 6 O AMERICAN PAUPERISM. A writer in the Evening Post puts the estimate at 628,286, from which he deducts 178,057 duplications, leaving a net number of 452,529 dis- tinct individuals receiving dispensary aid during the year. According to this estimate one of each 7. 59 inhabitants of Nezu York City receives free medical treatment. According to the same authority the charity organization investigated 1,500 cases selected out of 35,000 applicants. The answer was that about one-fourth were able to pay, but were paupers in spirit, another fourth had given wrong addresses (probably to avoid public notoriety), and the remaining half were recommended as worthy of medical treatment by reason of poverty. For an- other dispensary the same society made an in- vestigation of 212 cases and returned answer that 55 were able to pay, 50 were not found at the addresses given, 18 information not conclusive, and 31 unable to pay. These referred cases were questionable out of 30,000 patients. (See Amos G. Warner's book on Charities.) In European countries extreme poverty leads to professional begging. Professional beggars are recognized as a class by themselves. No pri- vate home, street or church is closed to them. Public opinion considers it as quite proper for very poor people to make their livelihood by begging. Private charity prevails over public charity. Even if there is a law prohibiting beg- ging it remains mostly as a dead letter. In the United States public charity institu- tions are supposed to take care of all "worthy" poor and the "unworthy" poor are supposed to get along as well as they can without any aid whatever. Begging is considered as a crime. PAUPERISM IN THE UNITED STATES. 31 And yet there are professional beggars in the United States, just as there are professional tramps and criminals. The following incidents and descriptions, taken from the New York Sun, will give us an idea what kind of a class American profes- sional beggars are and what methods they em- ploy in order to attain their purpose in New York City : "Detectives Hayes and Flynn of the Jefferson Market police court squad arrested two one- legged men beggars who were soliciting alms on Sixth avenue between 15th and 16th streets. One of them, who gave the name of William Smith, was recognized as a professional beggar, whose real name was Siebel. The other said that his name was George Allen. Both were young and well dressed and to all appearances perfectly able to work in spite of this lack of a limb apiece. Both said they lived at 12 Monroe street. In the last fortnight the same detectives have arrested three other beggars who gave the same address, and this fact led them to the suggestion to in- vestigate, with the result that they have discov- ered what they have long expected — that there exists in this city a syndicate of professional beggars which has its headquarters at the Mon- roe street house. A man named Burns, who lives in Brooklyn, is at the head of the syndicate. He employs constantly ten to fifteen men, cripples preferred, whom he stations along the great thoroughfares of New York. Five or six are constantly at work in the Sixth avenue shopping district. The men are young, as a rule, and are scrupulously clean and neat. No exhibition of sickening deformities is permitted by the boss 32 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. and wounds arc discouraged. All the men hand over a percentage of their proceeds to Burns. He on his part guarantees to care for them when they are sick, to free them when arrested, to provide them with a lodging and to direct their work. A special superintendent, or looker-out, not a crip- ple, is employed for the benefit of the shopping district squad. His duty consists in keeping an eye on the policemen and warning the beggars when a blue-coat is approaching. When the dav's "work" is done the beggars enjoy life as much as any man, as is plain from an experience which Detective Hayes had in the last opera season. He happened to be standing near the opera house when a well appointed carriage drove up, the door was thrown open and out stepped Siebel, the professional, attired in immaculate evening dress. An artificial leg made it impossi- ble to discover that he was a cripple. He was ac- companied by a good-looking and stylishly dressed girl, whom he escorted into the building after telling the coachman to wait for them after the performance. Hayes said that he stood close to the man, and he knew him so well that a mis- take was impossible. Siebel is only 21 years old. He has been a handsome man, but just now his appearance is somewhat spoiled by a recent attack of typhoid fever. He always tells the policemen and court clerks that he is a clerk by profession, but he has been subsisting on alms for the last three years at least. Both prisoners pleaded guilty to begging when arraigned in court. Magistrate Cornell sent Siebel to the workhouse for two months. Allen, who is not so well known to the police, was sent PAUPERISM IN THE UNITED STATES. 33 there for one month." (New York Morning Sun, June 22, 1879.) A beggars' trust is described as follows by the New York Herald: "The oyster knife, the symbol of the proverbial hatchet in the realm of 'panhandling,' is buried. Such was the information which was bruited about in the slums district, from the Burnt Rag, in Cherry Street, to Hell Kitchen, at 39th street and 10th avenue. The panhandler is the profes- sional fake beggar, who is seen on nearly every croner in the city. There are many bands of 'panhandlers' at work in the metropolis, all the way from Harlem to the Battery, but there are six rings which are particularly powerful. Of these Trixy's band, headquarters in Cherry street, in the vicinity of the Burnt Rag, a tene- ment house filled with 'panhandlers' and unfor- tunate women, is the most wide-awake of the lower quarter. Further up we enter the domin- ions of Big Meck's gang, whose headquarters are in James street, near Chatham Square. On the way thither we pass the 'Scratcher's Roost,' at Oak and James, where the most remarkable epistles to the millionaires and others are written, and also 'Blind Man's Alley,' which is the abode of scores of pencil venders, who are distributed about the city every morning, dressed in rags, and who pathetically hold out a little bunch of penny pencils as a subterfuge for begging. ' 'Big Meck's' band is the most wide reaching in its influence, and comprises no less than forty young toughs who are compelled to pay tribute to their chief, or get thrown into the cold with a beating whenever they 'go broke,' or to the Is- land without help or legal advice and service 34 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. when in trouble, or arrested on mere suspicion. 'Big - Meek' superintends the gang, and if a man is sent a hundred miles to cover a certain terri- tory he goes without question, and does his duty to his commander. "If Big Meek tells him that his make up as a 'flash' or blister victim just discharged from the hospital is no good he becomes a 'mocker,' dressing up in castoff army or navy clothes, pur- chased in some 'goose alley' off West Broadway, and does the plaintive abandoned soldier act, prattling glibly of his charge up San Juan hill with 'our Teddy' at the front, or how he helped man the big gun on the Iowa when fighting Bob made Spanish the most popular language in Hades. To the East of the lower city are several bands known as 'goose gangs,' in other words, cast- away Hebrew toughs, who have rebelled against personal and rabbinical control, and Dutch bands, who are German toughs preying upon their own people. These with the Guinny gangs, of the Mulberry district, are not on the same level with the superior toughs ruled over by such gutter czars as 'Blackey,' ruler of the Flatiron gang, in Forsyth street, or 'Big Meek' of Chatham Square, 'Trixy' of the 'Burned Rag,' and 'Omaha Tom' of the 'Dock gang' in West street. "These have long regarded one another with something of awe, rivals in a way, and now, for the first time, they have come together in con- ference and settled some differences of territorial rights whereby the smaller bands can be frozen out, or, rather, beaten out of competition en- tirely. "Whereas most of these 'panhandlers' are PAUPERISM IN THE UNITED STATES. 35 armed day and night. The favorite weapon is one that shields them from the suppressive meas- ures of the police — a common oyster-knife, made of the steel of an old file. This is nothing more than a dagger, often very sharp. "There is then a 'panhandler trust.' "The leader of each band keeps in touch with the political leader of the ward, being a very valuable factor about a week before election. "This was the observation of one of the 'pan- handler chiefs' to the Herald's representative at parting in Stratton street: 'Luk at dose greasy whiskered geese,' he said, contemptuously, point- ing up to the three floors of sweat shops one above another, out of whose windows came the sounds of whirring machines, and through them could be seen bearded slaves of toil, with the lit- tle round butterdish caps over grey hairs, bent low over their work. 'Luk at 'em. Dey works like dat for eighteen hours a day. I sees 'em as de sun jus' conies up over de house tops, when I am turning in after a night's work wid de gang ; an' I sees 'em shut up at night because of the more light, wid pants at $1.20 a dozen fer making, dey turns out fifteen pair. Wid no more work in a month den dey do in a minute, I turns me out a clean fifty, I do. Well, dat's wot yer gets fer having brains, dat is, see ?' ' How characteristic appears to us this attitude of mind of the parasite on the lowest stage of social life of parasitism in general. The so- cial parasite of the upper ten thousand also de- spises all those who toil, and imagines himself to be of superior intellectual attainments. So far we have spoken about paupers receiv- ing in- and outdoor relief and professional beg- 36 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. gars, a class of people hardened and demoralized by want, a class of people that either never had or have lost self esteem and self reliance, a class of people who never did struggle against poverty or gave up the struggle in despair. This class represents the lowest state of the proletariat, as a German would call it, "Das Lumpen proleta- riat," or in literal translation the Ragged prole- tariat. The "Ragged proletariat," however, represents only a small fraction of the poor class. Whilst many will rather die than enter an almshouse, many others suffer abject want, dire distress, without actually being penniless, and the great bulk of the residuum of the wage workers just contrive to drag out a more or less cheerless existence by means of intense and bitter drug- gery. Mr. Frederick Harrison stated a few years ago the following: "Ninety per cent of the actual producers of wealth have no home that they can call their own beyond the end of a week, have no bit of soil, or so much as a room that belongs to them ; have nothing of value of any kind except as much as will go in a cart ; have the precarious chance of weekly wages which barely suffice to keep them in health ; are housed for the most part in places that no man thinks fit for his horse ; are separated by so narrow a margin from destruction that a month of bad trade, sickness or unexpected loss brings them face to face with hunger and pau- perism." (Report of the Industrial Remunera- tion Conference, 1886, p. 429.) This is true to a great extent in relation to the United States. The proletariat of the slums of Baltimore, Chi- PAUPERISM IN THE UNITED STATES. T>7 cago, New York and Philadelphia is treated more or less extensively by the VII Special Report of the Commissioners of Labor, 1894. We will make here a few extracts from this report. The slum districts of sixteen principal cities of the United States, with a total population of 8,- 037,458, comprehends at least 10 per cent. The population of the slums of Baltimore, Chi- cago, New York and Philadelphia, as shown by the Eleventh Census, June 1, 1890, and by the Census of the Department of Labor, which rep- resents the condition April 1, 1893, is as fol- lows : Eleventh April 1st. census. 1893. Baltimore 16,878 18,048 Chicago 17,637 19,748 New York 27,462 28,996 Philadelphia I5,4°9 17,060 Total 77,386 83,852 The districts selected for canvassing by no means contained all the slum population of the cities in the investigation. According to the best estimates, the total slum population of Baltimore is about 25,000, of Chicago 162,000, of New York City 360,000, of Philadelphia 35,000. The slums of the city are in the dirty back streets, especially such streets as are inhabited by a squalid and criminal population, and they are low and dan- gerous neighborhoods. In these, as in any dis- trict, are to be found people of the higher re- spectability, people of means, living in good houses, but they form an exception. They have, however, been counted as inhabitants of the slum district by the report. 38 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. The above named cities were selected because they represent great types of American cities. In the whole city of Baltimore the illiterates constitute 9.17 per cent of the native born popu- lation and 12.40 per cent of the foreign born, the percentage for both being 9.79 per cent. In the slum district of that city 8.13 per cent of the native born and 30.62 per cent of the foreign born are illiterate, while the percentage for both was 19.6 per cent. In the city of Chicago at large the illiterates constitute 0.81 per cent of the native born population and 8.31 per cent of the foreign born, the percentage of both being 4.63. But in the slum districts canvassed 5.64 per cent of the native born persons are illiterate and 33.86 per cent of the foreign born, the percentage for both being 25.37. In New York the percentage of illiterates is 1. 16 of the entire population and 14.06 of the foreign born, the percentage for both being 7.69, while for the slum population the percentage of native born who were illiterate was 7.20 and of the foreign born 57.69, the percentage for both being 46.65. Philadelphia shows nearly as large a propor- tion of illiterates in the slum district as New York City, the figures for the whole population show- ing that 2.18 per cent of all native born persons are illiterate and 11.29 P er cent or foreign born, the united percentage being 4.97. In the slum district of Philadelphia, however, 8.44 per cent of the native born persons and 46.61 per cent of the foreign born are illiterate, the percentage of the two classes being 37.07. The occupation of the residents of the slum PAUPERISM IN THE UNITED STATES. 39 districts in the four cities named are as varied, probably, as in the cities at large. According to the Eleventh Census, the num- ber of persons to a dwelling in Baltimore was 6.02, in Chicago 8.60, in New York 18.52, in Philadelphia 5.60. The averages in the slum dis- tricts are about the same for Baltimore and Philadelphia, there being in the former city 7.71 persons to a dwelling, and in Philadelphia 7.34 persons, but the slum population averages 15.51 persons to each dwelling, and in New York 36.79 persons. The table about the average size of families show for Baltimore 5.01, for Chicago 4.94, for New York 4.84, and Philadelphia 5.10, the slum families being slightly larger than the size of families in other parts of the cities of Chicago, New York and Philadelphia. The following tables show the percentage of persons in the slums under different industrial groups : Of per- sons under each Males. Females, group, per per per Baltimore. cent. cent. cent. Agricultural, the fisheries and mining 82.8 17.1 0.4 Professional 84.82 15. 0.62 Domestic and personal ser- vices 82.92 17.08 11.26 Trade and transportation .... 90.11 9.81 10.26 Manufactures and mechanical industries 7072 29.28 16.52 Non-productive (Not gain- ful) 31-80 68.20 58.77 Housewives' work 100 2.13 Scholars and at work 75-00 25.00 O.02 4Q AMERICAN PAUPERISM. Of per- sons under each Males. Females, group, per per per Chicago. cent. cent. cent. Agricultural, the fisheries and mining ioo Professional 89.42 10.58 Domestic and personal ser- vices 84.23 15.77 Trade and transportation .... 90.31 9.69 Manufactures and mechanical industries 77-04 22.96 Non-productive (Not gain- ful) 33.32 66.68 Housewives' work 100 Scholars and at work 60.26 39-74 New York. Agricultural, fisheries and mining 96.43 3.57 Professional 90.80 9.20 Domestic and personal ser- vices 88.52 1 1.48 Trade and transportation .... 90.93 9.07 Manufactures and mechanical industries 67.17 32.83 Non-productive (Not gain- ful. 37.83 62.7 Housewives' work 100 Scholars and at work 52.44 49-56 Philadelphia. Agriculture, fisheries and min- ing 92.86 7.14 Professional 88.82 11.18 Domestic and personal ser- vices 82.40 17.60 Trade and transportation .... 91.40 8.52 Manufacture and mechanical industries 77.60 22.40 Non-productive (Not gain- ful) 33.71 66.29 Housewives' work 100 Scholars and at work 65.52 34. 48 0.05 0-95 14.29 11.29 14.69 57-04 0.89 0.29 0.1 0.9 1346 10.91 I5-04 57-12 2.19 0.28 0.08 0.89 11.56 IMS 17.27 57-46 I.42 O.17 PAUPERISM IN THE UNITED STATES. 41 Glancing at the labor column, showing the proportion of persons falling under each indus- trial group, we see that in all the cities named the percentage of the non gainful group is the largest, reaching almost 60 per cent. The next largest is the group of manufacturing and me- chanical industries. Domestic and personal serv- vices follow then, leaving a very small percentage to other groups. The average earning per week was in Baltimore $8.65'/2 Chicago . 9.88^ New York 8.36 Philadel- phia.... 8.68 The average hours of work per week in Baltimore 64.2 Chicago.. .60.94 New York 62.55 Philadel- phia 62.47 A large class of people, however, work ninety or over hours per week; in Chicago, New York and Philadelphia .14 per cent of wage earners receive under $5.00 weekly, while the number of those earning more than $5 but under $10 reached 37.59 per cent. The number of those earning $10 and more was only 24.62 per cent. Persons unemployed and average months un- employed was as follows : Per cent Months unemployed, unemployed. Baltimore 8.67 3.6 Chicago 15.88 3.1 New York 9.02 3.1 Philadelphia 15.19 2.9 The average wages of all four of the cities investigated was $8.89 weekly. As on the 42 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. average one-fourth of the year there is no em- ployment, we have to calculate only 39 weeks to the year. Consequently the average annual wages of inhabitants of slum districts amount to $346.71 only or $6.66 a week. This figure gains in silent eloquence if we take into consideration that 57.7 per cent of the inhabitants of the slums are engaged in nonproductive (not gainful) oc- cupations.* The magnificent income of $346.71 has consequently to be stretched so as to cover the expenses of living of the sick, aged and chil- dren of the slums. Instructive are likewise the figures about the number and per cent of families and individuals by tenement to a house. In Baltimore there were an average of 1.19 persons to a room. Chicago shows an average of 1.37 persons to a room, New York City 1.88 and Philadelphia 1.47. The greatest number of tene- ments to a house varied from 13 in Baltimore to 29 in New York City, Philadelphia as high as 15 and Chicago 24. The large number of fami- lies in Baltimore, Chicago and Philadelphia liv- ing in houses having one to five tenements is noticeable. New York is, however, an exception, showing a greater proportion of families living in houses having larger numbers of tenements to the house. Philadelphia showed 53.91 per cent of all families, comprising 60.97 per cent of all in- dividuals, living in houses of one tenement, that is, occupying the whole house. Baltimore fol- lows with 36.25 per cent of families, comprising 43. T2 per cent of all individuals. Chicago had *In 1870 in the United States only 32.4 per cent of the population were reported as pursuing gainful occu- pation. PAUPERISM IN THE UNITED STATES. 43 9.53 per cent of families, comprising 11.73 P er cent of individuals, and New York only 1.84 per cent of families comprising 7.96 per cent of indi- viduals. In New York and Chicago the number of persons to a dwelling in the slum district was almost double that found in the whole city. The figures for the slum districts are as follows : Baltimore 7.75, Chicago 15.51, New York 36.79, and Philadelphia 7.34 persons to a dwell- ing. In Baltimore 13.16 per cent of all families live in tenements of one room with an average of 3.15 persons to a room. In Chicago 5.87 per cent of all families live in one room, the average per- sons being 2.74. The per cent of families living in one room in New York was 5.62 and Philadel- phia 12.10, with an average number of persons to the room of 3.13 and 3.1 1 respectively. The percentage of families living in two rooms in each of the four cities is shown to be as fol- lows : Baltimore 27.88 per cent, Chicago 19.14 per cent, New York 44.53 per cent, and Philadel- phia 19.41 per cent. The average persons to a room in these fami- lies were, in Baltimore 1.92 persons, in Chicago 1.93, New York 2.14, and Philadelphia 1.99. The comparative number of families living in tenements of three and four is also large, the number of families living in tenements of over four rooms comprising but a small per cent of all families. In Baltimore slum districts but 7.35 per cent of all families, comprising only 9.51 per cent of the total population, have both rooms big. The pencentage of families and individuals not hav- 44 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. ing both rooms big is 92.65 per cent and 90.79 per cent of the houses investigated in New York and 82.28 per cent in Philadelphia. The greatest proportion of families having yards was in Philadelphia, the percentage being 89.56. In New York and Baltimore slightly more than 84 per cent had yards, while in Chi- cago but 64.47 P er cent °f ^s families involved in the investigation had yards. A few extracts from Jacob Riis's "How the Other Half Lives"* will give color to the truthful but somewhat dry statistical data we have pre- sented : "In the tenements all the influences make for evil ; because they are the hot beds of epidemic that carry death to the rich and poor alike ; the nurseries of pauperism and crime that fill our jails and police courts ; that throw off a scum of forty thousand human wrecks to the island asy- lums and workhouses year by year; that turned out in the last eight years a round half million beggars to prey upon our charities ; that maintain a standing army of ten thousand tramps with all that that implies ; because, above all, they taint the family life with deadly moral contagion. (P- 3-) "hi either legislation or charity can cover the ground. The greed of capital that ivrought the evil must itself undo it, as far as it can be un- done, (p. 4.) "A tenement house is generally a brick build- *The latest publications of the same do not add any- thing essentially new to his fundamental work we are quoting here at some length. His "Ten Years' Battle" rather proves that the conditions depicted by him in his first book did not change materially. PAUPERISM IN THE UNITED STATES. 45 ing from four to six stories high on the street, frequently with a store on the first floor, which, when used for the sale of liquor, has a side opening for the benefit of the inmates and to evade the Sunday law. Four families occupy each floor, and a set of rooms consists of one or two dark closets used as bedrooms, with a living room 12x10. The staircase is too often a dark well in the center of the house, and no direct thorough ventilation is possible, each family be- ing separated from the other by partitions. Fre- quently the rear of the lot is occupied by another building of three stories high with two families on a floor. A barrack downtown, where he has to live because he is poor, brings a third more rent than a decent flat house in Harlem. It no longer excites the attention, even passing atten- tion, when the sanitary police report 101 adults and 91 children in a Crosby street house, one of twins, built together. The children in the other numbers 89, a total of 180 children for the two tenements ; or when a midnight inspection in Mulberry street unearths a hundred and fifty lodgers sleeping on the filthy floors in two build- ings. The tenements to-day in New York City are harboring three-fourths of its population, (pp. 18 and 19.) "New York's wage-earners have no other place to live in than in the tenements, more is the pity. They are truly poorer for having no better homes ; waxing poorer in purse as the exorbitant rent to which they are tied keeps rising (p. 23). The case that came to my notice in a Seventh Ward tenement was typical enough. There were nine in the family ; husband, wife, grandmother and six children ; honest hardworking Germans, 46 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. scrupulously clean, but poor. All nine lived in two rooms, one about ten feet square that served as parlor, bedroom and eating room, the other a small hall room made into a kitchen. The rent was seven dollars and a half a month, more than a week's wages for the husband and father, who was the only breadwinner in the family. That day the mother had thrown herself out of the window and was carried up from the street dead. "She was discouraged," said some of the other women from the tenement, who had come in to look after the children while a messenger carried the news to the father at the shop. (P-47). "According to the police figures, 4,974,025 separate lodgings were furnished last year by these dormitories, or cheap lodging houses, be- tween two and three hundred in number, and add- ing the 147,634 lodgings furnished by the station houses, the total of the homeless army was 5,121,659, an average of over fourteen thousand homeless men (deduct 69,111 women lodgers in the police station) for every night in the year. (p. 89). In the dull content of the life bred on the tenement house dead level there are few re- deeming features. There is nothing to calm ap- prehension for a society that has nothing better to offer its toilers. The patient efforts of the lives devoted to rendering the situation tolerable, and the very sources of these efforts, serve only to bring out in stronger contrast the general gloom of the picture, by showing how much farther they might have gone with half a chance. Go into any of the "respectable" tenement neighborhoods, be with and amongst its peo- ple until you understand their ways, their aims PAUPERISM IN THE UNITED STATES. 47 and the quality of their ambitions, and unless you can content yourself with the Scriptural promise "that the poor we shall have always with us," or note the menagery view, that if fed, they have no cause of complaint, you shall come away agree- ing with me that, humanly speaking, life there does not seem worth living (p. 162). It is (the tenement of the slum districts) the frame in which are set days, weeks, months and years of unceasing toil, just able to fill the mouth and clothe the back. Such as it is, it is the world, and all of it, to which these weary workers return nightly to feed heart and brain after wearing out the body at the bench, or in the shop (164). "Every once in awhile a case of downright poverty and starvation gets into the newspaper and makes a sensation. But this is the exception. Were the whole truth known it would come home to the community with a shock that would rouse it to a more serious effort than the spasmodic undoing of its pursestrings. I am satisfied from my ozvn observation that hundreds of men, women and children are every day slowly starv- ing to death in the tenements with my medical friends' complaint of improper nourishment. Within a single week I have had three cases of insanitv, provoked directly by poverty and want (p. 171) * incidentally we may point out here, that the number of mentally unbalanced in the State of New York de- serves attention as an indication of the ever-increasing strain on the nervous system, caused by the economic struggle for existence. The annual census of the in- sane of New York, as presented by the State Board of Charities, shows an increase of 660 annually during the twelve years ending October I, 1902, or a total of 48 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. "The truth is that pauperism grows as natur- ally as weeds in a garden lot" (p. 246). The following extract from the Chicago Tribune (1903) demonstrates that the conditions are not much different in Chicago than in New York : "As prosperity increases the hardships of poverty increase proportionally. Prosperity raises prices but does not raise wages of washerwomen and scrubwomen, of day laborers. The present winter promises to test the resources of Chicago's charities to their utmost. Added to the high prices demanded for food is the high price de- manded for coal." In these words, Ernest P. Bicknell, superin- tendent of the Chicago Bureau of Charities, summed up the situation in Chicago : "It is an odd situation," added he, "that compels those who can least afford it to pay the highest price for coal. The fact that the poor are forced to pur- chase their fuel by the basketful makes them bear the heaviest burden of the suffering result- ing from the famine in fuel." Such conditions make the existence of a large portion of the population of the United States precarious and dependent on the tender mercies of the parasitic classes without even the means 7,920. At the beginning of the period the insane num- bered one to each 533 of the_ population and in 1892 one to each 373 of the population. The increase of the population from 1880 to 1890 was 28 per cent, while the increase of the number of insane during the same period was 38 per cent. [Remark of the author.] In eight years 135,595 families in New York were regis- tered as asking or receiving charity. For the five years past one person in every ten who died in this city zvas buried in the Potter's field (p. 243). PAUPERISM IN THE UNITED STATES. 49 of approaching complete life worthy of human beings. Is it to be wondered at, that the philosophy of Discontent and Pessimism is the philosophy of our age of mercantile civilization? This philosophy was aptly expressed by Airs. Browning in her "Aurora Leigh" : "The world, look round — The world we're come to, late, is swollen hard, With perished generations and their sins ; The civiliser's spade grinds horribly On dead men's bones, and cannot turn up soil That's otherwise than fetid. All success Proves partial failure, all advance implies What's left behind ; all triumph, something crushed At the chariot wheels; all government, some wrong; And rich men make the poor, who curse the rich, Who agonise together, rich and poor, Under and over, in the social spasm And crisis of the ages. Here's an age That makes its own vacation ; here we have stepped Across the bounds of time, here's nought to see, But just the rich man and just Lazarus, And both in torments, with a mediate gulf, Though not a hint of Abraham's bosom, Who, Being man and human, can stand calmly by And view these things, and never tease his soul For some great cure? No physic for this grief, In all the earth, and heavens too." THE CHILDREN OF POVERTY IN THE UNITED STATES. Each stage of culture and civilization has its own conception of right and wrong, virtue and vice, honor and disgrace, its own philosophy of life. This fact is in strict accord with the mate- rialistic or evolutionary conception of history. Even the myths of the ancient nations testify that hero-worship is subject to evolutionary changes. The gods of Babylonians, for instance, were ferocious human-flesh devourers, while the dei- ties of ancient Greece were drunkards and adulterers. The phenomenon of idealization of the human type at a given time and place into a supernatural being has for the student of human destinies a peculiar significance. This phenome- non reflects the philosophy of the life of a nation. The stratification of society in distinct castes or classes, the so called higher and lower classes, is but another illustration of the interdependence existing between material conditions and human ideas in general. The aristocracy of Greece of the age of Pericles consisted of slaveholders, who devoted almost all their time to a harmo- nious development of mind and body. The sol- dier, the thinker, the orator, the artist, the states- man were the heroes of that age. Rome was ruled by a military caste, and its hero was a strenuous warrior, a conqueror of na- tions. Physical strength and endurance were considered as virtues (vita, vis, virtus, vir meant life, power, virtue, man). To be physically weak, 50 THE CHILDREN" OF POVERTY. 51 to lack animal spirits, to be effeminate was con- sidered a degradation. The essentially military civilization of Rome, and Roman conception of human worth and worthlessness prevailed with but slight modifications during the early part of the middle ages. When, however, the power of the independent feudal nobility was absorbed by the kings, and the feudal system of land tenure turned into a stable economic system, the ideas about social distinctions underwent a transforma- tion. Heredity, blueblood, was esteemed higher than material wealth. A trader or merchant did not dare to dream about social equality with a nobleman. The growth of the middle or bour- geois-class introduced a sordid commercial so- cial ideal, a philosophy of life based on material wealth, a conception about human worth and worthlessness directly measurable by an eco- nomical status. Ethics were reduced to arithme- tics and religion degraded to worship of success. The aristocracy of our commercial age is a plutocracy. Neither the bravery of a soldier, nor a long line of ancestors, but the money bag, con- fers social distinction of the highest order. The most successful money maker is the hero of our time. It was a disgrace to be a physical weakling or a coward in ancient Rome. A low born mer- chant, however rich, could not raise his head in the presence of feudal snobs. In our time there is no greater disgrace than material poverty and want. In our parasitical civilization the most suc- cessful social parasite is the hero. The de- scendants of a moral leper like Jay Gould, are always before the public eye, as the descendants of some robber baron in the dark ages were, while the poor children of the poor, laborers de- 52 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. frauded by the same Jay Gould, remain in con- temptuous obscurity. \Vhat docs it matter how Jay Gould acquired his riches? Non olet! Money has no odor ! This modern spirit of success-worship and con- tempt of failure to attain economic success is probably the cause of the absence of reliable data about the number of the poor in the United States. The successful "captains of industry" are not over-anxious to make an exhibit of the victims of their exploits. On the other hand the "re- spectable poor" prefer rather to suffer all the horrors of starvation and dire want, than to make their indigence known to strangers. The student of the economic conditions of the so-called lower classes of the population of the United States is compelled to take recourse to the circumstantial evidences of poverty contained in the incomplete and fragmentary data of public charity statistics, reports about the life of peo- ple in the slums of great cities and similar docu- ments. Inadequate as these sources of information ap- pear, they however unroll before our eyes at least a part of the picture, a part by which we may form our more or less correct conception about the rest of the picture. Taking into consideration the above mentioned aversion of the respectable poor to publicity, we may safely conclude that our sources of information may lead us to an underestimate of the number of the poor in the United States rather than to an over statement pf facts. In our days of commercial culture and mercantile civilization poverty is considered as a disgrace and many a man and many a woman THE CHILDREN OF POVERTY. 53 prefer to suffer the biting pangs of bitter poverty in silence rather than to make their indigence known to strangers. There is, however, one element of the poor un- tainted by any of the prejudices of a parasitic civilization, one element who do not make any secret of their destitution and want. This ele- ment is the innocent children that are dragged into pauperism and destitution by their parents. In the American experience the large number of the destitute children is striking. Out of 4,310 persons dealt with by the New York C. O. S. in 1891 40.8 per cent, or 1,762, were under 14 years of age. In Boston out of 3,972 individuals dealt with 42.5 per cent were under fourteen years of age. In Buffalo out of 2,515 individuals 48.3 per cent were under 14 years of age. In Baltimore the per cent of those tinder 14 years of age drops to a little less than 16 (15.8). On the whole it must be concluded that in the United States the leading cause of incipient pau- perism, as investigated by American charity or- ganization societies, is the zvcakness of children. New York and California have now about 250 children of the dependent class to each thousand of their population. At the Denver conference of charities, Mr. Hart, of the Minnesota State Board of Charities and Corrections, estimated the number of dependent children in the United States to be 74,000. The expenditure for build- ing and "plant" used in taking care of these children he put at $40,000,000, and the annual expenditure for maintenance in all the forms $9,- 500,000. About 9,000 persons were supposed to be employed as care-takers. There were 15,000 54 ERICAN PAUPERISM. inmates in juvenile reformatories costing $10,- 000,000 and entailing' an annual average charge for maintenance of $2,000,000. (These juvenile delinquents are of course children of the poor.) Read Edna Sheldrake's article in the World's Review (April 27, 1901), who draws the fol- lowing composite picture of a "juvenile delin- quent": "He is 12J/2 years old, one of seven people living in three rooms. These rooms are such as can be rented for $7.50 per month. Eight dollars, sixty cents per week pays the rent, buys fuel, food, clothing, pays the fee required in the parochial school, buys books, — in short, provides for all the needs required of the family. There is no place for healthy recreation. The house is crowded, dreary, uninviting. Cheap and pernicious museums with a placard outside, 'Ladies not admitted' abound in the neighbor- hood." < The increase of the number of infants in the infant asylums as compared with the increase of the population during the years 1894-98 was as follows in Manhattan and the Bronx: Population Per in cent infant Normal Year. Population, increase. asylums. increase. 1804 1,809,353 2 9° 2 2 -747 802.194 1895 i,879J95 37-o8 2,708 1023.624 1896 1,9.34.077 29.02 2,738 799496 1897 1,990,562 29.02 2,920 852.640 1898 2,048,830 29.03 3,006 86.756 It appears for the years 1896 and 1898 the increase was under normal, while in 1897 it was decidedly abnormal. The death rate of children in these asylums varies from 1.58 per cent THE CHILDREN OF POVERTY. 55 (Hebrew Asylum) to 40.35 per cent (St. Jo- seph's Home for Babies), or an average of 2175 per cent. The census of these institutions on the 1st day of October each year from 1894 to 1898 was as follows : 1894 12,594 1S95 •• 12,192 1896 11,267 1897 • • 10,899 1898 11,610 The following table shows the population of the borough of Bronx and Manhattan and also the population of children in institutions of the orphanage class from the same borough, and the rate of such children to each 1,000 of the general population : Rate of each child to each 1,000 of the General Destitute general Years population. children. population. 1894 1,809,353 12,594 6.95 1S95 1,879,195 12.192 6 48 1896 1,934,077 ".267 5-82 1897 1,990,562 10,899 547 1898 2,048,830 11,610 567 At the same time there were destitute infants : 1894 2 >748 !-5i 1895 2,708 1-44 1896 2,738 1.41 1897 2 >92o 146 1898 3,006 146 It may be instructive in connection with these figures to cast a cursory glance at the data about the population of institutions in receipt of pub- 56 AMERICAX PAUPERISM. September 30, 1896 September 30, 1897 September 30, 1898 September 30, 1899 September 30, 1900 September 30, 1901 lie money but in private control from the close of the fiscal year ending September 30, 1896, to September 30, 1901 (Homes for Children) : (119 institutions) 27,769 (121 institutions) 28,380 ( 123 institutions) 29,967 (123 institutions) 29,440 (122 institutions) 28,649 (121 institutions) 29,241 The increase of the number of inmates for the year ending September 30, 1901, was 591 (Of- ficial Report Charity Association, p. 140). A peculiar feature of the New York State public charity is the marked tendency to build up private eleemosynary institutions of the State at the expense of public ones. One institution, officered by a religious order, received from the city government more than $260,000 per year. A list of over two hundred private institutions for orphaned children and the friendless in New York shows, that of their total revenue but $1,225,104.69 was derived from legacies, etc., while more than twice as much money, namely, $2,664,614.40, came from the taxpayers of the State, county and city. The following data fur- nished by Mrs. Josephine Shaw-Lowell proves that curious policy: Expenses for prisoners Expenses and paupers for paupers in public in private Years. Population, institutions, institutions. Total. 1850 515,547 $ 421,882 $ 9,863 $ 431,745 i860 813,669 746.549 128,850 875,399 1870 942.292 I,355.6i5 334,828 1,690,443 1880 1,206,577 1.348,383 1,414,257 2,761,640 1890 1,600,000 1,949,100 1,845,812 3,794,972 THE CHILDREN OF POVERTY. 57 Writing in 1891, Mrs. Josephine Shaw-Lowell said : "The point to which I wish to call atten- tion is that the city of New York continues, at the bidding of legislature, to pay without pro- test, year by year, increasing sums for the sup- port of public dependents under the care of per- sons in private institutions, many of whom, but for this provision, would probably not be de- pendent at all, while at the same time the public dependents, under the care of public officers in public institutions, are housed in buildings which are in danger of falling down, and are a discredit to the city." For the year 1898 the population was 3,438,- 899. For public prisoners and paupers $2,334,- 456.49 was expended, and for paupers in private institutions $3,131,580.51 was expended. In view of this data, it will be interesting to state here the amount appropriated by other large cities of the United States to private institutions. According to statistics collected by the special committee of charities, organizations, and socie- ties, the data are as follows: Chicago $ 2,796.00 Philadelphia 151,020.00 St. Louis 22,579.30 Boston none. Baltimore 227,350.00 Cincinnati none. Cleveland none. New Orleans 30,1 10.00 Pittsburg none. Washington 194,500.00 Detroit 8,081.00 Milwaukee none. Newark '. 7,500.00 Jersey City none. Minneapolis 2,000.00 New York City 3,131,580.51 58 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. Only about 21 per cent of the cost of depend- ent children is borne by private benevolence in New York City. (Conference on care of De- pendent and Delinquent Children, New York, 1893, pp. 164 and 165.) The city controller of New York, Hon. Bird S. Coler, says in his paper on Municipal Subsidies (Charities, Vol. Ill, p. 16): "Seventy Institutions receive appropriations aggregating $350,000 in bulk, i. e., upon no basis of payment for actual services performed. An examination of the returns made by the institu- tions receiving appropriations in bulk from the city treasury shows that many of them are using the public funds for purposes not authorized by the constitution (i. e., not 'for care and mainte- nance'). The reports of a large number of insti- tutions show the money annually obtained from the city carried forward wholly or in part as surplus. Different uses are made of this sur- plus, none of them, however, authorized by law, or warranted by a proper regard of the interests of the taxpayer. In some cases this surplus is used to pay off mortgage indebtedness, in others for permanent addition to buildings or for in- crease of investments and endowment. In one case the manager of an institution frankly ex- plained a remarkable falling off" in disbursements (so great that its charitable activities were al- most suspended) by stating that it was proposed by exercising great economy for a number of years to let the city annual appropriations ac- cumulate into a respectable building fund." That this subsidy system of public charities may cover a multitude of political sins of com- mission and omission seems to us obvious. There THE CHILDREN OF POVERTY. 59 is nothing sacred to old party politicians. Mr. Elbridge T. Gerry, president of "The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children," in his defence of the society and its methods before Albert Stickney, appointed by Justice Beach to investigate the institution, admitted that Superin- tendent Jenkins had a contract for feeding chil- dren at twenty-five cents a meal. Mr. Jenkins gets an annual salary of $3,000, has a floor in the building of the society, rent free for his family, and lives in summer at Larchmont. Mr. Gerry admitted, also, that he in one year made $993 out of the contract for feeding the children, and in no year had to lose anything (New York Morning Journal, June 22, 1892). As we are not interested at present in the study of methods of public charity we will pass the foregoing statements without any further com- ment. Foundling hospitals are for the most part institutions where infants die. A death rate of 97 per cent per annum for children under three years of age is not uncommon in some institu- tions. The cause of such mortality is due to neglect. From 1,439 children who died in 1899, 1,123 were inmates of infant asylums. Neglect of the children of the poor was the rule till 1875. Children were kept together with adult paupers in alms-houses. In 1875 a law was passed (Children's Law) which forbade the keep- ing of children between the ages of two and six- teen years in the alms-houses. It further stipu- lated that the county should pay child's board in some special institution. Special acts were subsequently passed enabling certain large insti- tutions in New York to receive children at will and collect from the county two dollars per week 60 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. for the care of each. The above mentioned sub- sidy system then increased rapidly. In 1850 the amount appropriated for the poor cared for in private institutions was only $9,863. This amount grew by decades as follows : In i860, $128,850; in 1870, $334,828; in 1880, $1,414,257; in 1890, $1,845,870, and in 1900 for greater New York, $3,079,259. (Hon. Bird S. Coler in the Report of the National Conference of Charities, XXVIII.) In 1892 (October 31) there were in the city and county alms-houses of the State of New York 936 children. Beside this there were in the private institutions of the State, but supported chiefly by the cities and counties, an army of 27,074 children. In these private institutions alone, there was one dependent child to each 270 persons. The cost of the children to the tax- payers of New York State for the fiscal year ending September 30, 1892, was $2,019,342.94. (Tables 19-21 in XXV Report of New York Board of Charities and Corrections, 1891.) Only about twenty per cent of the dependent children of New York are orphans, and a very large number of them, as soon as they become old enough to be of use, are returned to their pauper relatives or friends, that is, the persons who had given them up to be paupers. (XXVIII Annual Report of New York State Board of Charities and Corrections.)* *From the 30,973 children received in 127 homes for children Sept. 30, 1899, 9,363 had parents living. Dur- ing the fiscal year ending September 30, 1901, there were discharged from the homes for children under private control, but in receipt of public money, 15,217 children. From them 9,868 (64.8 per cent.) were turned over to relatives, 43 to friends and guardians, and 598 became self supporting. THE CHILDREN OF POVERTY. 6l "Child storage at public expense" has been suggested as an appropriate sign over the en- trance to the great New York caravansary for dependent children. Of the children supported by charity in New York one-seventh are sup- ported in private institutions at private expense (fourteen per cent of the total expenditure). Twenty-one per cent of the expense of caring for the dependent children is borne by private be- nevolence, while seventy-nine per cent is borne by the city. In New York one institution that received in 1892 $250,000 from the city, re- ceived from private sources less than $500, and in the case of twelve institutions the receipts from private sources were less than five per cent of the total expenditure. (American Charities, by Amos G. Warner.) The number of beneficiaries in institutions sub- ject to the supervision of the Board of Charities, Oct. 1, 1899, was 70,572. Among them were 31,410, or about 44 per cent, dependent children. The following table will show the expense of the State of New York for dependent children from the year 1889 to 1899: Orphanage Year. class. 1889 $1,135,886.46 1890 1,075,872.50 1891 1,186,864.10 1892 1,197,898.46 1893 1,195,002.29 1894 i,i33,507-87 189S 1,180,564.97 1896 1,187,476.27 1897 i,257,939.84 1898 1,183,721.46 1899 1,580,732.00 Infant Total class. expense. $430,969.3 $1,566,85579 448,871.57 1,524,479.47 452,146.32 1,639,010.42 436,877.69 1,639,77518 455,273.68 1,650,275.97 447,633-57 1,779,141.44 431,990.00 1,612,515.06 440,503.19 1,627,979.46 463,788.03 1,721,727.87 452,308.77 1,636,030.23 62 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. Bird S. Colcr, controller of the city of New York, states that of a total of $3,249,623.81, ap- propriated for private charities in 1899, no less than $2,216,773, or 69 per cent, was for the care of children and their support. In no city in the United States will the number of children sup- ported at public expense compare in proportion to population with the number of those cared for in New York City. In the city of New York, 50,638 children are supported in private institu- tions at public expense. This is one child to every 68 of the estimated population of the city (3438,877). Mr. C. Loring Brace, the secretary of the Chil- dren's Aid Society in the year 1901, stated in his report that during- the last twelve months the expenditures of that organization amounted to no less than $543,109.07. The number of children aided during the last year was given by Mr. Brace in tabular form as follows : Industrial school 16,364 Given relief in their homes 9,307 In lodging houses 4,226 In farm schools 645 In charge of probation officers 300 In summer homes 19,562 Given a day's outing 1,781 Treated by sick mission 1,486 Placed in homes 476 Placed in homes at wages 247 Assisted to emigrate 712 Total 55,io6 (Nezv York Times, November 26, 1902.) The statistical data we present here are suf- ficient to give an idea about the burden of pauper- ism weighing on the tender shoulders of the "poor THE CHILDREN OF POVERTY. 63 children of the poor." The figures and facts presented by us are more eloquent than any amount of sentimental circumlocution. We would, however, not consider our presen- tation of the problem complete without a few extracts from the writings of a careful and con- scientious, but somewhat conservative and opti- mistic observer, Mr. Jacob A. Riis. His known conservatism and rather unwarranted optimism guarantee that his assertions are free from any exaggerations. He cannot by any means be accused of being a calamity-howler, or malcon- tent demagogue. About the children in the slums he says: "It is the home itself that constitutes their chief hardship. It is only when his years offer the boy an opportunity of escape to the street, that a ray of sunlight falls into his life. In his back yard or in his alley it seldom finds him out. Thenceforward most of his time is spent there, until the school or the shop claim him, but not in idleness. ('The Children of the Poor," p. 20.) "There are still a lot of girls in Italian slums who drag as big loads as their brothers, but since the sewing machine found its way, with the sweater's mortgage, into the Italian slums also, little Antonia has been robbed to a large extent even of the poor freedom, and has taken her place among the wage-earners, when not on the school bench. Once taken, the place is here to keep for good. Sickness, unless it be mortal, is no excuse from the drudgery of the tenement. When re- cently, one little Italian girl, hardly yet in her teens, stayed away from her class in the Mott Street Industrial School so long that her teacher 64 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. went to look her up, she found the child in high fever, in bed, sewing on coats, with swollen eyes, though hardly able to sit up (p. 21). Poverty and ignorance are fearful allies in the homes of the poor against defenceless childhood. Two cases which I encountered in the East Side tene- ments, in the summer of 1891, are without a doubt typical of very many. The one was the case of little Carmen, who last March died in the New York Hospital, where she had lain five long months, the special care of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. She was found by the doctor lying in a little back room, up two flights, and looking upon a narrow back yard where it was always twilight. The room was filthy and close, and entirely devoid of furni- ture, with the exception of a rickety stool, a slop pail and a rusty old stove, one end of which was propped up with bricks. Carmen's bed was a board laid across the top of a barrel and a trunk set on end. I could not describe, if I would, the condition of the child when she was raised from the mess of straw and rags in which she lay. The sight unnerved even the nurse, who had seen little else but such scenes all summer. Loath- some bedsores had attacked the wasted little body, and in truth Carmen was more dead than alive (p. 23). I found boys, who ought to have been at school, picking bones and sorting rags. They said that they slept there (in the dumps). It was their home. They were chil- dren of the dump, literally. Two boys whom I found at the West Nineteenth Street dumps sort- ing bones were as bright lads as I have seen any- where ; one was nine years old and the other was twelve. Filthy and ragged, they fitted well THE c il [LDREN OF POVERTY. 65 into their environment ; even the pig I had en- countered at one of the East River dumps was much more respectable, as to appearance, of the lot — but were entirely undaunted by it. They scarcely remembered anything but the dump. Neither could read, of course. Further down the river I came upon one, seemingly not over fifteen, who assured me that he was twenty-one. The dumps had stunted him. He did not even know what a letter was. He had been there five years and garbage limited his mental as well as his physical horizon (p. 29). "It is a long time since I have heard a good honest laugh, a child's gleeful shout, in Ludlow Street. Children laugh because they are happy. They are not happy in Ludlow Street. Why should they be? Born to toil and trouble, they claim their heritage early and part with it late. There is work for the weakest hand, a step for the smallest feet in the vast tread-mill of these East Side houses. The average age at which these children leave school for good is rather below twelve than beyond it, by which time their work at home, helping their parents, has qualified them to earn wages that will more than pay for their keep. When, in the midnight hour, the noise of the sewing machine was stilled at last, I have gone the rounds of Ludlow and Hester and Essex streets, and counted often four and five and even six of the little ones in a single bed, sometimes a shake down on the board floor, often a pile of half-finished clothing brought home from the sweater, in the stuffy room of their tenement. In one I visited very lately, the only bed was occupied by the entire family lying lengthwise and crosswise, literally in layers, three 66 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. children at the feet, all except a boy of ten or twelve for whom there was no room. He slept with his clothes on to keep him warm, in a pile of rags just inside the door (pp. 38-39). It was said of Napoleon that he shortened the aver- age stature of the Frenchman one inch by get- ting all the tall men killed in his wars. The tenement has done that for New York. My medical friend finds it a fact that poverty stunts the body, which he is pleased to call a beautiful provision of nature to prevent unnecessary suf- fering ; there is less for poverty to perish then. It is a self-defence, he says, and he claims that the consensus of learned professional opinion is with him. It is the tenement that gives up the child to the street in tender years to find there the home it denied him. Its exorbitant rent robs him of the schooling that is his one chance to elude its grasp, by compelling his enrollment in the army of wage-workers before he has learned to read. Its alliance with the saloon guides his baby feet along the well-beaten path of the growler that completes his ruin. Its power to prevent and corrupt has always to be considered, its point of view always to be taken, to get the perspective in dealing with the poor, or the cart will seem to be forever getting before the horse in a way not to be understood" (p. 64). "But if the three R's suffer neglect among the children of the poor, their lessons in the three D's — Dirt, Discomfort and Disease, that form the striking features of their environment — are early and thorough enough (p. 67). "Poverty and child-labor are yoke-fellows everywhere. Their union is perpetual, indissol- uble. The one begets the other. Need sets the THE CHILDREN OF POVERTY. 6j child to work when it should be at school and its labor breeds low wages, thus increasing the need. That the law 'prohibiting children under the age of fourteen to work in factories' has had the effect of greatly diminishing the number of child- workers I do not believe. The child of eleven at home and at the night school is fifteen in the factory as a matter of course. Nobody is de- ceived, but the perjury defeats the purpose of the law (pp. 92, 93). "I undertook a census of a number of the most crowded houses, in company with a policeman not in uniform. The outcome proved that, as I suspected, as regards those houses at least (and I have no doubt they were a fair sample of the rest), the law was practically inoperative. In nine tenements that were filled with home-work- ers we found five children at work, who owned that they were under age. Two were girls, nine years of_age. Two boys said they were thirteen. We found thirteen who swore that they were of age. In seven back-yard factories we found 63 children, of whom five admitted being under age, while the rest, 45, seemed surely so. To the other thirteen we gave the benefit of the doubt, but I do not think they deserved it. All the 63 were to my mind certainly under fourteen, judg- ing not only from their size but from the whole appearance of the children. My subsequent ex- perience confirmed me fully in this belief (p. 95). "A vast horde of fifty thousand children is growing up in this city (New York) whom our public schools do not and can not reach; if it reaches them at all it is with the threat of jail. The mass of them is no doubt to be found in the 68 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. shops and factories as I have shown. A large number peddle newspapers, or black boots. Still another contingent, much too large, does nothing but idle, in training for the penitentiary. As a matter of fact the record of average attendance shows that the public school per cent reaches little more than a third of all the children. And even those it does not hold long enough to do them the good that was intended. The superin- tendent of schools declares that the average at which the children leave school is twelve or a little over (p. 126). "Under the heading, 'Just one of God's chil- dren,' one of the morning newspapers told the story last winter of a newsboy at the Brooklyn Bridge who fell in a fit with his bundle of papers under his arm, and was carried into the waiting room by the bridge police. The reporters asked the little dark-eyed woman at the bridge entrance which boy it was. "Little Maher it was," she answered. "Who takes care of him?" "Oh ! no one but God," said she, "and he is too busy with other folks to give him much atten- tion." "Little Maher was the representative of a class that is happily growing smaller year by year. There are homeless children in New York. It is certain that we shall always have our full share. The menace of the Submerged Tenth has not been blotted out from the register of the Potter's field, and though the "twenty thousand poor children who would not have known that it was Christmas" but for the public notice to that effect, be a benevolent fiction, there are plenty whose brief lives have had little enough of the THE CHILDREN OF POVERTY. 69 embodiment of Christmas cheer and good will in them to make the name seem like a bitter mockery (p. 247). "It is in the lodging houses for homeless chil- dren one may study the homelessness that mocks the miles of brick walls which enclose New York's tenements, but not its homes. One may still hunt up by night waifs who make their beds in alleys and cellars and abandoned sheds. This last winter two stable fires that broke out in the middle of the night routed out little colonies of boys, who slept in the hay (p. 257). "What drove the outcast boy to the street? Drunkenness and brutality at home helped the tenement to do it, half the time. It drove his sister out to a life of shame, too, as likely as not. Four-fifths of the homeless children, perhaps, are outcasts, the rest homeless waifs (p. 259). "A bed in the street, in an old box or corner, is good enough for the ragamuffin who thinks the latitude of his tenement unhealthy, when the weather is warm. In winter the boys can curl up on the steam pipes in the newspaper offices that open their doors after midnight on secret purpose to let them in. When this fails, there is still the lodging house as a last resort (p. 260)." These quotations will suffice to show a glimpse of the inferno to which the childhood of the poor is doomed. We may repeat here Tennyson's words in his "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After" : "Is it well, that, while we range with science, glorying in time, City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime? JO AMERICAN PAUPERISM. There, among the glooming alleys Progress halts on palsied feet, Crime and hunger cast our maidens by the thousands on the street. There the master scrimps his haggard seamstress of her daily bread; There a single sordid attic holds the living and the dead. There the smoldering fire of fever creeps across the rotten floor, And the crowded couch of incest, in the warrens of the poor." Is it well ? naive question ! Is it natural, is it human, is it economic to let the children of the poor "soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime?" In its solicitude for the preservation of the various living species, nature implanted in the heart of the animal the instinct of affection for offspring. Even the most ferocious beasts of prey, the tiger and the lion, are endowed with the instinct of love for their progeny. The higher an animal species stands on the ladder of evolu- tion, the longer is his period of helpless infancy, the better the care given it during that period. That the instinct of attachment to offspring reaches its highest stage of development in the human race is only natural. "Child" is the most pathetic word in the human vocabulary. The human heart does not know any more endear- ing sight than that of an infant in its touching helplessness and perfect abandon. The human heart is overflowing with tender emotion at the contemplation of the sweet enigma of childhood. In the entire material world there is nothing more sacred, pure and full of radiant hope than childhood with its vast possibilities of develop- THE CHILDREN OF POVERTY. Jl ment into ideal maturity. What a dismal desert life without childhood would be! What is a human family without the crowning glory of children? Nothing but legalized prostitution. The development of human society from a herd of half brutes and savages to a race of civilized and cultured beings may be measured by the kind and degree of care and attention it bestows upon its offspring. The higher a nation stands on the stage of culture and civilization, the stronger is its race-consciousness, the more pro- nounced is the recognition of its duty towards future generations, the more emphatic is its asser- tion of the rights of children as members of society. In our present commercial age of civilization the most sacred human relations — the family re- lations — are polluted by stupid mercantile con- siderations and corroded by irrational economic conditions. The matrimonial market is a tacitly recognized economic institution ; in the same sense as the board of trade — an officially sanc- tioned gambling institution. Pure affection be- tween the representatives of different sexes at the age of maturity seldom furnishes the basis of family life. Imbeciles, profligates and degen- erates may get the sexual commodity called husband or wife on the matrimonial market if they happen to be financially well situated and can pay the price. The fair proletarian maiden and sturdy youth of the class of the poor can not compete with the man with the coin in the matrimonial market. The heaven of family af- fection, the raptures of a child's innocent caresses, the blessings of a healthy progeny, are often denied them on the world's auction. The 72 [ERICAN PAUPERISM. fair proletarian maiden is cast on the thorny path of sexual slavery and her brother is driven to sexual profligacy. Those proletarians, how- ever, who dare to defy Mammon and his priests and marry in spite of all economic consideration are by the existing conditions compelled to pay a fearful penalty, as we have convinced our- selves, and drag their children along into pau- perism. Degrading, grinding want and misery, unhealthy surroundings, hopeless struggle against poverty, brutalizes the proletarian father and mother, turns the blessing of babyhood and childhood into a curse and perverts the instinct of creative love into its destructive opposite. Children are looked upon as a source of income and doomed to the fate of eternal drudgery. The exhausting soul-killing drudgery of physi- cal labor, the humiliation of poverty, the inse- curity of means of livelihood, with its endless anxieties and unceasing cares, weaken the physi- cal as well as the mental powers of the prole- tarian. The waste of energy and ability due to such conditions is beyond all calculations. The Eleventh Annual Report of the United States Commissioners of Labor, 1895-1896, on work and wages of men, women and children, contains some instructive data, throwing light on the causes of child and woman labor. The agents of the department secured information from 1,067 establishments of various kinds, lo- cated in 30 different States. The report makes a comparison between the data of the period 1895- 1896 and the former period ten years earlier: "The increase and per cent of increase of THE CHILDREN OF POVERTY'. 73 persons in 931 establishments over the former period were as follows : The increase of male employes 18 years of age and over amounted to 16,716, or 63.1 per cent, while the female em- ployes 18 years of age or over increased 17,999, or 66.3 per cent. The male employes under 18 years of age increased 3,365, or 80.6 per cent, and the female employes under 18 years of age increased 6,008, or 89.1 per cent. It appears, therefore, that the increase of female and child labor was quite pronounced in comparison with the increase of adult male labor. 13.19 per cent of children from 10 to 15 years of age were at work at the time of the census of 1870. At the census of 1880 the proportion of children from 10 to 15 years of age at work was considerably larger, being 16.82 per cent. The whole number of children from 10 to 14 years of age in 1890 was 7,033,509, and of their number 603,013, or 8.57 per cent, were at work. The total number of children 15 years of age in 1890 was 1,288,- 764, but to arrive at the number of those who were workers in that year, an estimate must be made on the basis of those 10 to 14 years of age who were at work. Now, to have the results a general average of 8.57 per cent at work of the ages from 10 to 14, it is plain that the individual per cent for each of these ages would run about like this: For those 10 years old, 3 per cent; 11 years old, 5 per cent; 12 years old, 8 per cent; 13 years, 11.5 per cent, and for 14 years, 15.5 per cent. Such an estimate of the percentage at work at each age from 10 to 14 seems to be about what is necessary to bring the general average of 8.57 per cent at work when all from 10 to 14 years are lumped together. From this 74 AMERKAX PAUPERISM. it is manifest that of those 15 years old, about 20 per cent, or 257,773, must have been workers. Adding this to 603,013, the number of workers from 10 to 14 years, the result is 860,786. This number, or 10.34 per cent of the whole number of children 10 to 15 years of age in 1890, repre- sents very closely the number at work. (Report, pp. 25, 26.) In connection with these data it is interesting to note that out of 781 instances in which men and women work at the same occupation and perform their work with the same degree of efficiency men receive greater pay in 595, or 76.2 per cent, of the instances, and in 7.3, they receive the same pay for the same work. The men received 32.3 per cent greater pay than the women in the 595 cases in which they are given greater pay, while the women receive but 10.4 per cent greater pay in the 129 instances in which' they are paid higher wages. Out of the 228 instances in which men and children (persons under 18 years of age) work at the same occu- pation with a like degree of efficiency, men re- ceive greater pay in 24, or 10.5 per cent, while in 22 instances, or 9.7 per cent, they receive the same pay for the same work performed with the same degree of efficiency. The men received 56.6 per cent greater pay than the children in the 182 instances in which they are paid more, while the children receive but 8.6 per cent greater pay in the 24 instances in which they are paid higher wages." (Report, p. 30.) The increasing perfection of the tools and methods of production, along with the minute subdivision of labor and co-operation of a vast number of workers, lend to the replacement of THE CHILDREN OF POVERTY. 75 the comparatively expensive labor of adult male workers by women and children. The labor of women and children is not only cheaper than that of adult male workers, but has in the eyes of the capitalist another great advantage. Women and especially children offer a great deal less resistance to the exactions of their exploiters. This is the reason why, as the statistics of the labor bureaus of different States testify^ the em- ployment of women and children is constantly increasing in the United States. About the work of women we will treat later, when analyzing the causes of poverty. The Second Annual Report of the New York Labor Bureau, devoted entirely to an investiga- tion of child labor, was summed up as follows: "My conclusions are: (i) The system of child labor exists in the State of New York in its worst form; (2) the compulsory education law is a dead letter; (3) the conditions of the laborers is of a low standard." The Commissioner of Labor of Ohio, in his report for 1887 (p. 9), says: "My attention has been, frequently called to the alarming growth of women and child labor in gainful occupations. Children are crowded into workshops at the age of twelve ; when they reach manhood they are thrown out of work and their places filled with other boys." The inspector of factories on New Jersey says, in his second annual report (p. 19) : "Our ex- aminations show that there are thousands of children in the State who know no change but from the workshop to bed and from the bed to the workshop." The statistics in regard to the employment of /6 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. children, as given by the census of 1870, are as follows : Total workers of all classes returned 12,505,- 923- Of these were children 10 to 15 years of age, 739-164. Thus, one out of every seventeen employes in the United States engaged in any gainful occu- pation, was a child under 15 years of age. In the tenth census the statistics show the following results : Total number of workers of all classes returned 17,392,099 Of these were children 10 to 15 years 1,118,356 This is an average of one child out of every sixteen employes in the United States engaged in gainful occupations. The number of children employed in other than agricultural pursuits increased during the decade of 1870-1880 sixty-six per cent, while the number of adults increased during the same period only forty-seven per cent. (Willoughby — Child Labor, p. 30.) In those States where the factory system has reached the highest development the extension of the employment of children was extremely rapid. (Crowell, in the Andover Review of July,'' 1885.) In cotton mills in 1880, one in each six of the employes was under fifteen years of age. In mining they numbered one in twenty. In tobacco one in twelve. The children toiling in sweatshops escape all control. Helen Campbell estimates that in New York alone 24,000 children under fifteen are nployed, a great portion of which are in tene- THE CHILDREN OF POVERTY. J"/ ment houses. Mr. Crowell, in the cited article, shows the employment of children in various States and industries as follows: In Baltimore the ratio of children to all other employes in the cotton mills was I 4. In Au- gusta, Ga., 1 :3 ; in Alleghany, Pa., i 4 ; in Brook- lyn, 1 13 ; in Lancaster, Pa., 1 :$, and in Boston, 12:17. In the six North Atlantic States, in 225 textile factories of special prominence, seventeen per cent of the employes are children. In Penn- sylvania the textile industries gave work to 5,300 boys of fifteen years and under. New Jersey employed fully 15,000 children ranging from eight to fifteen years of age. Paterson, out of a working population of 20,000, there were 3,000 children at work. In Rhode Island the children composed twelve per cent of the whole working population. In the South the employment of children has in the last few years increased rap- idly. In North Carolina thirteen per cent of the cotton factory operatives are children of fifteen or under. According to the New York World, modern industrial conditions have increased child labor in the South more than 200 per cent in a single decade. The percentage of the cotton factory operatives in Alabama under sixteen years of age is greater than in any other State of the Union; nearly 30 per cent. The census of 1900 shows in our Southern cotton factories 24,459 children under sixteen. The Tradesman of Chattanooga (Aug. 15) estimates that inasmuch as the number of mills has doubled at the South since the period covered by the census, the number under sixteen is now about 50,000. If the number of children /6 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. under sixteen has thus doubled in four years, we may assume that in another four years our oper- atives under sixteen may constitute an army of 100,000 souls. What will be the total in ten years, in twenty? The following instances contained in a small pamphlet, entitled "Pictures from Life — Mill Children in Alabama," will illustrate the condition of child labor in the South : A little boy of six years has been working 12 hours a day, from 6:20 a. m. to 6:20 p. m. (40 minutes off at noon), for 15 cents per day. "Three boys aged respectively 9, 8 and 7 years. The boy aged 9 has been working two years, the boy aged 8 has been working three years; the boy aged 7 years has been working two years. These little fellows work 13 hours a day, from 5:20 A. M. to 6:30 P. M., with twenty minutes for dinner. In "rush" periods their mill works until 9:30 and 10 P. M. They were refused a holiday for Thanksgiving and they obtained Christmas day only by working till 7 P. M. in order to make up the time. "Two girls, aged 16 and 11 ; each has had the fingers on one of her hands maimed by the ma- chinery, one at the age of 9 and the other at the age of 8. These are not rare cases. Almost all of the children are growing up in total illiteracy. The factory inspector of Chicago reported in 1 88 1 4,600 boys and girls of fifteen and under in the factories and workshops. In 1882 there were found 6,900, an increase of sixty-eight per cent, while there was an increase of but eighteen per cent during the same year in the male labor- ers over that age. In the American coal fields the labor of chil- THE CHILDREN OF POVERTY. 79 dren has been found in one of its worst forms. The industrial statistics of Pennsylvania for the year 1882- 1883 reported 87,000 employed in that industry, of whom 24,000 were boys and four- fifteenths 15 years of age and under. The number of boys who work in the hard coal mines is imperfectly realized in the rest of the United States. According to the report of the Bureau of Mines in Pennsylvania for 1901, 147,- 651 persons were employed "inside and outside the mines of the anthracite region" ; of these 19,564 were classified as slate-pickers, 3,148 as door-boys and helpers, and 10,894 as drivers and runners. "The report makes no classification of miners by their ages, but I am convinced that 90 per cent of the slate pickers, 30 per cent of the drivers and runners, and all of the door boys and helpers are boys. In other words, a total of 24,023, or nearly one-sixth of all the employes of the anthra- cite coal mines, are children," says Mr. Frances H. Nicols in McClure's Magazine for February, 1903. The same authority says that the legal age limit is usually falsified. "While the miner's boy is working in the breaker or the mine it is prob- able that his daughter is employed in a mill or factory," says Mr. Nicols. The statistics of the coal counties of anthracite count up 11,216 females employed in them, 2,403 between twelve and sixteen years of age. "The perjury certificate prevails for the girls as well as the boys, and I estimate that 90 per cent of the 11,216 females are girls who have not reached womanhood. They work ten hours a day, and the majority stand all the time, having 8o AMERICAN PAUPERISM. a chance to sit only in the noon-hours. This brings a characteristic lameness in the girls dur- ing the first year at the mill." The report of the Secretary of Internal Affairs of the State plac.es the average daily wages of children between the ages of thirteen and six- teen employed in the manufacture of underwear at forty-seven cents, in hosiery at forty-six cents. The children of the Coal Shadow submit un- complainingly to a habitual treatment which in a country like China would be considered cruel and intolerable. The Children of the Coal Shadow have no child life. The little tots are sullen, the older children fight; they rarely play, and almost their only amusement is the union and the strike. That is the logical result of the condition of their existence. They have no friends. Their parents, driven by what they think is necessity, forswear them into bondage. Their employers, compelled by what they regard as economic forces, grind them to haired. The State, ruled by influence, either refrains from ameliorating laws or en- forcement. The rest of the world does not care. In the iron and steel industry the census of 1880 shows an increase of boys from 2,400 in 1870 to 7,700 in 1880, an increase of 216 per cent, as compared with an increase of seventy- eight per cent of employes over sixteen years of age. The following extract from the Second Annual Report of the New York Inspector of Factories and Workshops (1884, p. 14) is very interest- ing: "Large numbers of children have been exam- ined in all our manufacturing districts. Almost THE CHILDREN OF POVERTY. 8l all the children examined were between the ages of twelve and fifteen. The average age at which the children went to work was nine years. All of them had been accustomed to work ten hours a day, and many of them thirteen and more hours a day through overtime. The general appear- ance of those children is noteworthy. Children, who had been set to work at an early age, were, as a rule, delicate, puny and ignorant ; they know the least, having forgotten the little they had been taught before going to work. Children of thirteen years, with little old faces, said they did not care' for school or play." The same report on page 18 states: "At least thirty per cent could not name the city in which they lived. Sixty per cent had never heard of the' United States or Europe, and ninety-five per cent had never heard of the Revo- lutionary War. Many who had heard of the United States could not say where they were." These conditions did not change materially in the last years, as can be concluded from articles like "Child Life vs. Dividends," in the American Fed- erationist for May, 1902, by Irene Asly-Mac- fadyen. The wages of children sacrificed on the Altar of Mammon are ridiculously small. In 1897 the factory inspectors found 9,259 children employed in different industrial establishments. In 1901 the factory inspectors found 1.9,939 chil- dren at work, as shown in their reports. The increase was greater in 1901 than in any previous year, being 5,583 children. Illinois permits children to work who cannot read in any language, who have never attended any school. There is no educational test before beginning to work. All the training required by 82 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. children in the labor market is in the direction of mechanical and brainless routine. The factory child can develop no individuality, and promises, in coming maturity, to be little more than an ad- dition to the mass of wretched, unskilled labor. Moreover, many occupations threaten actual disability by mutilation and disease. In the manu- facture of cigars, both girls and boys are em- ployed, and the saturation of the children with nicotine is only a question of time. So it is in other respects in other unhealthy industries. Of the garment workers it is true now as in 1894 that "many of the boys in the sweatshops are button-holers and every little button-holer is destined soonor or later to develop curvature of the spine. Other boys run foot power machines, and the fate that awaits them is consumption of the lungs or intestines. Many of the little girls are "hand girls," whose backs grow crooked over their work of hemming and felling or sewing on buttons. In the stamping industry children are often mutilated. Work in the laundries entails "ex- haustion from heat and dampness, and long, irregular hours of work. The proportion of blind or partly blind children in glass blowing com- munities is unusually large. Finally, the children work in the excessive heat of ovens through the night and go half clad, weary and hungry, out into the dawn of the early winter morning. Illinois permits her children to work at night, and they do work all night long in many indus- tries in which men and children are needed and where night work is carried on either regularly or occasionally. And what is the pittance? At a liberal esti- THE CHILDREN OF POVERTY. 83 mate it would average in Chicago $2.50 per week, from which must be deducted sixty cents for car fare. (See pamphlet on child labor in Illinois by the local Federation of Women's Club, 1902- 1903, pp. 6-1 1.) The condition of working children in New York is about as bad as those in Chicago and Illinois, as can be readily proved by extracts from the pamphlet "Child Labor,"' published by the Child Labor Committee. This century of legal endeavor has fallen far short of guaranteeing to poor children the rights of childhood — the chance to be happy, the chance to develop strong minds and strong bodies — the chance to grow into well-rounded men and women, able to hold their own in life. Children of thirteen and twelve, and even fewer years, are at work despite the most faithful efforts of the factory inspectors. Children are at work for inhumanely long hours during the weeks pre- ceding the holiday season. Children are regularly employed for long hours before and after school. A great number of child-workers, newsboys, bootblacks, street ped- dlers, office boys, delivery boys, messenger boys, are absolutely without any legal protection what- ever. A few typical cases, no worse than hundreds of others which have been investigated by the Child Labor Committee, will give an idea of the hours, of the wages and the conditions of work of these little under-age laborers. Peter Basto is regularly employed in a button factory to sew buttons on cards. He has his (legal age) certificate, though he is but thirteen years old and though he is only four feet in 84 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. height and conspicuously undeveloped. He works six days in the week from seven-thirty in the morning until seven o'clock at night, with an intermission of half an hour at noon. In return for his sixty-six hours of work each week he receives a wage of two dollars and a half. Thirteen-year-old Jennie Chianti had to say she was fourteen "to get her certificate," according to the statement of her sister and her friend. Every day except Sunday she works from eight in the morning to six in the evening in a factory where she helps trim dresses for other children. Her weekly wage is two dollars and a half. As trim- ming is not a lucrative occupation, on Sundays and in the evenings she makes artificial flowers for a near-by manufacturer. Milly Agricola and Mary Pelota both work in a leggin factory from seven-thirty in the morning until six in the evening, with half an hour for luncheon. Each is thirteen years old and each receives two dollars per week. According to her employment certificate, Ange- line Peratti is fifteen years old, but her actual age is twelve. She works in an artificial flower fac- tory from seven-thirty in the morning until six in the evening. In the evenings she helps her mother and younger sister make artificial flowers at home. She is in a pitiful physical condition, being subject to epileptic fits and being troubled with a weak heart. In all her life she attended school just one short month. Public School No. 180 in New York City fur- nishes an illustration of the results that follow the employment of children during vacation. Out of the ninety boys who were in this school when it closed in June, 1902, nineteen, or over twenty THE CHILDREN OF POVERTY. 85 per cent, went to work and did not return in September. Of the nineteen, eight were not four- teen when they began work, and eleven wer,e between fourteen and fifteen. None of them were more than two years in school. The case of fourteen-year-old Lena Schwartz is typical of a great number of children, whose condition is even worse than that of the average of the child laborers. During the busy season she dips candy five days of the week from seven in the morning until nine at night, and on the other day from eight till nine, with thirty min- utes for luncheon and fifteen minutes for supper. Her aggregate number of hours for the week during the busy season is seventy-eight and one- half. She has weak eyes, the result of previously working late into the night upon artificial flow- ers, and round shoulders' and a hollow chest, largely due to the exhausting character of her present occupation. Newsboys, bootblacks, peddlers, office boys, delivery boys, messenger boys — these can work as long hours as they or their employers choose, and all day and night in cases — they can be set at work at any age that suits their parents. Boys eight and nine years have been found working for delivery companies. Last fall twenty-five boys in the employ of one of the delivery companies went out on a strike. Several of these boys were under fourteen— the leader was thirteen. ' They said they worked four davs in the week from seven-thirty in the morn- ing until nine or ten at night and on Fridays and Saturdays until midnight or until one o'clock in the morning. If the packages were not delivered on Saturday night they worked Sundays until 86 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. they were delivered. Visits were made to the homes of these boys and their parents and former teachers were questioned. In all essential par- ticulars the stories of the boys were substantiated. During the holiday season there is practically no limit to the number of hours that may be demanded of the boys working as messengers. The present investigation has discovered cases of messengers being on duty continuously for twenty, thirty, thirty-two, forty and even seventy- two hours. The only rest during these long periods were snatches of sleep taken between messages on the wooden benches in the office. Some of these boys were only fourteen, and sev- eral were even younger. Such is their "start in life" — messenger boy, delivery boy, after-school worker, factory child. With such a start, such a present, what can their future be ? The children of the toiling masses are kept out of school in order to be sacrificed to the Molloch of profit-making Capitalism. Child labor and starvation wages condition each other. We take the liberty to quote here from our book, "The Passing of Capitalism" : According to Dr. Folkmar, of all the children in Chicago and Milwaukee that enter the public school, ( i ) about one-third go no further than the first grade; (2) about one-half go no further than the second grade; (3) about two-thirds go no further than the third grade; (4) about three- fourths go no further than the fourth grade; (5) about nine-tenths go only half way through the twelve grades; (6) about ninety-seven in every hundred drop out before reaching the high school; (7) only three in every thousand finish THE CHILDREN OF POVERTY. 87 the entire course. Or more exactly, the following per cent drops out of each grade: Grade I, 32 per cent; II, 51 per cent; III, 66 per cent; IV, 78 per cent; V, 86 per cent; VII, 95 per cent; VIII, 97 per cent; IX, 98 per cent; X, 99 per cent; XT, 99.7 per cent. Ex-superintendent C. L. T. Smart of the State of Ohio states that only about 3 per cent of the pupils enrolled in the public schools ever enter, and from them less than 1 per cent graduate ; 50 per cent of the youths enrolled in the public schools of the State do not attend school more than four years ; 75 per cent stop attending school before entering the eighth grade. Dr. Win. Har- ris, United States Commissioner of Education, says in his report to the Committee of Fifteen: "The average number of pupils of the St. Louis school in the lowest three years of the course was about 72 per cent of the entire number en- rolled. Nearly three-fourths of all the pupils of the public schools are in the studies of the first three years or in primary studies. Six-sevenths of the population of the United States, on arriv- ing at the proper age for the secondary education, never receive it. Thirty out of thirty-one fail to receive higher education upon arriving at the proper age. The question now arises : What is the main cause of this remarkably short duration of school attendance? Mr. C. L. Smart says: "A majority of the patrons of the public schools cannot do without the labor of their children, and therefore cannot give them time to attend school longer." Dr. D. Folkman says: "I answer without hesitation that the chief factors are economic conditions. Too many either cannot support their children as they desire, or cannot 88 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. spare them through a longer period of school- ing. UNITED STATES CENSUS 1900. (Population, Vol. II, Part II, Table 65, p. 422.) Illiterate Children Between the Ages of 10 and 14 Years in Each State. Alabama 66,072 r. Alaska 1,903 2. Arizona 2,592 3. Arkansas 26,972 4. California 1,279 5- Colorado 742 6. Connecticut 436 7. Delaware §45 8. District of Columbia 398 9- Florida 8,389 10. Georgia 63.329 II. Hawaii 394 12. Idaho 209 13. Illinois 4,044 14- Indiana 1,453 IS- Indian Territory ..12,172 16. Iowa 883 17. Kansas -• 878 18. Kentucky 21,247 19. Louisiana 55,69* 20. Maine 1,255 21. Maryland 5,859 22. Massachusetts 1,547 23. Michigan i,744 24. Minnesota 1.365 25. Mississippi 44,334 26. Missouri 1 1,660 27. Montana 374 28. Nebraska 412 29. Nevada 275 30. New Hampshire . . . 557 31. New Jersey 2,069 32. New Mexico 4,354 33- New York 4,740 34- North Carolina ....51,190 35. Wyoming Oregon Idaho Utah Nevada Vermont Washington . . . Montana Hawaii District of Co- lumbia .... Nebraska . . Connecticut . . . South Dakota. New Hamp- shire Rhode Island., Colorado North Dakota. Delaware Kansas Iowa Maine California Oklahoma Minnesota Indiana Massachusetts Wisconsin Michigan Alaska Ohio New Jersey . Arizona .... Illinois New Mexico New York.. 72 175 209 220 275 287 340 374 394 398 412 436 472 557 691 742 836 845 878 883 1-255 1,279 i,295 1-365 i,453 1.547 1,688 1,744 1.903 2,048 2,069 2,592 4.044 4,354 4,740 THE CHILDREN OF POVERTY. 8 9 North Dakota 836 Ohio 2,048 Oklahoma 1,295 Oregon 175 Pennsylvania 6,326 Rhode Island 691 South Carolina ....51,536 South Dakota 472 Tennessee 36,375 Texas 35491 Utah 220 Vermont 287 Virginia 287 Washington 340 West Virginia 5,819 Wisconsin 1,688 Wyoming "]2 36. West Virginia. 5,819 37. Maryland 5,859 38. Pennsylvania .. 6,326 39. Florida 8,389 40. Missouri 11,660 41. Indian Terri- tory 12,172 42. Kentucky 21,247 43. Arkansas 26,972 44. Virginia 34>6i2 45. Texas 35491 46. Tennessee 36,375 47. Mississippi 44-334 48. North Carolina. 51, 190 49. South Carolina. 51, 536 50. Louisiana 55,691 51. Georgia 63,329 52. Alabama 66,072 United States. . .579,947 The United States. 579,947 The column at the left is exactly as taken from the census. The column at the right is the same material arranged with the States in the order of the illiteracy of the children, those States which have the least number of illiterate children appearing at the top of the column and those having the largest number of illiterate children appearing at the bottom. Commenting on these figures, the Fourth. An- nual Report of the National Consumers League states as follows : "A significant point in the table is the appear- ance, in the topmost group, of the States of the agricultural Northwest where manufacture and commerce have not yet reached a high degree of development. Tn these States and in Connecticut, Vermont, the Hawaiian Islands and the District of Columbia, the number of illiterate children be- tween ten and fourteen years of age now reached 9 AMI AUPERISM. five hundred. Particularly interesting is the fact that Wyoming, which heads the list with only seventy-two illiterate children, has long main- tained traveling teachers to instruct children on remote ranches. Another significant point in the table is the appearance in the third group, nearer the bottom of the scale of the States than the top, of all the six great manufacturing States, with the excep- tion of Massachusetts. When graded according to the value of their manufactured products, these States rank in the following order : New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts, Ohio and New Jersey. But when graded according to the numbers of their illiterate children between the ages of ten and fourteen years, they rank as follows : 26 30 31 33 35 38 Massachusetts 1,547 Ohio 2,048 New Jersey 2,069 Illinois 4,044 New York 4740 Pennsylvania 6.326 Total 20,770' At a congress of the State Federation of Labor of New Jersey, held in Trenton, a resolution was passed calling upon the Governor to remove the State factory inspector for failure to abolish child labor. The inspector was called before the con- gress and practically admitted that child labor existed in New Jersey, but that he was powerless to stop it. There are several places in New Jersey where child slavery, in one form or another, exists, but nowhere is the law so flagrantly violated as in THE CHILDREN OF POVERTY. 91 Patterson. There the little white slaves endure an existence that is as hopeless and as dismal as that of any child in the coal breakers or knitting mills of Pennsylvania. There is a constant disposition on the part of the mill owners to supplant the labor of men and adult women with young girls and with children. Women in Patterson are paid from seven to ten dollars a week. This is considerably less than is paid to men ; but children can be hired for less than either. And so the child came to be a factor in the mill life of Patterson. In one factory not one mope than a quarter of the employes were men, the rest were all women and girls, and of the latter fully one hundred did not seem to be over eleven years of age. "There are three flax mills in Patterson that give employment to about two thousand hands. According to factory reports, only one hundred of these are less than sixteen years old. Near the flax mills is the tenement quarter of Patterson. Few of the families have more than two rooms and many of them possess only one. In the evenings and on Sundays the neighborhood swarms with children, but from seven o'clock in the morning until six in the evening on every week day the noise of their laughter and play is not heard in this part of Patterson. With care- worn, pale faces the children form a sort of a melancholy procession which 'comes home' from the mill at evening. Some of them may be fourteen years old. If they are they have al- ready lived four or five years in the factory. But by far the greater number are certainly not over eleven. "From the lips of men and women whose lives 92 ■' PAUPERISM. are spent behind the dull brick walls of the fac- tories the following is known about the work of the children there: "Part of the process of weaving flax consists in hemp steaming. In a room with a stone and cement floor the coils of flax are wrung out in hot water to make it pliable for weaving. This work is performed entirely by females, many of whom are little girls. With bare feet and cov- ered with rubber aprons they spend what should be the happy days of childhood in a room filled with clouds of steam, twisting the wet hemp coils. "The pay of the little girls in either a silk or hemp factory is about the same. When a girl enters the mill she receives about $1.25 a week. In the course of two or three years her pay is gradually increased until by the time she is fifteen years old she makes perhaps $2.50 or $3.00 a week. This sum constitutes her wages for several years, until she is old and experienced enough to 'learn the trade' of a weaver. In the flax mills her remuneration for the work is very rarely more than $8.00 a week; in the silk mills it is sometimes as high as $12.00. "In certain districts of the city there are no longer any little girls, there are only middle aged women, and women too old to work. And yet it would be a cruelty and injustice to lay the blame for the child labor evil at the door of the parents. Among the adult workers in the flax mills it is very exceptional to find one who makes more than $8.00 a week. This is not enough to support a family. The only recourse for parents is to send their little girls to the mill." (Francis H. Nickols in the Christian Herald, September 3, 1903) PENNSYLVANIA CHILD LABOR. (Special correspondence of the Evening Post.) "Scranton, Pa., February 10, 1903 —The crusade against child labor began with the intro- duction of a group of silk-mill children as wit- nesses before the Anthracite Coal Strike Com- mission, then sitting at Scranton, Pa. Un- dreamed-of conditions were laid bare; public indignation rose to white heat; press and pulpit joined in giving publicity to the facts, and from many quarters came demands for immediate leg- islation which would do away with at least the grosser evils. The United Mine Workers and the anthracite coal operators joined in preparing a bill for Pennsylvania. The story of this campaign in Pennsylvania is full of interest. "We actually find the flesh and blood of little girls coined into money," exclaimed Judge Grey, as the children stood before the Commission. "This matter of night labor by young girls," he continued, "should be made known in every part of Pennsylvania." This work has been done. It only remains for the leg- islators to make good the laws which have this week been sent to them. To-day efforts to rescue little children from sodden toil which robs them of their childhood and does violence to the unborn children of other generations are met with open threats. When the cry was first raised against the iniquitous regime in Pennsylvania, the superintendent of one large 93 94 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. mill publicly asserted: "One thing is certain — tinkering with existing conditions will drive the silk mills out of Pennsylvania to States where labor conditions are satisfactory. As matters stand, Pennsylvania has a lower age limit than any of her neighbors, and that fact is responsible for much of the prosperity of the State. If the age limit be raised, even though the raise be only one year, the factories will go elsewhere." There have been breathless moments at the hearings of the Strike Commission, but none so intense as when eleven-year-old Helen Sisscak and Theresa McDcrmott and Rosa Zinka sat in the witness chair and told the story of their lives. Every one of the seven Commissioners rose to his feet and strained towards the children. The crowded courtroom became as still as a summer night ; not a dress rustled, not a foot scraped ; the childish voices were heard in every corner. Chairman Grey asked most of the questions. The children spoke simply and frankly, as children will, much puzzled as to why so many people were interested in them. They did not know that seventeen thousand little girls under sixteen years of age who toil in the great silk mills and lace factories of central Pennsylvania were speaking through them. When they told of leaving their homes to report at the factory at half-past six. and of spending the long hours of the night until half-past six in the morning, when, tired and half asleep, they dragged back across the fields or through the streets of the scattered town to their beds, they did not realize that their words meant the emancipation of nearly four thousand child workers from night labor. Since then I have visited the homes of these l/ PENNSYLVANIA CHILD LABOR. 95 children and many others besides. Some of the little toilers get five cents an hour, others three, for the work. "Why do you allow your little child to do this?" I asked of one father. He glared at me a moment, then answered laconically : "It means bread money." The man was a miner. I put the same question to the mother of another. She answered never a word, but handed me her store book. It needed only a cursory examination to see that there were few extravagances in that house- hold. Then, as I glanced round the bare kitchen and through a doorway into the bedroom beyond, further questioning would have seemed mockery. The house was old and unpainted. The homes of these girls are often two and three miles from the mills, and children are obliged to walk in all kinds of weather. A number of children were found who allow an hour to reach the mill. Twelve hours of work and two hours walking would leave a strong man but little energy. CONDITIONS IN THE FACTORIES. The first of the silk factories that I saw was near Scranton. It was built near the Susque- hanna River, on a knoll of the Blue Ridge Moun- tains. In the clear atmosphere of a dark night its blaze of lighted windows shone like an acre of the starry heavens brought low and thrown be- fore the shadowy mountains. When the heavy door had been opened to my call and closed again behind me, the clatter and din were deafening. AMERICAN PAUPERISM. A hazel-eyed child in a dirty red waist flitted past me. I stopped her to ask her age. "Eleven past," she replied. "How long have you worked in the mill?" "A year past," she answered promptly and went on. A small boy was cleaning bobbins close to the nearest rattling loom. He told me he was four- teen. I should have guessed eleven. He had been three years in the mill. A surprised feature of this work is that the shifts are not alternated. The day-shift children are always on the day- shift, and the night-shift ones are always on the night-shift. The work is not heavy. It is as continuous as machine work. Constant vigi- lance is necessary. The fine silk fibers snap easily and must be quickly tied. "The tangles are always worst when I am tiredest," said one small girl. "I have to twist back the reel for a long time until all the tangles are gone. The big girl who had charge of our department often scolded me, and sometimes the man who was night superintendent told me he would discharge me if I couldn't do better. Then my head would ache something awful, and I would have to cry, and some other girl would straighten out the tangle." Another, who had just been taken out of the mill, said to a friend of mine who made a note of her words : "When I first went to work at night the long standing hurt me very much. My feet burned so that I cried. My knees hurt me worse than my feet, and my back pained all the time. Mother cried when I told her how I suffered,, and that made me feel so badly that I did not tell her any more. It does not hurt so much PENNSYLVANIA CHILD LABOR. 97 now, but I feel tired all the time. I do not feel near as tired, though, as I did the time I worked all night. My eyes hurt me, too, from watching the threads at night. The doctor said they would be ruined if I did not stop the night work. After watching the threads a long time, I could see threads everywhere. When I looked at other things, there were threads running across them. Sometimes I felt as though the threads were cut- ting my eyes." All physical ailments are naturally found among these children, especially nervous diseases, brought on through enforced wakefulness and the unnatural system of life. Throat and lung troubles are frequent, and anaemia is as common as is miner's asthma among the miners. Heart affections and stomach disorders are common. The tendency is always to devitalize the children, stunting their growth, and so weaken their pow- ers of resistance as to leave them easy prey for disease of every order. But this is not the saddest feature of night labor. There are phases to this question too terrible to describe. In the warm months of spring, summer and autumn, during the half hour in the middle of the night which is allowed for refreshments, the children are encouraged to leave the factory and spend the time in the outside air. In most instances the silk mills and lace factories of Pennsylvania are somewhat isolated from the villages and towns. They occupy lonely sites on the edge of the mountains or near river banks. The children leave the heated atmosphere of the factory rooms and run among the trees or across the fields. One or two men are supposed to watch over them, but under cover of the night 98 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. their vision is short. Those who should know, the police, justices of the peace, and investigators, say that immoral loafers and strange men lurk around these mills. In every factory there are girls who are older whose influence is not the best. NIGHT WORK. According to the State factory inspector, there are something over 17,000 girls between the ages of thirteen and sixteen who work in manufactur- ing establishments of the State. Of this number approximately 4,000 work all night in the textile mills, and it was estimated at the beginning of this investigation that nearly fifty per cent of these are under thirteen years of age. A promi- nent Scranton lawyer is responsible for the state- ment that "more than one-half of the children who work all night in the textile mills are under the statutory age. Fully 75 per cent of all the girls who do night work are under fifteen years." The legal age in Pennsylvania is thirteen, but, as Judge Gray took occasion to remark, some of the State laws are but dead letters in the anthra- cite regions. In one week following the disclos- ures before the Commission over two hundred children were removed by -a single inspector. Child labor seems to be largely in demand. Prosperity means an increased market for silk and laces. "Girls wanted" is found on signs tacked to the factory doors. This tends to make the employers careless in scrutinizing the age cer- tificates. Every child has to produce a certificate which purports to show that she is at least thirteen years old. If the parent, or even the PENNSYLVANIA CHILD LABOR. 99 child herself, makes out this certificate it covers the letter of the law and relieves the responsible ones of legal responsibility. The root of the question lies in the incentive which prompts a misstatement. The first cause is poverty. There are about seventeen hundred and fifty thousand children between the ages of ten and fifteen years employed in the mines and factories of the United States, according to Mr. Waudby. "The alarming rapidity of the increase of this traffic in human flesh and blood has been so insidious as to have, like the rising tide of the sea, engulfed us before we discovered it. Child labor of the past and child labor of the present are two different problems. In the first instance the child was not considered as a 'wage earner,' but was sent into the mills, the mines and the factories, for the purpose of learning a trade. Now-a-days he is sent into these hives of in- dustry to become an integral part of a machine and as such is looked upon with no personal re- gard whatever. His employer has no interest in his welfare beyond what his productive capacity will bring forth. The factories, the mines, the work shop and the great mercantile establish- ments of our country teem with the labor of chil- dren. The report of the census office for the year 1900, when issued, will show that for the mainland of the United States, excluding Alaska and Hawaii, there were, approximately, one mil- lion seven hundred fifty thousand persons from ten to fifteen years of age, inclusive, reported as engaged in gainful occupations. Hundreds of thousands of little children are being defrauded of their American heritage — the TOO AMERICAN PAUPERISM. right to a liberal education — by being compelled to work in the mills, the mines and the work shops, thus being stunted in body as well as in mind ! Accidents to the boy mine workers, who claim about eight cents an hour, are of daily occurrence, and many of them are of a fatal nature. At Scranton, last November, Charles Bie- berich, a fourteen-year-old boy, was killed in the Gibbon breaker, and, before the machinery could be stopped, the body was horribly mangled. In the cotton and woolen mills of North Caro- lina 3,857 boys and 4,139 girls under fourteen years of age work from ten to over twelve hours per day. Over a thousand children between the ages of six and fourteen are employed in fine cotton mills which stand within a mile of the State Capi- tol of South Carolina. More than a thousand children are kept at work in the coal cellars of New York." (Wil- liam S. Waudby, Special Agent U. S. Depart- ment of Labor, in Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly for April, 1903.) Child labor in the textile mills in the South is reduplicated not only in other industries in the South, but in the Middle States, and in more than one Northern State, notwithstanding many years of child labor legislation. Child labor in the North is employed to a very much greater extent than in the South. Besides the thirteen thousand children under sixteen em- ployed in the factories of New York, there are thousands in the stores, thousands on the streets, and other thousands scattered throughout the offices of the citv. Child labor has assumed PENNSYLVANIA CHILD LABOR. IOI stupendous proportions. Children are deformed, maimed, weakened, and made diseased for life in many of the trades flourishing in every industrial community. In the Minnesota Bureau of Labor, for instance, the statistics show that the accidents among children are many times more common than those among adults. (Wm. English Wall- ing, in the Eltical Record for January, 1903.) We will conclude with Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Cry of the Children" : "Do you hear the children weeping, O my brothers? They are weeping bitterly. They are weeping in the playtime of the others, In the country of the free. They look up with their pale and sunken faces, And their looks are sad to see, For the man's hoary anguish draws and presses Down the cheeks of infancy — 'Your old earth,' they say, 'is very dreary' ; 'Our young feet,' they say, 'are very weak,' For, 'oh,' say the children, 'we are weary, And we cannot run and leap.' For all day the wheels are droning, turning, Their wind comes in our faces, Till our hearts turn, our heads with pulses burning, And the walls turn in their places — Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling, Turns the long light that drops adown the wall, Turns the black flies that crawl along the ceiling, All are turning, all the day, and we with all. All the day the iron wheels are droning, And sometimes we could play 'Oh, ye wheels' (breaking out in a mad moaning), 'Stop! Be silent for the day!' 'Ay ! be silent ! Let them hear each other breathing For a moment, mouth to mouth ; Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing Their tender human youth. Let them feel that this cold metallic motion Is not all the life God fashions or reveals; 102 AMERK AN PAUPERISM. Let them prone their living souls against the notion That they live in you or under you, O wheels!' Still all day the iron wheels go onward. Grinding life down from its mark; And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward, Spin on blindly in the dark." THE CAUSES OF POVERTY IN THE UNITED STATES. The philosophy of life of our mercantile civili- zation was aptly summarized by Carlyle in the following words : "Scramble along thou insane scramble of the world, thou art all right and shall scramble even so on. And who ever in the press is trodden down has only to lie there and be trampled broad. Ours is a world requiring only to be well let alone." We justify this "scramble of the world" by all kind of more or less euphonious but meaning'less phrases about "the survival of the fittest" and other pseudo-scientific individualistic maxims. We are not satisfied with "trampling broad" those of our brothers and sisters in hu- manity who happen to be weaker than we are economically, but we add insult to injury by label- ing them as "unfit to survive." As a matter of fact, however, it is not the parasitic minority who trample down who survive, but just the reverse. The proletariat, in spite of its being trodden down "and trampled broad," survives and justifies its name, while the idle rich die out. The so-called "law of the survival of the fittest" is the weakest point in the Darwinian philosophy, and, if ap- plied to demography, proves to be merely a para- phrase of the long-ago exploded theory of Mal- thus. The very idea of an over-populization of America seems preposterous. As, however, Mal- thusian views are still surviving in the minds of 103 104 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. the uncritical multitude a few words about them may he not out of place in this treatise. We will quote here such authorities on the subject as Nitti and Loria. Malthus' law explains nothing just as it com- prehends nothing. Bound by rigid formulas which are belied by history and demography, it is incapable of explaining not only the mystery of poverty, but the alternate reverses of human civilization. Statistical examinations show that the birth rate scarcely ever goes below 20 births for 100 inhabitants, and scarcely ever beyond 50. But all the oscillations which occur between 20 and 50 are but necessary results not of a bio- logical fatal law, but of economic and social laws, which vary with the change of civilization and of economic constitution. (F. S. Nitti, Population and Social System, p. 114.) When the earth ceases to be free, the new (born) members of the population depend for their subsistence upon the good-will of the Capi- talist class, that is to say, upon the increase of profit, which it consents to distribute, under the form of food, among other classes. But until profit is raised, these increases of profit, which are spent in food, are sufficient to maintain the new members of the population, but must be divided into two parts, one of which keeps the worker, the other the mendicants, since these last are necessary to capital, in order to guarantee the continuance of the minimum salary and of (maxi- mum) profit. Hence, there is formed a syste- matic excess of population not over food] hut over capital (p. 133, Loria). This is practicallv a re-statement of K. Marx's assertion, that upon €7'cry Capitalistic organization weighs the neces- THE CAUSES OF POVERTY. 105 sity, at the risk of its peril, of producing arti- ficially a systematic excess of population. (Das Kapital, p. 645 and following.) The intrinsic cause which drove the capitalist class to originate by every means and every ex- pedient the rapid and abundant birth-rate of the wage-earning classes is simply the necessity of securing the persistence of profit. Indeed, we see that when wages are about the minimum and the persistence of profit is endangered, the capitalist class devises every means, and tries every way to impel the wage-earners to a great fecundity. (Loria, Vol. I, pp. 615-693, and Vol. II, pp. 380-416.) They (the capitalists) leave nothing untried — advice, influence by inducement, and even cor- ruption of manners are resorted to. And that which finally drives the wage-earner to this is the utter impossibility of a provident life and the need of finding in the work of women and chil- dren a margin to compensate for the decrease of the wages of adults. (Nitti, Population, etc., pp. I34-I35-) When the permanence of profit is menaced by the slight proportion between births and deaths, the capitalist class restricts the demand for work and occasions pauperism, and hence the abundant and disordered birth rate, which is its fatal con- sequence (loco citato, p. 135). In England, as in every industrial country, the wages of women and children supplemented insufficient wages of the adult. Then the laboring classes, compelled by necessity, abandoned the prudent foresight, which it had maintained centuries, and multiplied itself without bounds. But when the laws forbid child labor which menaces the decay of the race, 106 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. the employers have already attained their end, the reduction of the wages of the adult, (p. I37-) The birth rate is determined by the economic form. In a country where the irregularity of distribution of wealth is very great, and there exists a large class of wage earners, the birth rate tends to be disordered and abundant. On the contrary, in a country where social (national) wealth is greatly subdivided (as in France) and the number of small possessors large, the birth rate tends to be slight, (p. 139.) When wages tend to increase and the workers have a chance and even sometimes the hope of ease, the capitalist class, seeing itself menaced, tends to change a great part of capital from pro- ductive into unproductive. And thus it originates and grows an entire parasitical class whose only function is to crystallize wages and secure the permanence of profit, (p. 140.) The worker of the day is led by two motives to an improvident fecundity. On the one hand, he very soon arrives at the ultimate limit of aspirations, the apex of his career, hence every effort of ulterior improvement, and, indeed, every idea of foresight is completely thrown aside, while on the other hand, the possibility of em- ploying children in factories leads to the idea of increasing the income of his family by in- creasing the number of his family. (Le Popula- tion, Loria, p. 74.) A great birth rate always answers to a great depression of the working classes, to sinallness of wages, to a bad distribution of wealth. (Nitti, p. 1 59.) The great merit of K. Marx — a merit allowed him even by his great opposer, Lujo THE CAUSES OE POVERTY. \Oj Brentano — consists in having shown the falsity of the thesis, according to which, wages are con- sidered dependent upon the excess existing in single industries, (p. 160.) The fact is that the severest poverty has almost always occurred in countries and at times when the means of subsistence sufficed for the popula- tion, and even far exceeded it. (p. 165.) In the United States of America capital often restricts the demand for labor and produces in the greatest period of the development of the public wealth, a decrease of wages, the multiplic- ity of men without work, and pauperism. (Loria loco citato.) Nitti states the new demographic law as fol- lows : Given the constitution of modern society, the economic situation does not depend upon the in- crease of the population but, on the contrary, not only the number of those who live, but even the number of those who are bom, depend upon the economic situation. Every improvement of the condition, every diffusion of wealth, every increase of wages, and of the standard of living, exercises a useful in- fluence on the birth rate. Hence, nothing is more certain to fix limits to the birth rate than high wages and diffusion of ease. (p. 162.) As in animal struggle for existence parasitical species are deeply injured by the decrease of the species upon which they prey and subsist — the parasitical classes of human society are injured by a decreased birth rate in the productive classes. All the talk about over-population as a cause 108 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. of poverty of the proletariat is not only a per- version of truth, but a malicious falsehood com- ing with ill grace from those who are directly profiting from the same artificial over-population and do all they can to produce it. It is con- temptible cant. Another alleged cause of poverty is insufficient production of commodities. This represents an- other paraphrase of Malthusianism. In order to do full justice to the analysis of this alleged cause we have to review the industrial evolution of the United States. Such a review was published by a high authority on the subject in question, the United States Commissioner of Labor, Carrol D. Wright ; and we will follow his exposition in our investigation as far as statistical data are concerned. THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. Among the first European settlers of North America the simple production of useful articles (commodities) prevailed. The producers worked independently from each other at their own homes with their own tools and raw materials. The product of labor constituted the individual prop- erty of each producer. Social-economic relations in the colonies were, however, too complex to allow the direct exchange of commodities be- tween various producers. The commodities were disposed of on the open market with the aid of a class of middlemen, who appropriated the lion's share of the product in the shape of profit. Only two distinct forms of accumulated wealth, the merchants' and money lenders' capital, was handed down by the middle ages. The feudal sys- tem in the country and the guilds in the towns of England hindered the mediaeval capital from turning into industrial capital. The American colonists naturally followed the conditions and circumstances of the mother country. Individual production could not, however, satisfy the eco- nomic needs of the growing colonies for a long period of time. The stringent legislation of the English government, putting an export duty on woolen broadcloth and prohibiting the exporta- tion of sheep, wool and woolen yarn from Eng- land, stimulated the colonists to the development of home manufacture of woolen goods. Many la- 109 T10 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. borers were assembled in one workshop and tinder the personal direction of the employer produced goods, passing the article from hand to hand on its way to completion. A certain crude division of labor was essential to this stage of social pro- duction. And yet the handicraft, the personal skill of the highly trained laborers, made up the foundation of the manufacturing form of co-op- eration. The actual productive factors were men, not as yet the tools of production, machinery. The manufacturing period lasted approximately from 1656 to 1789, when the new constitution went into effect. As in the case of the manufac- turing system, the narrowly-selfish policy of the English government stimulated the industrial de- velopment of North America. The mainsprings of the rapid abandonment of the manufacturing system in favor of the more perfect factory sys- tem of production were the successful applica- tions of the principles of theoretical science to the actual problems and needs of production by such inventors as Hargreaves, Arkwright and Dr. Ed- ward Cartwright. We will have a chance to analyze the machine production later on more fully. At present it will suffice to state that one of the most characteristic features of the capitalistic or machine production consists in the divorce between the actual pro- ducer and his tools of production. The main fac- tor in manufacturing production was the skilled laborer who worked with relatively crude tools. Under capitalistic production the main factor is the highly perfected tool of production — the ma- chine. One of the necessary conditions for the ap- pearance, growth and development of modern machine production is the existence of a free THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. Ill laborer, who would sell his labor power, the sum total of his mental and physical faculties, for a definite time, for the purpose of producing useful articles. This free laborer has to be compelled by social economic conditions to sell the com- modity called labor-power as a means of subsist- ence for him and his family. It is obvious that the existence of the institution of slavery in the Southern States made the growth and develop- ment of capitalistic production impossible. The economically advanced Northern States possessed a class of free laborers or proletarians, but they could not compete in the world's market with the free labor of slaves in the South. The move- ment for the abolition of African slavery must be considered as a great labor movement, it was a movement against free slave labor and in favor of a more advanced economic system. The Civil War was an industrial struggle between the be- lated agricultural South and the economically advanced North. The abolition of African slav- ery cleared the way for the rapid development of the machine production and turned the United States into the most typical capitalistic country of the world. The economical development of the United States since i860 has no precedent in the history of humankind. The United States census of the year i860 reported the capital invested in mechanical and manufacturing industries as $1,009,855,715 and the products as $1,855,861,679. In 1890 the total capital invested in mechanical and manufacturing industries advanced to $6,525,156,456 and the value of the products to $9,372,437,283, an in- crease of 546 per cent in capital and 397 per cent in product. The per capita value of products for 112 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. 1890 amounted to $149. If we add to the manu- facturing the products of mining, agricultural products and fishery products we have a grand aggregate of $12,464,052,913 or $198 per capita. (Industrial Evolution in the United States, by- Carrol D. Wright, 1895, pp. 159, 160.) This marvelous development of the resources of the country finds its explanation in the ad- vanced methods of machine-production as com- pared with hand-production. The thirteenth annual report of the United States commissioner of labor presents some ex- ceedingly valuable statistics on the subject. The report embraces all kinds of industries and is quite complete in itself. We rearranged the fig- ures of the report for the sake of comprehensi- bility, so as to contain under one single heading all operations of manufacture, which were sub- jected to the same contraction in time in conse- quence of introduction of machinery as follows. The time of production was shortened under machine labor comparatively with hand labor to about two-thirds in the manufacture of flower pots ; three-fourths in the manufacture of pocket- books ; one-half in the manufacture of neckties, brooms, collar and cuff boxes, flask cartons, shoe brushes, jars, clock cases, corks, scythes, design- ing (engraving), dried prunes, hammocks, kin- dling wood, labels, cup plungers (leather), kid leather, saddles, saws, soup tureens (silver), cups (tin), tobacco (chewing), shovels, awnings, flags, tents, and in the mining of bituminous coal ; one- third in men's hats, sewer pipe, brick, buttons (vegetable ivory), divan frames, tops (carriages), sleighs, hatchets, mantles, engraving, boxes (sus- pender), wood cuts, diamond cuttings, chairs, THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 1 I 3 electrotyping, lockets (gold), faucets, sheet music, bread pans (tin), and sails; one-fourth in bags (other than paper), bookbinding, buttons (bone, brace), wagons, barrels, shotguns, bureaus (fur- niture), desks, pins (gold), ladders (wooden), marble (cutting), blinds, screens (window), sauce pans, wash basins (tin), screw drivers, chemises (woman's underwear), typewriting (copying), quarrying (granite); one-fifth in shoes (men's brogans), buggies, watch cases, shears, handkerchiefs, chair frames, bolts (iron), nuts (steel), cuff buttons, lasts, brown prints, milk pans (tin), cans (tin, tomato), chisels and spokes (wheel) ; one-sixth in rakes (steel), shoes (women's), boxes (tobacco), springs, hooks (brush), cleavers, lounges, chains (gold), gran- ite (groving), netting, doors, harness, under- skirts and window guards (springs) ; one-sev- enth in gold leaf (cutting), boxes (shoe), collars, brackets, teaspoons (silver), wire (gold), tables, mattresses (spring), rods (fishing), springs (fur- niture), measures (tin) ; one-eighth in shoes (men's calf), buttons (brass), carpets and boxes (pill) ; one-ninth in button molds, boots (men's pegged), boots (women's cheap), carpet (sew- ing), combs, rifle stocks and tips, sideboards, hats (women's), hair pins (silver), air chambers and float balls, tobacco (smoking), nail clippers, wheels and shirts; one-tenth in boxes (baking powder), files, rings (gold), marble urns and vases, posters and men's clothing; one-eleventh in gravel transportation ; one-twelfth in rakes (wooden), boots (women's fine), rivets, type and butter; one-thirteenth in bags (paper), railroad tickets (printing), axles (carriage), washers, granite (dressing), hymn books (printing), shin- I 14 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. gles and hammers; one-fourteenth in envelopes, bedsteads, coffee pots (tin), one-fifteenth in spring clips and spring hangers ; one-sixteenth in seals, pitchforks, collar buttons, threading pipe, canning fruit, cigars, dash boards and iron pipe, wrought. And so on. Machinery has lowered the cost of production, but the hand method of production is still exten- sive, though steadily going out of use. Some comparisons are made as follows: Ten plows, which cost $54.46 by hand labor, and which em- ployed two men for 1,108 hours, cost when made by machinery $7.90, employing 52 men for a total of 37 hours 28 minutes. One hundred blank books cost, when made by hand, $219.79 an d employed 3 men for 1,272 hours; they cost, when made by machinery, $69.97, employing 20 men for a total of 245 hours. Ruling 100 reams of paper cost, when done by hand, $400, and em- ployed 1 person 4,800 hours ; when done by ma- chinery it cost 85 cents and employed 2 persons for 2 hours and 45 minutes. The increase in the principal industries (tex- tiles, clothing, lumber, iron and steel, leather, boots and shoes, flour and meal, sugar, pepper, printing and publishing, carriages and wagons, foundry and machine shop products, and liquors, distilled and malt), forming over 60 per cent of the total product for all industries. The total capital invested in the several branches of the textile manufacture increased from $150,080,852 in i860 to $739,973,661 in 1890, or 393 per cent, while the value of product increased from $214,740,614 to $721,949,252. or 236 per cent. There were 1,091 establishments engaged in THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. II5 the manufacture of cotton in i860, with an aver- age product of $106,033 and an average of 4,799 spindles per establishment during the same pe- riod. In 1890 there were 905 establishments with an average product of $296,112 and an average of 15,677 spindles, an increase of 179 per cent in the product and of 227 per cent in the number of spindles per establishment. During the same pe- riod the aggregate capital invested in the industry increased from $98,585,269 to $354,020,843, or 259 per cent, and the value of product from $115,- 681,774 to $267,981,724, or 132 per cent. The capital invested in the different branches of wool manufacture increased from $38,814,422 to $245,886,743, or 533 per cent, and the product from $73,454,000 to $270,527,51 1, or 268 per cent. There were 213 establishments engaged in the manufacture of carpets in i860 with a capital of $4,721,768 and a product valued at $7,857,636. In 1890 the capital increased to $38,208,842 and the product to $47,770,193, while the number of establishments decreased to 173. The total num- ber of running yards of carpet in 1890 increased 90 per cent. The total capital invested in silk manufacture in i860 amounted only to $2,926,980 and the value of products to $6,607,771, being about 13 per cent of the entire consumption for that year. In 1890 the home factories produced 55 per cent of the total consumption, the product being valued at $87,298,454, while the capital invested in the industry had increased to $51,007,537. There were 3,968 establishments reported in i860 as engaged in the manufacture of women's and men's clothing, with a capital of $26,386,443 Il6 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. and a product of $80,758,344. The number of establishments had increased to 19,882, the cap- ital to $203,812,466 and the value of product to $446,186,834 in 1890. There were 12,487 estab- lishments reported in i860 engaged in the pro- duction of footwear, with a capital of $23,358,527 and a product of $91,891,498. In 1889, 1,959 factories were reported with a capital of $42,994,- 028 and a product of $166,050,354, the total num- ber of boots and shoes of all kinds manufactured during the year amounting to 125,478,511 pairs. In 1890 the capital invested in the industry amounted to $1 17.923,375 and a product of $280,- 215,185. The total number of boots and shoes in- creased in 1890 43 per cent over 1880. According to the United States Census of i860 there were 16,956 establishments, with a capital of $104,927,586 and a yearly product valued at $323,023,593, engaged in the manufacture of va- rious forms of food product. The grand aggre- gate for 1890 was 41,608 establishments, with a capital of $524,669,429 and a product of $1,647,- 477,291. The annual product for each of the four principal branches of the industry, viz: bread, crackers and other bakery product's, flour and grist mill products, slaughtering and meat packing, and sugar and molasses refining, exceeds $100,000,000. The manufacture of bakery prod- ucts reported for i860 amounted to $16,980,012 and for 1890 $128,621,535. The capital invested in the production of flour, meal and other prod- ucts of the grist mill in the United States in i860 amounted to $84,585,004 and the product to $248,580,365. In 1890 the capital was $208,473,- 500 and the product $513,971,474, being an in- THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 117 crease of 146 per cent in capital and 107 per cent in the value of the product. In 1870 there was invested in the meat pack- ing and slaughtering industry a capital of $22,- 124,787 and a product of $62,140,439. The cap- ital increased to $116,887,504 and the product to $561,611,668. The same increase applies to the manufactur- ing of cheese, butter, etc., etc. No branch of industry profited so much from the introduction of progressive methods as the iron and steel in- dustry. The capital invested and value of product in- creased from i860 to 1890 from $48,372,897 to $414,044,844 and from $57,160,243 to $478,687,- 519, respectively. The value of products in- creased from $207,208,696 in 1870 to $296,557,- 685 in 1880, or 43 per cent, while the quality of products increased 99 per cent. During the ten years from 1880 to 1890 the value of products increased from $296,557,685 to $478,687,519, or 61 per cent, and the tons of products increased 151 per cent. Quite instructive are the data about the petro- leum industry in the United States. In 1880 86 establishments were reported with a capital of $27,325,746 and a product valued at $43,705,218. In 1889 the number of establisments had in- creased to 94, the capital to $77,416,296 and the value of product to $85,001,198. The development of industry manifested itself likewise in the increase of capital invested and value of product in the manufacture of lumber, brick and tile and articles from gutta percha. In conclusion we will mention the printing and publishing industry. In i860 printing and pub- I I S \.\ir.UH \.\ PAUPERISM. lishing — including newspapers, periodicals, books and job printing — were reported by 1,666 estab- lishments with a captial of $19,622,318 and a product of $31,063,898. In 1890 tbere were 16,- 566 establishments reported for tbe same industry with a capital of $195,387,445 and a product of $275,452,515. The total production of the United States dur- ing the constitutional period, covering one hun- dred years of census taking, have been extended from twenty millions of dollars, as estimated for first census (1790), to $9,372,437,283 in 1890. In the distribution of this vast product for 1890 among the States, the State of New York leads with a product of $1,711,577,671, while Pennsyl- vania is second in line. Then comes Illinois. (Ibidem, pp. 160, 188.) The value of natural products can be stated in figures for the year 1889. In that year the farms gave $2,460,107,454 worth of products for the support of the people of the United States. The value of the products of all mining industries was $587,230,662, of the fisheries, $44,277,514; and of forests, $446,034,761. The total value of all these natural resources for the year 1889 was $3'537»650,39i. The wealth of the country, in- cluding land, buildings, merchandise and all forms of real and personal property, in 1890 amounted to $65,037,091,197, of which amount $39,544,544,333 represents the value of real estate and improvements thereon, and $25,492,546 that of personal property, including railroads, mines and quarries. In 1830 only 23 miles of railroads were oper- ated in the United States, while in 1890 there were 163,597 miles, and in 1893 there were 173,- THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. II9 433 miles. The population for each decennial census of the United States was as follows : Census year. Population. Per cent increase. 1790 3,929,214 1800 5,308,483 35.10 1810 7,239,881 36.38 1820 9,633,822 33.07 1830 12,866,020 33.55 1840 17,069,453 32.67 1850 23,191,876 35.87 i860 31,443,321 35.58 1870 38,558,371 22.63 1880 50,155,783 30.08 1890 62,622,250 (PP. 13, 75-) The influence of machinery on the producers consists in their displacement on one side, and opening- for them new fields of activity on the other. In the manufacture of agricultural imple- ments new machinery has, in the opinion of some of the best manufacturers of such implements, displaced full fifty per cent of the muscular labor formerly employed, as, for instance, hammers and dies have done away with the most particular labor on the plow. (p. 326.) It would require from fifty to one hundred million persons in this country working under the old system to produce the goods made and the work performed by the workers of to-day with the aid of machinery, (p. 334.) Ray Stannard Baker in his book "Our New Prosperity," published in 1900, draws a splendid picture of the national economic conditions in the United States. "It was in 1898 that the United States ex- ceeded Great Britain for the first time in the totals of her domestic export. In the following 120 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. year the foreign business of the United States passed for the first time in her history beyond two billion dollars, and her profits, — that is, — the excess of exports over imports, more than four hundred and seventy-six million dollars. In other words the United States in 1899 provided food, clothing and shelter, great quantities of foreign as well as domestic goods sufficient for comforta- ble and even luxurious living for her people, and sold abroad goods at the rate of a million and a half dollars in cash for every working day. All other great nations of the earth, except Russia, are heavy losers by their foreign business ; they buy so much more than they sell ; whereas the United States has made a profit since 1892 of over two billions of dollars." (p. 3.) Eighteen ninety-nine will go down in commer- cial history as the notable year in which the United States may be said to have ceased being a debtor nation and became a creditor nation. This was a year of extraordinary records also in the domestic business of the United States, which has long been of greater volume by millions of dollars a year than that of any other nation. The bank clearings, one of the surest indica- tions of the volume of the country's business, were billions of dollars greater they ever were before in the history of the nation. In five years from 1894 to 1899 they more than doubled. From 1898 to 1899 they increased by 33 per cent, and 1898 was itself a remarkable year. The rail- roads never experienced such prosperity, the year 1899 showing the smallest number of receiver- ships with two exceptions since 1876 and larger earnings than ever before. Never was there such an expansion in the various manufacturing indus- THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTIO 121 tries. Steel rails doubled in price between Feb- ruary and August ; cotton became a profitable crop, copper made unprecedented raises. And never before was there so much money in circu- lation in the country, either in volume or in per capita distribution ; and never before were the totals in the people's savings in the banks so enormous. It was also a year of extraordinary coal, gold, iron ore, lumber, copper and corn pro- duction, the year of the most profitable lake and coastwise steamer traffic since the civil war, and by all odds the greatest year of business and prof- its on the Stock Exchange, (pp. 4, 5, 6.) Great increase in gold production. — M. L. Muhlman, United States Assistant Treasurer in New York, prepared an exceedingly valuable table comparing the stock of gold of all European banks of issue with the entire stock in the United States. Gold in the European Banks Gold in the of issue. United States. Jan. 1st, 1897 $1,591,000,000 $ 693,000,000 1898 1,749,000,000 745,000,000 1899 1,632,000,000 949,000,000 1900 1,595,000,000 1,016,000,000 It will be seen from this table that while Europe gained only $4,000,000 between 1897 and 1900, and actually lost in the year 1899, the United States gained the enormous sum of $323,000,000, making the total stock of gold only one-third smaller than that of the combined banks of Europe, (pp. 28, 29.) Advance in per capita circulation. — Back in i860 if the money of the United States could have been divided up, giving an equal share to every man, woman and child in the country, there 122 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. would have been $13.85 for each. By 1880 this per capita share of the circulation was $19.41 and in 1890 it was $22.82. It rose to $24.28 in 1894. On February 1, 1900, it reached its climax of $25.98, the highest in the history of the nation, (pp. 29-31.) A glance at the number of commer- cial failures as recorded by Dun's Review, will show how they decreased from over 15,000 in 1893, with an enormous total of liabilities of nearly $347,000,000, to only 9,337 failures in 1899, with liabilities of less than $91,000,000. (P- Si.) United States as a food producer. — It is esti- mated that we grow 80 per cent of the entire corn crop of the world and consume most of it at home. Of wheat, "the world's food," we are the greatest producers among the nations, surpass- ing our nearest rival, Russia, in 1898 by over 200,000,000 bushels. Our crops are over one- third of that of all Europe, and almost a quarter of that of the entire world. We have been ex- porting for several years past more wheat than is raised either in Hungary or Germany^ and more than the total production of the continent of South America, including the vast fields of Ar- gentine. Of oats, the United States raises more than any other country, and we also produce large quantities of barley and rye, although not as much as Europe produces. In meat production our record is quite as satis- factory. We own about one-third of all the swine in the world. The value of pork exported in 1898 and 1899 amounted to $110,000,000 each year. " The United States is the greatest cattle raiser among the nations, the total number of head be- ing now nearly 45.000.000, or between one-sixth THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. I23 and one-seventh of the entire stock in the world. In the matter of mutton production we do not make as good a showing as in cattle raising, Australia, Russia, and Argentine exceeding us, but still we own about one-sixteenth of the world's sheep, more than enough to furnish us with all the mutton that we can use. Thus of the food staples, bread, meat, butter, milk, as well as vegetables and fruit, we are the most extensive producers, for we not only feed ourselves, but help to supply our neighbors. As a clothing producer America is abundantly able to clothe her population without assistance from foreign nations. In 1899 America's output of iron and steel products was about 40 per cent of the world's total. In 1899 the United States took her place as the greatest coal producing country. Her output constitutes more than one-third of the world's supply, and it not only satisfies her own enormous requirements, but helps to supply the foreign market as well. The annual output of petroleum amounts to 2,500,000 gallons or half of the total output of the world. United States has the greatest mileage of rail- roads, the greatest amount of freight transported and the most extensive marine traffic. In the matter of national debt the United States is less hampered than any other great na- tion, having a smaller national debt than even Italy or Spain." (pp. 246-253.) The review of the economic growth and devel- opment of the United States indicates beyond the shadow of a doubt that inadequate production of 124 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. commodities, or insufficient national wealth, can- not be considered as causes of poverty. Poverty exists in the United States in spite of the growth of wealth of the entire nation unprecedented in the history of humanity. The striking contrast between the great wealth of the nation and the poverty of the toiling masses suggests to us that there must be something abnormal in the dis- tribution of the national wealth among the classes on one side and the masses on the other, and that this inequality in the distribution of wealth may give us the key to the explanation of the causes of poverty. We will first see what Carrol D. Wright has to say on the subject of the number of persons em- ployed in the various branches of production and their wages. (See his "Industrial Evolution.") "The number of men and women reported em- ployed in 1850 was 957,059 or 4.13 per cent of the entire population. In i860, 4.17 per cent; in 1870, 5.33 per cent; in 1880, 5.45 per cent; in 1890, 7.35 per cent of the entire population. If the percentage for 1890 is based on the population of fifteen years ago and over it will be found that those having mechanical or manufacturing occu- pations amount to 12.61 per cent of the total. The total amount of wages for 1850 was re- ported as $236,755,464. In 1890 the number of wage earners is reported as 4,712,622 and the wages as $2,283,216,529 ; reducing the figures to a comparable basis, the figures show an increase of 347.88 per cent in numbers and 707.22 per cent in total wages over 1850. During the same pe- riod the average annual earnings per employee increased from $249.38 to $445.85, being an in- crease of 198.47 or 80.22 per cent. THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 1 25 The net value (i. e., the value remaining after deducting the cost of materials, the value added to the raw material by labor) is a very interesting indication of industrial development. For all the industries in the United States the data show that in 1850 51 per cent of the net value was assigned to labor and in 1890 45 per cent. (p. 192.) In the thirty years from i860 to 1890 the proportion of net products assigned to labor in the shoe manufacturing industry de- creased from 63 to 53 per cent, the annual earn- ings increased to 447.44; the net product in- creased 171 per cent; and the capital required for one dollar of net product to eighty-eight cents. The average number of men, women and chil- dren engaged in mechanical and manufacturing industries was 3,492,029, receiving $1,590,997,000 wages, the number being 74 per cent of the total wages. The men numbered 2,881,795, receiving $1,436,482,387 as wages. The women numbered 505,712, receiving $139,329,719 as wages; the (children numbered 104,522, receiving $14,704,891 as wages. The annual average earnings for men was $498, for women $276 and for children $141. (p. 199.) Indicated decimally the increase in average wages from i860 has been from 82.5 in 1840 to 168.6 in 1890. Of course the purchasing power of the wages and the change in the standard of living may have made this increase rather illusory. Carrol D. Wright's exposition on that score does not seem to us conclusive, (p. 227.) Carrol D. Wright's and other data of official statistics we quote below claim that prices de- clined to a level lower than in 1840, while the I_>6 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. wages increased to fabulous proportions. This seems to be far too optimistic. In the sixteenth annual report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor there are quotations of prices of commodities covering the period from 1752 to 1883 and a general comparison from 1830 to i860. It appears that from 1830 to i860 agricultural products advanced in price 62.8 per cent; burn- ing oils and fluids, 29 per cent; candle and soap, 42.6 per cent ; dairy products, 38.8 per cent ; fish, 9.8 per cent ; flour and meal, 26 per cent ; fuel (wood), 54.4 per cent; meats, 53 per cent. It is true that prices on manufactured goods — boots, shoes, clothing, dress goods and dry goods — correspondingly declined. The working men, however, use comparatively little of manufactured goods, while they cannot get along without a fixed quantity of food products. Especially note- worthy is the enormous increase in rent. H. L. Bliss, contributor of statistical articles to the Journal of Political Economy and American Journal of Sociology, in his pamphlet "Plutoc- racy's Statistics," subjects the official statistics to a most rigid criticism, especially wage statistics, and proves that the data about wages and prices are doctored "in the most unscrupulous manner in the interest of plutocracy." After having re- jected the official data as intentionally falsified he presents his own figures, which we quote here. The Massachusetts report regarding manufac- turing industries for 1897 (p. 174) presents com- parative statistics for 4,695 identical establish- ments for the years 1896 and 1897, showing aver- age annual earnings of $426.66 in the former and $421.69 in the latter year. The average time worked was 281.03 ^Y s in the former and 283.33 THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 1 27 in the latter year. Thus there was $5 less pay and two days' more work. The report for 1898 (p. 72) gives statistics of 4,701 establishments for the years 1897 and 1898, which show average annual earnings as $422.26 in 1897 and $421.48 in 1898. The work- ing time increased from 284.05 days to 286.28 days. Thus there was paid 79 cents less for over two more days' work. The Massachusetts report for 1899 shows that in 4,740 establishments there was an increase in average annual earnings from $419.91 in 1898 to $427.71 in 1899, and that the average time worked was 286.27 days in 1898 and 294.14 days in 1899. Thus for 7.87 days' more work there was an increase in pay for the year of $7.80. This indicates a slight decrease in per diem wages. The decrease occurred notwithstanding the fact of a greater increase in male than in female em- ployees; the increase was, males, 10.6 per cent; females, 7.63 per cent. The increase in number of employees of both sexes was 9.58 per cent. In 1898 the increase in the number of employees was 1.80 per cent. In 1897 it was 2.72 per cent. The Pennsylvania report for 1898 gives com- parative statistics of 961 identical establishments for the years 1896, 1897 and 1898, but the report of 1S99 makes comparison of but 855 establish- ments. It seems somewhat singular to find omitted all of the establishments of the clothing industry, nine in number. It does not seem pos- sible that the whole nine could have gone out of business. The average daily wages in these es- tablishments, having 3,105 employees, was, ac- cording to the report of 1898, but 66 cents. This [28 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. and other omissions from the li§t of establish- ments for which comparison is made, seems to have been due to the purpose of obtaining a higher average wage for 1899. The following shows the average number of days the establish- ments were in operation, the average annual earn- ings and daily wages for 855 establishments as given in the report of the secretary of Internal Affairs of Pennsylvania (part 3). Days in operation. Average annual Daily wages. earnings. 1806 268 $409.81 $1.33 1897 276 3S2.94 1.39 1898 286 398.69 1.39 1899 288 4.32.49 1.50 It should be understood that the average an- nual earnings is obtained in both Massachu- setts and Pennsylvania reports by dividing the total wages by the average number of employees, and represents the average an- nual earning of only those operatives who are employed during the whole time the estab- lishment is in operation. It will be noticed that while the average wages, as well as average earnings, were higher in 1899 than in 1898, the average wages were lower than in 1896. Thus we have in 1899 an increase in per diem wages, according to the Pennsylvania report, and a de- crease according to that of Massachusetts. Aver- ages are, however, often deceiving. The Massachusetts reports cover nearly every manufacturing establishment in the state of any importance and therefore come nearer reflecting the condition of wage-earners generally than could be done by the comparison for a few estab- lishments. THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 120, The Pennsylvania report shows a larger in- crease in the number of those employed in the higher paid industries, notably in iron and steel production. As we have already discovered, the statistician has dropped establishments from the comparison that might show an increase in the lowest paid employees. Let us, however, take a single industry, one in which there has been a boom, largely owing to foreign demand. Taking the pig iron industry we find the following fig- ures : Days in operation. Average annual Daily wages. earnings. 1896 289 $396.30 $1.37 i897 306 4I4-92 1.36 1898 326 442-32 1.32 1899 327 496.18 1. 51 This seems quite favorable to the wage earner, for he gets nearly $100 more for his year's work than in 1896, though working 38 days more to obtain it. This is what he gets. Let us see what is the increased value which his labor produces and which he does not get. The following figures are brought together from page 513 of this report: 1896. 1899. Average realized value per ton $11.21 $1501 Average cost of basic material 6.52 5.94 Average cost of labor per ton 1.14 1.16 Thus labor receives an increase of 2 cents per ton while the employer realized an increased mar- gin between selling price and cost of labor and material of $4.36 per ton. Compared with the reports of earlier years, ac- cording to the Massachusetts manufacturing re- 130 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. turns, the average annual earnings decreased from 1892 to 1898 $30.73 and such earnings were one-third of a dollar less in 1898 than in 1894, the year following the disastrous panic of 1893, a panic which, though world-wide, may, in a measure at least, be attributed to legislation, (pp. 24, 25 and ^6.) The most reliable statistics indi- cate not only a fall in wages since the panic of 1893, but that there has been an almost continuous decline from the high wages preceding the panic of 1873. Especially deplorable are the wages earned by women. Riis (in his "Other Half," etc., p. 241) states for New York City as follows. Sixty cents is put as the average day's earnings of the 150,000 (working girls and women), but into this compu- tation enters the stylish "cashier" two dollars a day as well as the thirty cents of the poor little girl who pulls thread in an East Side factory, and, if anything, the average is probably too high. Such as it is, however, it represents board, rent, clothing and "pleasure" to this army of workers. Here is the case of a woman employed in the manufacturing department of a Broadway house. She is typical of a hundred other women. She averages $3 (three) a week. She pays $1.50 for her room, for breakfast she has a cup' of cof- fee. Lunch she cannot afford, one meal a day is her allowance. This woman is voung and she is pretty. She has the "world before her." (p. 241.) The Fourth Annual Report of the Commis- sioner of Labor, 1885, "Working Women in Large Cities," contains the following data: "Seventeen thousand four hundred and twenty- THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 131 seven working- women living in 22 cities of the United States were interviewed by the agents of of the Department of Labor. The cities selected are thoroughly representative of different parts of the country, including the South, the North and West, the Middle States, the Pacific coast and the Atlantic slope. As six to seven per cent of the actual number of women in the employments considered in these cities were treated of in the report, the results of the last may be considered as fairly illustrative of the condition of the entire class of toiling womanhood. From the 17,427 only 6 were children under 10 years of age, and 247 of the number had begun work before they were 10; four were 10 years old, and 337 had be- gun at 10; 16 were 11. and 964 had begun at 11 ; 48 were 12, and 1,388 had begun at twelve; 236 were 13, and 2,502 had begun at 13; over one- sixth were 16 or under, and 13.505 had begun at 16 or under. More of the girls were 18 than of an)- other age. The average age at work was 22 years and 7 months ; the average age for begin- ning 15 years and 4 months. The number who worked after they were 30 years old was 267 ; and those who worked after 40 was 76. Ten thousand four hundred and fifty-six of the girls had attended public schools, and 5,375 had been in other schools. That the school training they received was not of a high order can be judged by the fact that 947 girls who reported that they attended school could not read an easy sentence. The report suggests the conclusion that in the 22 cities investigated there were about 300,000 working women of an average age of 22, who started to work at the average age of 15 with a very poor school training. 132 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. The conditions under which women work are less favorable than those of the male workers. The wages paid were found to average $5.24 for 13,822 women who reported; 373 earned less than $100 per year; there were some 400 who received from $450 to $500 ; but over half received as much as $150 but less than $300. About 150,- 000 women in the 22 cities investigated were com- pelled to live on such beggarly incomes, be re- spectably dressed and "look pleasant" during business hours. Some women reported that they averaged from their regular occupation an income of about $295 a year, that their expenses for rooms and meals amounted to about $162, for clothes about $80, and for other expenses about $38, leaving them a surplus of $15 a year. These, however, were cases where the women had a home ; 14,918 out of 17.427 live at home. Of these nearly 10,000 assist with housework, and over 13,000 either give their earnings to their family or pay board. Director of Charities Harrison B. Cooley, Ohio, has been looking into the condition of Cleveland's working women. In the report which he has prepared from personal investigation and observa- tion he avers that he is grievously suprised at the result. He found that the average cost of living for a woman of this class was $5.24, while the average wage is $4.83. He stated that out of thirty-eight women he questioned, twelve were earning $3 and six were earning but $2 per week. This, he declares, is a fair representation of the general condition. The director said, "To those who are permitted to see it, the tragedy of our modern industrial and social system is appalling. The cruel and unjust conditions real'v cause a THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. I33 ruin and degradation of life a hundred fold more than the things reformers are more prone to at- tack." (Taxpayer and Workingmen. ) Returning to official statistics we find the fol- lowing instructive data. The census of the de- cade 1 890- 1 900 contains the following figures. The total increase of the population of the United States during that decade was 20.7 per cent ; the total increase of the number total value of products in the United States during that de- cade was 23.2 per cent : the total increase of the number of laborers in the United States was 25.2 per cent. The total increase of laborers was 8y 2 per cent greater than that of wages. The solid fact is painfully emphasized by the following figures. The average wages in 1890 were $444.83 and in 1900 only $439.09. That means actually $6.88 or 1.5 per cent less in 1900 than in 1890. According to Dun's Index the prices of 350 articles mostly used by the working class averaged during that time an increase of 1.8 per cent. If we deduct this increase of prices from the rate of wages we will get a reduction of 3.3 per cent in the real wages, or the purchas- ing power of a day's work. The decreased pur- chasing powers of a dollar alone during that pe- riod would indicate a decline of 2 per cent in actual wages. Let us now take into consideration the corre- sponding data of the previous census for the de- cade 1 880- 1 890. The increase of the number of laborers from 1880-1890 amounted to 55.61 per cent, while the total wages for that decade increased 99.5 per cent. The aggregate wages paid to them in- 134 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. creased 79 per cent faster than the number of total laborers. Dividing the total wages by the total number of laborers from 1880-1890 the aver- ages wages increased 28 J/2 per cent. Moreover, the purchasing power of a dollar rose 8 per cent, making an increase in real wages of more than 38 per cent. Comparing now the data of the two censuses we are forced to the conclusion that there was a remarkable fall in the actual wages during the last decade, a fall amounting, accord- ing to the most conservative calculation, to about 2 per cent in the decade 1890-1900 if only the purachising power alone would be taken into con- sideration and the rate of wages would be as- sumed as stationary. In order to be fair we will glance at the figures expressing the state of eco- nomic growth of production in the country in gen- eral. The comparison of the two censuses in that re- spect shows that the increase in the total product was, both actually and relatively, greater from 1 880- 1 890 than from 1890- 1900, the increase be- ing 39 per cent for the last against 74.51 per cent for the first. In proportion to the population the wealth product in 1880 was $107 per capita, in 1890 $149, or an increase of $42 per capita; in 1900 it was $170, showing an increase of $21 per capita. So it appears that the product per capita increased just twice as fast in 1880- 1890 than in 1890- 1900. The comparative wages in gold were as fol- lows : Date. Daily wages in gold. January, i860 $1.18 January, 1873 1.81 January, 1801 1.69 THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 135 In other words, wages in gold in the urban es- tablishments which reported advanced 53^ per cent during the thirteen years between i860 and 1873. During the succeeding eighteen years, de- spite the continued advance in the productiveness of labor, they lost enough to reduce the net gain to 43 per cent. During the war the wages of labor advanced rapidly (about one-third if meas- ured in gold). After the war was over wages rapidly advanced till 1873. From that time until 1879 the wages fell rapidly. With the resumption of specie payment the wages started to increase pretty steadily until 1893. From the middle of that year wages fell again. According to the latest volumes of the Connecticut Labor Report and the Massachusetts "Statistics of Manufac- ture," the nominal rate of wages in 1894 had de- clined about seven per cent below the level of 1892, while the yearly level of the incomes of the laborers had been still reduced further by lack of employment. Manufacturing laborers have had a heavy share of the loss inflicted on all producers by the fall of prices. (Spahr — Distribution of Wealth, p. in.) Capital receives two-fifths of the national in- come, while the labor of all classes, including that of capitalists, receives three-fifths. Extra Census Bulletin 67, of the Eleventh United States Census, contains an array of fig- ures dealing with manufacturing industries in this country, the purpose being to show what propor- tion of such enterprises goes to the labor em- ployed in them. This table will show the conclu- sion succinctly : 136 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. Product total manufactures in 1890 $9,370,107,624 Material and miscellaneous cost 5,789,812,411 Wages cost 2,282,823,265 Balance to capital 1,297,471,948 Conditions in New York. — The Bureau of La- bor compiles statistics of wages and employees from the reports of 3,553 of the largest manufac- turing concerns of the State. The table shows how the number of employees increased from 1896 to 1899, fiscal vears, and especially from 1896 to 1898: Number of employees. 1896 299,957 1897 304,131 1.4 per cent increase 1898 326,090 7.2 per cent increase 1899 356.278 9.2 per cent increase Total increase in the years 56,321, 18.7 per cent. The aggregate of wages paid by the same es- tablishments : 1896 $141,184,845 1897 138,577,678 1.8 per cent decrease 1898 151,279,000 9.2 per cent increase 1899 162,645,649 7.5 per cent increase Increase wages 1889 over 1896, $21,460,804, or 15.2 per cent. From this table it will be seen that the number of men employed increased more rapidly (18.7 per cent) than did the total wages (15.2 per cent). In main the increase in number of men em- ployed in 1897 above 1898 was 20 per cent, while the increase in total earnings reached only 15 per cent. THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 1 37 Commissioner Martin F. McHale writes in February 16, 1900: "The relative cost of living- is on all sides conceded to be fully 20 per cent more than it was one and two years ago." The commissioners of Colorado, Minnesota and other States report decided advance in cost of living. The Massachusetts Labor Bulletin shows, on the whole, an upward tendency in prices. Here is a list which will show comparative prices of a few of the principal food commodities in the Boston market : January 1, 1899. January 1, 1900. Increase per cent. Sirloin steak 10 Bacon 10 Fresh pork 44 Butter 6 Coffee, sugar, molasses, salt, beans and most vegetables were slightly higher. Generally speaking meat was higher in price early in 1900 than a year previous, whereas bread was un- changed in price. Bradstreet's agency compiled a most valuable list, showing the commodities which changed in prices between January I, 1899, and January 1, 1900. INCREASES IN PRICE. Beef (live) Lard Sheep (live) Butter Hogs (live) Cheese Horses Mackerel Beef (carcasses) Coffee Hogs (carcasses) Sugar Milk Molasses Beef (family) Salt Pork Southern coke Bacon Linseed oil Hams Rosin U8 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. Beans Peas Potatoes Peanuts Lemons Raisins Hides Hemlock leather Union leather Oak leather Cotton Wool Hemp Jute Flax Print cloth Standard sheeting Ginghams Southern sheeting Petroleum Castor oil Turpentine Iron ore Eastern pig iron Southern pig iron Bessemer pig iron Steel billets Steel rails Tin plates Steel beams Copper Lead Tin Quicksilver Anthracite coal Bituminous coal Connelsville coke Rubber Paper Hay Cotton seed Olive oil Tar JANUARY i, 1899, AND JANUARY 1, 1000. INCREASES IN PRICE. Paper Spruce timber Nails Hemlock timber Carbolic acid Caustic Glass Alum Yellow pine Borax Sulphuric acid Quinine DECREASED IN PRICE. Wheat Rice Corn Carrots Oats Silver Barley Brick Rye Alcohol Flour Opium Mutton (carcasses) Hops Eggs Tobacco Tea Ground bone THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 139 UNCHANGED PRICES. Bread Aluminum Codfish Lime Apples Bicarbonate of soda Cranberries Nitric acid (pp. 61, 62.) To every unprejudiced mind this list proves conclusively that the most important food prod- ucts and most needed commodities increased in price. The decline in breadstuff's — wheat and corn — was only about six per cent. The Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics, in a pamphlet entitled Comparative Wages and Prices, 1 860- 1 892, states that, as a rule, wages were higher in 1897 than in 1881, only eight indus- tries being reported as exceptions, but the wages in 1897 were lower than in 1872. In the prices of groceries there was a decrease of 30 per cent from 1872 to 1877, and a decrease of 6.67 per cent from 1887. Provisions, as a whole, show a decrease of 18.52 per cent in 1897, compared with both 1872 and 1881. But even if it could be proven that prices of necessities declined, the rise in rent was so exorbitatnt as to overweigh this decline. Not only does this higher rent reduce to its full extent the portion of income available for other purposes, but the tenement house sys- tem, coincident with it, by precluding the possibil- ity of purchasing coal by the ton and wood by the load, drives up to extortionate figures the retail price of fuel. A part of the benefits which would otherwise have accrued to the wage earning class from the reduction that took place in the average retail prices of food and clothing was therefore transferred to the landlord and retail dealer. 140 AMERIC VN PAUPERISM. In connection with the investigation of the in- come of laborers it will be instructive to cast a cursory glance at their budget. According to Dr. Engel of Prussia a workingman with an in- come from $225 to $300 a year spends on means of subsistence 62 per cent of his earnings, while his expense and clothing reaches only 16 per cent. On lodging he spends 12 per cent; fuel and light, 5 per cent, making a total of 95 per cent ; 5 per cent being left for religion, legal protection, care of health and recreation. Very close to these figures are the data about the percentage of expenditures of a working- man's family with an income of $754.42 in the State of Massachusetts. He spends on subsist- ence, in round figures, 49 per cent; clothing, 15 per cent; rent, 19 per cent; fuel, 4 per cent; sun- dry expenses, 10 per cent. Dr. Engel 's figures for a laborer of approximately the same income are : Expenses for subsistence, 50 per cent ; clothing, 18 per cent; rent, 12 per cent; fuel, 5 per cent; sundry expenses, 15 per cent. (Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the State of New York, 1892, p. 294.) A number of budgets of workingmen's fami- lies residing in the State of New York show like- wise the preponderance of the percentage of the expenses for means of subsistence and rent over manufactured articles. It will suffice to quote here one typical budget of a carpenter's family with an income of $363. The expenses for rent, fuel and light make up 33.4 per cent ; food, 46.3 per cent; clothing, 11.6 per cent, and miscella- neous, 8.7 per cent of the budget, (p. 301.) The standard of living of the wage-earning class has not risen in proportion to its productiv- THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION'. 141 ity. The productivity, in fact, has increased most in the very things that the working class itself can neither consume, own or enjoy, (pp. 334, 335-) The State of New York contains nearly one- tenth of the population and over one-sixth of the total wealth of the Union. The review of the economic development of that State for the ten years from 1880- 1890, ac- cording to official data of the Labor Bureau, will be therefore of special interest. The total capital engaged in manufacturing in- dustries of all kinds, after making necessary sub- tractions for industries and items omitted in the previous census, increased 97.37 per cent from 1880 to 1890 in the City of New York. The number of hands employed in manufactur- ing industries in the City of New York increased 48.9 per cent for the same period. In the aggregate, the capital invested in manu- facturing industries has increased in a higher ratio than the number of hands employed. The returns for seventy-five leading cities throughout the country show an increase of 123.51 per cent in capital, against the much lower increase of 65.77 per cent in the number of persons employed. This is one of the facts which confirm and illustrate the proposition that the average amount of capital required to successfully engage in business is steadily growing larger. This fact in its turn leads to an increasing concentration of the indus- trial activity in the shape of gigantic combines, monopolies and trusts as an inevitable result. The amount paid for labor in the City of New York increased 127.89 per cent and the average earnings of the workings were $653 in 1890, 142 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. against $427 in 1880, showing an increase of 52.93 cent. We have, however, no reliable data about the actual purchasing power of wages, modified by the change in prices and rents. This remark applies likewise to the following data. For the seventy-five cities above referred to the number of employees increased 65.77 P cr cent, but the aggregate wages paid increased 135 per cent, and the average individual earnings were $547 in 1890 agajnst $386 in 1880, an increase of 41.71 per cent. The number of persons employed in manufac- turing increased faster than the population. The wage system developed at an unprecedented rate in the State of New York during the past decade. 1880-1890, more so than in the rest of the United States. In the City of New York from 1880- 1890 the increase in the number in the industries was 103 per cent, while the returns of the seventy-five cities throughout the country show also a high rate of increase, (pp. 39 and 46.) The percentage of increase in the City of New York was as follows : Number of establishments reported, 103.18 per cent. Capital invested, 97.37 per cent. Number of hands employed, 48.90 per cent. Wages paid, 127.89 per cent. Cost of material used, 20.36 per cent. Value of products at works, 56.20. Population of the city, 25.62 per cent. The general public little realizes that the prob- lem of the unemployed in the United States is a grave one, almost as grave as any other phase of the labor problem. The Massachusetts Labor Report of 1897, for instance, shows that in 1885, when the State census was taken, the average loss THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. I43 from this source was one and one-sixth months or five weeks for al! the employees of the State. Even in years that are most prosperous the total loss of time on the part of the wage earners is great. There are, every year, for the workmen never off the pay roll, holidays and days when the factory stops for repairs, taking of stock, etc., and days that work is slack in certain depart- ments, and days of sickness, and finally, in certain important trades, there are days, and even whole seasons, in which work is practically suspended. It is a prosperous year indeed when the average wage earner aggregates forty-four "full weeks' employment. (Spahr — Distr. of Wealth, p. 101.) The Massachusetts State Board of Labor indi- cates that during 1873-78, the industrial depres- sion, that out of 318,000 men in the State en- gaged in mechanical pursuits, about 30,000 were unemployed. During the depression of 1882- 1885 it is estimated that about 1,000,000 were idle. During the depression following 1893 the trades unions' estimate put the number at about 4,500,000. Returns made to Bradstreet's, the re- sult of which were published December 23, 1893, show that in 119 cities 801,055 men, having about 1,956,110 persons dependent upon them, were out of employment. Carlos C. Classen, investi- gating the problem of unemployed, found in sixty cities 523,080 idle men. During the depression in 1885 there were in Massachusetts 816,470 per- sons engaged in gainful occupations ; of those 241,589 were unemployed during part of the year. The time lost, if we consider only the principal occupations of each individual, was 82,744 years. The net absolute loss of working time amounted to 78,717.76 years. T44 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. The Illinois Labor Report for 1886 published returns upon this point from representatives of eighty thousand wage earners. The summary of these returns is as follows : 40,281 Trades Unionists average 35.5 weeks — 68 per cent full time. 7,036 Coal miners average 23.4 weeks — 45 per cent full time. 5,567 Railroad men average 46.1 weeks — 88 per cent full time. 32,445 Knights of Labor average 41.5 weeks — 80 per cent full time. "If," says the commissioner, "it be considered necessary to make some allowance for any sup- posed disposition to exaggerate the case on the part of those who have stated it, or for error in judgment on the part of those stating it, the con- clusion might be somewhat modified and still show the average working time to be 75 per cent." In the Massachusetts report of 1879 the em- ployer returns show that 263,000 persons en- gaged in mechanical industries averaged 266.6 days' work, or approximately 44 weeks. The Massachusetts Manufactures Report for 1891 shows that the factories ran an average of 493/2 weeks, and the average number employed was one-tenth less than the greatest number employed. Among unskilled workmen the amount of time lost, according to all reports, is much greater, (p. 102.) Among the causes reducing the earning capaci- ties of the laboring class many adverse industrial conditions of our time have to be taken into con- sideration. THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 145 W. F. Willoughby in the Bulletin of the De- partment of Labor for 1901 (Vol. VI) presents the following data on accidents to labor. TOTAL RAILWAY EMPLOYEES AND NUMBER KILLED AND IN- JURED IN THE UNITED STATES, YEARS ENDING JUNE 30, 1899 TO 1899. Total Year. railway employees. Killed. Injured. 1889 704,743 1.972 20,028 1890 749-301 2,451 22,396 1891 784,285 2,660 26,140 1892 821,415 2,554 28,267 1893 873,602 2,727 31,729 1894 779,6o8 1,823 23,422 1895 785,034 1,811 25,696 1896 826,620 1,861 29,969 1897 823,476 1,693 27,667 1898 874,558 i,958 3i,76i 1899 928,924 2,210 34,923 NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES FOR EACH ONE KILLED OR INJURED BY RAILWAY ACCIDENTS IN THE UNITED STATES, YEARS ENDING JUNE 30, 1889 TO 1899. All employees. Years. Killed. Injured. 1889 357 35 1890 306 33 1891 295 30 1892 322 29 1893 320 28 1894 428 33 1895 433 31 1896 444 28 1897 486 30 1898 .447 28 1899 420 27 ACCIDENTS. The total number of casualties to persons on account of railway accidents, as shown for the year ending June 30, 1902, was 73,250, the number of persons killed having been 8,588 and the number injured 64,662. Of I46 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. railway employees, 2,969 were killed and 50.524 were injured. These figures show a very considerahle increase in the number of employees injured, a result due in part to the unusual increase in traffic and the consequent use of all kinds of equipment and the employment of untried men, and in part to the fact that since July 1, 1901, the carriers have been obliged by law to render monthly reports, under oath, to the commission, detailing the causes and circumstances surrounding all accidents to employees. The summaries giving the ratio of casual- ties show that 1 out of every 401 employees was killed, and 1 out of every 24 employees was injured. With reference to trainmen — including in this term engine- men, firemen, conductors, and other trainmen — it is shown that one was killed for every 135 employed, and 1 was injured for every 10 employed. One passenger was killed for every 1,883,706 carried, and 1 injured for every 97,244 carried. Ratios based upon the number of miles traveled, however, show that 57,072,283 pas- senger miles were accomplished for each passenger killed, and 2,946,272 passenger miles accomplished for each passenger injured. Mr. Hoffman has prepared a large number of tables for accidents to miners in different States, but the general results are summarized in the En- gineering and Mining Journal for November 24, 1900: FATAL ACCIDENTS IN THE COAL MINES IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 189O-1899. 1890 701" 1895 T ,020 1891 1,076 1896 1,091 1892 859 1897 909 1893 919 1898 1,004 1894 934 1899 1,200 FATAL ACCIDENTS IN COAL MINES IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA PER EACH 1,000 EMPLOYEES, 1890 TO 1899. 1890 2.43 1895 2.63 1891 3.3O 1896 2.78 1892 2.51 1897 2.8l 1893 2.46 1898 2.54 1894 2.47 1899 2.99 THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION'. I47 No country offers more illustrations of injury to railroad employees than the United States, in- jury caused by overwork on the part of the labor- ers and criminal neglect on the part of the soul- less railroad corporations. There were killed on the railroads in the United States during the year ending June 30, 1892, 2,551 employees, and 28,268 were injured. That is, one employee for every 322 men at work in this industry was killed, and one injured for every 29 men in the employ of the railways. In the case of the trainmen, the statistics for the same year show that there was one man killed for every 113 of this class of employees, and one was injured for every 10. (Report of the Statistics of the Interstate Commerce Commissioners in 1892, pp. 68, 78.) According to the Report of the United States Geological Survey the number of miners killed during the year 190 1 alone amounted to 1,467, while the number of wounded reached 3.643. Each 1,881,668 tons of coal mined in the United States are paid by the price of the life of one killed miner. In the anthracite mines of Penn- sylvania alone 513 miners were killed and 1,243 wounded, 277 women turned widows and 624 children orphans. Each 131,524 tons of coal mined in Pennsylvania is paid by the priec of the life of one miner. In the bituminous mines of Pennsylvania 301 miners were killed and 656 wounded, 184 women turned widows and 412 children orphans. The mining belt teems with cripples, invalids and orphans. Industrial conditions peculiar to our capital- istic system of production lead not only to acci- dents resulting in the death or invalidity of the I48 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. wage workers, but to the gradual chronic degen- eration of the working- class because of the dis- ease-begetting conditions that surround the work. The annual report of the Labor Commis- sioner of New Jersey for the year 1889 (p. 35), for instance, states as follows: "The writer has witnessed the decline of the generations of pot-makers within the past forty years." Page 36 shows data according to which of 240 sizers of pots or makers of hats 76 had catarrh, 44 rheumatism, 41 coughs, 17 have had "shakes," 13 had at that time "the "shakes," 12 constantly catching cold because of sudden change of temperature, 7 complained of dyspep- sia, 200 of stimulants and tobacco. The writer ascribes all this to poor sanitation. Unhealthy industrial conditions lead to a higher death rate among laboring classes than among the well-to-do. The Massachusetts statistics show that the average death age of a farmer is 65.19 years, which is the highest average in any occupation. The average age of death among male factory operatives is 38.92, and of female operatives only 27.98, which is the lowest average on the list. Next to female operatives in lowness of average wage earners with 33.84, plumbers with 35.43, and glass blowers with 37.81 years. According to Joseph Korosy, the eminent statis- tician of Buda Pesth, if we start at the age of 25 with 1,000 persons of each class there will be living at the end of 35 years of the merchants, 587; of the tailors, 421 ; of the shoemakers, 376; of the servants, 290 ; of day laborers, 253. Dur- ing this time the total number of years of life lived by the merchants was 28,001 and by day THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. I49 laborers only 22,317. But worse than this, of the years of life falling to the lot of the day laborers, 1,493 will be years of sickness, while of years of life lived by merchants only 824 will be years of sickness. In other words the merchant will have 33//J years in which to provide for one of sick- ness, while the day laborer will have only 13.9 years of health in which to provide for sickness. (Mittheilungen tieber Industrielle Mortalitat, 1876, p. 28.) According to Ansell, out of 100,000 children born alive, there will be living: At end of Age of Age of first year. fifteen. sixty. Peerage family 93.038 85.890 51.166 Upper class 91.955 83.392 53-398 Clergy children 91.667 79-536 English life tables 85.051 68.465 36.983 Mr. John McMackin, Commissioner of Labor of the State of New York, gives the following data in his report for the year 1900 (p. 62, etc.). English statistics show that between the ages of 25 and 65 the death rate among workers of earthen ware is fully three times as large as that among clergymen. Such an enormous disparity shows that thousands of workingmen die long before they have produced all the wealth they were capable of producing, if their health had been preserved by proper care. Many other trades are equally injurious to health, as will be seen in the following table of comparative mor- tality of certain occupations in England in the years 1890, 1891 and 1892: i^o AMERICAN' PAUPERISM. OCCUPATIONS WITH HIGHEST AND LOWEST MOR- TALITY FIGURES IN ENGLAND, 1890-2. (Supplement to 55th Annual Report of the Registrar-General.) Comparative Occupation. mortality figure. Dock laborer 1,829 File maker 1,8 to Lead worker 1,783 Inn, hotel servant 1,725 Potter, earthenware manu- facturer 1,706 Innkeeper, servant, etc... 1,650 Costermonger, hawker ..1,652 Innkeeper 1,642 Coal heaver 1,528 Cutler, scissors makcr.1,516 General laborer (in- dustrial districts).. 1,509 Glass manufacturer 1,487 Brewer 1,427 General laborer (Lon- don) 1,413 Tool, scissors, file, saw, etc., maker 1,412 Tin miner 1,409 Manufacturing chemist. . . 1,392 Copper worker 1,381 Wool, silk, etc., dyer. ... 1,370 Seaman, etc 1,352 Slater, tiler 1,322 Chimney sweep 1,311 Lead miner 1,310 Nail, anchor, chain, etc., maker J, 301 Carman, carrier 1,284 Copper miner 1,230 Gunsmith 1,228 Messenger, porter (not railway or government). 1,222 General laborer 1,221 Transport service ...1,216 Musician, music master. . 1,214 Bargeman 1,1 99 Zinc worker 1,198 Stone, slate quarrier 1,176 Coach, cab service 1,153 Coal miner (Mon- mouth s hire and South Wales) 1,145 Cotton, etc., manufac- turer 1,141 Comparative Occupation. mortality figure. . Lowest. Silk, satin, etc., manufac- turer 921 Baker, confectioner 920 Shoemaker, bootmaker ....920 Commercial clerk 915 Blacksmith, whitesmith ....914 Coal miner (West Riding) 9l2 Paper manufacturer 904 Tallow, soap manu- facturer 897 Maltster 884 Carpet, rug manufacturer. .873 Shopkeeper 859 Other occupied males 847 Fisherman 84? Miller 845 Publisher 833 Railway guard, etc 825 Barrister, solicitor 821 Railway engine driv- er, guard, etc 818 Railway engine driver ....810 Ironmonger 807 Coal merchant 803 Engine driver (not rail- way, etc.) 786 Carpenter, joiner 783 Railway official clerk 781 Artist, engraver, etc 778 Wheelwright 778 Coal miner (Durham and Northumber- land) 774 Ironstone miner 774 Sawyer 768 Domestic indoor servant. . .757 Tanner, fellmonger 756 Brick tile burner 741 Coal miner (Derby- shire and Notting- hamshire) 727 Shipwright 713 Lace manufacturer 709 Hosiery manufacturer ....698 Laborer in agricul- tural group 666 Grocer 664 Agricultural Laborer 632' Schoolmaster 604 Agriculturalist 602 Farmer, grazier 563 Gardener, etc 553 Clergyman 533 THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 151 Occupations in the first column have a mor- tality above and those in the second column be- low the average for all occupied males (953). Among the 48 other occupational groups 39 are above and 9 below this figure. The standard of comparison (1,000) is the mortality figure for all males. Indented lines indicate sub-classes or occupa- tions. The number of deaths of male persons between 25 and 65 years of age in the years 1891 and 1892 is compared with the number of living persons exercising the various occupations, as returned by the census of 1891. The mortality of all males within the age period, 25-65 years, is then taken as a standard with which the death rate in the various occupations is compared. The unoccu- pied male had a death rate more than twice as large as that of all males, the exact ratio being as 2,215 t0 1,000, while the occupied males of course had a lower mortality, thus: All males (standard) 1,000 Unoccupied males 2,215 Occupied males (England) 953 Occupied males (London) IJ47 Occupied males (industrial districts) 1,248 Occupied males (agricultural district) 681 The mortality among male workers in the in- dustrial districts is all but twice as heavy as it is in the agricultural districts, thus showing the ex- pensiveness to the community of noxious pur- suits. Regarding men simply as working ani- mals the community cannot afford to permit such a disproportionate mortality. If all these work- ers were slaves we mav be sure that their owners 152 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. would take care to preserve their lives beyond the present average. If we recur to the preceding table of occupa- tional mortality the disparities arc even more striking - . At the bottom of the list are clergymen (533) an d at the top dock laborers (1,829). School teachers stand low in the list (604). Medical men, who are in constant contact with disease and who work most irregularly, have, nevertheless, a lower mortality (966) than the majority of factory operatives. These official figures from the fifty-fifth annual report of the Registrar General of England sim- ply confirm the conclusions of physicians familiar with the lives of factory operatives. A French physician who has made an exhaustive study of this subject (Dr. Ilja (Elias) Sachine, Le Journe du Huit Heures au Point de Vue de l'Hygiene et de la Medicine, Lyon, 1900), concludes that the abnormal sickness and mortality among working people is due, not simply to poisonous and nox- ious substances in the materials of work, but also to fatigue which affects the nerves. A few of the conclusions of Dr. Sachine will be of interest to us. ''Mortality and sickness are unusually pro- nounced among working classes. Their average death rate, compared with other classes, is espe- cially high beyond the age of 35 or 40, i. e., the age at which fatigue attains the ascendancy over the endurance and power of resistance of the indi- vidual, however great his physical strength may have been at first. The bodily development of the factory operative remains inferior to that found in other social classes. Excessive work and long hours are the causes that have powerfully pro- THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 1 53 motcd the use of stimulants and intoxicating liquors. The harmful influence of the long working hours are not only directly upon those who work, but also upon future generations and threatens the vigor and full development of the human race." We see that the laborer is exploited by the capi- talistic system of production — as a producer — by offering the lowest remuneration for the most in- tense work and as a consumer by screwing up prices to the highest possible point for commodi- ties he has to use in order to exist and propagate his kind. The result of this most unmerciful ex- ploitation of the producers by the parasitic classes of society appear in the distribution of income and property in the United States. Professor Chas. B. Spahr, of Columbia Uni- versity, wrote an essay on the present distribu- tion of wealth in the United States and published it in 1896. From this essay we will here make a few ex- tracts. "Distribution of property by classes. The Massachusetts Labor Bureau in its report for 1873 presented the following data : 'The num- ber of people paying taxes upon property was nearly four-fifths of the whole number of family residents. Among those paying such taxes, how- ever, four-fifths held less than one-fifth of the property, while one-fiftieth held nearly as much property as all the remainder.' The data pub- lished twenty years later by the assessing depart- ment of the city of Boston showed that the whole number of property taxpayers was less than one- fifth the number of families residing in Boston. 154 American pauperism. For the same year the list of property owners taxed more than $1,000 showed them to possess more than half the taxable property." (p. 52.) Mr. George K. Holmes' (quoted by Chas. B. Spahr) data shows that one-tenth of the families held about three times as much property as the other nine-tenths, (p. 55.) The returns received from New York City in 1892 were as follows: Only about one-fourth of the men who died during the three months end- ing December, 1892, left any property whatever except their clothing and household furniture. If the death rate was normal during the period covered the returns indicated about one hundred and ten thousand property-owning families. The whole number of families in the city was three hundred and thirty thousand. In other words, two-thirds of the families are in a strict sense of the word propertyless. The savings bank argument, so frequently em- ployed by conservative statesmen and economists, is utterly fallacious as can be seen from the fol- lowing facts : In New York City the number of savings bank accounts is nearly twice as great as the number of families. Yet two-thirds of the families not only possess no savings bank ac- count, but no registered property of any descrip- tion. The bulk of the deposit belongs to a comparatively small class of well-to-do citizens. Respecting the distribution of wealth among the propertied classes, the returns for New York City showed that the small estates outnumber the medium and large ones, the ratio being nearly three to one in favor of estates less than $5,000. In value, all of these smaller estates combined represented but four per cent of the property, THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 1 55 while the comparatively few estates exceeding $50,000 was three times as valuable as all the remainder. According; to the data furnished by the Surro- gate Court during the years from October, 1892- September, 1896, the properties over $50,000 aggregated five times as much as those smaller than that sum. The number of the possessors of the large estates was but six per cent of the prop- erty owners, and represented but two per cent of the heads of families dying during these two years, (pp. 50-60.) The real estate within New York City is more valuable than all the real estate in New England, exclusive of the City of Boston, and more val- uable than all the real estate in the eight com- monwealth's between the Potomac and Texas. An abnormal concentration of both wealth and poverty is known to exist everywhere within its borders, (p. 61.) The distribution of wealth in Brooklyn is more typical of tne large cities throughout the country. The estates worth over $50,000 contained over twice as much property as all the remainder; while the aggregate hold- ings of middle and poorer classes — those owning less than $50,000 — was but seven per cent of the total. Approximately one-eighth of the families of the nation — city, town and country — hold more than $5,000. The census investigation showed that in New York City but 6 1-3 per cent of the families owned their homes, (pp. 66-68.) The conclusion reached, therefore, is as fol- lows : Less than half the families are propertyless. I56 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. Seven-eighths of the families hold but one- eighth of the national wealth, while one per cent of the families hold more than the remaining ninety-nine. (p. 69.) The nation's income. The profit of manufacturers, according to the Massachusetts Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for 1890, including interest, rent, taxes, and earnings for superintendence, was approxi- mately two-thirds of the wages of the employes. The wealthiest ten per cent of American fami- lies received approximately the same income as the remaining ninety per cent. The average family income from labor should not be put higher than $500 in the towns and $300 in the rural districts. As three-fifths live in the rural districts the average woidd be $380 for all. More than five-sixths of the income of the wealthiest class is received by 125,000 richest families, while less than one-half of the income of the zvorking classes is received by the poorest, 6,500,000. In other zvords, one per cent of our families receive nearly one-fourth of the national income, while fifty per cent receive barely one- fifth. One-eighth of the families in America re- ceive more than half of the aggregate income, and the richest one per cent receives a larger in- come than the poorest fifty per cent. In fact, the small class of wealthy property owners re- ceive from property alone as large an income as half of our people receive from property and labor. In connection with these facts, it is very in- structive to see which of the classes — the rich or the poor — hear the burden of taxation. THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 1 57 Our authority maintains that nearly three- quarters of our national revenue is raised from taxes resting upon liquor, tobacco, sugar, and clothing. (Our national revenues have for sev- eral years aggregated a little less than four hun- dred' millions. All but twenty millions of this sum is raised by custom and internal revenue duties.) Mr. Spahr calculates: "When we consider only the revenues actually received by the govern- ment, the conclusion inevitably reached is that the wealthy class pays less than one-tenth of the indirect taxes, the well-to-do class, one-quarter; and the relatively poorer classes, two-thirds." (pp. 141-145O . . The resume of Mr. Spahr is so characteristic that we cannot abstain from quoting some of its parts. "In our own country the Civil War overthrew the once domniant cause of the separation of classes, but called into activity new forces work- ing to the same end. The dominant (social-eco- nomic) forces to-day are all working toward the concentration of wealth in the cities, and the im- poverishment of country districts. In the cities these forces are working towards a yet narrower concentration. The wealth of the cities is as much more concentrated as it is greater than the wealth of rural districts. Taking city and coun- try together, we found that the great body of small property ozvners hold barely one-eighth of the national wealth, and that one family of every one hundred owns as much as all the re- mainder. "Turning to the incomes of families, we found that in this country, as well as in Europe, two- [58 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. fifths of the products of industry go as the share of capital, quite apart from the earnings of cap- italist classes from personal exertions. One-tenth of the families have the same aggregate income as the remaining nine-tenths, while the one per cent at the top has as much as the fifty per cent at the bottom. Turning' finally to the field of tax- ation, we found that the public is taxing as large a percentage from the incomes insufficient for the healthful and decent living as from incomes morally perilous to their possessors, and is plac- ing upon the property of those struggling for in- dependence, burdens fourfold heavier than upon the property of those already rich." (pp. 158, The humiliating conclusion that the wage- worker of the United States, the man who sup- plies the "land of the free" with food, shelter, clothing and other necessaries of life, is over- worked and underpaid by his employers and over- taxed by the State, whose nominal citizen he is, and also the conclusion that the toiling masses of the United States have to be classed in the cate- gory of the "respectable poor" force themselves upon us with the irresistable logic of a mathe- matical certainty. Indeed, we have seen that the yearly income of an average wage-worker's family is barely sufficient to keep it on the brink of semi-starvation even when there is work all the year round. Even of this small income he is by no means certain. Slight disturbances in busi- ness, illness, the whim or fancy of the "bread giving" employer, any accident may in the twinkling of an eye destroy the unstable equil- ibrium of the proletarian's economic status and turn him into a pauper. That there is only one THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 159 fatal step from the respectable poverty of a "wage-worker" to the demoralizing pauperism of the "outdoor relief" and the "indoor relief" va- riety may be illustrated by the following "story of John and Mary Baker" as related by Ernest P. Bicknell, of the Chicago Bureau of Charities, in the Report of the XXXIII National Confer- ence of Charities : "John and Mary Baker lived in a little country town in Southern Wisconsin. When the World's Fair was being laid out and the great buildings were going up, a young man, who was a friend of John Baker, went clown to Chicago and got a job of work on the Fair grounds. John Baker was a good carpenter, and his friend wrote that everybody could get work at good pay, and that he had better come down. So John went, and took Mary and the two babies. He got work and steady pay. When the Fair was finished, there followed a terrible industrial depression. John Baker lost his job and could not get another. He went up and down and looked at the half finished buildings ; but the whole town was over- built, and there was nothing for him to do. His savings gradually wasted away, and after awhile he had to give up his flat, for which he was pay- ing $15, in a good neighborhood, and move into another place where he could rent rooms for $10 in a neighborhood not so good. He went on strug- gling and doing what he could in the way of odd jobs, and Mary took in a couple of boarders for awhile. They managed to get along for a year or two that way. Times continued hard. John could not make both ends meet, and his savings were all gone. They moved to a place where the rent was six l6o AMERICAN PAUPERISM. or seven dollars a month — in a dreadful locality. They had to move, as they were to be put out of their rooms for non-payment of rent. The third flat into which they moved had no drainage. The rooms were dark, the surroundings vile, and the neighborhood terrible. There was no grass plot or trees, nothing but a grim and sordid life on a very low plane. Their life began to grow bad in this wretched place, and who is there to say a word of condemnation? "Alary became cross and irritable and nervous. John's discouragement grew on him, and he got shabby and run down at the heel, and began to drink. After awhile it came about that, when he went into a business house to apply for a job, he went in with a hang-dog, sullen air which showed that he did not expect to get a job, and the em- ployer was satisfied at a glance that he did not want any man like that around. "When this state of affairs had been reached the eldest girl, Annie, who was not twelve years old, was taken out of school and put to work in a box factory. She began to run about at night, and the mother was too feeble to look after her. The boy, Harry, ran the streets, and fell into bad company, of course. He broke into a vacant house with some boys one day and stole lead pipe, and was arrested and sent to the House of Correction. Mary came down with typhoid fever just about the time that the landlord served a notice of eviction. Then a neighbor came to the Associated Charities and said, 'Here is a sad case. The woman is good, but the family is a bad lot. The man is worthless, the boy a crim- inal.' Now, that is what the Bureau of Charities found when its attention was first called to the THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. l6l case of John and Mary Baker. Here was a con- dition of affairs that not a single charity asso- ciation on the face of the earth could have cured. No charitable organization ever created, or that ever will be created, could have taken up that situation and quickly and permanently cured it. A long struggle was inevitable, if this family was to be brought back up the long steep incline down which it had gone. Our ambition to see results, or our failure to read the facts in their true significance, lead us to imagine that we can cure a case like that in a week. It leads some of us to think that by giving an order of groceries we can cure such a case, or that by sending the doc- tor around and giving Mary a dose of medicine we have done all that is required. What we need to remember is, that this has been a good family, and that it had moved down this incline for five years. It is folly to imagine that anything but long years of care in helping and guiding and lift- ing would bring it again up to the place of self respect that it had once occupied. The Associ- ated Charities could not have done anything by itself, the doctor could not do much ; no single society, no agency of any sort, was adequate to cope with that situation." The Associated Charities of any great city knows not merely one family, but thousands, like that of John and Mary Baker. The following data show the returns of 27,961 cases of applicants for relief, which were investi- gated by the charitable organizations in 1887: Worthy of continuous relief, 2,888, or 10.3 per cent. Worthy of temporary relief, 7,451, or 26.6 per cent. Need work rather than relief, 11,280, or 40.4 per cent. Unworthy of relief (?), 6,342, or 22.7 per cent. [62 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. Mr. Kellog, who submitted the report contain- ing the data to the Conference of Charities, says that among all the societies of the country there is a notable unity of opinion that only from 31 to 37 per cent, or say one-third, of the cases actually treated were in need of that material assistance for which no office or friendly counsel or restraint could compensate. The logical ap- plication of this statement to the whole country is, tliat two-thirds of its real or simulated destitu- tions could be wiped out by a more perfect ad just- in cut of labor. The summary of returns from Baltimore, Bos- ton and New Yorw charities for the years 1891, 1892, 1893 show that over J5 per cent of the cases should have work rather than relief; 9.1 per cent should have no relief ( ?) ; 58 per cent should be disciplined ( !) ; 7.4 per cent should have visita- tions and advice only ; and that only about 42.64 per cent needed direct relief of any kind. The causes of poverty in Buffalo are classified as shown on the following page. A glance at that table will convince us that industrial conditions leading to lack of employ- ment, insufficient earnings, etc., are responsible for the largest percentage among the causes of pauperism. Drink is considered among the most important individual causes of poverty. The fact is, how- ever, that drink is rather an effect of demoraliza- tion caused by extreme poverty, than a cause of the last. Intense exhausting labor, irregular em- ployment, bad air, inadequate and ill-prepared food, cause a craving for stimulants. Prof. Amos G. Warner says : ''The ravages of intemperance are most plainly to be traced in THE INDUSTRIAL F.VOLUTION. 1^3 *t) w !? SJ B 4 5* > v. 3 5; ~ c » 2. K* ™ —• " n p. S- p n 00 A *. 00 M O " on 4- 4k X On 00 00 On 0\ M H 10 00 VI On O M W v> n tn Cj 00 0- NO In vi A Co vl On on tO On On NO X On « Co On - M On Co O vl O 00 CI vi UN 'Jt 10 00 to On 00 00 V| C) DO vl H On vi C) to Co O ft 11 CO vi *• OJ 00 -f» VN 10 :■- NO DO _, M DO 00 _ On C> M K> On X 4. *» UN Ol 00 -^ O VO On ^0 DO o s *- a > d GO O o W Kj I— I w g ► tr 1 o 164 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. classes above the pauper class." In passing through wards of almshouses Prof. A. G. Warner has been frequently surprised at the number of inmates who were said to be temperate and of whom the statement was apparently true. W. Benson Lewis, who writes in the Fortnightly Re- view, September, 1893, "On the Conditions of Crime," finds that, territorially, crime rather than pauperism seems to accompany drunkenness. The same argument applies to so-called shift- lessness and other alleged individual causes of poverty. The vices of the poor are not the causes, but the results of the demoralization and physical deterioration brought about by indigence. A half-starved, ill-clad, badly housed, and igno- rant proletarian cannot be expected to be pru- dent and far-seeing, selfreliant and provident. The physical and mental deterioration due to the anti-hygenic conditions of life and work lead to sickness and poverty. To the sickness and death of the natural family bread-winner, the superin- tendent of Chicago Charities attributes the desti- tution of a large majority of the dependents in Chicago. He said, "The state of the average family found in destitution, in a state of dis- couragement and resignation to their lot of pov- erty, can almost invariably be traced back to one cause — sickness and death and doctor's bills after- wards, followed by utter destitution, or the widow is left with a large family and the result is inevitable. Where the natural bread-winner is either dead or invalidated, the result is depend- ence." That physical and mental weakness caused by poverty in its turn causes poverty and leads to the perpetuation of pauperism, is illustrated by THE INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION. 165 startling data about hereditary pauperism. Of 12,614 inmates in the almshouses of New York in the early seventies 397, or nearly 3.15 per cent, were the offspring- of pauper fathers; 1,361, or 1074 per cent, of pauper mothers. The de- pendence dated back to the third generation in 55 cases on the paternal and 92 cases on the maternal side, 1,122 had pauper brothers, 951 pauper sisters, 143 pauper uncles and 133 pauper aunts. About 22 per cent of the children of poorhouse parents were found to be of the de- pendent or delinquent classes. The percentage of those who were a charge upon the public raised a little more than 25 per cent. The influ- ence of the environment of the poor born in the poorhouses and the slums on the tendency to the perpetuation of pauperism seems to be obvi- ous. The children of the poor are foredoomed by the very conditions of their childlife to pauper- ism. (Mr. Booth puts pauper associations and hereditary together as contributory causes 16.7 per cent for England.) We have proven that the main, if not only, cause of poverty in our time is social-economic parasitism with which our present society is honeycombed. We may repeat, with perfect con- sciousness of stating actual conditions, the lines addressed by Shelley to the "Men of England," but applicable to all the children of toil in the United States and elsewhere : Children of toil, wherefore plough For the lords who lay ye low? Wherefore weave with toil and care The rich robes your tyrants wear? Wherefore feed, and clothe, and save, From the cradle to the grave l66 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. Those ungrateful drones who would Drain your sweat — nay, drink your blood? Wherefore, bees of America, forge Many a weapon, chain, and scourge ; That those stingless drones may spoil The forced product of your toil ? Have ye leisure, comfort, calm, Shelter, food, love's gentle balm? Or what is it ye buy so dear With your pain and your fear? The seed you sow, another reaps ; The wealth ye find, another keeps; The robes ye weave, another wears; The arms ye forge, another bears. Sow seed, but let no tyrant reap ; Find wealth — let no imposter heap; Weave robes — let not the idle wear ; Forge arms in your defense to bear. THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY. "It is a repulsive subject!" "It is a baneful misconception of modern civ- ilization !" "It is a socialistic atrocity!" Such were the opinions of the middle class Philistines, the Bourgeois, about the picture of Jean Weber at the last exhibition of the "Salon" in Paris. This picture is a large work, superb in colors and superbly drawn. It exercises an irresistible fascination on the spectator, it enchants the ob- server.- Everybody at the "Salon" gazed at it; everybody talked about it. It aroused anger and indignation among the respectable parasitic class- es of the French metropolis. It was greeted with intense enthusiasm by the friends of the masses who toil and lead a life of poverty. If the writer of these lines possessed the genius of Edwin Markham, he would produce a poem about Weber's picture, even more stirring than "The Man with the Hoe." A huge dynamo is in rapid motion. On a steel cylinder is perched a nude female figure, whose red hair stands on end by the force of electricity or terror. A ponderous fly-wheel is crushing to a hideous pulp tender and innocent children, delicate and beautiful women, vigorous men, representing the flower of the human race, old men and women. A river of human blood flows beneath. 167 l68 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. Let us supplement this picture by another one. Let us imagine that this river of human blood is being collected in a huge basin called "The World's Market," where the magicians of the Board of Trade, the wizards of gigantic trusts and monopolies, the conjurers of modern ma- chine production, the kings of the finance turn this human blood into glittering gold and coin it into money to fill their private treasuries, their safes and vaults. These two pictures, Weber's and ours, repre- sent our modern parasitic civilization called Capitalism, as it is in reality, as Cannibalism. The huge dynamo of Weber's picture repre- sents the social-economic mechanism of modern machine production. The ponderous flywheel symbolizes the social-economic powers concen- trated in the hands of the non-producers, called Capitalists. And the men, women and children crushed into pulp are the toiling masses. The most remarkable feature about the mur- derous flywheel of Capitalism is that it is en- tirely the product of the labor of its crushed, victims, the proletarians. The knowledge of the laws of Nature, the in- ventive genius and the mechanical skill that were necessary for the production of the flywheel of modern industry, are the common heritage of the human race. The huge dynamo moving the flywheel of modern industry concentrates blind natural forces, that instead of being utilized for the benefit of the entire human race are exploited in the interests of a parasitic minority. The injustice, the cruelty and absurdity of a THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY. 169 state of society, where the actual creators of commodities are turned into victims and abject slaves of those who do not create anything use- ful ; where the toiling masses are being crushed by the means of the very same products of their toil, are so striking that they need little elucida- tion. The questions that suggest themselves to our mind are: How did such an obviously unjust, cruel and absurd state of society develop? How and why is such a state of society maintained and tolerated bv reasoning and feeling human beings? Capitalism, like all institutions of human soci- ety, is of a transitory character. It developed, grew, and is bound to be succeeded by another state of society as soon as it has outlived its utility. Cannibalism was succeeded by slavery, slav- ery by serfdom, serfdom by free individual pro- duction, individual production by semi-socialized manufacture, and the last by fully socialized ma- chine production. There was a time when slavery was a progres- sive institution in comparison with cannibalism. Serfdom was the legitimate heir of slavery. In- dividual production was succeeded by the more economic manufacturing stage. The modern machine production, as an eco- nomic stage, is immensely superior to all prev- ious stages of production. The private owner- ship of the means of production by non-pro- ducers, however, turns machine production into the most perfect system of exploitation. The ownership of the means of production enables the non-producers to appropriate the lion's share 170 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. of the products of the toil of the working classes in the shape of rent, profit, and interest. In order to get means of subsistence for him- self and his family, the modern proletarian has to dispose in the world's market of the only property left to him — his labor power. He is compelled, under the penalty of death from star- vation, to sell his labor power at the market price to the owner of the means of production — to the capitalist. The divorce between the producer and the means of production turned human labor power into a mere marketable commodity, sub- jected to all the vicissitudes of supply and de- mand. As we cannot separate a living human being from his labor power, the laborer himself is actually turned into a mere marketable commod- ity, into a wage slave. It is true the modern wage slave, not like the serf or chattel slave, may choose, if he can, his master, but a master he must have, or starve. With the increasing concentration and consolidation of capital in gi-i gantic combines, trusts, and monopolies, even this doubtful privilege of choosing the master is becoming illusory. The employer of labor, the capitalist, is not in business for his health. He buys labor power at the lowest possible price and sells the products of this labor power at the highest price possible. It is in the interest of the capitalist to apply labor power to production with the highest intensity possible. The wage-worker must produce a higher value than that embodied in the wage he receives. He must produce surplus value for the benefit of his employer — the capitalist. The latter pockets the surplus value. Part of it he consumes and part THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY. 171 of it he reinvests in his business in order to buy more labor power and make more profit. Capitalistic property is consequently based not on the labor of its actual owner, but on the labor of those who do not own any property except their labor power, on the labor of exploited prole- tarians. Capitalism disintegrates the family of the proletrian, drives his daughter on the thorny path of sexual slavery, sends his child into the sweatshop and mill, breeds crime, and creates poverty and pauperism. In order to comprehend the reason why and how the capitalistic state of society is maintained and tolerated by a race of feeling and reason- ing beings, we have to examine the methods used by the ruling parasitic classes who keep the toil- ing masses in due obeisance and subjection. The cardinal difference between man and ani- mal, as far as the struggle for existence is con- cerned, consists in their respective mode of adap- tation to the environment. Animals limit them- selves, as a rule, to a passive adaptation to the environment. Men adapt to a great extent the environment to themselves — in fact, create an ar- tificial environment to suit their purposes. Cul- ture and civilization are mainly the results of this ability of men to be, to a considerable extent, the masters of their own destinies. A stage of cul- ture favorable to the ever-increasing perfection of the artificial material environment is called progressive and vice versa. The term artificial is, of course, not meant here as an entire opposite to the term "natural," but rather in the sense of conscious, purposely modi- fied. Men, for instance, invented cloth, houses, \-J2 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. stoves, etc., in order to protect themselves from the inclemencies of the weather. Cloth, houses, stoves, etc., are artificial, purposely modified, natural products ; they are the creation of human ingenuity and form a part of the material en- vironment that makes up our culture and civiliza- tion. What are the psychological foundations of the creative genius of mankind ? The foundations of the creative genius of mankind are properties of the human mind. The human mind is always active in observing nature and its phenomena, in making general conclu- sions from these observations for guidance in the future activities. Since men learned to distin- guish between their own self (ego) and the mate- rial environment, the not own self (non ego), they noticed that all natural processes take place in a certain way and manner. Where and when men succeeded in ascertaining exactly these con- ditions in any special case they can invariably predict or even reproduce the natural process arti- ficially. In other words, observation leads to knowledge and knowledge to conscious creative work. By an exceedingly slow and painful proc- ess of mental growth men gradually arrive at the conclusion that mere passive observation of nature does not always lead to exact knowledge. Artificial experiments, experiments with a set purpose in view, were adopted. Nature answers direct questions, not revealing the whole truth, so men started to subject it to cross examinations. The results of the observations, experiments and conclusions suggested to the human mind were gradually co-ordinated into a system called "Science." THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY. 1 73 As a civilizing factor science has no rival. Civilization is unthinkable without the knowl- edge of the immutable laws of nature, however crude and imperfect that knowledge may be. Science — perfected knowledge — is the most es- sential and solid foundation of culture and civil- ization. Knowledge is power to subject the material environment to human needs. Science is the strongest light at the disposal of men in their struggle for existence in the perplexing labyrinth of the universe. From the sociological point of view, science appears as the result of mind activity of countless generations of human beings, as the most precious inheritance of hu- mankind from the past, as the concentrated and digested achievement of the collective mind of the entire human race during its existence on the globe. Being the result of the achievement of the collective human mind, science is the rightful heritage of the entire human race. Each human being is entitled to his full share in the benefits of science. This appears to be an indisputable postulate of modern ethics. It is, however, a historical fact that the mar- velous power and light of knowledge was, as it is at present, monopolized by the ruling classes and misused by them to the detriment of the toiling masses of the people. In ancient times sacerdotal castes, priestcraft, monopolized knowledge and exploited it in the interest of its own and of the military caste. In ancient Greece and Rome learned slaves were employed as tutors for the slaveholding free citizens. In the middle ages i s science was confined to the obscure seclusion of monasteries. In our modern time science is made subservient to the ruling classes by the 174 AMERICAN PAUPER] [. economic structure of society itself. The broad masses of the people arc benefited by the appli- cation of science to useful arts indirectly and in- cidentally only, while the ruling- plutocracy con- sciously and unscrupulously monopolizes the di- rect use and enjoyment of the power and light of science. The masses are kept, as far as is prac- ticable, in the dense darkness and weakness of ig- norance. Our present industrial system in this manner, by condemning the toiling masses to ignorance, undermines the very foundation of culture and civilization. By depriving the children of the proletariat of their inalienable rights to knowl- edge and enlightenment, Capitalism slowly, but surely, tends toward barbarity. Those children of the toiling masses, who, in spite of all impediments and obstacles in their way, by dint of perseverance and great self abne- gation attain higher education, are compelled by the existing economic condition to submit their professionally trained minds and scientific erudi- tion to the same direct exploitation by the para- sitic classes of the predatory rich, as their hum- ble brothers in the so-called lower walks of life. The intellectual proletariat is comparatively a great deal more exploited than the broader masses of laborers. The clerk, the teacher, the physician, the engineer, the chemist, and other professional men get on an average a great deal less in proportion for their high grade services, which demand years of careful stud)', special training and exclusive abilities, than the com- mon laborer for his merely physical exertions. According to the investigation of the United States Commissioner of Labor, the average earn- THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY. 1 75 ings of the professional men and women living in the slums of the four typical large cities of Amer- ica — New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Baltimore — is as follows : WEEKLY WAGES OR EARNINGS OF PROFESSIONALS. In Baltimore — Males $15-50 Females . 9.02 In Chicago — Males $1530 Females • • i4-°9 In New York — Males $13-77 Females 11.80 In Philadelphia — Males $1370 Females 1329 And the social status of the intellectual prole- tarian is correspondingly low. An illiterate millionaire occupies an immensely higher social position than the most eminent scientist who happens to be poor. In our parasitic state of so- ciety nothing is cheaper than human brains. Education does not pay. The most "successful" members of our present society are ignoramuses who claim that "education is a disqualification for business." This claim is substantiated by facts and observations. Indeed "business" is nowa- days conducted on principles repulsive to any intelligent mind, to any man with more or less refined feelings. And yet, in spite of the fact that the intellectual proletariat is practically suffering a great deal more from the capitalistic system than the laboring class in general, there is a great deal less class consciousness to be met with among the educated workers than among the AMERICAN PAUPERISM. uneducated laborers. The consciousness of the solidarity of interests is rapidly growing among the working masses, as is clearly demon- strated by the spread and development of trade-unionism. At the same time the intellectual proletarians stubbornly persist in remaining on the strictly individualistic or anarchistic plan of action, in "the United States at least, if not over the world. The intellectual proletarians do not seem to be conscious of the fact that they form the upper strata of the exploited toiling masses. The distinct "esprit de corps," manifesting itself in different trades pursued by workingmen, is en- tirely lacking among the members of various so- called liberal professions. Those few professional men, engineers, chemists, or other professionals who succeed in getting into a position of employ- ing men of their own specialty, instead of at- tempting to keep up the dignity and social status of their own calling, as a rule, do all in their power to underpay and overwork their assistants after the most approved style of the parasitic system under which we live. In this way we meet professional men who earn as much as street and floor sweepers in factories and shops. The intellectual proletarian is more in- clined, as a rule, to serve as a tool of the ex- ploiting capitalistic class, than the ordinary worker. The reason for this monstrous anomaly is apparent. The capitalistic, as well as any other social-economic system, has the inherent ten- dency to perpetuate itself. This self-perpetua- tion tendency is manifest in the spirit of the edu- cation given to the masses of the school children and to the overgrown children called adults through the medium of books, the periodical THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY. 1 77 press, the pulpit, the stage, the bar, and public arena in general. The unsophisticated laboring class is fortunate enough to imbibe less of the subtle poison of anarchistic philosophy and para- sitic morals spread broadcast with lavish hands by the ruling parasitic class. Hence the more pronounced opposition to exploitation on the part of the working class proper. The educated proletarian, however, was and is constantly saturated with a philosophy of life and system of conduct favorable to the interest of the exploiting classes. The unsophisticated laborer is guided in his social economic relations by his common sense. The intellectual proletarian has his common sense obscured by all kinds of spiritual rubbish which he considers beyond and above criticism. The system of education which he receives is calculated to train his mind and enrich his knowledge in a certain special direction, so as to prepare him to be a useful small cogwheel in the gigantic mechanicism of modern production. On two of the most vital points of human inter- est — religion (in the broadest term of the word) and social economic relations of man to man — the intellectual proletarian is not only left igno- rant as a new-born babe, but he is taught from childhood to stunt or kill his critical faculties in the direction of revising the traditional views on the two points mentioned and receive these views implicitly. This accounts for the fact that we meet excellently informed and logically reason- ing specialists in all lines of activity, who profess the most antediluvian views on human social- economic relations. This accounts for the fact that there is such a frightful incongruity between [78 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. cur material and spiritual environment. From the cradle to the grave this incongruity perse- cutes us as a nightmare and makes us thoroughly miserable. Conventional lies, false statements of facts, wrong standards of life, sordid ideas and ideals and monstrous unrealities make up the hulk of the education we receive at school, through the medium of hooks, periodicals, the pulpit, the stage, the har, the public arena. Children are taught deliberately the opposite of truth as it is known to adults. And then, when they reach maturity, they have to go through the agony of mind occasioned by this disenchantment, by the stern realities of life. Many of them are demoralized by the unexpected temptations of life and only very few have grit enough to learn to forget and to start to think for themselves. Modern production is based on the strict ap- plication of the results of scientific research to the tasks of practical life. The means of production are controlled exclusively by the capitalistic class. Consequently the capitalistic class is interested, more than any other class in history, in the ad- vancement of science. Hence the generosity with which capitalists endow institutions of learning. At the same time the capitalist class is deeply conscious that only popular ignorance keeps it in power. Therefore there exists the tendency to guard the searchlight of knowledge from the toiling masses. Hence the tendency to make science exclusive and to foster snobbishness among the students of the higher institutions of learning. Andrew Carnegie, in a moment of frankness, made the following statement, or rather confes- THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY. 179 sion, in his address at the opening of the Institute of Technology at Hoboken : "I had no inventive mind — simply a mind to use the inventions of others. I think a fitting epitaph for me would be, 'Here lies a man who knew how to get around him men cleverer than himself.' " A fitting epitaph for the class of social para- sites to which A. Carnegie belongs would be, "Here lies a class that knew how to appropriate the lion's share of the results of other people's toil and genius without giving them an equivalent for it." The mammoth industries of capitalism have their own experimental laboratories where the methods of production are improved and ration- alized. The blighting influence of the commercial spirit of our age permeates to the very holy of holies of the temples of science, penetrates into colleges, universities and academies. Rich pro- fessors hire poor but talented young scientists and appropriate without scrupules their ideas and discoveries. Professional inventors hire sci- entifically trained proletarians and appropriate the results of their labor in the same manner as capitalists exploit their wage slaves. An all around stealing of ideas is considered as a mat- ter of course in the demoralized "scientific world." The calling of a scientist is degraded in comparison with a common trade. Accordingly the spirit of gross commercialism and low-bred snobbishness rules in our higher institutions of learning. The very system of private endowment of institutions of learning by social parasites like Rockefeller and Carnegie is vicious and demoral- l80 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. izing in the extreme degree. It robs science of its independence and breeds toadyism and sycophancy. It turns over the source of spiritual enlightenment to the polluting influences of greedy plutocracy. Under our present system many a genius plods along in the darkness of ignorance behind a plow or as a common city laborer, while many a dunce who was fortunate in the choice of his parents is wasting his physical strength in sports and riotous living as a nominal student of a uni- versity. Dr. Felix Adler, the founder of the Ethical Culture movement, in his address on the occasion of laying the cornerstone of the new building of his society, said: "In the great cities our public schools are no longer in the full sense "common schools" — in the sense that they are common to all classes. In the poorer districts of great cities the public school is often very largely a class school, a poor school ; elsewhere it is pa- tronized by a part of the middle class and by the poor, but in increasing numbers the wealthy are no longer educating their children in the com- mon schools, but in class schools, where they meet only members of "their own class." Thus the gulf between the social classes — the poor and the rich — which is wide enough at present, is getting wider and wider and the very founda- tion of our political democracy is being con- stantly undermined." We know now what Capitalism, as a stage of civilization, is and how it manages to rule the unthinking multitudes in the interests of a class of nonproducers. We know that Capitalism THE ABOLITION OF POVER1 l8l fosters pauperism and poverty of the broad masses of the people. Let us now see and comprehend the forces that counteract capitalism and work for an advanced civilization, for a nobler culture, for a brighter future for humanity. These forces may be sum- marized as the physical moment in social evolu- tion. "For the poor ye have with you always," is the somewhat fatalistic statement of the Old and New Testaments. The new gospel attempted even to make a virtue out of the sad necessity of poverty of the masses in a parasitical state of society. In the time of the Caesars the Roman mob raised the slogan, "Panem ct circenses," i. e., "free bread and entertainment." Hood's workingman says : "No alms I ask, give me my task," Here are the arm, the leg. The strength, the sinews of a man To work and not to beg." The modern proletarian does not see fatalist- ically the necessity of poverty under all social- economic conditions. He does not implicitly be- lieve in the redeeming power of indigence. He considers it below his human dignity to clamor for public charity. He even fails to get enthusi- astic at the idea of getting a chance to sell his labor power at the market price to some profit monger styled employer. What the modern proletarian demands is neither more nor less than full social-economic justice, industrial democracy, the entire product of his toil. [82 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. Such was the trend of the evolution of the ethical conceptions among "the submerged tenth." This evolution was in strict accordance with the social-economic development. In a primitive state of human consociation the means of production of the necessities of life are rather crude, the skill of the individual worker rather undeveloped. The struggle for existence must he severe. In such a state inadequate pro- duction of commodities, wealth underproduction, suggests to the physically strong, to the cun- ning and unscrupulous the expropriation of the physically weak and simple-minded by brute force or crafty stratagem. "To the victor be- long the spoils" and "woe to the conquered!" were the fundamental moral precepts of the pe- riod of almost purely animal struggle for exist- ence when Might was considered as identical with Right. This w r as the age when poverty appeared to be a permanent social institution and parasitism a normal mode of existence for the so-called higher classes or castes. Poverty and social parasitism were and always are linked inseparably together as cause and ef- fect, they are the opposite sides of the same medal of barbarity. Where there is a victorious social parasite there must be his victim — one of the poor. Social parasitism is considered as a mark of high distinction, while poverty is being looked down upon as a sign of despised weak- ness and meanness. The abnormal mode of living indulged in by the parasitic classes, their luxury, ostentation, idleness, arrogance and general viciousness — all symptoms of degeneration — must of necessity arouse the indignation and aversion of pure- THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY. 183 minded but uncritical friends of the human race and lead them to the emotional but irrational idealization of poverty. The instance of the Roman mob crying for bread and entertainment at public expense clearly demonstrates that poverty leads to degra- dation. Extremes meet here as elsewhere. With the increasing development of the skill of the individual worker labor not only lost the stigma attached to it in the days of slavery, but gained in dignity. Hence the contempt with which Hood's laborer rejects charity and asks, "Give me my task." He prefers work with his own tools and hands to begging, in the proud consciousness of his manly labor-power and physical strength. The growing perfection of the tools of production and their monopolization by a class of non-producing profit-mongers called Capitalists transferred the center of gravity from the skilled workingman to the complex ma- chinery. The tool of production gained ascend- ency over its maker and user. The dead mechan- ism subjugated its living, thinking and feeling creator and turned him into its insignificant ap- pendage. The arm, the leg, the strength, the sinews of a man were replaced by metallic giants without blood, muscles, nerves or heart. Indi- vidual production was almost entirely super- seded by socialized production. However the means of production not only were not socialized, but were monopolized by non-producers. The existence of private property in the means of production, under a system of socialized produc- tion is absurd. Indeed there must be a mutual harmony between the system of production and the form of ownership of the means of produc- 184 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. tion. An incongruity between the system of production and the mode of ownership of the means of production must necessarily lead to abnormal social-economic conditions. Abnormal social-economic conditions in their turn breed discontent among those who are compelled to carry the heavy burden of production and dis- tribution of national wealth without getting their share of the wealth they produce and dis- tribute. The dissatisfaction of the toiling masses with their fate resulted in a critical revision of the ethical conception of the institution of property in general and the so-called vested rights of the privileged classes in particular. This revision was accomplished on a thor- oughly scientific and rational basis and lead to the following conclusions : The commodities necessary to the civilized world represent natural products modified by human work. Work means energy applied to overcoming a resistance. For instance, a laborer who lifts a load overcomes the resistance caused by the attraction of the load to the earth. In order to accomplish this work the laborer has to spend the energy of his body, he has to waste a certain part of his muscles, sinews, tissues, nerves and blood. Every manufactured commodity rep- resents therefore the transformed elements of the body or bodies of those who participated in its production. Work is consequently the incarna- tion of human energy in modified natural prod- ucts. All men are children of Nature and are all equally entitled to its products as far as they do not embody human labor. Human labor, the energy applied by the laborer to the process of THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY. 185 modification of natural products, appears to be the actual ethical foundation of property. If one man alone toiled on the modification of a product of nature, or raw material, in order to produce a commodity, this commodity would be his in- alienable individual property. If many partici- pated in the process of producing a certain com- modity — the last would represent their inalien- able common property. Any other claim on prop- erty except work, labor or personal exertion is unethical and parasitical. Our present social-economic system viewed in the light of modern ethics appears to be parasit- ical by its very nature. In order to comprehend the nature of our cap- italistic system we have to view it from two aspects, namely, as a system of production and as a stage of civilization. As a system of production the capitalistic sys- tem represents the results of applied sciences, it is practically machine production on a more or less pronounced co-operative foundation, social- ized production. The monopolization of means of production by a non-producing class of profit mongers called Capitalists gives the second aspect of the cap- italistic system and imparts its peculiarity to our stage of civilization. Socialized production, with means of produc- tion owned by non-producers, is the brief defini- tion of Capitalism. The mode of production is thoroughly modern, while the form of ownership of the means of production appears as a survival of the previous stage of production, as an anachronism. We have now to explain how this incongruity l86 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. between the advanced system of production and the belated mode of ownership of the means of production came about. Production of commodities is a process de- pendent on the skill and knowledge of the pro- ducers. One happy idea, one great invention, may cause a rapid advance in the mode of pro- duction. A series of inventions and technical discoveries may revolutionize the methods of production in a comparatively brief period of time and change to a considerable extent the ma- terial environment. The case is, however, entirely different with the psychical environment, the intellectual, emotional and ethical readjustment of social-economic in- terrelations between the various elements of so- ciety. The spiritual life of man being infinitely more subtle, more complex than his merely mate- rial activities, the psychical environment must naturally lag behind the economic development. It is generally conceded that men are the product of their material environment. Mam- people, how r ever, do not realize that men, as in- telligent beings, in their turn exert a certain in- fluence on their material environment and are therefore to a marked degree active factors in the shaping of their own destinies. The tremendous complexity of forces which we call social laws have come down to us with the wisdom and ethical ideas of the past genera- tions. Social forces are psychical forces, forming the superstructure of social-economic conditions. Owing to mental inertia the psychical environ- ment of the uncritical majority of one generation represents a survival of the superstructure of THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY. l8/ material conditions of past generations. The dead rule the living. Says Karl Marx in the "Communist Mani- festo": "Does it require deep intuition to com- prehend that man's ideas, views and conceptions, in one word, man's consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life? What else does the history of ideas prove than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of the ruling class. When people speak of ideas that revolutionize society they do but express the fact that within the old society the elements of a new one have been cre- ated and that the dissolution of the old ideas 'keep even pace with the dissolutions of the old condi- tions of existence." Marx obviously speaks about the unthinking masses when he states that "the ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of the ruling class." He, however, has in view the reasoning minority when he mentions "the elements of a new (society) created within the old society." Marx may be correctly classed with the truly scientific modern school of psychological sociolo- gists. The so-called Spencerian school of sociologists may be termed "vulgar sociologists" in the same sense as Marx called the middle class economists (as for instance Roscher) "vulgar economists." The most brilliant American exponent of the psychological school of sociology, Lester F. Ward, is in all respects superior to Herbert Spencer as an unbiased scientist. l88 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. According to Herbert Spencer sociology is solely a descriptive science dealing with the status of society. According to Lester F. Ward sociology on the contrary is a purposive (teleo- logical) science about social forces. "Dynamic Sociology aims at the organization of happiness. Society, which is the highest prod- uct of evolution, naturally depends upon Mind, which is the highest property of matter. The dynamic department of psychology becomes also that of sociology the moment we rise from the in- dividual to society. The social forces are the psychic forces as they operate in the collective state of men. The organization of feeling is the central task of sociology." These few quotations will suffice to show the trend of the psychological school of sociology and its conception of social evolution as a conscious dynamic process, in which the human mind is the directive force, a conception that is in perfect har- mony with K. Marx's celebrated materialistic conception of history. The fundamental social force is the in- stinct of self preservation, a corollary of the law of conservation of energy, the desire to live as extensively and intensively as pos- sible. In order to satisfy this instinct man has to adapt himself to the material environ- ment or change the environment, as far as practicable, to suit his needs. The higher man stands on the evolutionary ladder, the more his conscious modification of the material environ- ment predominates over the passive unconscious or semiconscious adaptation to it. The civilized man, to a certain extent, creates an artificial en- vironment by the aid of his mind. The mind. THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY. l8g not physical force, is the chief characteristic of mankind. Following cunningly the line of least resistance man advanced from mere brute exist- ence stage by stage ; from cannibalism to slavery, from slavery to serfdom, from serfdom to wage dependence, under the system of Capitalistic or machine production. Each of these stages of so- cial evolution had its peculiar material as well as psychical environment. By sheer force of inertia the psychical environment of slavery survived the material environment that justified the institution of slavery as an advanced stage in comparison with cannibalism. Not alone did the numerically insignificant slaveholders of the Southern States kept up slavery long after that system outlived its utility, they could not have kept it up if they had not been backed up by the surviving psychical environment of slavery. The same ap- plies to serfdom and the sociological side of Capitalism, the wage dependence, which creates social economic parasitism of the classes, and ma- terial and spiritual impoverishment of the masses. The mission of the thinking minority in his- tory consists in the modification of the psychical environment of the broad unreasoning masses of the people to correspond to the advanced material environment. In our stage of civilization this mission con- sists in the propagation or broad and deep dis- semination of collectivistic ideas and ideals and the extermination of individualistic or anarchistic proclivities. The watchword of the advance- guard of a higher civilization is not "each for himself and the devil take the hindmost," but the brotherly principle "each for all and all for each." Their ideal is not competition, but emulation and I()0 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. co-operation. Their economic ideal is co-opera- tion and economic equality, and production for the satisfaction of human needs, but not for profit. The co-operative commonwealth will have no place for either millionaires or paupers, neither for exploiters nor exploited. Professor Simmel says, "The real significance of the mate- rialistic conception of history is contained in the fact that it was the first attempt to explain his- tory by means of a psychological principle. _ If hunger did not cause pain, if it were not, besides having its physiological function, a spiritual event, then it would never set free the events that we call history. The general synthesis that shall unite all the currents of existence, as known to us, into consistent ideas, that shall convert all external reality into spiritual values, and satisfy all the needs of the spirit with the results of knowledge — this great synthesis we still await." Professor Albion Small, of Chicago, a very conservative man, who never misses an oppor- tunity to draw a sharp line of demarcation be- tween sociology and socialism, says : "We have to find out what men want, why they want it, in what proportion they want it to other things, that themselves, and others want, how the wants depend upon each other, how associa- tion is related to those wants (the real passage from psychology to sociology), and how to ap- praise the same in settling upon a theory of the conduct of life. The center of gravity of the newer sociology is the interest which mores the machinery of association. Everything else be- comes secondary. The central reality in asso- ciation is the evolution and correlation of inter- ests." (Science N. S. V. XV 383, p. 706.) 11 IE ABOLITION OF POVERTY. I9I The demands of the modern proletariat aiming at the abolition of the social economic parasitism of the classes and of the poverty of the masses are, as we see, nothing else than the legitimate product of social evolution, the correlation of in- terests not of single class only, but of the entire human race. The modern proletariat movement is a logical outcome of social evolution in general. Since man succeeded in artificial modification of his material environment, since he succeeded in sub- jecting nature to the dictation of his will guided by mind, the animal struggle for existence be- tween single human individuals gradually lost its sharp sting. The primeval man was a gregarious being. The progressive development of the human mind led step by step to a relaxa- tion of extreme individualism and a correspond- ing strengthening of the dormant social and racial instincts. The passing relations between the representatives of the opposite sexes deepened into lifelong attachment and mutual affection. The human family — the prototype of the human race, the nucleus of the modern civilized society, the fundamental social unit, was differentiated. The attachment to progeny on the part of the parents proportionally increased and lead to the extension of the period of infancy, devoted to the task of preparing the coming generations for the emergencies of social life and strife. How- ever inimical the relations between single indi- viduals were at the- period when the family shaped itself as a permanent social institution, the mutual relations between the members of the family were more or less friendly and intimate. The fierce animal struggle for existence was Hj2 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. eliminated from family life and substituted by mutual helpfulness. The family formed a so- cial oasis of '"peace and good will" in the anarchic desert of general hostility, war and strife. The struggle for existence between single individuals gradually merged into a struggle between the fundamental social units, the families. The powerful civilizing agency of family life worked steadily in the direction of contracting the field of the animal struggle for existence, and extending the domain of civilization, mutual help- fulness and co-operation. The family grew into a clan, the clan developed into a tribe and so on and on, from the most simple to the most complex social aggregate. This process of consolidation of the human family is going on in our day and expresses itself in the political as well as economic field, in the growing consciousness of the soli- darity and even identity of the interests of larger and larger aggregates of men. The purest and most universal expression of this consciousness is the spreading conviction that the interests of the proletariat and the interests of the entire hu- man race are identical. The class consciousness of the modern prole- tariat, rightly understood, is nothing else but Race-consciousness. Race-consciousness was, is, and will always re- main the highest ideal of humanity, the ideal of all those who suffered, labored and died in the battle for the great cause of humanity from time immemorial to our days. The modern proletarian movement finds its clearest and truest expression in Socialism. Is socialism only a noble dream? Or is it a science built on the impregnable rock of the ma- THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY. I93 terialistic conception of history? Is it a panacea against all the social evils of the day? Is it a philosophy of life, a stage of culture and civiliza- tion, a class struggle? Why is the Socialistic movement subdivided into so many parts, factions and sects, often combatting each other bitterly ? These and similar questions involuntarily sug- gest themselves to every intelligent observer of the modern proletarian movement. The key to the solution of the problems indicated above is concealed in the complexity and many-sidedness of the movement. Different aspects of the social economic evolu- tion present themselves to different minds, ac- cording to their peculiarities and predilections. In order to have a closer and true conception about socialism it is necessary to view it from as many angles of vision as possible. Truth cannot be monopolized, and no particular school of so- cialism has a right to claim for itself infallibility. Any honest conviction, any sincere opinion on this, as on any other subject of human interest, has to be met with the spirit of broad tolerance and criticised in the light of science and reason. As a philosophy of life, socialism is the modern expression of Race-consciousness (in opposition to Anarchism or Individualism). It is based on the conviction that the interest of each man, woman, and child is served best by the advance- ment of the general welfare of humanity. This principle forms the foundation of international socialism. It is equivalent to the recognition of the perfect solidarity of interests of all men. The welfare of the proletariat is identical with the welfare of the entire human race. The final aim of the Socialistic movement consists in the [94 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. emancipation of humanity from the despotic sway of economic power of one class over the other. The classical call, "Proletarians of all countries, unite!"' is a call to a united self defence of the overwhelming majority against the tyranny of a ridiculously small minority of exploiters of hu- man toil. As a constructive power socialism is of great importance, inasmuch as it presents all the results of scientific research, of human reason, and noble aspirations to the services of social- economic advancement. In the past and at pres- ent the social economic evolution was mainly, if not exclusively, an organic and consequently un- conscious process. Constructive socialism has in view the introduction of rational conscious- ness into social economic life, with the purpose of the organization of happiness on earth. It aims at the emancipation of humanity from the fetish- ism of wealth ; from the worship of Mammon. As a factor in the advancement of culture and civilization socialism excels all others. It is in perfect harmony with the modern methods of production. The mode of appropriation has to be adapted to the mode of production. "Only from that moment," says F. Engels, "will the social process set into motion by them produce the re- sults desired by them in a larger and larger measure. // is the leap of humanity from the domain of necessity into the realm of Freedom." The modern phase of socialism expounded by Rodbertus, Marx and Lassalle may be most cor- rectly designated by the term Critical as opposed to the preceding stage of emotional Socialism. (St. Simon, Fourier, Cabet and others.) Emotional socialism developed into critical so- THE ABOLITION OF POVERT\ . I95 cialism and the last will serve as a foundation for constructive socialism. Constructive socialism will have to pursue a policy of adaptation to existing conditions in the very midst of the present civilization, clearing the ground, utilizing carefully the material at hand. One of these conditions is the existence of classes in present society, of distinct strata of people pur- suing their class interests, or what they consider as their class interests, in opposition to the inter- ests of the rest of humanity. This class con- sciousness is especially strongly developed among the members of the exploiting class and compara- tively weakly among the exploited masses. Marx, as a sociological thinker and economist, exposed the absurdities, incongruities and injus- tice permeating the class ridden system of parasit- ism called capitalism. He invited the proleta- rians of all countries, of all nations, to unite against the class-rule of the capitalists, for the purpose of destroying class-rule forever. According to his teachings, classes, as creations of certain irrational social economic conditions, will have to disappear along with the conditions that called them into life. The lasting, essential element of Marx's theory of society consists in the necessity of destruction of all social economic inequalities, in the elimination of the economic struggle for existence, from human society, and its replacement by co-operation and mutual help- fulness. F. Engels, in his introduction to the '"Communist Manifesto," said: "The proletariat cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class, the bourgeoise, without at the same time and once for all emanci- pating society at large (the human race) from all UjG AMERICAN' PAUPERISM. exploitation, oppression, class distinctions and class struggle." A clearer statement of the very essence of so- cialism, as the highest ideal of the human race, of Race-consciousness, can hardly be conceived. How truly F. Engels voiced the ideas of Marx may be gathered from the following quotations from the Communist Manifesto : "If the proletariat, during its contest with the bourgeoise (middle class, capitalists) is com- pelled by force of circumstances to organize it- self as a class, if, by means of a revolution it makes itself the ruling class, and as such sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class-antagonism, and of class generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old bourgeois (capitalistic) society with its classes and class-antagonism, we shall have an association in which the free de- velopment of each is the condition for the free development of all. * * * << * * * Ajl previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the selfconscious, independent movement of the im- mense majority. National differences and an- tagonism between peoples (nations) are daily more and more vanishing. The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action of the leading civilized countries at least is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat. In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put an end to, the exploitation of one nation THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY. I97 by another will also be put an end to. In pro- portion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to other nations will come to an end." The history of humanity may be, to an extent at least, looked upon as the record of struggles between different classes for supremacy and power. The feudal class, for instance, was con- quered by the middle class (the bourgeois), which now rules the world through the power of organized material wealth. The so-called "Great French Revolution" is considered to be the line of demarcation between the rule of the feudal and the rule of the middle class. The last won its battle with the aid of the propertyless fourth class, the proletariat. The proletariat played the part of the ram with the aid of which the fortress of feudalism was battered down into dust. When the fortress was demolished the ram was left to its own destinies. Political liberty (not freedom), political equality (in the abstract) and fraternity (of the Cain variety) gained by the price of torrents of proletarian blood, were turned by the middle class into means for the enhanced enslavement of the toiling masses. In modern po- litical democracies the property-less class, the proletariat, is used as voting cattle. There is nothing left to the proletariat except to fight its oppressor and exploiter with his own weapon and on his own ground. In order to be successful in this struggle the proletariat must cultivate class-consciousness, which does not mean class-exclusiveness or class hatred. The struggle of the middle class was supposed at the time when the struggle was going on to be in the interest not of a new exploiting class, but 198 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. rather in the interest of all humanity. This con- viction imparted the inspiration to noble deeds of self sacrifice on the part of the great actors of the French Revolution. The middle class, after its selfish class interests were satisfied, became philistinized and conservative. The struggle between the proletariat and the middle class capitalism is of an eminently broader and deeper significance than the strug- gle of any other classes in the history of hu- manity. It is a class struggle only if viewed from the surface. As a matter of fact it is the struggle of the entire human race against class-rule and exploita- tion of men by men. Socialism is the movement of the human race having in view the reconstruction of our para- sitic social economic institutions on principles of reason, justice and love. That Capitalism has outlived its utility and must be succeeded by Collectivism or Socialism is admitted even by conservative professors of universities endowed by plutocrats, as for in- stance Professor Oscar L. Triggs of the Chicago University. In his article "Industrial Feudalism — and After" he summarizes his views on social eco- nomic conditions of our time as follows : ( 1 ) An industrial order is now being estab- lished which corresponds in all essential respects with what is known in political history as feudal- ism. (2) The political order, so far as it is shaped by the same individuals who control industry, partakes also of the nature of feudalism; hence THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY. 199 the recrudescence in the United States of the principles of Hamilton and the dominance of the Republican party. (3) When the feudalistic tendency cul- minates in the establishment of a centralized control of all industries, then the conscious and deliberate appropriation of that power of the people will begin, till work becomes free and the worker self directive. (4) Biology and psychology testify to the ultimate triumph of the principle of self-activity. In other words, all the forces of national evolu- tion are on the side of the people. (Wilshire's Magazine, March, 1903.) In order to comprehend how the psychical environment is being adjusted to the changed material environment, it is necessary to take into consideration the psychology of the masses of humanity. The masses of humanity at any given time, at any period of history, may be roughly divided into three distinct classes : the philistines, the kickers and the thinkers. The philistines make up the overwhelming majority of the people ; the kickers are always in the minority, and the thinkers form the exceptional element of human society. Who are the philistines? They are the people living according to the wisdom of past genera- tions, according to tradition, authority, prece- dents. The philistines have no desire to reason analytically, critically. They do not care to know, but are anxious to believe. They are fatalists by inclination. To them the world is at a standstill. Their motto is "It was, is and will be exactly the same at all times since creation to 200 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. the crash of doom." They are spiritually asleep and hate to be disturbed from their slumber. Stupidly good natural under normal conditions, they may turn furious when forcibly aroused from their mental lethargy by extraordinary events. Once aroused they may turn dangerous as wild beasts and commit any atrocities. They make up the mob of violent popular upheavals called revolutions. Who are the kickers? They are the people who feel instinctively that the wisdom of past generations, called tradition, authority, prece- dent, in the course of time outlives its utility and turns into folly. They do not have the capacity for critical or analytical reasoning, but do not show any aversion to independent thought. They are rather anxious to know and at the same time ready to believe. They are not fatalists, they feel instinctively that the world is always chang- ing, that past, present and future are not identi- cal. They are half asleep and half awake spiritu- ally, and do not object to being aroused from their slumber once in a while and for a short period of time. Once aroused they form an active element in historical events and drag after themselves the usually inert masses of philistines. The kickers are not satisfied with the material conditions around them ; they vaguely realize that these conditions may be and ought to be changed, modified or revolutionized, but they do not possess any clearness of vision. Who are the thinkers ? They are the people who clearly see that each generation has to live in accordance with its own wisdom and in conform- ity with the ever changing material environment. Tradition, authority, precedent, are considered THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY. 201 by them as so many fetiches of a barbaric past. They are able and willing to reason critically, analytically, and trust only in the testimony of their senses and logic. They draw a sharp line of demarcation between the knowable and un- knowable and do not trouble themselves about the last. They are determinists in philosophy. To them the world appears as a perpetual change and transformation. They are thoroughly alive spiritually. They know and know that they know. They form at all times the ferment, the leaven of social life, the advance guard of humanity, its controlling and directing element. They sup- ply consciousness and clear vision to the kickers, and, through the medium of the last, drag the philistine masses forward and onward on the highway of progress. In our time of general unrest and dissatisfac- tion there are many transitory variations of the just characterized three main social types, there are people who are rather hard to classify, as they possess some features of one and some of another type at once. As a clear distinct type, the middle class reformers of our time are kick- ers, Socialists are thinkers. And yet we meet philistines among Socialists and once in a while thinkers among reformers. We will, however, ignore here the exceptions and try to point out the differences between mid- dle-class reformers and socialists. Middle-class reformers, as a rule, do not seem to realize the immense complexity and strict law- fulness of social economic life and activity. They believe in the miracle working power of paper legislation. They fail to see that it is futile to even attempt to introduce legislative measures 202 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. (however apparently salutary to the oppressed classes) which are out of joint with the entire system of the prevailing social-economic institu- tions ; they fail to realize that such measures, even if introduced and passed, would have neces- sarily to remain either inoperative or even in- jurious to the very class they were intended to benefit. Reformers usually concentrate their at- tention exclusively on some single symptom of social economic disease, and claim that all that is necessary for the restoration of social economic health is to make that particular symptom to dis- appear. The single taxers, for instance, con- centrate all their attention on one single mode of exploitation — rent. Currency reformers see but one source of social economic evils — speculation with the medium of exchange. Direct legisla- tionists believe that if every citizen should have his say, be it wise or otherwise, on all matters of importance to the State, the millennium would be an accomplished fact, etc., etc. The single taxers do not comprehend that it is absurd to insist on the nationalization of one object of plu- tocratic monopoly, the soil, while defending "vested rights" on other objects of plutocratic monopoly, namely means of production in gen- eral. Direct legislationists fail to realize that capitalism has no use for enlightened citizenship, but assiduously cultivates voting cattle. The currency reformers fail to grasp the idea that it is of paramount importance to introduce rational and just economic relations in general before at- tempting to modify the medium of exchange, that speculation is one of the most essential methods of capitalistic economics. The prohibitionists fail to consider that a state of society based on ex- THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY. 203 ploitations of human labor cannot get along with- out intoxicants. Honest and sincere reformers have nothing to expect from Capitalism. Socialism is the reform of all reforms. It is rather inclusive than exclusive. It contains all that is of lasting value in bona fide reform move- ments and vastly more than that on a deeper, broader and sounder foundation than the average reformers dare to dream of. Socialism for instance demands together with the single-taxers the nationalization of the soil, but at the same time demands the nationalization of all means of production and distribution. So- cialist platforms contain a direct legislation plank. Under collective ownership and operations of all the means of production and transportation, spec- ulation with the medium of exchange, as any speculation in general, would be impossible. So- cialism does not confuse symptoms of social dis- ease with the disease itself. It strikes at the root of all social evils, exploitations of men by men, parasitism. It does not pretend to change human nature. It proposes only to do away with the very incentive for exploitation of men by men by substituting collective instead of private own- ership of the means of production and distribu- tion, by inaugurating economic democracy with- out which political democracy is a snare and delusion. Socialism, as a primarily humanitarian movement, deserves the interest and sympathy of all true lovers of mankind. Socialism stands for brotherly co-operation of all the members of the human family for the purpose of exploiting the inexhaustible treasures of their common mother, nature. It stands for emulation instead of competition, for the survival of the best in- 204 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. stead of the most cunning and unscrupulous, for the elevation instead of degeneration of the hu- man type. The question now arises : How will Socialism, as materialized in the co-operative commonwealth of the future, be inaugurated? Far as we may penetrate with our spiritual vision into the gray vista of hoary antiquity of the human race, we clearly distinguish two car- dinal social forces contending for supremacy. These social forces are, on one side, the will of the broad masses of the people and on the other side the brute force in the hands of a ruling minority. At the dawn of civilization the brute forces reigned supreme, while the will of the common people was but vaguely expressed. With the growing spiritual development of the masses, however, the physical force concentrated in the hands of the organized ruling minority was more and more counter-balanced by the popular will or public opinion. The gradual pacification of European international relations with the devel- opment of democratic political institutions is a fact that cannot escape the attention of the clear sighted student of modern history. Wars have become scarce since the second part of the last century, at least among civilized nations. The bullet is kept in check by the ballot in interna- tional affairs. At the same time European na- tions are compelled by the ruling classes to spend their very substance for the maintenance of an armed peace. The European continent, figura- tively speaking, bristles with bayonets, glares with the barbaric splendor and offensive ostenta- tion so characteristically peculiar to standing bodies of scientifically trained and artistically THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY. 205 drilled professional wholesale assassins called military men. The science and art of wholesale murder called war has reached in modern times a stage of perfection calculated to delight the heart of the most unrelenting enemy of the hu- man race. Militarism is celebrating odious or- gies in the two most civilized countries of the European continent, Germany and France. The recent policy of the government of the United States shows clearly some tendency towards mili- tarism. The ruling classes are getting uneasy. The growing intelligence of the toiling masses ap- pears as a menace to the power of the parasitic minority. It is against "the internal enemy'', the "dangerous classes", that the ruling parasitic minority prepares its murderous cohorts of hired wholesale assassins called armies and militias. At the same time the proletariat, the toiling masses, remain unarmed and unskilled in the arts of war. There is the danger. The parasitic classes are ready to drown in torrents of blood of the prole- tariat any serious attempt on the part of the last to proclaim the co-operative commonwealth. As in the case of international relations — it is the ballot alone that can keep in check the bullet. The proletariat has to realize that its only salva- tion consists in the intelligent use of civic rights before it will be too late. The proletariat has to realize that its only salvation consists in inde- pendent, class-conscious political action. It has to realize that it cannot expect anything good from the old capitalistic parties and everything from their own Socialist party. The old politi- cal parties presented to the working classes tokens 206 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. of their devotions to the interests of the prole- tariat in Homestead, Pullman and the bull-pens of the anthracite region. The old parties tolerate child labor, sweat shops, convict labor. The old parties are honeycombed with demagogic jug- glery and political corruption. The old parties Christianize and civilize Filipinos by water cures. The workingmen have to realize that to vote for the old parties means to vote for the perpetuation of wage slavery, for the degradation of the noble human being to the level of a witless beast of burden. Economic or Social Democracy means organ- ized peace, the rule of the will of the people ex- pressed by the ballot ; it means the relegation of brute force in the state affairs to the relics of the barbaric past. The struggle between the survival of the bar- baric past and the ideals of the future, between the will and interest of the toiling masses and the power of the exploiters is going on before our eyes. There is a constant war going on between Labor and Capital. The cause of that class struggle between the producers of all material wealth on one and the owners of all the means of production and distribution on the other side is not generally known. The economic interests of these two classes of contemporary society are directly opposed to each other. The toilers strive to retain as much of the product of their labor as it is possible under the prevailing social economic conditions. The owners of the means of production and distribution, in their turn, en- deavor to appropriate as much of the product of THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY. 20J the toil of their wage-slaves as they may succeed in doing. The relations between the modern producer and his master, between the proletarian and the capitalist, are regulated* chiefly by the prevailing social economic conditions, expressed and embod- ied in the political institutions controlled and di- rected by the ruling class. The political institu- tions of a country make up in their entirety what we briefly call the State. The class that succeeds in getting control of the State must of necessity be in power to modify social economic conditions to suit best its class interests. That class gains the power to dictate the terms to all other classes of the nation and may enforce submission to its will in the name and by the authority of the State. Political power and economic power supplement each other. The ruling classes naturally use their economic power as a means to acquire and retain political power and then use the last as a means to increase the first. On the other hand, political dependence leads inevitably to economic depend- ence. There can be no actual political equality with- out economic democracy, or social democracy. The conclusions suggested by these general considerations may be applied directly to the relations between Capital and Labor in the United States. Who actually controls our National, State and Municipal administrations? Who spends mil- lions of dollars on political campaigns ? Who are the actual masters of our legislative and execu- tive, our judiciary and military institutions? Who owns the entire press, who inspires the pul- 208 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. pit, who controls our institutions of learning'' Who are the real commanders of our army and navy? To put these questions means to answer them. The Capitalists capture the State for all there is in it, and mainly for the social economic power it gives them over the voting cattle, the nominally free citizens of the United States. Both old Capitalistic parties grossly flatter these nominal citizens and promise them great things before election. After election the same "fellow citizens" who voted into power the rep- resentatives of one or the other capitalistic par- ties are neglected, bulldozed and maltreated. The average American proletarian fails to see the connection between his "job" and his "bal- lot", between economics and politics. He will, however, have to open his eyes in this connection before he may expect to improve his conditions materially and lastingly. As long as the capitalists control our National, State and Municipal administration through the medium of any or both of the old parties this ad- ministration will be managed in direct violation of the rights of labor. As long as capitalists will have a chance to spend millions on influenc- ing the "voting cattle" in national and local polit- ical campaigns the political state will be appro- priated by them and their hired servants, the professional politicians. As long as the capitalists will make and exe- cute laws the laboring class will be forced to break laws and be punished for doing it. As long as the capitalists remain the actual com- manders of our armies and navy these tremen- dous physical forces will be used for the exter- THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY. 200, ruination of "riotous strikers" and conquests of new markets. As long as the capitalists own the press, the pulpit, the bar, the educational institutions, gen- erations after generations will be trained in a spirit directly inimical to the toiling masses. In order to ha.ve at least a ghost of a show of success in their struggle against private capitalism the proletariat must fight with weapons just as efficient as those of their adversaries, must meet the enemy on its own ground of independent class-conscious and race-conscious action. The laboring class must strike at the ballot box for their own party, the Socialist party. By captur- ing the political power the proletariat will be enabled to make and execute its own laws and turn the United States into a gigantic labor union. The transition from Capitalism to Social- ism will then be a peaceful political change (coup d'etat) instead of a bloody civil war. Socialism, after the co-operative common- wealth is inaugurated, proposes to abolish all economic class privileges, to introduce a new era of civilization, an era of peace and good will to all men, women and children, to establish the supreme authority of the will of the toiling masses, of the ballot, to abolish forever the reign of the brute force of the bullet. Under social- ism, poverty and parasitism, these Siamese twins of the harlot of Capitalism, will have no place. There will be no millionaires and no paupers. The humanizing, pacifying influence of social- ism is being felt even now in Germany and France. During the excitement of the Franco-Prussian war, when jingoism and race hatred reached their 2IO AMERICAN PAUPERISM. climax, the German and French socialists were the only ones who remained cool hcadedly and warm heartedly on the high ground of humani- tarian principles of brotherly love, the only ones who had the courage to protest most emphatic- ally against the fratricidal war among German and French proletarians, instigated by and in the interests of the parasitic classes. The democratizing influence of Socialism was and is now demonstrated in France. When the French middle class republic was in danger of being destroyed by the reactionary elements of the feudal aristocracy, the church and plutocracy, backed by an army organization rotten to the very core, putrid with moral cor- ruption and reeking with sensual filth, the social- ist stepped manfully to the front and saved the ballot from the bullet. When this unholy trinity of the scions of feudalism, plutocracy and mili- tarism, in order to cover its crimes and atroci- ties, accused and punished an innocent man, the socialists again saved the honor of their nation by exonerating the innocent man and unmasking the actual perpetrators of the heinous crime of treason. The tyrannical proclivities of the loquacious Emperor of Germany are kept in check not by the weak-kneed middle class liberals, but by the vig- orous opposition of the sturdy Social Democratic party. The encroachment upon popular rights on the part of the feudal aristocracy of Prussia, the agrarians, meets its strongest opposition from the social democrats. It is the Social Democratic Party of Germany that exposes the moral rotten- ness of the parasitic classes and systematically champions the interests of the exploited masses. THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY. 211 The most conservative scientists like Prof. Mommsen and others testify on their own accord to it publicly and advise the people to vote for the only political party in Germany, that means well with the people and has the moral stamina to de- fend right against might. It is significant enough and augurs well for the future co-operative com- monwealth that socialists form the backbone of the French bourgeois republic and preserve the liberties of the German middle class against the onslaughts of the surviving remnants of feudal- ism. Doing this the party of the proletariat is true to the traditions of the glorious past of the class it represents. Not the middle class, not the bourgeois, vanquished feudalism. With the touch- ing naivete of a young, good-natured giant the proletariat left the fruit of his victory in the hands of the rapacious middle class. When in the posses- sion of political power the middle class allied itself with the former foe, the remnants of the feudal aristocracy, against the proletariat. The proletariat of Europe profited by the lesson of history and organized itself into an independent political socialistic party, serving as an advance guard of the world wide international socialist movement to guard the ballot from the bullet. Approximately similar conditions prevail in the United States. The abolition of African slavery was accomplished in the interests of white wage slave-holders of the North. The civil war was a struggle between the aristocracy of the South and the middle class of the North. The same political party that was instrumental in the abolition of chattel slavery gave ascendency to Caucasian wage slavery, and is turned now into a conservative power in the United States. 212 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. The Democratic party received its death blow at the moment it identified itself with African chat- tel slavery. Since that moment it has turned into a reactionary power in the United States. It lost its grip on the current events of the age, it failed to adjust itself to the new social economic conditions and ceased to represent any vital prin- ciples. Astute politicians like Mark Hanna are clear sighted enough to recognize and candidly admit that the battle royal between the modern wage slave-holders, the capitalists, and the prole- tariat will be waged between the Republican and Socialistic parties. Meanwhile the Republican party has already stepped in the footprints of its predecessors, the Democratic party. The Republican party has identified itself with the cause of wage-slavery and will be compelled by the victorious march of the party of the proletariat, the Socialist party, to take the back seat occupied now by the expiring Democratic party. The Socialist party, the party of the toiling masses, is destined to complete the work begun by the abolitionists and is bound to. turn into a ruling power in the United States in the near future. The old abolitionists fought for the emancipation of African slaves ; the new aboli- tionists, the Socialists, arc fighting for the aboli- tion of all kinds of slavery, for the abolition of parasitism and poverty. The gigantic strides made by the vast capitalistic consolida- tions (trusts, monopolies), the adventurous imperialistic colonial policy of the United States, the growth of militarism and many other events could not fail to advance civic education among the masses, could not fail to open the eyes of the THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY. 213 most apathetic philistines to the dangers of ap- proaching plutocratic feudalism. As a result we see and feel that Socialism is in the air. The vote cast during the last election for the Socialist party reached about 300,000. The following figures show the marvelous growth of Socialism all over the world : 1895 1897 1894 1898 1900 1872 1884 1887 1890 1892 1895 1898 1900 1885 1888 1892 1898 1867 1871 1874 1877 1878 1881 1884 1887 1890 1893 1898 1903 1895 1902 AUSTRALIA. BELGIUM. DENMARK. . 90,000 .750,000 •334,500 •543,324 .463,000 315 6,805 8,408 17,232 . 20,098 25,019 32,000 43,285 FRANCE. 30,000 91,000 800,000 1,000,000 GERMANY. 30,000 101,927 351,670 486,843 437J58 3H,96l 599,990 767,128 1,427,008 1,786,738 2,125,000 3,100,000 GREAT BRITAIN. 55,000 35°>°oo HOLLAND. 1901 39,000 1893 1895 1897 1900 1901 1895 1893 1895 1897 1901 1902 1890 1893 1896 1901 ITALY. NORWAY. SERVIA. . 20,000 . 76,400 •134,496 .215,841 • -7,013 .55,000 SPAIN. SWEDEN. . 7,000 . 14,000 .28,000 .25,000 .48,000 SWITZERLAND. ■ 13,500 . 29,822 ■ 36,468 . 100,000 UNITED STATES. 1890 13,704 1891 16,552 1892 21,512 1893 25,666 1894 30,020 1895 34,869 1896 36,275 1897 55,550 1898 91,749 1900 135,770 1902 about 300,000 214 AMERK W PAUPERISM. The rate of increase of the Socialistic vote in- dicates a marvelous growth of public conscious- ness. The question now arises : will history repeat itself literally? Will the abolition of parasitism and poverty, closely connected with Capitalism and wage slavery, be brought about by a bloody civil war just as the abolition of chattel slavery, or will it be accomplished peacefully by the ballot? There seems to be one factor in the modern abolition movement called Socialism, that rather augurs a pacific solution of the problem. The abolition of chattel slavery was accom- plished in a contest between two factions of the same race in the interests of a new class of slave- holders called Capitalists. The slaves themselves belonged to a different and lower race, that took but a small part in the struggle for their own emancipation. The abolition of wage slavery is in the interest of the entire human race, of economic democracy and true freedom. The toiling masses form the overwhelming majority of the people and voters. If the wage slaves only waken to the conscious- ness of the solidarity of their interests and power, if the proletarians will make up their minds to express their will by votes for their own political party, the victory may be, must be, a peaceful one. If, however, the wage workers will stubbornly refuse to take part in independent political action, they will gradually be disfranchised as the ne- groes in the South were, and the bullet will kill the ballot. One part of the proletariat called soldiers will be ordered to shoot into uncon- THE ABOLITION OF POVERTY. 215 ditional submission to the plutocratic feudal lords the rest of the proletariat called laborers, while the lords themselves will rub their hands and look on in fiendish glee. To avoid this the proletarian movement must do an immense amount of educational work ; it must appeal to the brains and hearts of men ; it must use as weapons exact knowledge, critical thought, ideas and ideals. As educators in the most comprehensive sense of the word the lead- ers of the modern abolition movement must ex- ercise a great deal of patience, tolerance and for- bearance. First of all, and above all, however, they must possess the courage of their convictions and never cease their educational crusade till their mission is fulfilled and parasitism and poverty are no more. With the gentle Quaker poet and singer of the old abolition movement let us say : "Friend of the poor ! — go on— Speak for the truth and right ! Onward — though hate and scorn Gloom round thee as the night. Speak — at each word of thine, Some ancient fraud is riven, And through its rents of ruin shine The sunbeams and the heaven ! "Speak — for thy voice will be Welcome in each abode Where manhood's heart and knee Are bended but to God ; Where honest bosoms hold Their holy birthright well ; Where Freedom spurns at Mammon's gold; Where Man is not to sell. "Speak for the poor man's cause — For labor's just reward — 2l6 AMERICAN PAUPERISM. For violated law Of Nature and of God ! ********** ********** Speak — thunder in Oppression's ear, Deliverance to the slave! "Ay, speak — while there is time, For all a freeman's claim, Ere thought becomes a crime, And Freedom but a name ! While yet the Tongue and Pen And Press are unforbid And we dare to feel and act as man- Speak — as our fathers did ! "The land we love ere long Shall kindle at thy call; Falsehood and chartered Wrong And legal Robbery, fall : The proud shall not combine — The secret counsel cease — And underneath his sheltering vine Shall labor dwell in peace ! "Perish shall all which takes From Labor's board and can ! Perish all which makes A Spaniel of the Man! With freshened courage, then, On to the glorious end — Ever the same as thou has been — The poor man's fastest friend!" Ml SUPPLEMENT JESUS or MAMMON? BY J. FELIX "I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord." Crying aloud against the blasphemy of those who devour the exploited laborer, and for a pre- tense make long prayers and give alms in His name ! Crying bitterly from a wilderness of con- tradictions against a society which, teaching the voung in the doctrines of the Redeemer that it is more blessed to serve than be served, to give than to receive, yet supports a system under which those who will not devour must chose to be devoured ! Crying piteously to those who pro- fess His Teligion of love to come boldly forth and help make the paths straight, that love may walk without brutality and lead humanity to that king- dom of God, where love may be a living law in- stead of a dead letter. Will ye never know the Master's meaning when He warned you against offending the little ones ? Will ye never perceive that when ye teach a child to love neighbor as self, in honor to prefer one another, "that all these things shall be added," that righteousness and truth and honest)- of dealing are sure paths to 217 2l8 .1 [Tl. KMF.XT. happiness and success in life and then push that innocent soul out into a world of greed where money is power, where every path is closed to those who try to practice what you teach ; will ye never learn that in doing this ye give mortal offense to His lambs? Can ye not see that only by throwing all your energies into the effort to do away with conditions which make a Christian life a practical impossibility can you escape the terrible sentence of the children's Christ? It were better ye had a millstone tied to your necks and ye were even cast into the sea where it is deep- est. Come, brethren, let us reason together. Do you not. fellow Christian, dread for your chil- dren and all posterity that which has been your fate ? Surely not all who claim to follow "in His steps" are despicable hypocrites ! Surely my brothers and sisters of the faith are all as honest and sincere as am I. That being so, they must suffer as I do. They. too. must feel at war with themselves. They, too, must feel lone and weary and heartsick at their vain endeavors to live the Christ life. Surely I am only a son of man and not the only son of man to feel the horror of subjection to conditions which make His way a practically impossible way. To be sure He said that there would be terrible suffering and many bleeding hearts and estrangements of kindred for His sake and the coming of His kingdom. Oh. but He also made a promise. He never said that poor humanity must forever be at war and suffer everlastingly. Tie bade us make straight the crooked paths. He commissioned us to re- move all obstacles. We are to overcome Mam- mon and the greedy horde of his worshippers. We are to clear away the institutions which JESUS OR MAMMON? 219 legalize the oppression of the weak by the power- ful, the enslavement of the poor by the rich. We are to open wide the gates, smooth the road and clear away the encumbrances of the usurer and exploiter so that a man may live by the sweat of his brow without stealing the wage of his neighbor. So that man may love his fellow- man without starving his own family. So that we may pray for the success of all our fellows without dreading that one man's gain is another man's loss and that other man may mean our- selves. Do you think it wise to make a living God appear under necessity of starving one that another may be blessed with untold wealth? Did "Our Father in Heaven" provide for the grow- ing of only one-half enough bread to go around ? Or are we countenancing a system which enables one man to seize the share of ten so that we may build almshouses, prisons and poor relief sta- tions for the other nine? Listen to my cry! Par- don much use of the personal pronoun. It is a personal story. My hope is that it is common to so many, that it will help answer some of these burning questions. Oh, I am sure my appeal is not going to be in vain. Though I am without wisdom or influence or power, I have love, boundless, all prevailing, devouring love. Love is God. Will you defy my God? Will you with- stand the power which brought forth and sus- tains the universe? Will ye say to Love, "Get thee hence?" Ye cannot resist. Even out of my wilderness ye must hear my cry and respond to my call. Ye could jeer at logic and refuse to reason, but Love ye can neither conquer nor ignore. There is no danger. In an age when a threat to violate the so-called rights of property 220 SUPPLEMENT. arouses more feeling and louder protests than the wanton destruction of thousands of lives, the bold proclamation of a rule of love without profit must attract interest if not respectful at- tention. Is it a wonderful thing that one who professes to follow Jesus of Nazareth should feel Jove impelled to help and cheer every living fel- low soul? Must not a sincere follower of the Great Lover of Children, the originator of the religion of the rights of the lowly, and the weak be wrung at heart to see innocent childhood sold for gain and virtue sacrificed to Mammon? Are you surprised that one who drinks of the cup and eats of the bread in "remembrance of Him" should be in love with all the universe? To me this seems natural, but oh it is so hard to be consistent! The rich and the poor may worship together. They may profess the same love of God. The high and the low lift their voices in praise and thanksgiving to the good loving Father in Heaven and then the rich go out to exploit the poor, to defraud the other rich, the high to oppress the low, the low to displace the higher. Do they associate together, dine and live together? Are they friendly and helpful to each other, seeking each other's company and culti- vating a close fellowship in preparation for the future co-existence which they profess to be looking toward in a paradise of Loving bliss? Certainly not. They are in constant antagonism. The poor want to be rich and the rich want to get richer for fear of becoming poorer. Prac- tically every Christian strives with all his might for gain. Yet Christ taught that material wealth was such a bar to entrance into His Kingdom, that onlv the miraculous intervention of God JESUS OR MAMMON? 221 could save a rich man. Did Christ lie when he said that? Are we all hypocrites? I tell you neither does the Lord's word fail nor are we all hypocrites. We are living in a state of chronic violence. I speak not of those who scoff at all religion. I am not addressing those who openly avow themselves devoted to no cult or creed save that of self. I am appealing to those who would follow the King of Truth and live by the gospel of Love. Who will, but cannot? The Christ said violence must come but woe to him who brings it. I say, woe also to him who maintains, countenances and fails to exert him- self to defeat violence. He is equally guilty with him who causes violence. The worst of all vio- lence is that which offends against the laudable aspirations of youth to follow in the steps of Him who said, "Little children love one another!" You have to live in a world where man is ar- ranged against man. You toil for bread amid conditions natural to beasts of prey. You teach your children that. "Love is the greatest thing in the world." When the child begins to reason you show it that money is the indispensable thing. Ohj listen to the cry of one who like many of you has been faced by the questioning, inno- cent "why" of a son or daughter. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. The harvest is white for the cutting. Why stand idle? Why do ye linger? Come forth in the power of His might. Come in the name of the King of Truth. Come in the name of Love of Humanity. Come for the sake of the Martyrs of countless ages who cry from the past at the danger of seeing the price- less heritage, the fruit of all. their sacrifice and struggle, lost through our selfishness and indif- 222 SUPPLEMENT. ference. Come for the sake of posterity which will surely call us to account! Brethren, we must think and work ! We must Thank, Trust and Work in Love, without ceasing to make His paths straight, to take away the barriers, so that generations to come may call us blessed while they walk in the paths of righteousness, of love, of service one to another without fear. We must follow the pointing of the finger which shows the better way. We must make possible the glorious prophecy that the Lion, the strong, shall lie down with the Lamb, the weak, to shelter, protect and raise instead of oppress and devour, to be loved and trusted instead of hated and feared. Ye believe in God? Then ye must be- lieve in this. The Christ did not die for a theory but for a truth, sublime but most practical. If we fail to join in the battle for this truth we make of Him a mockery, and the truth for which He died will yet prevail in spite of us. Listen to one crying in the Wilderness ! Make His paths straight. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, take heed when it comes lest ye be found among the generations of vipers, hypocrites, chil- dren of Mammon. You want to know what all this means? You demand something more definite than passionate exclamations? You shall have it. At the bot- tom of all this wilderness of contradictions and inconsistencies of our social fabric there is a primal cause. That cause is to be found in the desperate effort to cling to a worn out system of morals and economic ethics. With our advance in the mechanical arts and improvement of the means of production, unparalleled in the history of the world, the system of law governing the JESUS OR MAMMON? 223 relations of man to man and regulating the award and distribution of the said production have re- mained practically at a standstill. Instead of keeping pace with the advance on the one hand in the art of production, by adapting the system governing the producer to that of the changed conditions, we are stubbornly refusing to recog- nize that which may have been of social and political economy under former conditions have become the most damnable lies. Political equal- ity has become a dead letter. In place of chattel slavery a system of exploitation has sprung into existence and shelters itself under a system of laws originally intended to guarantee the rights of the individual. The result is that the condi- tion of the large mass of productive toilers is one in which they suffer all the evils of chattel slav- ery without any of the mitigating advantages of that institution. It is not merely the assertion of a fanatical devotee of an ism to say that the fore- going statement is a fact. One has only to have the very common experience of being compelled to seek or hold the employment necessary to earn daily bread for self and dependents, to learn how bitterly true it is that those who live by the sweat of the brow are the victimized creatures of him who holds the purse strings. This being a fact, what wonder that the worship of Mammon is the only one which enlists serious devotees? Time was when a man willing to work could take his little kit of tools and go out into the world with the assurance that at least a fairly equitable portion of what he produced would be his. Nor did the worker need dread that for the chance to work, to produce, he would have to bargain away not only the greater part of his product but even 224 SI rpPLEMENT. his personal freedom. Little by little the cunning of the workman and even his physical strength became less and less a factor of importance in production. The introduction of labor-saving machinery constantly reduces the percentage cost of manual labor and increases that of plant and machinery. Now, while it is an undisputable fact that labor-saving machinery results in im- proving the material condition of the people at large, it is equally indisputable that under the present system of exploitation it gives the em- ploying, the capitalistic element, enormously in- creased power. There is no doubt that a large percentage of the people, even the wage-working people, enjoy material conveniences and even luxuries unthought of before the extensive intro- duction of labor-saving devices. There is also no doubt that the percentage of product retained by the producer has suffered great decrease from the same cause. This condition leads to so-called over production and those periods of industrial depression are commonly known as Panics. A panic is not the result of over production. Panics and hard times are the direct result of a gradual withdrawing of the purchasing power from the producing masses. As an illustration we will sup- pose that, through the improvement in machinery a man receiving two dollars per day is able to produce ten dollars worth of shoes ; he has added to the supply ten dollars worth but is only able to purchase two dollars worth. If millions of people produce more than they can purchase in the same proportion and the residue is absorbed by a small non-producing minority, the time must come at more or less regular intervals when both the product and the purchasing medium will be JESUS OK MAMMON? 225 concentrated, a few hands will possess all, with the many impoverished. Then comes the so- called slack in the market. Money becomes cheap because industries are at a standstill. This piling up of produce and idleness of capital is not the result of over-production. If there was real over-production and just social distribution there would be no want and starvation. Want and starvation are rampant at times when the prod- uct of labor finds no ready market. When cor- porations declare the greatest dividends and the capitalist talks about prosperity based on enormous profits, then a panic is near at hand. This must be so because the larger the per- centage of profits, the less is the percentage of purchasing power left in the hands of the= producer, who is also the consumer. Now, at the bottom of this lies the fact that the in- troduction of machinery has compelled the pro- ducer to join with many of his fellows in the use of expensive equipment which in turn is con- trolled by private individuals who have all the power of life and death without any of the re- sponsibilities to which even the veriest despot of a potentate must yield consideration. All of this enormous advantage depends on a man's having money. It is not wonderful then that men will go any length to obtain that which gives them a chance to exploit, i. e., eat up their fellows in- stead of being eaten and exploited by them ? Yet the very fact that the getting of wealth is only a choice of dilemmas makes it impossible for the possessor of wealth to be happy. No sooner does a man accumulate large wealth and proceed to use it for the purpose of exploiting his fellows, than he in turn becomes the object of universal 22G SUPPLEMENT. attack. To defend himself against the on- slaughter and keep possession of his power he must brutalize himself (if he has not already done so in the getting), and his fear and sus- picion of his fellows destroys all chance of hap- piness. We see by all this that we have arrived at a high stage of productive advancement, but that our system of social distribution is entirely wanting in serving the best interests of humanity, rich and poor alike. The poor are compelled to compromise themselves and harden their hearts in order to live and even partially respond to the claims of those dependent on them. The rich likewise must steel themselves against every human impulse and choke off every high aspira- tion lest they be thrown back among the poor. How little chance is offered by such conditions to practice the love law of Jesus Christ, those who have conscientiously tried to do so, can best make answer. If, therefore, conditions are such as to make a consistent Christian life a practically impossible life, ought not every Christian bestir himself to remedy the evil? You ask how can this be done? In the first place, you and I, dear brother, must clear our minds of all prejudice. We must take on a spirit of unselfishness. We must look upon things through the eyes of earnest, devoted love for the truth. We must try to see things and not with- out fear as they are, as He saw them and not as we have become accustomed to see them. We must learn to distinguish between might and right. We must learn to look through the laws of conventionalities of man and see the law of God, of Nature, of Love ! They are one and the same. Having done this, what do we see? We JESUS OR MAMMON? 227 see the law of God made of no effect. We see that the advance of civilization has brought with it also a great forward stride in the methods of Mammon. The very truths upon which all ad- vancement is based have been cunningly con- strued to blind the masses and make their vic- timization easier. The "divine" right of rulers, feudal and paternal institutions, chattel slavery and all other crude devices of former ages by which the few sought to live upon and tyrannize the many, have been ripenend and developed into the perfectly effective modern Giant Capitalist. The sacred ( ?) fetishes of the rights of property, usury, capital, have developed into a perfect sys- tem of exploitation such as only modern civiliza- tion could produce. Under a system of laws which seeks to establish the right to get by what- ever means is available and which makes sacred the right of the getter to keep what he has, re- gardless of the common weal. Mammon has indeed become King, and to be poor in posses- sions is to be worthless of consideration. This is, if ye will hear it, the short reign of that Father of liars which the Master said must come. The cure for this state of affairs, the defeat of this Mammon of unrighteousness, the freeing of humanity must come through the abolition of private ownership of the means of production. The means of production must be returned to the people. The product of labor must be assured to the producer. In other words, if we would make material conditions and social environment such as to permit of the consistent following out of the precepts of the Christ, if we would make the natural law of love a possible practice of daily life, if we would do away with the present rule 228 SUPPLEMENT. of envy, conflict and Mammon, we must bring about the introduction of Socialism. We have too long stood aloof ; we have been befooled too long by those who wrongly think their interests at stake, to think that Socialism is a form of anarchism, the fruit of abnormal brains equally wedded to a destruction of religion, law and order. This is far from the truth. If you will take the time and trouble to impartially study the principles of Socialism and the declarations of its authoritative expounders, you will find, as I have, that they have an abhorrence of all vio- lence. You will be surprised to learn (it is sur- prising that you read the daily papers without Jearning) that the lawlessness is on the side of Mammon, of private ownership, of arrogant co- operative power. You will find that the principal grievance of the true Socialist is that the law can not, under present conditions, be enforced. You will also find that the enemies of Socialism, the ones who make every effort to misrepresent and malign Socialism, recognize no law save self- interest. You will find that enemies of Socialism are the real anarchists in that they never hesitate to violate the law when their interests are at stake, while they put forth every effort to defeat any popular advancement. For the most part you will find that they succeed because money is power and they have money. It is true that many of the leaders in this new thought are of foreign birth and that, owing to the depravel ideals with which the word religion and Chris- tianity has ever been associated in their native lands, they avow themselves as abhorrent of any form of institutional religion. In their minds all institutional religion must necessarily stand JESUS OK MAMMON? 229 only for tyranny of the worst sort. But if you will look at the principles advocated by "these men without prejudice you will soon see that there is no antagonism in principle toward what you and I, under more fortu- nate surroundings, recognize as Christianity. Even if it were true that up to the present this idea had been principally championed by those who are not of the household of faith, is that a reason why we should refuse to see the truth? Did our forefathers refuse political free- dom because some of its stoutest and most effective advocates gloried in being called in- fidels ? Certainly not. Even in our time we have seen no good Republican minister of the gospel refuse to vote his ticket because the redoubtable Bob Ingersol voted the same. It is therefore not a question of what other kind of people vote and work for Socialism or what they expect to gain by its introduction. The fact which we have to consider is that Christian ethics and the present social and industrial economy are antagonistic and at variance. As Christians we must seek to change this. Mammon sits enthroned. As Christians we want to enthrone Jesus. If Social- ism will do this every true Christian must become a Socialist. Come see for yourselves. As a brother, I say it will. You need not take my word. Read, work, love. You will surely come. You cannot be neutral. We do not need "Chris- tian Socialism," we need Socialism in order to live as Christians should live. Therefore, I know it will come because I believe in Jesus. Now it is: Jesus or Mammon. Jesus is bound to win. When He wins do you want to come with Jesus into power through Socialism or with Mammon 230 SUPPLEMENT. dethroned, in spite of Capitalism? You must decide, my brother. Whatever you decide do it quickly. Time is precious for both sides. Jesus or Mammon? THE PASSING OF CAPITALISM AND THE MISSION OF SOCIALISM By ISADOR LADOFF. Throughout its thirty-four chapters "The Passing of Capitalism" is a masterly arraignment of the capitalist system and an analysis of capitalist society in language at once trenchant and captivating. — Social Democratic Herald. A book of profound philosophic thought and great erudition. — Revue Socialiste. Comrade Ladoff's work is the first that has appeared in America championing Bernstein's theories, and has met with the same disapproval that greeted Bernstein. * * * Thirty-five chapters are contained in the book, of such a diverse nature, though all deal with the sub- ject of Socialism, that it is impossible to give a com- prehensive review of the book in the small space at our command and do it justice. The best that we can do is to recommend it to our readers with the assurance that a careful study of it will well repay for their time. — James Oneal, in The Toiler. Cloth, 160 pages, 50 cents; paper, 25 cents. By special arrangement with the Standard Publishing Com- pany, we are enabled to supply this book to our stockholders on the same terms as our own pub- lications. CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY (Co-operative), 56 Fifth Avenue, Chicago. "IIIIIIIIIIIII UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. RCA - ©EC V419© flEC'D U -UBP NOV 2 7 19W SET 1 3 19? ? SEP2S c^B^j UR| •fox -Series Jtz 1 1977' APR 4197T p r- o ■ p I Pi I l r-. , NOV 061989 NOV 2 8 3S89 L 005 779 900 9 91 Ll25a UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 424 304 Mill