Six years ago at Yale was started the industrial service movement of the
Young Men’s Christian Association. There are at present 3,500 students
from 150 colleges throughout the country engaged in this service under
the direction of city and student association branches. Engineering
students particularly are enlisted in this volunteer service for
industrial workers which presents an effective laboratory for practical
work, backed by the training, encouragement and supervision of
association officials whose co-operation is extended to the larger
efforts for industrial and social betterment which students engage in
after graduation.
Among the forty different lines of service are: teaching English,
history, and citizenship to foreigners; teaching drawing, electricity,
manual training, music and other subjects; conducting men’s and boys’
clubs and boy scout and big brothers work; giving noon shop talks in
factories; giving instruction in hygiene and first aid, athletics, etc.;
holding educational classes in labor unions; conducting socials,
entertainments, observation trips and week-end camps; doing charity
organization work; investigating working, living and recreative
conditions, etc.
The idea is permeating the leading colleges and universities. The old
Yale boat house is being used as a school for teaching English, civics,
and hygiene to foreigners. Students at the University of Illinois,
Indiana, Iowa, and Ames are holding classes for foreign men and boys in
railroad box-cars. Men from Columbia, Harvard, Williams, Brown,
Pennsylvania, and other colleges are conducting educational classes in
labor unions, talking in shop meetings, and leading clubs of working
boys. University of Wisconsin engineering students are instructing
American mechanics and boiler makers in the round house, and convicts in
the jail. Undergraduates of Amherst, Massachusetts Agricultural College,
Princeton, Penn State and other institutions are doing deputation work
in rural industrial communities. Men from Cornell, Worcester Polytechnic
Institute, McGill University, California and the University of Puget
Sound are visiting the homes of immigrants and are teaching groups in
boarding houses. Students of South Carolina, Furman, and other southern
colleges, are doing extension work in cotton mill villages.
[Illustration:
CLASS OF RUSSIAN AND ROUMANIAN JEWS
]
Students have made possible unusual community meetings. In New York city
sixty classes in English and civics for foreigners have been taught by
students, and on several occasions the members of these classes,
representatives of sixteen nationalities, came together under their
respective flags to hear a lecture on American citizenship, to tell what
the work was doing for them, to sing their national songs and to unite
in learning “America.” The Working boys’ clubs came together on one
occasion to hear addresses by Ernest Thompson Seton and Dr. George J.
Fisher. In Pittsburgh, a foreign singing contest was attended by several
thousand people, and a huge American flag of silk was awarded to the
winning group. In San Francisco a mass meeting and entertainment was
attended by men of twenty-five nationalities.
In Tacoma last spring, the notable immigration conference, attended by
several hundred delegates, including five state governors, a Canadian
premier and representatives of capital and labor, was planned and
promoted by the Y. M. C. A. immigration secretary and his student
workers. The conference resulted in the formation of the Coast-wide
Immigration League, to cope with the problems of Pacific immigration
which will be aggravated on the opening of the Panama Canal. In April of
this year a similar conference was held in San Francisco. The man who
conceived and is promoting these conferences acquired his first
experience in teaching foreigners English as a graduate student at
college. It was this effort that determined his life work.
The interest that college men have in this service which brings no
financial compensation is due to the natural sympathy that most students
have for those less fortunate than themselves. To awaken that sympathy
they need only to be shown a real and definite job to do and how to do
it. They can also be shown that industrial service is not only an
altruistic privilege and patriotic duty but also “blesseth him that
gives and him that takes.” This service affords an experience which
students need, for it enlarges a man’s vision, increases his sympathy
with “the other half” and gives a knowledge of how to deal with men.
_Enlisting Students the Service_
The methods of enlisting students are interesting. Lectures on
industrial conditions and needs and the college man’s responsibility are
given before students by carefully selected employers, labor leaders,
and social workers. Especially prepared literature is distributed,
articles are written for student periodicals, and an industrial library
installed in the college Y. M. C. A. building. Interested students meet
weekly, often under expert leadership, for a discussion of industrial
subjects. The student and city branches of the Y. M. C. A. join hands in
the movement, and, in co-operation with churches, missions, social
settlements, boys’ clubs, libraries, civic associations, factories,
labor unions, foreign societies, etc., discover definite opportunities
for industrial service where students can be useful. Experience has
proved beyond a doubt that volunteer service can be conscientious and
efficient. A settlement worker writes: “I don’t see how we could have
done without the splendid work of those college men.” After a few men
are put to work, others become interested through observation, and the
movement naturally spreads.
[Illustration:
A NOON CLASS CONDUCTED IN POLISH
]
In a three-day-campaign in New York, the industrial service movement was
presented to selected classes of students at Columbia, New York
University, and the College of the City of New York, with the result
that 280 students signified their hearty interest and 125 were willing
to undertake immediate work. In a single year 165 undergraduates engaged
in industrial service in New York city, and the movement has become of
such importance that a secretary gives all his time to it. This man was
captain of his university football team two years ago and became
interested at college. It is noticeable that generally the strongest and
most popular students volunteer for service. A list of those at work
from Yale includes varsity football, basketball, baseball, and track
men, intercollegiate debaters, class and fraternity officers, and honor
men. In many places the matter has been presented to the various
fraternities and has met a most cordial response.
Recently at the University of Michigan the movement was presented to
1,200 students in two days, to employers of the city at a luncheon, to
labor leaders at a dinner in the city Y. M. C. A., and to a special
meeting of engineering professors. At Cornell University over 1,600
students were addressed, and 525 signed up as interested and willing to
promote the ideas and ideals of the movement. One hundred and thirty men
volunteered for definite service, and many are already teaching in the
homes of foreigners, leading boys’ clubs, and doing other similar work.
Others will teach this summer where they live and work. The movement was
presented also at meetings of engineering professors and at a gathering
of the Business Men’s Association. The city and student branches of the
Y. M. C. A. are financing the scheme, and a strong student committee is
heading the work in the university.
In practically every college the faculty heartily supports the scheme,
and the sentiment of many professors was expressed when one said, “I
hope every one of my students will make a place in his program for some
volunteer altruistic service. They will have opportunity to do a great
deal of good, but will gain far more than they can give.” Recently at
the University of Iowa the movement was presented to a faculty meeting
which had not been addressed by any outsider for nineteen years. A
number of college faculties have met to discuss the movement, and to
consider the re-adaptation of engineering courses to give more attention
to the “human side of the engineering profession.” Already many
engineering schools have courses in “management,” but professors feel
increasingly that even these courses have too much of the “material” and
not enough of the “human” element. Such instruction supplemented by
personal friendly contact in service for industrial workers will do much
to remove prejudices and promote mutual understanding between college
men and workingmen.
_Appreciation of the Work_
Some quotations from letters written by working men show better than any
other testimony how they feel about this work:
“I have not found words to thank the best friend I ever had on earth
for all he has done for me. I am a better man.”
“I have learn some English, got better job, will be good American
citizen. I am grateful forever.”
A foreign convict writes: “Now I got good chance to learn English to
read and write because I got long time to do in this prison, and if I
learn, that will help me when I get out from here. I no like to work
all my life with pick and shovel.”
In the West a lumber company has provided a room where its foreign
employes can learn English under student leadership. A newspaper
clipping tells the story in these headlines: “Slavonians eager to
acquire knowledge of English after back-breaking work in mill.”
That American working men are also open to friendliness of this kind is
splendidly illustrated by an experience with a large labor union. When
the students first spoke to the members of the union, the men naturally
wondered and were suspicious of an ulterior motive. But when they went
down to the union rooms two nights a week, often at considerable
sacrifice, and taught mathematics, mechanics, and electricity, the men
warmed up. As the students proved that they were not “snobs” but good
fellows, the men unhesitatingly showed their appreciation. The work was
so successful that it has been carried on for several years. The
president of the union testifies that the wages of some of his men have
been raised from $18 to $28 a week, as a result of the instruction
given. A series of lectures has been given before 500 men in the union
and the men have now asked the students to plan the entertainments for
their social meetings. This latter request is particularly significant,
as the class of entertainment formerly enjoyed was of very low grade.
The work is spreading to unions in many other cities, and the students
are getting an entirely different view of the rights of the workingman.
In a number of instances the labor union, sometimes the Central Labor
Union, has invited selected students to act as fraternal delegates, with
full power to discuss and to introduce motions. This is a remarkable
development, and in no case have the unions had cause to regret the
step.
In one city the students discovered a Syrian who spoke six languages
fluently, had been a school superintendent in his own country, but
because he knew no English, was sweeping out a market for one dollar a
day. The man was befriended, educated and has become a power for good
among his countrymen.
An Italian lad lived in America four years before an American treated
him as a friend. By that time he was so discouraged that he had several
times attempted suicide. A college student met him on a street corner,
invited him to an English class in one of the settlements, helped him,
trained him for leadership, and he is now a social worker of remarkable
ability among his people.
_Engineering Students Especially Interested_
Social workers in our colleges have in many instances found engineering
students “too busy,” and as a rule not so open to the altruistic appeal
as those in other departments of the universities. Yet, it is a fact
that 70 per cent of the 3,000 men engaged in industrial service are
engineers. The reason is obvious: A football captain (an engineer) said
the other day:
“This industrial work is the livest thing that’s struck college since
I’ve been here. It’s a real job and it’s practical. Everyone of us who
goes into it is bound to acquire an experience in dealing with men,
which the curriculum can’t give, and we need it!”
Indeed a prominent general manager, himself a college graduate, recently
said to the writer:
“The college graduates in my employ are frequently a confounded
nuisance. They come to us with a splendid knowledge of books, but when
as foremen or superintendents, they get out into the shop, and deal
with _working men_, they make a mess of it. A good part of my time is
spent in straightening out difficulties and restoring harmony. They
haven’t any real sympathy with men and don’t know how to handle them.”
Here then is a great need in the training of an engineer, which the
industrial service movement is designed to meet. Engineering students
are quick to see the point. As they teach English to foreigners or lead
a club of working men they come to understand these men, not as a
“class,” but as individuals. They get a friendly insight into their
working and living conditions and a first-hand knowledge of how to deal
with them intelligently and sympathetically. Thus one student writes:
“My class of Italians is the finest bunch of men I’ve ever come into
contact with—bright, keen, appreciative to an embarrassing extent.
They have done me more good than I can ever do them.”
Another says:
“My club of working men was the big thing needed to complete my
college education. It taught me things I could have learned in no
other way, and as an engineer, I am already deriving great benefit.”
It is also true that many a college man has been kept straight and
acquired higher ideals because of the responsibility of some group of
men or boys who were looking up to him. One such man, an engineer of
promise, says:
“Before I undertook any of this work, my one ideal in life was to make
all the money I could, regardless of anyone under me. Since I gave
some of my time in volunteer service my ideals have all changed. Now I
don’t care where I go or what my salary, so long as it is some place
where I can help my fellow men.”
[Illustration:
AN ENGLISH CLASS FOR RUSSIANS AND POLES
]
This naturally raises the great question of what these students will do
with their experience after they graduate from college.
_Larger Significance of the Movement_
As already indicated, after students have had a real service experience,
their changed attitude toward the world’s needs and their sense of
responsibility is bound to lead to greater activity in their larger
spheres of influence after graduation. Thus, it is not surprising that
we have in our central office a mailing list of 3000 graduates, most of
them engineers who were interested as undergraduates, and many of whom
are now in the forefront of movements for social and industrial
betterment. Here is what some of them write from various parts of the
country:
“It is surely satisfactory to feel one is doing something for the
betterment of the human race. You can count on me to co-operate in the
work wherever I go.”
“As a student I got interested in industrial service and resolved that
any men whom I might later control should get a square deal. I’ve just
investigated the living conditions of the men in this lumber camp, and
found them sleeping on old vermin-producing wooden bunks, that hadn’t
been changed in six years. I’ve had the whole outfit burned up and an
iron cot put in for every man in camp.”
“I am sending you my personal check to cover cost of equipment for
English classes in my steel mill.”
“We have put in a fine welfare club for our men, with reading, writing
and smoking rooms. No gambling or liquor allowed. It certainly pays and
I am delighted with my share in it.”
“As foreman in the steel mill, I see that my men get a square deal on
the job, a better job if they deserve it, and I have taken pains to
render personal service to many. We must get rid of the seven-day,
twelve-hour labor schedule before we can have real men with real homes.”
“I have signed up eight hundred working men for a Y. M. C. A. membership
in our mining town. After a thorough investigation, we feel that the
Association will meet the needs of the men better than any other
agency.”
“I am superintendent of schools here and am putting in evening classes
for the first time in this city, and an using Roberts’ method of English
for foreigners.”
“Have just been elected president of the Social Hygiene Society in this
community.”
“I have been traveling all over the country and have noticed that the
heart has almost been educated out of some of my friends with degrees. I
am convinced that every undergraduate enlisted in this volunteer work
will have the broad field of humanity opened before him. It’s great
business.”
One of America’s greatest football captains, a few months after
graduation, wrote from a construction camp in Colorado:
“Remembering what I learned in this movement at Yale, when I became
foreman I treated my gang of Italians as men and not as dogs, and it was
really pitiful to see the way they returned the little kindness I showed
them. Each day I was met with cheery words of greeting. When the job was
complete the men came to me in a bunch, thanked me for the fair way I
had treated them, and said they would like to work for me always.”
What greater satisfaction could an engineer ask? And what may it not
mean to the industrial world of tomorrow, as hundreds and hundreds of
engineering and other students graduate from college with a new vision
of their service opportunities, and a knowledge of how to help. In one
college town through the entire winter, the son of a railway magnate,
who has 25,000 men under him, taught a group of foreign laborers in one
of the worst districts of the city. Who can judge of that man’s
influence a few years hence?
This in brief is the story of the industrial service movement, which
heads up in the Industrial Department of the Y. M. C. A. International
Committee, in which state committees and nearly 300 student and city
associations co-operate, and for which thousands of college men are
conscientiously working. From the central office of the secretary a
letter of news, suggestion and inspiration, and quantities of helpful
literature go each month to the local secretaries who are co-operating.
Thus, quietly but rapidly, without undue advertising has been advancing
a great movement, broad in scope, submerging creed and class in
altruistic service; deep in influence, reaching to the very heart of
many vital industrial problems of the day. At a conservative estimate
3,500 undergraduates are reaching over 60,000 working men and boys each
week in definite constructive service, which will make for better
understanding, the improvement of industrial and social conditions and
the transforming of individual lives. No one can measure the helpful
service of the 3,000 graduates who also are promoting the ideals of the
movement. As hundreds of men continue to graduate with a new vision of
their service opportunities and responsibilities, who can foresee their
influence in maintaining industrial righteousness and industrial peace?
MAKING INCOME EQUAL OUTGO[7]
WHAT THE STRUGGLE MEANS TO COTTON MILL WORKERS
MARGARET F. BYINGTON
CHARITY ORGANIZATION DEPARTMENT, RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION
Footnote 7:
See Federal Report on the Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in
the United States, 19 volumes. Edited by Charles P. Neill. Volume XVI.
Family Budgets of Typical Cotton Mill Workers. By Wood F. Worcester
and Daisy Worthington Worcester.
Hidden in monotonous uniformity there is to be found in the volumes of
the federal report on the Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in
the United States a most illuminating analysis of the budgets of cotton
mill families. It is notable for simplicity rather than for
comprehensiveness. Budgets of twenty-one families employed in southern
cotton mills and of fourteen in the cotton mills of Fall River, Mass.,
have been secured and the conditions of the families studied. Because
the number is so small no attempt is made to use the figures as a basis
for generalizations, but the full statement of the circumstances as well
as the expenditures of each family gives the study a compensating
vividness.
The study of the fourteen families in Fall River is not as satisfactory
as the southern investigation because the standards of English, Italian,
French Canadian, Portuguese and Polish operatives are so different. Also
it was not possible, as it often was in the South, to get an almost
complete record both of family income and expenditure through the books
of the companies where the families worked. For these reasons the
analysis of the southern families’ budgets is more deserving of
attention.
Special interest attaches to the study of the twenty-one southern
families as it was the first budget study of southern families, I
believe. As a background we may quote from the report a brief
description of life in a southern cotton mill town:
“Certain conditions of the new industrial life foster this isolation.
The whole family—men, women, and children—are engaged in the same
industry in which every other family in their community is engaged.
They have their own churches and their own schools, in many cases
furnished by the mill owners. They live, with few exceptions, in
houses owned by the mill company. They buy their provisions, in many
cases, from the company store. The cotton mill is the center of their
lives. Their present and their future are bounded by it. In less
isolated industrial communities there is always the prospect of
working into some other and higher industrial group. The vision of the
southern cotton operative, however, is so limited by his surroundings
that this possibility rarely occurs to him. In other industries the
father may feel that he can never hope for anything more for himself,
but he can at least plan and struggle for a better life for his
children. Here the mill demands the children as well as the fathers.”
This dependence on the mills serves to make the study more accurate than
is usually possible. The rent of company houses was, of course, known
and through the courtesy of the mill owners the investigators were
allowed to copy from the books of the company not only the detailed
expenditures for food, clothing, etc., but what was of more importance,
the actual wage of the various members of the family from week to week
for an entire year. The total income, in some cases practically every
item of expenditure, is therefore known.
The families chosen for study are considered typical, though probably on
the whole having somewhat better than average conditions. This necessity
for making an arbitrary choice is, of course, the one uncertain point in
the study. As the investigators, however, had taken part in the larger
investigation of the cotton mill industry made by the Federal Bureau of
Labor, reliance can probably be placed upon their judgment as to what
families were representative. Moreover the report states that the names
of the families working in one of the three mills were furnished by a
mill official as representative families, and in another they were
frankly avowed by the mill officials to be among the best. It may
therefore be assumed that while there is really no “typical family” and
while there are wide variations in circumstances, the stories of these
twenty-one families give an accurate picture of the home life of cotton
mill employes.
In view of the discussion of the effects of the work of young children
in cotton mills it is interesting to note that of the twenty-one
families studied not one was wholly dependent on the wages of the man.
The average number of wage earners in these families was 3.6 and the
average number of individuals 8.5.
Practically all the families live in company houses for which they pay a
low rent, usually $.75 to $1 a room per month. A typical house is “a
one-story frame, built upon brick piers instead of a solid foundation.
It is rectangular in form and divided into four rooms. The rooms are
about fourteen by sixteen or sixteen by sixteen feet, and they are
ceiled instead of plastered. Two rooms have fireplaces or grates, a
third is arranged for a cooking stove, and the fourth has no means of
heating. The flooring is of a single thickness and, as it is seldom
carpeted, furnishes little protection against the cold.” Most of the
homes are but meagerly furnished and only partly heated.
In the discussion of food, the menus and daily expenditures of many
families are given and repay careful study. As a standard for judging
the adequacy of the food supply, the dietary for the federal prison in
Georgia is used (20.5 cents per man per day). Eleven of the twenty-one
families fell below even this meagre diet. “Corn bread, biscuit, pork
and coffee form a large part of the diet of all families.”
In the matter of clothing the study is detailed and brings out some
interesting points as to the different standards of dress for various
members of the same family. The daughter who works in the mills spends
many times as much on clothes as does the mother who works at home. In
some cases, at least, the mother wears the cast-off clothing of the
daughter. One such mother spent $1.98 for clothing in an entire year,
while her daughter of twenty-one who was married that year spent
$113.84; another daughter of nineteen spent $77, and a third girl of
sixteen spent $86.
After giving the budgets of these twenty-one families in full, the
investigators attempt to formulate a “minimum standard” and a “fair
standard” of living. For the former the food cost is based on the prison
dietary; the housing standard on the rent of a mill house; and the other
items—clothing, furniture, fuel, light, and sundries—on the least amount
spent by any family for each item, excluding those that were manifestly
impossibly low. On this basis the “minimum standard” for a family
consisting of a man, his wife, and three children under twelve was
reckoned as possible at an expenditure of $408.26 a year. This amount,
the authors state, is “so low that one would expect few families to live
on it.” Frankly, from the description of what is included, I should be
inclined to say that no family could:
“If the family live upon this sum without suffering, wisdom to
properly apportion the income is necessary. There can be no amusements
or recreations that involve any expense. No tobacco can be used. No
newspapers can be purchased. The children cannot go to school, because
there will be no money to buy their books. Household articles that are
worn out or destroyed cannot be replaced. The above sum provides for
neither birth nor death nor any illness that demands a doctor’s
attention or calls for medicine. Even though all these things are
eliminated, if the family is not to suffer, the mother must be a woman
of rare ability. She must know how to make her own and her children’s
clothing; she must be physically able to do all of the household work,
including the washing. And she must know enough to purchase with her
allowance food that has the proper nutritive value.”
Such a “standard of living” cannot be considered adequate, falls far
short of being scientific and it seems to me doubtful wisdom to consider
as a “standard” at all a program so bankrupt of actual family needs.
The “fair standard” is worked out on a similar scheme. It includes
somewhat more generous provision of food and allowance for certain other
factors which “these people have come to regard ... as essential to
their every-day life.” This “fair standard” is estimated at $600.74 for
the average family.
[Illustration:
CHART OF THE WEEKLY EARNINGS OF ONE OF THE TWENTY-ONE SOUTHERN
FAMILIES
]
A series of novel diagrams is presented showing, for each family, their
earnings from week to week, their average earnings for the year and a
comparison of this with the minimum and fair standards.
An additional study was made of the wages of seventy-five families for a
year, the figures being secured from the mill pay roll. The income of
fifteen families fell below even the minimum; twenty-two had more than
the fair standard, and thirty-eight between the two. Of the seventy-five
families, fifty had fathers working in the mill and only two of these
fifty fathers, both overseers, earned enough to support a wife and three
young children according to the fair standard, and four according to the
minimum. A decent home life for the families of these men would be
impossible were it not for the wages of the children or the income from
boarders. The great variations in incomes from week to week would
increase the difficulty of planning household expenditures even when the
average indicates a living wage.
The results of this low standard of living on physical vitality are
shown by the fact that each of the twenty-one families studied spent
some money for medicine or doctor. As illustrating the amount of
sickness in these families, with its resulting loss of income and added
expense we may quote from the description of one family which has
suffered extensively: “The father was injured in the mill twice during
the year and lost six weeks. The mother is ill with lung trouble. The
boy has tuberculosis, and the fourteen-year-old girl is very frail and
is constantly taking patent medicines. During the year they spent
$108.25 on medicines and doctor’s bills. The year before the
fourteen-year-old girl, whose earnings were a large share of the family
income, lost twenty-four weeks because of sickness.” Another family,
though in good general health, suffered as a result of bad sanitary
conditions: “The members of the family appear to be in good health. The
daughter, aged eighteen, had typhoid fever during the year and was
unable to work for eight weeks. The son, aged sixteen, had malaria and
lost from one to two weeks at different times.”
This is the picture of southern cotton mill life—a family living in a
four-room mill-owned house without running water and indoor toilets,
with but one room heated; a meager diet of pork and beans, biscuit,
coffee and syrup; an irregular income, not allowing on an average enough
for a fair standard of living for most of the families, yet tempting
often to extravagance in those weeks when it is high; a twelve-year
limit permitted by the child labor law, and adult wages that necessitate
the children’s going to work as soon as that law allows; the father
rarely earning much more, and sometimes even less, than the younger
members of the family; scant amusement, usually only the moving picture
show, possible on the meager income; poor health with the doctor often
an impossible luxury.