Our Benevolent Feudalism

It is not an extravagant hope that some day we shall have two successive censuses carried out on identical schedules, so that comparisons may be accurately made between two decades. As it is, we must take what the powers give us, and be thankful. We must take it on trust, moreover, for there is no going behind the returns; and any captious questioning of the figures can be met only in the spirit with which Telemachus answered the fair Helen’s inquiry if he were a true son of Ulysses. It is a matter of faith – there is no proof.

In the faith, then, that there is reasonable accuracy in the reports, and a reasonable basis of comparison with previous reports, it is interesting to note what is revealed. First in point of interest is the relation of the value of the manufactured product to the amount of wages paid. A comparison will show whether labor is receiving an increasing or decreasing share of the wealth created. The census totals under the former heading are confessedly crude, since “a constant duplication of products appears, … owing to the fact that the finished products of many manufacturing establishments become the materials of other establishments, in which they are further utilized and again included in the value of products.” The new census has therefore made a separate classification of materials purchased in a partially manufactured form. Nevertheless, the gross total, including products from both raw materials and partly manufactured products, is reached by the same means as were employed in previous censuses, and is therefore comparable with the gross totals of previous decades. Whatever the duplications, they are similar to those of preceding reports.

There are nineteen States wherein the average number of wage-earners in manufacturing pursuits constitutes more than 6 per cent of the population. Rhode Island heads the list with 22.5 per cent. It is followed by Connecticut with 19.5; Massachusetts, 17.7; New Hampshire, 17.1; New Jersey, 12.8; Delaware, 12; New York, 11.7; Pennsylvania, 11.6; Maine, 10.8; Maryland, 9.1; Vermont, 8.6; Ohio, 8.3; Illinois, 8.2; Florida, 7; Wisconsin, 6.9; Michigan, 6.7; Washington, 6.6; Indiana, 6.2; California, 6.1.

In each of these States the value of the manufactured product has increased, Florida leading with a gain of 109.6 per cent; Washington following with 107.8 per cent; New Jersey with 72.5; Indiana, 66.7; Vermont, 50.4; Wisconsin, 45.2, and so on, Massachusetts showing the slightest increase, 16.6 per cent. The value of the manufactured product is of course affected by the two items, cost of material and miscellaneous expenses, though in turn these are almost invariably reflected to some extent in the increase or decrease of the value of the product. When his material and his expenses increase, the manufacturer, if he can, puts up the price of his product. It would be wholly impossible to find a ratio, for the figures show an astonishing variety. In Massachusetts, for instance, – that classic State for the observation and study of industrial phenomena, the State wherein statistics are gathered with some approach to accuracy, – the increase of miscellaneous expenses is put at 16.1 per cent; of cost of material, at 16.8 per cent; of value of product, 16.6 per cent. But against this reasonable showing New York confesses to an increase of 81.8 per cent in miscellaneous expenses, with an increased product of but 27.1 per cent. Miscellaneous expenses increased 131 per cent in New Jersey, while the product increased but 72.5 per cent, and Pennsylvania and Indiana follow hard in the tracks of the two former States. Perhaps a key to the mystery is furnished in the enormous increase of miscellaneous expenses in certain industries which require favorable legislation. Gas, for instance, which is generally considered the rightful prey of certain kinds of aldermen and legislators, shows a payment of $8,635,399 for “advertising, interest, insurance, repairs, and other sundry expenses,” an increase of 74.8 per cent against an increase in the value of the product of but 32.9 per cent.

In each of these nineteen factory States the value of the product increased. In all but one it increased more than 25 per cent, in two more than 100 per cent. But in ten of these States total wages have declined, and in three of the remainder the gain is insignificant. Wages of men workers have declined in eleven of these States, with a fractional gain in two States. Florida, which shows the greatest percentage of increase in the number of wage-earners, shows the greatest relative loss in wages. Maine, which gives the smallest percentage of increase in number of wage-earners, gives the largest relative percentage of increase in wages. The four States having the greatest absolute number of wage-earners all show decreases of wages. New York, with 849,092 workers, shows a wage-loss of 2.2 per cent; Pennsylvania, with 733,834 workers, a loss of 2 per cent; Massachusetts, with 497,448, a fractional loss; and Illinois, with 395,110, 5 per cent.

The specific industries for the whole nation show similar results. Relative wages have increased in refining petroleum, in manufacturing ice and salt, and in a few other industries. But they have decreased in the great majority of the industries so far reported. There is a wage-loss in the making of bicycles, leather gloves and mittens, watches, watch-cases, buttons, gas, oleomargarine, boots and shoes, paper and pulp, coke, needles and pins, cigars and cigarettes, pocket-books, trunks and valises, leather belting and hose, in canning and preserving fruits and vegetables, in the tanning and finishing of leather, the slaughtering and packing of meat, the smelting of zinc, ship-building, car-building, the weaving of flax, hemp, and jute, and cotton products, the brewing of malt liquors, and newspaper publishing. All along the monotonous rows of figures the same lesson is generally revealed, – the productivity of the laborer increases, the value of the product increases, the wages, except in occasional instances, decline or remain stationary.

The important point of the purchasing power of the dollar in 1890 as compared with 1900 needs also to be considered. According to the exhaustive compilation of wholesale prices published in the Bulletin of the Department of Labor for March, 1902, the dollar would purchase in 1890 a greater quantity of beef, bacon, ham, corn meal, beans, cheese, eggs, pepper, American salt, Formosa tea, hard and soft coal, petroleum, earthenware, furniture, and glassware than in 1900. In the latter year it would purchase more butter, Rio coffee, dried fruits (except currants), rice, sugar, onions, potatoes, mutton, and fish. Wheat flour cheapened, but the price of bread remained the same. A comparison of the two lists on the basis of relative quantities consumed in the average family will show the dollar to have had considerably less purchasing power in 1900 than in 1890, though the exact percentage is hardly computable.

V

The new Feudalism involves not only the moderating of the present rates of pay for men workers, but an increase in the quantity of defenceless labor – the labor of women and children. Census Bulletin No. 150 gives the increase in the number of men working in manufacturing pursuits at 23.9 per cent; of women, at 28.4 per cent; of children, at 39.5 per cent. The wages of women have slightly increased; that is, the increase in total wages is 30.8 per cent against an increase in numbers of wage-earners of 28.4 per cent. The figures are better for the children; their wages are stated to have increased 54.4 per cent. There are ample reasons why this should be so. Popular agitation in behalf of the little ones may be guessed to have had some effect in the betterment of their pay; and a still greater effect has been wrought by their vastly increasing productivity. The perfecting of the instruments of production has been carried to such a degree that many a machine may be operated by a nursling; and it is well-nigh inevitable that some part of this increased productivity should be compensated for by increased pay of the operatives.

The number of women in factory work in the United States is 1,031,747, nearly one-fifth of the total. There are 230,199 in New York, 143,109 in Massachusetts, 126,093 in Pennsylvania, 58,978 in Illinois, 53,711 in Ohio. Eighteen of the nineteen factory States show an increase, Maine being the exception; and in thirteen of these States the percentage of gain is considerably in excess of that of men workers. Washington leads with a gain of 151.8 per cent; Michigan and Illinois show gains of 79 per cent each; Vermont, of 63.1; Indiana, 56.4; California, 46.8; Pennsylvania, 44.9; New Jersey, 39.3. In States outside the factory list still greater increases are shown. The figures for South Carolina are 158.3 percent; for North Carolina, 151.2; West Virginia, 130.2; Alabama, 109.1; Georgia, 82.2.

In specific industries the gains are sometimes enormous. There are no women reported for coke-making, and the number employed in making agricultural implements has declined 25.7 per cent. Car-building, too, shows a decline. But in refining petroleum the 60 women wage-earners represent a gain of 3200 per cent, and in bicycle and tricycle making the 517 women represent a gain of 3346.7 per cent. An increase of 2600 per cent is shown for distilled liquors, although men workers decreased 23.8 per cent. A decrease of men workers and an increase of women workers are also shown for clay products, flouring and grist-mill products, chewing and smoking tobacco and snuff, starch, cheese, butter, and condensed milk, watches, and watch-cases. The percentage of increase is in excess of that of men workers in oleomargarine, pocket-books, trunks and valises, tanned, curried, and finished leather, and needles and pins. There are six and one-half times as many women as men in collar and cuff making, and more than twice as many in the leather glove and mitten industry; in the latter, moreover, the percentage of increase for women is double that for men. There are 37,762 women making cigars and cigarettes, a gain of 56 per cent, against a gain of but 4.6 per cent for men. Malt liquors show an increase of 101.6 per cent of women workers against an increase of 30.2 per cent of men workers. Women have also increased in number in the cotton goods, flax, hemp, and jute, rubber boot and shoe, glass-making, slaughtering, and meat-packing, and boot and shoe industries, and in newspaper publishing.

VI

There are 168,624 children employed in manufactures throughout the country, a gain of 39.5 per cent. Child labor has increased in twelve of the factory States, remained practically stationary in two (Michigan and New Hampshire), and decreased in five States. The reasons for a decrease, where it is observed, are not hard to find; in certain industries child labor has been demonstrated to be unprofitable. But wherever it has been found profitable it seems to have been increasingly utilized. The increase in Wisconsin is 193.5 per cent; in Washington, 103.8; in Illinois, 92; in New Jersey, 51.4; in Pennsylvania, 47.8; and in Massachusetts, 44.9. In States outside of the foregoing list the same tendency is shown. South Carolina increased its child laborers by 270.7 per cent; Alabama, by 143.8; North Carolina, 119.2; Georgia, 81.

Children number 17.5 per cent of all the factory wage-earners of South Carolina, and 14.6 per cent of all those of North Carolina. In five other Southern States (including Maryland) the percentages range from 4.3 to 7.6, while among Northern States Rhode Island children form 5.2 per cent of the factory wage-earners, and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin children 4.5 and 4 per cent, respectively. If Pennsylvania is comparatively low in percentage, it is because of the great mass of its adult workers; for in absolute numbers of child workers it heads the list of commonwealths. No less than 33,135 children are employed in its factories, a figure which puts to shame the puny showing of New York, with 13,199, and of Massachusetts, with 12,556.

In certain industries children form more than one-fourth of all the operatives for a particular locality. In the making of cotton goods in Alabama 29.2 per cent of the workers are children, and in South Carolina 26.8 per cent. The figures for this industry in North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, and Maryland are nearly identical. In Pennsylvania, for the making of jute goods the figures are 26.2, and for silk and silk goods, 20.2. Slightly more than one-fourth of the hosiery and knit-goods workers of Georgia are children and slightly less than one-fourth of the tobacco workers (chewing, smoking, and snuff) of North Carolina. Massachusetts, with its factory law, can make but the humble showing of 6.4 per cent of children in its cotton-goods factories, and Rhode Island but 10.3 per cent. Glass-making is an industry which has made a most literal adaptation of Jesus’ invitation to little children; though, if the words of reputable eye-witnesses are to be accepted, it is not exactly a heaven into which they are welcomed. Of the operatives in Pennsylvania glass works, children number 14 per cent, and of those in New Jersey glass works, 15.7 per cent.

In the cotton-goods industry there are 39,866 children, a gain of 70.1 per cent. It is interesting to learn that there are 1003 children employed in ship-building, and that this number is a gain of 476.4 per cent over 1890. There are 4521 in boot and shoe making, an increase of 85 per cent. There are 2259 in flax, hemp, and jute weaving, nearly twice as many as ten years ago. There are 316 in turpentine and rosin making, a gain of 236.2 per cent. The number has decreased for some reason in the making of clay products, as has also the number of men workers, women having now a growing preference in the potteries. There are also fewer children in petroleum refining, but in button-making an increase of 321.6 per cent, in leather-glove making of 185.7 per cent, and in slaughtering and meat-packing of 138.1 per cent is shown. Watch-making shows a gain of 30 per cent, bicycle-making of 780 per cent. Children have been found comparatively unadaptable in the liquor industry. Only 643 are employed in brewing and 18 in distilling. For all that, these figures represent an increase – in the former case of 24.6 per cent, in the latter of 200 per cent.

Children, according to the census, are persons below the age of sixteen. Testimony outside of the census reports shows the extreme youth of many of these operatives. Investigations among the glass works of southern New Jersey reveal a number of cases of child workers of eight, nine, and ten years of age. Mr. J. W. Sullivan, a careful and accurate observer, who visited this district in July of the present year, confirms these statements. Miss Jane Addams, of Hull House, found a child of five working at night in a South Carolina mill. Mrs. Irene Ashby-Macfadyen, who has carefully studied conditions in the Southern mills, gives many instances of extremely young children working incredibly long hours. Professor George Clinton Edwards, in the New York Evening Post for August 13th, gives other instances relating to the mills of Dallas, Tex. In a later communication to the same journal he quotes the statement of a mill superintendent to the effect that of sixty boys and seventy-six girls employed, “there are two in their tenth year, nine in their eleventh year, thirteen in their twelfth year, and seventeen in their fourteenth year.” “This list, from the pay-roll,” writes Professor Edwards, “does not include the little children, who, with the mills’ knowledge, worked at the mills’ work, who earned the mills’ pay in the 10 or 20 per cent increase received by the relatives they assisted at piece work, and who were, therefore, in fact, the mills’ employees.” Labor Commissioner Lacey, of North Carolina, reports 7605 children under fourteen in 261 mills. A correspondent of the Cincinnati Post estimated 400 of the 1000 children employed in five mills in Columbia, S.C., to be under twelve years of age. Testimony by mill officials before a Southern legislature acknowledged in one instance 30 per cent of child workers under twelve years in a spinning room, and in another 25 per cent.

The census reports bear amiable testimony to the providence of the mill-owners. “Many of the mills,” says the South Carolina report, “have reading rooms and libraries for their employees, and nearly all contribute regularly to the support of the local schools.” “In the absence of legislation regulating child labor,” says the Georgia report, “all the cotton manufacturers in the State have signed an agreement to exclude from the mills children under ten years of age, and those under twelve who cannot show a certificate of four months’ attendance at school.” In the North Carolina report we find, “In the absence of legislation nearly all the mill-owners have agreed to discontinue the employment of children under twelve years of age.” A correspondent of the New York World found a like benevolence among the glass employers in southern New Jersey. “I need the boys,” said one, “all I can do is to treat the boys as well as I can.” The mill-owners, one and all, demand that the State keep its hands off, and trust to their own benevolence for remedies. So far, in the South, despite a three years’ agitation, the matter is still left entirely in their control.

Criticism of the mill-owners has been made to the effect that despite their benevolent professions, the children are poorly paid and that they remain uneducated. Some of them work long hours for 10 cents a day, others for 12 1/2, 15, and 18 cents. A newspaper correspondent tells of a certain spinning room in a Southern mill wherein the average daily pay for all children is 23 8/10 cents. “I know of babies,” writes Mrs. Macfadyen, “working for 5 and 6 cents a day.” The schooling which a child working seventy-two hours a week can get may be roughly guessed at. Mrs. Macfadyen found 567 children under twelve years working in eight mills. Only 122 of these children could read or write. In a school in a mill-town of between 6000 and 8000 persons, the same investigator found an enrolment of 90 pupils divided into two classes. A visit to one of these classes disclosed 22 children, only 12 of whom were mill-workers’ children, and 10 had worked in the mills from one to three years.

Criticisms based on these data are, however, generally held to be sentimental and irrelevant. Glass-blowing or textile-weaving, like anthracite mining, is, in the sententious phrase of President George F. Baer, of the Philadelphia and Reading Railway Company, “a business, and not a religious, sentimental, or academic proposition.” It is conducted for the making of money, and not for the spiritual or hygienic welfare of the operatives. It would be well, say the employers, if things could be better. But for the present they are making all the contribution to that end that they feel can conveniently be made. Moreover, they contend – and they are supported generally by the local ministers, who have in charge the spiritual affairs of the populace; by the local editors, lawyers, and solid men of “business” – it is better that children should work in the mills and factories than “run about the streets.” As for education, the contributing employers point to the schools, as though to say, “Here are the opportunities; why do you not take advantage of them?” It is quite enough to provide a balky horse with water, without being morally obliged to make him drink.

CHAPTER V

Our Makers of Law

The dual responsibility which our lawmakers and judges bear, on the one hand to the people, and on the other to the Big Men, produces a chaos of conflicting laws and decisions. For the chartering of business corporations we have the “Delaware theory,” which seems to be to give the applicant whatever he asks for; the “New Jersey theory,” which is a slight modification of the former; and the “Massachusetts theory,” which reserves to the State a certain measure of supervision and control. For the fixing of employers’ liability for injuries to workmen we have a wide range of precedents, from States which hold to the common-law doctrine that practically frees the employer from blame, to those which fix a liability in somewhat definite terms. Factory legislation, regulations for the public health, the determination of a legal workday, the restraining of corporate aggressiveness – these and a score of like questions are variously passed upon or deliberately avoided in the several States. Judicial decisions, too, present a spectacle of the widest diversity.

Nevertheless this chaos shows signs of a gradual reduction to order. The insistent challenge, “Under which king, Bezonian, speak or die!” which perpetually assails all of our legislative and judicial functionaries, sooner or later forces a decision, and naturally it is the stronger rival that wins. How effective is this challenge, how strong is the pressure, Mr. John Jay Chapman has strikingly shown in his “Causes and Consequences,” and the instances that crop out from time to time, like that of the recent tampering with the Supreme Court of Missouri, reveal only a needless confirmation of a known truth. Legislation in behalf of the general welfare and of the industrially dependent classes becomes less frequent and more guarded; and judicial decisions in matters that involve class antagonisms are more frequently given to the dominant class.

I

A marked tendency of recent legislation is that toward giving increased powers to municipal officials. Another is that toward the creation of boards charged with administrative, executive, semi-judicial, and even police powers. The institution of these boards means simply a further removal from the people of the conduct of public affairs. Mr. Leonard A. Blue, in the Annals of the American Academy for November, 1901, gives an interesting view of the subject. “These boards,” he writes, “are practically irresponsible bodies. They are beyond the control of the people, or of any one who is responsible to the people for their actions. Appointed as they are for definite terms of office, they cannot be removed during that term except after an investigation which amounts to an impeachment. The Governor who appoints them in many cases can only appoint a single member, the terms of the others extending beyond his own, so that he can neither mould the policy of the board nor can he be held responsible for it.” And he quotes from one of the messages of the Hon. W. E. Russell, Governor of Massachusetts (1891-93), these words: “The people of the State might have a most decided opinion about the management and work of the departments, and give emphatic expression to that opinion, and yet be unable to control their action. The system gives great power without proper responsibility, and tends to remove the people’s government from the people’s control.” Irresponsible to both the people and the people’s officials as they are, these boards are yet not wholly unsusceptible to outside pressure; they are, as is well known, peculiarly liable to the influence of the Big Men.

II

While legislation moves rapidly enough in the direction of detaching political powers from the people, it shows a growing disinclination to meddle with affairs between magnate and minion. Twelve or fifteen years ago, in certain sections, “labor” legislation had a flourishing career. The number of laws so classified, passed in a single three-year period in New York State, made a record for all time. Labor was then rapidly combining, and its lusty organizations made emphatic demands for protective laws. A Democratic Governor, not wholly regardless of hopes of the Presidential succession, for the time allied himself with the movement and secured the passage of many of these measures. With an alacrity much greater than that with which the Constitution follows the flag, judicial decisions in those days tended to follow the general policy of the party in power, and thus but slight trouble was experienced in securing constitutional sanction.

Other States followed, and for several years the astonishment and indignation of the Big Men were intermittently roused by the spectacle of Jacobinical legislators meddling in affairs outside their province. Mr. F. J. Stimson, in the Atlantic Monthly for November, 1897, informs us that in the ten preceding years 1639 laws relating to labor had been passed in the various States and Territories. This is an average of 3.4 a year for each legislature, though the courts had modified the average somewhat by declaring 114 of these measures unconstitutional. Doubtless among those that escaped the “killing decree” of the courts were a number that benefited the worker, though it is doubtful if any of them served to modify his economic status.