A DAY-LABORER AT WEST POINT
HIGHLAND FALLS, N. Y.,
Monday, August 3, 1891.
At three o'clock on Saturday afternoon I decided to quit work on
the old Academic building. I went up to the boss and told him of my
intention, as I had seen other men do, and was ordered into the office;
there, without a moment's delay, the timekeeper's books were consulted,
and No. 6 was paid the five dollars and eighty-five cents which were
due him. Five dollars are gone to Mrs. Flaherty for board; seventy-five
cents more will be owing to her to-morrow morning for another day, and
then I shall set out on the road with ten cents in my pocket.
I had calculated upon a balance far in excess of that; for when I went
to work on Tuesday, five full working-days were before me, and, at a
wage of one dollar and sixty cents, they were to yield an income of
eight dollars. My reckoning left out the chance of rain. For three
days passing showers drove us to cover, and the "called time" was as
closely noted by the boss as it is by the referee in a foot-ball game;
only we were given no chance to make it up.
Mrs. Flaherty's home has a real hold upon my affections. It is one
in my mind with the blessed interludes of rest which were brief
transitions from one æon of work to another. My acquaintance with the
household covers a period of incalculable time. Mrs. Flaherty wears
toward me now a motherly air of possession; and she wrinkles her brows
in perplexed protest when I tell her that I am going away in the
morning, with no knowledge of where I shall find another place; and
she wipes her mouth with the corner of her apron, and tells me, with
increasing emphasis, that I'd better stay by my job, and let her care
for me decently, and not go wandering about the country, and, as likely
as not, come to harm.
Her husband is a painter, a little round man with red hair and high
spirits, who is a well-preserved veteran of the Civil War, and very
fond of telling you of his life as a "recruitie."
Minnie is their daughter. She inherits her father's hair, and gives
promise of his rotundity. But just now Minnie is fifteen, and the world
is a very interesting and exciting place. She took her first communion
last Easter, and still wears her confirmation dress on Sundays, and
is really pretty in a blushing effort to look unconscious when Charlie
McCarthy calls.
Charles appears regularly on Sunday afternoons, I gather. He is a
driver for an ice-dealer, is not much older than Minnie, and is very
proud of a light-gray suit and a pair of highly polished brown boots.
Tom is Minnie's only brother. He is a stoker on a river-boat, and can
spend only his Sundays at home. Tom is a little past his majority, and
takes himself very seriously as a man. He tells you frankly that he
is earning "big money," and is anxious that you shall not escape the
knowledge that he is a libertine.
The child that he is came comically to the surface last night, with no
least regard for the newly found dignity of manhood. Tom shares one of
the beds in my room, and in the middle of the night he came bounding
to the floor in a nightmare, and running to the door began pounding
it with both hands, and screaming, "Papa! Papa!" like a child in a
paroxysm of fear. He soon woke himself, and then he slunk into bed and
was surly with us as we crowded about him, eager to know the cause of
this violent awaking.
Jerry and Pete and Jim and Tom Wilson and I are the boarders. Wilson's
is the only surname that I know. Surnames are little in use on this
level of society; they smack of a certain formality like that which
attaches to Sunday clothes. We were all sitting on the porch after
supper on my first evening, and I knew that the men were taking my
measure. Jerry broke the silence with an abrupt inquiry after my name.
I responded with my surname. Jerry took his pipe from his mouth, and
turned to me with some warmth: "That's not what I want to know. What's
your first name? What's a man to call you?" "Oh, call me John," I said,
with sudden inspiration, and I have passed as "John" accordingly.
Wilson and I worked together at unskilled labor, and we have a bed in
common; and it was during a night of fearful heat, when neither of us
could sleep, that Wilson, in a burst of confidence, told me his full
name.
I had noticed him as a new-comer on the works on Wednesday morning.
He accepted the job with alacrity, and, in spite of evident physical
weakness, he went to work with feverish energy. At noon hour we shared
a dinner, and he told me that he had slept in the open for three nights
running, and had had nothing to eat since the previous noon. I referred
him to Mrs. Flaherty, and at supper I found him at a place at her
table.
It was that night that he gave me his confidence. Two years ago he
came to America from the north of Ireland. From the first he had
found it hard to get work, and he had never kept a job long. This was
chiefly due, he said, to his having been brought up to the work in the
linen-mills, and to the difficulty that he found in adapting himself to
any other. And now his narrative suddenly glowed with active personal
interest, for, with each succeeding sentence about his apprenticeship
in Lurgan, there rose into clearer memory visions of a charming
fortnight once spent at the home of the owners of the mill.
I have set for myself to-day the task of describing the past week of
actual service in the ranks of the industrial army. My pen runs wide
of the subject, and I have to force it to the retrospect. There were
five working-days of nine hours and a quarter each, less the "called
time" eaten out by the rain. Never was there clearer proof of the
pure relativity of time measured by an artificial standard. Hours had
no meaning; there were simply ages of physical torture, and short
intervals when the physical reaction was an ecstasy.
We were called at six on Tuesday morning; and at twenty minutes to
seven we had breakfasted, and were ready to start for the works, each
with his dinner folded in a piece of newspaper. Passing from our side
street to the road which leads to the Post, we were at once merged in a
throng of workingmen moving in our direction.
I was suddenly aware of a novel impression of individuality. Gangs of
workingmen, as I recalled them, were uniform effects in earth-stained
jeans and rugged countenances, rough with a varying growth of stubborn
beard. To have distinguished among them would have seemed like
distinguishing among a crowd of Chinese. Now individuality began to
appear in its vital separateness, and to awaken the sense of infinite
individual sensation, from which we instinctively shrink as we do from
the thought of unbroken continuity of consciousness.
But my eyes were growing sensitive to other differences, certainly
to the broad distinction between skilled and unskilled workmen. Many
orders of labor were represented--masons and carpenters and bricklayers
and plasterers, besides unskilled laborers. An evident superiority
in intelligence, accompanied by a certain indefinable superiority in
dress, was the general mark of skilled labor. And then the class of
unskilled workers was noticeably heterogeneous in composition, while
many of the other class were plainly of American birth.
It is a mile from Highland Falls to West Point, and we moved briskly.
There was little conversation among the men. Most of them had taken off
their coats, and with these over their arms and their dinner-pails in
hand, they walked in silence, with their eyes on the road. The morning
was sultry and overhung with heavy clouds, full of the promise of rain.
A forest lines much of the road, and from the overhanging boughs fell
great drops of dew, dotting the surface of soft dust. The wayside weeds
and bushes were gray with a coating of dust, and seemed to cry out in
the still, hot air for the suspended rain.
The old Academic building stood near to the Mess Hall at the southern
end of the Post. In process of removal one wing had been blown up by
dynamite, I was told, and now its site lay deep in heaps of débris. It
was here that one gang of laborers was employed, and it was with them
that the boss had instantly given me a job upon my application on the
previous morning.
There were about sixty men in the company. Most of them stood grouped
among the ruins, ready to begin work on the hour. I had but to
follow their example. I hung my coat, with my dinner in one pocket,
on a neighboring fence, and brought a shovel from the tool-house, and
joined the other men. We stood silent, like a company at attention.
The teamsters drove up with their carts, and the bosses counted them.
In another moment the head boss, who had been keeping his eye on his
watch, shut the case with a sharp metallic click, and shouted "Turn
out!" in stentorian tones.
The effect was magical. The scene changed on the instant from one of
quiet to one of noisy activity. Men were loosening the ruined mass with
their picks, and urging their crow-bars between the blocks of stone,
and shovelling the finer refuse into the carts, and loading the coarser
fragments with their hands. The gang-boss, mounted upon a section of
wall, began to direct the work before him. A cart had been driven
among the ruins, and he called three of us to load it with the jagged
masonry that lay heaped about it. It was too coarse to be handled with
shovels, and we went at it with our hands. They were soon bleeding from
contact with the sharp edges of rock; but the dust acted as a styptic
and helped vastly in the hardening process. When the cart was loaded,
another took its place, and then a third and a fourth.
In a harsh, resonant voice the boss was shouting his orders over our
heads, to the farthermost portion of the works. His short, thickset,
muscular figure seemed rooted to the masonry on which he stood. The
mingled shrewdness and brute strength of his hard face marked him as a
product of natural selection for the place that he filled. His restless
gray eyes were everywhere at once, and his whole personality was tense
with a compelling physical energy. If the work slackened in any portion
of the ruins, his voice took on a vibrant quality as he raised it to
the shout of "Now, boys, at it there!" and then a lash of stinging
oaths. You could feel a quickening of muscular force among the men,
like the show of eager industry in a section of a school-room that has
fallen suddenly under the master's questioning eye.
In the dust which rose from the débris I picked up a mass of heavy
plaster, and, before detecting my mistake, I tossed it into the cart.
But the boss had seen the action, and instantly noticed the error,
and now all his attention was directed upon me. In short, incisive
sentences, ringing with malediction, he cursed me for an ignoramus and
threatened me with discharge. I could feel the amused side-glances of
the men, and could hear their muffled laughter.
At last all the carts were loaded and driven away, and until their
return, some of us were set at assorting the débris--throwing the
splintered laths and bricks and fragments of stone and plaster into
separate heaps. The work compelled a stooping posture, and the pain of
lacerated fingers was as nothing compared with the agony of muscles
cramped and forced to unaccustomed use.
A business-like young fellow, with the air of a clerk, now began
to move among the men, and they showed the keenest interest in his
approach. I heard them speak of him as the "timekeeper," but I had no
knowledge of such a functionary, and I wondered whether he had any
business with me. He hailed me with a brisk "What is your number?" I
looked at him in surprise. "He's a new hand," shouted the boss from his
elevation. "What's your name?" asked the timekeeper, as he turned a
page in his book. I told him, and when he had written it he drew from
his pocket a brass disk, upon which was stamped the number six, and
this he told me to wear, suspended by its string, and to show it to him
as often as he made his rounds.
The cartmen had reappeared and received their loads, and had again
driven off, in long procession, in the direction of Highland Falls.
We went back to the varied torture of assorting. But the pain was
not purely physical. The work was too mechanical to require close
attention, and yet too exhausting to admit of mental effort. I did not
know how to prevent my mind from preying upon itself.
At last I hit upon a plan which appealed to me. I simply went back in
imagination to the familiar country-seat, and followed the morning
through a likely course. We met at breakfast, and complained of the
discomfort of the sultry day as we discussed our plans, and then we
walked over the lawn to the pier. Two cruising sloops, that had waited
in the hope of a freshening breeze, now weighed anchor, and under
main-sail and top-sail and jib drifted slowly out of the harbor. We
watched them in idle curiosity, wondering at the distinctness with
which the conversation of the yachtsmen came back to us across the oily
placidity of still water, until they seemed almost half way to the
spindle, and then we agreed upon a morning ride. We telephoned to the
stables, and before we were ready the horses stood restless under the
_porte-cochère_. Step by step I followed our progress along the road
that skirts the inlet, and across the crumbling bridge on the turnpike,
and under the great, drooping elms which line the village-street in
Fairfield, and up the long ascent of the Greenfield Hill to the old
church, and then home by the "back road." The dogs came running at us
from the stables with short, sharp barks of welcome as we cantered
past, and we called to them by name. As we turned by the reservoir, we
could see a groom running down the path in order to reach the house
before us. Hot from the ride, we passed through the dim mystery of
the hall and billiard-room and den, and out upon the veranda, where
a breath of air was stirring, and the fountain played softly in its
bed of vines and flowers. Louis had returned from market. Our letters
lay in order on the settle, and near them, neatly folded, were the
morning papers. And now Louis's approach was heralded by the tinkling
of ice against the glass of bumpers of cooling drinks, and his bow was
accompanied with a polite reminder that luncheon would be served in
half an hour.
I had been working with all my strength. Now I looked up at the boss
in some hope of a sign of the noon hour. There was none. Painfully I
went back to the work. Again I tried to find diversion in this new
device. Slowly, with double the needed time for each event, I followed
the morning through another imaginary series. Now I was sure that the
boss had made a mistake and had lost track of the time, and was working
us far into the afternoon. The clouds had thickened, and the growing
darkness I was certain was the coming night. Great drops of rain began
to fall, but the men paid them no heed. Soon the drops quickened to
a shower, and still the men worked on. The moisture from within and
without had made us wringing wet when the boss ordered us to quit. We
bolted for our coats and dinner-pails, and then huddled in the shelter
of the still-standing walls of the ruin. Through one of the great
doorways I caught sight of the tower of a neighboring building with a
clock in it. It was twenty minutes to nine! In all that eternity since
we began to load the first cart, we had been working one hour and forty
minutes, and had each earned about twenty-nine cents.
The rain cost us an hour of working-time, and then we went back, and
found some relief from the earlier discomfort in the saturation which
had thoroughly settled the dust.
In another hour, with no freshening of the air, the clouds faded out of
the sky. The sun shone full upon us, and there arose from the heaps of
ruin a mist heavy with the smell of damp plaster. But I had my "second
wind" at last, and I worked now with the feeling of some reserve of
physical strength. It was with surprise that I heard the loud voice of
the head boss in a shout of "Time's up!" and almost before I knew what
had happened the men were seated on the ground, in the shadows of the
walls, eating their dinners.
I opened mine with much curiosity. There were two huge sandwiches,
with slices of corned beef between the bread, and a bit of cheese and
a piece of apple-pie, very damp and oozing. Among the other men, with
my aching back pressed against the wall, I sat and ate my dinner,
lingering over the last crumbs like a child with some rare dainty.
At the end of the forty-five minutes allowed to us at noon, there
came again, from the head boss, the order to "Turn out." In a moment
the scene of the morning was renewed. There was the same alternation
between loading the carts and assorting the débris.
We had been but a few minutes at work when the cadets went marching
past, on their way to mess. Familiar as most of the men were with
the sight, they seized eagerly upon the diversion that it offered.
The boss relaxed his vigilance. The work visibly slackened, as we
lent ourselves to the fascination of individual motion merged into
perfect harmony of collective movement. Conspicuous in the rear was
the awkward squad, very hot in its effort to walk erect, and keep its
shoulders back and its little fingers on the seams of its trousers. The
men laughed merrily at the comical contrast between such grotesquely
strenuous efforts at conformity and the ease and strength and grace of
the unison which preceded it.
No rain came to give us breathing-space in the afternoon. Hour by hour
the relentless work went on. The sun had soon absorbed the last drop
of the morning rain, and now the ruins lay burning hot under our feet.
The air quivered in the heat reflected from the stone and plaster about
us; the fine lime-dust choked our breathing as we shovelled the refuse
into the carts. You could hear the muttered oaths of the men, as they
swore softly in many tongues at the boss, and cursed him for a brute.
But ceaselessly the work went on. We worked as though possessed by a
curious numbness that kept us half-unconscious of the straining effort,
which had become mechanical, until we were brought to by some spasm of
strained muscles.
But five o'clock came at last, and with it, on the second, the loud
"Time's up!" of the head boss. You could see men fairly check a tool
in its downward stroke, in their eagerness not to exceed the time
by an instant. In two minutes the tools were housed and the works
deserted, and the men were running like school-boys, with a clatter of
dinner-pails, in a competitive scramble for seats in the dump-carts,
which were moving toward Highland Falls.
The hindmost were left to walk the mile to their lodgings. I fell in
with two old Irishmen, who noticed me with a friendly look, and then
went on with their conversation, paying me no further heed. But I felt
strangely at home with these old men. Their short, faltering steps
exactly suited my own, and I comfortably bent my back to the angle of
their stoop, not in an effort to simulate their figures, but because to
stand erect cost me exquisite agony.
The men in the carts were soon out of our sight, but the remnant was
large and was thoroughly representative. We formed a weird procession,
this fragment of a company in the ranks of labor. There were few
native-born Americans, one or two perhaps, besides myself; but there
were Irish and Scandinavians and Hungarians and Italians and negroes.
[Illustration: A WEIRD PROCESSION, THIS FRAGMENT OF A COMPANY IN THE
RANKS OF LABOR]
As a physical exertion, walking was not hard after our day's labor.
It was a change and a rest, and we must all have felt the soothing
refreshment in the breath of cool air which was moving down the river,
and in the soft light of the early evening, which brought out in new
loveliness the curves of the opposite hills and deepened the shades of
blue and green. My own appreciation of all this and more would have
been livelier but for two overpowering appetites, which were asserting
themselves with unsuspected strength. I was hungry, not with the hunger
which comes from a day's shooting, and which whets your appetite to
the point of nice discriminations in an epicure's dinner, but with a
ravenous hunger which fits you to fight like a beast for your food, and
to eat it raw in brutal haste for gratification. But more than hungry,
I was thirsty. Cold water had been in abundant supply at the works, and
we drank as often and as freely as we chose. But water had long since
ceased to satisfy. My mouth and throat were burning with the action of
the lime-dust, and the physical craving for something to quench that
strange thirst was an almost overmastering passion. I knew of no drink
quite strong enough. I have never tasted gin, but I remembered in one
of Froude's essays a reference to it as much in use among working-men,
and as being seasoned to their taste by a dash of vitriol, and eagerly
I longed for that.
Half-way down the road we met some young women in smart dog-carts
driving to the sunset parade at the post. In the delicate fabric and
color of summer dress they seemed to us the embodiment of the cool of
the evening. Suddenly I looked with a keener interest. With her fingers
outstretched she was shading her eyes from the horizontal rays of the
setting sun, and she did not see us, rather saw through us, as through
something transparent, the familiar objects on the roadside. I had
seen her last in town at a wedding at St. Thomas's, and fate unkindly
sent her up the aisle on the arm of another usher. I laughed aloud,
a short, harsh laugh, that escaped me before I was aware, and that
had in it so odd a quality that it gave me an uncomfortable feeling
of unacquaintance with myself. The two old Irishmen turned inquiring
glances at me, and appeared disturbed at my serious look.
My room, when I reached it, was, in spite of wide-opened windows, like
Nero's bath at Baiæ. The ceiling and walls glowed with stored-up heat.
Jim was there making ready for supper, and I could hear Jerry and Pete
in their room in similar preparation.
When I put my hands into the cold water, I could scarcely feel them;
but the pain of cleansing grew sharp, and yet, when I had thoroughly
washed them, although the fingers felt double their normal size, they
were really less swollen, and were far on the way to comfort.
The reaction had set in now, and I could feel it in great, cooling
waves of physical well-being. The table was heaped with supper, huge
slices of juicy sirloin, and dishes of boiled potatoes and cabbage and
beans, from which the steam rose in fragrant clouds. By each plate was
a large cup of tea, so strong and hot that it bit like lye, and it soon
washed away the burning lime-dust.
We sat down with our coats and waistcoats off. The men were in the best
of good-humor, and the conversation ran into friendly talk. They asked
me how I liked my job. I thought much better of it by this time, and I
tried to wear the air of critical content. They may have had their own
notions about my previous experience of manual labor, but certainly
they did not obtrude these with any show of suspicion. They accepted me
as a working-man on perfectly natural terms. Until Wilson came I was
the only unskilled laborer among them, but my different grade was no
barrier to our intercourse, and we met and talked with the freedom of
men whose experience is innocent of conventional restraints.
Long after supper we sat on the porch, smoking in the twilight. A deep
physical comfortableness possessed us. Each mouthful of meat and drink
had wrought miraculous healing, and had restored wasted energy in
measures that could be felt. My muscles were sore, but the very pain
turned to pleasure in the ease of relaxation.
The men were town artisans, skilled laborers, attracted here by the
abundance of work. Jerry was a plasterer, and Pete a bricklayer, and
Jim a stone-mason. A short, slender figure, a smooth-shaven face
with small, sharp, regular features, black hair, and gray eyes, is a
sufficient outline of Jerry's personality. His air was that of a cynic,
and there was a cynical flavor in his speech, but the sting of it was
gone at the sight of his soft gray eyes, full of generous reserve of
human kindness.
Pete was a well-set-up young fellow, of twenty-five, perhaps, plainly
of German parentage. Like Jerry, he was smooth-shaven, and there was a
striking contrast between his dark hair and his singularly fair skin
and blue eyes. He was a bricklayer, and ambitious of promotion. He
spoke hopefully of an appointment in the Navy Yard as a result of a
recent examination.
Jim was the only married man among us. His wife and three children
were in Brooklyn, and Jim went home every Saturday night, and spent
Sunday with them. He was a handsome young Scotsman, with curling brown
hair, and brown eyes, and a well-formed mustache, and a round face with
full features. In the casual flow of our talk, Jim spoke of Burns, and
quoted him with a ready familiarity. It was easy to catch the drift of
his liking. Its set was steadily toward passages which sing the wrongs
and oppression of the poor. Jim had none of the tricks of a declaimer;
but with jerks of unstudied emphasis he repeated familiar lines until
you were conscious of new meaning and strength. He was sitting with his
chair tilted against the wall, and his heels resting on a round, and
his hands clasped about his knees. His eyes were fixed upon the evening
gloom as he recited:
Man's inhumanity to man
Makes countless thousands mourn.
The verses seemed exactly to fit his mood, for he repeated them again
and again, with lingering liking for their sense and alliteration.
Jerry broke in abruptly here with sudden, unmeasured condemnation
of the dulness of evenings in a country town in the absence of the
theatre, pronounced theátre. The drama had fired his imagination for
the moment, for he broke through his wonted reserve and waxed fluent as
he expressed his views:
"When I go to the theátre, I go to laugh. I want to see pretty girls
and lots of them, and I want to see them dance. I want songs as I can
understand the words of, and lots of jokes, and horse-play. You don't
get me to the theátre to see no show got up by Shakespeare, nor any
of them fellows as lived two thousand years ago. What did they know
about us fellows as is living now? Pete, you mind that Tim Healy in the
union, him that's full of wind in the meetings? Onct he give me a book
to read, and he says it's a theátre piece wrote by Shakespeare, and the
best there was. I read more'n an hour on that piece, and I'm damned if
there was a joke into it, nor any sense neither."
We were presently yawning under the stars, and I was more than
glad when the men spoke of bed. Almost in the next moment, to my
consciousness, Mrs. Flaherty was knocking on the door, bidding us wake
and not to go to sleep again, for it was six o'clock.
Of the five, this second day was the hardest. My body was sore in
every part when I began to work, and the help of hardening muscles I
did not gain until the third day. Mrs. Flaherty had skilfully bound
up the slight wounds on my fingers. The merciful rain came twice to
our relief, once in the morning and again in the afternoon. But this
was not an unmixed blessing, for in the minutes of delay we could but
calculate the growing loss in wages, and watch the sure vanishing of
any surplus above actual living expenses. I remember making an estimate
on my way to my lodgings that evening, and it was with much sinking of
heart that I discovered that my earnings made a total rather less than
the cost of the day's living.
There has been difficulty in the way of intercourse with the men. I
speak no Italian, nor any of the Scandinavian tongues, so that my
acquaintance has been confined to my own countrymen, who are few in
number in the gang, and to the Irishmen and negroes, and an occasional
Hungarian who understands my stammering German. And within the
English-speaking circle, in the absence of this, there have been other
barriers. There is wanting that social freedom that is most natural
in Mrs. Flaherty's home. There is much of it among the foreigners.
They hang together at their work, and sit in separate groups through
the noon hour, and one commonly hears, especially among the Italians,
that picturesque volubility which sets you wondering as to the subject
of such fluent debate. Among the English-speaking men, the Irish and
negroes are as Jews and Samaritans; but aside from this, the general
attitude is one of sullen suspiciousness. Few appear to know the
others, and not even their wretchedness draws them to the relief of
companionship. Sometimes we hear warm greetings among acquaintances,
or see some show of friendliness, but this is markedly out of keeping
with the general tone of things. The usual intercourse is an exchange
of experiences, an account of the circumstances which brought them to
their present lot, among men who happen to be working side by side or
sitting in company at the noon hour. Quite as commonly one hears only
muttered curses against the boss.
You would gather from their own accounts that many of the men are
unused to unskilled labor. There is a singular uniformity in their
histories. Nearly all have seen better days, and are now but tiding
over a dull season in their trades, or are earning enough to take them
to some other part of the country, where there is a quickening in the
demand for their labor.
I found myself growing doubtful of these unvarying tales. The mechanism
became too apparent. "I am really an efficient and energetic workman,"
each seemed to say; "you see me now in a strait of circumstances. You
should see me at my trade, in which I am an adept. I am out of that
employment now because of depression in the business, but when business
revives, or when I can reach Chicago or St. Louis or Minneapolis, my
labor will be in strong demand." Irresistibly one is led to the belief
that most of these men probably have no trade, or, at the best, are
inefficient workmen, who, unable to keep a job long, habitually pick up
a living at work like this, in the careless makeshift of a shiftless
life.
It is refreshing to meet others who are frankly laborers. All their
lives they have been bred to unskilled labor, and they make no pretence
of anything different. They are hard men who look out upon a world that
is hard to them at every point of contact; but they are true men, by
virtue of their honesty and directness, and one likes them accordingly.
Some of them are old, and it is pitiful to see them tottering under the
burden of years, and staying off actual want by forcing their rheumatic
limbs through the drudgery of this rude toil.
I had noticed the absence of one of this coterie for a day or two when,
in the middle of a morning's work, he appeared among the ruins. He was
an old Irishman. His face was swollen from toothache, and was bound up
in a cotton bandanna. His hands were clasped on his stooping back, and
he moved with the painful motion that suggests acute rheumatism. For a
time he stood watching us at our work and exchanging words with some
of the men about his complaints, when suddenly he burst into tears.
The men jeered him, and angrily told him to be gone. I had a sickening
feeling of cruelty as I saw him go sobbing down the road; but when I
spoke of him at the noon hour the men explained that it was a disgrace
to have him crying there, but that they would see that his wants were
provided for.
There was a revelation in the discovery of the degree to which
profanity is ingrained in the vernacular of these men, as
representatives of the laboring poor. They swear with the readiness
of instinct, not merely in anger, when their language mounts to a
torrent of abuse unspeakably awful in its horrid blasphemies, but in
commonest intercourse, when their oaths are as meaningless as casual
interjections. And almost never is the rude hardness of their speech
softened by the amenities which seem so natural a part of language.
The imperative, more than any other mood, is rudely thrust into common
use. They are even punctilious in its employment.
A single instance will serve to point the nature of this graceless
speech. Two boys of ten or twelve are employed in carrying water to
the men at their work. One carries his bucket through the building to
those engaged in the upper stories; and the other, a flaxen-haired,
delicate child whose thin legs bend under his burden, serves those
of us who are at work on the heaps below. Through all the day, and
especially in its greatest heat, the boys run busily from the works
to a neighboring pump, and return with bucketfuls of water, which are
at once surrounded by thirsty workmen and emptied in a few minutes.
Regardless of the prevailing custom, I always thanked the little fellow
for my drink. Soon I noticed that even this instinctive acknowledgment
seemed to embarrass him. In an interval of rest he came up to me, after
receiving my thanks. "You shouldn't thank me," he said. "And why not?"
I begged to know. "Because, you see, I'm _paid_ to do this," was his
conscientious answer. A mere child, naturally gentle, and yet so bred
to rougher usage that a simple "Thank you" jarred upon his sense of
right! A few minutes later I saw the two boys in a rough-and-ready
fight, and their language lacked none of the horror of that of their
elders.
I shall be on the road again to-morrow morning, and I shall go as
penniless as I came, but somewhat richer in experience. I have been
through nearly a week of labor, and have survived it, and have honestly
earned my living as a working-man. In the future I shall have the
added confidence which comes of knowing that, if work offers, I shall
probably be able to perform it. But this is not the only cause of my
increased light-heartedness. I am frankly glad to get away from the job
on the old Academic building. This is a selfish feeling, and is not
without the cowardice of all selfishness. I hope for a job of another
kind, for a time at least, because I wish to see some hopefuller side
of the lot of common labor. When we draw too near to the hand of Fate,
and begin to feel as though there were a wrong in the nature of things,
it is best, perhaps, to change our point of view--if we can. This may
account for some of the drifting restlessness among working-men of my
class.
The salient features of our condition are plain enough. We are
unskilled laborers. We are grown men, and are without a trade. In the
labor market we stand ready to sell to the highest bidder our mere
muscular strength for so many hours each day. We are thus in the lowest
grade of labor. We are here, and not higher in the scale, by reason
of a variety of causes. Some of us were thrown upon our own resources
in childhood, and have earned our living ever since, and by the line
of least resistance we have simply grown to be unskilled workmen.
Opportunities came to some of us of learning useful trades, and we
neglected them, and now we have no developed skill to aid us in earning
a living, and we must take the work that offers.
Some of us were bred to farm labor, and almost from our earliest
recollection we worked in the fields, until, tiring of country life,
we determined to try some other; and we have turned to this work as
being within our powers, and as affording us a change. Still others
among us, like Wilson, really learned a trade; but the market offers no
further demand for the peculiar skill we possess, and so we are forced
back upon skilless labor. And selling our muscular strength in the open
market for what it will bring, we sell it under peculiar conditions.
It is all the capital that we have. We have no reserve means of
subsistence, and cannot, therefore, stand off for a "reserve price."
We sell under the necessity of satisfying imminent hunger. Broadly
speaking, we must sell our labor or starve; and as hunger is a matter
of a few hours, and we have no other way of meeting this need, we must
sell at once for what the market offers for our labor. And for some of
us there is other pressure, unspeakable, immeasurable pressure, in the
needs of wife and children.
The contractor buys our labor as he buys other commodities, like brick
and iron and stone, which enter into the construction of the new
building. But he buys of us under certain restrictions to us both. The
law of supply and demand does not apply to our labor with the same
freedom as to other merchandize. We are human beings, and some of
us have social ties, which bricks and iron have not, and we do not,
therefore, move to favorable markets with the same ease and certainty
as these. Besides, we are ignorant men, and behind what we have to sell
is no trained intelligence, nor a knowledge of prices and of the best
means of reaching the best markets. And then we are poor men, who must
sell when we find a purchaser, for no "reserve price" is possible to us.
The law of supply and demand meets with these restrictions and
others. If it applied with perfect freedom to our commodity, we should
infallibly be where is the greatest demand for our labor; and with
perfect acquaintance with the markets we should always sell in the
dearest. But the benefits of perfect freedom of supply and demand would
not be ours alone. If we sold in the dearest markets, the employer
would as certainly buy in the cheapest. He has capital in the form of
the means of subsistence, and can stand off for a "reserve price,"
and could force us to sell at last in the pinch of hunger, and in
competition with starving men.
As matters are, our wages might rise, in an increased demand for labor,
far above their present point; but even under pressure of decreasing
demand, and with scores of needy men eager to take our places, our
wages, if we had employment at all, would not fall far below their
present level. So much has civilization done for us. It does not insure
to us a chance to earn a living, but it does measurably insure to us
that what we earn by day's labor, such as this, will at least be a
living.
As unskilled laborers we are unorganized men. We are members of no
union. We must deal individually with our employer, under all the
disadvantages which encumber our position in the market as compared
with his.
But his position is not an enviable one. He is a competitor in a freer
market than ours. He has secured his contract as the lowest bidder,
under a keener competition than we know, and in every dime that he
must add to wages in order to attract labor, and in every dollar paid
to an inefficient workman, and in every unforeseen difficulty or delay
in the work, he sees a scaling from the margin of profit, which is
already, perhaps, the narrowest that will attract capital into the
field of production. The results of our labor are worth nothing to him
as finished product until given sections of the work are completed. In
the meantime he must advance to us our wages out of capital which is a
product of past labor, his own and ours as working-men, and of other
capital. And this he must continue to do, even if his margin of profit
should wholly disappear, and even if ultimate loss should be the net
result of the expenditure of his labor and capital. In every case,
before any other commodity has been paid for, we have insured to us the
price for which we have sold our labor.
Our employer is buying labor in a dear market. One dollar and sixty
cents for a day of nine hours and a quarter is a high rate for
unskilled workmen. And the demand continues, for I notice that the
boss accepts every man who applies for a job. The contractor is paying
high for labor, and he will certainly get from us as much work as
he can at the price. The gang-boss is secured for this purpose, and
thoroughly does he know his business. He has sole command of us. He
never saw us before, and he will discharge us all when the débris is
cleared away and the site made ready for the constructive labors of the
skilled workmen. In the meantime he must get from us, if he can, the
utmost of physical labor which we, individually and collectively, are
capable of. If he should drive some of us to exhaustion, and we should
not be able to continue at work, he would not be the loser, for the
market would soon supply him with others to take our places.
We are ignorant men, and we have a slender hold of economic principles,
but so much we clearly see: that we have sold our labor where we could
sell it dearest, and our employer has bought it where he could buy it
cheapest. He has paid high for it, but not from philanthropic motives,
and he will get at the price, he must get, all the labor that he can;
and, by a strong instinct which possesses us, we shall part with as
little as we can. And there you have, in its rudimentary form, the
bear and the bull sides of the market.
You tell us that our interests are identical with those of our
employer. That may be true on some ground unknown to us, but we live
from hand to mouth, and we think from day to day, and we have no power
to "reach a hand through time, to catch the far-off interest of tears."
From work like ours there seems to us to have been eliminated every
element which constitutes the nobility of labor. We feel no personal
pride in its progress, and no community of interest with our employer.
He plainly shares this lack of unity of interest; for he takes for
granted that we are dishonest men, and that we will cheat him if we
can; and so he watches us through every moment, and forces us to
realize that not for an hour would he intrust his interests to our
hands. There is for us in our work none of the joy of responsibility,
none of the sense of achievement, only the dull monotony of grinding
toil, with the longing for the signal to quit work, and for our wages
at the end of the week.
We expect the ready retort that we get what we deserve, that no field
of labor was closed to us, and that we are where we are because we
are fit, or have fitted ourselves, for nothing better. Unskilled
labor must be done, and, in the natural play of productive activity,
it must inevitably be done by those who are excluded from the higher
forms of labor by incapacity, or inefficiency, or misfortune, or lack
of ambition. And being what we are, the dregs of the labor market,
and having no certainty of permanent employment, and no organization
among ourselves, by means of which we can deal with our employer and he
with us by some other than an individual hold upon each other, we must
expect to work under the watchful eye of a gang-boss, and not only be
directed in our labor, but be driven, like the wage-slaves that we are,
through our tasks.
All this is to tell us, in effect, that our lives are the hard, barren,
hopeless lives that they are because of our own fault, and that our
degradation as men is the measure of our bondage as workmen.
This seems to state an ultimate fact, and then, with the habit of much
of such thinking, to settle itself peacefully, with an easy conscience,
behind the inevitable.
But for us there is no such peace or comfort in the inevitable. And
yet, even in this statement of our case, we are not without hope. We
are men, and are capable of becoming better men. We may be capable of
no other than unskilled labor, but why should we be doomed to perform
it under the conditions which now degrade us at our work?
Imagine each of us an ideal workman. Through all the hours of the
working-day we labor conscientiously, with no need of oversight beyond
intelligent direction; for each of us feels the keenest interest in the
progress of the work, because we are honest men, and, with far-sighted
knowledge, we know that by our best labor in any form of useful
production we are contributing our best to the general prosperity, as
well as our own, and that it is by our energy and personal efficiency
that we may open for ourselves a way to promotion. Here clearly is a
solution on ideal grounds. Is there no remedy that can reach us as we
are?
Our ambition must be fired, our sense of responsibility awakened and
enlisted in our labor, our intelligences quickened to the vision of our
own interests in the best performance of our duty. Life will not be
rendered frictionless thereby. Work will still be hard, but to it will
be restored its dignity, its power to call into play the better part of
a man, and so build up his character.
We have already seen how such an end is realized in the initial
betterment of character itself. Let us see whether something might not
be done by an initial improvement in the conditions of employment.
Let us suppose now that we are not ideal characters, but ordinary men,
whose lot in life is to perform unskilled labor; but let us suppose
that we are an organized body of workmen. The contractor made terms
with us as an organized gang for the removal of the old building. Our
organization, from long experience of such work, was able to enter into
an eminently fair agreement. The contract rests upon a basis of time.
For the completed work we are to receive a fixed sum, provided that
it is finished by a given date. If we finish the work, according to
the terms of the contract, one week earlier, we are to receive a bonus
in addition to the fixed amount; if two weeks earlier, there will be
an increase in the bonus. In the meantime advances are to be made to
us, week by week, in the form of days' wages, but so regulated as to
protect the contractor against loss if the gang should fail to complete
the work.
Every member of the gang is perfectly familiar with the terms of the
contract, and knows thoroughly the advantages of an early completion
of the job. We agree among ourselves upon the number of hours which
shall constitute a day's work, and from our own number we elect a
boss, who will give direction to our labor, and under whose orders we
bind ourselves to serve. It is no part of his duty now to stand guard
over us in the office of a slave-driver to prevent our shirking, for
we effectually perform that service for ourselves, seeing to it, with
utmost regard for our interests, that no man among us fails to do his
share in the common task. The boss is now the best and most intelligent
worker among us, and not only does he direct our efforts, but, with his
own hands, he sets the example of energetic work for the securing of
the best terms that the contract offers for our common good.
In a true sense now we have got a job. It is ours. The work is hard,
but we have an object in working hard. Every stroke of labor is not
a listless, time-serving economy of effort, but an eager and willing
furthering of the work toward its completion and our own advantage. We
are glad in the progress of our job, even if we are glad from no higher
motive than our personal profit. We have a sense of responsibility and
the keen interest which comes of that, even if they rise in no better
source than our greed for gain.
It is true that the root of the matter lies deeper than this. We may
work under hopefuller conditions and be, intrinsically, no better
men. Our selfishness may take on the refinement of the altruism that
merely seeks our own in the welfare of others; our ignorance may
become illumined by an enlightened self-interest; our vices may assume
respectability; and yet our old hardness of heart remain in full
possession of us. But the truly pertinent question is this: Nearer to
which of these ways of living lies the living way? In which have we the
better chance to become better men? Life in its present course is to
most of us a miserable bondage. We work daily to physical exhaustion;
and, with no power left for mental effort, our minds yield themselves
to the play of any chance diversion until they lose the power of
serious attention. In what constitutes for us the work of life there is
no pleasure, no education, no evoking of our better natures.
All truly productive labor performed under right conditions is itself
a blessing. It partakes of the highest good that life offers. It is
a bringing of order out of chaos, a victory over forces which can be
reduced from evil mastery to useful service. It thus becomes the type
of that labor which is the work of life, the mastery of self in the
building of character. In this sense it was that the monks of the
Middle Ages framed their motto, _Laborare est Orare_--labor is prayer.
But robbed of its true conditions and reduced to the dishonor of
time-service under the eye of a slave-driving boss, who impels us with
insults infinitely more degrading than the lash, labor is no longer
prayer, but a blasphemy, which finds expression in the words which rise
readiest to our lips.
I have been writing from the position of an unskilled workman, with no
apparent allowance for my newness to the life. The physical stress and
strain, for example, how different my experience of these as compared
with that of the other men inured to them by long habit! A year or two
of such labor, and how great the physical change! My hands would be
hard, and the friction of this work, so far from wounding them, would
render them the more impervious to harm. My muscles would be like iron,
and would lend themselves with far greater ease to the stress of manual
labor. Ten years would find me a seasoned workman.
But under conditions of labor such as these, what changes other than
physical would there be? My body might be hardened in fibre to the
point of high efficiency in manual labor, but the hardening of mind
and character--is it likely that this would be of the nature of the
strength of more abundant life, or of the hardness of petrifaction?
I have received the strangest kindness from the men, the most tactful
treatment of me as a novice. They laughed at my strenuous efforts to
do what was so much easier to them, and they laughed when the boss
singled me out for abuse, but never ill-naturedly, I thought. And those
who made up to me, and with whom I picked up acquaintance, showed
the kindest consideration. They never pressed me with embarrassing
questions, but fell gracefully into the easy assumption that I was a
factory hand or a "tradesman" out of a job. It was natural to adopt the
general strain and speak of plans which involved my going West.
In spite of their roughness and hardness of manner and speech, one
never felt the smallest fear of these men, and you had a growing
feeling that their better natures were never far to seek. And yet in
reality here they were, a cursing, blaspheming crew; men upon whose
lives hopelessness seems to have settled; whose idea of work is a
slavish drudgery done from the instinct of self-preservation and to be
shirked whenever possible; whose idea of pleasure is abandonment to
their unmastered passions.
I had a purpose in quitting work in the middle of Saturday afternoon.
I went to my lodgings and asked Mrs. Flaherty for an early supper of
anything that she could give me without trouble. Then I brushed my
clothes and washed myself, and made myself as presentable as my slender
pack permitted. My beard was now of nearly two weeks' growth, and
my face was well burned by the sun, and my clothes, in spite of the
protection of overalls, were much labor-stained.
I felt some security in my disguise, and after an early supper I walked
over to see the sunset parade. On the road I met the men returning from
the works, and had to run a gauntlet of questions as to whether I had
left the job for good, and what I meant to do.
There was bustle in the camp; a running to and fro of cadets, who
appeared to be subject to many calls; a nervous appearing and vanishing
at the tent-doors of figures which were in process of achieving
parade-dress; a hasty personal inspection of arms and uniform; and then
suddenly, out of apparently inextricable confusion, there emerged,
without a trace of disorder, the two companies, in double lines of
perfect symmetry, before the inspecting officer.
Then followed the sunset parade. Seated on the benches under the trees,
and grouped on the turf behind, was an eager crowd watching intently,
in perfect stillness, every evolution of the cadets. The fascination
was in the sense it gave you of abounding life, of youth and strength
and vigor, brought to perfect unity in willing subordination to
authority. Here was the type of highest organization, the voluntary
submission of those who are "fit to follow to those who are fittest
to lead." So much has civilization achieved for the purpose of
self-defence. The mission of many of these young officers will be to
take such men as those with whom I have been working, and teach them
the manly lesson of obedience, and awaken in them the feelings of
courage and loyalty and _esprit de corps_. Civilization is yet a long
way from such organization for industrial ends, if ever such corporate
action will be possible or good; but certainly it will not belong
before civilization gives birth in increasing numbers to "captains of
industry," who will feel with their men other ties than the "_nexus_
of cash payment," and who will attack the problems of production with
other aims than selfish accumulation. Under the direction of such
leaders, workingmen will be led to far greater conquests over the
resources of nature than any in the past, and, sharing consciously in
these victories as the fruits of their own labors, there will open
to them a new life of liberty and hope in willing allegiance to true
control.
The intense satisfaction I felt in the rest of yesterday (Sunday) was
heightened by a feeling of hopefulness as I thought of the future of
workingmen in a country like ours. Here are almost boundless natural
resources, capable of supporting many times our present population.
Under the stimulus of private acclamation, what marvellous genius and
skill and enterprise have directed labor to the development of our
national wealth! When, with the growth of better knowledge, there is
added to this stimulus among the great leaders of industry a sincere
desire for the common good and a purpose to make the conditions of
employment the means of achieving this good, how far greater must be
the industrial results, and how far better the lives of the workers!
I felt aglow with this idea as I walked, in the afternoon, down the
road below Highland Falls. It was a warm mid-summer day, and in keeping
with its restful quiet the air moved gently among the leaves in the
tree-tops. I was disturbed by the sound of music from the deck of an
excursion steamer, and, seized with sudden desire for a glimpse of the
river, I vaulted a low stone wall, and quickly made my way over the
mossy carpeting of a wood which covers the bluff above the water.
I did not see, at first, the abrupt ending of the wood and the sweep of
an open lawn, and when I caught sight of that I was only a few yards
from a rustic bench. There two persons sat, with their backs toward me,
but I recognized the girl at once as an acquaintance, and I knew that
I was a trespassing vagrant. The man I knew well, for he was a college
classmate and a charming fellow, and I longed to ask his views on the
question of the improvement of the lot of unskilled laborers by means
of organization.
But I grew painfully conscious of my work-stained clothes, and my faded
flannel shirt, and the holes in my old felt hat, and of how all these
marked me as belonging now to another world. And so I quietly stole
away and returned to "mine own people."