a startling contrast to the prate of demagogues concerning the dignity
of American labor. While they scheme to get the votes of intelligent
workingmen, labor in many parts of this country is being enslaved by
means of the hordes of foreigners who are imported in violation of law
and right. Mr. Powderly tells, in the _North American Review_, of a
visit which he paid to a mining-camp to investigate the condition of
the men who were imported to take the places of American workmen who
had demanded higher wages for labor done. These men lived in huge
barracks. Their dining-room, smoking-room, sitting-room, kitchen, and
bedchamber were one. There were five rows of bunks, three deep, each
one thirty inches in width and seventy-eight inches long--the first
bunk eighteen inches from the floor, the next, supported by rough
hemlock posts, but two feet above it, and a third two feet above the
second one. Each bunk was filled with straw, and covered with coarse
coffee-sack material for bed-clothing. Two rows of hemlock boards, each
one twenty feet in length by three feet in width, constituted the
tables. The men came in from the mines while he was present, and,
before washing face or hands, sat down to their supper of salt pork,
meal, and water. One hundred and five men lived in a building one
hundred and sixty feet in length by thirty feet in width. He found no
one to answer him in the English tongue. When it was bedtime they lay
down without divesting themselves of a single article of clothing; some
of them took off their shoes, but the majority did not even do that.
These men took the places of American workmen who were receiving from
two dollars to two dollars and a half per day. The compensation allowed
them was but seventy-five cents a day, and board. As a careful
investigation proved that fifteen and three-eighths cents would provide
the food furnished each man, the outlay was but ninety and
three-eighths cents a day. It is getting to be quite a common custom on
railroads and in mines and other places where this class of laborers
are employed, to attach to the waistband of each man a leather strap
fastened to a large brass check, similar to a baggage check. Every
check bears a number, and the man who carries it, or to whom it is
fastened, is known by the number on his check. Mr. Powderly grimly
comments: "Fancy the future of the American laborer, whose name is
forgotten, and whose only means of identification rests with a brass
check, which may be substituted for another while he sleeps." If this
is not white slavery, what is it?
These Old World tides have also close relation to the health of our
cities. Large numbers of these people have been accustomed to live in
crowded quarters, on insufficient food, and without any regard for
cleanliness, in their native country. They come here, bringing all
their filthy habits, bred in them sometimes for generations. I have no
doubt that some of my critics tell the truth when they say that the
squalid tenements occupied by the Russian Jews and Italians in Boston
are better than the homes whence they came. So far as these foreigners
themselves are concerned, even these wretched conditions are perhaps an
upward step in evolution. But if we are going to have Naples in Boston,
we must expect to have Neapolitan cholera epidemics as well.
[Illustration: SURGICAL THEOLOGY.]
These Old World tides have also a very close relation to the morals of
our people. An overwhelming majority of all the criminals who figure in
our police courts, and are supported in our jails and penitentiaries,
were born abroad. This is very easy to understand when one investigates
a little the methods used to encourage emigration to this country. The
investigation made by the Ford Congressional committee revealed the
enormous extent to which steamship companies are drumming Europe for
human freight, to be dumped on our shores. "To those unscrupulous
'fishers of men' everything that walks or crawls is acceptable.
Quantity, not quality, is the desideratum. The worse the specimen, the
more effective, usually, is the emigration prize offered, and the less
the opposition interposed by government officials. In a word, a
drag-net has been thrown over nearly the entire European continent,
with the result of having recently collected for shipment to this
country a class of humanity, which, wherever it may be, is a menace to
good order and a tax upon the police and charity departments of the
country."
One who speaks with the highest authority on questions of political
economy puts the immigration problem in a strong light when he says:
"We are now draining off great stagnant pools of population which no
current of intellectual or moral activity has stirred for ages.
Thousands and hundreds of thousands of those who represent the very
lowest stage of degradation to which human beings can be reduced by
hopelessness, hunger, squalor, and superstition, are found among the
new citizens whom the last decade has brought into the Republic." It is
known beyond doubt that prisoners' aid societies in various European
countries have been steadily shipping convicts to the United States.
Neither has it been an uncommon thing for criminals to be let off by
the courts, on condition of their emigrating to America. It is folly
for us to expect to take this great criminal class, who were born to
crime in the purlieus of European cities, who have been thieves from
their cradles, and who come to us fresh from jails and prisons, and
change them into useful citizens. They will not only continue to be
criminals themselves, but they will spread their vile and wicked
contagion wherever they go. There is not a single cause of reform or
progress in this country that is not constantly discouraged and
postponed by these Old World tides of ignorance and vice.
[Illustration: BUILDING USED BY THE BRITISH AS A HOSPITAL.]
There can be no doubt that there is a rising tide of public sentiment
in this country in favor of a careful and wise examination of every
emigrant who offers himself as a candidate for American citizenship in
the future. I think, in view of the fact that we are getting a very
large and increasing proportion of our immigration from Southern
Europe, which is the most illiterate portion of the Old World--in
Southern Italy, for instance, seventy-nine out of every one hundred are
illiterate--there ought to be an educational test. There is certainly
no wisdom in our adding hundreds of thousands a year to the number of
illiterates already here, who are unable to read the Declaration of
Independence, and have not the faintest conception of the principles of
our Constitution. The examination of emigrants ought to be on the other
side of the water. We have had many recent illustrations in Boston of
the manifest hardships experienced under the present arrangement. Every
person intending to emigrate to America ought to be required to give
notice of that desire through the nearest American Consul, and furnish
a clean bill of health, both moral and physical; and no one should be
permitted to sail without a certificate of such investigation and
satisfactory finding. This would not shut out any one who would be of
value to American institutions, but it would require European countries
to care for the criminals and paupers which their own social system has
bred.
But what shall we do with these multitudes of foreigners who are
already living in our midst? In the first place, we must cease to
regard them as foreigners or aliens, and set to work with a definite
purpose to Americanize them as quickly as possible. We must not, for a
moment, be satisfied to let them herd together in the filth and squalor
to which they may have been accustomed at home. We cannot afford to
hand them over to the greedy tyranny of the sweater. Nothing will help
us more than the abolition of the neglected tenement house, and the
provision for a healthier, cleaner shelter for the people.
[Illustration: VICTORIA SQUARE.]
Some of our public-spirited men of wealth cannot do better than to look
in this direction as a field in which to make their mark upon the
uplift of their race and their time. There is a far greater demand for
this class of benevolent investments than there is for added colleges
or universities. If some of the vile and unhealthy tenements that have
been described recently, not only by myself but by the reporters and
the daily press, could be replaced by such buildings as the Victoria
Square building in Liverpool, it would be a great public benefaction.
On the former site of Victoria Square were miserable tenement houses.
To-day a magnificent structure stands there, built around a hollow
square, the larger portion of which is given up for a healthful
play-ground for the children. "The halls and stairways of the building
are broad, light, and airy; the ventilation and sanitary arrangements,
perfect. The apartments are divided into one, two, and three rooms
each. No room is smaller than thirteen by eight feet six inches; most
of them are twelve by thirteen feet four inches.
"All the ceilings are nine feet high. A superintendent looks after the
building. The tenants are expected to be orderly, and keep their
apartments clean. The roomy character of halls and chambers may be
inferred from the fact that there are only two hundred and seventy-five
apartments in the entire building. The returns on the total expenditure
on the building, which was three hundred and thirty-eight thousand
eight hundred dollars, it is estimated will be at least four and a half
per cent." The rents will seem miraculous to those of you who have been
following the prices given in this series of discourses. In this
beautiful Victoria Square dwelling, with its large, shrub-encircled
play-ground for children attached, light, airy, three-room tenements
are furnished for one dollar and forty-four cents per week. For those
containing two large rooms one dollar and eight cents a week is
charged; while the one-room quarters are let at fifty-four cents a
week.
Who among our rich men will lead off in some grand crusade of this
sort? Another thing we want to do to Americanize these people, is to
furnish them employment under conditions consistent with health,
intelligence, and morality. Instead of the crowded sweat-shop, the
moral atmosphere of which is as filthy as the physical, we must have
factories conducted in the spirit of Christian civilization.
Let me tell you of a vision I had the other day as I sat meditating and
dreaming in my study chair. I dreamed I was walking down the streets of
an American city when I saw a large brick building which I might have
thought was a factory except that there were white curtains at every
window in the house. As I neared the door, I asked a passer-by what it
was, and he astonished me by saying, "This is the great Christian
factory." Being a little anxious to see what life in a really Christian
factory would be like, I went in on a tour of investigation. There were
several hundred employees in the factory, most of whom were young
women. To my astonishment, I found bath-tubs in this factory, with an
abundance of hot and cold water, linen towels, and toilet soap. Did one
ever hear of such luxuries in a factory of any sort? In the girls'
bath-room there were rugs under foot, the finishing was done in oak,
the trimmings were nickel-plated, the sanitary arrangements were
perfect, and everything was as bright and clean as it was possible to
make it. Each employee was allowed thirty minutes for a bath, and if
one was so fastidious as to need three-quarters of an hour, no comments
were made. The structure was commodious and convenient, substantially
built, and heated, lighted, and ventilated throughout according to the
most improved system. Even the cellar was attractive in its
completeness, from the steam-engine that operated the machinery of the
building, to the culinary department where those who desired could
purchase a noon-day lunch at actual cost of material. The cook in
charge of the kitchen devoted her entire time to the work. Every day,
tea, with milk and sugar, was supplied by the firm free of charge;
oaten meal was furnished three days in the week at the same rate.
Delicious soup was served at three cents a bowl. The entire floor was
carefully cemented; it was light, warm, and clean, and there were
tables and benches for those who lunched in the building. An hour was
allowed at noon, and while all were expected to be on hand promptly at
one o'clock, the girls living at a distance from the factory were
thoughtfully permitted to leave a few minutes before twelve o'clock.
On the main floor goods were stored in the centre of the room, the
remaining space being reserved for the pleasure and convenience of the
employees. At one end of this spacious floor there was an improvised
music-room, with a piano and window garden, where the girls could sing
and sun themselves every noon. Opposite was an enclosed sanctum,
divided into a reading and reception-room. Bright, soft rugs were
scattered about. The reading-table was as well stocked with current
literature as a club man's library table. The papers and periodicals
were reserved for the exclusive use of the girls. An open fireplace was
one of the attractive features of the reception-room, and there was a
mantel-mirror, too--that means of grace so dear to the gentler sex.
The two upper floors contained the work-tables and machines. On
entering these work-rooms one was struck by the neatness of the place.
Everything seemed to have a white lining. The atmosphere was not only
clean, but fresh and sweet. There were no rags, no dust, no fluff, no
smell of dripping grease from over-hanging machinery. A special staff
of men was constantly employed to look after the premises, and their
vigilance was such as to anticipate the wear and tear. The abundance of
light and sunshine would astonish and delight not only business people,
but school commissioners as well. Each work-shop was the size of an
entire floor, so that light was admitted from four sides of the
building, the windows almost adjoining one another. The white curtains,
which softened the light, gave the place a homelike appearance which
was very pleasing. Another charm was the love of flowers. There were
potted plants on every floor, and they were as green and lovely as if
nourished by a practical florist. On making some inquiries, I found
that Friday was pay-day, and that indirectly much good resulted from
this thoughtful system. Not only did it give the hundreds of families
the benefit of the early Saturday markets, but in a great measure did
away with the credit-books, and, best of all, was instrumental in
keeping the girls off the street Saturday night. No charges were
imposed upon the operators. They did not have to buy thread, pay
machine-rent, or replace broken needles. If an attachment was
displaced, it was restored by the firm, and even the girls' scissors
were kept sharpened at the expense of the employer. Hot and cold water,
mirrors, towels, and soap were among the conveniences. Posted over the
stationary wash basins was this request: "Please help with your
forethought to keep things clean and nice. Any attention will oblige."
This was signed by the firm. The work was so systematized, and the
training so thorough, that the tyrannical forewoman and domineering
foreman had no place in the establishment. The manager was the only
person to whom the hands were accountable. Adjoining the factory was a
pretty garden containing a pear-orchard, with arbors and seats, where
the girls lunched in fine weather. Women as a class show the effects of
good keeping, and these workers were not an exception. There were a
great many pretty faces among them, and not one that betrayed
"boss-fright" or time-terror. As a class they looked more like normal
college students than factory hands. Compared with overworked,
nerve-strained, anxious-faced girls in the sweat-shops, and indeed in
most shops and factories, these trim, tidy-looking, cheerful and
contented women seemed to me the very _noblesse_ of the industrial
world.
Ah! you may say, that is only an idle and visionary dream; and no doubt
my critic of a few weeks ago, who thought I belonged to the most
dangerous class in the community when I was describing the misery of
the "white slaves of the Boston sweaters," would be ready to say that I
am engaged in a scarcely less dangerous task in putting such ideal and
impossible dreams into the heads of working-girls. But, dear sceptical
friend, what I have been telling you is not a dream at all, but a
heavenly reality that is going on in this modern work-a-day world, in
the city of Newark, N. J., and I have merely been summarizing for you
the report of Nell Nelson in the New York _World_, giving an account of
the Christian experiment of Ferris Brothers' factory for the making of
corset waists. I was at this point in my discourse on Thursday at
half-past one o'clock, when I said to myself, "Isn't it a little
hazardous to take all this for fact, even on the authority of a
newspaper reporter? Will not a great many of your audience say it is
only a pleasing fancy of a reporter's imagination?" So at three o'clock
I was on the train for New York, and at eleven that evening I was in
bed in a hotel in Newark.
Friday morning, at half-past seven, I was going through Ferris
Brothers' factory, It is with great pleasure that I tell you that, on
returning, I did not have to strike out a single word I had written. On
every side were evidences of thoughtfulness; for instance, a large
portion of the girls employed live in a section of the city to the rear
of the factory. In order to save the extra walk of a block or two,
three hundred additional keys have been made to the orchard gate, so
that they can come and go that way. A large number of umbrellas are
kept in the office. If a girl is caught at the factory in an unexpected
shower, she finds an umbrella waiting to be loaned in just such an
emergency.
With the manager I went through the culinary department. They make
ice-cream now every day, and sell large plates to the girls for three
cents. A careful account is kept of the cost, and the manager said he
thought he should be able to reduce the cream to two cents a plate. I
looked through the reading-room and over the carefully selected lists
of papers. The manager said that among the girls were some excellent
musicians, and others with good literary abilities, and told me, I
thought with a pardonable degree of pride, that a few months since,
when some desirable positions in the Newark Public Library were open to
competition, the two young ladies from the Ferris Brothers' factory who
were successful, scored ninety-five points out of a possible hundred in
their literary examination. No employee works more than nine and
one-quarter hours a day, and Saturday afternoon is free. The average
wages, including beginners and help girls, is seven dollars a week, and
a good worker makes twelve dollars.
You may say that many of these things that I have mentioned are
insignificant and only trifles, but, after all, it is such things as
these that in a large degree make or unmake our human lives; and a
human life is no trifle. But lest some hard-headed business man shall
shake his head and say, "The fools will bankrupt themselves," I must
add, that aside from the beauty and grace of this thoughtful business
philanthropy, the enterprise has been entirely satisfactory from a
commercial stand-point, the firm agreeing that not only have their
employees done more, but better, work than ever before. One of the firm
assured me that, while there were, of course, many discouraging things
and occasionally an employee who showed little appreciation, on the
whole there had been a steady improvement during their three years'
experience in this factory, and under no circumstances would they be
willing to go back to the old factory _regime_.
To contrast a factory like this with some of the sweat-shops I have
visited, is like contrasting heaven with hell. There may be, and I
doubt not are, many other factories where the same Christian
thoughtfulness is exercised in the treatment of employees, as here.
Upon all such may the benediction of Heaven rest! May their numbers be
multiplied!
The Church, too--I mean the great Catholic Church, formed of all the
branches of our Christianity "who love the Lord Jesus Christ in
sincerity"--must open its arms with a heartier tone of welcome and
brotherhood to the tried and disheartened working-people. Nothing in
recent art has stirred me so deeply as a dim copy of Hacker's "Christ
and the Magdalene," reproduced by Mr. Stead in the _Review of Reviews_.
The Christ is standing with coarse clothing and toil-worn hands by the
work-bench in the carpenter-shop at Nazareth. The shavings are heaped
in piles around, him on the otherwise bare floor, while kneeling at his
feet in penitence and trust is the Magdalene. Brothers, it is this
carpenter Christ, as Frances Willard aptly puts it, "the Monday
Christ," for whom the toil-worn world hungers, and will welcome when it
sees Him manifested in us, in the shop, the factory, and the
counting-room, as well as in the church.
Zoe Dana Underhill sings, in _Harper's Magazine_, a song the modern
Church needs to learn, until its great heart shall throb with its
spirit.
"The Master called to His reapers,
'Make scythe and sickle keen,
And bring me the grain from the uplands,
And the grass from the meadows green,
And from off the mist-clad marshes,
Where the salt waves fret and foam,
Ye shall gather the rustling sedges,
To furnish the harvest-home.
Then the laborers cried, 'O Master,
We will bring Thee the yellow grain
That waves on the windy hillside,
And the tender grass from the plain;
But that which springs on the marshes
Is dry and harsh and thin,
Unlike the sweet field-grasses,
So we will not gather it in.'
But the Master said, 'O foolish!
For many a weary day,
Through storm and drought, ye have labored
For the grain and the fragrant hay.
The generous earth is fruitful,
And breezes of summer blow
Where these, in the sun and the dews of heaven,
Have ripened soft and slow.
'But out on the wide, bleak marshland
Hath never a plough been set,
And with rapine and rage of hungry waves
The shivering soil is wet.
There flower the pale green sedges,
And the tides that ebb and flow,
And the biting breath of the sea-wind
Are the only care they know.
'They have drunken of bitter waters,
Their food hath been sharp sea-sand;
And yet they have yielded a harvest
Unto the Master's hand.
So shall ye all, O reapers,
Honor them now the more,
And garner in gladness, with songs of praise,
The grass from the desolate shore.'"
X.
OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS, THE BOSTON PAUPERS.
"And Sir Launfal said, 'I behold in thee,
An image of Him who died on the tree;
* * * * *
Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me;
Behold, through Him, I give to thee!'"
--James Russell Lowell: _Sir Launfal_.
"Now there was a certain rich man and he was clothed in purple and fine
linen, faring sumptuously every day: and a certain beggar named Lazarus
was laid at his gate full of sores."
"Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least,
ye did it unto Me."
These two views of poverty ever stand over against each other. They are
the same to-day as when so graphically described by Jesus of Nazareth.
The one looks on poverty with contempt; it is the view of selfishness.
The other looks upon it with sympathetic brotherhood; the view of
humanity at its highest attainment, or from the standpoint of Jesus
Christ. Both these scriptures, however, agree in teaching us the
solemnity of our relation to our neighbors who are in trouble or
poverty. Mrs. Catherwood, in her story of "The Lady of Fort St. John,"
in the August _Atlantic Monthly_--a tale of the early French
settlements in this country, illustrates one of the old superstitions
by a weird tale of an old Hollander who had married a very young wife
who, when he came to die, was still only a girl; and the cunning old
Dutchman endeavored to maintain his supremacy over her after his death
by grimly providing in his will that his right hand should be severed
from his body, and, preserved by some rare chemical process, should
always remain in the possession of his widow as her most sacred
treasure; for if she lost or destroyed it, or failed to look on it once
a month, nameless and weird calamities, foreseen by the dying man, must
light not only on her, but on those who loved her best. And so, long
after he was in his grave, that horrible memento of the past held this
poor woman in the clasp of its skeleton fingers, and guided her course
across the oceans, and into distant lands. This was the grip of a
superstition only; but there is a real grip of the "dead hand," of
which this ghostly story is only a faint intimation--the grip of
yesterday on to-day--of to-day on to-morrow--the grip of my duty toward
my neighbor that cannot be shaken off, which even death itself does not
loosen.