SELF-HELP FOR LABOR.
If the laboring man doesn’t want to be in a state of slavery, he must
refrain from putting himself into chains.
He is a good deal like the rest of us; he always blames somebody else
for his condition. He won’t be able to get out of trouble until he lays
most of the blame on himself.
If a man feels obliged to enter into business relations with a lion he
does not begin by putting his head into the animal’s mouth. If a
workingman begins life with the belief, which seems prevalent now, that
all employers will enslave a man if they can, he should not allow
himself to be in such condition that he cannot take care of himself.
Why, even a dog or a cat going into a strange room spends its first
moments in looking around to see how it can get out again in case of
necessity.
Employers as a class have so many sins to answer for that there will be
lively times for them on judgment day, I suppose, but that is no reason
why the employee should be a fool. If a
[Illustration: AGRICULTURAL BUILDING.]
man sticks a knife into you, and is sent to State’s prison for it, his
sentence punishes him, but it does not pay your doctor’s bill, or make
up to you what you have lost in time and money while you have been lying
in bed under the surgeon’s care.
The workingman is too often satisfied to do whatever is before him
without fitting himself to do anything else in case of accident or
change of business, or lack of demand, or any one of the various other
accidents that may occur to disturb the even routine of his life. No man
in any other line of business dare be so careless. There are clerks and
book-keepers and men in the highest mechanical arts who are very good in
their places, but who never fit themselves for anything better or
anything else. These men are slaves--literally. Their employers know it,
if the slaves themselves don’t. No matter how honest they may be, no
matter how capable they are in their own specialties, these are the men
who always are passed over when promotions are to be made, or when men
are to be selected for higher positions.
By a strange coincidence these are also the men who grumble most at
their rate of pay, their hours, the amount of work they have to do, and
the manner in which their employers treat them. Many of them are such
good fellows personally, so full of human virtues that are not
specially business virtues, that they excite a great deal of sympathy
among their acquaintances, but in the case of any acquaintance who
happens also to be an employer there is no sympathy whatever.
The American workingman, above all others on the face of the earth,
needs to take this warning to heart, for one result of competition has
been the subdivision of most varieties of mechanical labor to a degree
which requires twenty or thirty men sometimes to complete a bit of work
which once was done by a single individual. Undoubtedly work can be done
cheaper in this way, and both capital and labor have some obligations to
fulfil toward the consumer, but the less a man is a “full-handed
workman,” which means that he can do all branches of the business in
which he is engaged, the more necessary it is for him to be prepared to
do something else in case of emergency.
To illustrate: there was a time, almost within the memory of the present
generation, when miniature painting was the most profitable division of
art work in the United States. A fine miniature would bring more money
than an oil painting. Suddenly the process of daguerreotyping was
discovered. Then came the ambrotype and photograph, and other cheap
methods of making accurate likenesses, and as a consequence miniature
paintings became less and less in demand, and the few members of the
profession who still survive have none at all of the work at which they
once were famous. Some of them took to drawing on wood, others went into
oil portraits, some devoted themselves to water-colors, and others went
into mechanical businesses where a good and accurate eye for color and
proportion commanded good pay. But if the miniature painters, whose
misfortunes were greater than those of any class of common laborers now
complaining to the public, had insisted that the public owed them a
living and they were going to have it, and that Congress should make
laws enabling them to get a living out of their business, they would
have been laughed to scorn. The miniature painters had no more brains
than mechanics. What is fair for one is fair for another.
One of the first things that the young laboring man does is to take a
wife. A wife is a desirable object of possession. So is a horse, a yacht
or a handsome house, but the man who would load himself with either
while he sees no means of supporting it except by weekly earnings which
might be stopped at short notice by any one of a dozen accidents to life
or business, would be regarded as a fool. Some people would call him a
scoundrel. Yet when financially pushed a man can sell a horse or yacht,
and get at least part of the value while getting rid of responsibility.
He cannot sell a wife, though, even if he is willing. That sort of
business has become illegal. Even if it had not, the probabilities are
that a wife, taken by a fellow who is so reckless as to marry before he
is able to properly care for so precious and complicated a bit of
property as a woman, would not be in salable condition.
The possession of a wife implies, quite implies, occasional bits of
income, but also of responsibility, in the shape of children. “He who
has wife and children has given hostages to fortune.” The rich man knows
this to his cost, though he may get enough delight out of the experience
to pay him a thousand times over. But to the poor man dependent upon
daily wages, and with no property or savings to fall back upon, a family
is often fetters, with ball and chain to boot. Thank God, such bonds
often feel as light as feathers and soft as silk, but these sensations
do not decrease the weight or dragging power one particle. If a man
determines to marry while he has nothing to marry on, let him at least
be honest with himself, tell himself that he is going to be the slave of
whoever employs him, and blame himself instead of employers, or capital,
or public opinion for the consequences.
There is a large class of workingmen who do not seem to think they are
fit for anything but what they are doing. Such men may be honest,
cheerful, obedient, industrious, painstaking and obliging. Well, slaves
have been all this and more. Such men are bound to be slaves. Nothing
that trade unions, Knights of Labor, law, religion or public sentiment
can do, can save them from practical slavery.
The men who organized any State, county or town in this Union had no
bigger or healthier brains than the workingmen of to-day; but if each of
them had imagined he could do but one kind of work, the map of our
country would not look as it does now. Any of these men considered
himself equal to taking a hand at building houses, clearing land,
shoeing horses, digging post-holes, following the plough, planting corn,
tending stock, loading steamboats, acting as deck-hand of a flatboat,
carrying mails, or doing whatever else had to be done. They blundered
terribly at times, but who did not and who does not? Each new kind of
work they laid their hands to sharpened their wits and widened their
view of what might be done in the way of getting ahead in the world.
That is the reason why trade unions do not flourish in new countries.
Men there have been taught by experience to take care of themselves. The
common laborer in a new country thinks himself the equal of the judge,
the doctor, the lawyer and the railway president. And so he is, so far
as a fair impulse and a fair show can make one man equal to another in
the race for life.
It is a great pity that representative workingmen in our large cities
cannot once in a while be sent on a tour of observation by their
respective trade societies. It is the custom of almost every man to
regard every one in his own business as about in his own condition. But
an observing man going outside of the large cities and the manufacturing
towns will quickly be undeceived regarding the possibilities and future
of his own business, or of himself, or of any of his associates who have
any spirit in them. He may find men of his own specialty doing work
longer hours per day and for less money than he is accustomed to get,
and they may seem to be having terribly hard times, but there is one
significant difference between the two classes: the men in new countries
never grumble at whatever their hard times may be. If nature refuses a
crop, or makes a river overflow and washes away a town, or a plague of
locusts comes upon them, they can grumble quite as badly as any one
else. But so far as they have free use of their own wits and their own
hands, they “don’t ask nothin’ of nobody,” to use their own emphatic
expression.
The mechanic who works all day in the newer countries can seldom be
found in the beer-shop at night. He drops into the post-office, or the
store, or the office of the justice of the peace, or wherever he sees a
crowd of men, or knows that men will congregate, so that he may learn
what is going on. He will change his business six times in the week, and
then be guilty of doing it twice on Sunday, if there is any money in it.
You never know the business of a man in a new country for more than a
week at a time, unless you have your eye on him. It may seem awfully
stupid to the stranger, but among people where his lot is cast the
workingman manages to keep his end up, as the saying is, and the man who
attempts to depress that end is dealt with by the individual himself. If
a laboring man aggrieved in any of the newer countries were to go to his
fellow-workmen for relief, he would be called either a fool or a coward.
If he does not like what he is doing he is expected to try something
else, just as every one else in the country does. The banker does not
restrict himself to one single business, or one subdivision of business.
Neither does the merchant, or the manufacturer, or any of the few
farmers who have become “forehanded.” He does whatever he sees most
money in, and he has blind faith in his ability to do it. It may not be
the finest variety of finished labor, but that is not found anywhere
except in the competitive trades.
It should not need any argument to prove all this. There seldom is a
great strike at any manufacturing centre during which a large number of
the operatives do not disappear. Some of them find work elsewhere in
their own specialty, but the oldest inhabitant, or the village gossip,
or some one else who has time to pay close attention to other people’s
business, can tell you that some of these men have struck out for
themselves in some other direction, and they very seldom are able to
tell you that any such change of business has brought unfortunate
results. It has already been said in this book that some of the great
industries of the country to-day are managed by men who once were common
laborers.
However ignorant the workingman may be of the fact, or however willing
he may be to ignore it, the truth is that the workingman half a century
ago was a great deal worse off than his successors to-day. He worked
longer hours, he got smaller pay--I mean smaller pay in proportion to
the purchasing power of money, and his social position was very bad.
Even the Revolutionary war, the Declaration of Independence, the rights
of man, and all that sort of thing, didn’t break down at once the laws
of caste that had come to us from the old country. It was not so very
long ago that even the students of Harvard University were classified
according to their ancestry, the list being led by gentlemen, which was
followed by the profession and then brought up by the general assortment
of what the late Mr. Venus called “humans various.”
The apprentice was not only household servant as well as work-boy to his
employer, but he was kept in order by a strap or a club, and the law not
only could give him no redress for personal abuse, but it recognized the
right of the employer to treat his boys in that manner. Boys brought up
in that way had not much independence when they became men, and the
independent spirit of the present generation was a thing almost unknown
in the more thickly settled communities at that time. The workingman in
that day was more religious than his successors in the present
generation, but when he went to church he sat in the poorest seats;
generally he sat in the gallery. When he was out of work he went to the
poor-house. The poor-house was built especially for people of his kind.
Perhaps in some of the large cities workingmen and their families go to
the poor-house to-day, but most of them will take pains to go to another
community than that in which they are known before they allow themselves
to be supported in such manner.
The people of the United States cannot afford at any price to support a
class which proposes to stay in one spot, making no endeavor to go
further or go higher. No grade of society can afford to support such a
class. The class itself cannot afford to remain in any such position.
Allusion has already been made to the willingness of men of the present
generation to enslave their fellow-men when they get special
opportunity. The methods are not the same as of old, but the fact is the
same and the practice is steadily fostered by the inability of a great
number of men and women to impress upon the public any ability to be
anything better than slaves.
The workingman may take such consolation as there may be in the fact
that this rule does not apply to him or to his own class alone. It
exists everywhere. There are plenty of business houses who keep their
men under their power, body and soul, by a custom, apparently founded on
good nature, of lending them money in excess of their earnings. It is a
modification of the South American _consistado_ plan, to which allusion
has already been made, and it works just as well in New York or Chicago,
or any other manufacturing centre, as it does in South America. A man
who will not spend his earnings in advance if he can get them is pretty
hard to find. If this were not so there would be very little of running
to banks, by business men, for discounts and loans, and “shaves.” The
impulse to discount the future is almost as old as the world itself. It
dates all the way back to the Garden of Eden, when our first parents
began to devour some fruit which they were not yet entitled to.
It may be that slavery sometimes is pleasant. Indeed, it often is. In
spite of all the bad stories that were told about the treatment of the
southern blacks during old slavery days, there were a great many
plantations from which the slaves did not run away, even after they
heard of the Emancipation Proclamation, and knew, from what they heard
in the dining-room and parlor, that the South was on its last legs, and
that the good old times could not possibly come back again. There were
many plantations found by the Union army, during its tramps through
certain States, which the masters and the mistresses had abandoned, but
to which the colored people clung closely, from old association alone,
and were found there when the owners came back again. Slavery exists
still in many portions of the world, principally eastern countries, and
Europeans of high character and close observation have declared that the
condition does not inflict cruel or unfair burdens upon the enslaved.
But this is a free country. All our institutions are based upon the
theory that one man is just as good as another, and not only so, but
that he ought to be expected to be as good as his neighbors, and that as
soon as he ceases to be an independent being, the master of his own
time and of his own family, including all their interests, he is not
equal to his duties and responsibilities as a citizen. We hear a great
deal about votes purchased for money and whiskey and offers of office;
but does any one realize how entirely the political status of certain
States and counties and towns depends upon the opinions of even the
temporary whims of certain large employers? There are thousands of men
in each of at least three New England States who would not dare vote any
way than they are requested to do by their employers. Fac-similes of
cards and written notices have been printed to show that in certain
mills the proprietors announced that their operatives were expected to
vote for certain candidates which were named. If an American, an
inhabitant of the freest country of the world, cannot vote as he
pleases, what does his personal liberty amount to? Even a tramp has a
right to his own vote, or to sell it to the highest bidder, if he has
been long enough a resident of the locality in which he attempts to
deposit his ballot. There are slaves in banks and mercantile houses as
well as in manufacturing establishments, so the laboring man need not
feel hurt at the intimation that he is in danger of being subjected to
an involuntary servitude which not only will control his time, but also
his mind, to such an extent that he is not a free agent in anything
regarding moral opinion or his duties as a citizen.
The principal outlet for the energies of the workingman at the present
time is undoubtedly in the newer parts of the country. There is where he
is almost sure to be found if he is a man of proper spirit and has not
handicapped himself so it is impossible for him to reach there. This
outlet will be practicable for at least a generation to come. We hear a
great deal about the new countries being filled up and there being no
chance for a man any longer, but some thousands of men who have footed
it half-way across the continent can tell us differently, and show
substantial proofs that they are right.
The man who resolves not to take any heavy responsibilities upon his
time or pocket until he considers himself fairly settled in life, can
always make his way to the new country, and there in no part of this
land, although it is not a land flowing with milk and honey, in which he
cannot find something to do. I once was made curious, by the
conversation of a number of workingmen in a large pork-packing
establishment in a small town in the West, to know where they had come
from, and what their previous occupation had been, and among
twenty-seven men I found twenty-one businesses and professions
represented, not one of which was pork-packing. Nevertheless each of
these men was earning two dollars and a half a day, and keeping an eye
open for something better, which I am happy to say I saw some of them
realize within a few months. At that very time at least one-half of the
trades which these men had originally learned, and in which they were
all supposed to be experts, were languishing in the East, and a great
number of those engaged in them were in that desperate condition of mind
that in other countries has often precipitated riots and brought about
bloodshed and prolonged disorder.
But--let workingmen note the distinction--only two of these twenty-seven
men were already married. What they had earned already was their own.
They were able to move about from place to place until they found a
satisfactory opening in life. Some of them afterward went to the dogs.
It is impossible to find any lot of men together by chance in which
there will not be some incompetents and some who, through one failing or
other, would be their own enemies if they were in the best of hands.
There were only twelve men in the first company of assistants organized
by Jesus Christ, and one of them turned out to be a scoundrel in spite
of the excellent company in which he found himself.