LABOR CONDITIONS
The laborer employed in the manufacturing enterprises of the South,
whether white or black, is native born and Southern born. Sporadic
efforts to import industrial workers from Europe have not been
successful and there has been no considerable influx of workers from
other sections of the Union. A few skilled workers have come, but the
rank and file in all the factories and shops were born in the State in
which they work or in a neighboring State. Speaking broadly, those
dealing with complicated machines are white, while those engaged in
simpler processes are white or black. We find, therefore, a
preponderance of whites in the textile industries and in the shops
producing articles from wood and iron, while the blacks are found in the
lumber industry, in the tobacco factories, in the mines, and at the
blast furnaces. There are some skilled workmen among the negroes,
especially in tobacco, but generally they furnish the unskilled labor.
The textile industry employs the greatest number of operatives, or at
least concentrates them more. From the farms or the mountain coves, or
only one generation removed from that environment, they have been drawn
to the mills by various motives. The South is still sparsely settled,
and the life of the tenant farmer or the small landowner and his family
is often lonely. Until recently, roads were almost universally bad,
especially in winter, and a visit to town or even to a neighbor was no
small undertaking. Attendance at the country church, which sometimes has
services only once a month, or a trip to the country store on Saturday
afternoon with an occasional visit to the county-seat furnish almost the
only opportunity for social intercourse. Work in a cotton mill promised
not merely fair wages but what was coveted even more--companionship.
During the period of most rapid growth in the textile industry,
agriculture, or at least agriculture as practiced by this class, was
unprofitable. During the decade from 1890 to 1900 the price of all kinds
of farm produce was exceedingly low, and the returns in money were very
small. Even though a farmer more farsighted than the average did produce
the greater part of his food on the farm, his "money crop"--cotton or
tobacco--hardly brought the cost of production. The late D.A. Tompkins, of
Charlotte, North Carolina, a close student of cotton, came to the
conclusion, about 1910, that cotton had been produced at a loss in the
South considered as a whole, at least since the Civil War. Many farmers,
however, were in a vicious economic circle and could not escape. If they
had bought supplies at the country store at inflated prices, the crops
sometimes were insufficient to pay the store accounts, and the balance was
charged against the next year's crop. Men who did not go heavily into debt
often handled less than $200 in cash in a year, and others found difficulty
in obtaining money even for their small taxes. To such men the stories of
$15 to $25 earned at a mill by a single family in a week seemed almost
fabulous. The whole family worked on the farm, as farmers' families have
always done, and it seemed the natural thing that, in making a change,
all should work in the mill.
To those families moved by loneliness and those other families driven by
an honest ambition to better their economic condition were added the
families of the incapable, the shiftless, the disabled, and the widowed.
In a few cases men came to the mills deliberately intending to exploit
their children, to live a life of ease upon their earnings. There were
places for the younger members of all these families, but a man with
hands calloused and muscles stiffened by the usual round of farm work
could seldom learn a new trade after the age of forty, no matter how
willing. Often a cotton mill is the only industrial enterprise in the
village, and the number of common laborers needed is limited. Too many
of the fathers who had come to the village intending themselves to work
gradually sank into the parasite class and sat around the village store
while their children worked.
During the early expansion of the industry, the wages paid were low
compared with New England standards, but they were sufficient to draw
the people from the farms and to hold them at the mills. In considering
the wages paid in Southern mills, this fact must never be forgotten.
There was always an abundance of land to which the mill people could
return at will and wrest some sort of living from the soil. For them to
go back to the land was not a venture full of unknown hazards. They had
been born on the land and even yet are usually only one generation removed,
and the land cries out for tenants and laborers. It must also be remembered
that though the wages measured in money were low, the cost of living was
likewise low. Rents were trifling, if indeed the tenements were not
occupied free; the cost of fuel and food was low; and many expenses
necessary in New England were superfluous in the South.
With the increasing number of mills and the rising price of agricultural
products, the supply of industrial laborers became less abundant, and
higher wages have been necessary to draw recruits from the farms until
at present the rate of wages approaches that of New England. The
purchasing power is probably greater for, while the cost of living has
greatly increased in the South, it is still lower than in other parts of
the country. This does not mean that the average Southern wage is equal
to the New England average. While there is a growing body of highly
skilled operatives in the South, the rapid growth of the industry has
made necessary the employment of an overwhelmingly large number of
untrained or partially trained operatives, who cannot tend so many
spindles or looms as the New England operatives. Again, much yarn in the
North is spun upon mules, while in the South these machines are uncommon.
For certain purposes, this soft but fine and even yarn is indispensable.
Only strong, highly skilled operatives, usually men, can tend these
machines. The earnings of such specialists cannot fairly be compared with
the amounts received by ordinary girl spinners on ring frames. Again the
weekly wage of an expert weaver upon fancy cloth cannot justly be compared
with that of a Southern operative upon plain goods. Where the work is
comparable, however, the rates per unit of product in North and South are
not far apart.
From the standpoint of the employer it may be possible that the wages
per unit of product are higher in some Southern mills than in some New
England establishments. In the case of an expensive machine, an
operative who gets from it only sixty to seventy-five per cent of its
possible production may receive higher wages, or what amounts to the
same thing, may produce at a higher cost per unit than a more highly
paid individual who more nearly approaches the theoretical maximum
production of the machine. There is much expensive machinery in the
Southern mills. In fact, on the whole, the machinery for the work in
hand is better than in New England, because it is newer. The recently built
Southern mills have been equipped with all the latest machinery, while
many of the older Northern mills have not felt able to scrap machines
which, though antiquated, were still running well. However, the advantage
in having a better machine is not fully realized if it is not run to its
full capacity. Both spinning frames and looms have generally been run at
a somewhat slower speed in the South than in the North. This fact was noted
by that careful English observer, T.M. Young: "Whether the cost per unit
of efficiency is greater in the South than in the North is hard to say. But
for the automatic loom, the North would, I think, have the advantage.
Perhaps the truth is that in some parts of the South where the industry
has been longest established and a generation has been trained to the work,
Southern labor is actually as well as nominally cheaper than Northern;
whilst in other districts, where many mills have sprung up all at once
amongst a sparse rural population, wholly untrained, the Southern labor at
present procurable is really dearer than the Northern[1]." This does not
mean that Southern labor is permanently inferior; but a highly skilled body
of operatives requires years for its development.
[Footnote 1: T.M. Young, _The American Cotton Industry_, p. 113.]
In the beginning there were no restrictions upon hours of work, age, or
sex of operatives, or conditions of employment. Every mill was a law
unto itself. Hours were long, often seventy-two and in a few cases
seventy-five a week. Wages were often paid in scrip good at the company
store but redeemable in cash only at infrequent intervals, if indeed any
were then presented. Yet, if the prices at the store were sometimes
exorbitant, they were likely to be less than the operatives had been
accustomed to pay when buying on credit while living on the farms. The
moral conditions at some of these mills were also bad, since the least
desirable element of the rural population was the first to go to the
mills. Such conditions, however, were not universal. Some of the
industrial communities were clean and self-respecting, but conditions
depended largely upon the individual in charge of the mill.
As the years went on and more and more mills were built, the demand for
operatives increased. To draw them from the farms, it was necessary to
improve living conditions in the mill villages and to increase wages.
Today the mill communities are generally clean, and care is taken to
exclude immoral individuals. Payment of wages in cash became the rule. The
company store persisted, but chiefly as a matter of convenience to the
operatives; and in prices it met and often cut below those charged in
other stores in the vicinity. The hours of labor were reduced gradually.
Seventy-two became the maximum, but most mills voluntarily ran sixty-nine
or even sixty-six. The employment of children continued, though some
individual employers reduced it as much as possible without seriously
crippling their forces. This was a real danger so long as there were no
legal restrictions on child labor. Children worked upon the farm as
children have done since farming began, and the average farmer who moved
to the mill was unable to see the difference between working on the farm
and working in the mill. In fact, to his mind, work in the mill seemed
easier than exposure on the farm to the summer sun and the winter cold.
Men who were not conscious of deliberately exploiting their children
urged the manager of the mill to employ a child of twelve or even ten.
If the manager refused, he was threatened with the loss of the whole
family. A family containing good operatives could always find employment
elsewhere, and perhaps the manager of another mill would not be so
scrupulous. So the children went into the mill and often stayed there. If
illiterate when they entered, they remained illiterate. The number of young
children, however, was always exaggerated by the muckrakers, though
unquestionably several hundred children ten to twelve years old, and
possibly a few younger, were employed years ago. The nature of the work
permits the employment of operatives under sixteen only in the spinning
room; the girls, many of them older than sixteen, mend the broken ends of
the yarn at the spinning frames, and the boys remove the full bobbins and
fix empty ones in their stead. The possible percentage of workers under
sixteen in a spinning mill varies from thirty-five to forty-five. In a
mill which weaves the yarn into cloth, the percentage is greatly reduced,
as practically no one under sixteen can be profitably employed in a weaving
room.
Public sentiment against the employment of children became aroused only
slowly. Crusades against such industrial customs are usually led by
organized labor, by professional philanthropists, by sentimentalists,
and by socialistic agitators. The mill operatives of the South have
shown little disposition to organize themselves and, in fact, have
protested against interference with their right of contract. The South is
only just becoming rich enough to support professional philanthropists, and
an outlet for sentimentality has been found in other directions. There has
been as yet too little disproportion of wealth among the Southern whites
to excite acute jealousy on this ground alone, and the operatives have
earned much more money in the mills than was possible on the farms. In
comparatively few cases does one man, or one family, own a controlling
interest in a mill. The ownership is usually scattered in small holdings,
and there is seldom a Croesus to excite envy. This wide ownership has had
its effect upon the general attitude of the more influential citizens and
hindered the development of active disapproval.
The chief reason for the inertia in labor matters, however, has been the
fact that the South has thought, and to a large extent still thinks, in
terms of agriculture. It has not yet developed an industrial philosophy.
Agriculture is individualistic, and Thomas Jefferson's ideas upon the
functions and limitations of government still have influence. Regulation
of agricultural labor would seem absurd, and the difference between a
family, with or without hired help, working in comparative freedom on a
farm, and scores of individuals working at the same tasks, day after day,
under more or less tension was slow to take shape in the popular
consciousness. It was obvious that the children were not actually
physically abused; almost unanimously they preferred work to school, just
as the city boy does today; and the children themselves opposed most
strongly any proposed return to the farm. The task of the reformers--for
in every State there were earnest men and women who saw the evils of
unrestricted child labor--was difficult. It was the same battle which had
been fought in England and later in New England, when their textile
industries were passing through the same stage of development. Every
student of industrial history realizes that conditions in the South were
neither so hard nor were the hours so long as they had been in England and
New England.
The attempt to apply pressure from without had little influence. Indeed
it is possible that the resentment occasioned by the exaggerated stories
of conditions really hindered the progress of restrictive legislation,
just as the bitter denunciation of the Southern attitude toward the
negro has increased conservatism. Every one knew that the pitiful
stories of abuse or oppression were untrue. No class of laborers
anywhere is more independent than Southern mill operatives. It has been a
long while since a family of even semi-efficient operatives has been
compelled to ask for employment. Runners for other mills, upon the
slightest hint of disaffection, are quick to seek them out and even to
advance the expense of moving and money to pay any debts. It is well known
that families move for the slightest reason or for no reason at all except
a vague unrest. Self-interest, if nothing else, would restrain an overseer
from an act which might send a whole family or perhaps half a dozen
families from his mill.
Gradually the States imposed limitations upon age of employment, hours
of labor, and night work for women and children, which practically meant
limiting or abolishing night work altogether. These restrictions were
slight at first, and the provisions for their enforcement were
inadequate, but succeeding legislatures increased them. Mild compulsory
attendance laws kept some of the children in school and out of the mill.
A more or less substantial body of labor legislation was gradually
growing up, when state regulation was stopped by the action of the
Federal Government. Since the first Federal Child Labor Act was declared
unconstitutional, several States have strengthened laws previously
existing, and have further reduced the hours of labor.
Until comparatively recently whatever provision was made for the social
betterment of the operatives depended upon the active manager of the
particular mill. Some assumed a patriarchal attitude and attempted to
provide those things which they thought the operatives should have.
Others took little or no responsibility, except perhaps to make a
contribution to all the churches represented in the community. This
practice is almost universal, and if the term of the public school is
short, it is usually extended by a contribution from the mill treasury.
During recent years much more has been done. Partly from an awakening
sense of social responsibility and partly from a realization that it is
good business to do so, the bigger mills have made large expenditures to
improve the condition of their operatives. They have provided reading
rooms and libraries, have opened many recreation rooms and playgrounds,
and have furnished other facilities for entertainment. Some of the mills
have athletic fields, and a few support semi-professional baseball
teams. At some mills community buildings have been erected, which
sometimes contain, in addition to public rooms, baths, and a swimming
pool, an office for a visiting nurse and rooms which an adviser in
domestic science may use for demonstration. The older women are hard to
teach, but not a few of the girls take an interest in the work. Nothing
is more needed than instruction in domestic science. The operatives
spend a large proportion of their income upon food--for the rent they
pay is trifling--but the items are not always well chosen, and the
cooking is often bad. To the monotonous dietary to which they were
accustomed on the farms they add many luxuries to be had in the mill
town, but these are often ruined by improper preparation. Owing to this
lack of domestic skill many operatives apparently suffer from
malnutrition, though they spend more than enough money to supply an
abundance of nourishing food.
Not many years ago the improvidence of the mill operatives was
proverbial. Wages were generally spent as fast as they were earned, and
often extravagantly. Little attempt was made to cultivate gardens or to
make yards attractive, with the result that a factory village with its
monotonous rows of unkempt houses was a depressing sight. The "factory
people," many of whom had been nomad tenant farmers seldom living long
in the same place, had never thought of attempting to beautify their
surroundings, and the immediate neighborhood of the mill to which they
moved was often bare and unlovely and afforded little encouragement to
beauty.
The improvident family is still common, and many ugly mill villages yet
exist, but one who has watched the development of the cotton industry in
the South for twenty-five years has seen great changes in these
respects. Thousands of families are saving money today. Some buy homes;
others set up one member of the family in a small business; and a few
buy farms. More than seventy-five families have left one mill village
during the last ten years to buy farms with their savings, but this
instance is rather unusual; comparatively few families return to the
land. Efforts have been made to develop a community spirit, and the
results are perceptible. Many mill villages are now really attractive.
Scores of mills have had their grounds laid out by a landscape
architect, and a mill covered with ivy and surrounded by well-kept lawns
and flower beds is no longer exceptional. In scores of mill communities
annual prizes are offered for the best vegetable garden, the most
attractive premises, and the best kept premises from a sanitary
standpoint.
The Southern operative is too close to the soil to be either socialistic
in his views or collectivistic in his attitude. The labor agitator has
found sterile soil for his propaganda. Yet signs of a dawning class
consciousness are appearing. As always, the first manifestation is
opposition to the dominant political party or faction. This has not yet,
however, been translated into any considerable number of Republican
votes, except in North Carolina. In the other States, the votes of the
factory operatives seem to be cast in something of a block, in the
primary elections. The demagogic Blease is said to have found much of
his support in South Carolina in the factory villages.
Employees in other industries show so much diversity that few general
statements can be made concerning them. The workers in the furniture
factories--who are chiefly men, as few women or children can be employed
in this industry--are few in number compared with the male employees in
the cotton mills and, except in the case of a few towns, can hardly be
discussed as a group at all. Both whites and negroes are employed, but
the white man is usually in the responsible post, though a few negroes
tend important machines. The general average of education and
intelligence among the whites is higher here than in the cotton mills,
and wages are likewise higher. Conditions in other establishments making
articles of wood are practically the same.
Lumber mills range from a small neighborhood sawmill with a handful of
employees to the great organizations which push railroads into the deep
woods and strip a mountain side or devastate the lowlands. Such
organizations require a great number of laborers, whom they usually feed
and to whom they issue from a "commissary" various necessary articles
which are charged against the men's wages. As the work is hard, it has
not been at all uncommon for employees who had received large advances
to decamp. The companies, however, took advantage of various laws
similar to those mentioned in the chapter on agriculture to have these
deserters arrested and to have them, when convicted, "hired out" to the
very company or employer from whom they had fled. Conditions resulting
from this practice in some of the States of the Lower South became so
scandalous about 1905 that numerous individuals were tried in the courts
and were convicted of holding employees in a state of peonage. In 1911
the Supreme Court of the United States declared unconstitutional the
law of Alabama regarding contract of service.[1] This law regarded the
nonfulfillment of a contract on which an advance had been made as _prima
facie_ evidence of intent to defraud and thus gave employers immense
power over their employees. Conditions have therefore undoubtedly
improved since the peonage trials, but the lumber industry is one in
which the labor has apparently everywhere been casual, migratory, and
lawless.
[Footnote 1: Bailey _vs._ Alabama, 219 U.S., 219.]
The manufacture of tobacco shows as much diversity of labor conditions
as the lumber industry. There are small establishments with little
machinery which manufacture plug and smoking tobacco and are open only a
few months in the year, as well as those which cover half a dozen city
blocks. In the smaller factories the majority of the laborers are black,
but in the larger establishments both negroes and whites are employed.
Sometimes they do the same sort of work on opposite sides of the same
room. In some departments negro and white men work side by side, while
in others only whites or only negroes are found. The more complicated
machines are usually tended by whites, and the filling and inspection of
containers is ordinarily done by white girls, who are also found in
large numbers in the cigarette factories. Not many years ago the
tobacco industry was supposed to belong to the negro, but with the
introduction of machinery he has lost his monopoly, though on account of
the expansion of the industry the total number of negroes employed is
greater than ever before.
In the smaller factories labor is usually paid by the day, but in the
larger establishments every operation possible is on a piecework basis.
These operations are so related in a series that a slacker feels the
displeasure of those who follow him and depend upon him for a supply of
material. In the smaller factories the work is regarded somewhat in the
light of a summer holiday, as the tasks are simple and the operatives
talk and sing at their work. This social element largely disappears,
however, with the introduction of machinery. As might be expected in a
labor force composed of men, women, and children, both white and black,
with some engaged in manual labor and others tending complicated
machines, there is little solidarity. An organized strike including any
large percentage of the force in a tobacco factory is a practical
impossibility. Those engaged in a particular process may strike and in
consequence tie up the processes depending upon them, but any sort of
industrial friction is uncommon. The general level of wages has been
steadily rising, and among the negroes the tobacco workers are the
aristocrats of the wage earners and are content with their situation. Since
the larger factories are almost invariably in the cities, the homes of the
workers are scattered and not collected in communities as around the cotton
mills.
Experiments have been made in employing negro operatives in the textile
industry, so far with little success, though the capacity of the negro
for such employment has not yet been disproved. Though several cotton
mills which made the experiment failed, in every case there were
difficulties which might have caused a similar failure even with white
operatives. Negroes have been employed successfully in some hosiery
mills and in a few small silk mills. The increasing scarcity of labor,
especially during the Great War, has led to the substitution of negroes
for whites in a number of knitting mills. Some successful establishments
are conducted with negro labor but the labor force is either all white
or all black except that white overseers are always, or nearly always
employed.
An important hindrance in the way of the success of negroes in these
occupations is their characteristic dislike of regularity and punctuality.
As the negro has acquired these virtues to some extent at least in the
tobacco industry, there seems to be no reason to suppose that in time he
may not succeed also in textiles, in which the work is not more difficult
than in other tasks of which negroes have proved themselves capable. So far
the whites have not resented the occasional introduction of black
operatives into the textile industry. If the negroes become firmly
established while the demand for operatives continues to be greater than
the supply, race friction on this account is unlikely, but if they are
introduced in the future as strikebreakers, trouble is sure to arise. In
the mines, blast furnaces, oil mills, and fertilizer factories the negroes
do the hardest and most unpleasant tasks, work which in the North is done
by recent immigrants.
The negroes are almost entirely unorganized and are likely to remain so
for a long time. Few negroes accumulate funds enough to indulge in the
luxury of a strike, and they have shown little tendency to organize or
support unions. However, their devotion to their lodges shows the
loyalty of which they are capable, and their future organization is not
beyond the range of possibility. Generally the South has afforded little
encouragement to organized labor. Even the white workers, except in the
cities and in a few skilled trades, have shown until recently little
tendency to organize. In the towns and villages they are not sharply
differentiated from the other elements of the population. They look upon
themselves as citizens rather than as members of the laboring class.
Except in a few of the larger towns one does not hear of "class conflict";
and the "labor vote," when by any chance a Socialist or a labor candidate
is nominated, is not large enough to be a factor in the result.
During 1918 and 1919, however, renewed efforts to organize Southern
labor met with some success particularly in textile and woodworking
establishments, though the tobacco industry and public utilities were
likewise affected. The efforts of employers to prevent the formation of
unions led to lockouts and strikes during which there was considerable
disorder and some bloodshed. Communities which had known of such
disputes only from hearsay stood amazed. The workers generally gained
recognition of their right to organize, and their success may mean
greater industrial friction in the future.