as a whole the saleswoman suffers not only from long-continued standing,
but from bad air, ventilation having no place in the construction of the
ordinary store. Separate dressing-rooms are a necessity, yet are only
occasionally found, the system demanding that no outlay shall be made
when it is possible to avoid it. Overheating and overcrowding, hastily
eaten and improper food, are all causes of the weakness and anæmic
condition so perceptible among shop and factory workers, these being
divided into many classes. For a large proportion it can be said that
they are tolerably educated, so far as our public-school system can be
said to educate, and are hard-working, self-sacrificing, patient girls
who have the American knack of dressing well on small outlay, and who
have tastes and aspirations far beyond any means of gratifying them. For
such girls the working-women's guilds and the Friendly societies--these
last of English origin--have proved of inestimable service, giving them
the opportunities long denied. In such guilds many of them receive the
first real training of eye and hand and mind, learn what they can best
do, and often develop a practical ability for larger and better work.
Even in the lowest order filling the cheaper stores there is always a
proportion eager to learn. But here, as in all ordinary methods of
learning, the market is overstocked, and even the best-trained girl may
sometimes fail of employment. Now and then one turns toward household
service, but the mass prefer any cut in wages and any form of privation
to what they regard as almost a final degradation. A multitude of their
views on this point are recorded and will in time find place.
In the mean time a minute examination of the causes that determine their
choice and of the conditions surrounding it as a whole go to prove the
justice of the conviction that penetrates the student of social
problems. Again, the shop-girl as a class demonstrates the fact that not
with her but with the class above her, through accident of birth or
fortune, lies the real responsibility for the follies over which we make
moan. The cheaper daily papers record in fullest detail the doings of
that fashionable world toward which many a weak girl or woman looks
with unspeakable longing; and the weekly "story papers" feed the flame
with unending details of the rich marriage that lifted the poor girl
into the luxury which stands to her empty mind as the sole thing to be
desired in earth or heaven. She knows far better what constitutes the
life of the rich than the rich ever know of the life of the poor. From
her post behind the counter the shop-girl examines every detail of
costume, every air and grace of these women whom she despises, even when
longing most to be one of them. She imitates where she can, and her
cheap shoe has its French heel, her neck its tin dog-collar. Gilt rings
and bracelets and bangles, frizzes and bangs and cheap trimmings of
every order, swallow up her earnings. The imitation is often more
effective than the real, and the girl knows it. She aspires to a
"manicure" set, to an opera-glass, to anything that will simulate the
life daily more passionately desired; and it is small wonder that when
sudden temptation comes and the door opens into that land where luxury
is at least nearer, she falls an easy victim. The class in which she
finally takes rank is seldom recruited from sources that would seem most
fruitful. The sewing-woman, the average factory worker, is devitalized
to such an extent that even ambition dies and the brain barely responds
to even the allurements of the weekly story paper. It is the class but a
grade removed, to whom no training has come from which strength or
simplicity or any virtue of honest living could grow, that makes the
army of women who have chosen degradation.
A woman, herself a worker, but large-brained and large-hearted beyond
the common endowment, wrote recently of the dangers put in the way of
the average shop or factory girl, imploring happy women living at ease
to adopt simpler forms, or at least to ask what form of living went on
below them. She wrote:--
"It may be urged that ignorant and inexperienced as these workers
are, they see only the bubbles and the froth, the superficial
glitter and exuberant overflow of passing styles and social
pleasures, and miss much, if not all, of the earnestness, the
virtue, the charity, and the refinement which may belong to those
they imitate, but with whom they seldom come in contact. This is
the very point and purpose of this paper, to remonstrate against
the injustice done to the women of wealth and leisure by their own
carelessness and indifference, and to urge them to come down to
those who cannot come up to them, to study them with as keen an
interest as they themselves are studied,--to know how that other
half lives."
"To know how that other half lives." That is the demand made upon woman
and man alike. Once at least put yourselves in the worker's place, if it
be but for half an hour, and think her thought and live her starved and
dreary life. Then ask what work must be done to alter conditions, to
kill false ideals, and vow that no day on earth shall pass that has not
held some effort, in word or deed, to make true living more possible for
every child of man. No mission, no guild, no sermon, has or can have
power alone. Only in the determined effort of the individual, in
individual understanding and renunciation forever of what has been
selfish and mean and base, can humanity know redemption and walk at last
side by side in that path where he who journeys alone finds no entrance,
nor can win it till self has dropped away, and knowledge come that
forever we are our brothers' keepers.
CHAPTER SIXTEENTH.
TWO HOSPITAL BEDS.
Why and how the money-getting spirit has become the ruler of American
life and thought no analyzer of social conditions has yet made plain.
That New York might be monopolist in this respect could well be
conceived, for the Dutch were traders by birthright and New Amsterdam
arose to this one end. But why the Puritan colony, whose first act
before even the tree stumps were brown in their corn-fields was the
founding of a college, and whose corner-stone rested on a book,--why
these people should have come to represent a spirit of bargaining and an
aptitude for getting on unmatched by the keenest-witted Dutchman hath no
man yet told us.
The sharpest business men of the present are chiefly "Yankees;" and if
"Jew" and "a hard bargain" are counted synonymes, "New-Englander" has
equal claim to the place. The birthplace and home of all reform, New
England is the home also of a greed born of hard conditions and
developing a keenness unequalled by that of any other bargainer on
earth. The Italian, the Greek, the Turk, find a certain æsthetic
satisfaction in bargaining and do it methodically, but always
picturesquely and with a relish unaffected by defeat; but with the
Yankee it is a passionate, absorbing desire, sharpening every line of
the face and felt even in the turn of the head or shoulders, and in
every line of the eager, restless figure. Success assured softens and
modifies these tendencies. Defeat aggravates them. One meets many a man
for whom it is plain that the beginning of life held unlimited faith
that the great city meant a fortune, the sanguine conviction passing
gradually into the interrogative form. The fortune is still there. Thus
far the conviction holds good, but his share in it has become more and
more problematical. The flying and elusive shadow still holds for him
the only real substance, but his hands have had no power to grasp or
detain, and the most dogged determination gives way at last to the sense
of hopeless failure. For this type may be the ending as cheap clerk or
bookkeeper, with furtive attempts at speculation when a few dollars have
been saved, or a retreat toward that remote West which has hidden
effectually so many baffled and defeated lives. There may also come
another ending, and the feverish, scheming soul lose its hold on the
body, which has meant to it merely a means of getting and increasing
money.
It is this latter fate that came to a man who would have no place in
this record save for the fact that his last querulous and
still-questioning days were lived side by side with a man who had also
sought money, and having found it had chosen for it certain experimental
uses by means of which siphon he was presently drained dry. For him also
had been many defeats. A hospital ward held them both, and the two beds
were side by side, the one representing a patience that never failed,
yet something more than patience. For the face of this man bore no token
of defeat. It was rather triumph that looked at moments from the clear
eyes that had also an almost divine pity as they turned toward the
neighbor who poured out his story between paroxysms of coughing, and
having told it once, proceeded to tell it again, his sole and final
satisfaction in life being the arraignment of all living. The visitor
who came into the ward was pinned on the instant, the fiery eyes
demanding the hearing which was the last gift time held for him. It was
a common story often told, this slow, inevitable descent into poverty.
Its force lay in the condensed fury of the speaker, who looked on the
men he had known as sworn conspirators against him, and cursed them in
their going out and coming in with a relish that no argument could
affect. What his neighbor might have to tell was a matter of the purest
indifference. It was impossible even to ask his story; and it remained
impossible until a day when arraignment was cut short and the
disappointed, bitter soul passed on to such conditions as it had made
for itself.
"You've got the best of me. They all do," he said in dying, with a last
turn of the sombre eyes toward his neighbor. "You ought to have gone
first by a week, and there you are. But this time I guess it's just as
well. I don't seem to want to fight any longer, and I'm glad I'm done.
It's your turn next. Good--"
The words had come with gasps between and long pauses. Here they stopped
once for all. Good had found him; the only good for the child of earth,
who, having failed to learn his lesson here, must try a larger school
with a different system of training. The empty bed was not filled at
once. A screen shut it off. There was time now to hear other words than
the passionate railings that had monopolized all time. The sick man
mended a little, and in one of the days in which speech was easier gave
this record of his forty years:--
"It's a fact, I believe, that the sons of reformers seldom walk in the
same track. My father was one of the old Abolitionists, and an honest
one, ready to give money when he could and any kind of work when he
couldn't. It was a great cause. I cried over the negroes down South and
went without sugar a year or so, and learned to knit so that I could
knit some stockings for the small slaves my own size. But by the time I
was eight years old it was plain enough to me that there were other
kinds of slavery quite as bad, and that my own mother wore as heavy
bonds as any of them. She was a farmer's wife, and from year's end to
year's end she toiled and worked. She never had a cent of her own, for
the butter money was consecrated to the cause, and she gave it gladly.
My father had no particular intention to be unkind. He was simply like a
good two-thirds of the farmers I have known,--much more careful of his
animals than of his wife. A woman was so much cooking and cleaning and
butter-making force, and child-bearing an incident demanding as little
notice as possible. It is because of that theory that I am five inches
shorter than any of our tribe. My mother was a tall, slender woman, with
a springy step and eyes as clear as a brook. I see them sometimes as I
lie here at night.
"I said to myself when I was ten that I'd have things easier for her
before she died. I said it straight ahead while I was working my way up
in the village store, for I would not farm, and when she died I said it
to her in the last hour I ever heard her voice: 'What I couldn't do for
you, mother, I'll do for all women as long as I am on the earth.'
"I was eighteen then, and whichever way I turned some woman was having a
hard time, and some brute was making it for her. I knew it was partly
their own fault for not teaching their boys how to be unselfish and
decent, but custom and tradition, the law and the prophets, were all
against them. I watched it all I could, but I was deep in trying to get
ahead and I did. Somehow, in spite of my dreams and my fancies, there
was a money-making streak in me. It's a lost vein. You may search as you
will and find no trace, but it was there once and gave good returns. I
left the village at twenty-one and went to Philadelphia, and the small
savings I took with me from my clerking soon began to roll up. I had the
chance to go into a soap-factory; a queer change, but the old Quaker who
owned it knew my father and wanted to do me a good turn, and by the time
I had got the hang of it all I was junior partner and settled for life
if I liked.
"Well, here it was again. This man was honest and clean. He meant to do
fairly by all mankind, and he tried to. He had some secrets in his
methods that made his soap the best in the market. The chief secret was
honest ingredients, but it was famous. If you've ever been in a
soap-factory you know what it is like. Every pound of it was wrapped in
paper as fast as it cooled, and the cooling and cutting room was filled
with girls who did the work. They were not the best order of girls. The
wages a week were from three to five dollars, and they were at it from
seven A. M. to six P. M. There was a good woman in the office,--a woman
with a head as well as a heart,--and she did the directing and
disciplining. It was no joke to keep peace if the cooling delayed and
the creatures began squabbling together, but she managed it, and by
night they were always meek enough. You're likely to be meek when you've
carried soap ten pounds at a time ten hours a day, from the cutting
table to the cooling table, across floors as slippery as glass or glare
ice. They picked it up as it cooled, wrapped it in paper, and had it in
boxes, five pounds to the minute, three hundred pounds an hour. The
caustic soda in it first turned their nails orange-color and then it ate
off their finger tips till they bled. They could not wear gloves, for
that would have interfered with the packing.
"Now and then one cried, but only seldom. They were big, hearty girls.
They had to be to do that work, but my heart ached for them as they
filed out at night, so worn that there was no life left for anything but
to get home and into bed. Very few stayed on. The smart ones graduated
into something better. The stupid ones fell back and tried something
easier. But as I watched them and it came over me how untrained and
helpless they were, and how every chance of learning was cut off by the
long labor and the dead weariness, I said to myself that we owed them
something: shorter hours; better wages; some sort of share in the money
we were making. Friend Peter shook his head when I began to hint these
things. 'They fare well enough,' he said. 'Thee must not get socialistic
notions in thy head.' 'I know nothing about socialism,' I said. 'All I
want is justice, and thee wants it too. Thee has cried out for it for
the black brother and sister; why not for the white?'
"'Thee is talking folly,' he said and would make no other answer.
"It all weighed on me. Here was the money rolling in, or so it seemed to
me. We did make it in a sure, comfortable fashion. I was well off at
twenty-five, and better off every month; and I said to myself, the money
would have a curse on it if those who helped to earn it had no share. I
talked to the men in the boiling department. It takes brains to be a
good soap-maker. We kept to the old ways, simply because what they call
improvement in soap-making, like many another improvement, has been the
cheapening the product by the addition of various articles that lower
the quality. Experience has to teach. Theoretical knowledge isn't much
use save as foundation. A man must use eyes and tongue, and watch for
the critical moment in the finishing like a lynx.
"Well, I beat my head against that wall of obstinacy till head and heart
were sore. It was enough to the old Quaker that he paid promptly and did
honest work; and when I told him at last that his gains were as
fraudulent as if he cheated deliberately, he said, 'Then thee need share
them no longer. Go thy way for a hot-headed fool.'
"I went. There was an opening in New York, and I had every detail at my
fingers' ends. I went in with a man a little older, who seemed to think
as I did, and who did, till I made practical application of my theories.
I had studied everything to be had on the subject. I had mastered a
language or two in my evenings, for I lived like a hermit; but now I
began to talk with every business man, and try to understand why
competition was inevitable. I was in no haste. I admitted that men must
be trained to co-operate, but I said, 'We shall never learn by waiting.
We must learn by trying.' I tried to bring in other soap-makers, and one
or two listened; but most of them were using the cheap methods,--increasing
the quantity and lowering the quality. Some of the men had come on to me
from Philadelphia, and were bound to stay, but it was hard on them. They
had to go into tenement-houses, for there were no homes for them such as
building associations in Philadelphia make possible for every workman.
But I took a house and divided it up and made it comfortable, and I
lived on the lower floor myself, so that kept them contented. I fitted
up a room for a reading-room, and twice a week had talks; not lectures,
but talks where every man had a chance to speak five minutes if he
would, and to ask questions. I coaxed the women to come. I wanted them
to understand, and two or three took hold. I made a decent place for
them to eat their dinners, and put these women in charge. I put in an
oil-stove and a table and seats, and gave them coffee and tea at two
cents a cup, and tried to have them care for the place. That has been
done over and over by many an employer who pities his workers; and nine
times out of ten the same result follows. The animal crops out. They
were rough girls at any time, yet, taken one by one, behaved well
enough. But I've seen boys and girls at a donation party throw cheese
and what not on the carpet and rub it in deliberately, and I don't know
that one need wonder that lunch-rooms in store or factory turn into
pig-pens, and the few decent ones can make no headway.
"I spoke out to them all, but it was no more than the wind blowing, and
at last even I gave it up. There was no conscience in them to touch.
They wanted shorter hours and more money, when they had got to the point
of seeing that I was trying to help, but they had no notion of helping
back. With my men it worked, and they talked down the women sometimes.
But when a bad year came,--for soap has its ups and downs like
everything else,--most of them struck, and the wise ones could make no
headway. 'It's a losing game,' my partner said; 'if you want to go on
you must go on alone.'
"I did go on alone. He left and took his capital with him. The best men
stayed with me and swore to take their chances. The soap was good, and I
made a hit in one or two fancy kinds, but I could not compete with men
who used mean material and turned out something that looked as well at
half the price. My money melted away, and a fire--set, they told me, by
a man I had discharged for long-continued dishonesty--finished me. I had
the name of stirring up strife for the manufacturers, because I tried to
teach my workers the principle of co-operation, and begged for it where
I could. It hurt my business standing. Men felt that I must be a fool. I
had worked for it with such absorption that I had had little time for
any joy of life. I had neither wife nor child, though I longed for both.
I would not have ease and happiness alone. I wanted it for my fellows.
To-day it might be. Ten years ago it only the thought of a dreamer, and
I made no headway.
"The fire left me stranded. I went in as superintendent of some new
works, but went out in a month, for I could not consent to cheat, and
fraud was in every pound sent out. I tried one place and another with
the same result. Competition makes honesty impossible. A man would admit
it to me without hesitation, but would end: 'There's no other way. Don't
be a fool. You can't stand out against a system.'
"'I will stand out if it starves me,' I said. 'I will not sell my soul
for any man's hire. The time is coming when this rottenness must end.
Make one more to fight it now.'
"Men looked at me pitifully. 'I was throwing away chances,' they said.
'Why wouldn't I hear reason? We were in the world, not in Utopia.'
"'We are in the hell we have made for all mankind,' I said. 'The only
real world is the world which is founded on truth and justice.
Everything else falls away.'
"Everything else has fallen away. I was never strong, and a year ago I
was knocked down in a scrimmage. Some bullies from one of the factories
set on my men--mine no longer, but still preaching my doctrine. Somehow
I was kicked in the chest and a rib broken, and this saved me probably
from being sent up as a disturber of the peace. The right lung was
wounded, and consumption came naturally. They nursed me--Tom's wife and
sister, good souls--till I refused to burden them any longer and came
here in spite of them. It has been a sharp fight. I seem to have failed;
yet the way is easier for the next. Co-operation will come. It must
come. It is the law of life. It is the only path out of this jungle in
which we wander and struggle and die. But there must be training. There
must be better understanding. I would give a thousand lives joyfully if
only I could make men and women who sit at ease know the sorrow of the
poor. It is their ignorance that is their curse. Teach them; study them.
Care as much for the outcast at home as for the heathen abroad. And, oh,
if you can make anybody listen, beg them for Christ's sake, for their
own sake, to hearken and to help! Beg them to study; not to say with no
knowledge that help is impossible, but to study, to think, and then to
work with their might. It is my last word,--a poor word that can reach
none, it may be, any more, and yet, who knows what wind of the Lord may
bear it on, what ground may be waiting for the seed? I shall see it, but
not now. I shall behold it, and it will be nigh, in that place to which
I go. Work for it; die for it if need be; for man's hope, man's life, if
ever he knows true life, has no other foundation."
CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH.
CHILD-WORKERS IN NEW YORK.
Political economists in general, with the additional number of those who
for one purpose and another turn over statistics of labor, nodded
approvingly as they gazed upon the figures of the last general census
for the State of New York, which showed that among the myriad of workers
in factory and other occupations, but twenty-four thousand children were
included.
"Fifty-six million and more inhabitants, and all faring so well
that only one fortieth part of one of these millions is employed
too early in this Empire State. Civilization could hardly do more.
See how America leads among all civilized countries as the
protector of the feeble, the guarantee of strength for the weakest.
No other country guards its children so well. There have been
errors, of course; such enlightenment is not reached at a bound;
but the last Legislature made further ones impossible, for it fixed
the minimum limit at which a child may be employed in factories at
thirteen years of age. By thirteen a child isn't likely to be
stunted or hurt by overwork. We protect all classes and the weakest
most."
Thus the political economist who stops at figures and considers any
further dealing with the question unnecessary. And if the law were of
stringent application; if parents told the truth as to age, and if the
two inspectors who are supposed to suffice for the thousands of
factories in the State of New York were multiplied by fifty, there might
be some chance of carrying out the provisions of this law. As it is, it
is a mere form of words, evaded daily; a bit of legislation which, like
much else bearing with it apparent benefit, proves when analyzed to be
not much more than sham. The law applies to factories only. It does not
touch mercantile establishments or trades that are carried on in
tenement-houses, and it is with these two latter forms of labor that we
deal to-day. In factory labor in the city of New York nine thousand
children under twelve years of age are doing their part toward swelling
the accumulation of wealth, each adding their tiny contribution to the
great stream of what we call the prosperity of the nineteenth century.
Thus far their share in the trades we have considered has been ignored.
Let us see in what fashion they make part of the system.