_Question_. What is your opinion of the work undertaken by the
_World_ in behalf of the city slave girl?
_Answer_. I know of nothing better for a great journal to do.
The average girl is so helpless, and the greed of the employer is
such, that unless some newspaper or some person of great influence
comes to her assistance, she is liable not simply to be imposed
upon, but to be made a slave. Girls, as a rule, are so anxious to
please, so willing to work, that they bear almost every hardship
without complaint. Nothing is more terrible than to see the rich
living on the work of the poor. One can hardly imagine the utter
heartlessness of a man who stands between the wholesale manufacturer
and the wretched women who make their living--or rather retard
their death--by the needle. How a human being can consent to live
on this profit, stolen from poverty, is beyond my imagination.
These men, when known, will be regarded as hyenas and jackals.
They are like the wild beasts which follow herds of cattle for the
purpose of devouring those that are injured or those that have
fallen by the wayside from weakness.
_Question_. What effect has unlimited immigration on the wages of
women?
_Answer_. If our country were overpopulated, the effect of
immigration would be to lessen wages, for the reason that the
working people of Europe are used to lower wages, and have been in
the habit of practicing an economy unknown to us. But this country
is not overpopulated. There is plenty of room for several hundred
millions more. Wages, however, are too low in the United States.
The general tendency is to leave the question of labor to what is
called the law of supply and demand. My hope is that in time we
shall become civilized enough to know that there is a higher law,
or rather a higher meaning in the law of supply and demand, than
is now perceived. Year after year what are called the necessaries
of life increase. Many things now regarded as necessaries were
formerly looked upon as luxuries. So, as man becomes civilized, he
increases what may be called the necessities of his life. When
perfectly civilized, one of the necessities of his life will be
that the lives of others shall be of some value to them. A good
man is not happy so long as he knows that other good men and women
suffer for raiment and for food, and have no roof but the sky, no
home but the highway. Consequently what is called the law of supply
and demand will then have a much larger meaning.
In nature everything lives upon something else. Life feeds upon
life. Something is lying in wait for something else, and even the
victim is weaving a web or crouching for some other victim, and
the other victim is in the same business--watching for something
else. The same is true in the human world--people are living on
each other; the cunning obtain the property of the simple; wealth
picks the pockets of poverty; success is a highwayman leaping from
the hedge. The rich combine, the poor are unorganized, without
the means to act in concert, and for that reason become the prey
of combinations and trusts. The great questions are: Will man
ever be sufficiently civilized to be honest? Will the time ever
come when it can truthfully be said that right is might? The lives
of millions of people are not worth living, because of their
ignorance and poverty, and the lives of millions of others are not
worth living, on account of their wealth and selfishness. The
palace without justice, without charity, is as terrible as the
hovel without food.
_Question_. What effect has the woman's suffrage movement had on
the breadwinners of the country?
_Answer_. I think the women who have been engaged in the struggle
for equal rights have done good for women in the direction of
obtaining equal wages for equal work. There has also been for many
years a tendency among women in our country to become independent
--a desire to make their own living--to win their own bread. So
many husbands are utterly useless, or worse, that many women hardly
feel justified in depending entirely on a husband for the future.
They feel somewhat safer to know how to do something and earn a
little money themselves. If men were what they ought to be, few
women would be allowed to labor--that is to say, to toil. It should
be the ambition of every healthy and intelligent man to take care
of, to support, to make happy, some woman. As long as women bear
the burdens of the world, the human race can never attain anything
like a splendid civilization. There will be no great generation
of men until there has been a great generation of women. For my
part, I am glad to hear this question discussed--glad to know that
thousands of women take some interest in the fortunes and in the
misfortunes of their sisters.
The question of wages for women is a thousand times more important
than sending missionaries to China or to India. There is plenty
for missionaries to do here. And by missionaries I do not mean
gentlemen and ladies who distribute tracts or quote Scripture to
people out of work. If we are to better the condition of men and
women we must change their surroundings. The tenement house breeds
a moral pestilence. There can be in these houses no home, no
fireside, no family, for the reason that there is no privacy, no
walls between them and the rest of the world. There is no sacredness,
no feeling, "this is ours."
_Question_. Might not the rich do much?
_Answer_. It would be hard to overestimate the good that might be
done by the millionaires if they would turn their attention to
sending thousands and thousands into the country or to building
them homes miles from the city, where they could have something
like privacy, where the family relations could be kept with some
sacredness. Think of the "homes" in which thousands and thousands
of young girls are reared in our large cities. Think of what they
see and what they hear; of what they come in contact with. How is
it possible for the virtues to grow in the damp and darkened
basements? Can we expect that love and chastity and all that is
sweet and gentle will be produced in these surroundings, in cellars
and garrets, in poverty and dirt? The surroundings must be changed.
_Question_. Are the fathers and brothers blameless who allow young
girls to make coats, cloaks and vests in an atmosphere poisoned by
the ignorant and low-bred?
_Answer_. The same causes now brutalizing girls brutalize their
fathers and brothers, and the same causes brutalize the ignorant
and low-lived that poison the air in which these girls are made to
work. It is hard to pick out one man and say that he is to blame,
or one woman and say that the fault is hers. We must go back of
all this. In my opinion, society raises its own failures, its own
criminals, its own wretches of every sort and kind. Great pains
are taken to raise these crops. The seeds, it may be, were sown
thousands of years ago, but they were sown, and the present is the
necessary child of all the past. If the future is to differ from
the present, the seeds must now be sown. It is not simply a question
of charity, or a question of good nature, or a question of what we
call justice--it is a question of intelligence. In the first place,
I suppose that it is the duty of every human being to support
himself--first, that he may not become a burden upon others, and
second, that he may help others. I think all people should be
taught never, under any circumstances, if by any possibility they
can avoid it, to become a burden. Every one should be taught the
nobility of labor, the heroism and splendor of honest effort. As
long as it is considered disgraceful to labor, or aristocratic not
to labor, the world will be filled with idleness and crime, and
with every possible moral deformity.
_Question_. Has the public school system anything to do with the
army of pupils who, after six years of study, willingly accept the
injustice and hardship imposed by capital?
_Answer_. The great trouble with the public school is that many
things are taught that are of no immediate use. I believe in manual
training schools. I believe in the kindergarten system. Every
person ought to be taught how to do something--ought to be taught
the use of their hands. They should endeavor to put in palpable
form the ideas that they gain. Such an education gives them a
confidence in themselves, a confidence in the future--gives them
a spirit and feeling of independence that they do not now have.
Men go through college studying for many years, and when graduated
have not the slightest conception of how to make a living in any
department of human effort. Thousands of them are to-day doing
manual labor and doing it very poorly, whereas, if they had been
taught the use of tools, the use of their hands, they would derive
a certain pleasure from their work. It is splendid to do anything
well. One can be just as poetic working with iron and wood as
working with words and colors.
_Question_. What ought to be done, or what is to be the end?
_Answer_. The great thing is for the people to know the facts.
There are thousands and millions of splendid and sympathetic people
who would willingly help, if they only knew; but they go through
the world in such a way that they know but little of it. They go
to their place of business; they stay in their offices for a few
hours; they go home; they spend the evening there or at a club;
they come in contact with the well-to-do, with the successful, with
the satisfied, and they know nothing of the thousands and millions
on every side. They have not the least idea how the world lives,
how it works, how it suffers. They read, of course, now and then,
some paragraph in which the misfortune of some wretch is set forth,
but the wretch is a kind of steel engraving, an unreal shadow, a
something utterly unlike themselves. The real facts should be
brought home, the sympathies of men awakened, and awakened to such
a degree that they will go and see how these people live, see how
they work, see how they suffer.
_Question_. Does exposure do any good?
_Answer_. I hope that _The World_ will keep on. I hope that it
will express every horror that it can, connected with the robbery
of poor and helpless girls, and I hope that it will publish the
names of all the robbers it can find, and the wretches who oppress
the poor and who live upon the misfortunes of women.
The crosses of this world are mostly born by wives, by mothers and
by daughters. Their brows are pierced by thorns. They shed the
bitterest tears. They live and suffer and die for others. It is
almost enough to make one insane to think of what woman, in the
years of savagery and civilization, has suffered. Think of the
anxiety and agony of motherhood. Maternity is the most pathetic
fact in the universe. Think how helpless girls are. Think of the
thorns in the paths they walk--of the trials, the temptations, the
want, the misfortune, the dangers and anxieties that fill their
days and nights. Every true man will sympathize with woman, and
will do all in his power to lighten her burdens and increase the
sunshine of her life.
_Question_. Is there any remedy?
_Answer_. I have always wondered that the great corporations have
made no provisions for their old and worn out employees. It seems
to me that not only great railway companies, but great manufacturing
corporations, ought to provide for their workmen. Many of them
are worn out, unable longer to work, and they are thrown aside like
old clothes. They find their way to the poorhouses or die in
tenements by the roadside. This seems almost infinitely heartless.
Men of great wealth, engaged in manufacturing, instead of giving
five hundred thousand dollars for a library, or a million dollars
for a college, ought to put this money aside, invest it in bonds
of the Government, and the interest ought to be used in taking care
of the old, of the helpless, of those who meet with accidents in
their work. Under our laws, if an employee is caught in a wheel
or in a band, and his arm or leg is torn off, he is left to the
charity of the community, whereas the profits of the business ought
to support him in his old age. If employees had this feeling--that
they were not simply working for that day, not simply working while
they have health and strength, but laying aside a little sunshine
for the winter of age--if they only felt that they, by their labor,
were creating a fireside in front of which their age and helplessness
could sit, the feeling between employed and employers would be a
thousand times better. On the great railways very few people know
the number of the injured, of those who lose their hands or feet,
of those who contract diseases riding on the tops of freight trains
in snow and sleet and storm; and yet, when these men become old
and helpless through accident, they are left to shift for themselves.
The company is immortal, but the employees become helpless. Now,
it seems to me that a certain per cent. should be laid aside, so
that every brakeman and conductor could feel that he was providing
for himself, as well as for his fellow-workmen, so that when the
dark days came there would be a little light.
The men of wealth, the men who control these great corporations--
these great mills--give millions away in ostentatious charity.
They send missionaries to foreign lands. They endow schools and
universities and allow the men who earned the surplus to die in
want. I believe in no charity that is founded on robbery. I have
no admiration for generous highwaymen or extravagant pirates. At
the foundation of charity should be justice. Let these men whom
others have made wealthy give something to their workmen--something
to those who created their fortunes. This would be one step in
the right direction. Do not let it be regarded as charity--let it
be regarded as justice.
--_New York World_, December 2, 1888.