The manufacturing classes of this country doubtless present a much more
favorable condition of the workmen than prevails in other countries. The
men who are generally described as laborers—whether they work isolated
or in bodies—occupy a higher level of life than the same class in the
old world. We may pass by, as being, in dispute, the question of the
protective system’s relation to this fact. The higher condition of
workmen is partly a result of democratic institutions and the absence
of social grades in society; partly also of the youth of this country
and its abundance of natural bounties. We have had the unexampled good
fortune to be a young country rapidly developing wealth. A democratic
level, a republican simplicity, vast stores of undeveloped natural
wealth, and a system of free schools and free churches, have probably
conspired to produce a high grade of workmen. We naturally desire to keep
this feature of American society and industry. We note with alarm any
sign that workmen are dropping to a lower level. It is not exclusively
a humanitarian feeling which prompts us to maintain our workmen on a
high level. We have all come to be interested in the prosperity of
this section of the community. The economic usefulness of a man may be
as conveniently measured by what he consumes as by what he does. In
fact, his consuming power is the more accurate measure of his value.
It is not so much a question of the number of strokes per day of which
he is capable, as of the power he has to buy and use what his fellows
produce. In this country the workman’s consuming power is probably at
least twice as great as it is in Europe. This means that forty per
cent. of our people buy twice as much as the corresponding forty per
cent. buy in Europe. The effect is to greatly enlarge the market which
we are all supplying with various kinds of goods. The reduction of
this growing section of our population to the European condition would
cause a contraction of the market, and an arrest of our industrial
development, such as we have never experienced. We should be able to
_make_ just as many goods as now, but the people who now buy them would
be obliged to reduce their buying, and this reduction would make an
appalling aggregate. If twenty millions of people should at once reduce
their annual purchases by one-half, the effect would be a more complete
bankruptcy of us all than we have ever dreamed of. The reduction might
come about slowly and with less peril; but even then the stagnation would
be fatal to a large portion of the community. The truth is that we have
a new factor in our industrial life, a new economic co-efficient. It is
the well-paid workman, who is a relatively large consumer. Relatively to
population the market we are all engaged in supplying is a much larger
market than exists in Europe. We are built upon a foundation of which
this well-paid laborer is an important part. We added an immense mass to
this foundation when we emancipated the slaves. We increased the demand
for goods by the difference between the cost of supporting a slave and
that of supporting a free man. The new factor is a sum to be estimated
only by the study of our own country. It never before existed in any
country. It is a fact without a precedent; and it is so large that the
whole fabric of our prosperity rests upon it. Gradgrind may persuade
himself that he does not care whether poor men can buy goods or not; but
his persuasion to that indifference will give way just as soon as the
poor cease to buy his goods. In short, Gradgrind can not afford to see
the buying power of workmen reduced with complacency. It means, whenever
it becomes a _general_ fact, ruin for Gradgrind. Whoever has anything or
produces anything has given bonds for the maintenance of workmen’s wages.
Well, then, the alarm has already been sounded. We do not refer to the
“tariff reform”—though that _may_ be fatal—but to more certain matters
over which the tariff laws have no power. It is affirmed that the
character, social status, aspirations and self-respect of workmen in
this country has already fallen. An observer in a manufacturing center
recently said: “The change in ten years is frightful. The old hands have
risen in life or gone west. The new hands live in smaller quarters, care
less for the comfort of their families, and buy fewer goods of any kind.
They read less, take newspapers more rarely, are less careful to dress
well on Sunday, and see their children in rags with a complacency which
was unknown ten years ago. The new people are from Europe, and nine in
ten of them have brought their old habits with them. Higher wages mean to
them only more rum and more idleness.”
We hope that this is an exaggeration. But even if it be only very
partially true, it opens an unexpected vista, and an alarming one. The
only way to maintain workmen’s wages is to keep up workmen’s characters.
If the character grows debased the wages will drop to that lower level.
A higher grade of living is the only possible security for higher wages.
Workmen can not long get high wages to spend in rum shops. Wages will
sink to the level of their life. But if the common market is to suffer so
great a loss as this fall in wages and consuming power would occasion,
then we must all suffer. Nor is this all. The failure would be that
of our civilization. We are, every way, in all sources, most deeply
interested in arresting the threatened decline of the American workman.