Social Legislation and Social Activity Being Addresses delivered at the Sixth Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Political and Social Science of Philadelphia
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Published for the American Academy of Political and Social Science of Philadelphia, by
I. The Annual Address — SOCIAL EFFECTS OF TRANSPORTATION
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By Honorable Martin A. Knapp
Chairman of Interstate Commerce Commission, Washington, D. C.
The progress of mankind in devising means of transportation
embraces three distinctive stages. The primitive man traveled
on foot and moved his scanty belongings with his own muscle; and
we can only imagine the ages that elapsed before he secured any
aid for the transfer of his person or his property other than his own
bodily powers.
Probably the first contrivance for carriage was a rough-hewn
plank or pole dragged upon the ground. Two connected planks
doubtless formed the original sled. Finally the idea was conceived—some
accident suggesting it—of lessening friction by the
use of rollers. The rollers gradually developed into wheels, and
when at last the wheels were made in pairs which revolved upon
an axle the essential feature of all subsequent vehicles was devised
and employed.
The earliest movement on water, we may suppose, was equally
crude and simple. Some observant savage noticed that wood did
not sink, and later found out by experiment that a floating log
would remain on the surface even when his own weight was added.
The rude dug-out followed the discovery. The stick or limb by
which the dug-out was pushed and turned shaped itself at length
into the lighter and more effective paddle; the hollowed log was
succeeded by a framed and covered structure, the paddles became
oars; and thus was evolved in prehistoric times the type of all
later boats on lake and stream. It was centuries after this—no
one knows how many—before the force of wind was utilized by
the invention of sails, and when that immense advance was achieved
the enduring era of ship-building commenced.
Roughly speaking, then, we may assign to the first stage in
the development of transport such results as were obtained by
the muscular strength of man, whether applied directly to the
articles carried or used in propelling the clumsy vehicles and water
craft which he had constructed. The motive power in all cases
2was the unaided energy of his own body. And no later addition
to the resources then at his command, it should be observed, has
wholly displaced the original method. The natural powers of
locomotion have not only remained unabated, but have greatly
increased by experience and training. Indeed, the manual handling
of articles of property must always be an important incident
of ownership and exchange, since no mechanical device can meet
all the needs of transfer or equal the delicacy and dexterity of
our bodily organs. Nor should we overlook in this connection
the many-sided ingenuity which has been displayed in constructing
and perfecting a great variety of vehicles for hand propulsion.
The latest examples of this ingenuity are the light racing shells
which can be rowed with such remarkable rapidity, and that unique
and fascinating machine, the up-to-date bicycle. These are at
once the survival and the consummation of primitive transportation,
that is to say, transportation where human energy is the
motive power.
To the second stage of this development belongs the great
increase of force which was obtained by the subjugation of animals
and their employment for land transportation, and by the use of
sails and rudders which multiplied many times the efficiency of
water carriage. When these two results were secured, man had
added to his own bodily powers the superior strength of beasts
of burden and the enormous energy derived from the winds of
heaven. This was an immeasurable gain and marked the beginning
of that wonderful civilization which slowly followed. The
animal kingdom was brought into service for the varied functions
of land distribution, and the ship which could be sailed and guided
made every waterway subservient to man’s requirements.
This hasty and imperfect outline brings us to a fact of history
which seems to me not merely significant but profoundly impressive.
With the subjection of animals and the use of wind-propelled
vessels, both of which achievements reached a high degree of perfection
in the unknown past, the means of transportation, broadly
speaking, remained unchanged and unaugmented until a period
not much prior to the present time. It is a long stretch of years
from the savage cave-dweller to the twentieth century man, and
this wonderful world of ours had quite a career before the present
generation was born. Long before other agencies of conveyance
were dreamed of, while ox and horse, oar and sail, were the only
3means of transport, the race had occupied most of the habitable
globe and advanced to lofty heights of national greatness. Strong
governments were established, vast populations engaged in varied
pursuits, and opulent cities crowded with every luxury. The
institutions of society had acquired strength and permanence,
the arts of leisure and refinement had approached the limits of
perfection, and inductive science had laid firm grasp on the secrets
of nature. Great inventions and discoveries had widened the
fields of activity, furnished the means and incentive for multiplied
vocations and opened up in every direction alluring vistas of
advancement. In a word, there was the developed and splendid
civilization of little more than threescore years ago, before any
new or different motive power was utilized for commercial intercourse.
And the weighty fact is that this immense and complex organism,
with all its accumulations of wealth and wisdom, its diversified
employments, its agriculture, manufactures, business affairs,
financial systems, commercial and political relations, civil and
social order—its very life and potency—was not only fitted to
but dependent upon means of transportation which, as respects
their expense, speed and capacity, had not essentially altered since
the earliest tribes began to barter! Enormous growth of enterprise
and enlightenment, amazing progress in every other sphere
of human effort, with motive power, which lies at the foundation of
every activity, remaining from first to last a constant quantity!
Before the earliest recorded transaction—when Abraham purchased
the field of Ephron and paid for it his “400 shekels of silver current
with the merchant”—the horse and the ox were the established
agencies of land distribution; and what better agencies, bear in
mind, became available at any time thereafter until well along in
the nineteenth century? Yet the ox was as strong and the horse
as fleet, and their powers were as effectively employed, in the days
of the Pharaohs as they are at the present time. Indeed, no history
is so ancient as not to disclose the general use of animals for the
purposes of carriage, while the vehicles to which they were harnessed
had then been developed, in point of convenience and
usefulness, to a degree not much exceeded in any subsequent
period. Though differing considerably in appearance from the
wagons with which we are familiar, yet they were constructed upon
the same principles and performed the same functions as those
now employed.
4Similar progress was made in ship-building and seamanship
as far back as history affords proof or tradition. There were oar
and sail, tides and currents, and the inconstant winds, long before
the ships of the Phœnicians brought back from the East the gold
of Ophir; and what more was there than oar and sail, winds and
currents—for all the purposes of navigation—until, almost within
the memory of men yet living, the little steamboat of Robert
Fulton ascended the Hudson River! In this long span of time, it
is true, bridges were built, highways improved, vehicles finer
fashioned, sailing craft increased in size, and the mariner’s compass
led to longer voyages; but, nevertheless, the forces by which
movement is effected, the actual means of distribution on land
and sea, continued without substantial change in character or
efficiency age after age and century after century until the recent,
the very recent, era of steam locomotion.
To my mind it is a matter of fascinating import that the long
procession of the world’s advancement down to the century just
ended was conditioned by and dependent upon agencies of transportation
which were themselves essentially unprogressive and
incapable of important betterment. True, there were minor
modifications from time to time in the line of mechanical adjustment,
but the general methods employed, and the results obtained,
showed no marked improvement or material alteration from those
applied in the earliest days of commerce. Reduced to the forms
in ordinary use there were at the last as at the first the beast of
burden on land and the oar and sail on water. Yet thus hampered
and restricted in the means of transportation, which is the basis
of all commercial activity, there was built up in the long process
of years the varied and advanced civilization which the last century
inherited.
Then all at once, as it were, into and through this social and
industrial structure, so highly organized, so complex in character,
so vast in its ramifications, yet so adjusted and adapted to the
fixed limitations of animal power, was thrust the new mode of
conveyance by mechanical force, and the third stage of transportation
was suddenly ushered in by the employment of steam as its
principal motive power. The advent of this new and marvelous
agency was the greatest and most transforming event in the history
of mankind. It wrought an immediate and radical change in the
elemental need of society, the means of distribution. The primary
5function was altered both in essence and relations. The conditions
of commercial intercourse were abruptly and completely altered,
and a veritable new world of energy and opportunity invited the
conquest of the race.
As time goes, this revolution has been phenomenally rapid.
But yesterday, as it seems, and the first iron track had not been
laid, and even the idea of steam as an available motive power had
hardly been conceived; yet already, within the limits of an ordinary
lifetime, long lines of railway—which sprung into being as if born of
enchantment—have stretched out in every direction from one end
of the land to the other. They have bridged the rivers, penetrated
the wilderness, climbed over mountains and traversed the deserts
with their highways of steel. There is scarce a hamlet so remote
as not to hear the shrill whistle of the locomotive, and the clang
of its warning bell is everywhere a familiar sound. In the passing
of a generation the railroad and the steamship have transformed
the whole realm of commerce, of industry and of social life. They
have enriched every occupation, given multiplied value to every
pursuit, added incalculably to the means of human enjoyment,
and made our vast wealth possible; they are at once the greatest
achievement and the greatest necessity of modern civilization.
It is little more than sixty years since the first steam road was
constructed, yet at this time, within the limits of the United States
alone, nearly 200,000 miles of railway are in active operation; and
of this immense mileage—enough to put eight girdles around the
globe—fifty per cent has been built in the last two decades and
more than eighty per cent since the close of our civil war, only
thirty-seven years ago. Elsewhere similar activity has prevailed
during the same period, until animal power the world over has been
almost wholly displaced for the purposes of transportation. Not
only has the railroad become the chief agency by which inland
commerce is carried on, but its influence upon all pursuits is so
powerful, and its relation to every phase of activity so intimate and
vital, that its effects upon social welfare and industrial progress
present an inquiry of the gravest moment.
No other triumph over the forces of nature compares with
this in its influence upon human environment. It has directly
and powerfully affected the direction and volume of commercial
currents, the location and movements of population, the occupations
and pursuits in which the masses of men are engaged, the
6division of labor, the conditions under which wealth is accumulated,
the social and industrial habits of the world, all the surroundings
and characteristics of the associated life of to-day. The world has
seen no change so sudden and so amazing.
The next fact to be noted is hardly less remarkable. Not
only are the new methods of transportation incomparably superior
in speed, cheapness and capacity, but, unlike those which have
been superseded, these new methods are themselves capable of
indefinite increase and expansion. The maximum efficiency of an
animal is so well known as to amount to a constant quantity,
and this unit of power is practically unchangeable. Substantially
the same thing is true of a vessel of given dimensions and given
spread of canvas. For this reason distribution remained, as I
have said, the one fixed and inflexible element to which other
activities, however elastic and progressive, were necessarily adjusted
and by which they were limited.
Now, a special and most suggestive feature of transportation
by steam, electricity or other kinds of mechanical force is that its
capacity is not only unmeasured and unknown, but will doubtless
prove to be virtually inexhaustible. That is to say, no certain
limits can be assigned to the operation or effect of these new agencies
as compared with those which have been supplanted. Therefore,
speed may reach many times the rate now attained, the size
of vehicles may be greatly increased and the cost of carriage for
the longest distances reduced to an astonishing minimum; so that,
as progress goes on in developing the means and methods of distribution,
the habits and needs of men will be more and more modified,
with consequences to social order and the general conditions of
life which may be far greater than have yet been imagined.
Among the results already realized, which directly forecast
what will further happen, some of the more obvious may be briefly
mentioned. For well understood reasons the speed and capacity
of water craft are much superior to those of vehicles drawn by
animals, while the cheapness of the former gives them a great
advantage over the latter. While the old conditions prevailed,
the waterways were mainly relied upon for the conveyance of
bulky products. Commercial movements on land were, of course,
considerable, but the transfer of heavy goods, such as enter most
largely into ordinary consumption, was principally effected by
sailing vessels. Therefore, the fertile lands along the river-banks
7and the indented shores of the sea were the first to be occupied
for agricultural pursuits, the exchange of produce for merchandise
being accomplished by water carriage. The great cities founded
prior to our time were for the most part located upon or near
navigable streams while the masses of population outside the
towns dwelt within easy reach of these natural channels.
But the building of railroads has often deflected and sometimes
wholly altered the routes of distribution. In our own
country, for example, notwithstanding it is penetrated by numerous
rivers which flow, generally speaking, from north to south, the
great volume of traffic is carried by railways running east and
west across valleys and mountains. Even where the rail lines are
parallel with river courses they absorb the greater share of freight
and passenger movement. In short, the routes of land transportation
in all the principal countries of the world have been largely
recast in the last fifty years by the changes from river to rail
conveyance.
The next most noticeable effect, as it seems to me, is the
prodigious increase of commerce under the stimulus of modern
agencies. It is estimated by Mulhall that as late as 1820 the
carrying capacity of all the sailing vessels of the world—and
there were then no others—did not much exceed 3,000,000 tons;
yet this is less than one-sixteenth of the tonnage actually moved
last year by the railroads of our New England states. This astonishing
growth in the quantity of transported articles, and in so
short a time, is sufficient to produce, as it certainly has produced,
the most important and significant results; since the fact itself
indicates a current volume of transport business compared with
which the commerce of our grandfathers seems like the idle play
of children. Because of this wonderful speed and cheapness of
distribution, the average prices of food, fuel, clothing, building
material and other necessary supplies have been greatly reduced,
independent of the standard by which prices are measured. And
this cheapening of most commodities has in turn brought a marked
alteration, within a very brief period, in the style of living, dress,
home-furnishings and the like, which makes the present conditions
of life far more desirable and attractive than ever was known
before.
The effect of this cheap conveyance is also seen in the commonness
of pleasure travel, the extent of immigration, the spread
8of population over new territories, and in all the employments and
surroundings of the people everywhere. The railway is not only
the chief means of developing uninhabited or thinly settled regions,
but the same line may operate in both sparsely and thickly populated
districts, since an indefinite number of trains can be moved
on the same track. For instance, the 200,000 miles of railroads
of the United States serve some 75,000,000 persons, distributed
through an area, excluding Alaska, of more than 3,000,000 square
miles; while in Great Britain about 22,000 miles of railway serve
at least 45,000,000 persons, located within a mainland area of
less than 117,000 square miles. Thus, in Great Britain as compared
with the United States, one-ninth as much railway mileage
reaches more than half as many persons, because of the density
of a population confined within a territory not larger than one-twenty-fifth
of the land surface of the United States.
Again, the railway at once causes the concentration of people
in cities and at the same time is the prime factor in the creation
of cities. It is impossible that such inland towns as Atlanta and
Denver, for example, could have acquired their present importance
without the facilities for carriage and intercourse which railroads
provide. In 1870 nearly forty-seven per cent of all our people
employed in gainful occupations were engaged in farming; while
only twenty years later barely thirty-six per cent were following
that pursuit. And what is still more suggestive, the recent census
shows that more than one-third of our entire population live in
towns of 5,000 inhabitants and upwards, as against less than
seven per cent in 1830. That so great a change has taken place
in so short a time in the geographic distribution of our people can
only be explained by the potent force of steam transportation,
while the fact itself has a social significance which can hardly be
overstated.
In the region west of the Alleghanies the railroad has been
the pioneer in opening up unoccupied lands for settlement, while
the lines upon which railroads were there built and the points they
reached determined the location and growth of numerous towns
and cities in that great section of country. On the other hemisphere,
as is well known, a wonderful railway is now pushing to
completion across the vast stretches of Siberia, a territory larger
than the United States and Europe combined, connecting the
capital of Russia with the Pacific Ocean. The consummation of
9that project cannot but have immense effect upon the commerce,
industries, social welfare and military power of a large portion of
the world’s inhabitants.
In connection with this should be observed the rapid increase
in stationary steam power which has been coincident with and
primarily caused by steam locomotion. Taken together they
make up the colossal forces now exerted in the fields of commerce
and industry, in comparison with which all the power of all the
beasts of burden is hardly worth the mention. And this in turn
reminds us of the mutual action of production, shipping and land
transportation in producing the stupendous results we everywhere
observe. It is impossible that these gigantic agencies should come
into such active operation without the most vital consequences to
every phase of human life.
Take into account, also, the new and wonderful means of
transmitting intelligence. The obstacles of time and distance,
hitherto so formidable, are swept away by telegraph and telephone.
We send our thought and speech with lightning swiftness to the
four quarters of the globe, and hold all lands and peoples within the
sphere of instant intercourse. So recent is this miracle that we are
still dazzled by its marvels and fail to realize how powerfully it aids
the unification of world-wide interests.
That this substitution of steam and electricity as the instruments
of commerce has been an immeasurable gain is witnessed
here and everywhere by half a century of unparalleled progress.
Along these modern pathways the world has literally leaped. No
longer tied to beasts of burden, the entire realm of industry has
been quickened and enlarged; productive energy has been invigorated
by new and limitless means of distribution; the products
of the whole earth are embraced in wide circles of exchange;
all the luxuries of all lands are brought to every household; wealth
has multiplied until we are almost surfeited with its abundance;
the genius of invention has been stimulated to larger exercise, the
sphere of thought grandly extended, the impulses of charity
awakened to nobler activity, while keener sympathy through closer
contact is leading the race to real brotherhood.
But these manifold benefits have not been secured without
many and serious dangers. The potent energy which produced
such marvels of utility and convenience has generated an array of
forces which test with severe strain the structure of organized
10society. So radical a change in the methods of distribution, and
consequently of production, was sure to be attended with peril
as well as beneficence, and to entail a series of results, immense and
far-reaching. Passing by the acute abuses which are incident to
the process of development, for they are transitory and must gradually
disappear, we may well consider the more profound and
permanent effects, what I venture to call the economic effects, of
present and future methods of transportation upon the whole range
of industrial activity. This brings into view again the impressive
fact I mentioned at the outset, and suggests some graver consequences
than those that appear on the surface and appeal to ordinary
observation.
When transportation was measured by the strength and
endurance of animals, only a limited area could be reached from a
given centre. Its slowness and expense confined all inland distribution
within narrow bounds. Only eighty years ago it cost $125
to move a ton of freight from Philadelphia to Pittsburg, and the
average price for carrying the necessaries of life was not less than
twenty cents a ton for every mile of haul. On such a basis most
commodities were shut off from distant markets, and farm products
would seldom permit of conveyance more than 100 or 150
miles. Only such articles as were of small bulk and weight compared
with their value were moved to any considerable distance
from the place of production. For this reason the requirements
of an ordinary family were almost wholly supplied from nearby
sources. And this means—without amplifying the statement—that
productive energy, for the most part, was restricted by the
consuming capacity of the surrounding neighborhood. The forces
outside each separate circle were but feebly felt and had little
influence upon its daily affairs. Broadly speaking, the activities
of each locality were adjusted to its own conditions and were practically
undisturbed by like operations in other places. What we
call competition was held in check by slow and costly means of
conveyance; its effects were moderate and limited, its friction
seldom severe.
But the use of steam for motive power and electricity for communication
increased enormously the range of accessible markets,
and at once intensified competition by the celerity and cheapness
of distribution. Industrial strife has already become world-wide
in extent, and distance an ineffectual barrier against its destructive
11assaults. For the commercial factor of distance is not at all a
matter of miles, it is merely a question of time and money. The
fact that the cost of moving a hundred pounds of goods a single
mile by wagon transports a ton of the same goods by rail more than
three times further is some indication of the effect of cheap and
rapid conveyance in bringing remote places closer together. Our
grandparents got their supplies mainly in the localities where they
resided and only a few persons were concerned in their production.
To-day it may safely be said that five millions of people and five
hundred millions of capital are directly or indirectly employed
in furnishing an ordinary dinner. When merchandise of every
description is carried at great speed from one end of the land to the
other, and at an average cost of less than three-quarters of a cent a
ton a mile, as is now the case, the expense of transport is but a
trifling impediment to the widest distribution.
Nor should we forget that it was the opening up of new and
ever enlarging markets, by the cheapness of steam transportation,
which gave the first opportunity for the extensive use of machinery;
and this in turn quadrupled the capacity of labor and greatly
reduced the cost of large-scale production. By this revolution
in the methods of manufacture—caused by the railroad and steamship—the
mechanic was supplanted by the operative, and the
skilled and independent craftsman of former days found his
occupation gone. For what chance now have hand-made articles
when the factory-made product is carried across the continent
at nominal cost? But the factory without the railroad would be
only a toy-shop. If its wares had to be hauled over country roads
by mules and horses, the points they could reach would be few
and nearby, and thus contracted sales would limit the size of the
plant and the volume of its business. It is simply because transportation
is now so speedy, so cheap and so abundant that great
establishments have become profitable and driven their smaller
rivals from the field.
These facts—which might be multiplied without limit—bear
directly, as I think, and with a force not fully perceived, upon the
whole problem of industrial competition. For, as the means by
which industrial products are distributed become more convenient,
quicker in action and less expensive, the area of distribution
rapidly enlarges, and as the area of distribution enlarges the competition
of industrial forces increases in something like geometrical
12ratio. The movement of property by rail in the United States
alone already exceeds three millions of tons every twenty-four
hours. Think of the rivalry of products, the strife of labor, the
strain and struggle of trade, which such a movement implies. With
the constant acceleration of that movement, which is certain to
happen, how long can the friction be endured? How soon will it
become unbearable?
When Adam Smith wrote “The Wealth of Nations,” it took
two weeks to haul a wagon-load of goods from London to Edinburgh,
and such a thing as a business or industrial corporation
was virtually unknown. To-day the great enterprises of the world
are in the hands of corporations, and the time is fast approaching
when they will absorb all important undertakings. Why? Simply
because the railroad and the steamship—cheap and rapid transportation,
all the while growing cheaper and quicker—ever widening
the area of profitable distribution, furnish the opportunity, otherwise
lacking, for the employment of larger and still larger capital.
This opportunity permits and encourages the concentration of
financial resources; so that, within limits not yet ascertained, the
larger the business the greater its possibilities of gain. But the
legitimate, the inevitable offspring of corporations is monopoly.
Why? Simply because the operation of these massive forces—impinging
and grinding upon each other in every market—begets
an extremity of mutual danger which always invites and often
compels a common agreement as to prices and production; that
is, a trust. Just as the implements of warfare may become so
devastating in their effects that nations will be forced to live in
amity, so the destructiveness and exhaustion of commercial strife
in these larger spheres of action may make combination a necessity.
Thus the potent agencies by which distribution is more and
more rapidly and cheaply effected, which so unite and intensify
the forces of production, are fast altering the conditions and changing
the character of industrial development. And the end is not
yet; it outruns imagination. What will be the ultimate effect of
these methods of conveyance when brought to higher perfection
and employed with still greater efficiency? When these agencies
of commerce are increased in number and capacity, as they will be;
when cost is still further and greatly reduced, as it will be; when
speed is doubled, as it will be, and quadrupled, as it may be; when
the whole United States shall have reached the density of population
13now existing in Great Britain, how can industrial competition
possibly survive?
So, in the measureless and transforming effects of modern
transportation, and the ends to which it resistlessly tends, I find
the primary cause of the economic revolution upon which we have
entered. The incoming of these new and unfettered forces not
only changed the basic function of society, but disturbed its industrial
order. In the effort to restore a working equilibrium the
gravest difficulties are encountered, and we do not clearly see how
they are to be overcome. Already we are compelled to doubt the
infallibility of many inherited precepts and to reopen many controversies
which our grandsires regarded as finally settled. The ponderous
engine that moves twice-a-thousand tons across an empire
of states, the ocean steamer that carries the population of a village
on its decks and the products of a township in its hold, are indeed
splendid evidences of constructive skill, but more than this they are
economic problems as well which challenge and dismay the present
generation. They force us to discredit the venerable maxim that
“competition is the life of trade,” and warn us, I think, that the political
economy of the future must be built on a nobler hypothesis.
If it be true in the long run, as I believe experience teaches, that
where combination is possible competition is impossible, is it not
equally true that combination becomes possible just in proportion
as transportation becomes ampler, speedier and cheaper? So the
opportunity, if not the necessity, for combination has already
come in many lines of activity and will certainly come in many
more. The circumstance that permits competition, its sine qua
non, is mainly difference of conditions. Practically speaking, this
difference is chiefly found in the means of distribution. As that
difference disappears, with the constantly diminishing time and cost
of transport, the ability to combine will enlarge and the inducement
to do so become overwhelming. That seems to me the obvious
tendency of our industrial and social forces to-day, and that tendency,
I predict, will be more and more marked as time goes on.
In the unrest and discontent around us, deep-seated and
alarming here and there, I read the desperate attempt to avoid the
effects of industrial competition and a tremendous protest against
its savage reprisals. Every trust and combination, whether
organized by capitalists or by artisans, is a repudiation of its teachings
and a denial of its pretensions. The competitive theory may
14have answered the age of mules and sail-boats and spinning-wheels,
but it fails to satisfy the interlacing needs or to sustain the interdependent
activities which are founded on modern methods of
intercourse and distribution; it is a theory unsuited to the era of
railways and wireless telegraphy, this era of ours, so restless in
thought, so resistless in action.
This, then, as I conceive, is the underlying question. Shall
we continue to enforce with precept and penalty the rule of competition,
whose cruel creed is “every man for himself,” or shall the
effort and industry of the world be hereafter conducted on a more
humane and fraternal principle? That is to say, is society—stripped
of its polish and altruistic pretences—is society after all only a mass
of struggling brutes fighting for the best places and the biggest
bones, and is government simply an armed referee standing by to
see that every dog has fair play? In short, is personal selfishness
the ultimate force and individual greed the bottom fact? For
myself, I disbelieve the doctrine. I am not terrified by the cry of
paternalism nor dismayed by unreasoning clamor at the dangers of
monopoly. The trusts and the unions are here, in money, in labor,
in production and in distribution—they came with the railroad
and the steamship—and they have come to stay.
When population was scattered and sparse, when movement
was difficult and costly, when communities were isolated by distance
and by dissimilarity, and bonds of relationship were feeble
and few, the attrition of rivalry was complacently endured. But
now, when seas are spanned with steamships and netted with
electric wires; when city and forest, farm and factory, mine and
counting-room are joined together by innumerable pathways of
steel, and the swift locomotive, rushing across continents—like the
shuttle through the loom—weaves this majestic fabric of commerce
which covers the globe; when life is no longer localized in effort or
achievement, and the thought of one man is the instantaneous
possession of all men, the friction of unbridled competition has
become irksome and intolerable. It is folly to shut our eyes to
unmistakable facts or to stand in the way of inevitable events.
Doubters may deride, demagogues denounce, and ignorant lawmakers
strive to build up legal barriers; but neither agitation, nor
protestation, nor legislation can stop the growth or prevent the
advance of industrial federation.
I much mistake, therefore, if we are not entering upon a period
15of great transitions, a period of difficulty and many dangers. The
whole structure of industry and social life is liable to be subjected
to a strain—possibly to a shock—for which experience furnishes no
guiding precedent. We have settled the administrative questions;
we can collect taxes, build court-houses and pay the policeman.
We have settled the political questions; for the nation lives and
will live, the greatest and grandest in all the earth. But the
further test is now to come, the test of the ocean liner and the
limited express. Can we settle the economic questions? Can we
raise this wide realm of industry from selfishness to charity, from
strife to friendship, from competition to co-operation, from the
warring instincts of the savage state to the larger and nobler
needs of associated life? This is the problem which steam and
electricity present for solution.
Will there be a fourth stage and another revolution in the
methods of transportation? That is to ask, I suppose, will the
puzzle of aerial navigation find a practical solution? Whether it
does, or whenever it does, of this we may be certain, that the
varied products of labor and skill, the endless commodities that
supply our ever growing wants, will always seek their passage from
producer to consumer along the routes of least resistance. Therefore,
it may happen, in some bright and wonderful to-morrow,
nearer to us perhaps than we imagine, that the stubborn land over
which our ponderous vehicles are now dragged will be abandoned,
even the liquid waterways discarded, and the vast commerce of
the future be borne swiftly and noiselessly through the yielding
air. If that marvelous day shall come, assuredly will it bring its
harder questions and press us with its weightier demands.
II. Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration — INDUSTRIAL CONCILIATION AND ARBITRATION — THE LIMITATIONS OF CONCILIATION AND ARBITRATION — RESULTS ACCOMPLISHED BY THE INDUSTRIAL DEPARTMENT, NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION — CO-OPERATION OF LABOR AND CAPITAL — HARMONIZING LABOR AND CAPITAL BY MEANS OF INDUSTRIAL PARTNERSHIP
17
19
By Honorable Marcus A. Hanna
United States Senator from Ohio
21When I received the kind invitation of this society to come
to this meeting, I confess I did not know what I was coming to. I
like to talk upon practical things, and there is no subject to-day
that is nearer my heart than is this question of the relation between
capital and labor.
The subject assigned to me was “Arbitration,” which I consider
only introductory in entering upon the discussion of a subject
as broad as the one under consideration this evening. The matter
of arbitration might be considered under two heads. Arbitration
in business circles, by business men, whom we may call employers
or capitalists, if you please, is one phase of it, but arbitration to
settle differences between employers and employees is an advanced
stage of it. It is a progressive form of arbitration.
To have success in conciliation, or arbitration, there must be
thorough and effective organization on both sides. The large
aggregations of capital, feared at first by labor, may prove to be
labor’s best friend, in that, control of a trade being thus centralized,
there is opportunity to establish friendly relations which shall make
uniform conditions throughout the country, or large sections
thereof, and reduce the basis of competition to the quality of the
product rather than to the concessions forced from labor.
The growth of sentiment for arbitration and conciliation has
been reflected in the legislation of the various states. While
foreign countries made the earlier attempts by legislation to promote
the formation of local boards of arbitration, some of the
states of the Union were first to establish permanent central
bodies with authority to mediate in labor disputes and to arbitrate
matters referred to them. Sixteen states have established such
central boards, beginning with Massachusetts and New York in
1866 and following, in succeeding years, with California, Colorado,
Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Montana, Minnesota, Ohio. Utah, Wisconsin,
New Jersey, Michigan, Connecticut and Indiana. These
22central boards usually consist of three members, an employer, an
employee and a neutral.
Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin
seem to be the only states within which tangible results have
been accomplished, doubtless due to the highly developed industries
prevailing and the frequency of labor disputes therein. In
this as in all other matters of enforcement of public laws, successful
results depend upon the strong impelling influence of an enlightened
public sentiment.
The United States Government has established a method for
arbitration and mediation in strikes and lock-outs upon interstate
transportation lines, by virtue of its constitutional authority over
interstate commerce. The act of 1888 provided for a voluntary
board, but had no provision for enforcement of awards, and seems
to have fallen into disuse. In 1898 a new act was passed under
the terms of which either party to a dispute upon any interstate
transportation line might request the intervention of the chairman
of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and the United States
Commissioner of Labor. These officers have no specific authority
to intervene on their own motion, but apparently have the right
to attempt conciliation even in the absence of an application from
either party. There has been no case of arbitration under the act,
so its effect in application is yet to be demonstrated.
The compulsory law of New Zealand has found no favor in
this country. The hearings before the recent Industrial Commission
show that the representatives of both employers and workingmen
gave testimony against compulsory arbitration. The
employers object because, they claim, it would be one-sided owing
to the lack of responsibility on the part of the workingmen, while
the workingmen object because, they claim, it would be manipulated
to suit the employers, and, if enforcement carried imprisonment,
it would provide for a species of slavery intolerable in a free
country. Many state boards, however, while not advocating as
a whole compulsory arbitration, urge further legislation which shall
prevent public inconvenience and loss resulting from strikes and
lock-outs involving public service corporations and means of transit.
This condensed summary of the general features of the question
brings us logically to a consideration of the method or methods
best suited to our time and country. Since the great majority
interested on both sides, employer and employed, reject any system
23of arbitration which includes compulsion in its composition, experiments
must be along the line of mutual concession and tactful persuasion.
Such results may be hoped for, and, perhaps, confidently
expected in the system of mediation and conciliation promulgated
by the Industrial Department of the National Civic Federation.
That brings me up to date. I do not propose to treat this
question from an academic standpoint, but to give an expression
of my own experience, having been a large employer of labor for
more than thirty years, and having studied that question from the
standpoint of mutual interest. My attention was strongly directed
to this subject as far back as 1874, at the end of one of the most
severe and destructive strikes that ever occurred in Northern Ohio,
in the coal mines, long and protracted, bitter and destructive.
When it was over both sides had suffered, and it occurred to me
that there ought to be some other way to settle these differences,
and as a result of that we organized in Northern Ohio an organization
of employers, the mine owners, and the men organized what
was known then as the National Bituminous Coal Miners’ Association,
the first of that character ever organized in the United States.
Their constitution and by-laws provided that no strikes should
occur until every other effort in the right should fail, and the employers
covenanted that they would give hearings and consideration
to any committees sent to them by the union.
As a result, during the life of the organization on the part of
the men, there never was a serious strike. All differences, which
with small beginnings very often lead to disastrous strikes, were
settled by the employer and employee coming together with a proper
spirit, with a determination to do right. Upon that hypothesis I
have been working ever since, and from that day to this I have
never had a serious strike.
The Civic Federation is the outgrowth of the evolution to
which your chairman has referred. This country has grown greatly.
Our industries have multiplied, and the opportunities for labor
equally with it. Great undertakings are claiming the attention of
the people, and this question of labor and capital has approached
a crisis. This Civic Federation has adopted a constitution and
by-laws covering simply the methods of procedure, and has also
adopted a principle, and that principle is the Golden Rule.
Now, Mr. Chairman, the great productive capacity of this country
has forced upon us the aggregation of capital and the creation
24of great material wealth seeking opportunity for investment. This
rapidly increasing wealth must find investment, and to make the
investment in industrials secure we must have industrial peace.
The Civic Federation is beginning to lay the foundation for
such results, with the hope that it will appeal to the whole country
and to all classes of the people. We are simply placing before the
American people the opportunity to unite with us in the accomplishment
of this purpose, as necessary to our social conditions as
to our industrial conditions. Of course, it is not an easy task;
the conditions in the United States differ from those in any other
country in the world. This great cosmopolitan people, coming to
our shores by thousands every year from every country and from
every clime, this coming together of all classes and all kinds of people
from the four quarters of the globe, produces a condition of things
not found in any other country. It is not an easy matter to assimilate
such a large number of foreign immigrants; they do not understand
our language, they are not abreast with the education of a
self-governing people; they do not understand our institutions.
Therefore, it must necessarily be a work of education, and the Civic
Federation is merely a nucleus to begin this educational work.
When I make the appeal to all persons and all classes in the
United States to join with us, I believe that in their hands ultimately
rests the future of that question. We may have arbitration
and we may have meetings of our conciliatory committees, but
unless we have the sympathy of the people, who in the end are the
final arbiters on this question, we cannot hope to succeed.
The Civic Federation is only two years old, and the Industrial
Bureau of the Civic Federation has been scarcely organized, but
seven strikes have already been settled in three months. It has
prevented the occurrence of two strikes which would have brought
from the labor ranks more than two hundred and fifty thousand
people, and that has been accomplished, my friends, by simply
finding out to start with what the differences were, and who were
right and who wrong. When men get together with the determination
to treat each side of the question fairly, and when the
public feels that the men connected with this enterprise are thoroughly
acquainted with details, men of prominence in the country,
well known and well understood, and are men giving their time
for the love of the work and the good they may accomplish, the
public realizes that it means something.
25In adjusting the relations of labor and capital, appeal must be
made to the sympathies of the people. Opportunities like this
to-night must be embraced to inform intelligent audiences of the
character of the work to be done and to give them an opportunity
to contribute their mite and influence to help the cause along. I
know no city in the United States where we can look for more aid
and comfort than in this great industrial centre of Philadelphia.
Indeed, it was because of this that I was induced to come here to-night
and discuss this question of capital and labor before people
who in every day of their lives can put into execution and effect
the principles for which we are contending.
My experience has taught me, my friends, that the employer
because of his position has the most to do, and it must be expected
that the employers, at least in the beginning of this educational
work, should go more than half way. They provide work, and
are responsible for the conduct of business, and upon them rests
the responsibility of seeing that the men receive their share of its
benefits. We must rise to a higher level, where we can have a
broader view of this question, where we can tear ourselves away
from the prejudices which have heretofore stood between capital
and labor.
I believe in organized labor, and I have for thirty years. I
believe in it because it is a demonstrated fact that where the concerns
and interests of labor are entrusted to able and honest leadership,
it is much easier for those who represent the employers to
come into close contact with the laborer, and, by dealing with fewer
persons, to accomplish results quicker and better.
The trusts have come to stay. Organized labor and organized
capital are but forward steps in the great industrial evolution that
is taking place. We would just as soon think of going back to
primitive methods of manufacturing as we would primitive
methods of doing business, and it is our duty, those of us who
represent the employers, from this time on to make up our minds
that this question is one that must be heard.
You are well aware that there has been a tendency in this country,
from the very nature of things, to what is called socialism.
Everything that is American is primarily opposed to socialism.
We talk about it and regret that these conditions exist, regret that
there are extremists who are teaching the semi-ignorant classes
labor theories, that proceed upon the principle that liberty is
26license. This is a condition which must be met. It is the duty of
every American citizen to assume his responsibilities in this educational
work, and to assist any organization which can correct
these theories and these ideas. There is no question concerning
our body politic to-day that should command deeper or more serious
thought. There is nothing in the organization of society in this
country that can afford to permit the growth of socialistic ideas.
They are un-American and unnatural to us as a people.
In the beginning of this work I received great encouragement
from an address which Samuel Gompers made in Cooper Union
Institute, in New York, about a year and a half ago, when he took
the broad ground that in the interests of labor there was no room
for the socialist or the anarchist, no room for men who undertook
to disturb the principles of our society and government. When
such words came from a man leading the largest labor organization
in the world, a man of advanced thought and of honest intent, I
knew that now is the time to strike, now is the time to proclaim
to the American people that in the consideration of this question,
which sooner or later must be forced upon us, we must consider
what is for the best interests of society as well as for our material
development.
If I can impress these principles upon the people of this country,
either by word or action; if I can hold the attention of the
American people away from all selfish and political interests long
enough to have them study and investigate this great question, I
shall feel that of all the efforts I have ever made to serve my country
and society in any way, that has been the best.
27
By Samuel Gompers
President American Federation of Labor
29The subject under consideration involves the difference between
the isolated bargain made by workmen acting as individuals
and the joint or collective bargain made by an aggregation of
workers. The individual bargain made by a workman with his
employer is practically based upon the condition of the poorest
situated among the applicants for the position, and the conditions
of employment, accepted or imposed, are fixed by the immediate
and dire necessities of the poorest conditioned worker who makes
application for the job. The collective bargain is made upon the
basis of about the average economic condition or situation of those
who desire to fill the position.
The individual bargain is made at the entrance to the factory,
the shop, the mill, or the mine; the collective bargain is made
usually in the office of the employer.
When the period covered by the collective bargain has expired
and the conditions under which labor has been carried on for a
specific period become unsatisfactory to either or both, a conference
is held and a new agreement endeavored to be reached under
which industry and commerce may be continued. When there is
failure to agree, a strike occurs.
The effort at best in the joint bargaining or in the strike is the
effort to secure the best possible conditions for the wage-earners.
Much as we deplore strikes and endeavor to avoid them, they are
the highest civilized expression of discontent of the workers in any
part of the world. China has no strikes. The people of India
have no strikes, but in the highest developed and most highly
civilized countries strikes do occur. In China, when discontent
30arises, we see it manifested in revolution against constituted authority,
the venting of prejudice against the foreigner; the stiletto,
the bludgeon, war brutality are the manifestations of the discontent
of the poor and of the workers of those countries.
I am not here to defend strikes, nor to find an excuse for them,
but that we may more clearly understand the subject to which we
are giving attention, it may not be amiss to at least set ourselves
right concerning strikes. Our forefathers, when establishing
our government, wisely reserved to the popular branch of our
federal government the right to control revenue and expenditure,
a right which had been struggled for and secured by the House of
Commons of Great Britain. The strike of labor is in another form
the holding of the purse-strings of the nation, to protest against
injustice and wrong being meted out to the laborers. It is the
determination of the workers that in the last analysis, if there be
no other means by which their rights may be accorded and their
wrongs righted, they may say with Lincoln, “Thank God, we live
in a country where the people may strike!” Nevertheless a strike
ought to be avoided by every means within the power of every
man, capitalist, laborer, or the neutral citizen, and he who would
not give his best efforts and thought to prevent a strike is scarcely
doing justice to his fellow-men, nor is he loyal to the institutions
under which we live. But I re-assert that there are some things
which are worse than strikes, and among them I include a degraded,
a debased, or a demoralized manhood.
Labor insists upon and will never surrender the right to free
locomotion, the right to move at will, the right to go from Philadelphia
to Camden or California, or vice versa, at will. To achieve
that right it has cost centuries of struggles and sacrifices and burdens.
Laborers, moreover, will insist upon the right freely to
change their employment, a right which they have secured through
centuries of travail and sacrifices. That right three-fourths of the
nation was up in arms a little more than forty years ago to achieve
for the black man, and the white laborers of America will not
surrender that prerogative. Laborers are aiming at freedom
through organization and intelligence.
The Industrial Department of the National Civic Federation is
erroneously thought by some to be an arbitration committee,
whereas the first purpose is to endeavor to bring about a conference
between employers and employees before any acute state
31of feeling shall occur relative to their diverse interests. If a
rupture occurs, the committee endeavors to bring about a conference
so that arbitration may be resorted to if both parties to
the controversy shall so request.
As a rule, men do not care to refer matters in which they are
particularly and financially interested to what are usually termed
disinterested parties. They prefer to meet with those whose interests
may be opposite to theirs, and, each conceding something
in a conciliatory spirit, endeavor to come to an adjustment and
agreement.
Unorganized workmen have a notion that they are absolutely
impotent, that the employers are omnipotent, almighty. This is
typified in the thought or expression, “What can labor do against
capital?” Likewise the employers of unorganized workmen
usually regard themselves as “monarchs of all they survey,” and
brook no interference. If any workman has the temerity to question
the justice or sense of fairness of the employer or the wages
paid, he is dismissed and a strike frequently results.
No strikes are conducted more bitterly than strikes of previously
unorganized workmen. As soon as such men become
desperate enough to strike, they are transformed; they no longer
believe the employer all-powerful, but attribute to themselves that
function and faculty; the touching of shoulders brings a newfound
power to their minds, of which they never dreamed before,
and they look upon their employers against whom they went on
strike as absolutely at their mercy.
The employers, in these cases, usually regard the matter of
request to be heard upon the question of wages, hours or other conditions
of employment, as dictation by their workmen; but whether
the strike is won or lost, if the workmen but maintain their organization,
the initial step has been taken for a joint bargain and a conciliatory
policy in the future. Both parties have learned a severe
but a profitable lesson, that neither party is impotent, and neither
all-powerful. The organized labor movement in our day is an
assertion of the principle that there is no hope that the workers
can protect their interests or promote their welfare unless they
organize; unless they advocate conciliation to adjust whatever
controversies may arise between themselves and their employers
and declare for arbitration with their employers upon any disputed
points upon which they cannot agree. There are some who advocate
32compulsory arbitration. I concur with Senator Hanna, who
does not believe in compulsory arbitration. Indeed, voluntary
arbitration cannot be successfully carried out unless both parties
are equally strong and powerful or nearly so. This is true between
nations as well as between individuals. Russia never arbitrated
the question of the nationality of Poland. England did not arbitrate
the question with Afghanistan, but simply bombarded her.
England in her dispute with Venezuela proposed to bombard her,
and only when the United States said, “Hold on, this is of very
serious consequence to us,” did England consent to arbitrate.
There has never yet been in the history of the world successful
arbitration between those who were powerful and those who were
absolutely at their mercy. There has never yet been arbitration
between the man who lay prone upon his back and the man who
had a heel upon his throat and a sabre at his breast. Arbitration
is possible, but only when capital and labor are well organized.
Labor is beginning to organize, and when labor shall be
better organized than it is to-day we shall have fewer disputes than
we have now.
Of the agreements made between employers and employed,
two-thirds, if not more, of the violations, of the failures to abide
by the awards of arbitrators, are on the part of the employers.
But if it were not so, if the awards were broken by either one or the
other side or by both sides in equal proportion, it would be better,
it would make for human progress and economic advantage, to have
an award violated than to have the award forced by government
upon either one side or the other. The employer if he chose could
close his business, and that would mean his enforced idleness. On
the other hand, if the state entered and forced workmen to accept
an award and to work under conditions which were onerous to him
or to them, you can imagine the result. Men work with a will when
they work of their own volition, then they work to the greatest
advantage of all. On the other hand, if men were compelled to work
by order of the state, with the representatives of the state entering
with whip in hand or a commitment to the jail, it would create a
nation of sullen, unwilling and resentful workers; a condition that
we do not wish to encourage; a condition which would be most
hurtful to our industrial and commercial greatness and success.
It is strange how some men desire law to govern all other men in all
their actions and doings in life. The organized labor movement
33endeavors to give opportunities to the workers so that their habits
and customs shall change by reason of new and better conditions.
We have our combinations of capital, our organizations and
federations of labor. These are now working on parallel lines and
have evolved the National Civic Federation. Through the efforts
of men noted for their ability, for their straightforwardness, noted
for the interest they take in public affairs, an effort is being made to
bring about the greatest possible success industrially and commercially
for our country with the least possible friction.
One of the greatest causes of the disturbance of industry, the
severance of friendly relations between employer and employees, is
the fact that the employers assume to themselves the absolute
right to dictate and direct the terms under which workers shall toil,
the wages, hours and other conditions of employment, without
permitting the voice of the workmen to be raised in their own behalf.
The workers insist upon the right of being heard; not heard
alone at mass-meeting, but heard by counsel, heard by their committees,
heard through their business agent, or heard, if you please,
through the much-abused walking delegate. They insist upon the
right to be heard by counsel; the Constitution of our country
declares that the people of our country may be heard through
counsel. It is a saying in law, and I repeat it, though not a
lawyer, that he who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client.
The organized workmen have long realized this truism and have
preferred to be heard by counsel, and we say that the political and
civil right guaranteed to us by the constitutions of our country and
our states ought to be extended; the principle of it ought to be
extended to protect and advance our industrial rights.
One of the representatives of the Illinois Board of Arbitration
recently said to me that there were so many cases of employers who
refused to recognize the committees of the organizations of their
employees that the Board was in doubt whether it ought to name
each individual employer or simply group such employers together
and give their number in round figures. No man in this world is
absolutely right and no man absolutely wrong. If this be so, men
ought, as organized labor has for half a century demanded, and as
the National Civic Federation has emphasized, to meet in conference
and be helpful in allowing common-sense and fair dealing
and justice and equity and the needs of the people to determine
what shall be the conditions under which industry and commerce
34shall continue to advance until we shall be in truth producers for
the whole world.
The movement for which we stand tends to foster education,
not only among the workmen, but among the educated; for of all
those possessing crass ignorance and prejudice regarding industrial
matters, the educated man who takes his cue regarding the labor
question from those who are always opposed to the labor movement
and who never takes the trouble to find out the laborer’s
side of the labor question, is in the most deplorable condition.
35
By Honorable Oscar S. Straus
37The contest between capital and labor is as old as the human
race, and very likely will continue as long as there is employer and
workman. Early in the history of our country, that rugged reformer,
who stood for much of the liberty we enjoy to-day, Roger
Williams, said: “What are all the wars and contentions about, except
for larger bowls and dishes of porridge?” That is putting the
question in a very graphic form. This struggle for the dishes of
porridge is still going on, and unfortunately very often through clash
and strikes the dish gets broken and neither side gets any of the
porridge. We want to save the porridge; we want the dishes to
be so large that labor will get its full share, we know that capital
will take care of itself. In these industrial contests there are other
interests at stake than labor and capital—the general public,
greater in numbers than either of these. The Civic Federation
believed that if it organized a machinery which contained within
itself the representatives of both the laborers and the employers,
and associated with these two the representatives of the general
public, it would have the true basis for the solution of the labor
question. You have heard from capital and labor. I am here
as the representative of the general public.
The Industrial Department of the National Civic Federation
is composed of twelve men representing the employers, twelve men
representing labor, and twelve men representing the general public.
At the head of these three groups of the Civic Federation stand
Grover Cleveland, Senator Hanna, and Samuel Gompers. This
is the only semi-public office ex-President Cleveland has accepted
since he retired from the office of President of the United States.
The purpose and the objects of the National Civic Federation appealed
to his heart. His acceptance and co-operation have been
to us a tower of strength and an inspiration for our difficult task.
The Civic Federation feels there is a possibility of inaugurating
a great work, of promoting a better feeling and better relations
38between the employers and the workmen, and thereby removing
some of the chief obstacles militating against industrial peace. We
have been criticised; peacemakers always are. I want to answer
one or two criticisms that have been made in reference to our
organization. One of the misconceptions is that the Civic Federation
is a board of arbitration. Its purpose is to mediate, to
conciliate, and only in very exceptional cases, when requested by
both sides, to arbitrate between capital and labor. It has been
said that the existence of such a body would stimulate laborers to
threaten to strike or to strike or to make demands which otherwise
they would not make, with the hope that the subject might be
brought before this body, and that they might thereby gain concessions
which otherwise they could not hope to secure. It might
as well be said that preventives and curatives stimulate disease.
It has also been stated that we promote the organization of labor,
and that organized labor stimulates strikes. The Civic Federation’s
platform or statement of objects distinctly provided that its
province would embrace unorganized as well as organized labor.
The scope of the Federation is embodied in the By-Laws:
“The scope and province of this Department shall be to do
what may seem best to promote industrial peace and prosperity;
to be helpful in establishing rightful relations between employers
and workers; by its good offices to endeavor to obviate and prevent
strikes and lock-outs, to aid in renewing industrial relations where
a rupture has occurred.
“That at all times representatives of employers and workers,
organized or unorganized, should confer for the adjustment of
differences or disputes before an acute stage is reached, and thus
avoid or minimize the number of strikes or lock-outs.
“That mutual agreements as to conditions under which labor
shall be performed should be encouraged, and that when agreements
are made, the terms thereof should be faithfully adhered to,
both in letter and spirit, by both parties.
“This Department, either as a whole or a sub-committee by it
appointed, shall, when requested by both parties to a dispute, act
as a forum to adjust and decide upon questions at issue between
workers and their employers, provided, in its opinion, the subject
is one of sufficient importance.
“This Department will not consider abstract industrial
problems.
39“This Department assumes no powers of arbitration unless
such powers be conferred by both parties to a dispute.”
The Civic Federation recognizes conditions and aims to improve
them in the interest of the public welfare. Railroad accidents
do not argue for the stage-coach, but that the railroad should
be better constructed so that accidents may be more and more
eliminated. Education upon this great question of labor and capital
is not entirely confined to the labor side. We have found in
our short experience that education is needed upon the other side
as well, and if the Civic Federation succeeds in bringing out a more
conciliatory spirit on both sides and thereby contributes to a better
understanding of such principles as have been laid down to-night
by Senator Hanna and Mr. Gompers, it will be doing a very great
public service.
It will perhaps surprise some of you, I confess, that before I
became more familiar with this subject, I was agreeably surprised,
to hear, in the conferences recently held in the rooms of the National
Civic Federation, one of the most important officers of organized
labor, state, that he wished it to be understood, that
organized labor does not approve of sympathetic strikes, and that
organized labor has come to the conclusion that restrictions of
output should not be permitted, as all such efforts were uneconomical.
The chances for industrial peace in this country are greater
than they are in any other country. The fact that this conflict
and antagonism have existed and now exist in the countries of
Europe, is no reason why the same conditions should obtain in the
United States, and the reason is very evident. In the first place,
we are not divided in this country into permanently distinct classes.
There is no fixed gap between the laboring and capitalistic classes.
The most successful capitalists in this country to-day are men who
have themselves risen from the ranks of labor, men who have been
the architects of their own fortune. The large fortunes of to-day
are to a great extent held by the men who achieved them, and for
that reason there is a natural and closer contact between capitalists
and laborers in this country than in any other. In America, as a
rule, the great fortunes are not as yet in the hands of the second,
third and fourth generations and are never likely to be to any considerable
extent.
I will refer but briefly to the work the Industrial Department
40of the National Civic Federation has performed since its organization
in December last: The first contest that came up before it
was the threatened clothing cutters’ strike. This strike affected
forty thousand hands in the clothing trade. It was announced in
October before the organization of this committee, and was to
go into effect on the first of January. On our committee we had
the chief representatives both of the clothing cutters and of the
manufacturers. A meeting was called of a section of the committee
of the Civic Federation, and when the two chiefs of the rival
interests came together, the trouble was satisfactorily adjusted in
the course of ten minutes. The next matter that claimed our help
was the Dayton Cash Register strike. It began nine months ago,
or more, and consequently before our committee was formed. We
were asked to mediate by the Cash Register people, and we are
gratified to state that that great trouble after we had been called
in was very speedily adjusted.
The third matter was the Union Iron Workers’ strike in San
Francisco. It began nine months ago, six months before our committee
was organized. Our committee was called in and the adjustment
was largely, if not entirely, due to our mediation.
A number of other questions have come before us; one was that
of the paper manufacturers; a general strike had been decided
upon and we brought the workmen and paper manufacturers together
and they had a conference, and as a result postponed the
question of their differences for further consideration.
Then there was the Boston’ Freight Handlers’ trouble. The
Civic Federation came into that upon the invitation of the Mayor
of Boston and the Massachusetts Board of Arbitration; and
without arrogating to ourselves too much credit, I think both of
those bodies concede that we were of material help in adjusting
those difficulties.
The anthracite coal controversy has been before us. You
know that the springtime always produces a great many labor
troubles. They are called the spring crop of strikes. I do not
know whether we can uproot all the seed; in fact, I know we cannot.
I think there has been rather less of it thus far this spring
than usual. Still the entire spring has not gone by, and we cannot
yet tell what may happen. At any rate, we have brought together
the leading coal operators and the leading representatives of the
coal miners; brought them face to face, and that is a thing that had
41not been done before. They discussed their various grievances,
and the whole matter has been adjourned for a month in order that
each side may consider and deliberate.[1]
There are other important matters before us. We are happy
to say up to the present time, which we think is rather remarkable,
we have as yet had no failure to report.[2] I am proud to say this
because I am afraid in another year, should you have Senator
Hanna and Mr. Gompers before you, they may not be able to bear
witness to so good a report. I will say, however, that at the conference
in December, where there were present the representatives
of two million organized laborers and of the leading employers of
the country, we were impressed with the desire of these men to
endeavor to find a common ground upon which they might arrive
at a better understanding. The representatives of labor in their
treatment of the subject were highminded and liberal in their
views; I think I am voicing the sentiments of everyone of my colleagues
in the Civic Federation when I say that such men as
Gompers, Mitchell, Sargent and Duncan have given every evidence
of being conservative, patriotic and considerate of the public
welfare.
In conclusion, permit me to say that the powers of the Civic
Federation are entirely voluntary, and that its effective force is
public opinion. We can advise, endeavor to conciliate, remove
misunderstandings, and invite both sides of the controversy to
come together and confer. We cannot compel, except by the
force of reason and public opinion. We may invite to arbitration;
we may upon request of both sides arbitrate. Arbitration is a
powerful weapon, and experience has shown that the side in the
wrong is the first to object, upon the ground, “There is nothing to
arbitrate.” That answer is itself a confession of wrong. It was
Penn’s famous maxim, “We must concede the liberties we demand.”
If both sides to this controversy will bear that maxim
in mind, much trouble can be avoided. That maxim implies that
organization on the one side justifies, if it does not compel, organization
on the other side; and each side must concede the rights
which it claims for itself, and any contest waged upon principles
which conflict with such concessions the public will not justify.
42The refusal to recognize conditions does not change those conditions,
and often embitters the relations that exist between the
respective sides. The mission of the Civic Federation is one of
peace, and like all peacemakers will doubtless, as time runs on,
come in for abuse and misinterpretation of its purposes. We are
prepared for this reward, and so long as we remain true to our mission,
and that we will so remain our membership is a guarantee,
no amount of abuse will cause us to flinch from the duty that is
before us.
43
By W. H. Pfahler
National Association of Iron Founders
45There is no subject of greater general importance before the
world to-day, none more simple in its character, and yet none so
handicapped by fanaticism, as that of the relation of employer and
employee.
Remove the curtain between the two real parties to the controversy,
which is often held by men of selfish purpose on both
sides, and you behold two simple factors, the wage-payer and the
wage-earner, each dependent upon the other and both serving the
same master, the great consuming public, of which they are also
equal and very important parts.
The wage-payer, being directly in contact with the purchasing
consumer, claims that he must have a result in production equal
in every way to the wages paid, while the wage-earner contends
that he must have a wage equivalent to his contribution in time,
energy and skill, to the article produced.
Every visible article of use, for food, clothing or shelter, of
necessity, luxury or culture, represents three component parts, and
the production of each such article depends upon the proper combining
of these parts, which are: 1st. Raw material. 2d. Capital.
3d. Labor.
Raw material, supplied by nature, is controlled only by the
law of supply and demand, except when by legislation the natural
law is for a time superseded, and it then becomes a matter of political
action, in which the entire community, except the few who are
directly interested in profit, join to abolish the corrupt legislation
and restore the natural condition. Raw material is, therefore, the
basis of cost in determining the price of every product to the public.
Labor, whether skilled or unskilled, engaged in the reduction
of the raw material to the finished product, is also dependent upon
the law of supply and demand to fix its value or wage; and any
effort to change this value brings the wage-earner in direct conflict
with the consumer, through his representative, the employer, whose
duty it is to know, and who usually does know, what proportion
of the entire cost of any article can be distributed in wage so as to
46retain the value of the article at a price not in excess of the ability
of the consumer to purchase, and yet within limits which will prevent
a more favored nation or district from furnishing the same
article in competition, and thereby cause idleness for the wage-earner
and loss to the employer.
Capital represents plant, machinery, transportation, interest,
and all the factors known as unproductive, and yet absolutely
essential for the combination of material and labor. Capital is
usually, though not always, the owner of material and the direct
employer of labor, and therefore must stand for the silent partner
in the combination. What is so frequently called a war between
capital and labor is simply an effort on the part of the wage-earner
and wage-payer to determine what part of the product of labor, as
distinct from material, is represented in the price to the public, and
after deducting the proper charge for plant, etc., how the balance,
which is profit, shall be divided between the employer and the
employee,—or wage-payer and wage-earner.
The growth of prosperity in this country has always been in
ratio to increased production, and until a recent period such
increased production has been the direct result of the co-operation
of the wage-earner and the wage-payer. In the beginning of our
commercial history it was only necessary for one man to exchange
the product of his own industry for that of other men to obtain the
necessities of life, and then the results of labor were not measured
by a unit of value or wage, but by the amount of energy expended
in production.
When the rapid growth of the country required greater productiveness,
and the enlargement of territory made necessary a
change in the distribution of the products of labor, the factory
system was introduced, whereby capital, or unproductive labor,
was joined with productive labor to accomplish greater results than
had heretofore been attained by individual labor.
This brought with it the employment of a number of wage-earners
under the direction of one or more employers, or wage-payers,
and made it necessary to determine the relation of one to
the other, or rather the share each should have in the division of
profits.
All conflicts which have ever arisen between men upon any
subject, whether social, political or religious, have been based, not
upon difference in conditions really existing, but upon difference
47of opinion as to the relation which existed between the parties to
the conflict; and strife, to a greater or less extent, has been brought
into use to determine such position.
An excess of power on one side or the other succeeded in establishing
for a time the opinion of the victor, but never removed the
cause of dispute; and so the organization of wage-earners into
associations or unions enabled them to establish from time to time,
by power which they never hesitated to exercise, such wages and
conditions as in their opinion were fair to them, but not always in
accord with the condition of supply and demand.
From their struggle arose the continual change of wages in
ratio to the power of either party, the employer lowering wages
when by reason of limited demand he could limit production, and
the employee raising wages when his services were in sufficient
demand to enable him to do so.
The union was able in many cases,—I may say in all cases,—to
enforce its demands because of the combined power it could
exercise against the individual employer, and, as is usual in such
cases, soon began to exercise a power which was unnatural and
unwarranted. The result of this was the necessity of forming an
organized opposition to their force by creating an opposing force
in the organization of the employer class, and this brings me to the
history of two organizations of this character with which I have
been closely identified during the past fifteen years, and which have
been successful in establishing a new basis of relation between the
employer and employee.
Fifteen years ago the industry in which I am engaged was in
perpetual conflict, involving three or four strikes or lock-outs
every year, causing great loss in time and money to employer and
employee. Unable longer to endure the strain, an association was
formed of about fifty of the leading firms engaged in the business,
for the sole purpose of defending the members against the unjust
demands of their employees. It was decided to create a large fund
for the purpose of carrying on a warfare against the union to which
our men belonged. Within a year from the organization a strike
occurred which resulted in every member of the Defence Association
closing his shop, and the consequent defeat of the union. A
second strike occurred in which, after many weeks of severe struggle,
the union was again defeated by the united action of the Defence
Association. In the third year of its existence, the Defence Association
48was invited by the officers of the union to appoint a committee
to meet a similar committee from their organization for the
purpose of discussing some plan by which strikes and lock-outs
could be avoided. Frequent meetings were held; many attempts
at forming a plan were abandoned, until finally it was agreed that
all questions of difference between any employer, member of our
association, and his employee, member of the union, should be
referred to a committee of three from each association for arbitration
and that, pending such action, no strike or lock-out should
occur. As a result of this agreement, during the past ten years no
strike has occurred in this industry, and every point of difference
has been amicably adjusted by conference. Each year a general
conference is held, at which the wages are fixed for the ensuing year,
and such other changes as may be of mutual advantage are adopted.
It is true that at first the members of local unions, led by some
wild agitator, would make a demand upon their employer, and,
failing to enforce the demand, would quit work; but the national
officers of the union would require them to return to work at once
and await the usual and proper means of adjustment.
The Arbitration Board is composed of an even number of men
because then an agreement when reached becomes unanimous,
and a failure to agree (although no such failure has ever occurred)
will not result in the enforcing of the opinion of either side by the
decision of a third party. We prefer rather to adjourn from time
to time, under the agreement to have no strike or lock-out, and let
time and reason aid in finding some common ground upon which we
can agree. These agreements made from time to time have been
signed for the members of the union by their officers, and it gives
me the highest pleasure, as a tribute to human nature, and in reply
to those who deny the responsibility on the part of workingmen
to a contract, to say that in the history of our organization no
agreement has ever been violated in any manner.
The success of this organization led to the formation of a
larger and more powerful one, known as the National Founders’
Association, of which I had the honor to be the first president. It
required a long time to convince many of the larger employers of
men that the formation of such an association was not dangerous,
because in the negotiations it would be a virtual recognition of the
union; but we at last succeeded in organizing with about fifty
members.
49Within six months the president of the union in which most of
our men are employed addressed a letter to our body requesting a
conference to devise a plan for conducting negotiations on lines
similar to those of the Stove Defence Association. This conference
resulted in what has ever since been known as the New York
Agreement, which is as follows:
Whereas, The past experience of the members of the National Founders’
Association and the Iron Molders’ Union of North America justifies them
in the opinion that any arrangement entered into that will conduce to greater
harmony of their relations as employers and employees will be to their mutual
advantage; therefore,
Resolved, That this Committee of Conference indorse the principle of
arbitration in the settlement of trade disputes, and recommend the same
for adoption by the members of the National Founders’ Association and
the Iron Molders’ Union of North America on the following lines:
That, in the event of a dispute arising between members of the respective
organizations, a reasonable effort shall be made by the parties directly
at interest to effect a satisfactory adjustment of the difficulty, failing to do
which either party shall have the right to ask its reference to a Committee
of Arbitration, which shall consist of the presidents of the National Founders’
Association and the Iron Molders’ Union of North America or their representatives,
and two other representatives from each association appointed
by the respective presidents.
The finding of this Committee of Arbitration, by a majority vote, shall
be considered final so far as the future action of the respective organizations
is concerned.
Pending adjudication by this Committee of Arbitration there shall be
no cessation of work at the instance of either party to the dispute.
The Committee of Arbitration shall meet within two weeks after reference
of the dispute to them.
This agreement to go into effect Monday, March 4, 1901.
Occurring at a time when we were passing from extreme depression
to a revival of business activity, when there was an enormous
demand for good workmen, when wages were moving upward and
when strikes were of almost daily occurrence in every industry,
this agreement was observed in letter and in spirit, and, as a result,
both employer and employee enjoyed industrial peace and prosperity.
Because of a failure to agree on certain demands made by the
union, which would have resulted in reduction of production, a
strike was commenced in the city of Cleveland by the union about
two years ago, which lasted over seven months and cost upwards of
50a million dollars, but at the end resulted in a conference lasting
some days, in which both parties to the conference agreed to prevent
a recurrence of warfare and united in an agreement which
marked greater progress in the labor situation than had ever been
reached before.
The resolution was as follows:
Whereas, The N. F. A. and the I. M. U. of N. A., through their duly
accredited representatives, at a joint conference held in Detroit, Mich., June,
1900, each formulated a declaration of principles to which they still adhere
and which they have been unable to harmonize after careful consideration;
and
Whereas, The consensus of enlightened opinion points to conciliatory
methods and the principles of arbitration as the most desirable and equitable
policy to be pursued when disputes arise between any employer and his
employees; and as this is a policy to which both the N. F. A. and the I. M.
U. of N. A. most heartily subscribe, they entered into an agreement, the one
with the other, since known as the New York Agreement, by virtue of which
their representatives have been enabled to meet and harmoniously discuss
important matters affecting their mutual interests, and to endeavor to settle
them in accord with the more enlightened and equitable policy referred to;
and,
Whereas, These efforts have discovered the fact that wide differences
of opinion, upon certain vital and essential principles, exist between the
members of the N. F. A. and the I. M. U. of N. A., which their representatives
have hitherto failed to harmonize by the method provided in the New
York Agreement, thus seriously endangering the high purposes to which
they stand committed, and in one instance leading to a serious conflict
between the members of the two associations in an important section of the
joint jurisdiction; be it therefore
Resolved, That it is the earnest opinion of this Joint Conference Committee,
composed of representatives of the N. F. A. and the I. M. U. of
N. A., that agreement upon the essential points of difference can only be
secured by the slow evolutionary processes begotten of friendly intercourse
and the more intelligent understanding of mutual interests, which time and
the influences of education alone can bring. And be it further
Resolved, That we hereby reaffirm our adherence to the New York
Agreement, whose beneficent provisions we will continue to invoke, until by
joint agreement we are enabled to reach a more defined code of conciliation
and arbitration.
The National Founders’ Association now numbers nearly 500
members, having a combined capital of over $400,000,000, and
employing nearly 30,000 molders and more than 100,000 workingmen
in other departments, and is daily adding to the number
51because the manufacturer has seen that it is the best—in fact, the
only—method of dealing with organized labor.
On the other hand, the labor organization, recognizing the
strength and fair dealing of the employers’ association, is from time
to time so modifying its plans and methods as to make it possible
to work in harmony with the employer, and together secure results
for both that have heretofore been impossible.
This brief history enables me to declare not only as a conviction,
but as an axiom, that there is a common ground upon which
the wage-payer and the wage-earner can safely unite to form a
community of interest in the great industrial problem, and that
negotiation for the adjustment of their several interests can be
conducted without strife, to the mutual advantage of both.
The history of all associations of manufacturers formed for the
purpose of establishing and maintaining just and fair business
relations between their employees and themselves, proves beyond
doubt that better results can be obtained in this way than in any
other.
Following the conference resolution adopted at Cleveland,
the first agreement entered into as a result of the conference involves
so many points of imaginary difference between employer and
employee, and shows the possibility of arranging even the smallest
difference by conference, that it is worthy of, careful study by both
the employer and employee.
This agreement was made in the city of Philadelphia, March
4, 1901, is still in force, and I believe has never been violated by
either party to the contract.
Agreement between the National Founders’ Association (on behalf of its Philadelphia
members), and the Iron Molders’ Union of North America (on
behalf of its Philadelphia members):
Article 1. In view of the fact that there has been an agreement entered
into at the recent conference in Cleveland, Ohio, between representatives
of both associations, on the question of equitable wage rates for molders,
and in view of the mutual understanding that there is to be a further conference
on the subject within a reasonable time—as may be agreed upon by
the presidents of the respective associations—for the purpose of further
perfecting the details regarding the regulation of wages of molders;
It is agreed that the temporary agreement, entered into July 16, 1900,
shall be null and void, and that the agreement herein contained shall supersede
the above-mentioned temporary agreement.
52Art. 2. The iron molders, members of the Philadelphia Union of the
Iron Molders’ Union of North America, agree to withdraw their demands
that the foundrymen of Philadelphia should operate their foundries under
the rules and regulations of the union.
Art. 3. In accordance with the national agreement, entered into at
the recent conference in Cleveland, on the regulation of molders’ wages, the
foundrymen of Philadelphia who are members of the National Founders’
Association, and the molders of Philadelphia who are members of the Iron
Molders’ Union of North America, agree to the following wage scale:
The standard minimum wage rate for bench and floor molders who have
learned the general trade of molding shall be twenty-seven and one-half
(27½) cents per hour, or sixteen dollars and fifty cents ($16.50) per week of
sixty hours, it being understood that when a molder has completed his work
before regular shop-closing time such time shall not be deducted in computing
the week of sixty (60) hours.
Art. 4. The standard minimum wage rate shall be subject to the following
DIFFERENTIALS:
1. The young man who has completed his apprenticeship, and who,
by reason of his mechanical inferiority or lack of experience, or both, in
either branch of the trade of molding, shall be unfitted to receive the full
wage rate provided for above, shall be free to make such arrangements as
to wage with his employer for a period mutually satisfactory as may be
agreeable to himself and employer.
2. The molder who, by reason of his physical incapacity or physical
infirmity, cannot earn the standard minimum wage rate, is to be free to
make such arrangements as to wages as may be mutually satisfactory to the
employer and himself.
3. There being in some foundries a grade of work calling for less skill
than is required by the ordinary molder, this grade of work being limited
in quantity, it is agreed that nothing in this agreement shall be construed
as prohibiting the foundrymen from employing a molder to make such work
and paying for same at a rate that may be mutually agreed upon between the
molder and the foundryman. It is understood that a molder who is working
for and receiving a rate of wages of twenty-seven and one-half (27½) cents
per hour or over, is not to be asked or expected to make the grade of work
referred to above for any less wage rate than he is regularly entitled to under
this agreement. This does not give the molder the right to refuse to make
the work if it is offered to him at his regular wage rate.
Art. 5. It is agreed that nothing in the foregoing shall be construed
as prohibiting piece or premium work, and when it is desired on the part of
the foundryman that his work shall be done under the piece work or premium
system, it is agreed that the wages of the molder shall be based so
that he may earn a wage not less than if working by the day. This is understood
as applying to molders who are competent to do an equal amount of
work and of equal quality to the average molder in the foundry in which he
is employed.
Where the foundryman and molder cannot agree on the piece price for
a certain piece of work, the foundryman is to have the work done by the day
53for a period of a day or more, according to the nature of the work, in order
to establish a fair and equitable wage rate on the work in question.
It is further agreed that nothing in this agreement shall be construed
as preventing a molder from agreeing with his employer on a piece price as
soon as he is given a pattern.
Art. 6. Time and half-time shall be paid for all overtime, excepting in
cases of accident or causes beyond control consuming not more than thirty
(30) minutes; and double time for Sundays and legal holidays—to wit:
Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas. It being
further understood that when foundries do not make a practice of running
beyond bell or whistle time and are occasionally late, the “give and take”
system shall apply in all such cases, it being further understood that both
sides should show a spirit of fairness in adjusting matters of this kind.
Art. 7. Arbitrary limitations of output on the part of molders, or
arbitrary demands for an excessive amount of output by the molders on
the part of the foundryman, being contrary to the spirit of equity which
should govern the relationship of employer and employee, all attempts in
that direction by either party, the molder or foundryman, are to be viewed
with disfavor and will not receive the support of either of the respective
associations parties to this agreement.
It being further agreed that the wage rates specified herein are to be
paid for a fair and honest day’s work on the part of the molder, and that in
case of a molder feeling that a wrong has been done him by his employer
and that his treatment has been at variance with the terms of this agreement,
he shall first endeavor to have the same corrected by a personal interview
with his employer, and, failing in this, then he shall report same to the proper
channel of his local union for its investigation. If there is any objectionable
action on the part of the molder which is in conflict with this agreement or
the spirit thereof, then the employer is to endeavor to point out to the molder
where he is wrong, and, failing in this, he may discharge the man for breach
of discipline, or else retain him in his service and submit the case to the
National Founders’ Association for investigation.
In order that there may be no misunderstanding as to the wages a molder
is to receive under the above agreement, it is understood that a molder must
agree with the employer on the rate of wages that he is to receive at the
time he is engaged; it being further agreed that neither the molder nor the
foundryman is to deviate from the terms of this agreement as to wages or
deportment.
Art. 8. In conformity with the agreement adopted at the recent conference
in the city of Cleveland, the National Founders’ Association and the
Iron Molders’ Union of North America deprecate strikes and lock-outs, and
desire to discourage such drastic measures among the members of their
respective associations.
It is therefore agreed that all unfair or unjust shop practices on the
part of molders or foundrymen are to be viewed with disfavor by the Iron
Molders’ Union of North America and the National Founders’ Association,
and any attempt on the part of either party to this agreement to force any
unfair or unjust practice upon the other is to be the subject of rigid investigation
54by the officers of the respective associations; and if upon careful
investigation such charges are sustained against the party complained of,
then said party is to be subject to discipline—according to the by-laws of
the respective associations.
And it is further agreed that all disputes which cannot be settled amicably
between the employer and molder shall be submitted to arbitration
under the “New York Agreement.”
Art. 9. When the words “employer” or “foundryman” are used, it
is understood that their foremen or representatives may carry out the provisions
of this agreement and act for them.
Art. 10. It is further agreed that nothing in the foregoing shall be
construed as applying to operators of molding machines who have not learned
the general trade of molding, and the right of a foundryman to introduce or
operate molding machines in his factory shall not be questioned.
Art. 11. This agreement shall continue in force to July 16, 1901, and
thereafter to June 3, 1902, and to continue from year to year, from June 3,
1902, unless notice be given on May 1 of any year by either party to this
agreement signifying their desire to change or modify the conditions of this
agreement.
And it is further agreed that should any agreement be reached by a
conference of representatives of the National Founders’ Association and the
Iron Molders’ Union of North America upon the question of wage rates for
molders, and in conflict with the terms of this agreement, that a conference
of the parties hereto shall be called immediately to conform the terms of this
agreement to those of the national agreement; otherwise this agreement is
to continue in force as above provided.
In England, several years ago, the great strike of engineers
involving 75,000 men, and extending over a period of six months,
was finally settled by conference between the representatives of the
associated employers and representatives of the several unions,
and resulted in an agreement which established harmonious relations
between both parties, and has ever since prevented strikes or
lock-outs.
In Belgium, in 1899, a lock-out, probably the greatest which
has ever occurred, involving almost every industry, shutting out
more than 50,000 men, and extending over a period of seven months,
was only settled after the employers discovered to their own great
advantage that matters can be arranged more satisfactorily when
the representatives of organized capital confer with the representatives
of organized labor. The result of their conference was the
removal of all obnoxious demands and the adjustment of wages
and conditions of labor upon an equitable basis, embodied in an
agreement now in force and held equally binding on employer and
55employee, the result of which was, in England as in the examples
cited in this country, the elimination of strikes and lock-outs.
A review in detail of the results accomplished by the methods
of conference and conciliation, in these cases referred to, would
require more space than can be used in this paper—but warrant
the following conclusions:
First.—That labor organizations are the natural result of a
great movement in the business world which is replacing costly
competition with profitable co-operation, and are formed primarily
for the protection of their members, upon the theory that collective
bargaining for the sale of their labor is more profitable than individual
contract.
Second.—The accomplishment of their object requires labor
organizations to secure the membership of the largest number of
persons employed in any kindred trade, and (because voluntary
advancement of wages rarely or never occurs) to demand a change
in wages and betterment in conditions whenever it appears that the
need for their labor is in excess of the supply, and therefore warrants
such demand. Labor organizations are necessary also to
resist collectively any movement on the part of the employer which
would result in injury to the workingman.
Third.—Whenever labor organizations by reason of false
leaders have made unfair demands or established conditions
which were unfair to the employer, it has been because of the use
of collective force against the individual employer, and this has
been defeated whenever the employers have organized similar
associations for their own defence.
Fourth.—That strikes for advance in wages and improvement
of condition—occurring, as they do, during a period of prosperity—usually
succeed, while strikes for recognition of the union, usurpation
of the rights of the employer or against the reduction of
wages almost invariably fail in their purpose.
Assuming that the employer is governed by honesty of purpose
in dealing with labor, and that the employee is equally honest in
his desire to give worth for wages, the organization of both parties
must slowly but surely remove force as the means of securing
results, and cause a resort to reason and conciliation as the best
means to accomplish the greatest value for both.
There are two great obstacles which prevent the substitution
of these means of settling the labor question at present, and which
must be first removed before better conditions can be realized.
56On the part of the employer there is the refusal (usually
sentimental) to recognize the union, and the determination to
destroy it. He forgets that his effort to destroy the union presupposes
his recognition of it, else he would be fighting a nightmare,
while the recognition in fact would enable him to learn its scope,
purposes, and plans, and by co-operation secure a valuable ally
instead of an unreasonable enemy.
In the use of the word union, I desire always to be understood
to refer to such organizations of workingmen as are conducted
along reasonable lines and are led by representatives worthy of the
best element composing the membership, who formulate their
demands in harmony with known business conditions and control
their movements within the lines of law and order, because when
they assume any other condition they are simply mobs, and deserve
only the condemnation of every worthy citizen.
The obstacle on the part of labor is the effort to establish the
idea that recognition of the union implies more than the agreement
to make collective bargains between employer and employee
at such times as a change in business conditions demands or
permits, or to insist that it conveys the right to enforce rules and
methods in the conduct of the business without the consent or co-operation
of the employer.
To remove these obstacles and establish a condition of harmony
and mutual prosperity, the employer must not forget that
wage-earners have formed powerful associations for the purpose of
advancing and protecting their interests, and have delegated their
individual power to, and placed their confidence in, the officers of
their unions.
That these officers are in many cases far above the average
of their craftsmen, and their highest ambition is to better the condition
of their fellow-workmen.
That the aggressive methods of labor unions are very frequently
caused by the determination of the employer to destroy them,
without giving them a chance to be heard in their own defence.
That in the conduct of business involving large investment for
plant, and the employment of a large number of men, able management
is required to secure the best results from machinery and
power, but good government is necessary to secure the highest
efficiency of men, and the best government is that which is founded
on the consent of the governed.
57That responsibility for the performance of such an agreement
as should exist between employer and employee cannot be measured
by legal or financial standard, but can be safely based on individual
integrity, and in this I have found that a very large majority of
the workingmen in this country hold an agreement which is made
for them by the officers of their union as binding them in every
sense of the word.
That the organization of associations of employers in kindred
branches of industry tends to uniformity in method of regulating
the employment of men, and at the same time affords protection
against the demands which may be unfair or the strife which may
be instigated by unwise leaders of organized labor.
The employee must not forget:
That the right to be a union man implies also the right to be
a non-union man.
That no honest employer can discriminate between the men in
his employ, or recognize the right of any body of men to determine
whom he shall employ.
That the effort to establish a minimum rate of wage, if based
upon the lowest standard of efficiency, destroys the earning power
of the more competent workman and lowers the standard of all.
That the effort to limit production is false in principle, and can
only succeed, if at all, when the demand is in excess of the supply,
and when it succeeds, it causes the creation of methods and
machines which supplant the skill of the mechanic and bring into
competition a lower grade of labor at a lower wage.
That the effort to create a monopoly by attempting to retard
the privilege of the American boy to acquire a trade is destructive
to the best interests of a progressive nation.
That the laws, rules and methods of labor unions must be
changed to conform with present conditions, if the union hopes to
be recognized as a factor in the adjustment of the labor problem.
That the right to strike, or refuse to work, under certain conditions,
does not involve the right to prevent others from working,
if the conditions are satisfactory to them, and involves responsibility
for all the damage that may arise.
That the standard of wage cannot be measured by the standard
of time employed, or energy expended, but by the results
attained.
These, and many other differences which might be enumerated,
58are the causes which make for strife and dissent, and prevent the
harmony which should exist for the mutual benefit of both classes.
These differences can only be removed or harmonized by honest
and intelligent conferences between the employer and employee,
and to bring about such conferences is the purpose and aim of the
National Civic Federation. The success of the effort promises, for
the employer, the markets of the world; for the employee, continued
and increasing profits; for the country, industrial peace and better
citizens.
59
By Alexander Purves
Treasurer, Hampton Institute, Virginia
61In this age of business supremacy, when trade has become the
leading science and merchandising an art; when sentiment is being
pushed aside by the forward rush of commercialism, and expediency
seems to be successfully competing with morality; when one
is almost persuaded that the Church itself, to survive, must be conducted
with business sagacity, one is compelled to acknowledge
the futility of urging any plan for the reformation of the existing
relations between capital and labor with serious hopes for its present
consideration and possible adoption, except the same shall be able
to prove its principles to be in accord with good business policy.
There are those who believe the danger to vested interests is
increasing proportionately with the ever growing average of intelligence
on the part of the wage-earners and that the former will
eventually be overwhelmed by the latter to the demoralization of
both unless capital anticipates and averts the danger by securing
end maintaining a hearty co-operation of the working classes
through a substantial acknowledgment of the just claims of enlightened
labor to an enlarged share in the product of the two.
It seems reasonable to assume that with the advance of civilization
and general intelligence, some means must be found for the
treatment of the whole matter of the return for services rendered,
that shall be more progressive and more humane in character
than the present basis of supply and demand. As Prof. Gilman
says—“We must acknowledge that the wages system, viewed in
its simplest form of time wages, does not supply the necessary
motives for the workman to do his best.” To which we may add,
that neither does it appeal to his sense of right nor to his theory
of justice.
The first advance towards a change must be made by the
masters, and any movement for a revision of the existing system
must take form in an apparent concession on the part of vested
62interests. The apparent indifference and complacency with which
the dominant class regards the whole matter is most regrettable.
The leaders in reform should adopt some plan whose successful
operation would commend itself—from a business point of view—to
the many masters. That is to say, whatever is done in that
direction, let it be done primarily because it is just and right.
Then if it can be shown to be profitable to capital, so much the
better. Such a demonstration would be invaluable, not so much
by reason of the resulting increase in the incomes of the leaders
in the movement, as that such a fact would make probable the
extension of the system into other enterprises where such an
incentive would have the stronger influence.
The successes, moderate though they have been, which have
generally attended the introduction and operation of profit-sharing
plans in various forms, should encourage further developments
and extensions of that system in the broadest manner possible,
without, however, introducing or permitting any features that would
embarrass the administration or weaken the personnel. As the
successful manufacturers of the present generation are largely
those who have found ways to utilize the by-products and the
power which had theretofore gone to waste, so the successful
masters of the future must be those who shall find some means of
harmonizing the demands of capital and labor, thus saving and
utilizing that large percentage of human energy which is now
worse than wasted in the continual contention, passive or active,
between the working classes and vested interests. Apart from
every other element of advantage, can there be any question as
to the increased physical capacity and staying powers of a man
when led on in hopeful expectancy rather than when driven on by
physical necessity?
It is justly claimed that in many instances the wage-earners
would not be benefited by a distribution in cash of a percentage
of the profits, that they would fritter it away either foolishly or
with lack of discretion. There is nothing to which the average
family can adjust itself so easily and with such alacrity as to an
increase in income. Could we but save the wastes of carelessness,
the losses from strikes and lock-outs, and to these add the enlarged
profits resulting from a broader co-operation and greater physical
ability to produce, then capitalize and conserve all of these for the
benefit of those who in each case have contributed their proportion—either
63in capital, brains or labor—to the enlarged success of the
enterprise, we would have placed within reach better homes, better
clothing, better food, better schools, and have taken a step forward
which should inspire individuals of both classes with higher ambitions
for a larger and better life.
“Prosperity sharing,” strictly speaking, does not go, far
enough, because it limits the amount awarded to labor to a small
percentage of the real profits. The share must be small because
“adversity sharing” does not accompany profit-sharing. In all
fairness the share of labor in the margins of the business should be
of such proportions that justice to all would make it alike a sharer
in losses as well as in gains. By this we do not mean to say, when
losses occur, that labor should contribute actual money to make
good any portion of the impairment. Such a proposition would
be impracticable and impossible. The share of labor in the surplus
profits—that is, after the payment of standard wages and a
just return to capital for its simple use—should be upon a most
liberal basis, and any and all impairments suffered in years of
adversity should be made good out of subsequent surplus earnings
(in which, except for such impairment, labor would have been a
sharer) before wages shall again be entitled to any further dividends.
Amongst the various schemes that have been put into operation
in those concerns which have endeavored to make their
employees sharers in the profits of the business, the most familiar
plan is that of offering to wages a dividend on the total amount
thereof, at the same rate of percentage as is paid on the par value
of the capital stock. This proposition is unfair, since in most
industries the capital stock amounts to several times the total of
the annual pay-roll. After the first adjustment upon that basis,
the incentive to labor to strive for larger results is almost insignificant,
since the share of wages in the subsequent increased
earnings would, where the capital is equal to say four times the
annual pay-roll, amount to only one-fifth of the increase in net
earnings, the other four-fifths thereof going to capital.
Other institutions have established a custom of presenting to
their employees annually a sum of money equal to a certain percentage
of their salaries. But this extra income soon becomes as
much a matter of wages as the weekly or monthly pay-roll, and little
real good is accomplished—the employee is still working for fixed
wages. There is something in the make-up of a man that cannot
64be wholly satisfied, no matter how secure it may be, with a definite
agreement that he shall receive a certain fixed sum of money for a
given amount of work, however liberal the compensation may be.
There is a positive satisfaction in having a pecuniary interest in
an enterprise where the financial return is not definitely restricted
and known in advance, even though there may be as an accompaniment
some danger of a loss.
Any attempt to satisfy the craving of labor for justice will fail
if handicapped by paternalism. A man must be acknowledged a
man. His sense of independence and self-respect must be strengthened
and not crushed.
Furthermore, a man is not satisfied to have even a part of his
just earnings expended for him. Company kindergartens, company
libraries, company churches are doubtless very estimable in their
way and are doing much good. They are a step in the right direction
and most valuable in the practical demonstration which they
offer that it pays capital to improve the conditions and surroundings
in which the operatives live. But those who are to enjoy
these institutions should not be allowed to feel that they are under
any obligations to the owners thereof. Rather they should be
given to understand that a certain definite percentage of the net
earnings of the enterprise would be expended for the public good—not
as a benefaction, but as a just due—giving to the operatives, as
far as possible, the administration and management of such company
institutions.
Some manufacturers believe that if their employees can be
induced to purchase homes adjacent to the mills the labor problem
has been solved. From the manufacturer’s point of view the plan
is attractive. An employee who puts the hard-earned savings of
years into a small dwelling—generally situated in a community
wholly dependent upon the local mill of his employer—doubtless
ties himself up very effectually to the enterprise, but whether
he is attached by his loyalty to and affection for the concern, or
is held by the self-welded fetters of a money investment is an
open question.
The actual value of an investment in any business is based
primarily upon the security—the consideration of the rate of
interest being secondary to the safety of the investment. This
is recognized by the great exchanges where all manner of stocks
and bonds are bought and sold. These compel the frequent
65publication of the earnings and general business of those corporations
that desire to have listed any of their issues of securities. No
one can say with truth that public knowledge of the affairs of any
such corporation has imperiled the proper operation and legitimate
success of the enterprise. On the contrary, experience has proven
the wisdom of such a course from every standpoint—the public is
better protected in its investments of capital and such corporations
are given a standing in the financial world not accorded to those
who keep their affairs secret and guarded from the public view.
We are compelled to infer that the negative action on the part of
these latter concerns is prompted by one of two reasons: either
they are striving to secure a higher credit rating than that to which
their actual condition would entitle them, or, more probably, that
they fear their percentage of net profits is larger than public sentiment
would regard with favor. It would seem in either case that
the interested public is morally entitled to frequent and intelligible
information regarding all corporations which owe their very existence
to the public consent.
What is true of corporations is true of individual partnerships
as well. To let the interested public have knowledge of the
true state of affairs would doubtless be very distasteful to all classes
of masters. And yet it is not difficult to imagine that conditions
still less agreeable may confront the masters if the demands for
justice to wage-earners are ignored. Would not the publication of
figures covering the assets, liabilities and earnings (or losses) place
all business upon a firmer foundation and exert a helpful influence
on the adjustment of profits between capital, brains, skill and labor?
Is the withholding of truth an established virtue and the publication
of truth a dangerous experiment? And finally if the introduction
of profit-sharing into a business necessitates the publication of
the earnings of the business, would it not be fair to ask the few
masters to make that concession to the interests of the many
workers?
Business organizations are composed of two classes—those
who own and control and those who operate and produce; or rather
those who contribute their money and those who contribute their
lives. We are not aware of any moral law that denies that the man
who makes his contribution of flesh and blood in work be it in
stoking a fire, running an engine, operating a type-writer, selling
goods or driving a truck—is justly entitled to as full a knowledge
66of the pecuniary result of his labor as the man who merely loans
capital to the operation.
The following principles may be set down as sufficiently well
established to be used as a basis for working out plans for the reform
of prevailing relations of labor and capital:
(a) That whenever there is sufficient confidence on the part of
the employees a direct or an indirect dividend to labor is a good
investment for capital.
(b) That with an actual dividend-earning interest in the business
every participant would be prompted to individual efforts:
1st. Towards accomplishing more work in a given length of time.
2d. In the saving of waste. 3d. In seeking and suggesting
improvements in the manufacture and in the conduct of the business
looking to the advancement of the general welfare. 4th. In
that it would naturally become the self-imposed duty of every
employee to challenge a co-worker for laziness or upon the commission
or omission of any act through which a loss to the business
would be the likely result; and, therefore,
(c) That capital in business is best secured when every employee
is pecuniarily benefited through the enlarged success of the
enterprise.
It is a false theory that capital shall not accumulate, or that
the return upon it shall be restricted within definite limits. There
must be allowed to capital the opportunity for enlarging returns
in the development of new enterprises—a chance to earn more by
risking more. Otherwise there will be no incentive for its broader
operations and its usefulness will be restricted. That capital is
accumulated in the hands of the comparatively few is not, generally
speaking, an accident, but rather that fact is a strong indication
that those who control it are the men best qualified to hold it
intact and make it most productive.
Besides the elements of capital and labor, the matter of brains
or business sagacity must be recognized as an indispensable factor
in business and must be reckoned with. The peculiar ability that
a certain small percentage of men possess to conduct modern
business ventures at a profit is of great value, is always in urgent
demand and must be well paid for. Like everything else it will
naturally seek for itself the best market and will generally go to the
highest bidder. There can be little doubt that the neglect to
67recognize and properly care for this element as essential to success
has been largely the direct cause of the many failures of purely
co-operative ventures. Brains must be paid for. Sagacity must
have its reward.
Amongst the many obstacles which confront any effort to
arrive at some fair basis for the introduction of profit-sharing
institutions, probably the most prominent is the difficulty of establishing
a satisfactory system for calculating and treating the profits
and losses of the business so as to avoid the element of suspicion on
the part of the employees as to the fairness of the bookkeeping
employed in arriving at the basis for the division to them provided
for in the agreement. Many honest efforts of employers to introduce
plans for a distribution amongst the employees of a percentage
of the net profits of the business have been defeated solely by
reason of the inability of the management to overcome the distrust
on the part of the wage-earners in the bookkeeping, it being
a simple enough matter so to treat the accounts of profits, losses,
depreciation of plant and receivables, that the percentage actually
due the employees under the agreement may be cut down or
entirely obliterated at will. The plan of having a direct representative
of the employees (of the watch-dog order) in the management
is neither desirable nor logical. There may be individual and
isolated cases of perfect faith and trust on the part of labor towards
capital, but as a business proposition in the present stage of our
moral development there must be something more tangible than
the mere verbal assurances of the owners, endorsed by an accounting
under their direction.
It is with the aim of presenting a plan for meeting in a measure
this difficulty, and at the same time outlining a scheme which should
operate to the mutual advantage of both capital and labor without
compromising the security of vested interests, but rather strengthening
it, that the suggestions herein contained are submitted—the
basic principle being that the encouragement of righteous ambition
with a well-grounded hope for future prosperity must surely develop
the best there is in the wage-earner with benefit both to himself and
to capital as the inevitable result.
In considering the proportion of the net profits which should
be paid out in cash dividends to capital for its use, it may (at least
for the sake of presenting this argument) be counted fair to assume
that in the average legitimate enterprise the withdrawal of say
6860 per centum of the actual net earnings would be the limit of
safe business policy and that the remainder of such earnings should
be kept in the business for the purpose of extending the enterprise
and the more securely protecting the investment.
As an outline for a plan for the proposed adjustment in a concern
already established, the proposition is that a binding agreement shall
be entered into, which shall provide for the payment of the regular
standard of cash wages to all employees of the concern, including
the officials and management—and shall likewise name a definite
amount which shall be determined to be a just and fair annual return
to capital for its simple use; not, however, exceeding say 60
per cent of the average established net earnings; that the agreed
amount shall be paid annually (in quarterly or half-yearly instalments)
as a dividend upon the common stock of the corporation
cumulatively; that it shall be especially understood that the company
by a two-thirds vote of its common stockholders may issue
for needed additional capital preferred stock; that the prior right
to subscribe to such preferred stock shall be pro-rated one-half of
the issue to the holders of common stock, and the other one-half to
the holders of the debenture books (hereinafter particularly set
forth) in proportion to the par value of the respective holdings; that
wages shall be a first claim upon the assets, and that the dividends
to capital stock shall have the first claim upon the net earnings, and
that they shall be cumulative at a rate fixed by agreement; that
after the payment of such dividends as a first charge upon the net
profits of the business, 20 per cent of the net profits then remaining
shall be set aside in a contingent fund (to be hereafter specifically
referred to) and that the balance of the annual net profits still
remaining shall be held in the business—but, one-half thereof for
the benefit of the stockholders and the other one-half for the employees
(under certain restrictions and agreements to be explained
presently).
It will be readily seen that the above treatment of the annual
net profits would continue the accumulation in the business of the
surplus earnings in excess of the regular cash dividends, and so
increase, as now, the security of the original investment and (as
hereinafter shown) in no way diminish or endanger the present
power of the stockholders to control the management of the concern.
To accomplish this, it is proposed that after the regular cash
dividends have been paid to capital and the said percentage set
69aside for the contingent fund, annual stock dividends shall be
declared covering the amount of the surplus earnings which are to
be held in the business; that the certificates issued therefor shall
be in the nature of deferred stock debentures which shall have no
voting power and shall be subordinate in every respect to the
common (and preferred) stock of the concern, both as to dividends
and principal, so that said deferred stock debentures shall not be
entitled to any dividend or interest whatsoever except when earned
during the then current year, and not until after the dividends
upon any preferred stock shall have been paid or set aside, nor
until the said agreed sum (equal to 60 per centum of the established
average net earnings) shall have been paid out, or set aside
for the dividends upon the common stock and said contribution
made to the contingent fund; that the said deferred stock debentures
shall receive dividends at a rate not exceeding 6 per cent per
annum when earned in the then current year, and in no sense shall
said dividends be cumulative; that in the event of liquidation or
dissolution, the common (and preferred) stock shall be paid in full
before any payment shall be made upon the said deferred stock
debentures, but said deferred stock debentures shall then receive
all of the assets remaining after the payment in full of the preferred
and common stock and of all outstanding indebtedness; and that
the said deferred stock debentures shall always be subordinate
to the general creditors of the company.[3]
These deferred stock debentures shall all be issued to a trustee—one-half
thereof to be held in trust for the benefit of the common
stockholders, and the other one-half shall be considered as extra
wages and shall be held by said trustee for the benefit of the employees.
Cash dividends on all deferred stock debentures, when
declared, shall be paid to said trustee, who shall disburse the same—one-half
thereof to the holders of the common stock pro rata, and
the other one-half to the employees in proportion to the respective
amounts standing to their credit on their debenture books (hereinafter
described).
That is to say, for illustration, that if the capital of the concern
is $1,000,000 and the net earnings for the past several years have
70averaged $200,000 per annum,—60 per cent of such earnings, or
$120,000, would be the amount agreed upon as the annual cash
dividend to capital represented by the common stock,—that 20
per cent of the balance of such earnings, or say $16,000, would be
the amount to be paid into the contingent fund, and that at the end
of the first year of the operation of the plan the balance, or sum of
say $64,000, would be held in the business, but that deferred
stock debentures to cover said amount would be issued to the
trustee—$32,000 to be held for the use of the stockholders, and
$32,000 as extra wages to be held for the employees. At the end
of the second year after the payment of the dividends to common
stock and the percentage to contingent fund, a dividend would
then be declared upon $64,000 of deferred stock debentures, and
for the balance of the net profits still remaining another issue of
deferred stock debentures would be made to said trustee; and so
on from year to year.
The effect of the above arrangement being that after the payment
of all cash dividends to common (and preferred) stock, and
the setting aside of the said percentage to the contingent fund,
the surplus earnings then remaining—representing the surplus assets
of the company—would be capitalized in the form of deferred
stock debentures and held in trust for the joint interests of the
original owners (or their assigns) and the employees—it being
especially provided that should the company at any time or times
prefer to pay the amount of surplus earnings in cash directly to the
stockholders and the holders of the debenture books instead of
issuing the deferred stock debentures therefor, it shall have the
right and option of so doing.
Each year the amount of the deferred stock debentures to be
issued to the trustee as wages shall be calculated as above outlined,
and the percentage thereof in which each individual employee is
interested shall be determined by the proportion that his wages for
the year shall bear to the whole salary list for that period. This
amount then shall be set down in his debenture book, and upon this
sum he will be entitled to receive through the trustee (when earned)
dividends not exceeding 6 per cent per annum, non-cumulatively
and subject to certain limitations set forth in and made a part of
his debenture book as hereinafter particularly set forth. The fees
of the trustee for the above and all other services to be charged to
the general expense account of the concern. The said trustee
71shall be entitled to full statements of the condition of the company
at any time, and at all times shall have access to the general books
of the concern.
A debenture book shall be issued to each employee, and shall
contain a full statement of the conditions upon which the same is
issued, and shall be signed by each of the respective holders thereof
in evidence of his understanding thereof and agreement thereto.
Each debenture book shall be numbered, and the age, nationality,
sex, etc., of the employee shall be stated therein. It shall provide
among other things:
(a) That no employee shall be entitled to participate in these
extra wages until he shall have been for one year in the continuous
employ of the company.
(b) That the debenture book may be redeemed by the company
at its option, at any time upon the payment of the total
principal sum or sums therein set forth.
(c) That nothing therein contained shall in any way limit the
power of the management in the control of the business, and that
their authority to employ and discharge any employee shall not be
limited in any way whatsoever, but shall be left entirely to the
discretion of the board of directors and that under no circumstances
shall the issuance of said debenture book entitle the holder
thereof to any voice in the management of the business.
(d) That in case of losses in the business in any year or years,
the impairment thereby caused shall be made up either (first) out
of subsequent profits, or (second) out of the contingent fund,
or both, and all accumulated dividends upon the common and preferred
stock shall have been paid in full before the holder of the
debenture book shall be entitled to any dividends.
(e) That the individual named in the debenture book shall,
after all impairments have been made good and all dividends on the
common and preferred stock due and in default, as above set forth,
have been paid, be entitled to receive, through the said trustee,
dividends, when earned, at a rate not exceeding 6 per cent upon
the total of the amounts therein set forth, but in no sense shall the
dividends upon the debenture book be cumulative.
(f) That said debenture book shall not be redeemable during
the life of the employee named except at the option of the company.
(g) That in case of the death of the holder thereof, the same
shall form a part of his estate and shall be convertible into cash
72at its par value within thirty days, upon application to the company,
and the same shall be paid for out of and held by the contingent
fund when the balance in said fund will so permit, otherwise
to be paid for out of the general funds of the company and
held in the treasury.
(h) That said debenture book shall not be transferable
without the consent of the company.
(i) That it shall be especially understood and agreed that all
calculations of profits and losses of the business shall be left entirely
to the discretion and best judgment of the board of directors, and
that their decision upon these and all matters touching the question
of depreciation of plant, amounts charged to profit and
loss, valuations and inventories, and all other matters affecting the
business and policy of the company, shall be final, and from whose
decision there shall be no right of appeal.
(j) That the “net earnings” of the concern shall comprise
the amount of the profits of the business after deducting all losses
and charging off an agreed percentage in the valuation of the plant
account for depreciation and any other items of doubtful value,
at the discretion of the board.
(k) That in case the holder thereof shall make or attempt to
make any assignment of all or any part of his interest as set forth
in said debenture book, the same shall, at the option of the company,
be immediately forfeited as liquidated damages for violation of
this contract, and shall revert to and be held as a part of the said
contingent fund.
(l) That these debenture books may be attached by the
company for any indebtedness due to it, in any department, by
the holder thereof.
(m) That the company reserves the right to issue for capital
account preferred stock with cumulative dividends, which new
issues shall in every particular outrank all issues of deferred stock
debentures; it being provided, however (as above set forth), that
the holders of these debenture books shall have the prior right to
subscribe, pro rata, to fifty (50) per cent of any and all of said new
issues of stock.
The amount to be set aside to the contingent fund shall be
paid in cash, and may be invested in legal and marketable securities.
This fund shall be held in the first place to make good to the
company any excessive business losses that cannot be met out of
73the current profits of the concern. It will also purchase at par
the debenture books of deceased employees; and any accumulation
of income therein shall be used as a basis for sick benefits, etc., upon
such a uniform plan as the amounts thereof will warrant, the disposition
of the available income for that purpose to be placed as
largely as practicable in the hands of the employees.
The proposition is that the above treatment of profits shall
be continued annually from year to year, so that at the end of the
second year of its operation—after the payment of the regular cash
dividends upon the common (and preferred) stock out of that year’s
net profits and the payment into the contingent fund—the dividend
on the deferred stock debentures shall be declared and
paid upon the amount thereof held by said trustee; and for the
remainder of the surplus earnings for the second year another
issue of deferred stock debentures shall be made to said trustee, one-half
for the use of the common stockholders and the other half
as extra wages to be held for the use of the employees, and that
the amount thereof to which each employee is entitled to credit shall
again be determined as above set forth, and shall be entered in the
respective debenture books and added to the amounts of the
previous similar credit, and so on from year to year, it being provided
as above set forth, that in case the company could not make
advantageous use of this increase of capital it shall have the option
of disbursing the amount in cash direct to the employee and stockholders.
Could the masters manipulate the bookkeeping so as to fleece the
employees of the percentage of profits to which they were actually
entitled? The writer believes that this could not be, and for the
following reasons:
(a) It will be seen that under the plan as suggested, whatever
action the management might take regarding the valuation of the
assets and calculation of the annual profits, its decision would bear
equally upon the interests of the stockholders and of the employees.
(b) If the management is overly conservative and the actual
surplus assets are thereby cut down, the stock dividend to the
trustee, representing both the employees and the stockholders,
would be for that year unduly diminished; but such action could
make little or no difference in the final result, as the actual surplus
assets would still be intact, and if not shown in one year would
surely appear in another. So that beyond a delay in the division
74thereof those in control of the bookkeeping would be powerless to
discriminate against the employees, and as already shown an
unfair settlement would bear equally upon capital and labor.
Then, too:
(c) There could be little or no object in such an attempt, as it
is not intended that the surplus, whatever the amount may be,
shall be withdrawn from the business and distributed, but that the
whole of the same shall be retained in the business (so long as it
can be used advantageously), and under the plan as outlined all of
these surplus earnings shall be capitalized and subordinated to the
original investment and thus acting practically as a guarantee fund
to protect and secure the same; and, again,
(d) It is a part of the plan that all employees, from the lowest
form of unskilled labor to the highest salaried official, shall be
sharers in the dividend to wages. Under such an arrangement it
would be practically impossible for the owners to equivocate or to
treat the question unfairly.
It will be generally conceded that the universal publication of
the assets and liabilities of all business enterprises would greatly
simplify and proportionately stimulate trade. With the added
security against losses that such a system would assure, a liberal
extension of credits would be the natural and a safe outcome. It
is more difficult, however, to meet the question as to what effect the
publication of the earnings, debts and resources would have upon
the credit and general business of a single concern when in direct
competition with others in the same class which continued to hold
to the system of secrecy. It is clearly impossible to make a conclusive
statement concerning this question. Whether the publication
of accounts by one concern would work to the advantage
or disadvantage of its secretive competitors seems wholly problematical.
So far as we can see, however, indications point with
some confidence to the ultimate success of that concern which does
not conceal that of which their creditors of a right should be
informed.
Regarding the probable effect upon the general business of the
concern, it seems reasonable to claim that the liberal and just
treatment of the employees will surely appeal to the public at large
and that the advantage gained through the profitable influence
that such action will have upon the concern’s constituency, especially
among the buying public, would largely overbalance any
75possible disadvantage that could come as a result of the exposition
of figures regarding the condition of its affairs.
As to the effect on credit when the published earnings show a
decrease in profits it is still difficult to do more than surmise, though
if the liabilities of the enterprise are made up more and more each
year in a growing percentage of subordinated income-debentures
we believe the publication of decreased profits would not operate
towards the impairment of its credit, and certainly not until the
losses became so extensive as to imperil the solvency of the concern—in
which latter case it seems clear to us that little can be justly
said in support of the custom of concealment.
Would the plan of letting the employees generally become
part owners of the concern place them in a position to give trouble
to the management of the enterprise, and would they not soon
demand, as stockholders, the right to a voice in the direction of
its affairs and in the shaping of its policy? On the contrary, it is
urged:
(a) That with the proper and timely guarding of the interests
of the original investment through sufficient, clear and undeniable
limitations upon the rights and powers carried with the issues of
deferred stock, such issues could not be used to the detriment of
vested interests, but rather:
(b) That such a pecuniary interest in the enlarged success
of the business would act as a guarantee of loyalty to the management
and as an incentive to the employees to further the legitimate
business of the concern, and:
(c) That the employees with a money investment in the
enterprise, if for no higher reason than the instinct of self-preservation,
would realize the value and necessity for harmonious and
sympathetic co-operation between the capital, brains and energy
of the concern.
Would capital be benefited by the operation? We claim
without reservation that it would—and for the following reasons:
(a) That the net profits of the business would be largely
increased through the reduction of friction; the larger incentive
of labor; the increase in the physical capacity of the workers to
produce; the saving of useless waste; and through the absence of
strikes and lock-outs; as in all of such increase in net profits the
capital would be an equal sharer with its employees.
(b) That the true loyalty and support of all employees would
76greatly strengthen the security of the capital in the business and
proportionately add to the real value of the investment.
(c) That where adverse legislation may be easy of accomplishment
when it attacks the interests of one man or a small body
of men, it would be quite a different matter where the interests of
all employees are involved.
(d) That the surplus profits would not be paid out and distributed,
but would be held in the business, subordinated to the
claims of the original investment, and so very materially adding
to the security thereof.
(e) That with a property interest in the business the tendency
of the operatives to shift from one concern to another without real
purpose would be reduced to the minimum, and that the consequent
advantage to the management would result in a distinct
gain in the stability of the business.
Would such a plan when perfected succeed? If it would
increase the productivity of the workers, if it would tend to elevate
character, to develop a greater loyalty to the concern and help to
change an operative from an automaton into a man, if it would
strengthen the security of vested interests and narrow the gulf
between wealth and work, and finally, if it would be in the direction
of righteousness and justice, it must finally succeed. It cannot be
expected that at first the introduction of such a scheme would be
received by the operatives with enthusiasm. It would only be
through the medium of their more intelligent leaders that they
could be assured of its benefits, and only after several years of
successful operation could we expect it to receive the unqualified
support of the workers. When, however, their capitalized extra
wages show an accumulation and they begin to receive annual cash
dividends upon the surplus earnings of previous years, we may be
reasonably assured of a decided change of sentiment in its favor.
In the meanwhile the masters would do well in avoiding undue
antagonism to labor organizations per se, so far as the large body
of wage-earners is concerned, the benefits of profit-sharing are still
to them unproven, while the trade union has in many ways demonstrated
its usefulness in protecting the interests of its members.
Whether it does more really to help the best interests of the worker
than to hinder, may be an open question. However this may be,
certain it is that the institution is strongly established in the mind
of the workman as his strongest friend, his one means of expression
77and his only hope of material salvation. In its reverses as well as
in its successes his heart will remain loyal to his union, until he
shall have been furnished a substitute which has proven to him its
larger usefulness.
In view of the increasing tendency to incorporate business,
this paper has treated the question as it relates to organized capital.
It is nevertheless clearly true that the same general situation
obtains in the strictly partnership concerns and that the principles
herein suggested could be the more readily applied in such cases,
especially as the power to act is concentrated in the hands of a few
individuals who have no one else to consult.
In such a case it is suggested, in place of the issue of the deferred
stock debentures, that the surplus net earnings—after the
payment of the agreed interest to capital, and the assignment in
cash of the percentage to contingent fund—shall be credited to a
“mutual reserve fund” which fund shall take the place of the
proposed trustee in a stock company, and shall be entitled to
receive dividends (or interest) upon the same terms and subject to
the same limitations provided for the deferred stock debentures,
and that said fund shall be held for the joint and equal benefit of
capital and employees—the respective interests of the employees
to be entered in a pass-book similar in terms to the debenture
books herein particularly described.
The plan briefly outlined is offered as a suggestion. Doubtless
every point made can be improved by modification or substitution.
If it influences in a small degree more earnest thought on the part of
those in whom the power is vested, towards the formation of a comprehensive
plan looking to a more reasonable division of the product
of all and a fuller acknowledgment of the humanity of man,
its purpose will have been accomplished.
III. The Housing Problem — TENEMENT HOUSE REGULATION—THE REASONS FOR IT—ITS PROPER LIMITATIONS — THE HOUSING PROBLEM IN CHICAGO — Discussion of the Papers Read by Miss Addams and Mr. De Forest : — CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE HOUSING PROBLEM IN PHILADELPHIA — THE HOUSING CONDITIONS IN BOSTON — HOUSING CONDITIONS IN JERSEY CITY
79
81
By Robert W. De Forest
Tenement House Commissioner of the City of New York
83When Theodore Roosevelt, then Governor of the State of
New York, attended the opening of the Tenement House Exhibition
of the Charity Organization Society of New York, and looked
over the models of tenements, old and new, and the charts which
showed the close connection between the housing of the vast majority
of that city’s population, and health, pauperism and crime,
he said to the few of us who had organized this exhibition—“Tell
us at Albany what to do, and we will do it.” The result was the
New York State Tenement House Commission of 1900, the enactment
last year of the most advanced code of tenement house laws
as yet put in force in any American city, and the creation for the
first time in this country of a department directly charged with
the oversight of the construction and proper maintenance of tenement
houses.
The tenement house problem we had to meet in New York
was the most serious of any city in the civilized world, for in New
York, according to the last census, out of 3,437,202 inhabitants,
2,273,079, or more than two-thirds, lived in tenement houses, and
there were 82,652 of these tenements in the city.
The interest in this particular phase of the housing question
is not confined to New York. No one who has followed, even carelessly,
public opinion on this subject can fail to realize the hold it
has upon the public conscience. It may be that some tremble at
the effect upon their own fortunes of a possible social revolution,
and seek to protect themselves, for their own sake, by trying to
make what they call the lower classes more comfortable in their
homes. But the large body of men and women in this country
who are giving to this subject attention, are doing so from love of
their fellow-men, and an earnest desire to give them in their homes
some of the healthful surroundings and comforts they enjoy in
their own.
84There are few large cities in America in which there is not
some tenement regulation, and some agitation for its extension.
At the moment there is an active movement in Boston for the
appointment of a commission to frame a new code of tenement
house laws for that city. There is a similar movement in Chicago
and in Cincinnati. Nor is this activity confined to the larger
cities. Kansas City in the West, Hartford in the East, Yonkers,
Syracuse and Rochester in New York, are already moving in the
same direction, and the subject is receiving close attention in
Washington, Cleveland and Pittsburg.
The New York law of last winter was a state law applicable
to all cities of the first class. It included Buffalo as well as New
York, and Buffalo did its full part in securing the enactment of the
law. Philadelphia is emphatically the City of Homes, and not of
tenements. Fortunately for Philadelphia, its working classes
are almost exclusively housed in single family dwellings. It has,
as most of you know, an admirable code of tenement house laws,
which has proved very useful to us at New York in preparing ours,
and it has its Octavia Hill Association to advance the cause of
housing reform.
In some quarters benevolent people are proposing to build
model tenements. That is good as far as it goes, but if at the same
time other people, not benevolent, who have no motive but gain
for themselves, are permitted to build tenements which are not
models, the extent of progress is very limited. What we must do,
first and foremost, is to secure proper legislation, using that term
in its broadest sense, to include city ordinance, as well as state law.
Legislation to regulate building, so as to secure for new buildings
proper air and light space and proper sanitation; legislation to
regulate, in buildings old and new, their maintenance so that health
conditions may be improved and at least not be impaired; legislation,
moreover, that provides the means for its own enforcement,
by proper inspection.
Most of us have been brought up to believe that, as owners of
real estate, we could build on it what we pleased, build as high as
we pleased, and sink our buildings as low as we pleased. Our ideas
of what constitutes property rights and what constitutes liberty
are largely conventional. They vary with time and place. They
are different in different countries. Liberty, proper liberty, to-day,
may, under changing conditions, become license to-morrow.
85I came home from Europe not long since with a French friend,
who had gone home to his native country to take possession of his
ancestral estates. He told me of having found the trees grown
up quite thickly around his father’s country home, and of the
difficulties he had encountered in obtaining permission from the
public authorities to cut down some of them, which was finally
only granted on condition that he replanted elsewhere. That his
trees could only be cut down with the consent of the public authorities,
and that he could properly be required to replant elsewhere
as a condition of obtaining that consent, seemed to him a
part of the eternal order of things. He no more questioned it in
his mind than we, who live in cities, question the propriety of
obtaining from the city building department a permit to build,
based upon approval of our architect’s plans.
Lecky, in one of his later books, speaking of sanitary legislation,
says: “Few things are more curious than to observe how
rapidly, during the past generation, the love of individual liberty
has declined; how contentedly the English race are committing
great departments of their lives to the web of regulations restricting
and encircling them.” It is not that love of liberty has declined,
it is that the English race are meeting new conditions with the
same genius with which they have evolved their great system of
common law. Living, as most of them did a century ago, in
separate houses, and in small villages or towns, every man could
build as he pleased and could maintain his building as he pleased
without seriously endangering the liberty of his neighbors, but with
the steady movement of the population from the country to the
city, and the marvelous growth of cities, not only horizontally but
vertically, new conditions must be met, and the property rights
and liberty of one neighbor must be limited to protect the property
rights and liberty of another. If a man built an isolated house in
the country, without light or air for the bedrooms, and kept it in
such filthy condition as to breed disease, it is a fair question whether
his liberty should be infringed by any building or health regulation.
He may be fairly left free to suffer the consequences of his own misuse
of his liberty. His death, and that of his family, from disease
so caused may, as an awful example, do more to advance civilization
by making his neighbors more careful, than would his life and
theirs under enforced sanitary regulation. But if that same man
is separated from you and me only by a board partition or twelveinch
86wall, and our families meet every time they go into the street
or into the back yard, his liberty must be restricted in some degree
in order to enable you and me to enjoy ours.
How and why has tenement house law been evolved in American
cities? In the same way in which the Anglo-Saxon mind deals
with any such problems. Just as it evolved common law, and for
the same reasons. First a case—that is, an evil—to be remedied;
afterward a decision—the application of the remedy, and the establishment
of a principle or law by which similar evils shall be
remedied. It is not according to the genius of our race to provide
the remedy in advance of the supposed disease. Better be sure
that the disease really exists, even if some few die from it, and then
provide the remedy which will be sure to meet actual conditions,
than to burden the community with advance remedies for diseases
that after all may prove to be imaginary. Even if the disease be
not imaginary, such remedies are apt to be worse than the disease
itself. Thus, in Anglo-Saxon countries, a conflagration has usually
preceded precautions against fire, and the evils of sunless, airless
and unwholesome tenements have preceded any attempt to prevent
these deplorable conditions. Eventually we act, and when we do
we act practically.
It may be well to define what is meant by a tenement house,
for without definition there is infinite confusion in the use of this
term. In one of our recent civil service examinations in New
York, a candidate, evidently “learned in the law,” or supposing
himself to be so, defined it as being “That which is neither land
nor hereditament.” It has its popular and its legal meaning.
Popularly, it is used to designate the habitations of the poorest
classes, without much thought of the number of families living
under any particular roof. The National Cyclopedia significantly
says: “Tenement houses, commonly speaking, are the poorest
class of apartment houses. They are generally poorly built,
without sufficient accommodation for light and ventilation, and
are overcrowded. The middle rooms often receive no daylight,
and it is not uncommon in them for several families to be crowded
into one of their dark and unwholesome rooms. Bad air, want
of sunlight and filthy surroundings work the physical ruin of the
wretched tenants, while their mental and moral condition is
equally lowered. Attempts to reform the evils of tenement life
have been going on for some time in many of the great cities of the
world.”
87Legally, tenement is applied to any communal dwelling, inhabited
by three, or in some cities four, or more families, living
independently, who do their cooking on the premises. It includes
apartment houses, flat-houses and flats, as well as what is popularly
called a tenement, if only built to accommodate three, or as the
case may be four, or more families who cook in the house. It is in
its legal sense that I use the term. At first blush it may seem
objectionable to class apartment houses, flat-houses and tenements,
so called, together, and subject them to the same code of regulation.
Practically, it has never been possible to draw any line of separation
between different houses which are popularly designated by these
different words. Nor has anyone ever suggested any regulation
proper for the poorest tenement, using the word now in its popular
sense, which would not be voluntarily, and as matter of self-interest,
complied with in the most expensive apartment house. Nor is
there any certainty that what to-day is popularly called an apartment
house may not to-morrow, in popular parlance, be a tenement
of the worst kind. My own grandmother, within my own recollection,
lived in what was then one of the finest houses, in one of the
most fashionable streets of New York. Not long since I passed
the house, and noticed on the front door a sign reading, “French
flats for Colored People.”
In its earliest form (and many cities have not yet passed beyond
the first stage) the tenement was a discredited private house,
or other building, not originally built for the occupation of several
families, but altered for the purpose. Each floor of what was originally
a private dwelling was changed so that it could be occupied
by a family. Later on—it may be at the beginning—each floor
was subdivided between front and rear, so that it could be occupied
by two families. One of the chief evils of such tenements arose
from cellar occupation, and consequently some of the earliest tenement
house regulations relate to the occupation of cellars.
In its second stage the tenement house is built for the purpose,
imitating, not infrequently, in a servile manner, the arrangement
of the altered house, with its dark rooms, and only gradually being
adapted to a new architectural form growing out of its special use.
The introduction of running water and city health regulations
made it possible and desirable to locate water-closets inside.
Courts and air-shafts increased in size. Fortunately, the process
of evolution is not exhausted, and is still going on.
88The tenement is still regarded in many places as an exotic, not
adapted to our climate. But, judging from the history of New
York and other cities, West and East, the tenement house has come
to stay, and is, perhaps, destined to crowd out other and better
forms of housing. I remember well when the first tenement to
be dignified by the term apartment house was built in New York.
It was in the early 70’s. Now it is a prevailing type of new
building for dwelling purposes on Manhattan Island. There were
no less than 82,652 tenements in Greater New York at the time
of the last census. The development of the tenement has been
largely influenced by legislation intended to prevent its worst evils.
To test the reason for such legislation, and to define its limitations,
a brief summary of particular subjects of regulation is desirable.
Protection against fire is almost universal. Structural provisions
directed to this end are contained in the building laws of
all cities. In New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Jersey City,
Providence, Syracuse and Nashville, all tenements must have fire-escapes.
All tenements over two stories in height must have
fire-escapes in St. Louis, Baltimore, Louisville, Minneapolis, St.
Paul, Denver, Toledo and Columbus. In Chicago, Cleveland and
Cincinnati, this rule only applies to tenements over three stories
in height. In many cities tenements must be fireproof throughout
when over a certain height. In Philadelphia this is true of all over
four stories; in Washington of those over five stories; in New York,
Buffalo, Louisville, Minneapolis and Denver, of those over six
stories in height. In Boston, the limit is 65 feet.
Light and ventilation are protected by minimum open spaces.
In Philadelphia there must be open spaces at the side or rear equal
to one-fifth of the lot area, and the minimum width of all spaces is
eight feet. In Buffalo, under the local law in force before the
general state act of 1901 was passed, the minimum width of any
outer court was six feet in two-story buildings, eight feet in three
and four-story buildings, and one additional foot in width for each
additional story. The minimum interior court was eight by ten.
In Boston, a clear open space at the rear must be left equal to one-half
the width of the street on which the tenement fronts, and there
must be two open spaces at least ten feet wide. In some cities the
required court area is expressed in square feet, without regard to
minimum width or length, and increases proportionately with the
height of the building. This principle is adopted in New York,
89where the minimum width of exterior courts in buildings five stories
high is six feet on the lot line and twelve feet between wings, and
the minimum area of interior courts on the lot line in buildings
of the same height is twelve by twenty-four, reduced this winter in
three-story tenements to eight by fourteen. Such buildings must
have an open yard at least twelve feet wide in the rear. The
height of rooms is almost universally regulated, the minimum
usually being eight feet. The height of tenements is limited in
many cities.
Water supply is prescribed. In New York, water must be
furnished on each floor. In Philadelphia and Buffalo, on each
floor, for each set of rooms. In Boston, Chicago, Jersey City and
Kansas City, in one or more places in the house or yard.
Water-closet accommodation is very generally prescribed. In
Philadelphia, and in New York under the new law, there must be
one for every apartment. Under the old law in New York, and at
present in Chicago and Detroit, there must be one for every two
families. In other cities the unit is the number of persons. It is
twenty persons in Boston, Baltimore and Denver; ten persons in
Rochester.
The reasons for tenement regulation may be roughly classed as
follows—precise classification is impossible, as it is seldom that any
particular regulation is attributable solely to a single reason:
The protection of property rights in adjacent property. Such
is the reason for regulations requiring fireproof construction in
whole or in part. Such is the chief reason for limitations of height
and for leaving an obligatory open space at the rear of each house
so as to preserve thorough ventilation for the block. The protection
of neighbors and the community from unsanitary conditions,
by which they might be affected, or which might breed contagion.
Under this class falls the great body of sanitary law and tenement
house regulation of a sanitary kind. That all legislation which
falls within these classes can be justified as a proper restraint on the
liberty and property rights of some, in order to protect and preserve
the property rights and liberty of others, is clear.
There is another and increasing class of regulations intended
to protect the life and health of those who cannot, it is supposed,
protect themselves by any means within their control. Fire-escapes,
which are almost universally required by law in non-fireproof
tenement houses, belong to this class. There is no such regulation
90for private houses, and there is usually no such requirement
for two-family houses. The reason for the fire-escape in tenements
and hotels must rest either on the supposed inability of the inmates
to protect themselves, as the owner of a private house can protect
himself and his family, or else from the greater number of persons
exposed to risk. Of such class also is the law providing that there
be a separate water-closet for each apartment, as in New York, or
for every two families, as in Detroit and elsewhere, and that lights
be kept burning in public halls at night. No such regulations
exist for private houses. They can be only justified in tenement
houses on the theory that the tenants in such houses must live in
them, cannot control their maintenance in these particulars, and
are entitled to the protection of affirmative law for these necessities
or conveniences. It may be answered that they need not rent
rooms in houses not furnished with separate water-closets, and the
halls of which are not kept lighted, unless they wish to, and that
they should not be restricted in their liberty to rent rooms in such
houses, it may be at a lower rent, if they so desire. The reply may
be, and in some cities would properly be, that they would have no
choice unless the law intervened to protect them. Moreover, it
might be urged that in the provision for separate water-closets for
each apartment, and in the lighting of public halls, there was an
element of protection to public health and morals in which the
community had an interest, and which the community by regulation
should insure.
I have sought by these illustrations to point the closeness of
the dividing line between justifiable restriction of the individual
liberty of the house builder and house owner, for the protection of
the liberty of others, and paternalism. It is undoubtedly true,
as Mr. Lecky states in the concluding part of the paragraph to
which I have already referred, that “the marked tendency of these
generations to extend the stringency and area of coercive legislation
in the fields of sanitary reform is one that should be carefully
watched. Its exaggerations may, in more ways than one, greatly
injure the very classes it is intended to benefit.” There is real
danger lest in our eagerness and earnestness to improve the condition
of others, we legislate from the point of view of those fathers
and mothers who are always ready to regulate the affairs of every
family but their own, and break down the habit of self-dependence
91and the spirit of individual responsibility upon which the vigor of
our American social fabric so largely depends.
Perhaps the most important limitation to tenement house
reform, in the construction of new tenements, is the question of
cost. If tenements cannot be rented at a profit they will not be
built. There are many things which it would be desirable to have
in a tenement, each one of which adds to its cost, and if they be
required by law to an extent which makes it unremunerative,
tenement building will cease. It is undoubtedly desirable that
all tenements should be fireproof throughout; indeed, the same
may be said of private houses. In 1892, Boston so prescribed;
but few, if any, were erected, and the law was consequently modified
in 1899.
The amount of rent which the average American workingman
in any particular city can pay approximates a fixed quantity.
Any legislation which materially increases this rent, or which prevents
building and therefore prevents his finding shelter, is quite
certain to be repealed. This proposition, however, is not so discouraging
as it may appear at the outset. The standard of living
among our working classes is steadily improving. What yesterday
was a luxury, to-day is a necessity. In many cities, apartments
which are not provided with running water are unrentable.
Bathing facilities are increasingly in demand, and are frequently
being provided. Families that have once lived in apartments
where the bedrooms have light and air, will not hire apartments
which are dark and unventilated. The supply must meet the
demand. Interest rates are receding; economies in construction
are being introduced, which some time ago were unknown, largely
by the building of houses by the wholesale. The large profits
which were demanded as the normal income on tenement houses
in the past are no longer expected. Rooms up to the standard of
the modern tenement house law can be provided without increasing
the rental.
Another limitation in many cities is the prevailing lot dimension.
If Dante were to-day writing his “Inferno,” the lowest depth
would be reserved for those men who invented the twenty-five foot
lot and imposed it on so many American cities. In unbuilt districts,
where several lots, whatever be their dimensions, can be
purchased and built upon together, the lot dimension does not
necessarily control the frontage of the building, and the tendency
92in such districts in New York is to build tenement houses of wider
frontage, which admit of better court arrangement, but there
are usually so many lots separately owned, and so many which
are situated between lots already built upon, so that their enlargement
is impossible, that any proposed legislation prescribing court
areas which, however desirable, puts the prevailing lot unit at a
disadvantage, will meet with overwhelming resistance. No better
illustration of this can, perhaps, be found than the story of New
York legislation this winter, of which I intend to speak. From
the point of view of proper tenement house construction, happy
that city in which land is sold by the front foot, instead of by any
procrustean lot unit.
There is another practical limitation, not necessarily to the
enactment of tenement house law, but to its permanence, in the
extent to which it, either actually or supposedly, interferes with
the profits of builders and material men, and perhaps no better
illustration of this practical limitation can be given than a simple
recital of the contest over the radical amendment of the New York
law which has been waged at Albany during the past few weeks,
and which terminated only a few days ago. The New York law
of 1901 marked the longest step in advance that tenement house
reform in that state has ever taken, though in its provisions for
court areas, the particular point in which it was assailed this winter,
it does not go so far as the Philadelphia law, and but little
further than the previous Buffalo law. It unquestionably increased
the cost of construction by its fireproof provisions, as well
as, though in a less degree, by its larger court areas. That there
would be, this winter, organized effort on the part of building and
real estate interests to modify it was certain and inevitable. Many
bills were introduced amending it, but my illustration only concerns
two, the City Administration bill, in the preparation of which
I myself had part, and a bill introduced by a Brooklyn member of
the Legislature in the interest of Brooklyn builders and material
men, who claimed that they represented the people of Brooklyn.
It is a fair question whether Brooklyn did not really have a grievance
against last winter’s law. One of the prevailing types of
Brooklyn tenements is a three-story house on a twenty-five foot
lot, with two families on a floor, making six families in all, each
apartment running through from front to rear. These houses had
been built with interior courts or air-shafts about two and a half
93feet wide and ten feet long. These light-shafts were supposed to
light and ventilate the interior rooms of each apartment. As a
matter of fact, they furnished little light or ventilation to any bedrooms
below the top floor. The same type of air-shaft in taller
tenements of Manhattan was one of the chief evils against which
the new law was directed. These evils were undoubtedly less in a
three-story building, but still existed. The minimum interior
court or air-shaft permitted by the new law in such buildings was
eleven feet wide by twenty-two feet long. Such a court prevented
the building of this type of house, and no tenements of this type
were consequently built on twenty-five foot lots from the time when
the law went into effect. The Brooklyn bill sought to amend the
law, as respects three and four-story houses, by permitting a return
to the old air-shaft, with an increased width of six inches, and with
a somewhat increased length, making it three by twelve. We
conceded that under the law it was impossible to build this particular
type of tenement on a twenty-five foot lot, with each apartment
running through from front to rear, but we demonstrated
that it was perfectly practicable to build what seemed to us a much
better two-families-on-a-floor tenement on such a lot, by putting
one apartment in the front and another in the rear; that it was
perfectly practicable to build, under the law, apartments running
through from front to rear on a somewhat larger lot, and that the
law interfered with no other current type except the one in question.
The separate front and rear apartments, which were practical
under the new law, are usual in Manhattan, and the rent
obtainable from the front apartment differs but little from that
obtainable from the rear apartment. Our Brooklyn friends insisted
that though Brooklyn was a borough of New York and only
separated from Manhattan by the East River, Brooklyn people
were so accustomed to apartments running through from front to
rear that they would not rent rear apartments, and indeed, that
the social distinction between families who could afford to live in
the front apartment, and those who would be forced to live in the
rear apartment, was so great that they would not rent apartments
in the same house.
This proposition may seem strained, but we of the City Administration
were finally satisfied that so much regard should be
paid to local habits and customs, that it was wise to modify our
minimum court areas in three-story houses to such a point as would
94permit the building of this particular type of Brooklyn house.
Plans were then made which demonstrated beyond peradventure
that by reducing the minimum court area to 8x14, instead of
3x12, this particular type of house could be built, with bedrooms
infinitely better lighted and better ventilated than those opening
upon the narrow shaft. One would have supposed that this improved
plan, which permitted Brooklyn builders to construct a
front-to-rear apartment, for which they claimed so many advantages,
would have been received with acclamation as a solution of
the difficulty. Not at all. Some insisted that Brooklyn must
have what it was accustomed to, narrow air-shaft and all. Others
more openminded, while frankly admitting that the new plans
made better apartments, which should bring in an increased rental
of from fifty cents to a dollar a month, insisted that tenants would
not pay more rent, and that because the buildings under these new
plans cost say $800 per house more than under the old plans, they
would not be commercially profitable, and therefore would not be
built. Not a word was said as to the interests of tenement dwellers.
There was no dearth of apartments in Brooklyn at current-rents.
Indeed, the supply was far beyond the demand. The
whole issue turned on the commercial profitableness of building
under the law, as amended by the City Administration bill, to meet
this Brooklyn condition. The Brooklyn builders were perfectly
frank in their arguments. They started with the premise that the
building of tenements in Brooklyn must be made commercially
profitable; that buildings under the new plan, with a minimum
court area of 8x14, would not be commercially profitable, because
about $800 was added to their cost, and therefore insisted that the
law should be amended to meet their ideas of commercial profitableness.
That the purpose of the law was not to promote building
operations, or increase the value of real estate, but to provide
healthy habitation for tenement dwellers, and that that purpose
was certainly being accomplished under the new law so long as
tenement dwellers could house themselves without any increase
in rent, was ignored, nor if it had been urged would it have seemed
to them an argument worth considering.
I am happy to say that they did not succeed, but they demonstrated
the influence which can be exerted upon the average legislator
by men of their type through their trade and allied labor
organizations, and had those who, at the moment, represented the
95unorganized public in the cities been less active, and had the force
of public opinion as voiced by the press been less outspoken, the
result might have been different.
The advance of tenement house reform undoubtedly means
some diminution in the profit of the landlord, or some increase in
rent. Improved tenements must cost more. Someone must pay
that cost. If any material rise in rents would produce such opposition
to the law as to repeal or modify it, then either the cost must
be borne by the landlord, or the law must be modified. Whether
the landlord’s rent will by the law proposed in any city be diminished
below the point of legitimate profit, cannot be certainly
demonstrated until the experiment be tried. Some enlightened
landlords, with a sense of their obligations toward their tenants,
are perfectly willing to suffer this small diminution of income.
Others are not, and the others, who usually constitute the majority,
in alliance with the builders and material men, will always seek to
prevent legislation which affects their pockets. Tenement house
reform must always be militant, not only to gain ground, but to
hold the ground that has once been gained.
There is something for almost everyone to do. Let none suppose
that our cities, however small, will remain free from the evils
of the tenement house, which in larger cities has necessarily evolved
in self-protection tenement house regulation. The tenement has
come to the United States, like the Canada thistle, to grow and to
multiply. The smaller cities need not go through the bitter experience
which is teaching New York and other cities their lesson.
They can, by timely regulation, prevent the crystallization of unsanitary
conditions into brick and mortar. I do not recommend the
adoption in every city of the New York law. It was framed to
meet the special conditions there existent. The remedy should
be no greater than the prevailing or expected disease warrants. A
few elementary regulations with regard to court areas, vacant
spaces, and regular and official inspection to make certain that
these simple regulations are followed in construction and that
ordinary sanitary rules are complied with in maintenance, will
suffice, if there always be a keen eye to look some years ahead, to
meet future needs before they make themselves unpleasantly manifest
in your own surroundings, and before conditions are created,
as in New York, which cannot be changed except at great cost to
owners and to the municipality.
97
By Miss Jane Addams
Hull House, Chicago
99In considering the housing problem in Chicago, it is at once
evident that we are not in the deplorable condition of New York,
nor yet perhaps in the happy condition of Philadelphia. Until a
year and a half ago, we thought that all our problems in connection
with the housing question were in the future. We have a way in
Chicago of shoving disagreeable problems into the future, and saying
that we will take care of them by and by, when our resources are
more adequate, when we have developed a little more civic
consciousness. An association of people, however, called the City
Homes Association, come eighteen months ago, made a very careful
investigation of such tenement districts as we have and their
report was startling, even to those of us who knew something of the
conditions by daily seeing them.
The time at the disposal of the committee was only six months,
and Chicago is very large as to area. We have 187 square miles
under city management, and the tenement houses, certainly according
to the legal definition given by Mr. De Forest, are scattered
more or less through that very large region. It seemed, therefore,
better to take three districts, limiting carefully the area of the
districts, and to make as careful a study as possible of each.
The largest one, in two of the river wards of Chicago, was
mainly occupied by Italian immigrants and Russian Jews. The
second in size was the Polish district northeast of the business
quarter of the city, and the third in size the Bohemian district
extended south from the centre. We discovered several things
which were very surprising, among them that many of the houses
were owned or partially owned by the people living in them. The
thrifty Bohemian put his savings into a house, perhaps building
at first a house on the front of his lot, living in a few rooms,
and so saving rent until he had enough money to build a rear tenement,
in the end covering up his lot as much as possible and renting
it all out. The Italians to a somewhat lesser extent did the same
thing, and the Poles also, so that one could not talk of the effect of
100tenement house regulation upon the landlord in contradistinction
to the effect upon the tenant, for it is very largely the neighbors
of the tenants themselves who are the landlords, and the tenant and
landlord are represented by the same type of person. Their interests
are identical, not in the larger sense, but in the immediate
sense, and they stand together either in demanding or opposing
certain regulations. The situation is quite unlike that obtaining
in the cities where the landlord lives in some other part of the town,
and where tenement legislation affects only his property interests
and not his human interests.
We also were very much surprised at the density in certain
quarters which this investigation disclosed. If the average tenement
house density of the three districts investigated were spread
throughout the city, we could house within our borders 23,000,000
people. We discovered one-seventh of an acre which was occupied
to the ratio of 900 people to the acre, and if that density were
applied to our borders we could house, not very comfortably to be
sure, all the people of the Western Hemisphere. This seemed to
us sufficiently alarming in a city in which it was said that the
matter of density was something concerning only the future. The
average tenancy in the houses throughout these three districts
was only three families to a house. This average means that in
many cases there is no real tenement, but a single house. Again,
many of these single houses were very small, sometimes containing
but two or three rooms, and the average number of rooms to an
apartment was 3 116–1000. Although many houses were small
and the tenements for each house again small, in certain quarters
the density within the houses was very great and the conditions
bad. We also found in these three areas almost a hundred full-fledged
double-deckers, and a great many more that only escaped
being double-deckers through a mere technicality in the definition
that had been settled upon. These double-deckers are growing and,
unless we have a more vigorous enforcement of tenement house
regulations in Chicago, threaten to become very common there.
In both the building department and in the health department
of the city, a great deal is left to the discretion of the inspector.
Of course, in the city where the landlord not only owns his house but
also lives in it and at least knows which way his tenants vote, this
matter of discretionary power becomes an important one. It is
very hard for an official to stand out against a certain amount of
101political pressure, and the consequence is, that while there are laws
fairly good on books, this large discretion left to the enforcing
officers has made many of them of little account. This is especially
true in regard to the yard spaces, which are set between the front
and rear tenements, the size of the shafts, and other special regulations.
The City Homes Association is trying at present to secure
a better code of tenement house legislation, to restrict the discretionary
power and thus to limit the very casual and varying
judgment of the enforcing official, and to give some sturdy standard
in law observances.
In the matter of rents, Chicago is in rather a curious state.
The property in the river wards, in which many of these houses are
situated, has been held for a long time by its owners upon the
theory that finally factories and shipping interests were going to
occupy the land. The consequence is, that the little houses which
were built very soon after the fire have been allowed to remain,
without very much repair and without very much change,
and in many cases have become so wretched that only a low
rental can be asked for them. The men who own them, content
themselves with getting out of the houses about enough
to pay taxes and to keep up a minimum amount of repairs. So
that the rent of certain houses in the river districts is low. Perhaps
this is not low for Philadelphia, although I am sure it will
sound low for New York. The average rent paid by an Italian
family for an apartment is $4.92 a month, or $1.78 per room a
month; the average rent paid by a Bohemian family for an apartment
is $5.93 a month, or $1.64 a room; by a Polish family $5.66
for an apartment, and $1.40 for a room; by a Jewish family $8.28;
the average rent rising to $2.12 a room. Whenever the question
of modern tenements comes up in Chicago, and the cost is carefully
gone into, it is found very difficult to furnish apartments in good,
satisfactorily well-built houses at so low a rental, and yet once this
rental has been established, it is found on the other hand very
difficult to ask much more than the current rate. By a strict
enforcement of law many of these houses should be demolished.
That would rid the city of a number of unsanitary houses and
bring conditions to a more normal situation.
What Mr. De Forest says about the twenty-five foot lot, I
should very much like to corroborate. It is very difficult to erect
a convenient house on a lot 25 feet wide and 120 feet deep. This
102unfortunate division of property was made in the first instance,
doubtless, to enable as many men as possible to own their own
separate houses. For a long time we have made a sort of fetich of
the house, and have come to believe that a man has a sense of being
at home only when he is within four walls standing alone upon one
piece of ground. In reality the idea of a home reaches back so
much further than the four walls, and is so much more deeply
implanted in the human breast than the ownership of land that we
do not need to fear that a new type of house will destroy it. But
we are timid and would rather be uncomfortable in a little house
than to start out in some reasonable way in building apartments.
If one has a house 12½ feet wide and 24 feet deep and 24 feet high,
one has not a very comfortable arrangement. It is not even
rationally divided, but by a purely imitative method; in every house
you enter you will find the little hall, the little stairs, and all the
other things that presuppose plenty of space. If that same strip
of twelve feet had been added to the other strips in the block and
the whole treated in some reasonable manner, we could comfortably
house the same number of people in a sort of glorified tenement
house or apartment house; each family might have at least one large
living-room where the members could get together in comfort and
have a much better chance for conserving family life than they have
in the little square box. Some of us still believe that a workingman
has a sense of ownership only when he puts his savings into a piece
of ground or the house in which he lives. To tie a workman down to
a given piece of ground is often of questionable good. A man may
put all his savings into a house on the North Side of Chicago, for
instance, and before it is paid for, find himself out of work; his next
work may be fifteen miles from that place, in South Chicago. If
his house is partially paid for, it is very difficult to get rid of it, and
it is also difficult and expensive to travel fifteen miles twice a day.
If his property had been in some other form, let us say stocks or
bonds, it would have allowed him much more mobility in regard to
his labor, and he would have a better chance of adjusting himself
to the changing conditions of his trade.
A Housing Conference, it seems to me, ought first of all to look
at industrial conditions as they confront the workingman of to-day,
not as conditions existed fifteen or twenty years ago, nor as they
existed for our fathers. A conference should not consider the
workingman of its imagination, nor yet the workingman as he
103ought to be, but the workingman of to-day as he finds himself,
with his family, with his savings, with his difficulty of keeping a
place very long, due to the sudden changes in the methods of his
trade. His employer is obliged to make constant changes and adaptations
in his factory, but his landlord is afraid to try changes in his
house. We hold a certain fiction in our minds of what home is
and what it ought to be, forgetting how far back it goes, that it
can survive all sorts of changes and adaptations, that the one thing
which will kill it is that which kills every living thing, i. e., lack of
adaptation to its environment; if it fails to adapt itself to the situation
as it really exists, it is for the first time endangered. If the
community, as a whole, gives its mind to it, as the Philadelphia
community seems to be doing, and knows conditions accurately
and thoroughly, I am sure we are going to see very marked changes
in the housing of the poorer people of the modern cities, and we
shall no more cling to the single house than to the country store.
The time may come, when, if in any city, the death-rate rises above
the normal, that the body of public-spirited citizens shall at once
feel forced to do something about it, that they shall be filled with a
sense of disgrace and feel that a disaster has occurred in their city.
At the present moment the death-rate is constantly above the
normal, in certain quarters of our cities; we allow it to be high year
after year, knowing that it is excessive. This apathy can only be
explained on one of two grounds, either that we do not know the
housing conditions which exist, or that we are so selfish as to have
no sense of responsibility in regard to them.
“Q. Is the discretion, which Miss Addams says is abused in
Chicago to such an extent, exercised with regard to the legal court
area which should be left unoccupied by the building?
“A. (Miss Addams), I would reply, yes, that buildings are
permitted to go up with lesser court areas than provided by law.
The matter is so largely in the hands of the office giving the permit
that almost every provision is changed. I think we found
in this investigation houses which illustrated the encroachment
upon and the breaking of every single ordinance found upon the
statute books, in regard to the shaft area as well as other provisions.
104“Q. I cannot see why the figures mentioned should be unduly
low for the rent per room per month, or should be too low to permit
a reasonable profit to the owner of property. I have rented a six-room
house in Washington, around the corner from one of the best
residence districts, for $3.50 per room per month; furnished rooms
in New York, near Columbia University, for $2.00 a week, and
downtown, near the business part of the city, for $1.50, furnished,
with attendance. I wonder if Mr. De Forest can tell us what, under
modern conditions in New York City, for example, should be a fair
rent which would enable a landlord to get a fair profit on the investment
per room per month.
“A. (Mr. De Forest), In New York, rents are, I think, on a
business basis. In other words, I do think the landlords expect to
receive, and do receive from their tenements a normal income, and,
in many instances more than a normal income. The modern
tenements which are being put up by the City and Suburban
Homes Company of New York, which are now being increased in
number, do produce a fair income, representing not less than 4
per cent on the money invested. I refer to the buildings constructed
at the present time under the modern requirements of the
state law.
“Q. The Washington Sanitary Improvement Company paid 5
per cent from the very beginning and rents its flats for about $3.00
per room per month. The buildings are one to three stories high.
“A. Land is considerably higher in Washington. This land
is not less than $150, and usually $200 a foot. The price quoted
lowest was $1.78 per room per month, whereas your price was
$2.00 a week, for New York; $3.00 and $3.50 per month for
Washington.
“Q. We have heard this question from the standpoint of Chicago,
New York and Philadelphia, but the clientele of this association,
as I understand it, covers the entire country, and I should
like to ask Mr. De Forest whether it is not true that the investigation
made by the Tenement House Commission of New York disclosed
the fact that in virtually every manufacturing city of the
country there is to-day distinctly a housing problem for the poor and
that definite constructive work needs to be done to remedy the evils.
“A. The investigation made by the Tenement House Commission
which covered all the large cities, and some of the smaller
ones of the country, includes statistics from twenty selected cities.
105It is true that the tenement house problem presents itself in a much
less degree in some places than in others; it does so to a much less
extent in Philadelphia. In other large cities of the country the
housing problem exists to a large extent, and so much so in some
of the smaller cities that last winter the cities of the second class in
New York State—Syracuse, Utica, Albany and Rochester—took up
the problem of regulation in these cities. Jersey City, which is
directly opposite New York, and which is a comparatively small
city, has some of the worst housing conditions in the whole country.
“Q. About how large a proportion of the population is affected
by the housing problem in New York?
“A. The total population of New York is about 3,400,000.
Out of that population upwards of 2,200,000 live in tenement
houses, as legally defined, which includes apartment houses.
The proportion in Brooklyn is quite as large as in New York,
although there is a smaller number of families per house.
“Q. What is a double-decker?
“A. (Miss Addams), The double-decker was originally, of
course, a house, which grew from the fact that there was a front
tenement and a rear tenement, and that later the two were joined
into one house.
“Q. I would like to ask Miss Addams as to Chicago and Mr.
De Forest as to Brooklyn, whether any notice has been taken of
the question as to the best pavement for the poor sections of the
city, that is, whether asphalt for the lanes and alleys is not, as a
rule, cleaner in appearance and in other ways, than other kinds of
paving, as cobblestone, for instance.
“A. (Miss Addams), I will ask Mr. De Forest to answer that.
Paving is a weak point in Chicago.
“A. (Mr. De Forest), Perhaps I ought to say that I am glad to
find some point on which New York has something to say. Most
of our congested tenement districts in New York, largely on the
East Side, have been paved with asphalt. This is regarded as a
matter of grave importance, and was one of the subjects considered
by the Tenement House Commission; that in some districts
there should be asphalt pavements, because the families almost
live in the streets in summer and the children all play there, was
one consideration, and keeping the streets clean was another of
great importance.
“Q. Do you think that the facilitation of the workingman
106in change of residence, either within metropolitan borders, or from
one city to another, or from one state to another, is a good thing
in contemplation of his privileges and duties as an American
citizen?
“A. I think that in industry, as it is now organized, with
the sudden changes and fluctuations of skill, if the workman is
deprived of the power to sell his labor, it is very bad for him.
Then I think the adaptable person is a better American citizen
than a person who is planted too hard.
“Q. Are you not, therefore, regarding only the rights and the
good that may be done to the individual, eliminating altogether
his obligations as a citizen?
“A. What I wanted to say was this, that I think we have a
way of relegating all the old-fashioned virtues to workingmen and
reserving to ourselves the most interesting and more adaptable
virtues. We say to our workmen, do not drink, be thrifty and industrious.
These are good but negative. We reserve to ourselves
the power of developing an interesting life, and all the rest of it.
On general principles, if a man can stay in one place and own his
house, of course it is better for him both from a financial and social
point of view; but there are exceptions, and we all know that the
present industrial conditions imply constant change both in
methods and place of manufacture, that if we really understood
the workingman’s needs and were trying to serve him, we would
evolve some such plan as has been evolved in Belgium. A man
there puts his savings into the Government Savings Bank, which
has all the features of a building and loan association. As I
understand it, he may make partial payments upon a house in
Brussels, but if his work takes him away from that city to another
within the kingdom—let us say Ghent—he may transfer his payments
to a house in Ghent. On the other hand he may remain
in Brussels, complete his payments until he owns his house or
withdraw his stock in his own house, after allowing for proper
depreciation, and hold his savings in simple bank stock. The
entire arrangement is flexible and adaptable, and transfers the
sense of ownership from the simple ownership of land and house,
to the more complex one of stock.
“Q. Regarding gardens, playgrounds and gymnasiums, which,
in some sections of Philadelphia—namely, the College Settlement—have
been located on the tops of buildings for the benefit of children,
has that been done in New York and Chicago, and with what success?
107“A. I should say, yes, so far as the movement has gone,
that is with regard to open playgrounds, not speaking of roof
gardens, and with regard to open parks. The small park movement
has undoubtedly done a great deal of good, and the children’s
playground, so far as it has gone. It has not gone to the extent that
its friends desire. So far as roof gardens are concerned, that is,
the adoption of roofs for recreation, that has not been done so far
as I know. It has been thought of and talked of, but never
carried out.”
109
Report Prepared by the Octavia Hill Association
111The work of the Octavia Hill Association has been one of
detailed management of the houses of the poor and not of investigation,
but it cannot let this opportunity pass without describing
some of the conditions known to it. No comprehensive report of
housing conditions in Philadelphia has ever been made. The
Seventh Special Report of the Commissioner of Labor in 1894 on
the Slums of Great Cities has interesting data on living conditions
at that time in certain sections of the slum districts, while “The
Philadelphia Negro,” a social study, by W. E. Burghardt Dubois,
published by the University of Pennsylvania in 1899, throws a
vivid light on the problem in its relation to the colored population
of the Seventh Ward. We believe that the time has come for
wider consideration of this important subject. Our purpose in
this paper is to urge strongly the importance, if not the necessity,
of a thorough investigation and that one may be undertaken in
the near future before our situation becomes more serious.
Philadelphia had in 1900 a population of 1,293,697 persons,
covering an area of almost 130 square miles, with an average density
of about fifteen persons to an acre. Of its 258,690 dwelling-houses
more than one-half are two-story dwellings, and its average
number of persons to a dwelling is 4.91. These facts show that
our problems differ radically from those of New York and Chicago
and that it is the house built for occupation by a single family and
not the tenement, which is the important feature for us to consider.
The excellent system which has made Philadelphia famous
and has given it a larger proportion of separate dwellings for the
working classes than any city of an equal population, has blinded
our eyes too long to the evils which have been growing up about us.
Until within a few years the building law was practically a dead
letter, and no check was placed on the avarice of the landlord in his
desire to gain the utmost possible return from his ground space.
Even to-day we have no laws for the enforcement of underdrainage
and our municipal departments are unable with their small force
112of inspectors to cope with the conditions we are facing. These facts
have given us problems which though the way to their solution may
be plain, yet demand serious consideration.
Philadelphia can be justly proud of the way in which the needs
of the regularly employed wage-earner have been met by the small
house. In the newer and outlying parts of the city this house is
found in its best development. There are rows upon rows, streets
upon streets of attractive four and six roomed houses with an increasing
number of modern conveniences. Sanitary plumbing,
bath, range, furnace, gas, a cemented cellar, a porch and a small
yard may be had for from $15.00 to $20.00 a month. Three thousand
six hundred and twenty-five two-story houses were in 1901
added to the already large number of these and the Building and
Loan Associations bear witness to the continued demand and the
increase of popular ownership.
Nearer to the centre of the city also, and in the great mill and
factory districts, one finds still the individual home, but here the
houses are older, the rows seem longer and more unbroken in their
monotony and in innumerable courts and alleys there is surface
drainage. Here, also, we find the various features of the problem
which grows more difficult in the older parts of the city and as the
social scale is lowered. In prosperous times, each small house
holds one family. In times of industrial depression the house built
for one family must with no additional conveniences, no better
arrangements for privacy and comfort, accommodate two or more.
For the purpose of this report we have considered mainly the
district in the southeastern part of the city where our own work
centres.[4] The five wards, where this district lies, contain about
one-tenth of the population of the city and cover about one-eightieth
of the area or one and three-fifths square miles. The average
density of population in these wards is 123 persons to an acre. In
the Third Ward the average number increases to 209. The wards
are relatively well provided with park area, but the whole amount
used for this purpose is only 16.88 acres out of a total of 1030 acres,
which shows the crying need there is for more breathing spaces in
these congested districts. There are a number of old graveyards
which would be valuable additions to the park area if they were
so used. The total number of inhabitants in the five wards is
113127,466. Of these, 50,733 are foreign born, 17,611 are negroes. It
is impossible to attempt a description of the many phases of life
throughout this region. The large numbers of foreigners are
grouped together according to nationality, in fairly well-defined
geographical areas, each showing many characteristics of its own
national life. The slum districts shift their centres somewhat in
the changing of populations, but are seemingly as strongly entrenched
as ever and extend over increasingly large areas. Architecturally
the buildings show great variety. Quaint, gabled frame
houses often in the most dilapidated condition, modern brick
dwellings, colonial houses of fine proportions, and tenements are
found side by side often in picturesque proximity.
The size of the block in Philadelphia is an important factor
in any consideration of its housing conditions. This block averages
about 400 feet square. By the purpose of the founder of the
city it was intended that each house should be in the middle of the
“breadth of his ground, so as to give place to gardens, etc., such
as might be a green country towne which might never be burnt and
might always be wholesome.”[5] This large size has continued to
be the plan of the city and has lent itself readily to being cut up
into the network of inner courts and alleys which are practically
universal. The gardens, however, in all the poorer districts, have
totally disappeared. The small house has been crowded onto the
ground formerly allotted to them, and the revenue from the land
has been increased by an intensive process, which while not building
into the air has covered the ground with large numbers of
dwellings. It is the limited height of the buildings that is the
saving factor. If the houses were high with the consequent increase
of overcrowding to the acre, the conditions would be extreme.
From the various types of houses known to us we have chosen
for special mention three of those which show most clearly the
character and needs of this district. The most striking of these
is the occasional large tenement. In the early nineties the great
increase of immigration suggested the building of tenements as a
profitable investment. The result was a goodly number of scattered
houses, built under the law governing the building of the
ordinary dwelling-house and showing some of the worst phases of
tenement house construction. Narrow air-shafts, lots closely built
114over, insufficient plumbing, badly ventilated and dark rooms, inadequate
fire-escapes, would if multiplied have thrust upon us a
problem of a very serious form. These houses hold from sixteen
to fifty families. In many instances the yard space is a long narrow
strip on which all the rooms are dependent for air and light except
those on the front of the building. When the adjoining lot is
covered in the same way the result is a narrow well in which sunshine
cannot enter and through which there is no circulation of air.
In one case, in a house built on the four sides of its ground, sixty-four
rooms open on such a well which is seven feet six inches in
width, while in another instance a copy of the New York dumb-bell
plan is found. This movement was fortunately watched and
arrested in its early development. Through the thoughtful action
of Mr. Hector McIntosh and with the co-operation of a number of
prominent city officials and others, a wise law was framed and
accepted by the Legislature. The evil was checked and the building
of large and badly arranged tenements prevented.
Under this act of May 7, 1895, the term tenement is defined as
meaning every building which is, or is to be, occupied by three or
more families, living independently of each other and doing their
cooking on the premises. The act provides that not more than 80
per cent of a lot can be built on, except in corner properties, that
the width of a yard shall be not less than eight feet, that every room
in such houses shall have a window opening upon a street or upon
the yard, that every tenement house over four stories high shall
be fireproof, throughout. It has also stringent provisions in regard
to water supply, sanitation, minimum size of rooms, halls,
etc. The cost of building is thus so much increased as to be
almost prohibitive.
In 1890 the percentage of families living in tenement houses
in Philadelphia was 1.44. Whatever the increase in this figure
may be in the census of 1900,[6] it remains true that only the poorest
live in one and two rooms, and that as soon as a higher rent can be
paid, or a small house can be had at a low rent, the change is eagerly
made. The management of all large tenements is very difficult, and
manifest evils are sure to follow neglect and inefficiency on the
part of the owners. Thus, in a community containing so large a
number of small houses, the tide was turned from this plan of
115housing at a critical moment, the results of which are of far-reaching
benefit.
The second class of house which is found prominently is that
built for one family of the better class and now converted to the
use of three or more families of the very poor. In the history of
housing in other cities, these houses have formed one step in the
evolution of such tenements as we have described. Here, they
form the most important phase of our tenement house problem.
May it not be that by wisely adapting them to the needs of the
very poor they can take the place of the larger tenements and give
to Philadelphia the proud distinction of housing these classes in
small buildings, which shall avoid the evils attendant upon the
herding of many families together? At present, there are large
numbers of houses of this class in the older parts of this region and
a total failure of any adaptation of the old arrangements to suit
the new conditions. The houses are usually well built and the
rooms large and well ventilated, but there is no attempt at adequate
or sanitary plumbing. The hydrant in the yard is often the
only water supply and there is probably but one closet, also in the
yard, the privy well of which may be shared by three adjoining
houses. Little attention is given to care or management. The
repairs are neglected, the stairways are dark, the halls obstructed
by extra furniture and rubbish. In many cases the cellars are damp
and filthy and give no provision for storage. The yards are obstructed,
there are no arrangements for drying clothes.
The law provides that when buildings are altered into tenements
certain provisions shall be enforced, but it makes no mention
of the need for this alteration in houses so used without changes,
nor does it exact any such changes. The landlord of the district is
keenly alive to the fact that when alterations are to be made, an
affidavit that the house is to be used by only two families will protect
him from the exactions of the tenement house law. A special
investigation into houses of this class would surely show how the
law could be amended to cover their defects and to fit them at a
moderate expenditure and under good regulation to meet the needs
of the newly arrived immigrant and of the very poor.
This type of houses built for one family and changed into tenements
has another and a worse form when it is used for what is
known as a “furnished room house.” There is a large, and it is
believed a steadily increasing, number of these in the older parts
116of the city and where conditions have greatly deteriorated. There
are no data on which to estimate their number. A thorough inquiry
could be made only with police or other authority behind the
workers. These houses are tenements and have all the objectionable
features of tenements in a marked degree, besides others peculiar
to themselves. These features are intensified by the character
of the tenants, who are of the lowest class. Sometimes the
houses are used for immoral purposes, and the occupants generally
are shiftless, intemperate and slovenly. Some few are deserving
families where the breadwinner is out of work. Their conditions
are deplorable, and they have not even the stimulus to decent living
that comes from the ownership of household goods. The buildings
are generally old, and ill-adapted to the number of people crowded
in them. The rooms are rented by the week at prices ranging from
$1.50 to $2.50 per room. They have the scantiest possible equipment
of old and dilapidated furniture. They are dirty and unventilated;
the beds and bedding indescribable. Water is seldom found above
the ground floor. Bath-tubs are unknown or used for storage.
In most cases there is but one closet in the yard for all the tenants
of the house. The yards, as a rule, are filthy. There is no apparent
effort at cleanliness or supervision. One room is the ordinary
rule for one family, with frequent boarders in addition. In some
cases the large rooms have been divided by flimsy partitions, and
each half is occupied by a family. The primary need of these
houses is frequent and efficient inspection. This is more urgent
than in a case of ordinary tenements, as the occupants are the
lowest and the poorest, and unable or unwilling to make any efforts
in their own behalf. In no way can the Health and Building Department
regulations be enforced, nor any general improvement
in the condition of these houses be effected, except by a system
of periodic inspection, followed by action by the proper city departments.
It is entirely possible that a thorough investigation
of these houses made under adequate authority throughout the
city, would show the prevalence of conditions warranting a system
of licensing—the license to be revoked upon failure by the landlord
to enforce reasonable regulations as to cleanliness, decency,
overcrowding, etc.—in addition to the present laws applying to all
tenement houses.
The third class of houses to which we would draw special
attention is that of the rear dwelling, a small two or three-story
117house, built sometimes singly and sometimes in rows of from two
to eight or ten houses on the rear of the front house. This plan of
building has been characterized as the horizontal rather than the
vertical tenement. The entrance to the row is by a narrow passage-way
from the street or court. This passage-way is also frequently
the means by which the surface drainage is carried to the street or
to an open sewer-connection at its entrance. The space in front
of the houses is the only yard. Sometimes this space widens at the
end of the entrance-way and there is a double row of dwellings
facing each other and covering the rears of two or three front lots.
Sometimes again the open space forms a square with houses on
three sides. Thus one comes unexpectedly on a little community
whose existence one has not imagined. More often, however, the
narrow passage-way runs the whole length of the row and in many
cases the brick wall of an adjoining lot shuts away all air and sunshine
and makes a prison of the little court.
In a careful investigation made by the college settlement into
the sanitary condition of one block in its immediate neighborhood,
this type of house was strongly illustrated. Out of a total of 196
houses in the block, over 90 were rear dwellings, and but a small
proportion of these was underdrained. The building of rear houses
is now prohibited by law. Such an investigation as we ask for
would show many localities where some houses should be torn
down to give light and air to the others, and other cases where the
courts should be cut through or entirely demolished. Where the
conditions are good, however, these houses meet the needs of the
very poor and offer the advantage of an individual house, at a
low rent, even though it involve the common use of yard space and
closet and water conveniences.
Enough has been said about sanitation to show the great need
of reform. The death-rate is not the only gauge of the sanitary
condition of the neighborhood. It is shown also in lowered vitality
and poor health for which there are no statistical returns.
The prevalence of surface drainage in Philadelphia is very imperfectly
realized. Of its 1500 miles of streets, according to a Bulletin
of the Department of Labor in 1901, there were in that year 419
miles that were unpaved, and 613 miles without sewers, leaving a
balance of at least 193 miles of paved streets without underdrainage.
In streets where drains have been laid, many houses have
not been connected. The open drains still run through the great
118majority of alleys, where the decaying matter stands in the gutters
and when dried is scattered about by the wind. Neglected and
foul privy wells are frequently found. The people are eager to
tell their grievances and many are submitting patiently to intolerable
conditions.
The most essential step now to be taken by the city is systematic
and frequent inspection of sanitary conditions. If it is
not possible to enforce underdrainage at once, such inspection
would cause it to be enforced where flagrant nuisances exist, and
the moral influence of an official would stimulate to better standards.
The Board of Health can make but rare inspections on its
own initiative and its small force of twenty inspectors of nuisances
is unable to respond promptly to the numbers of complaints made
to it. If this force and the force of the Bureau of Building Inspection
were largely increased, with added powers, the evils of
insanitary dwellings and of the evasion of the building law could
be readily dealt with. There is no large city where these problems
could be more easily solved.
To prove more fully the need of such measures we hope that
an investigation full enough to give a comprehensive knowledge of
existing conditions may soon be made. The results of such an
investigation would not only promote these reforms, but would
suggest other means of undoing the evils which have arisen from
our long neglect and of safeguarding the future.
We have spoken thus far of the need of reform through legislation
and the strengthening of the municipal departments whose
work is so important in these districts. Such measures are necessary
for all classes; it is for the very poor that something more is
needed. The principle cannot be too strongly set forth that it is
the management of the dwellings of the poor, whether they live in
courts or tenements, that is to be the means of securing to them
health and comfort, of giving them, in reality, homes. Miss Octavia
Hill began in London in 1864 the work that was destined from the
strength of its underlying principles to become a significant factor
in dealing on these lines with the housing problem in Europe and
also to some extent in this country.
While considering that the “spiritual elevation of a large class
depends to a considerable extent on sanitary reform,”[7] Miss Hill
believes also that sanitary improvement itself depends upon the
119educational work among grown-up people and that this work must
be effected by individual influence. It is this influence in the
hands of the landlord or his representative that is so great a power,
and can be used either for weal or woe.
Miss Hill’s plan is not to tear down old buildings and to begin
anew, but to improve existing conditions gradually as the tenants
are trained gradually to appreciate and desire better things. This
work is done with the assistance of large numbers of volunteer rent
collectors, each one of whom is specially trained and is given a
small group of tenants to care for. We quote from Miss Hill as
to the duties of the collectors: “We have tried so far as possible
to enlist ladies who would have an idea of how, by diligent attention
to all business which devolves on a landlord, by wise rule with
regard to all duties which a tenant should fulfill, by sympathetic
and just decisions with a view to the common good, a high standard
of management could be obtained. Repairs promptly and
efficiently attended to, references carefully taken up, cleaning
sedulously supervised, overcrowding put an end to, the blessing of
ready money payment enforced, accounts strictly kept and, above
all, tenants so sorted as to be helpful to one another.” The relation
thus established on a basis of mutual obligation is one of real and
often enduring helpfulness, and the opportunities for service are
almost unlimited.
Miss Hill’s work has from the first been on a sound business
basis and has given excellent financial returns. She has never
formed any association of the owners of the many properties under
her care, or of the workers who manage them. She has felt that
the work is freer, and more real when thus untrammeled.
Many cities have followed the example of London in this plan
of work. That of the Edinburgh Social Union is of unusual interest.
It believes, as we must all believe, that the “immediate question
to face is how to make the best of present conditions, how to
raise the standard of comfort without waiting for legislative
changes.” Its reports tell a story of successful growth which is
full of valuable and suggestive experience.
In Philadelphia the need for the extension of such work grows
to us stronger and more insistent as we learn more of the neglected
places of our city, of the many streets and courts which need such
influences as these. We believe that this work must grow and that
there will come also a more realizing sense of the responsibility of
120the community for the welfare of its people. In the wise control
of new building, and of the apartment houses which may be tenements
in the future, by planning for wide streets and many open
spaces, by the awakening of higher civic standards we shall come
also to a higher social order. “Victory over evil at its source and
not in its consequences; reforms which shall regard the welfare of
future generations, who are the greatest number.”[8]
Editor’s Note.—The Octavia Hill Association is a stock company organized
to improve living conditions in such neighborhoods as those described
in the foregoing paper, on lines similar to the work of Miss Octavia Hill in
London. Its aim is to improve old houses and small properties rather than
to build new ones. It uses women rent collectors, both paid workers and
volunteers. The Association was organized in 1896 and has a capital stock
of $50,000; it has paid yearly dividends of 4 per cent and 4½ per cent.
Its capital is invested in houses which when purchased were typical of the
classes above described. These houses have been properly altered and
repaired and demonstrate the possibility of overcoming such conditions and
yet receiving a fair financial return. The Association assumes also the
management of property for other owners. It has seventy-seven houses
now under its care, sixty-five of which are small houses for separate families,
and twelve are tenements of a medium size, averaging eleven or
twelve rooms each. The Association desires especially to extend its work
of managing the properties of other owners, believing that the relation
thus established is stronger and more enduring than where the ownership is
in a company. Its directors are:
Nathaniel B. Crenshaw, President, Girard Trust Company, Broad and
Chestnut streets; Miss Hannah Fox, 339 South Broad street; Mrs. William F.
Jenks, 920 Clinton street; Mrs. Thomas S. Kirkbride, Secretary, 1406 Spruce
street; Hector McIntosh, 605 North Sixteenth street; Miss Helen L. Parrish,
1135 Spruce street; Mrs. William M. Lybrand, 139 East Walnut Lane, Germantown;
George Woodward, M. D., Chestnut Hill; C. H. Ludington, Jr.,
Treasurer, 425 Arch street.
121
By Robert Treat Paine, Esq.
Boston
123The housing conditions of Boston may be studied under five
aspects:
1. The growth of population compared with the increase of
houses.
2. The facilities for the building of new houses by private
enterprise.
3. The influence of philanthropic efforts in building model
blocks and separate homes.
4. Building laws.
5. The diminution of slum conditions.
1. The following table has been prepared by Dr. E. M. Hartwell,
statistician of Boston.
Population and Number of Dwelling-Houses with Per Cent of Annual Increase.
Year.
Estimated Population.
Per Cent Increase.
Total Number of Dwelling-Houses.
Per Cent Increase.
Of those Vacant Dwellings.
1891
457,772
2.07
53,429
2.42
1,104
1892
467,260
2.07
54,853
2.67
1,269
1893
476,945
2.07
56,730
3.42
1,446
1894
486,830
2.07
58,310
2.79
1,866
1895
496,920
2.07
60,039
2.96
1,964
1896
509,102
2.45
60,278
.40
2,205
1897
521,583
2.45
61,573
2.15
2,127
1898
534,370
2.45
62,850
2.07
2,647
1899
547,470
2.45
63,890
1.65
2,902
1900
560,892
2.45
64,886
1.56
2,686
1901
573,579
2.26
65,600
1.10
2,627
In the ten years from 1891 to 1901, while the population
increased from 457,772 to 573,579, or 25.3 per cent, the number of
dwelling-houses increased from 53,429 to 65,600, or 22.8 per cent,
not quite keeping pace; and though not a few of the new buildings
124are capacious tenement houses, yet actual conditions have probably
not improved. It is to be noted that 4 per cent of the
dwellings are vacant.
2. The facilities for the building of new houses in the suburbs
steadily increase. The suburbs of Boston are deservedly healthy
and are ample for a vast population.
The President of the Boston Elevated Railway Company has
furnished the following statistics, which show in the last five and
ten year periods a marvelous development and explain the exodus
outward from the crowded centre into happy and healthy suburban
life on some of the hundred hills which make these suburbs so
attractive. This outward migration shows no sign of culmination,
but is still under full headway.
The running time of the cars has improved so that it now
averages nine miles per hour on the whole system, against six miles
or less ten years ago when horses were used, and within the last five
years it has been reduced about 8 per cent. The track mileage
increased from 260 miles in 1891 to 296 in 1896 and 408 in 1901.
“For the year ending September 30, 1891, we ran 2,326,274 trips,
17,462,572 miles, carried 119,264,401 revenue passengers and
8,466,311 free transfer passengers. The average length of each
trip at that time was 7.5 miles. Five years later we ran 2,822,142
trips, 25,841,907 miles, carried 166,862,288 revenue passengers and
17,566,361 free transfer passengers. The average length of each
trip was 9.16 miles. Five years later, or for the last fiscal year,
we ran 3,883,737 trips, 43,631,384 miles, carried 213,703,983 revenue
passengers and 65,000,000 free transfer passengers. The length
of each trip had increased to 11.23 miles.”
The co-operative bank system has greatly promoted the construction
and separate ownership of the modest and cosy little
homes springing up so rapidly in all the suburbs of Boston. The
Pioneer Bank was started in 1877, and to-day there are in Boston
eighteen of these co-operative banks with a capital of $5,029,478,
nearly the whole of it loaned out on small estates. A score of
years ago it was no easy matter to obtain a “building loan,” but
co-operative banks have perfected the system of loans to builders
upon houses “in process of construction.” The admirable process
of small monthly payments not only educates the borrowers into
habits of saving, but in a few years reduces the loan, so that the
old-fashioned savings banks with their immense capital can take
125up at lower rates these loans, when they are reduced to the statute
limit of 60 per cent of the value of the estate. Hence it is the
case that the $5,000,000 of co-operative bank capital by no means
measures the full beneficial influence of this system in the growth
of suburban homes.
3. The influence of philanthropic enterprise, compared with
that of private business, has been insignificant.
Three incorporated societies are working in a small way, the
oldest, the Boston Co-operative Building Company, chartered in
1871. With a capital of $292,000, it has about $400,000 invested
in seventy-eight houses with 985 rooms, occupied by 311 families
containing 1,023 persons.
The Harrison avenue group of twenty-four three-storied brick
houses—each, except the corners, arranged for three families—has
attracted deserved attention, with its hollow square in the centre,
tastefully arranged as a playground for the children, and a bit of
beauty for the parents.
The company has just started to reproduce this hollow square
on its last purchase of 33,000 feet on Massachusetts avenue. Mr.
A. W. Longfellow, the architect of the Harrison avenue group,
furnishes this plan of a corner and a normal interior house just
completed on Massachusetts avenue, showing the latest developments
of model tenement house design, and also a land plan.
The thirty-one years of life of this company show many vicissitudes;
7 per cent being earned for some years, and then from
1876 to 1889, dividends were stopped or reduced to 3 per cent
and earnings were invested. Recently dividends have been 6
per cent or 5 per cent. But the capitalization of undivided profits
has been so large, that it is not possible to ascertain what the just
annual earnings are from year to year, and hence the educational
influence is lost upon other capitalists who might be incited, by a
clear and exact statement of facts, to follow the most commendable
lead of this company in building the very best model tenements
and having them managed by the considerate care of women agents.
The Workingmen’s Building Association was organized in
1888, to build small separate houses for sale. Its first purchase of
668,591 feet, about three miles out in Roxbury, was most successful.
This tract was divided into 150 lots, averaging 4,457 feet, so that
one acre has ten lots, with an estimated population of sixty to
seventy souls.
126
FIRST FLOOR PLAN OF TWO HOUSES OF THE MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE BLOCK FOR THE BOSTON COÖPERATIVE BUILDING COMPANY ❋ ·A· W· LONGFELLOW· ARCHITECT·
127
PLAN SHOWING ARRANGEMENT OF BLOCKS ON MASS. AVE. LOT [150′ × 200′] AS PROPOSED FOR THE BOSTON COÖPERATIVE BUILDING COMPANY ❋❋❋ ·A·W·LONGFELLOW·ARCHITECT· BOSTON·
128The houses cost from $1,800 to $3,000, and were almost all
for single families, total cost of a house and land varying from
$2,600 to $4,500. They were all sold by 1894. Its next venture
in Dorchester found the demand for single houses painfully reduced
in the depression of the last seven years, while a marked preference
shows itself for “two-family” or “three-flat” houses.
This company has not succeeded in building houses at lower
cost, to its great regret.
4. The building laws of a city greatly influence results. Boston
was startled by its great fire of 1872 into creating a stringent
code. This was remodeled in 1885, chapter 374. After a commission
had studied the subject anew, the present code was enacted
in 1892, chapter 419, with subsequent amendments.
Two features are especially important: (1), the percentage
of the area of a lot which may be built upon; (2), the height of the
buildings and the provisions as to fireproof construction.
The law of 1892 permitted three-quarters of the area to be
covered, measuring to the middle of the streets on which the lot
abuts. This proviso, however, would allow a building to cover
the whole of a lot sixty feet deep on a forty-foot street. The act
also required two exposures on open spaces at least ten feet wide,
of an aggregate length of one foot, for every twenty-five square
feet occupied by the building.
These last provisions, however, were found not to prohibit the
construction of a huge four-storied tenement house on a lot forty-two
feet wide and 101 feet deep, built on a dumb-bell plan, with
only about two feet of open land across a part, but not the whole,
of the rear. It was the erection, in 1894, of this barrack, which led
many observers to doubt whether these new conditions were not
worse than the old; whether these vast tenement houses, sometimes
called model houses, were not far worse in many essentials for the
health and welfare of their occupants than the little old houses,
often built of wood, which they replaced. These views are confirmed
by the deliberate judgment which Miss Octavia Hill has
put on record in her valuable chapter in the second volume of
Charles Booth’s great work on London.
The construction of this great tenement house, with such
trifling rear light, occasioned the act of 1895, chapter 239, which
reduced the area to be occupied from 75 to 65 per cent, and also
required an open space across the whole rear of the building, and
129of a depth equal to one-half the width of the front street, not
exceeding twenty feet, or an equivalent area of open space in the
rear of other dimensions.
The act of 1897, chapter 413, section 9, exempts corner lots
from this requirement of open rear land, and also gives the Building
Commissioner discretion to accept “an equivalent area of open
space in the rear or on either side of such building.”
It is worthy of note that these requirements are less stringent
than those in the new tenement house law, chapter 334, of 1901, for
Greater New York, which limits the building to 90 per cent of a
corner lot and 70 per cent of any other lot.
Secondly, the law of 1897, chapter 413, section 3, required
every tenement house to be a first-class building, i. e., “of fireproof
construction throughout.” It was at once apprehended
that this requirement, that all tenement houses must be of fireproof
construction, would stop the building of tenement houses for
tenants paying moderate rents. Subsequent investigation showed,
that after existing permits had been exhausted, few, if any, tenement
houses were built with tenements renting at $16 a month or
less. Reaction set in, and by the act of 1900, chapter 321, the
requirement of fireproof construction was removed from tenement
houses of not more than four stories and not more than fifty feet
in height, but here again came a proviso limiting these houses to
“two families, or less, above the second story.”
This is the present tenement house law of Boston. It seriously
handicaps the construction of tenement houses, but whether
this is too stringent, and the influences are harmful, is not yet
apparent. So far as an impulse is given to scatter the population
out into the healthier suburbs and into the small, separate,
detached suburban homes, each with its little plot of land, instead
of the fearful overcrowding of families in the huge new tenement
houses, students of the social welfare of the people must certainly
rejoice.
In the old North End of Boston, where population is densest
and rentals are highest, the erection of new tenement houses and
the remodeling of old buildings into tenement houses are visible
in many of the streets. On the other hand, in the southerly part
of old Boston, such enterprise is nearly at a standstill and rents are
falling, owing probably to the greater attractiveness of the neighboring
suburbs.
130The definition of a tenement house by the number of tenements,
rather than by the number of rooms, discriminates with
unintended harshness on just that class whose welfare ought
especially to be studied, the very poor, the lone widow, the widower,
the parent with a single child, who always find with difficulty a
single spacious room, and usually pay higher rents because of the
short supply of such much-needed accommodation. Twenty
years ago a committee of the Associated Charities made a report
to show the importance of building tenements of a single room
and to call the attention of capitalists to this need. A small one-storied
house with only four rooms, adapted for the needs of four
separate women, must conform to all the expensive provisions of
the tenement house code.
A just and judicious amendment should define a tenement
house as having more than three tenements “and containing more
than twelve rooms.”
Workers among the poor were surprised last year at orders
issuing from the Board of Health, for single tenants to vacate single
rooms. Such a notice was nailed on the door of the large “square
room” in the model block of the Boston Co-operative Building
Company, on Canton street, occupied by a lone old woman. It is
supposed that this mistaken policy has been abandoned.
A strange thing happened in 1892; the building law of that
year, chapter 419, in its final section 138, repealing numerous laws,
included a repeal of the health provision, 1885, chapter 382, section
4, defining for health purposes a “tenement house.” So that since
1892, the Board of Health has been shorn of so much of its powers
over tenement houses as depended on the definition, so carefully
inserted in the health law of 1885, which has been since then the
health code of Boston. Perhaps it is stranger still that no allusion
can be found in the annual reports of the Board of Health, to this
mysterious and probably unintended curtailment of health powers,
the exact legal effect whereof no man can tell.[9]
1315. A crusade for the extirpation of the slums of Boston has
been waged for the last fifteen years, thus far with no great success.
Housing conditions are justly to be condemned so long as old,
dilapidated and unsanitary buildings are allowed to stand, often
so overcrowded upon the land that sunlight and air are practically
shut out. Such conditions are a disgrace to any city. They tempt
the most wretched of the poor, or vicious, or criminal classes to
worse degradation. The breadwinner loses his health, which is
his only wealth. Children grow up in shameless loss of self-respect.
Frequent visitors are physicians, police officers, and charity agents;
physicians to struggle with needless disease, the police to arrest
criminals created by their foul environment, and charity agents to
relieve countless varieties of want caused by cruel and unjust
conditions of life.
Private initiative has been struggling in these years to secure
more vigorous action by the Board of Health in the destruction of
the worst slums. Prof. Dwight Porter, acting under the auspices
of a voluntary committee, made an investigation and “Report upon
a Sanitary Inspection of Certain Tenement house Districts in Boston,”
in 1888, which really started the movement.
Committees of the Associated Charities have lodged indictments
against many vile slums and have been heard by the board.
In 1891–2, the state caused the Bureau of Labor to make a thorough
and exhaustive investigation. The report of Hon. H. G. Wadlin
sets forth in two volumes the results. (22d and 23d Annual
Reports of the Bureau of the Statistics of Labor. “A Tenement
House Census of Boston,” made pursuant to chapter 115, Resolves
of 1891.)
Sanitary conditions were classified under five heads: excellent,
good, fair, poor, and bad. It may be truly stated that tenements
falling so low as to be classed “bad” are so intolerable as to demand
most summary measures for their destruction, yet 1,346 houses
were found to deserve this just but terrible condemnation (Vol. 1,
p. 577).
“It may be safely assumed that whenever a tenement was
designated as entirely bad as to its inside condition—that is, to be
more explicit, was bad as to facilities for light and air, ventilation
and cleanliness—such a tenement was unfit for human habitation.
The existence of such tenements forms primarily an indictment
against the landlord who is responsible for their condition. They
132should either be abandoned or improved. In some cases such
improvement as would render them suitable for occupancy can
easily be made; in other cases, no doubt, they should be permanently
abandoned.” (Vol. 2, p. 417.)
“The existence of defective outside sanitary conditions is,
upon the whole, an indictment against the city; for while some of the
defects are due to unclean or poorly kept private ways and alleys,
the responsibility of the city for the existence of such defects can
hardly be avoided.” (Italics are the writer’s.) (Vol. 2, p. 418.)
In the reports of the Boston Board of Health no allusion is
found to this fearful indictment by the authorities of the Commonwealth,
or to the following municipal report.
In 1895 a special committee of the Common Council was
appointed to consider what improvement could be made in the
tenement districts of Boston, and what legislation was needed.
They made a very brief “Partial Report” (Document 125 of 1895)
from which may be quoted:—“In the North End the tenement
houses are to-day a serious menace to public health.... The
most astounding circumstance in connection with this investigation
that attracted the attention of your committee is the social and financial
standing of the owners of the most of these tenement houses.”
In 1897 a study was made, under the direction of the Tenement
House Committee of the Twentieth Century Club, of certain
typical slums, and the results were published with plans of some
seven areas where buildings were old, dilapidated and so overcrowded
on the land, that no remedy was possible except destruction
either of all or of many of the tenements. (“Some Slums in
Boston,” by H. K. Estabrook, May 15, 1898.)
A public hearing was granted by the Board of Health on
June 27, 1898, and many competent experts and real estate owners
testified to the intolerable conditions. Mayor Quincy attended the
hearing and promised strong support. Commendable progress was
made in vacating or destroying some of the worst slums for about
three years. But the exercise of the power to “destroy” seems
recently to have been paralyzed, perhaps, as a result of pending
litigation.
The law grants two powers to the Board of Health to deal with
these evils. Since 1850, chapter 108, tenements may be “vacated”
if adjudged unfit for human habitation. This power should be
exercised only after thorough investigation and on deliberate
133judgment, setting forth true and sufficient causes. It may easily
work grave injury to owners if exercised unjustly. Yet, when
justly exercised, orders to vacate should be adhered to and not
lightly rescinded because of political or other pressure. Observe
that this power to vacate requires no destruction of the building
and cannot justly prevent use of the vacated tenement for other
fit purposes, not of human habitation.
In 1897, chapter 219, the power to destroy [the statute word
is “remove”] buildings first appeared in Massachusetts. Its
origin is interesting. The British “Housing of the Working Classes
Act,” 1890 (53–54 Vict., chapter 70), sections 30–37, is the origin,
so far as I know, of this new power “to order the demolition”
of a “dwelling-house” “unfit for human habitation.” Section 38
enlarged this power and made it apply to “obstructive buildings,”
thus condemning one building because it injures another building.
It is surprising that any American lawyer could suppose that such
a power would be sustained in America, where the unlimited powers
of the British Parliament are much curtailed by constitutional
safeguards.
Yet New York soon copied this British Act (1895, chapter 567,
amended by 1897, chapter 57) in shape so condensed as to make its
injustice more conspicuous. This act was enforced for a few years
in the city of New York, till owners of property began to defend
their rights in court. The suit of Dassori vs. the Health Department
of New York has settled that this law cannot be enforced to
its full extent.
“Proof that rear tenement houses, each five stories high, lighted
only from a court on the west or front from five to eleven feet wide,
and a space or opening of eleven inches wide at the southeast corner
of the court, and a space on the east side of eight inches filled with
all sorts of filth, occupied by 115 persons, showing a death-rate
almost twice the normal one, damp, filthy, infested with vermin,
and filled with foul smells, and by their construction interfering
with the light which would otherwise have been enjoyed by tenement
houses on the front of the lots, justifies a finding that the rear
tenement houses are unfit for habitation, but does not necessarily
establish the fact that they are not capable of being made fit for
other uses to which the owner might lawfully put them, nor does it
show that the nuisance could not be abated in any other way than
by their destruction.
134“The owner of a tenement house cannot be compelled to submit
to its destruction, if it is on his own land, merely because some
building adjacent to it is, by reason of its existence, deprived of
proper ventilation.” (N. Y. Health Dept. vs. Dassori, Appellate
Division Reports, Vol. 21, p. 348. October, 1897.)
Boston deserves no credit for the slovenly shape in which this
faulty law was reproduced, 1897, chapter 219, closely following the
language of the New York act. First the power to vacate is set
forth, yet while covering the same ground as our ancient and well-tried
statute (1850, chap. 108; Pub. Sts., chap. 80, sec. 24; Revised
Laws, chap. 75, sec. 71), neither repeals nor amends it. Then
follows the power to order “removed,” i. e., destroyed, a building
irremediably “unfit for human habitation.”
Statute 1899, chapter 222, enlarged these powers of the Board
of Health so that the order may be not merely to “vacate” a building
“unfit for human habitation,” but to “cease to use” a building
“unfit for use”; the power to order buildings destroyed remaining
limited to those “unfit for human habitation.”
The suit (October, 1900) of Holland vs. Durgin et al. (Board
of Health) has gone on appeal to the Supreme Court. It raises
interesting questions as to this last statute, its constitutionality,
the lawfulness of a decree to remove, without previous notice to or
opportunity to be heard by the owner, as well as the lawfulness of
an order to remove stables occupied by horses and sheds only for
storage as “unfit for habitation” (sic), the statute language being
“unfit for human habitation.”
The Board of Health is thus clothed with transcendent powers,
whose exercise vitally affects the physical and moral welfare,
especially of that large portion of the people who are lowest in the
economic scale. These powers should only be lodged in the hands
of men of strong character, sound judgment, sanitary experience
and genuine love for the plain people. Yet the action of the Boston
Board of Health has been characterized for many years past by
mysterious apathy.
The law provides that the Board of Health shall make annually
“a full and comprehensive statement of its acts during the year,
and a review of the sanitary condition of the city,” yet in the
annual volumes of the last ten years the space devoted to the
sanitary condition of the city has been utterly insignificant.
“To this subject, houses vacated, nearly a whole page is
135devoted in the report for 1892; nearly two pages in the report
for 1893; from four to six lines in each of the reports for 1894, ’95,
and ’96; and not one word in the report for 1897. Throughout
the 122 pages of this last report, this extremely important duty
to vacate houses unfit for occupancy is not mentioned.
“The report for 1895 says only this: ‘The number of houses
which the board has ordered vacated during the year because of
their unsanitary condition is 112; of this number, however, a very
large per cent were put in a satisfactory condition before the
expiration of the time allowed the occupants to quit the premises,
and in such cases the orders were not enforced.’ The report for
1896 simply quotes this one sentence, word for word—except that
‘121’ is substituted for ‘112.’ This one sentence, then, is the ‘full
and comprehensive statement’ of the acts of the three years,
1895–7.”
In none of these reports since 1892 “is a list given either of
houses ordered vacated or of houses actually vacated, yet hundreds
of other lists and tables are given, as lists of stables ordered
discontinued, of passageways paved, and even of minor defects
in certain houses. While in the reports of the New York Board
of Health there are complete lists of houses vacated and of those
demolished, in only two of our reports, those for 1892 and ’93, are
any of the houses ordered vacated named.”
The objection of injury to tenants by the destruction of
slums has no weight. The Associated Charities (Report of 1898,
pp. 40–48) seized the occasion of the building of the South Station
and the change in the neighborhood, in 1897–8, to cause a careful
study to be made of the results upon the welfare of the twelve
poorest families known to them when that sudden and forced
migration occurred. “It brought out the interesting fact that in
every case the condition of the family was improved by the change.”
Death-rates by wards are shown in the annual report of 1901
of the Registry Department of Boston for the first time, so that
it is possible to compare. The ghastly fact stands out that the
death-rate in some wards is more than double what it is in the
healthier wards, viz: one person dying in the year 1900 out of 39
in Ward 7, 40 in Ward 13, 41 in Ward 6, and 42 in Ward 5, contrasted
with one in 81 in Ward 25, 72 in Ward 24, 71 in Ward 23,
69 in Ward 20 (p. 5).
Now that this table proves how the murder of the innocents
136goes on, the public conscience should be aroused. Statisticians
will also tell us that the ratio of sickness keeps pace with the ratio
of death, so that sickness among the poor, with its train of evils,
is twofold more than good sanitary conditions should tolerate.
The model buildings of London have told the world what a
powerful influence upon the length of life (and of course upon the
amount of sickness) of their occupants is exerted by healthy homes.
The Peabody buildings with a population of about 20,000 show a
death-rate of about 1 in 71; and the Waterlow buildings, with
30,000 tenants, about 1 in 100, while the rate of all London is about
1 in 57. In Boston, 1 out of 48 dies yearly.
A Tenement House Commission will probably be appointed
by the Mayor this year, to consider and report upon existing conditions
and possible improvement.
On the whole, the outlook is full of hope. Vigilance and
vigorous action are demanded of all municipal authorities. Public
interest is aroused. The action of other cities in Great Britain as
well as in New York and other American cities warns Boston not
to fall behind in this movement, which will surely give to us and our
children a healthier city for the homes of the plain people, with its
plague spots extirpated, and an increasing proportion of the population
living out in suburban homes in this city of unsurpassed
suburban beauty.
137
By Mary Buell Sayles
Fellow of the College Settlements Association
139The housing of the working people in Jersey City presents few
striking or distinctive features. There are in the crowded parts
of the city no such alley-intersected or narrow back street districts
as are found in certain sections of Chicago and Philadelphia; there
is no block which presents such conspicuously bad conditions of
overcrowded land areas, and consequently deficient lighting and
ventilation, as prevail throughout the newer tenement house districts
of New York. None the less the evils of construction of
sanitary neglect and of overcrowded living quarters, which have
been brought to light in the recently completed investigation upon
which the present article is based, are of a character both to claim
the interest of specialists and to compel the attention of citizens.
In his report on housing conditions and tenement laws in
leading American cities, Mr. Veiller, then secretary of the New
York Tenement House Commission of 1900, notes but four cities,
out of the twenty-seven which he discusses, as having a tenement
house problem. Among these is Jersey City. Yet compared with
the situation in New York, the Jersey City tenement house problem
is still in its early stages. The great mass of the working class
population is housed either in converted dwellings or in tenement
houses of the primitive type commonly erected here, as in Manhattan,
twenty to forty years ago; and these two classes of houses,
which in the great city have been rapidly giving way, during the last
generation, before the onslaught of the dumb-bell tenement with its
characteristic eighteen-inch wide air-shaft and overcrowded lot,
in the smaller city show few signs of a similar yielding of place.
Very few tenements are at present in process of erection, and so
few built within the last five or even ten years were found in the
districts investigated, that it is difficult to speak with certainty of
present tendencies in construction. It is, therefore, chiefly to evils
long fixed upon the community and grown so familiar as to be
generally overlooked, that attention has been directed—evils none
the less serious for this fact, and all the more difficult to eradicate.
140The investigation upon which, as has been said, the present
paper is based, was necessarily very limited in scope, as it was
undertaken single-handed and, under the conditions of the College
Settlements Association fellowship, confined to a single academic
year. Five hundred houses having been decided upon as a reasonable
estimate of the field which could and should be covered, three
districts were selected as representative both of the worst and—hardly
less important—of average housing conditions. Seventeen
blocks in all were investigated. Of these the investigation of the
first was largely experimental, as it was undertaken before the
printing of the regular schedules used later on, and its results,
though hardly less complete than those afterwards obtained, are
not in all respects uniform with them, and have therefore, for the
present, been set aside. It is then with the returns from sixteen
blocks, consisting of the records of five hundred and four houses,[10]
and of two thousand one hundred and fifty-four apartments,[11] that
we shall deal in this paper.[12]
Of the three districts, the first and largest includes the eight
blocks bounded by Sussex and Essex and by Van Vorst and Hudson
streets, together with two others adjoining, extending between
Hudson and Greene to Grand, and between Van Vorst and Warren
to Dudley street. The widest range of conditions, as might be
expected from its relative size, is to be found in this district. From
the comfortable well-built dwellings of Sussex street, only recently
converted to tenement house uses, and still in a large proportion
of cases unaltered, to the four and five story brick tenements and
the huddled rear houses of Morris and Essex streets, every type
and grade of house is represented. The population of the district
is overwhelmingly foreign. Only 18 per cent of the 1,278 families
interviewed were of American stock, while in some of the blocks
south of Morris street the percentage falls as low as 11 per cent.
141The foreign elements most largely represented are the Polish and
Russian, who together lead with 18 per cent; the Germans who follow
with 20 per cent, and the Irish with 18 per cent. Twenty other
nationalities are represented, but as the most numerous, the
Jewish, is represented by but thirty-two families, no one of them
forms an important element numerically in the population.
The industrial attractions which have brought together this
foreign population are not far to seek. The great American Sugar
Refinery looms conspicuously on the southern boundary of the
district; numerous other factories and workshops are interspersed
through the blocks; while to the north, within a few minutes’ walk,
lies the Pennsylvania Railroad, and to the south, across a narrow
strip of water, stretch the docks of the Central Railroad of New
Jersey. The foreign population shows, as was to be expected, a
heavy preponderance of factory hands, railroad employees, and
longshoremen.
The second district includes the two blocks bounded by Railroad
avenue and Morgan street and by Henderson and Warren
streets, and another adjoining, extending between Provost and
Henderson to Bay street. Bounded to the south by the Pennsylvania
Railroad’s elevated tracks, stretching out toward the Erie
Railroad, and hedged in towards the Hudson by factories, foundries
and workshops, it offers to the immigrant almost the same inducements
of employment as does District I, and presents an
even larger percentage of foreign born inhabitants. Of the 506
families whose apartments were investigated, not quite 14 per cent
were Americans, 42 per cent were Polish, 18 per cent Irish, 13
per cent Italians and 4 per cent Germans. Among the remaining
families the Jewish lead, numbering 16.
The houses of this district correspond with the older and more
neglected portion of District I, showing, however, a larger proportion
of wooden buildings and a smaller proportion of high
tenements.
District III, consisting of the three blocks bounded by First
and Second and by Monmouth and Merseles streets, is located
farther from the business centre of the city and from the water
front, near the foot of the hill on which are situated most of the
better-class resident districts. It lies in the heart of what is known
as Little Italy—the most distinctively national section of the city,
and the most dilapidated and neglected. Sixty-five per cent of the
142377 families interviewed were Italians, and their manner of packing
themselves solidly where once they enter into possession gives to
the southern half of the district, with the blocks adjoining, an intensely
foreign aspect. The remaining 35 per cent, among whom
the Irish, the American with 10 per cent, and the German nationalities
predominate, are interspersed chiefly on the northern side
of the blocks, along Second street.
Rival attractions to the railroads, factories and docks, which
claim so large a part of the population in the other two districts,
are here offered by the dump-grounds adjacent. Irregular heavy
laboring work is, however, the predominating occupation among
the Italians, though the rag-picker and junk-dealer are frequently
found, as well as the omnipresent factory hand.
So much for the characteristics of the separate districts. For
the remainder of the paper, the houses will be dealt with, in the
main, without regard to district lines. Some preliminary classifications
may properly be given before more detailed points of construction
and sanitation are taken up, or special evils pointed
out.
First of all, classifying the 504 houses by materials, we find
that just 55 per cent are of wood, and 45 per cent of brick—a few
of the former having brick, and a few of the latter stone, fronts.
If we group them by the number of stories, three-story and three-story-and-basement
houses are found to lead with 54 per cent;
four and four-story-and-basement houses come next with 31 per
cent; 5 per cent have five stories; the remaining 10 per cent have
either two stories or two stories and basement, with the exception
of two houses, one and one-half stories and one-story-and-basement
respectively.
Again, we may group the houses by the number of apartments
contained. Houses occupied by but one family were not touched
in the investigation, but sixty-three two-family houses were
examined, leaving 431 houses which contain accommodations
for three families or more, thus falling under the definition of a
tenement house most generally accepted throughout the country.
Three-apartment houses are most common, 25 per cent of the
total number falling under this head; 58 percent have from four
to nine apartments; of houses containing ten apartments or
more there are twenty-three, or 4 per cent.
Another significant classification of houses is that by position
143on the lot. Fourteen per cent of the houses investigated are rear
houses. These figures, however, give little idea of the actual aspect
of things, as two blocks are without any rear houses, and six others
have but one or two each, while in one block rear houses constitute
no less than 40 per cent of all. These houses are seldom over three
stories in height, are almost always of wood, are in general very
old and frequently dilapidated.
Turning now from classifications of the houses themselves
to consider the apartments they contain, we find that three-room
apartments lead by a wide margin, constituting 41 per cent of the
total of 2,154. Next come four-room apartments with 28 per cent;
two-room apartments with 12 per cent; five-room apartments with
7 per cent; six-room apartments with 4 per cent. Of one-room
apartments there is less than 1 per cent. One per cent of the
apartments examined contained over six rooms.
If now, leaving these preliminary statistics, we turn to matters
of greater interest, we shall find it convenient to group the chief
evils found, as first, evils of construction, under which we shall
speak only of the two leading faults, lack of proper provision for
escape in case of fire, and inadequate lighting and ventilation;
next, sanitary evils, some of which are structural and some the
result of natural conditions or neglect; and lastly, evils of occupancy,
chief among which is that of overcrowded apartments.
The absence of fire-escapes is perhaps the most conspicuous and
glaring fault observable in the tenement houses of Jersey City. Of
the twenty-four five-story buildings found, just one-half were
provided with fire-escapes; while of the 155 four-story or four-story-and-basement
houses, only four were so equipped. After
these figures it will hardly surprise anyone to learn that in no case
was a fire-escape found upon a three-story house. There are thus
out of a total of 431 tenement houses, most of them three stories
or more in height, but sixteen, or 3 per cent, which are provided
with fire-escapes of any kind.
The character of the fire-escapes found makes them in a number
of cases practically valueless. The balconies of five had
wooden floors; and not only in a large proportion of cases were
balconies seriously encumbered and stairway or ladder openings
covered by tenants, but in two instances trap doors were regularly
fitted to these openings, the owner thus encouraging the use of the
balcony as a general catch-all and storage place. Furthermore,
144in only three houses did all the apartments above the ground floor
have access to a balcony, while in one instance, but one out of four
families was provided with such means of egress. No form of fireproof
construction was anywhere found, even the dumb-waiter
shafts in the higher buildings, well known to be one of the most
common paths by which fire spreads, being almost without exception
of wood.
In regard to lighting and ventilation, the facts are less easily
grouped. The buildings being seldom of a depth to encroach
seriously upon the yards, we find, with the exception of a very few
of the higher houses, that nearly all of the kitchens and general
living-rooms open upon the yard or street and are thus adequately
lighted. In the converted dwellings, and in all houses occupied
by but one family on each floor, a large proportion of bedrooms
also are open to the outer air. But in the three or four-story
buildings erected originally for tenement uses, and furnishing accommodations
for two families or more on a floor, a light bedroom
is more nearly the exception than the rule. The typical interior
room is lighted by a window to the outer living-room or a public
hall, these windows seldom having more than five square feet of
glazed surface, and more frequently an area of from three to four
square feet. One thousand and eighty-four such rooms were noted
in the course of the investigation; while—a still more serious evil—399
rooms were found which had no window at all, and in most
cases not even a transom opening into another room.
Light and air-shafts were found in only a small proportion of
the tenement houses investigated; and a light and air-shaft which
is more than the merest travesty of its respectable name is emphatically
an exception. The typical shaft is a triangular or oblong
niche in the outer wall, with an area of from five to twenty square
feet; an occasional variation being found in a square shaft of about
the same area, let into the interior of the house and covered in most
cases by a skylight. Below the top story such shafts furnish practically
no light, while tenants bore almost unvarying witness that
windows upon them were uniformly kept closed. A single whiff
of the pent-up air within their narrow walls is quite sufficient to
convince one of the wisdom of such disregard of their presence;
and one feels no surprise in reading the evidence of chemists and
physicians as to the positive injury to health wrought by pretended
ventilation of this sort—evidence which has led to the
145giving of the suggestive name of culture tubes to such shafts.
Among evils of sanitation only a few of the most serious can
be touched upon. Most conspicuous and widespread of all is that
of the foul and ill-smelling privy vault. Seventy-five per cent
of the houses investigated furnish no toilet accommodations
save these objectionable structures in the yard. The vaults are
in the main sewer-connected, one block and part of another in
District III being the only sections in which no street sewer is
laid, though unsewered vaults were found in small numbers elsewhere.
But a sewer connection is in a large proportion of cases
a most illusory blessing. The great mass of solid matter frequently
remains after the liquids have run off to the sewer, and its decomposition
renders the air of the yard, upon which the rear rooms depend,
many times almost intolerable. In two cases school-sinks—modified
privies, with metal vaults in which water stands—were
discovered in cellars; but as the water was changed, according to
the testimony of tenants, but once a week, these cannot be said
to offer many advantages over the ordinary privy. Among the 368
water-closets in use in the remaining houses, the old and objectionable
pan closets number sixty-one; while numerous water-closet
compartments are either entirely unventilated or have windows
only to halls or rooms, and in a number of cases, especially on the
top floor of five-story buildings, the water-flush is wholly inadequate
to cleanse the bowl.
A serious evil is also found in the location and condition of
household sinks. In seventy of the houses investigated all such
sinks were located in the public hall, while in fifty-five other houses
sinks were so located on one or more floors. Nearly every such
sink is used by two families. In one block, chosen at haphazard
from those of the Italian district, sixty apartments were found
whose occupants were obliged so to share their sink; while fifteen
other apartments were provided with but one sink to every three
or four apartments. Furthermore, eight houses were found in
which, in flat defiance of a city ordinance, no water at all was
furnished indoors. One row of four such houses, containing in all
twenty-two apartments, was provided with but two hydrants in
the common yard, one hydrant serving for ten, the other for twelve
apartments.
The collection of statistics as to the plumbing of sinks was not
at first attempted, but was taken up as the result of an observation
146of conditions in the earlier blocks investigated. Eleven hundred
and sixty-two sinks, located in four blocks of District I, and in the
six blocks of Districts II and III, were examined. Of these only
10 per cent were properly trapped and vented; 68 per cent were
trapped but not vented—a far from satisfactory state of affairs,
especially where as in many cases traps were so small or otherwise
defective as to be practically useless; 10 per cent were neither
trapped nor vented, the pipes thus offering free passage to the contaminated
sewer air; 12 per cent were boarded up solidly, so that
the waste-pipes could not be examined—an almost sure sign that
the concealed plumbing is of the oldest and worst type.
One serious element in the insanitary conditions of the districts
investigated, which, unlike those just mentioned, cannot
primarily be charged to the householder, is found in the character
of the land upon which a large part of lower Jersey City is built.
Only six of the sixteen blocks investigated are composed entirely
of original solid ground. Five blocks in District I were in greater
or less degree formed by the filling in of marsh land or the extension
of the water front. All of District II, and nearly all of two
blocks of District III, were so formed.[13]
The significance of these facts appears when we realize that
land so made is largely intermingled with refuse matter, and, still
more important, is generally damp and is subject to periodic risings
of tidewater. In a large proportion of the houses built upon such
land, observations of the investigator, supplemented by the testimony
of tenants, proves that the water in cellars unprotected, as
are nearly all, by water-proof flooring, stands at times to a depth
of several inches. Sewage is thus frequently washed back into
yards and cellars, first floor apartments are rendered damp and
unhealthful, and nauseating odors suggest the serious danger to
health which such a condition brings upon the entire house. Fortunately
the cellar-dwelling evil is not a prevalent one in Jersey
City; yet one instance is recalled where a family paying for four
rooms in the basement and first floor had been obliged to vacate
the lower two rooms entirely—the men of the family wading
through water knee-deep to rescue the kitchen stove.
One of the most serious evils from which the poorer classes
suffer is that of overcrowded apartments. As was anticipated
147from the facts brought to light by investigations in other American
cities, this evil was found to be most prevalent among the poorest
foreign population, especially the Poles and Italians, and is largely
due to the custom of taking so called boarders—really, in most
cases, lodgers, who provide their own bedding and pay in the
neighborhood of two dollars a month.
There are two ways of measuring overcrowding in apartments;
by number of individuals per room, and by cubic air space per individual.
To secure perfectly accurate results, it is of course
necessary to discover just how many rooms in a given apartment
are occupied for sleeping purposes and how many persons sleep
in each. This may seem a simple matter, but in practice reliable
results are not only very difficult, but in many cases impossible to
secure, save by a night inspection. Not only must allowance be
made for very general under-statement of the number of boarders
taken, but in a large proportion of cases either no answers at all or
wholly unsatisfactory answers can be obtained to questions as to
the distribution of members of the family and of boarders at night.
Under these circumstances it has seemed best, instead of attempting
to state the number of individuals sleeping in each room and the
precise cubic air space afforded by that room to each, to give the
ratio of number of occupants to entire number of rooms in each
apartment, and the cubic air space per individual afforded by that
apartment as a whole. Only rough indications of the degree of
overcrowding at night are of course given by this method, but it
has at least the advantage of greater accuracy so far as it goes than
could fairly be claimed for one seemingly more precise.
Applying the method of measurement by cubic air space to the
2,154 apartments investigated, we find that in 65 per cent of
them each occupant has an allowance of 600 cubic feet of air or more.
Living conditions in most of these apartments are fair, and in many
good; yet some of the most disgraceful cases of overcrowding were
found among them—as in one apartment, where in a single large
room two little girls of about twelve years slept, together with a varying
number of male boarders. The remaining 35 per cent of apartments
afford less than 600 cubic feet of air space per occupant.
This means in nearly all cases a serious degree of overcrowding; since
if bedrooms alone are occupied at night such an allowance for the
whole apartment means actually on an average less than 400 cubic
feet, and often less than 300 or even 200 cubic feet for each person;
while if the crowding compels the use of the kitchen for sleeping
148purposes, other evils hardly less serious are added to those of
limited air space. Such being the meaning of the figures given, it becomes
evident that in the 199 apartments, 9 per cent of all, in which
there were found to be less than 400 cubic feet of air space to each
occupant in the apartment as a whole, very serious danger to health
exists. It is below the limit of 400 cubic feet per adult, with a
smaller allowance for children, that government interference has
generally been authorized, where authorized at all; as is notably
the case in Glasgow, where the law is enforced by an especially
efficient system of night inspection, and among American cities in
New York.
The other test of overcrowding, by ratio of number of persons
to number of rooms, while a less accurate means of estimating effect
on health, furnishes a more accurate indication of the relation of
overcrowding to standards of decency. An example typical of
many cases met with will make this distinction clear. Suppose
two large high-ceiled rooms with a total cubic contents of 3,500
cubic feet, occupied by eight people. Each person has then more
than the minimum of 400 cubic feet; yet the absence of any possibility
of privacy or decency of living involved where men and
women boarders, parents and growing children make up the eight,
need not be dwelt upon. It is evident that four rooms with an
aggregate contents of less than 3,200 cubic feet might be occupied
by the same eight persons with perhaps greater danger to health
from limited breathing space, but with certainly better opportunities
for separation by sexes.
If we apply this second method of measurement, we find that in
24 per cent of the total number of apartments there are two persons
or more to each room. Such apartments may fairly be classed as
overcrowded; since either every room is occupied for sleeping
purposes, or if one room is reserved for kitchen and living-room,
the bedrooms are shared by a minimum average of two and two-thirds,
three or four persons each, according as the number of rooms
in the apartment is four, three or two.[14] To appreciate what this
means it is of course necessary to realize that few bedrooms in
such apartments contain more than 800 cubic feet, while a large
proportion are dark interior rooms containing from 600 to 400 cubic
feet or even less. These facts having been pointed out, it is unnecessary
further to emphasize the seriousness of the state of
affairs, where, as in 196 apartments, 9 per cent of the total number,
149the ratio of number of occupants to number of rooms rises as
high as 2.5 or more.
Space will not permit of an extended comparison of these conditions
of overcrowding with those revealed by similar investigations
in other cities. It is interesting, however, to note in passing
that the average number of individuals per room in the districts
investigated is higher than the average number of occupants per
room in the 9,859 apartments covered by the recent investigation
of the City Homes Association in Chicago; the former being 1.35,
and the latter 1.28 persons. While averages do not form the most
satisfactory basis of comparison, a difference so marked as this
unquestionably indicates a greater degree of overcrowding in the
Jersey City than in the Chicago districts.
Enough has been said, it is believed, to show that serious housing
problems demand solution in Jersey City. While the investigation
covered the living environment of but 10,179 persons out
of a total city population of 206,433, it may yet fairly claim to have
some representative value. The districts investigated of course
present conditions different in some respects from those of the city
as a whole. Thus—to use a method of comparison too rough to
have any but a suggestive value—while but 28 per cent of the total
population of the city are foreigners, 84 per cent of the heads of families
whose apartments were investigated are foreign born. Along
with this large proportion of the poorest foreign population go
unquestionably especially bad conditions of overcrowding, and
in many respects of sanitary neglect; though such is not the case
with faults of housing construction pure and simple. Nevertheless
the accusation that an unfairly dark and harrowing picture has
been presented cannot justly be brought; since on the one hand
many tenement houses of the best type were included, as is shown
by a range of monthly rents between extremes of $17 and $3 per
apartment; while on the other, large numbers of blocks as bad in
character as any of those investigated could be pointed out in other
parts of the city. The hope of furnishing data upon which a movement
for reform might safely base its demands was the determining
incentive to the investigation; but this direct practical aim
has by no means obscured the sociological and scientific interests
involved. If the results obtained shall on the one hand be used
as a point of departure for social effort, and on the other be judged
a real though small contribution to the literature of the housing
problem, the ends sought will have been fully attained.
IV. The Child Labor Problem — CHILD LABOR LEGISLATION — Exemptions. — Reinforcements. — Educational Tests. — The Hours of Labor. — Night Work of Children. — Children Not Yet Protected. — Enforcement. — CHILD LABOR IN THE DEPARTMENT STORE — Discussion. — THE NECESSITY FOR FACTORY LEGISLATION IN THE SOUTH — CHILD LABOR IN NEW JERSEY — CHILD LABOR IN BELGIUM [18] — The Law of December 13, 1889 — The Application of the Law. — MACHINERY AND LABOR
151
153
By Mrs. Florence Kelley
Secretary National Consumers’ League
155It is most desirable that the present widespread agitation for
child labor legislation may achieve permanent results of a uniform
character. Such laws as now exist are alike in no two states; they
are enforced differently when they are enforced at all; they are
uniform only in their failure to afford adequate protection to the
rising generation of the working class.
It is the aim of this paper to set forth some essential points of
an effective child labor law efficiently enforced; for whatever the
local differences of industrial conditions may be, certain fundamental
needs of childhood are constant and child labor legislation
must ultimately be framed with regard to these.
This fact is somewhat recognized in the statutes already
enacted; for all these begin with a restriction upon the age at
which the child may begin to work. This minimal age has varied
from ten years to fifteen, differing in some states for boys and for
girls, while the statutes prescribing it have been weakened in some
states by exemptions and strengthened in others by educational
requirements. The fundamental provision of all child labor legislation
has always been the prohibition of work before a specified
birthday.
Akin to the restriction of the age of employment is the restriction
of the hours of work. The former secures to the child a fixed
modicum of childhood; the latter assures to the adolescent certain
leisure, all too little, for growth and development.
No one law can be selected as containing all the provisions
needed or even as containing all the provisions now in force. It
is not possible to say to students of the subject, “The law of Massachusetts
should be copied everywhere,” for the laws of Ohio and
Illinois contain single provisions in advance of that of Massachusetts.
Among the best child labor laws in the United States are
those of Illinois and Indiana, which are almost identical. In
Illinois no child under the age of fourteen years can be legally
156employed in any mine, manufacturing establishment, factory
or workshop, mercantile institution, store, office, or laundry.
The Indiana law adds, to the foregoing list, renovating works,
bakeries and printing offices. This prohibition is absolute throughout
the year, admitting no exemptions or exceptions. Herein
lies the superiority of these laws. Under the New York law,
children at work in stores are exempt from restrictions during half
of December—from December 15 to December 31—and also
during the vacations of the public schools, when they may be
employed from the age of thirteen years everywhere outside of the
factories, which happily they may not enter before the fourteenth
birthday. This exemption in New York has been given such
elastic construction that children have been employed on Saturdays
and even on school-days out of school-hours.
The laws of Illinois and Indiana are humane; they set the
highest age limit without exemptions yet attained; they are equitable
since they place mine owners, manufacturers and merchants
in the same position in relation to this particular source of cheap
labor. The employment of children under fourteen years of age
is prohibited to all three sets of employers alike.
Treating these laws as standard or normal, for purposes of
comparison, the law of Pennsylvania, for instance, is seen to fall
below, because under it children may work in certain mines at
twelve years and in factories at thirteen years of age; while lowest
in the scale among all the Northern and Middle states stands New
Jersey, whose child labor law permits boys to work at twelve and
exempts all children, on grounds of poverty, at discretion of the
factory inspectors.
From the foregoing brief statement it is clear that the subject
of exemptions is a varied and complicated one. The most insidious
form of exemption, and therefore perhaps the most dangerous,
is that prescribed in the law of Wisconsin. Under it, no child may
be employed under the age of fourteen years in manufacture or
commerce, unless it is exempted on grounds of poverty by a judge
of a local court. In practice, a judge has no time to investigate the
economic condition of hundreds of families; hence he follows the
recommendation of the deputy factory inspector. This overworked
157officer is drawn away from his proper duties to perform an
economic investigation for which he possesses no especial fitness.
His own work suffers. Children are exempted from school attendance
and permitted to work, who more than any other children in
the community need education because of the poverty or shiftlessness
of their parents. Too often, drunken fathers are encouraged
to further drunkenness because their young children, under exemption,
are earning money which the parents spend. Finally, this
exemption rests upon the pernicious principle that a young child
under fourteen years of age may be burdened with the support of
itself or its family.
It is not a legitimate function of the judiciary to investigate
the poverty of individual families. It is not a legitimate function
of the factory inspectors to investigate family life. Both officers
are interrupted in the performance of their legitimate duties by
every attempt to perform this alien task. Moreover, children under
fourteen years of age are undesirable additions to the body of wage-earners,
pressing by their competition upon the wages of their
seniors and therefore tending to produce in other families the same
poverty which serves as a pretext for their own exemption. The
number of exempted children, under such a provision, tends to
increase continuously, because greedy and pauperized parents are
tempted to follow the example of the really needy, in urging applications
for exemptions.
Besides being free from all the undermining effects of exemption
clauses, the child labor laws of Illinois and Indiana profit by
several reinforcing clauses. Chief among these is the requirement
that children under sixteen years and over fourteen years must
keep on file in the office of the place of employment an affidavit of
the parent or guardian, stating the date and place of birth of the
child. In Indiana, this must state also that the child can read and
write the English language. While some parents are undoubtedly
guilty of perjury, and others carelessly take the oath perfunctorily
administered by a notary public, thousands of honest people
are deterred by the requirement of the affidavit from sending their
children to work before reaching the fourteenth birthday.
158Employers must produce, on demand of factory inspectors,
affidavits for all children under sixteen years of age in their employ.
The penalty prescribed for failure to do this is the same as for
employing a child under the age of fourteen years. The value of
this provision for the protection of the children depends wholly
upon the policy of the inspectors. If every failure to produce the
affidavit is followed by immediate prosecution, manufacturers
become extremely cautious about employing young children;
children under fourteen years of age virtually cease to be employed;
and the number of those employed under sixteen years of age
diminishes because many employers refuse to be troubled with
affidavits, inspections and prosecutions. On the other hand, employers
of large numbers of children find it profitable to make one
clerk responsible for the presence in the office of an affidavit for
every child between the ages of fourteen and sixteen years. In
these cases, the children who have affidavits acquire a slight
added value, are somewhat less likely to be dismissed for trifling
reasons, and become somewhat more stable in their employment.
Where, however, inspectors fear to prosecute systematically,
lest they be removed from office, the provision requiring an affidavit
to be produced by the employer, on demand of an inspector, is not
rigorously enforced; children soon come to be employed upon their
verbal assurance that they are fourteen years of age, and the protection
which might be derived from this very useful reinforcing
clause is lost for the children under fourteen years of age, as well as
for the older ones.
A farther reinforcement of the prohibition of employment of
children under fourteen years of age is the authority conferred by
the Illinois law upon inspectors to demand a certificate of physical
fitness for children who may seem unfit for their work. This provision
enforced with energy and discretion can be made, in the case
of children conspicuously undersized, largely to counteract the
tendency to perjury on the part of parents, besides relieving healthy
children from overstrain of many kinds. The difficulties encountered
are chiefly two:—physicians grant certificates without visiting
the place of employment. This occurs quite uniformly to the disgrace
of the profession. Physicians also grant certificates, in many
cases, without careful examination of eyes, heart, lungs and spinal
column of the child, simply upon the parent’s statement of poverty.
159To make this reinforcement thoroughly effective, every
factory inspection staff should include a physician, preferably two,
a man and a woman, appointed expressly to follow up the children
and the conditions under which they work.
Several states require that children under sixteen years of age
must be able to read and write simple sentences in the English
language, before being employed. This is of the highest value in
those states which receive large streams of immigration from
Europe. In New York, every year, numbers of children are dismissed
from factories by order of factory inspectors, because the
children cannot read; while in Massachusetts, French Canadian
children find school attendance at a high premium because of the
difficulty of securing employment without it. The influence of
the foreign voting constituency has defeated in several states, for
several years past, the effort to secure a statutory requirement of
ability to read and write English, or a specified attendance at
school, as a prerequisite for work on the part of children under
sixteen years of age. This is conspicuously true of Illinois, where
such a provision was defeated in the legislatures of 1893, 1895 and
1897.
The most powerful reinforcement of the child labor law is a
compulsory school attendance law effectively enforced. For want
of this, the child labor law of Illinois suffers severely. The school
attendance law requires children between the ages of eight and
fourteen years to attend school sixteen weeks, of which twelve must
be consecutive. Children under ten years of age must enter school
in September, children under twelve years must enter school not
later than New Year’s. Meagre as these provisions are, they are
not uniformly and effectively enforced by the local school boards;
and the state factory inspectors are therefore burdened with frequent
prosecutions of employers because children under fourteen
years of age are sent to work by parents who should be rigorously
prosecuted by the school attendance officers.
In Indiana, the reinforcement afforded by the state truancy
law is of great value, for children must attend school to the age of
fourteen years, throughout the term of the school district in which
160they live, generous provision being made for truant officers. This
difference accounts, perhaps, for the fact that Indiana has but three
and one-half thousand children under the age of sixteen years at
work, compared with nineteen thousand such children in Illinois;
and this despite the rapid development of the “Gas Belt” in Indiana,
where the temptation is very great for parents to put excessively
young children to work with the help of perjured affidavits.
Truant officers, watching young children, from the eighth to the
fourteenth birthday, every day of the school term, are the best
preventive alike of perjury by parents and of child labor. They
constitute the best possible reinforcement of the child labor law.
The contrasted practice of the neighboring states of Indiana
and Illinois, in this respect, is so marked that, unless the policy of
Illinois be radically changed in the near future, it is reasonable to
expect that, despite the excellent child labor law, the number of
children at work under the age of sixteen years must continue to
double at intervals of five years, as it has done in the past—the
recruits being largely drawn from the ranks of the children under
the legal age for work.
In Boston, the very enlightened firm of merchants known as
Filene’s have long made it a rule to employ no person who is not a
graduate of the grammar grades of the public schools. In two
cases known to the writer, girls aged respectively eighteen and sixteen
years applied for work, but were not engaged because they had
not completed the school requirement. They found employment
elsewhere while attending the graded evening schools of Boston in
preparation for service at Filene’s. It is reasonable to expect that
this method of securing efficient help will be increasingly followed
by public-spirited employers interested in placing a premium upon
school attendance, until at last legislators may feel justified in
specifying some one grade of the schools below which the pupil
may not leave to begin working.
Among the most advanced restrictions upon the hours of labor
of children is that of New Jersey, which prohibits all persons, men,
women and children, alike, from working in manufacturing establishments
longer than fifty-five (55) hours in any week, or after one
161o’clock on Saturday. This provision applies throughout the year.
Massachusetts and Rhode Island prohibit the employment of
women of any age and of youths under eighteen years, longer than
fifty-eight hours in any week, or ten hours in one day, or after nine
at night or before six in the morning.
These laws have the advantage of precision. They require
that the hours of work of the persons concerned must be posted
conspicuously, and that the posted hours shall constitute the working
day—work beyond the posted hours constituting a violation of
the law—thus rendering the enforcement of the law simple and
easy.
The statute of Utah prohibits all persons from working in
mines, smelters and factories longer than eight hours in one day
and forty-eight hours in one week. This statute has been sustained
by the Supreme Court at Washington, in the decision in the case of
Holden vs. Hardy, 1896. It does not, at present, affect any considerable
number of children, because child labor hardly exists in
Utah. But with the development of manufacture, now proceeding
with startling rapidity, the value of this enlightened law
for the children who must inevitably find employment is quite
beyond computation. And as a precedent for similar legislation
elsewhere, this statute and the extremely strong decision of the
Supreme Court at Washington sustaining the validity of the statute
are of epoch-making importance.
The extent to which children are employed at night is not generally
recognized. In any state in which such employment is not
explicitly prohibited, it is very general in all branches of industry
in which children are employed by day. Glassworks, nut and bolt
works, tin can factories, furniture factories, cutleries, and scores of
miscellaneous industries employ boys regularly at night. Girls
are regularly employed in garment and candy factories during the
busy season; and in some factories this work continues all through
the year, as in the cotton mills of Georgia, Alabama and the Carolinas.
Wherever the prohibition is not explicit and sweeping, the
night work of children is the rule, not the exception. In Illinois
and Indiana boys are not prohibited from working at night, and are
162regularly employed in the glassworks in both states under circumstances
of great hardship. In Indiana, girls are forbidden to work
after ten o’clock; but Illinois, cruelly belated in this respect, merely
restricts the work of children under sixteen years of age to sixty
hours in any week, and ten hours in one day, failing to proscribe
night work even for girls. It is, accordingly, very common. Even
in Boston, where the hours of labor of boys under eighteen years
engaged in manufacture and other forms of commerce are strictly
limited, a recent attempt to pass an ordinance requiring that newsboys
under fourteen years of age shall not sell papers on the streets
after eight o’clock at night failed utterly, and small boys are to be
seen upon the streets at all hours. The place of honor in the matter
of legislation prohibiting night work for children properly belongs
to Ohio, which provides that minors under eighteen years of age,
may not be employed after seven o’clock at night.
Large numbers of working children remain wholly unprotected
by legislation. Not only have the four great cotton manufacturing
states, Georgia, Alabama and the Carolinas, defeated all bills presented
to their legislatures for the purpose of protecting young
children, but in the North, also, newsboys, bootblacks, peddlers,
vendors and the thousands of children employed in the tenement
houses of New York and Chicago, and in the sweat-shops of Philadelphia,
remain wholly outside of the law’s protection, so far as
statutory regulation of the conditions of their work is concerned.
The problem of abolishing the overwork of school children in tenement
houses, under the sweating system, appears at present insoluble
except by a prohibition of all tenement house work.
To secure the enforcement of child labor legislation, there are
needed factory inspectors, both men and women, equipped with
ample powers and supplied with adequate funds for traveling and
other expenses. These inspectors need good general education,
long experience, and vigorous public opinion reinforcing their
efforts. Massachusetts enjoys the unique distinction, among the
163American states, of possessing a large staff of factory inspectors
meeting all these requirements; and Massachusetts is, accordingly,
the only state of which it may be confidently asserted that its child
labor law is uniformly and effectively enforced at all times and in all
its provisions. A faithful officer serving a full quarter-century at
the head of the department, with subordinates equally assured of
permanent tenure of office during good behavior, has been able
fearlessly and intelligently to enforce the laws securing to the
children of Massachusetts fourteen full years of childhood, with
opportunity for school life, followed by safety of life, limb and
health after entering upon the years of work.
In all the other states it is extremely difficult for an inspector
who faithfully enforces the law to retain his position. The interests
which oppose such legislation and object to its enforcement,
are enormously powerful and are thoroughly organized. The
people who procure the enactment of child labor laws are usually
working people unacquainted with the technical details of the work
of inspection; busy in the effort to earn their own living; not able
to keep vigilant watch upon the work of the inspectors, the creation
of whose office they achieve. Thus the officials are subjected to
pressure in one direction only. If they are idly passive, they may
be allowed to vegetate in office several years. If they are aggressively
faithful to the oath of office, enforcing the law by prosecuting
offenders against its provisions, the children who profit by this are
unable to reward their benefactors; the working people who obtained
the creation of the office have no arts of bringing pressure
to bear effectively to reward faithfulness in public service by
appointed officers; while the offending employers are amply able
to punish what they decry as officious overactivity, if they do not
go farther and charge persecution and blackmail. For these
reasons it may almost be stated as a general proposition that the
more lax the officer, the longer his term of office; and the history
of the departments of factory inspection, the country over, sadly
substantiates the statement.
The recent startling revelations of non-enforcement of the laws
intended to protect young children from exhausting overwork in
the glass factories in New Jersey merely intimate what will be found
true in every state in which there is not a powerfully organized,
compact body of public opinion alert to insist upon the retention
164of competent officers, the removal of incompetent ones, and the
uniform, consistent enforcement of all the provisions of the child
labor laws.
To form in every state, among the purchasers of the products
of manufacture, a body of alert, enlightened public opinion, keen to
watch the officers to whom is entrusted the duty of enforcing child
labor laws, rewarding with support and appreciation faithful
officials and calling attention to derelictions from duty on the part
of the mere politicians among them, this is an important part of the
duty of the National Consumers’ League.
165
By Franklin N. Brewer
General Manager Wanamaker Store, Philadelphia
167The topic assigned me, “Child Labor in (so called) Department
Stores,” interests us, I take it, from but one point of view:
that of the education and development of the child into the man
or woman who shall contribute and receive a normal share of the
world’s good growth in life, liberty and happiness.
I cannot claim comprehensive thought or research, under this
topic, and my paper must be the brief and superficial one of a man
whose too short days are full of the work of the builder rather than
the study of the architect.
If my coming before you is justified at all, it must be by the
simple statement I am able to make of how one establishment,[15] a
typical one of the class under consideration, is trying to meet its
responsibility for its children.
First entrance into the employ of this house is, to the extent
possible, with a clear understanding between parent, or guardian,
and the employer, that the child’s business career shall continue
with the same house, at least until maturity in years and efficiency
in some distinct branch of the business shall have been reached.
Following our State law, thirteen years is the minimum age.
The smaller boys begin as “cash boys.” Girls are not given this
work, positions of less freedom being considered safer for them.
The girls up to, usually, seventeen years of age, and the boys, other
than cash boys, usually, from sixteen to eighteen, are engaged
directly in the general corps of the junior employees—we call it
“The Cadet Corps”—and into this corps the cash boys come by
promotion. Except at Christmas, the cash boys will average two
hundred in number; the cadets four hundred, of whom about one
hundred are girls. These six hundred young people are assigned
to duty in the various departments and divisions of the business,
according to natural aptitude and fitness, and are under the direction
of their respective department or section heads; but always,
also, and until graduation from the Cadet Corps, they are under
168the care and discipline of the chief of the corps and a lady assistant.
The young people are not lost sight of individually, but are known
and studied by the managers with view to advancement according
to capacity and natural abilities.
Cultivation of good manners, neatness, elevated personal
habits, the general requirements of the store service, lessons
from their individual experiences, etc., are considered with them
individually and at general meetings, and are emphasized by a
system of monthly averages bearing upon questions of promotion
and increase of salary. To illustrate: Each of the smaller
boys (the cash boys) has his record card which he must carry
for a month. It is no small departure from small-boy nature,
simply to have and hold this card during a month without a
forbidden accumulation of dirt and damage upon it. One of
the early signs of progress, after the adoption of this feature of
our plan, was an increased average whiteness and remaining
area in the cards surrendered at the month’s end. This card
epitomizes the boy’s early business life and he reverences it and
guards it. On one side are rules to be committed to memory, but
this is merely incidental. The other is the serious side, where an
array of spaces gradually fill up, like the rising of the tide. Weekly
ratings by his section manager for neatness, promptness, truthfulness,
etc.; a weekly rating at morning “inspection,” by his general
chief; daily strokes of the pencil (if occasion require) for misconduct
or neglect of duty—“bluies” the boys call these latter marks
and there is no levity or disrespect in the term. Protest against
what is felt to be an undeserved “bluie” is made to his chief, or
even to the general manager, with all the earnestness of an appeal
to the Supreme Court, and, needless to say, such appeals are
patiently entertained and decided with honest effort after justice.
Upon these cards, also, are entered the monthly figures given for
the boys’ school-work. The average of all the ratings is the “store
average” and the misconduct marks (“bluies”) reckon so much
off. The card goes home for inspection and signing by parent
or guardian. Upon the “store average” depend increase of
salary and promotion. If advance in salary is not won reasonably
soon (six weeks or two months usually bring the first upward
step) the conclusion is apt to be reached that the boy is unfitted
for our service and he is dropped from the ranks. The simple
expedient of these cards, and that which they represent, secures
169in discipline what the harsh word and impulsive discharge never
could secure, and a month or two bring about in the little “raw
recruit” a surprising improvement.
I mention these details as illustrative of the spirit, character
and thoroughness with which, to the best of our ability, the problems
of the discipline and development of our young people are
met, along their whole course from first entrance into the business
up to graduation into the ranks of men and women. And this
line of procedure is simple recognition of the fact that these are
children still, whose characters are forming, and that faults and
defects, which in man or woman might require discharge, in the
child simply demand correction.
The boys above the cash boy grade, and the girls, are placed,
as early as wisely possible (depending upon their own developing
tendencies and the business conditions), where some distinct
branch of the business, or class of merchandise, will be learned
thoroughly. Stock boy, salesman, stock-head, buyer’s assistant,
is the usual line of advancement in merchandising. Development
in clerical lines makes the bookkeeper, the auditor, the office assistant,
the stenographer. In trades lines grow up among us, the
milliner, the dressmaker, the paper shade and flower worker, the
plate engraver and printer, the designer, draughtsman, decorator,
show-card painter, the mechanic in repair of bicycles, dolls, and so
on. Exceedingly numerous and varied are the paths open, and in
so far as possible an early and definite selection and patient reasonable
progress along some one of these paths are insisted upon.
Meanwhile salaries are advanced systematically according to a
minimum scale which is increased as progress above the average
and promotion to higher duties may mark the course of the individual.
Does the program, thus far, sound too serious and strict
for normal happiness and hopefulness in the children? See our
young people and you will find the reverse to be true. Granted
a child, normal in body and mind, happily busy and interested in
duties of genuine importance to and among other busy people,
and the question of training in the business proper answers itself:
the child learns, absorbs, grows by the easy process of nature. His
capital knowledge, as a business man, becomes to him like the mud
on the carpet at Willie’s home: “I didn’t bring it into the house,
mamma; it just stuck to my shoes and came in itself.” But the
170youthful business students of to-day require for normal development
more than the round of duty of a succession of business days
in a fixed place can supply, and more than the average home and
home circle of friends and interests of the working boy or girl do
supply.
And so we have found it practicable to bring into the business
lives of our young people most of the activities usual in the schools.
The smaller boys are organized into school and military companies.
Each company assembles in the school-rooms, on the fifth floor of
the store building, two mornings in the week, where regular instruction
is given in arithmetic, grammar, spelling, writing, composition
and singing. On two other mornings they have the setting-up
exercises and drill of the school of the soldier, with some
other physical culture features. The boys elect their own military
officers, save, of course, their chief, and these officers become successful
disciplinarians, retaining well the respect and obedience of
their companies. A very successful fife, bugle and drum corps,
composed of the boys themselves, is a feature of this branch of
their organization. As fairly indicating the standard of these
special activities, let me mention here that this fife, bugle and
drum corps has twice marched at the head of the combined Boys’
Brigades of Philadelphia, and has been pronounced the best junior
organization of the sort in the city.
Our girls have their school organization, also, each division
having two mornings in the week. The branches taught are those
above mentioned and also business correspondence, stenography
and typewriting, and bookkeeping. Attention is given to singing
and physical culture, while an elocution class and a mandolin club
are successful outgrowths of this branch of the store school.
The older boys, in number about three hundred, have supper
in the store and remain for their school, two evenings in a week.
The branches taught are arithmetic, spelling, writing, commercial
correspondence, English, stenography, bookkeeping, metric system,
mechanical and free-hand drawing, rapid calculation. Military
and gymnastic training are given, and as outgrowths of the school
are a club for debate and literary exercises, an orchestra, a field
music band, a mandolin club, a glee club, an elocution and
dramatic class, and a minstrel troupe. Monthly report of the
standing and progress of each pupil is made to the parents.
Each of these three branches of the store school has its separate
171annual commencement exercises conducted similarly to those
of other schools and not falling below the latter in general merit.
Association Hall has been used in later years for this purpose, but
is now much too small for the gathering of the parents and friends
interested. Certificates (they call them diplomas) are given to the
graduates, but these papers have double significance. They testify
to the attainment of a certain standard in the school-work proper
and also to the actual number of years of satisfactory service in the
business, with promotion from the Cadet Corps to a position in the
regular ranks of some one of the store departments—equivalent
to a stepping out of the ranks of the business boy or girl into those
of the business man or woman.
These graduates have organized themselves into Alumni and
Alumnæ Associations and maintain their fellowship, principally
in social, but partly in educative work. The school button or pin
and the alumni pin prove that these young folks are quite as human
as those of other schools and colleges. The standard of class-work
done, while perhaps less in quantity for the same length of time,
does not, in quality, seem to fall below the standard of other
schools. The business training, the business authority and the
fact that excellence in school-work is also an important element in
business promotion, all give the teacher an advantage, and the
scholar an incentive greater than in ordinary schools, and these
substantially offset the disadvantage of shorter class-hours. With
justifiable pride we call the schools, collectively, the “J. W. C. I.,”
“John Wanamaker Commercial Institute.” The “Junior Savings
Fund” is another feature of the young people’s organizations of
the store, largely taken advantage of and helpfully stimulating
to habits of care with money. A summer camp, the outfit for
which is owned by the boys, provides for the vacation of many.
The results are very manifest. Jacob Riis says, “the small
boy is a boiler with steam up all the time, and if authority sits on
the safety-valve there is bound to be an explosion.” We have but
few explosions. There is so much of varied and interesting demand
upon his activities that our future business man has but little time
to scheme out mischief and practically no surplus steam to explode.
The incentive to faithful doing of his best is strong. Participation
in the actual work of the business daily is the broadest end of school-work.
Beginning early and with awakening interest and ambition,
the children are in less danger of developing wrong habits,
172temptation to dishonesty, a sullen or resistful spirit toward those
in control, and many another cause by which a naturally well-equipped
child fails to fulfill the promise of his childhood.
While children here are children still, yet I know not of an equal
number of young people gathered together with an equal standard
in present character and ability and promise of future success and
usefulness. As would be supposed, such care in the early training
of the young people necessarily and naturally carries with it the
advancing of these people as the years go on, so that what is practically
a system of civil service promotion has resulted, and the
higher positions are continually filling with those who have grown
up in the business from childhood.
To be sure, it often happens that a young man, having made
himself fit for a larger position than is open to him at the time in
this his business home, goes out with our approval to some other
establishment which needs a chief and bids for him, but, on the
other hand, it is true that no young man or woman, having won
a foothold in the regular store service and continuing faithfully to
do his or her best, need look elsewhere for advancement or a business
future.
Sometimes these changes to other service are invited before we
think the young man or woman fully qualified, and in any case
much is risked in the search elsewhere for sudden and uncertain
advancement.
From these conditions develop three important features of
modern business life: First: A fair equivalent for the apprentice
system still so strong in the Old World, and for want of which our
young business men and mechanics have suffered in comparison
with Old World competitors, in point of thoroughness and detail
knowledge; second: civil service promotion; and third: service
and disability pension.
May I presume further upon your patience with an additional
question or two? Are we prepared to say that better results than
these I have tried to indicate are observable in those trained solely
in academic courses? It is too large a question for me to attempt
to answer. An answer is, however, suggested by R. T. Crane in a
pamphlet issued in 1901 in Chicago, entitled “An Investigation
as to the Utility of Academic Education for Young Men Who Have
to Earn Their Own Living and Who Expect to Pursue a Commercial
Life.” Mr. Crane comes, among other conclusions, to this: “The
173truth of the matter is that, when it comes to considering an applicant
for a position, few of these gentlemen (employers in various
lines) will be found to pay any attention to the amount of knowledge
he may have of Greek, Latin, literature, etc., or care a straw
about the mental drill and discipline or the well-rounded character
that he may have acquired through a course at college. What
they are particularly interested in knowing is whether he understands
their business and can promote it. This is all that has any
weight with them in the selection of help.”
And further, “The great majority of our strongest and most
successful men in the country to-day came from farms and villages
and obtained very little education.... In my opinion, few
of them would have been anywhere near so successful in business
had they gone to college, for their success was largely due to the
fact, which was impressed upon them in the early part of their
career, that they would have to struggle if they expected to
succeed.
“I feel quite sure that if the men who have been successful in
business were asked whether they regretted starting in business at
the time they did, in place of going to college and taking the chances
of afterward being able to gain the success which they have
achieved, all would answer in the negative.... I think it
can be safely said that the great men at the head of our railroads
are the strongest business men the world has ever produced, and
so far as I have been able to ascertain, not one of them is a consistent
believer in college education.
“Certainly none of them have expressed in their letters any
regret on account of not having received such education themselves.
“On the contrary, Mr. Roswell Miller remarks that he spent
one year in college, and considers it fortunate that he did not spend
more.”
Without depreciating the value of a college course, our business
experience tends to the conclusion that men and women trained
up from youth in the business are the most successful; that length
of service, with its unconscious absorption of and self-adjustment
to the principles and needs of the business, will carry a given degree
of natural capacity to a higher point of efficiency and success
than an originally greater degree of capacity will be likely to reach
by the shorter road of business training begun in maturer years.
174I am aware that business success is but a partial test of true education,
and my mark is missed if I seem to have set up that as my
test alone. Perhaps from the unfavorable conditions of child labor
in the past, has arisen the assumption that to work for wages in
early years is necessarily a misfortune to the child, and, until now
at least, the instinctive choice of parents is for long years in the
schools. But as time brings to working men and women improved
conditions, shortened hours, higher standards of intelligence, increased
rate of earnings, may not a proportionate bettering for the
child bring conditions so normal, to the best education and development,
as that labor in the real world of business or trade will accomplish
more, and more desirably, for the child that which is
striven for in business and trades courses of the schools?
Modern educational methods have carried much of the shop
and counting-house into the school-room, while but little in the
reverse order has been accomplished, at least in this country.
Pennsylvania State law has done little more for the child than to
forbid his being employed in manufacturing or mercantile establishments
before the age of thirteen, and thereafter to surround his
employment with some safeguards against danger to life or limb.
But considerably greater progress has been made in Germany.
Some present here will recall a paper read in this room by our Consul
at Chemnitz, the Hon. J. C. Monaghan, on “Industrial Education,
a German Example.” Mr. Monaghan tells of industrial
schools established in manufacturing districts for the benefit of
the workers of the factories, where the law requires so many hours
in the week to be spent in these schools by the younger employees,
who thus combine the practical of their business with the theoretical
of their school. I quote from Mr. Monaghan: “I have had
exceptional opportunities during three periods, since the war of
1870, of investigating the industrial progress of Germany, and to
make what might easily be a long story short, I may say it is due
mainly to education. When you are building a house, you begin
with the foundations. When you are building up a man, you begin
with the child. Germany a century ago, after its exhaustion and
humiliation caused by the great wars, fixed the foundation of its
new life and development on the rock of education. The country
was poor, its people could only exist by hard work, and their education
was organized so as to help them with their work....
Germany has a system of further-developing schools, and industrial
175art schools, so close to the people that they aid the trades and
industries in such a way as to commend themselves to all parties
concerned therewith. Education in Germany is compulsory.
After graduating from the public schools (or leaving the public
school, for reference here is to the lower grade schools which boys
leave at fourteen or fifteen for work, as they do with us at thirteen)
and entering upon an employment, they are not only expected but
compelled to attend these further-developing schools for a period
of three years. They go two or three times each week, sometimes
on Sunday. They are developing the scientific side, if one may
put it thus, of the trade or business with which they are connected.”
Here, then, is the child at work and yet the school brought to him.
But a step further brings to him also those branches of study
usually associated with the school alone and suggested more by
the liberal than the strictly business and trade view of education.
Instead, then, of commercial and mechanical work in the school of
the schools, we have school-work in the school of actual commerce
and industry, in the store and factory.
And shall we say that this reversal of the older plan may not
have a wise and lasting place in educational life?
Is the labor of the store, shop or office more truly educative
when imitated in the class-rooms of commercial and trade schools,
than when done in course of actual business? Do not the labor
and experiences of business life, with their real responsibilities,
their unartificial rewards and retributions, their contact with men
in real life, do all the former can do and much more? Certainly
the real thing done in business or shop, and shaped and regulated
to serve the ends of the world’s actual economic life, must have
an educative advantage above the like thing theorized over in the
school-room; while of unquestionably great value is that further
reward which the school of actual business gives to its pupils,
namely—a knowledge of men and affairs, confidence, judgment,
association with practical workers at the centre of the world’s daily
life.
Keep the children young, we are tempted to say as we see
them in our own home circles. A dangerous plan! Rather, let
the children learn what they must, of the best masters, and as their
years are able! So wise and devoted a parent as Lord Chesterfield
wrote his young son: “Do not imagine that the knowledge,
which I so much commend to you, is confined to books, pleasing,
176useful, and necessary as that knowledge is; but I comprehend in
it the great knowledge of the world, still more necessary than that
of books. The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in
the world, and not in a closet.” “Happy the man who, with a
certain fund of parts and knowledge, gets acquainted with the
world early enough to make it his bubble, at an age when most
people are the bubbles of the world, for that is the common case
of youth.”
If, then, the commercial and trades training, the business or
manual, or whatever the course be called, can be found in actual
commerce and trade; if a sufficient degree of scholastic education
can there be added, and if with this the maturing man or woman
shall gain a higher degree of technical skill and a safer knowledge
of men and affairs, does not the plan of the school in business best
meet the educational problem for at least a majority of childkind?
Answer as you may for present or future, this is true
now—that child labor in the Wanamaker store means education,
physical, scholastic, commercial; development in character, fitness
for intelligent work, and fitting into a place in the bread-and-butter
belt of the world; an open path and a helping hand to the career
of the man or woman who shall add a due part to the sum of life
and win the crown fashioned by the Great Father for each of us,
His children, who finds his duty and does it.
“Q. Has the store any difficulty in keeping out boys under
thirteen?
“A. Practically no difficulty. I have no doubt the truth is
stretched occasionally and those not yet thirteen brought in, but
there must be an affidavit as to age, and few of the class of people
from whom our employees are drawn are willing to swear to a lie
in order to secure earlier employing of the child.
“Q. Is there a physical examination, a physician in charge?
“A. There is no physical examination other than that which
the eye of the employer can give. The first weeks or months of
the boy’s service, or girl’s, develop the fact whether physically,
mentally and otherwise, the child is suited for the business.
“Q. How long has this system been in operation?
“A. I think it was six years ago that we began with the school
177for cash boys. It was some two or three years before that the
initial step, out of which all the rest has grown, was taken. The
plan arose originally from a recognition of the fact that the young
people who came into the store were not sufficiently looked after.
They were apt to be lost sight of, as distributed in the various
departments, and when the busy season passed and some reduction
in the force became necessary, the department head was often not
far-sighted enough to consider that the small boy now would be his
best man in the years to come. It was the recognition of this fact
that led to the beginning of the plan of which the first step was
merely the placing of the smaller boys of the establishment under
one head. All the other steps came one by one, as our experience
led to them.
“Q. You referred to the fact that your experience had shown
that college training was not useful in business career. Are there
many college men in your departments, or are you able to find that
out?
“A. I did not give this as our own experience and conclusion,
but was quoting that of others as given in the pamphlet of Mr.
Crane’s, to which I referred, and which contains my answer to a
letter from him. Mr. Crane sent letters to representatives of various
establishments, asking that question. So far as I can recall
the answer, it was that we were unable to say exactly, but taking
such departments as required salesmen, bookkeepers and so on
(that is, dropping out the delivery and packing rooms, where the
more highly educated would naturally not be found), aggregating
some five hundred and fifty men, we found twenty-six who had
had either a full or partial college education. It is not our custom
to inquire as to the college education. The difference in the success
of the college-educated man and the one not so educated has not,
in our experience, been sufficiently marked to make that a point
of distinction in engaging the rank and file of our men, although
in the man of college education we naturally look for quicker
progress or brighter mental work.”
179
By Hayes Robbins
Dean, Institute of Social Economics, New York
181The keynote that needs to be struck in the child labor matter,
South or anywhere, is not “hands off,” but hands on. It is fortunate
for social progress that the point of view of modern economic
thought has drifted so far away from the old-school doctrine of
non-interference that we can take hold of a problem like this to
some robust, practical purpose, without becoming intellectually
disreputable; and the reason why this is fortunate is that right
here factory legislation has met its bitterest opposition, ever since
the first child labor act in England, in 1802.
The doctrine that cheapness is the all-sufficient goal of economic
progress, the only economic fact of any possible interest or
concern to the laborers, has been a corner-stone in political economy.
Only within recent years has the idea begun to dawn that an adequate
theory of economic welfare must include the interests of the
citizen as a producer as well as a consumer; that the conditions
under which the man works, and his opportunities of enjoying the
fruits of his labor, are quite as vital to his happiness as the price
of potatoes or beef or clothing. It is clear, now, however, that
cheapness, important as it is, must come, and in the long run can
only come, through more effective utilizing of natural forces, by
invention and machinery, not through the overworking and social
degradation of labor; and the great enlightening circumstance
on this point has been the fact that the whole price-cheapening
trend of our modern industrial era has come hand in hand with
increasing wages, diminishing hours, and restrictions on the labor
of women and children.
In respect to child labor alone, the progress of protective
legislation has been extraordinary. England has had a half-time
factory and school law for children of nine and over since 1844, the
half-time age having since been raised to eleven; and a fourteen-year
age limit for full-day work since 1874. In Germany the limit
182for full-day work is fourteen years, and for any factory work at all
thirteen; in Holland, Belgium, France, Austria, Norway and
Sweden it is twelve; in Russia fifteen, half-time being allowed from
twelve up. In Switzerland it is fourteen; in Denmark fourteen,
with half-time allowed from ten up; and even in Italy child labor
under nine years is absolutely prohibited.
Here in the United States, at the beginning of 1899, when the
last complete compilation on the subject was made, there were
limitations on child labor in thirty-four states and all the territories.
To select for comparison our greatest manufacturing
states, as showing most clearly the possibility of prosperity without
child labor, the limit under which such labor is prohibited in
Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Illinois and Indiana is
fourteen years; in Georgia no limit. In Rhode Island fifteen and
Ohio fourteen, except during school vacations, and no work at all
under twelve; in North Carolina no limit. In New Jersey twelve
for boys and fourteen for girls; in Alabama no limit, except in
mines, twelve years. In Pennsylvania thirteen; in South Carolina
no limit. Happily, the tendency is moving Southward; Missouri,
Maryland, Tennessee and even Louisiana now have restrictive
laws; so that the section specially known as the new industrial
South, the home of the Southern cotton and iron manufacturing
industries, is the only place in the United States where the idea of
protecting the physical, moral and educational opportunities of
little children has made practically no impression in statute law.
At the outset, now, of her industrial development, the South
has a unique opportunity. She can transfer to her own conditions
the results of nearly all Christendom’s experience in humane factory
regulation, without having to suffer over again the hardships and
struggles this progress has cost. I do not mean to imply that all
such legislation has worked to perfection, without evasion or hardship;
but the vast improvement over no legislation at all indicates
the soundness of the effort and points the line of further reform.
Those who have not yet even made a start ought not to be frightened
out of a beginning because the others still have something
more to do.
The Japanese are a case in point. They are now reported to
be sending students abroad to study modern labor legislation, with
the object of applying it to their own oncoming factory system
at the beginning, recognizing that it is as inevitable as progress
183itself. Russia, even Russia, has already done this. Surely the
new South does not need to go to school in Russia and Japan.
It seems hardly necessary to prove the importance of doing
something. Bare statement of the admitted fact that children
of eight to twelve, and even younger, are working in the mills
through the industrial South tells the story, and ought to be sufficient.
Personally, I have seen the child labor system in operation
in North and South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, and gathered
some vivid impressions; have seen scores of little people working
in the dust and din of the spinning-rooms, seen scores of others on
their way to the mills before daylight, who would not come out
until after dark, the hours of labor ranging from eleven to twelve;
have been in the homes of these people and learned something of
how they live and the wages they receive. For example, we
brought back from the South some 154 weekly pay envelopes for
both adults and children, collected from operatives’ families in
one of the best sections, and nearly 100 of them are for less than
$1.50 each, per week, the average in most cases ranging from ten
to thirty or forty cents a day; only older children earning the latter
sums, however.
In other words, low as the wage rates are, the actual earnings,
especially of children, are much lower. This is due partly to
absences, partly to constant deductions of all sorts, for faulty work,
rent, money advanced, car-fare advanced to get them down from
the mountains or in from the country to the mills, and what not.
In forty-four out of the 154 envelopes, these deductions exactly
cancel the entire amount of wages due. Let me cite three or four
specimen cases, omitting names. One envelope, repeated two or
three times, shows wages for the week $1.00, rent seventy-five
cents, balance twenty-five cents; another, wages $1.20, tin cup
five cents, transportation $1.15, balance nothing; another, wages
$3.00, rent $1.40, loan $1.00, balance paid sixty cents; another,
wages $1.50, transportation $1.00, balance fifty cents; and so on.
It is impossible to state with exactness the number of children
under a given age, say fourteen years, employed in Southern factories.
The Federal census does not cover this point, and only one
Southern state of the group under consideration—North Carolina—makes
any provision for collecting and publishing industrial and
labor statistics. Close approximation to the facts of the general
conditions, however, is not very difficult. It appears from the
184latest report of Commissioner Lacy, of the North Carolina Bureau
of Labor, that about 7,600 children under fourteen years of age
were employed in 261 mills in that state. The Federal census
bulletins on manufactures, now being issued, show the total number
of employees in the cotton manufacturing industry in the five
Southern states where any important amount of cotton manufacturing
exists; and for North Carolina the total in 1900 was 30,273
operatives. In other words, more than one-third of the total number
of operatives in the cotton mills of that state are children under
fourteen years of age. In South Carolina the total number of
operatives in 1900 was 30,201, in Georgia 18,348, in Alabama 8,332,
in Mississippi 1,675, the total for the five states being 88,829.
Estimating the same proportion of child labor throughout the
entire group (and this is entirely legitimate, since North Carolina
conditions are even better than in some other manufacturing sections
in the South), it would appear that there are more than
22,000 children under fourteen years of age in the cotton mills of
these states. On this basis, it is a conservative estimate to say
that at least eight or ten thousand of these children are under
twelve, while the lower extreme of the age limit is down even to the
almost unbelievable point of six years; the fact being well established
that children as young as six to eight and nine years are
to-day working in some of the Southern mills.
Remember, along with this, the fact just observed in the case
of our Northern states and European countries, where legislation
on child labor exists, that fourteen years is very nearly the average
age under which factory labor is prohibited altogether. In other
words, the absence of any restrictions in the South means that
fully one-third of all the operatives are younger than the age
standard established by the forces of humanitarian opinion and
wise statesmanship throughout the larger part of Christendom.
The amounts earned by the children in Southern mills would
not be necessary to the support of the families under any proper
system of factory regulation. The economics of the situation
would inevitably take care of that. If the labor of the children is
not available, the mills must employ older help, and in order to get
such help must pay wages sufficient to maintain the families, including
the children. This is how the matter has adjusted itself
wherever child labor has been restricted, and of economic necessity
it must be so. The difference in labor expense involved has never
185yet been sufficient to hamper industrial activity or drive capital
away from any industrial section, and, so long as competing groups
are not permitted to gain a permanent advantage by the wholesale
use of child labor, it never will.
The lack of restrictions on child labor makes possible also that
semi-barbarous institution of night work. Where all the family
work by turns in the mill, the results are shockingly demoralizing.
Just as a side-light on one phase of this system, let me quote a
paragraph from a discussion of factory evils in the South, just published
this month, by Rev. J. A. Baldwin, of Charlotte, N. C., a
special student of these problems. Where part of the family work
by day and part by night, he says:
“The mother has to get up at 4:30 in the morning to get
breakfast for the day hands, so they can be at the mill at six; then
the night hands come and eat about seven. She has to have dinner
for the day hands strictly at twelve. The night hands get up
and eat from four to five, so as to be ready to go to work for the
night at six; she also gives them a lunch to be eaten at midnight.
Then the day hands get out at six and have supper about seven.
Besides this, there is house-cleaning, washing and ironing, sewing,
and often the care of little children.... The mills usually
run sixty-six hours per week at night; that is, the operatives work
twelve hours from Monday night to Friday night inclusive, and on
Saturday get up about two o’clock (before they have had enough
sleep) to go to work at three. They then work till nine, at night.
As a matter of fact it is usually ten or eleven when they get out.
“Night work is much worse in summer than in the winter.
In the winter they go to bed, cover up and sleep soundly. In
summer it is difficult to sleep on account of light, heat, flies and
noise. In summer, while they usually go to bed, it is a very
familiar sight to see them lying across the bed with their work-clothes
on, or on a pallet in the passage or on the porch. Their
sleep is fitful and unsatisfying, and they never feel bright and fresh
from the beginning to the end of the week. They furnish the most
favorable conditions for the development of physical, intellectual
and spiritual disease germs.”
The children of factory families in the South to-day have no
protection against this. Night work for women and children
ought to be absolutely prohibited. It is, almost everywhere else,
even in Russia. This would practically force either the employment
186of men only in night work, or else its abolition altogether.
I would not deny that there may sometimes be good economic
reasons for night work, at least in rush times, but it should be
done by men if at all, never by women and children.
Nobody is urging any step that threatens to destroy Southern
mill profits, but it must be insisted that there is another way to
secure profits than the way of using child labor. Scientific improvement
of industrial methods is the only sure and safe road to permanent
prosperity, and it would not seem that the South has much to
fear when the great bulk of the most prosperous industry in Christendom
is being conducted under more or less advanced forms of
factory regulation. Furthermore, nobody need or ought to urge
legislation as the remedy on the ground that Southern manufacturers
are all indifferent and inhumane. Legislation is urged
simply because it is the most uniform and least costly method the
South could of its own accord adopt. Southern manufacturers are
no more types of hardhearted callousness than are manufacturers
anywhere; they have all been opposed to factory legislation at one
time or another, under the influence of mistaken economic doctrines.
I do not know, but would risk it, that scores of Southern
manufacturers would be glad to see these evils abolished in their
own mills if they could do it without immediate competitive disadvantage
with all the rest. Here comes in the advantage of
legislation, that by establishing the same conditions and opportunities
for all, it imposes no special relative handicap on any.
Moreover, and here is one of the saddest features of all, the
fathers, sometimes even the mothers, are among the worst
offenders in this whole matter. I have seen cases, and there are
others in abundance, where the wife and children practically earn
the family living in the mill, while the father thoughtfully carries
in the dinner-pail at noon, perhaps working a little on odd days
when he gets tired of loafing. We cannot altogether blame the
manufacturers when these people are fairly urging them to take on
the children in the mills; and we need to remember also that to
most of these unfortunate people factory life is a distinct improvement
over the log-cabin, salt pork and peach brandy, white-trash
and Georgia-cracker type of life from which many of them were
sifted out when the mills came. The manufacturer knows this,
and it is not surprising that he should even think himself something
of a philanthropist, just in furnishing mill jobs on almost
187any terms. He does not see as yet that when these people drift
down into the factory centres they become industrial, social and
political factors in an altogether new and more serious sense than
they ever could be while burrowing in the mountain sides.
To have practically all of the next generation of factory operatives
growing up stunted in body and mind, and nearly all of them
illiterates, in a section of the country where the general average of
illiteracy is already appalling, is a matter of the gravest concern.
Southern manufacturers sooner or later will have to recognize this
fact, and its impending consequences. According to the 1900
census statistics just appearing, the proportion of illiteracy among
males of voting age, white and black together, was, in Alabama 33.7
per cent, in Georgia 31.6 per cent, in Mississippi 33.8 per cent,
in North Carolina 29.4 per cent, in South Carolina 35.1 per cent;
as compared, for instance, with 6.4 per cent in Massachusetts, 6.8
per cent in Connecticut, 9.2 per cent in Rhode Island, 5.9 per
cent in New York, 6.9 per cent in New Jersey, 7.7 per cent in
Pennsylvania. The South simply cannot afford to permit the
processes to go on that are adding fresh groups every year to its
grand total of illiterate and unfit citizens. In the face of the
present situation, if a new race of degenerates, brought up in
exhausting toil, dense ignorance, and exposed to all the temptations
of an unprotected environment, is to be developed now in the fast-growing
centres of the new South, they are certain to form a social
and civic and economic menace to the community.
This will be true not only of the South; the matter is coming
to have a national significance. Within the limits of any one
interdependent industrial group, like the United States, there must
be at least some general approach to uniformity in the working
conditions of the laborers, by given lines of industries. Differences
in competitive success must come from differences in managing
ability, quality of plant, or natural environment, not from
different standards of decency in the use of labor. If long hours
and child labor become the fixed conditions of success, the whole
field of competing industry must eventually come down to that
basis. A competitive influence which works for the undermining
of higher standards of living, wherever established, is a matter of
universal concern. In a democracy, no condition is safe which
offers a competitive advantage to anything that leads toward
ignorant, inferior citizenship. It is not safe anywhere, whether in
188Southern mill villages or Northern city slums, because to make
degradation profitable in any quarter sets the current of tendency
that way, with demoralizing effect.
That is why it is not meddlesome interference for American
citizens not of the South to have a concern about this matter, from
the broad standpoint of national welfare. The real test-point of
permanent progress and prosperity, affecting the nation as well
as the South, is not the size of profits in Southern mills in the next
five years, large as we hope they may be through all proper means;
but it is the quality of Southern citizenship in the next five generations.
That citizenship is now in the making, and now is the
time of times to safeguard its development. Such action will be
good economics, good morals, good humanity. For the South, it
is an inspiring opportunity.
189
By Hugh F. Fox
President New Jersey State Board of Children’s Guardians
191For the discussion of child labor in New Jersey there are no
official data in which reliance can be placed. The reports of the
State Bureau of Factory Inspection are conclusive evidence of the
incompetence of the inspector and his deputies. The State Charities
Aid Association has recently analyzed the report of the
Bureau for the year ending October 27, 1900, and has published
the results in the New Jersey Review of Charities and Corrections,[16]
and it is shown that out of a total of 6,014 factories and bakeshops
which were discovered by the Bureau, no less than 1,543 were not
visited at all, and yet the department reports favorably on 5,862,
indicating that 1,391 were reported favorably, but not visited.
According to the 1900 census, however, there were in New Jersey
8,308 factories proper (excluding hand trades), and 1,485 clothing
establishments, excluding families working in the tenements.
The factory inspectors also report on 1,185 bakeries, so that there
appears to have been a total of 10,978 establishments which it was
the duty of the inspectors to visit.
The factory inspectors found 5,968 children under sixteen in
the 6,014 establishments which they reported; an average of about
one child to each establishment. Of these they ordered only fifty-nine
children discharged during the year. The census reports an
average of 8,042 children under sixteen, employed in manufacturing
establishments alone, during the year. Attention should be
directed, in this connection, to the difference between the duties
of a census taker and a factory inspector. The former furnishes
a blank schedule to the manufacturer, which he fills out at his own
discretion, without any verification on the part of the census taker.
In short, the census agent takes what is given him by the employer,
and his interest in the matter is entirely perfunctory. The factory
inspector is, however, supposed to make his own investigation
and get his own evidence, though it is generally believed that in
many cases he contents himself with a visit to the office only and a
192polite exchange of social amenities with the employer. While the
factory inspector is expected to take a personal interest in his
figures, it involves a lot of extra work for him and serious trouble
for the employer, if the latter is so thoughtless as to inconvenience
him by entering into embarrassing particulars in regard to children.
In some instances it is reported that the inspector apprises the
factory owner of his intended visit beforehand, the children being
given a holiday in honor of the occasion.
The New Jersey laws prohibit the employment of boys under
twelve and girls under fourteen, “in any factory, workshop, mine
or establishment where the manufacture of any goods whatever is
carried on.” Children between the ages of twelve and fifteen must
have attended school for twelve consecutive weeks (or two terms
of six consecutive weeks each) within the twelve months immediately
preceding their employment. Children under fifteen must
procure a certificate from their teachers giving full particulars as to
attendance, etc. The report of the Department of Factory Inspection
does not indicate how many of the 5,968 children, under
sixteen, are over the age of fifteen, but of the total number of children,
only 1,343 were required to produce school certificates. It
seems hardly possible that 4,625 of the children employed were
over fifteen years of age.
The inspectors have the power to prohibit overcrowding in
factories and workshops, and to demand a certificate of physical
fitness from some regular practicing physician in the case of minors
who may seem physically unable to work. Apparently this gives
the inspectors power to prohibit the employment of any girl
under eighteen, or boy under twenty-one, who cannot obtain such
a certificate, but it is evident from the report of 1900 that this
power has not been exercised.
The law prohibits the employment of any child under sixteen
“at any work dangerous to health, without a certificate of fitness
from a reputable physician.” The meaning of this is somewhat
ambiguous. Is the physician to certify to the condition of the child
or the healthiness of the occupation? Who is to decide as to
whether the work is dangerous to health? The questions are,
however, entirely speculative, since the factory inspectors have
done nothing to indicate any anxiety to put the matter to the test.
It does not seem to have occurred to the inspectors that their power
to set a standard of physical fitness for children really removes
193their chief difficulty. At a recent hearing before Governor Murphy,
Inspector Ward pleaded that there were many difficulties in the
way of enforcing the laws, his department being confronted with
sworn affidavits of parents that their children were over the minimum
age of twelve years, while the children themselves are taught
with threats never to admit that they are under twelve years old.
The test of physical fitness is really much more important than that
of age, and the power to apply it gives the factory inspector the
whip-hand over both the child’s parent and the employer. It
seems strange, however, that nothing has been done in this country
to define fully the dangerous trades or occupations. The British
Parliament appointed a committee some years ago on “Dangerous
Trades and Diseases of Occupations.”[17] The report of this committee
established the fact that lead poisoning is rampant in the
potteries, that phosphorus necrosis is common in the match factories,
and that naphtha fumes in rubber-manufacturing results
frequently in premature aging and paralysis. Among other specially
unhealthy occupations may be mentioned glass-making,
printing, cutlery, silk-mills, hats, pearl buttons and tobacco.
What Mrs. Kelley said in 1896, at the National Conference of Charities
and Correction, is equally true to-day:
“The physical condition of working children has never received
attention, so far as I know, in any systematic way. There
are some desultory provisions in the New York and Illinois factory
laws which show there is a dim consciousness in the law-making
mind that children may be put at work beyond their strength,
unless there is supervision of them by some state officer. But
these provisions are so loosely drawn that they are nugatory. The
Illinois inspectors are urging upon the Legislature the necessity of
adding to the staff a physician who shall give her whole time to the
care of the children. There is, at present, no such material available
as such a physician could furnish, upon the condition of the
children, except the records of measurements made by two volunteer
physicians for the inspectors, in 1893 and 1894, covering about
200 children, taken from the factories and workshops of Chicago.
These records, published in the Factory Inspectors’ Report for
1894, are startling in the proportion which they show of undersized,
rachitic, consumptive children at work. They are, however, so
194limited in number that their principal value lies in indicating the
wide field open for investigating the working child as compared with
the school child. What they show, comparatively, is that the
stature of the working child is far less, upon the average, than that
of the city school child. The child study of the past ten years bears
out the assertion that stature in children is indicative of general
development, physical and mental.”
The New Jersey Factory Inspectors have the power to call
upon the public authorities to furnish truant officers, who are required
to act under their direction. But this law is also a dead
letter. So too is another law which was passed to regulate the
sweat-shop evil, and provides that “No person, firm or corporation
shall hire or employ any person to work in any room or rooms,
apartment or apartments, in any tenement or dwelling-house, or
building in the area of a tenement or dwelling-house, at making, in
whole or in part, any coats, vests, trousers, knee pants, overalls,
cloaks, furs, fur trimmings, fur garments, shirts, purses, feathers,
artificial flowers or cigars, unless such person, firm or corporation
first shall have obtained a written permit from the factory and
workshop inspectors, ... which permit may be revoked at
any time that the health of the community or of those employed as
aforesaid may require it, and that such permit shall not be granted
until due and satisfactory inspection of the premises affected shall
have been made by the said inspector.” By a recent act, overcrowding
in tenements or rented rooms is punishable at a fine of
$25.00. Each adult must have 300 cubic feet of air; each child
under twelve, 150 feet.
Public authority is thoroughly aroused on the whole question
of child labor in New Jersey, and some interesting facts are coming
to light. The trades unions are taking the matter up, in several
directions, and the searchlight of the press is trained on several
of the leading industries—notably the glass factories of South
Jersey, the silk and textile mills of Passaic county, and the various
tobacco and cigar factories which are scattered over the state. It
is stated that each man employed as a glassblower is required to
furnish a boy as a “helper,” and that a combination of the padrone
system and veritable child slavery exists. Incidentally it
has been developed that many boys have been placed in the families
of glassblowers by private child-placing societies and orphan
asylums of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. It furnishes a striking
195argument for the public oversight of child-caring agencies. Here
are a few letters from local cigarmakers’ unions:
No. 101, Elizabeth.—“We have Mr. Hilson’s machine cigar manufactory
here, employing about 300 or 400 hands, all girls; about one-half of them are
under age; our union has from time to time been obliged to see the factory
inspector to remedy this evil; we informed him about a week ago that in
case he further neglects his duty the Union County Trades Council and Cigar
Makers’ Union would be compelled to see the Governor. The leading brand
they make is the “Hoffman House,” which is done up in neat boxes, and as
you can readily see they are able to undersell all union goods, as the lowest
price for union cigars made is $8.00 per M., while they can furnish them
with the girls working for them for $2.50 to $3.00.”
No. 230, Millville.—“There is no child labor in connection with our
trade in this locality. This being a strong union city we have no use for the
production of child labor in our trade. This union covers Millville, Vineland,
Bridgeton and Salem. No child labor in either city in connection with this
trade; you will find most of the children employed are employed by the
American Tobacco Company or Trust. They have a factory in Camden,
N. J., this being the nearest one to this city.”
No. 428, Trenton.—“There is one place that employs 280, mostly children
from ten years old. We had a committee last week working on the
subject of child labor employed in this place known as the American Cigar
Trust; they say it is safe to say that the ages won’t average over fourteen.
We know for a fact that their children are not allowed to say a word to one
another while at work, if they do they will be discharged. They claimed at
one time to have over 300 at work and have room and machinery for over a
thousand, but don’t seem to get them as fast as they thought. Our committee
reported that some of these little tots when they came out at night
actually fell down from weakness, but there seems to be no way to stop
such work.
“The work that these children do costs the Trust $2.10 per thousand
for making cigars, and the low price for men is $7.50 per thousand; the
average cigarmakers will make 1500 a week of this kind of work, and three of
these children with machinery make six thousand a week. You can imagine,
when the Trust surely get their feet in it, what will become of cigar-making.”
Many of the children in the glass works and in worsted mills
are said to have been employed on “night shifts.” If the children
in state reformatories were worked half as hard as the children in
the factories, there would be a perfect storm of indignation. There
is, however, a general awakening, and the leading papers in Newark,
Paterson, Passaic, Hoboken, Jersey City, Trenton, Camden
and other cities have taken the matter up vigorously. The Governor
has announced his determination to make the inspectors devote
196their entire time to their duties, in accordance with the law just
passed, instead of spending their odd moments only in inspecting
factories, as has been the case hitherto. Good results are already
apparent, and the new inspectors in Essex and Passaic counties are
making a strong effort to enforce the laws. The latter has brought
suits against several employers for the recovery of the penalty imposed
by the state for employing children illegally. There is ample
legislation in New Jersey for the regulation of child labor, though
the minimum age for boys should be raised to fourteen, and girls to
fifteen. Now that the community is informed of the evil, the Legislature
may be counted on to make an adequate appropriation for
expenses. There ought to be a lawyer on the staff of the Department
of Factory Inspection, and an effort should be made to bring
the various State Boards into co-operation in the work. It seems
curious that no reference has hitherto been made to child labor in any
of the reports of the state and local Boards of Health and of Education;
nor does the Bureau of Statistics of Labor and Industries seem
to know anything of the subject. The various departments of the
government seem to be so afraid of overlapping, that in this, as in
other matters, they studiously ignore each other.
The “Lord bill,” which was passed last session, authorizes the
Governor to appoint a woman inspector, and strong pressure is
being brought upon Governor Murphy to induce him to do so. The
State Federation of Labor has been working for the appointment
of a woman inspector since 1897. It is felt that the duties of the
office involve personal qualities possessed in an eminent degree by
many women, and that a good woman inspector would work a
revolution in the department.
The following tables are given for purposes of comparison with
other states. The school census of 1900, taken by the state, gave
457,479 children of school age, the enrollment being 322,575. The
number of schoolable children is increasing from 7,000 to 10,000
per year. The “persons of school age” in the Federal census
cover all from five to twenty years of age, inclusive. The total of
them was 572,917 (282,180 males and 290,737 females). The
particulars as to parentage are:
Born of American parents
271,827
Born of foreign parents in United States
226,566
Born in foreign lands
54,837
Born of colored parents
19,693
197
[U.S. Census, 1900.]
Persons of School Age, 5 to 20 years inclusive, in New Jersey Cities of 25,000 or more.
(Showing 62.4 per cent of foreign parentage.)
Total.
Native Parents.
Foreign Parents.
Foreign Born.
Colored.
Atlantic City
6,782
4,089
1,265
286
1,146
Bayonne
10,626
2,812
6,289
1,426
100
Camden
22,943
13,793
6,510
1,086
1,557
Elizabeth
16,229
5,551
8,729
1,619
331
Hoboken
18,699
4,463
11,956
2,258
23
Jersey City
63,495
21,535
35,271
5,744
953
Newark
74,897
25,210
38,797
9,114
1,789
Passaic
9,274
1,653
3,934
3,553
134
Paterson
33,170
8,270
18,655
5,965
286
Trenton
22,337
10,591
8,999
2,241
508
278,452
97,967
140,405
33,292
6,827
Notes from the Census Bulletins Nos. 88, 89, 135 and 157 for
New Jersey (1900):
Total population of New Jersey
1,883,669
This was made up as follows:
Born of American parents
825,973
Born of foreign parents in United States
556,294
Born in foreign lands
430,050
Born of colored parents
71,352
The percentage of the New Jersey population living in cities
is 70.6. The states of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut
and New York are the only ones which have a larger percentage
of their population in cities. In this connection it is interesting to
note that New Jersey ranks sixth in the United States in the value
of its manufactured products.
The average number of wage-earners employed by manufacturing
establishments in New Jersey during 1900 was 241,582
(12.8 per cent of the total population), of whom 8,042 were children
under sixteen years of age.
The greatest number employed at any one time during the
year was 307,933, or 16.3 per cent of the total population.
The total number of manufacturing and mechanical establishments
in New Jersey was 15,481. Of these, 11,115, or 71.8 per
cent, were located in forty-four cities and towns. The urban establishments
employed 196,901 wage-earners, or 81.5 per cent of the
total number employed. The list of industries includes “hand
198trades.” Omitting them, the total number of manufactures
proper was 8,308.
The manufacture of textiles is the most important industry
in the state. Of these the silk factories employed 24,157 wage-earners
out of a total of 46,932 engaged in textile work.
Foundry and machine-shop products are second, with 17,918
wage-earners.
The fifteen leading industries of the State embraced 1,780 establishments,
and employed an average of 117,008 wage-earners
during the year 1900.
Average number of children under sixteen years, employed in
New Jersey manufactories during the year 1900 (U. S. Census
Bulletin No. 157):
Boots and shoes
192
Brass wire
65
Bakeries
64
Buttons
71
Carpets
86
Clothing
191
Cotton goods
641
Dyeing and finishing textiles
70
Fireworks
85
Foundry and machine shops
212
Canning
86
Gas and lamp fixtures
181
Glass
850
Hardware
80
Hosiery and knit goods
152
Iron and steel
65
Linen goods
316
Pocket-books
60
Pottery
193
Printing
174
Roofing
74
Shirts
50
Silk
1,199
Stamped ware
119
Surgical appliances
75
Tobacco
183
199Woolen goods
187
Worsted goods
456
6,177
Miscellaneous industries
1,865
8,042
Comparison of the reports of the United States Census, and of
the New Jersey Factory Inspectors, for the year 1900, in regard to
children employed in certain industries in eleven cities in New
Jersey:
Census Reports.
Factory Inspectors’ Reports.
Bayonne—Petroleum
21
0
Camden—Worsted goods
160
113
Elizabeth—Tobacco
0
30
Elizabeth—Clothing and shirts
9
10
Elizabeth—Sewing machines
0
22
Hoboken and Jersey City—Silk
60
60
Hoboken—Clothing
9
0
Jersey City—Clothing
3
0
Jersey City—Electrical apparatus
45
25
Jersey City—Printing
48
16
Jersey City—Soap
42
21
Jersey City—Tobacco
92
87
Jersey City—Boxes
0
44
Newark—Boots and shoes
108
0
Newark—Carpentering
65
0
Newark—Clothing
82
11
Newark—Corsets
34
17
Newark—Foundry and mechanical shops
52
0
Newark—Hardware
75
16
Newark—Jewelry
36
13
Newark—Leather
22
11
Newark—Stamped ware
116
0
Newark—Tobacco
19
35
Newark—Thread
0
100
New Brunswick—Tobacco
29
45
Orange—Hats
27
5
Passaic—Woolen goods
98
15
Paterson—Silk
832
504
Paterson—Foundries
91
0
Trenton—Iron and steel
54
0
Trenton—Potteries
118
204
Trenton—Rubber
28
47
Trenton—Bakeries
19
47
201
By E. Dubois
Professor in the University of Ghent
203The industrial census of October 31, 1896, of which the complete
results have just been published[19], furnishes the most recent
and the most complete information regarding the extent of the
industrial labor of children and the general conditions under which
it exists.
Upon that date, out of a total of 671,596 laborers of all ages
and both sexes, employed in the manufactures properly so called,
and excluding the domestic workshops, there were 76,147 children
less than sixteen years of age working in factories and workshops—that
is to say, out of every 100 employees eleven were less than
sixteen years of age.
The child labor was found principally:
(1) In the textile industries 11,863.
(2) In the mining industries 10,167, of whom 5,516 are employed
in underground labor, and 4,651 in surface labor.
(3) In the manufacture of clothing for men and women 9,674.
(4) In the glass industries 4,429.
Among 4,681 establishments and contractors employing both
adults and children, and having at least ten employees: 1,737
(37.1 per cent) employed less than 10 per cent of children along
with adults; 1,675 (35.9 Per cent) employed from 11 to 25 per
cent of children along with adults; 821 (17.3 per cent) employed
from 26 to 50 per cent of children along with adults; 361 (7.9 per
cent) employed from 51 to 100 per cent of children along with
adults; 87 (1.8 per cent) employed more than 100 per cent of
children along with adults.
There are, hence, in eighty-seven establishments more children
than adults. These concerns belong chiefly to the textile industries
(26), to the tobacco industries (10), books (8), clothing (7), manufacture
204of chocolate (6). One woolen mill and two dressmakers
employ only children.
The statistics of the children according to age is as follows:
Number of children aged less than sixteen, 76,147—50,493
boys, 25,654 girls; number of children from fourteen to sixteen,
54,946—36,431 boys, 18,515 girls; number of children from twelve
to fourteen, 20,762—13,814 boys, 6,948 girls; number of children
less than twelve, 439–248 boys, 191 girls. About one-half of these
children less than twelve years old belong to the manufacture of
clothing (dressmakers and cutters).
The census has succeeded in determining the length of actual
labor (recess deducted), for 61,652 children employed in the industrial
establishments, not including the coal mines. Rather more
than one-tenth of them (about 7,000) work nine hours and less.
One-third (about 21,000) work about ten hours. One-third (about
19,000) work about ten and a half to eleven hours. One-fourth
(about 15,000) work more than twelve hours. The days of more
than eleven hours are most frequent in the textile and clothing
manufactures.
Under the head of time of labor: 61,314 children (38,414 boys
and 22,900 girls) work during the day only (92.99 per cent);
thirty-six children (boys) work only at night (0.02 per cent), 4,611
children (4,238 boys and 373 girls) work alternately by day and
night (6.99 per cent). The majority of these night laborers are
employed in the glass industries, viz.: 3,262. Then comes the
iron industry with 657 children, and the confectionery factories
with 447.
Regarding the coal mines, the duration of labor has been determined
for 9,153 children out of 10,167. Among these 9,153
children, 7,772 work during the day only (5,550 boys and 2,222 girls);
4,482 (3,281 boys and 1,201 girls) work ten hours and less; 2,855
(1,900 boys and 955 girls) work ten to ten and a half hours; 308
(246 boys and 62 girls) work ten and a half to eleven hours; 127
(123 boys and 4 girls) work more than eleven hours; 4,827 boys
and 9 girls work underground. Working only at night are
1,357 boys (no girls); and in gangs 24 boys. Almost the whole
number of the “underground” boys work about ten hours or less,
between the descent and the ascent.
One of the great merits of the Belgian industrial census of
1896 is the particular care which was taken in gathering exact
205statistics regarding the individual wages of the whole of the working
population. The statistics of the wages of the Belgian workmen,
by their completeness and exactness, are certainly of the best
existing to-day. They have succeeded in ascertaining the wages
of 70,688 young workpeople (45,577 boys and 25,111 girls).
Number of children working by the day: with wages less than
0.50 fr., 17,229 = 24.37 per cent; 7,511 boys (of which 2,844 receive
no pay); 9,718 girls (of which 6,141 receive no pay); from 0.50 to
1.00 fr., 21,192 = 29.98 percent; 12,748 boys and 8,444 girls; from
1 to 1.50 fr., 19,723 = 27.91 percent; 15,090 boys and 4,633 girls;
1.50 fr. and over, 12,544 = 17.74 per cent; 10,228 boys and 2,316
girls.
In round figures one may say that one-fourth of these young
employees earn nothing or less than 0.50 fr.; a little more than half
earn from 0.50 to 1.50 fr.; and less than one-fifth earn more than
1.50 fr. In fact about two-thirds of the latter earn from 1.50 to
2 fr., and one-third from 2 to 2.50 fr. These percentages relate
to the entire number of children, and would be modified somewhat
if the boys and girls were considered separately. The figures also
show that smaller wages are paid for female than for male labor.
The statutes affecting child labor in industrial establishments
have been under consideration in Belgium since 1843. At that
time an investigation conducted by the government unveiled the
unfortunate and often abusive conditions under which child labor
was conducted, and a scheme of very remarkable legislation was
drawn up by M. Ducpetiaux, chairman of the Investigation Commission.
But this project was premature. Manchesterian ideas were
still the prevalent ones in the country and with the government.
Reform was still to be waited for, for almost a half century longer,
in spite of the repeated efforts of divers groups of enlightened
manufacturers, of physicians, of philanthropists. All these united
efforts succeeded simply in causing to be introduced into the royal
decree of April 28, 1884, containing regulations concerning the
working of mines, an article, No. 69, which forbade boys aged less
than twelve, and girls less than fourteen, to be allowed to labor in
the mines.
206The industrial troubles of 1886, and the efforts of the Labor
Commission instituted the same year, prepared at last the solution
to the question, and led to the law of December 13, 1889, upon the
labor of women, of youths and of children in industrial establishments.[20]
This law placed under restrictive measures the labor of children:
(1) In mines (coal and metal), quarries, stoneyards.
(2) In works, mills and factories.
(3) In establishments classified as dangerous, unhealthy or
unsuitable; as well as in those where steam boilers or machine
motors were used.
(4) In harbors, terminals and stations.
(5) In transportation by land or water.
It applied both to public and private establishments, even
when they were of an educational or benevolent character. By
virtue of this provision the law regulated, for example, the labor
performed by children in the reform schools, in the lace-making
schools, etc.
The law did not affect the family workshops, where only the
members of a family are employed, under the authority of either
the father, the mother, or the guardian; providing, however, that
these workshops were not classed as dangerous, unhealthy or unsuitable,[21]
or that work therein was not performed with the aid of
steam boilers or machine motors.
It also did not affect, according to the admitted official interpretation,
other workshops which could not be regarded as mills
or factories, or which are not classed among the dangerous, unhealthy
or unsuitable establishments. Hence, the greatest portion
of the clothing factories, which employ a great deal of child labor,
escaped the application of the law.
The principal legal provisions applying to children and youths
of less than sixteen years are the following:
207(1) Prohibition to employ at labor children under twelve
years of age (Art. 2).
(2) The King can prohibit, or only authorize under certain conditions,
the employment of children and youths under sixteen, at
labor that is beyond their strength, dangerous or unhealthful
(Art. 3).
(3) The length of the working day is twelve hours at the most,
divided by recesses, the total of which shall not be less than one
and a half hours.
The King has the authority to regulate the length of the working
day, as well as the length and the conditions of recess, in
accordance with the nature of the occupations in which the children
are employed, and the needs of the industries, professions or trades.
(Art. 4).
(4) Night labor, that is to say, labor after nine o’clock in the
evening and before five in the morning, is prohibited to children
and youths under sixteen (Art. 6).
Exceptions. (a) The King can authorize the employment of
children at night, at occupations which, by reason of their nature,
cannot be interrupted or retarded, or which cannot be accomplished
except within a definite period.
(b) As relating to labor in mines, the King can authorize night
labor by a certain class of workmen more than fourteen years of age,
also by male children fully twelve years old, to begin their labor at
four a. m. (c) The governors of provinces, acting upon the report
of the inspectors of suitable labor, can authorize night labor for
children and youths, in all industries or trades, in cases of delay
resulting from unavoidable necessity, or in exceptional circumstances.
This authorization cannot be granted for more than two
months at most; but it can be renewed. It must be approved by
the Minister.
(5) Children and youths under sixteen cannot be employed at
labor more than six days in the week (Art. 7). This regulation
provides for the Sunday holiday, but the legislation of 1889 did not
intend expressly to forbid Sunday labor. Indeed in 1889 the point
was discussed whether the Belgian Constitution (Art. 15) did not
oppose the legal prohibition of Sunday labor. Even to-day the
question is still in controversy. Hence the law of 1889 solved the
difficulty by merely forbidding children to labor more than six
days in the week. In fact Sunday, the seventh day, is the day of
208rest. There are, however, certain Exceptions: (a) As regards the
industries in which labor, by reason of its nature, cannot stand
either interruption or delay, the King can authorize the employment
of children over fourteen, during seven days in the week,
whether permanently or temporarily, or conditionally. They
must, however, be granted, in every case, the necessary time to
devote to their religious duties once a week, as well as one complete
day of rest in fourteen.
(b) In case of unavoidable necessity, the inspectors, burgomasters
and governors can, with respect to the industries, authorize
the employment on the seventh day of children and youths
under sixteen.
(6) In order to facilitate the enforcement of these legal provisions,
children and youths over sixteen must carry a memorandum
book, which is to be given them gratis by the parish administration;
and which must contain their Christian and surnames, date and
place of their birth, their residence, and the full names with residence
either of their parents or guardians. Likewise the heads of
the industries, chiefs or managers, must keep a registry of the same
information that appears in the memorandum books (Art. 10).
The Belgian laws, in their principal provisions which we have
just examined, resemble for the most part the laws regulating child
labor in other countries. But there is a gap which must have struck
the reader, viz.: the absence of provisions for the education of
children. Foreign laws, and notably the German, English and
French laws, require that the children, whose industrial labor is
effectively regulated, should devote to attendance at school the
time which they do not spend in the factory or workshop. This
is done in the interests of their welfare and for their intellectual and
moral development. The legislator only imperfectly fulfills his
mission when he confines himself to preventing and repressing
the abuses of industrial labor.
This defect in the Belgian law is due to the opposition that
compulsory education has met with and still meets among a notable
part of the population and among the majority in Parliament.
In order that the statement of legislation may be complete,
the author has collected in a table the provisions of the royal
decrees which have resulted from Articles 4, 6 and 7 of the law, and
which concern the determination of the duration of daily labor and
the conditions of recess in a number of industries (Art. 4); the
209exceptions to the prohibitions of night labor (Art. 6), and the
authorizations of work on the seventh day (Art. 7). (See page 210.)
Art. 3 of the law gives the King the power to prohibit or to
regulate the labor of children or youths under sixteen, in certain
industries particularly unhealthful or dangerous.
The royal decrees of February 19, 1895, August 5, 1895, and
April 5, 1898, have applied this legal provision in the following
manner:
(1) Prohibition of labor of children and youths under sixteen
in sixty-five industries, enumerated in Articles 1 and 2 of the decree
of February 19, 1895. These industries are, for the most part,
the chemical ones, or those which manufacture injurious products.
(2) In the lucifer-match factories:
(a) The labor of children and youths under sixteen is prohibited
where paste containing white phosphorus is made, or in the
factories where matches dipped in such paste are dried. Such
labor is also prohibited where matches are dipped in white phosphorus.
(b) Children under fourteen may not be employed in filling
boxes with white phosphorus matches (Article 3 of the royal decree
of February 19, 1895).
(3) In factories where india-rubber is treated with carbon
sulphuret, the presence and the labor of children and youths
under sixteen are prohibited (Art. 4 of the same decree).
(4) Art. 6 enumerated a series of industries in which certain
places are closed to children and youths under sixteen, because of
the injurious and unhygienic character of the labor performed there.
Art. 7 prohibits the admission into certain places and labor therein
of children under fourteen.
(5) The royal decree of August 5, 1895, regulates the employment
of children in rag-shops.
(6) Finally, by force of a royal decree of April 5, 1898 (intercalated
into the decree of February 19, 1895, Art. 5) it is forbidden
to employ children and youths under sixteen in all places
where the treatment of hare and rabbit skins is performed; in all
places where the hare and rabbit skins are prepared before the treatment;
also in all processes which the skins undergo after the treatment,
carrying, brushing, cutting.
210
INDUSTRIES.
LENGTH OF LABOR AND CONDITIONS OF RECESS.
NIGHT LABOR.
LABOR ON THE SEVENTH DAY.
(Art. 4 of the law.)
(Authorization provided by Art. 6 of the law.)
(Authorization provided by Art. 7 of the law.)
I. Spinning and weaving of flax, cotton, hemp and jute (royal decree of December 26, 1892).
For children and youths of 13 to 16 years: 11½ hours a day, 3 recesses of a total of 1½ hours at least. The recess at mid-day to be at least 1 hour. For children of 12 to 13 years, 6 hours a day; recess, ¼ hour.
II. Woolen industry (royal decree of December 26, 1892).
For children and youths under 16: 11¼ hours a day. Recess as in No. 1.
III. Newspaper printing (royal decree of December 26, 1892).
For children and youths under 16: 10 hours a day. Several recesses with a total of 1½ hours at least.
IV. Art industries (royal decree of December 26, 1892).
As for No. III; but for type foundries, the labor of children under 16 is limited to 8 hours a day.
V. Manufacture of paper, (royal decree of December 26, 1892).
For youths of 14 to 16: 10 hours a day. Length of recess: 3 recesses with a total of 1½ hours at least. For children of 12 to 14: 6 hours a day. Recesses: one or more with a total of ½ hour at least.
Authorization for young men of 14 to 16. The length of night labor and recesses is the same as for day labor.
211VI. Tobacco and cigars (royal decree of December 26, 1892).
For youths of 14 to 16: 10 hours a day. Recesses: 3 with a total of 1½ hours at least. For children of 12 to 14: 6 hours a day. Recesses: one or more with a total of ½ hour at least.
VII. Manufacture of sugar (royal decree of December 26, 1892).
For children and youths of less than 16: 10½ hours a day. Recesses: 3 with a total of 1½ hours at least.
Authorization for youths of 14 to 16. The same conditions of labor and recess as for day labor.
VIII. Furniture and industries pertaining to ship-building (royal decree of December 26, 1892).
For children and youths under 16: 9 hours a day during the months of October to March, and 10 hours a day during the rest of the year. Recesses: 3 with total of 1½ hours at least. The recess at mid-day shall be 1 hour at least.
IX. Pottery and crockeryware (royal decree of December 26, 1892).
For children and youths under 16: 10 hours a day. Recess as No. VIII.
X. Refractory products (royal decree of December 26, 1892).
As for No. IX.
212XI. Glass industry (royal decree of December 26, 1892).
As for Nos. IX and X.
Authorization of night labor, for the glass-tapping, to boys of 14 to 16. The same conditions of labor and recess as by day.
One week in every two, the boys of 14 to 16 can be employed a seventh day at the glass-tapping. On that day the actual labor must not exceed 6 hours, with a recess of ½ hour for rest, and the time necessary for their spiritual devotions.
XII. Lucifer matches (royal decree of December 26, 1892).
For children and youths under 16: 10½ hours a day. Recesses: 3 with a total of 1½ hours at least. One hour at mid-day. During these recesses the workmen leave the premises.
XIII. Ship-building industry (royal decree of December 26, 1892).
For children and youths under 16: 8 hours a day during the months of November to February, and 10 hours the rest of the year. Recess: 1 hour during the first months, and 1½ hours during the others.
XIV. Zinc rolling mills (royal decree of December 26, 1892).
Children from 12 to 14: 5 hours a day. Recess of ½ hour at least. Youths of 14 to 16: 10 hours. Recesses with a total of 1½ hours; noon recess at least 1 hour.
Authorization for youths of 14 to 16. The same conditions of labor and recess as by day.
213XV. Crystal and goblet factories (royal decree of December 26, 1892)
For children and youths under 16, who work at glass-making: 10 hours and 20 minutes. Recesses: 3, one of 20 minutes at least, in the morning; one of ½ hour at least, at noon; a third of 20 minutes at least, in the afternoon.
Authorization for youths of 14 to 16. The same conditions of labor and recess as by day.
One week in every two, the youths of 14 to 16 may be employed a seventh day at the manufacture of glass tiles and other analogous labor, which settled glass demands. On that day the actual labor shall not exceed 6 hours, with a recess of ½ hour at least, and the time necessary for their spiritual devotions shall be provided for.
XVI. Industries pertaining to clothing (1st category: hosiery, lace, embroidery, tulles and blond lace, wool-braid, etc.), (royal decree of December 26, 1892).
For children and youths under 16: 11 hours. Recesses: 3 with total of not less than 1½ hours. The mid-day rest shall be at least 1 hour.
XVII. Industries pertaining to clothing (2d category: tanning, currying, tawing, cord-waining, hat-making, fine linen, toilet and millinery, etc., in so far as the law of December 13, 1889, applies to the establishments where these industries are performed), (royal decree of December 26, 1892).
For children and youths under 16, it must not exceed 10 hours a day. Recesses with a total of at least 1 hour. During these recesses the workmen shall be at liberty to leave the premises.
214XVIII. Bulky mechanical construction (royal decree of December 26, 1892).
Children of 12 to 14: 10 hours. Youths of 14 to 16: 11 hours. Recesses with a total of 1 hour at least.
XIX. Small mechanical construction (royal decree of December 26, 1892).
In a first group of industries in this branch (Table A), the length of labor of children 12 to 14 shall not exceed 10 hours. For youths of 14 to 16: 11 hours. In the trades enumerated in Tables B, C, D, children and youths of less than 16: 10 hours. Recesses with total of 1½ hours at least. One hour at noon. Free exit from the premises.
XX. Bricks and tiles “hand-made,” and other similar employments (royal decree of September 22, 1896).
Children and youths under 16: 12 hours a day. Recesses: if the actual day’s labor exceeds 8 hours: 3 recesses with total of 1½ hours at least, at noon. If actual labor exceeds 6, but not 8 hours: 1 or more recesses with total of 1 hour at least. A recess of ¼ hour at least is obligatory after each 4 hours of labor.
215XXI. Window-glass industry; basin kilns; drying ground; pot kilns (royal decree of December 31, 1892).
For children and youths under 16: 10½ hours. Recesses with total of 1½ hours. Each period of labor shall be followed by a complete rest of a duration double that of the labor itself.
Authorization for youths of 14 to 16. The same conditions of recess and labor as by day.
One week in every two, youths of 14 to 16 can be employed the seventh day.
XXII. Mining and quarrying (royal decree of March 15, 1893). N. B.—For the coal mines of Mariemont, where the organization of labor is different from that of other coal mines, the royal decree of March 15, 1893, provides a special regulation.
In underground labor, the length of stay, descent and ascent comprises, among children and male youths under 16, 10½ hours. Recess: at least ⅛ of the stay underground. Male children 12 years old may be employed underground after 4 a. m., under the same conditions of labor and recess. For surface labor, the length of labor for children and youths under 16 is 10½ hours. Recess, 1½ hours at least.
Authorization of night labor for male youths of 14 to 16 occupied in cutting out and maintaining the roads and filling up the dumps. Length of labor 10 hours, and recess as by day.
XXIII. Manufacture of coke (royal decree of March 15, 1893).
A. Ovens for common coke.
Children and youths under 16: 10½ hours. Recess not less than 1½ hours. The principal recess 1 hour.
A. One week in every two, authorization to work a seventh day, for male youths of 14 to 16. Day’s work 8 hours, less the recess of 1 hour and time for religious devotions.
B. Coke ovens for the recovery of by-products.
Children and youths under 16: 10½ hours a day. Recesses with total of 1½ hours. Principal recess 1 hour.
For male youths over 14, authorization for night work. Same length and recess as by day.
B. Same authorization as for No. XXIII A.
216XXIV. Factories for the agglomeration of coal (briquette factories), (royal decree of March 15, 1893).
Children and youths under 16: 10½ hours. Recesses: a total of at least 1½ hours. Principal recess 1 hour.
XXV. Quarries and works connected with them (royal decree of March 15, 1893).
For underground labor, the same conditions as for No. XXII.
For surface labor: 10 hours. In the tool repair shops: 10½ hours. Total recess 1½ hours.
In the works for cutting and carving the rough products of the quarry: for children and youths from 12 to 16: 8 hours a day, in order to give time for professional instruction.
XXVI. Metallurgic works governed under the law of April 21, 1810. (Blast furnaces, iron and steel mills, rolling mills, foundries, etc.), (royal decree of March 15, 1893).
Length of labor: 10½ hours a day. Total recess: 1½ hours. Principal recess: ½ hour between 11 and 2 o’clock for the furnace men; 1 hour for the other workmen.
Male youths of 14 to 16 years may work at night, under the same conditions of labor and recess as the day labor.
One week in every two, male youths of 14 to 16 may work a seventh day, in order to feed the blast furnaces and attend to the zinc foundries. Time allowed for religious devotions.
217XXVII. Preserving and pickling of fish (royal decree of November 3, 1898).
Children and youths under 16: 11 hours. Recesses: 3 with total of 1½ hours when actual labor exceeds 8 hours. When it exceeds 6, but not 8 hours, one or several recesses with a total of 1 hour. A recess of ¼ hour is compulsory after each period of 4 hours’ labor.
Authorization for youths of 14 to 16 to work from 9 p. m. until midnight, during a number of days which shall not exceed thirty a year. Actual labor may never exceed 12 hours. Recesses as by day.
XXVIII. Factories for enamel products (royal decree of November 29, 1898).
Boys of 14 to 16 may be employed at night, one week out of every two, in the work of the enamel cooking ovens. Length of labor and recess as for No. XIX.
218In order to give a full account of the extent of the regulation
of child labor in Belgium, it was necessary to consider in detail the
law of 1889 and the provisions of the various decrees of which we
have just spoken. Let us see now how the law and the regulations
are applied:
In order to insure the application of the law and to watch its
execution, Article 12 prescribes the appointment of officials by the
government, whose powers shall be determined by royal decree.
At first the inspection of labor was vested in officers already
charged with other powers. This system, condemned by experience
in other lands, did not give good results, and a special body of labor
inspectors was organized by a royal decree of October 22, 1895.
According to this decree, the inspection of labor and the observance
of the execution of the law of 1889 in the mines, quarries
and metallurgic works is committed to the engineers of the mines.
For all other industries, the service of labor inspection is attached
to the Labor Bureau.
This service comprises:
(1) Inspectors of labor in the central administration, residing
at Brussels. These officers are six in number: two inspectors-general,
three labor inspectors and one female inspector.
(2) Inspectors and deputies residing in the country. There
are actually eight labor inspectors in the provincial service and six
deputies. The country is divided into nine districts, and the departments
of inspection have, on the last occasion, been defined by
a ministerial decree of December 16, 1899.
(3) Finally, a certain number of medical inspectors are charged
specially with watching over the application of the rules with reference
to the healthfulness and safety of the workshops.
The labor inspectors not only have charge of the execution of
the law of 1889, but also of the laws on the payment of wages, the
regulations of factories, etc. They make an annual report, and
their reports have been published regularly since 1895, and from
them information must be secured concerning the law’s execution,
even though the reports are often incomplete and unmethodical.
I will refer here particularly to the last report published, that
of 1900:
The law of 1889 was not applied seriously until 1895, following
the reorganization of inspection. Since then progress has been
219made, but it is incontestable that in several of its provisions the law
is not applied as it should be in all parts of the country. The press
and Parliament[22] have several times pointed out this unsatisfactory
situation.
The inspectors certainly perform their complicated and delicate
work with fidelity. But they are too few in number to fitly discharge
their numerous duties. The opposition or the ill-will of the
manufacturers is still too frequent; and when the inspectors wish
to apply the law and enforce its respect, they do not always find the
support which they should have among their superior officers.
In certain industries, e. g., glass and hand-made brick, which
employ a considerable number of children, the application of the
law is particularly to be desired. It is true these industries have
peculiar economic characteristics. There has already been introduced
a regulation less severe for the brick-works, and certain mitigations
are being asked for the glass industry.
Too many children are still permitted to labor before having
reached the legal age of twelve years. The inspector for the district
of East Flanders (Ghent) announces that the number of children
under twelve found in the industrial establishments was particularly
numerous in 1900. He found seventy-five such in his district
in ten hosiery factories, two tobacco factories, one lace-making
school, one mechanical weaving mill, one jute mill, one sugar refinery.
(Report 1900, pp. 88, 89.) In some other districts the
situation is better, according to this report, but almost everywhere
violations are still observed, as well as the complicity of parents.
“Families in need often make all efforts and use all sorts of devices
to cause their children under age to be admitted to labor.” (Report,
p. 143.) It happens that the regulation note-books requiring the
entry of the child’s age contain false declarations, or they are
delivered to the children under age by the civic authority. (Report,
p. 127.) Moreover, these note-books are often missing, and the
registries which the masters should keep do not always come up to
the demands of the law.
A royal decree of December 26, 1892, as we have said, organizes
the system of half-time—six hours of work—for children
of twelve to thirteen, employed in the textile industries other than
the woolen industry. This system has not given good results.
220The manufacturers prefer to do without children under thirteen,
rather than adopt this special organization. In the works which
have adopted this system, the child does not benefit from it at all.
“After having worked six hours in the morning at the spinning or
weaving of linen, the parents send that child to complete the day’s
labor at a chairmaker’s, at picking rags, or in a preserved fruit and
vegetable factory, where the law does not protect him any longer
within the same limits. Moreover, if he does not work in the afternoon,
he roams around the streets and becomes vicious, the school
refusing to admit as pupil a child who can only attend half the
time.” (Report, p. 65.)
This confirms what was said above, concerning the defect
in the Belgian law, which contains no regulations for the instruction
of children whose labor it limits.
On several occasions the labor inspectors have called attention
to the necessity of extending the application of the law to the workshops
which are not included, and especially to the clothing and
millinery shops, which freely employ numerous children. They
ask, in every case, that the legislator should state more clearly and
precisely than the actual interpretation of the law does, the distinction
between the workshops subject to the law and those that
are not. (Report, pp. 3, 66.)
Finally, the inspectors think that it is necessary to revise and
to simplify the royal decrees, the complications of which give rise
to many difficulties. This revision is, by the way, at present under
consideration. (Report, pp. 3, 44.)
From what precedes, we may conclude that, except certain
desirable ameliorations and simplifications, Belgium possesses a law
comprising what is needed for the protection of children employed
in the industries, and a law regardful of the many interests of
industry. The most important present problem is to secure
general, strict and complete execution of the legal provisions.
Nothing is more demoralizing, from the social point of view, than
to possess laws to which officials either cannot or will not compel
obedience.
221
By Henry White
General Secretary, United Garment Workers of America
223This subject is one which involves the whole industrial problem.
It is the complexity of conditions due to the introduction of machinery
which has caused the wide differences of opinion upon the
question of wealth distribution. Under the simpler methods of
industry the manner in which the proceeds of labor were divided
was readily understood; to-day, however, the system is so highly
organized that there is much confusion as to its operations. The
perplexity is so great that many who see in labor-saving inventions
some malign purpose, and others again who discern that any means
which enhances the productiveness of labor must benefit mankind,
are unable to comprehend the manner by which that result is
effected. The habit of judging the operations of so complex a
system by the effect upon special interests instead of viewing it as a
whole, accounts for the common misconception regarding the
function of machinery.
If people were to consider how meagre would be the rewards
of toil without the aid of machinery, how costly the necessities of
life, and how small the purchasing power of the laborer, its uses
would soon become apparent. The confusion is heightened by the
dual relation which a person occupies as a producer and as a consumer.
As a consumer he benefits almost at once by every saving
in effort, while as a producer his means of a livelihood may in consequence
be threatened. The laborers thrown out of work by a
machine or even the merchant forced out of business through some
combination cannot be expected to appreciate the beneficence of
such economy. In both cases their horizon is limited to their own
means of a livelihood. When a person finds his occupation suddenly
gone, it outweighs all other considerations; and unmindful of
the benefits he may have received from similar economies in other
trades, inventions to him seem a curse. The rewards of the particular
invention which distresses him go to the body of consumers
and he only shares indirectly as one of them. In the case of the
wage-workers the gain is not evident as it is with the manufacturer
224who first utilizes an invention, and consequently their views on the
subject will differ correspondingly. It is regrettable that even
the temporary disadvantages of industrial progress should fall
heavily upon some to the advantage of others, but it is as unavoidable
as friction is to motion. The suffering can be mitigated only in
proportion as our knowledge of the methods of industry increases,
by recognizing the inevitableness of the changes and preparing to
meet them.
Economic laws, like the laws of nature, admit of no exceptions.
Were discriminations possible the consequences would make
the present hardships seem nothing in comparison. In fact, society
would quickly disintegrate and revert to its primitive state. If
society had to wait for the sanction of every person before a forward
step could be taken it would never start. In the process of
adjustment and readjustment which progress implies, it is unavoidable
that some have to be forced out of old grooves and made to
fit into new ones. It is this adaptability to change which characterizes
modern enterprise; this willingness to suffer immediate
discomforts for the achievement of larger ends.
The general confusion as to the service rendered by machinery
is not strange considering the absurd notions which are rife regarding
the rudiments of social economy. No distinction is usually made
between useful and useless labor. There is supposed to be only
a given amount of work to be done, and hence the less each one
does the more jobs there will be to go around. If wealth be wasted
or destroyed, it will in some mysterious manner be replaced. The
destruction of property by fire or flood is regarded with complacency
by those not directly affected, upon the supposition that
more work is thereby provided, without taking into account that
the wealth required to replace it must be diverted from some productive
use. The spending or circulating of money is equivalent
to creating wealth. Luxury is looked upon with more favor than
frugality, and it is even thought that gambling benefits a community
as much as industry because the fortunate ones spend freely,
and the misery which it begets is lost sight of in contemplation of
the profits of a few. With such erroneous ideas entertained even
by educated people, it is apparent why the complex operations of
our industrial system are so slightly understood. The expansion of
industry which follows labor-saving devices, the creation of new
industries and the consequent replacing of those displaced is unintelligible
225to all save those that comprehend economic principles.
In addition to the popular misconceptions of the subject, there are
historic causes which have created this antipathy to machinery.
During the transition from the domestic to the factory system in
England, machinery became a club to subjugate the laborer. Untutored,
unorganized, without any resisting power, the former
independent artisan, now a factory hand, was placed in brutal
competition with his fellows, and every invention only served to
add to his helplessness. The plight of the English laborers at that
time abundantly shows that there are circumstances in which the
wealth of a nation may increase tremendously, the productive
power of labor multiply many-fold, while the workers on the other
hand become impoverished and brutalized. Mill was of the opinion
that machinery had not benefited the working class, but happily,
since the time in which he wrote, education and organization, two
indispensable factors in their advancement, have come to their aid.
An upward trend has in consequence taken place, and the stimulus
which it has given will make a relapse, owing to the advances in
sanitary science, as improbable as another visitation of a plague.
Where the workers have succeeded in acquiring some independence,
in raising their standard of living, machinery, despite the
drawbacks described, has undoubtedly become a potent factor in
the elevation of their class.
Under a collective system the immediate benefits which
would be derived by each individual through labor-saving inventions
are its chief merit, but to compare the good features of an
imaginary social system with the disadvantages of the existing
one is not an easy task. It can, however, be shown that this
desired co-operative principle actually does work out at the present
time in a rough way by the distribution of the benefits of inventions
throughout society and that there are possibilities for a more perfect
application of it.
As to the workers’ share in production, Karl Marx in his incisive
analysis comes to the conclusion that the value of commodities
is based upon the labor cost plus the profits of the capitalist
and in that he is in accord with the authorities upon social science
since Adam Smith. He deduces from that, that labor alone represents
the actual wealth which is exploited for profit by the capitalist
and that the very capital invested was previously appropriated
from the laborer. Granting this conclusion, Marx should have
226made allowance for the competition between capitalists by which
the price of commodities is kept within certain limits and the
benefits of cheaper production are given to the consumers. In
the cases Marx deals with, cheaper production unfortunately did
not only mean more economical methods, but lower wages and long
hours and the sacrifice of the worker, while the consumer represented
some one else than the operative, who barely subsisted on his
pittance. Without the ability to purchase the goods he produced,
England had to dispose of in foreign markets that which should
have been consumed at home, always the best market. Her chief
dependence being upon outside markets, everything had to be
subordinated to cheaper production, no matter how obtained.
Concerning the attitude of trades unions upon the question of
machinery, the membership being composed of men with the usual
abilities, their views do not materially differ from others. Having,
however, the benefits of an education derived from a close study
of economic problems and an experience which has helped them
form broader opinions, they are gradually reconciling themselves
to machinery. As for example the action taken at the late convention
of the American Federation of Labor held at Scranton. In
a resolution introduced by the delegates of the Cigar Makers’ International
Union requesting that a certain firm be declared unfair,
there was reference to a cigar-making machine used in the shop of
this employer. Although the machine was mentioned as an evidence
only of the inferiority of the product of the concern, a vigorous
objection was at once raised by the delegates against any
mention of the use of machinery by the firm. In the debate which
followed, it was argued that the convention could not afford to go
on record as against labor-saving devices and that any attempt to
oppose them would prove futile. The objectionable words were
stricken out by a decisive vote. As to what action the convention
would have taken if the delegates had thought it possible to
suppress the machine is a question. The decision of the convention,
however, has brought the movement to a point in which the
members will be enabled to take a more liberal and complete view
of the subject, and realize that the limitation of work is not only
impolitic, but that by increasing their capacities the opportunity
is afforded for them to insist upon a fair share in the larger product.
The British unions have not advanced in that respect as
far as the American unions because the habits of the working
227people there are more set, but circumstances have also changed
very much their attitude toward machinery.
The Typographical Union is a notable example of a union
which accepted a revolutionizing invention as being inevitable
and thus succeeded in securing a rate of wages for the operators
considerably in excess of that received by the hand compositors
An officer of the New York Union estimates that each linotype
machine introduced into the newspaper offices displaced three
men, and that within three years, owing to the increase in the size
of the newspapers and the larger demand for printed matter which
it encouraged, the men laid off have been re-employed, and that
to-day the pay-rolls even exceed the former figure. This machine
has also had the effect of elevating the standards of the craft, owing
to the higher skill and education required. The competition
among the employers is such that profits are reduced to a minimum
the public therefore receiving the full benefit of the improvement.
In the building trades, similar results are also noted. Improved
methods have led to a prodigious expansion in building
operations. The laborer’s work is now largely done by mechanical
means, and parts of a structure, such as the trimmings, are made
in factories and are only fitted together upon the premises. The
subdividing of the work is carried on to an extent that a number
of contractors, each performing a distinct function, co-operate in the
completion of a single building. When this specializing began and
the ingenious hod-hoisting device made it unnecessary for men to
make beasts of burden of themselves, a general alarm was created
over the prospect of great numbers of workmen being thrown out
of employment. To-day a far greater number of men are steadily
employed in this fundamental industry than at any time in its
history.
Examples of this kind can be cited indefinitely to demonstrate
the larger results which flow from greater economy in effort.
Allowances are seldom made for the enterprises which could not
be carried on at all were it not for labor-saving methods.
The lowering of the cost of commodities enables the average
person to indulge in what were formerly considered luxuries, and
by this encourages the development of new industries. The
tendency under the influence of machinery is for industry to
spread out fan-shape, ever widening as the distance from the starting
point increases. Were it not for the limitations set by the purchasing
228capacity of the people and the periodical disarrangements
or panics which occur as a result of what is conveniently termed
over-production, there would be no check. To fear a surfeit of
wealth seems absurd considering the needs of the average person.
What is meant by over-production is the inability to buy what has
been produced.
Russia with her immense population is unable to consume
the products of her few mills, while in the United States, where
the efficiency of labor is higher than anywhere else and is being increased
at a marvelous rate, not to speak of the half-million aliens
absorbed every year, the percentage of unemployed is lower than
it has been for years, and even less than during the earlier part of
our history when manufacturing was in its infancy.
To increase the purchasing capacity of the people either by
higher wages or cheaper products is to reduce the surplus and maintain
an equilibrium, hence the economic value of higher standards
of living. Production cannot be greater than the ability of the
average person to consume, any more than water can rise higher
than its source, therefore increased production must be accompanied
by the same increase in consumption, if normal conditions
are to be maintained. No matter to what extent machinery,
division of labor or economy in management may be perfected
theoretically, the demand for labor ought not to be diminished.
The eight-hour work is advocated by many, not because of the
personal benefit to the workman, but upon the same grounds that
they would favor the curtailment of production, in the belief that
it would increase the number of the employed. By decreasing the
average amount of work done in order that it may be distributed
more evenly may accomplish that object temporarily, but if generally
practiced would decrease the demand for work through the
increase of the price of the commodity.
It is doubtful if workmen in a particular craft have ever
succeeded for a length of time in erecting a wall around themselves
and preventing as many extra men as could be employed from
getting in if the emoluments were sufficient. So even if it were
possible to so restrict work as to create a scarcity of workmen, this
pressure from without would prove irresistible and the normal level
would be maintained. If on the contrary a lack of work would
make a number of workmen superfluous, there would be a tendency
for them to find their way into growing occupations. Union
229regulations, such as apprenticeship rules, can and do prevent undue
crowding into a trade owing to a sudden and temporary demand
which would prove highly injurious unless checked, for it would
serve to break down standards upheld by the union. Through
such means an assimilation of those entering the trade is gradually
accomplished.
Unions have been frequently charged with trying to restrict
output. The same accusation has also with equal effect been made
against industrial combinations for seeking to create an artificial
scarcity. In many cases where unions endeavor to prevent rush
or driving work injurious to the worker, they have been accused
of limiting work. Such restrictions can be easily defended. That
labor organizations have in some instances attempted to prevent
the use of labor-saving appliances there can be no question considering
the prevailing ideas on the subject, and organized workmen
can give force to their opposition, but that such is the policy of
labor movement is far from fact as I have just illustrated. The
opposition to labor-saving methods is not confined to workmen
alone, for employers will rail against competitors able to give better
service for less cost. The same resentment at being forced out of
a settled occupation is entertained by all.
The actual injury done by machinery is caused by the suddenness
of the changes that result. Since there could be no way of
regulating inventive genius, and the incentives for using improvements
will remain as great, the rational and the only way to meet
them is by preparation. The working class suffers most because it
is less able to accommodate itself to new situations. The rising
generation should be better equipped with a general knowledge
of mechanics, and taught how to handle tools with skill. Such
a training would undoubtedly relieve the difficulty and it could
only be adequately supplied by the public schools. The results
would be to increase the independence of workmen, as they would
not then rely upon a small division of a trade or upon a single
employer. Independence and higher wages go together. Unskilled
laborers in some cases learn more than skilled mechanics
for the reason that workmen trained only in one craft are usually
unfitted for other work, while those accustomed to being thrown
upon their own resources are more adaptable.
In the case of the aged workman the situation is specially hard,
as he cannot find any place in an industrial system in which alertness
230counts for more than skill. He cannot profit by accumulated
experiences as others do. It is the tragic side of the question, this
grievous predicament of the worker who has spent his energies
adding to the nation’s wealth. It can and ought to be overcome,
not by any system of alms-giving which must always prove inadequate,
not by retiring him to idleness, but by keeping him employed
at such work as his long training and peculiar abilities
fit him for. As his earning power declines at a certain period, some
system of insurance could supply the deficiency.
In respect to the material advantages of machinery, it surely
has enlarged the capacities of the people and multiplied their
opportunities. The possibilities are such as to make the mind
tremble in anticipation. It is the agency which alone can raise
wages, reduce the working time and enhance the buying power of
money—a threefold gain.
The feeling against machinery will not cease until the workman
profits more directly as a producer as well as a consumer, until
he is treated as a human being and not as a mere animated tool,
until he becomes more than a tender, an incident in production.
The human element must become more evident and the toiler
made to feel his partnership. The true mission of machinery,
would then be revealed to all as the only means which liberate
man from drudgery, increase his control over nature and provide
the leisure essential to a higher culture.
One of the acknowledged evils of machinery is the exploitation
of child labor which usually follows its introduction. Such was
the case in England, and we find it repeated to-day in the new
industrial districts of the South. In such industries where the
repetition of a small mechanical process enables child labor to be
employed, the temptation to take advantage of the opportunity is
great; for children have no rights to assert, no wage scale to uphold
or working time to protect. In that respect child labor is akin to
slave labor. It must be added for fairness that the capitalists
utilizing such opportunities are not alone to blame, for shortsighted
and grasping parents often drive their children into the
mills because of the paltry sum which can be added to the family
income, and in time they get into the habit of depending upon the
pittance purchased at so terrible a price.
The inducement of a “plentiful supply of cheap labor” is also
held out to capitalists by small communities as a means of persuading
231them to locate factories in their neighborhood. These
are the two chief obstacles in the way of reform. In course of
time, however, as the consequences become more evident and the
exultation over the establishment of a new factory wears off, the
public conscience revolts against this debasement of the helpless
children and the law is eventually evoked to suppress the evil.
The strenuous efforts being made in the South upon the part of the
labor organizations and sympathizers to enact protective laws
lead us to hope that we will at least be spared the dreadful experiences
of England during the first half century of the factory
system.
V. Tendencies of Factory Legislation and Inspection in the United States — TENDENCIES OF FACTORY LEGISLATION AND INSPECTION IN THE UNITED STATES — Present Factory Laws of the United States. [23] — Historical Development. — Enforcement by Inspection. — Uniform Labor Legislation. — Constitutionality.
233
By Sarah S. Whittelsey, Ph.D., New Haven, Conn.
235
By Sarah S. Whittelsey, Ph.D.
The introduction of the factory system in American industry
acted in this country, as it had in England, to develop certain
abnormal conditions of labor that in the end required government
interference. Thus in the manufacturing states, chiefly in the
North and East, there has come into existence a very considerable
body of factory law. The enactment of such regulative statutes
is the prerogative of each of the several states acting independently
and according to the discretion of its own legislature; in consequence
there is great variety in these laws and in their scope,—from
the comparatively complete codes of Massachusetts and New
York to absolutely no regulation whatever.
“In all, about half the states have so far passed what may be
called a factory act; that is, laws for the regulation, mainly sanitary,
of conditions in factories and workshops. These include ...
the New England states generally, New York and the Northern
Central and Northwestern states following their legislation. There
are almost no factory acts in the South nor in the purely agricultural
states of the West, but these statutes are being passed rapidly
and moreover, in states where they have already been enacted, are
being amended every year.
“The most usual statutes are those making provision for
proper fire-escapes, or against use of explosive oils, etc.; for the
removal of noxious vapors or dust by fans or other contrivances;
requiring guards to be placed about dangerous machinery, belting,
elevators, wells, air-shafts, crucibles, vats, etc.; providing that
doors shall open outward; prohibiting the machinery from being
cleaned while in motion; laws to prevent overcrowding and to
236secure sanitary conditions generally.”[24] Building laws also reinforce
these measures.
Antedating such factory acts proper, the same states have
very generally passed statutes regulating child labor and forbidding
employment to those under a stated age. In eleven states this age
limit is fourteen years, in nine over twelve, and in four,—New
Hampshire, Vermont, Nebraska, and California,—ten years; eleven
also make educational provision for older children and illiterate
minors.[25]
The majority of states have further legislated upon the hours
of labor of minors, while fifteen limit the working time of women
as well, generally to sixty hours per week, but in Massachusetts to
fifty-eight hours, in New Jersey to fifty-five, and in Wisconsin to
forty-eight.[26] Eight also provide for time for meals, and five prohibit
night work.[27] This limitation of hours for women and children,
considered “wards of the state,” very generally necessitates
a similar working day for the adult male laborer in the factory,
while it in a measure avoids the serious question of constitutionality
that a broader statute could not fail to raise.
“There is absolutely no limitation for persons of any age or
sex only in Iowa, Kansas, Oregon, Nevada, Washington, Idaho,
Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Kentucky, Arkansas, Texas, North
Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, New Mexico, Arizona,
Oklahoma, and the District of Columbia.”[28]
Besides these statutes, other laws that must be mentioned,
as immediately affecting the interests of factory labor, are those
which regulate wage payment and fines, also the employers’ liability
acts which allow recovery of damages for bodily injury
237sustained in service. Thirteen states have passed laws regulating
the period of payment by individuals and corporations, and nine
others stipulate weekly or fortnightly payments by corporations.
Only Massachusetts, Indiana and Ohio have attempted to “prevent
the withholding of wages or the imposition of a fine by
factory employers for imperfect work.”
Outside of the New England states “anti-truck acts,” similar
to the English statute and stipulating a money payment, have been
passed in sixteen states, five of which, however, limit its application
to corporations. It may be noted in passing that several of these
wage-regulating laws have already fallen under the ban of the
courts.
Employers’ liability statutes supplement the factory acts by
affording additional reason for care on the part of the employer in
guarding dangerous machinery and otherwise providing for the
safety of those in his employ. Twenty-two states have legislated
upon the “fellow-servant” question, and ten make employers liable
for injury caused by defective machinery. Of these, however, only
six apply in full to factory labor.
The states that have passed factory acts and regulated hours
of labor “have usually created one or more factory inspectors,
charged with the duty of seeing that the statutes are carried out
generally with powers to enter personally or by deputy and to
inspect all factories at any time.”[29]
The child labor laws are variously entrusted for enforcement
to the factory inspectors, school committee or board of education,
commissioners of labor, or left to the care of the police.
It may seem perhaps that such a sketch fails to show the
underlying or directive principle of this legislation, but a detailed
study of the laws adds confusion rather than enlightenment. Studnitz
considered that he had seized upon the real causal force and
summed up the situation in the statement that American labor
legislation has been determined by the political and social strength
of the laborers demanding it, rather than in accordance with the
natural needs and varied conditions of industry within the states.[30]
238Allowing this explanation at least as to the immediate agency,
we must nevertheless recognize the fact that other forces are at
work and that there are traceable tendencies of a natural growth
even when arbitrary human action is so apparent. The most casual
acquaintance with the history of labor legislation must convince us
that the action of economic law has inevitably necessitated the
legal regulation of labor; and this really in spite of human opposition
and in the face of extreme doctrines of non-interference.
Industrial labor unregulated has everywhere developed the same
symptoms. Competition between producers tends to encourage
all possible reductions of costs, to reduce wages, to increase the use
of cheap child labor, to perpetuate long hours of labor, etc., and to
range the interests of the employing class against those of the operative
class. In the struggle which results from this antagonism
the employer has the advantage of position to force his own terms
of contract upon the laborer, for he has in his hands an accumulated
capital which is equivalent in power to effective organization.
Such conditions left to work themselves out have invariably acted
to degrade the social status of labor, the heaviest pressure falling
upon those who could least resist it. This was the experience of
England first, then felt on the Continent and in this country in the
New England states and other centres of manufacture, and to-day
we are becoming aware of like tendencies in the cotton-goods industry
of the South.
It was almost universally the evils attending child labor that
evoked the first acts of regulation. But although abuses were very
serious, legal remedies were most timidly applied. Even with the
example of the successful issue of the English laws the New England
legislatures contented themselves with the passage of most inadequate
measures, measures that could hardly have been looked upon
as anything more than unenforcible threats. We realize how complete
a change of attitude toward this “intermeddling legislation”
has been brought about during the course of the past sixty years
when we compare a few of these old laws with those to-day in
force. Contrast, for example, the detailed and exacting requirements
of the present law concerning child labor in Massachusetts
with the older Vermont statute, which is quite typical of the earlier
order and “merely requires the selectmen of towns to inquire into
the treatment of minors employed in manufacturing establishments;
and if a minor’s education, morals, etc., are unreasonably
239neglected, or he is treated with improper severity or compelled to
labor unreasonable hours, they may, if he has no parent or guardian,
discharge him from such employment and bind him out as apprentice
with the minor’s consent.” (Vt. 2518.)[31]
Early measures were certainly neither severe in the regulation
imposed nor exact in defining the parties held to be responsible.
They generally involved a question of volition, making “willful”
transgression alone punishable, and thus unenforcible in the
letter, were given into the hands of town officials who had neither
the power nor the effective desire to investigate or to bring suit.
Such enactments stood for little more than a public recognition
of abuses which they in no wise checked, but the increasing menace
of the situation, the threat, not to be scorned, of a future sickly
and illiterate labor population, forced the passage of more adequate
measures and the resort to a better mechanism of enforcement than
that of town officials and the general police. In such reforms
Massachusetts took the lead, enacted and repealed several contradictory
statutes, and finally by the slow process of continued
amendment evolved the present really enforcible law.
We feel in studying the halting stages of this development not
only that there was a pardonable ignorance of ways and means in
attacking a new problem, but also the influence of a more or less
skeptical public opinion concerning this policy of interference
which reflected itself in hedging clauses that weakened and sometimes
vitiated what would otherwise have been good measures.
In spite of many drawbacks to advance, however, there was no
retrograde motion, but a continued development of strictness and
detail in exactions, of clearer definition and placement of responsibility
and of more adequate provision for inspection. As these
laws gradually demonstrated their practical usefulness and convinced
the public of benefit instead of harm, the former attitude of
timidity gave place to a decided peremptoriness, the former indiscriminate
omnibus ad quos hae litteræ pervenerint to placed responsibility.
Meantime the way was opened for more wide-reaching regulations
concerning hours of labor, workroom conditions, etc., and
a broader conception of the province of such legislation and of
that which might be considered proper subject of legal interference.
240Whereas the first attempts to protect even little children from conditions
that imperiled their health and life were bitterly opposed
in England upon grounds of national policy, to-day we find statutes
that regulate not only child labor, hours of labor, factory constructions
and the use of machinery, but also others that stipulate times
and manner of wage payment, and forbid fines in dealings with
adult male employees. And this has come to pass in America
where “freedom of contract” is the constitutional right of every
individual citizen.
Our laws have indeed very steadily progressed from measures
of simple protection to detailed regulation of conditions, and even
to the securing of special benefits to labor.
This broader application of the legal remedy has been accompanied
also by marked territorial extension, following the growth
and spread of manufactures. Other states have felt the necessity
of adopting a labor code and have naturally, in a general way,
followed the forms of New England and New York. They range,
however, through all stages of incompleteness. A curious phenomenon
constantly appears in this imitative legislation. When a
state legislature passes a new labor law, or revises an old one, it
does not necessarily adopt the latest form nor that which has proved
to work most satisfactorily in another state, nor yet a combination
of choice clippings from several. A state legislature is generally
perfectly content with a law that is about as poor as the average
and looks forward most placidly to the inevitable train of amendments
that must follow in its wake. By this I do not mean to
criticise in the least the enactment of less strict regulations as a
lower age limit or longer hours of labor, which may be proper under
given local conditions, but alone the continued repetition of blunders
and faults of construction that have elsewhere proved their
character and their power to nullify the intent of the law. Fortunately
experience proves in the end an effective, if dear, teacher
and one of the lessons that it ultimately drives home is that even a
state legislature cannot legislate the laws of nature out of the
world arena. As Jevons said, “The state is the least of the powers
that govern us.” But as the physician through his knowledge of
medicine and physiology, and by his diagnosis of the symptoms
of disease, is able to pit law against law, and to restore health
where he found abnormal conditions; so the statesman who understands
the social order and the tendencies of economic forces
241is often able to control their action. In either case, a knowledge
of the active agencies is absolutely necessary to the solution of the
problem. The recent organization of bureaus of labor statistics
is certainly significant in this connection. To-day, when a question
of labor legislation is presented, there is, in many states, such a
qualified advisory body to whom the whole matter may be referred
for investigation and study, and whose regular duty it is to inquire
into and report upon labor and industrial conditions within the
state. This indicates a growing appreciation of the necessity of
accurate information and of the exercise of due care in passing acts
of regulation.
The problem of enforcement of these laws has proved even
more serious than that of their enactment. Labor laws, however
good, cannot enforce themselves. It may appear to be for the
laborer’s own interest to report violations and seek the legal remedy,
but the indisputable fact is that he does not do it. Moreover, not
only is the individual laborer often not in a position to do so safely,
but even the labor union shrinks from the task. The whole history
of the movement for the regulation of labor shows the absolute
necessity of efficient inspection, a fact which has unfortunately been
most clearly demonstrated in the general lack of such inspection.
In nothing do the states differ more widely than in their provision
for inspection. There are such specifically differentiated departments
as that of Massachusetts or New York; there are such combinations
as that of Connecticut, where a single inspector with two
or three assistants enforces the factory, workshop and bake-shop
acts, while the Board of Education is charged with the child labor
laws; and there is dependence alone upon the general police force.
Inspection always lags too far behind legislation and has
given some ground of credit to the often-repeated criticism that
this labor legislation is not in fact intended seriously, but has been
entered upon the statute books rather to still the clamor of agitators
for reform than to effect any real change in conditions. It is certain
at least that the serious effectiveness of these laws develops
in exact proportion with the inspecting power,—with the organization,
number and qualification of inspectors. If the charge of
insincerity, however, had been true, we might expect to find that the
242better the laws became, the stronger the pressure that would be
brought against the development of costly inspection. The legal
remedy being given, is it not the privilege of the individual to avail
himself of it, rather than the duty of the state to force it upon him?
On the contrary, however, the history of inspection runs parallel
and in the same direction with that of the legislation just reviewed.
The same economic and social forces that were the raison d’être of
these laws have quite as distinctly and steadily, though more slowly,
created the supplementary machinery of enforcement. The unreliable
and haphazard inspection of town officials has passed entirely,
superseded by the inspector whose sole duty is inspection, in
which duty he is aided by assistants immediately under his own
command, or by members of other departments of government.
The tendency towards the development of distinct inspection
departments is quite unmistakable though the exact form of their
future organization is less easily predicted. There are two toward
which present forms lean, one exemplified in Massachusetts, the
other in New York.
In Massachusetts the inspectors are organized as a division of
police, under the chief of police as chief inspector, exactly as the
detective division, for instance. That of New York is a separate
and distinct body under a chief appointed by the governor to hold
that single office.
The question is therefore raised as to whether organic connection
with the police department or separate and distinct autonomy
is the more practical and advantageous form. It is conceded that
Massachusetts has developed the most efficient corps of inspectors
in this country, but this cannot at present be taken as conclusive
proof of policy, because Massachusetts was earlier in the field, and
because opposing obstacles were hardly so serious as those met in
New York. Further, such connection with the police department
in Massachusetts seems to have been largely due to local conditions
and to have grown out of measures dictated by immediate convenience
at the time of the passage of the early child labor laws,
rather than a deliberately chosen system of administration. A
clipping from the history of the department will make this clear.
“At first the unreliable mechanism of truant officers and local
town or city officials was solely depended upon for inspection.
Then, under new child labor statutes, a single deputy was in each
case detailed by the police department to aid enforcement (1866,
243c. 273; 1867, c. 285). The law of 1877 (c. 214), increasing the duties
of factory inspection by regulations looking to the safety of employees,
provided that members of the State Detective Department
should act as inspectors of factories and public buildings, to
report and prosecute violations of this act as well as of other
measures relative to the employment of women and minors....
In 1879 (c. 305), the governor was authorized to appoint two regular
inspectors from the police department....
“Better administration was finally secured in 1888 (c. 113),
by separating the detective and inspecting forces.... With
the enactment of stringent steam-boiler inspection laws, a new
department of boiler inspectors ... was created.”
While in some ways this affiliation with the police has been
helpful, there are also drawbacks in the combination under one
head of work in fields that are so large and so distinctly marked off
from one another not only in object, but most essentially in methods
of work. It would seem that a due co-operation between district
departments could be made to afford all of the advantages of the
closer relationship, while it would insure the whole time and energy
of the chief to a task that is quite enough to occupy his entire
attention. Indeed, with the increasing number and detail of
regulations, the many technicalities that arise in the application of
labor laws and the rapid growth of the factory system of industry,
another specialist will soon be demanded to fill such an office. The
necessary increase in numbers alone must make the police connection
awkward.
In framing many of these laws, for example the factory acts,
much has necessarily been left to the discretion of inspectors in
the decision of what is “adequate” provision. Especially where
appliances not contemplated in the ordinary law are offered, very
careful judgment is called for. Such powers cannot be entrusted
to untrained and inexperienced persons, however well intentioned,
nor is the training of police duty any sufficient preparation. It
would not be considered appropriate to appoint a policeman
inspector of stationary steam boilers or examiner of engineers, yet
under present factory laws, technical knowledge of industrial processes,
machinery, etc., is sometimes equally demanded. In
Massachusetts the original method of detailing police as inspectors
when occasion demanded, or even permanently installing them in
these positions, has been abandoned for the stricter and more
244adequate tests of civil service examinations open to all applicants.
And again her example indicates a general trend.
The tendency in inspection already is, and in the future must
be more markedly, toward the growth of a distinct and specialized
department, in which the chief and his assistants are trained for
their work. Such a department, while it would not stand in the
relationship which some at present hold to the police, would come
into closer touch with other departments, as the Board of Education
and Bureau of Labor.
The influence of state boundary lines upon the course of legislation
in this country is an interesting question, and one upon which
entirely diverse opinions are held. Some go so far as to claim that
there never can be really successful legislation so long as such
boundaries hold; that if a good labor law is passed in one state and
enforced there, the benefit that may result to the few operatives is
balanced by the restriction which it puts upon the producer and
the consequent discrimination against capital in that state as
compared with its neighbors. Capital therefore seeks investment
in those sister states instead of in the law-trammeled one, thus
reacting against the interests of the labor market there; while
states that so profit in their freedom are the more loath to give
over their advantage by enacting similar measures. Thus legislation
in one state becomes at once detrimental to its own industrial
interests, and a check upon legislation elsewhere. Loud protests of
this tenor were heard, for example, in Massachusetts a few years
ago, when at a time of business depression the cotton mills suffered
from the competition of Southern rivals. A somewhat extended
study of the situation at that crisis, however, failed to show that
these detrimental consequences had followed in actual life, or that
the stress felt by the mills could have been removed by a suspension
of the laws complained of.
On the other hand, when we begin to reckon with the difficulties
that must be encountered in any attempt to legislate upon labor
conditions in this country treated as a whole (even disregarding
entirely the present constitutional impediment), we find arguments
showing that local self-government has probably furthered the
development of labor legislation. In the first place, it is much
245more difficult to persuade a body with such wide jurisdiction to
pass what must often be experimental measures and may endanger
national interests. Suppose, however, that this legislation was
undertaken, it would be well-nigh impossible to frame a measure
that would apply with justice throughout and in communities where
industrial occupations differ entirely in kind, or, if of like order,
range through many stages of development. It would mean that
such legislation must conform to a very low margin of production
in order to avoid injury to states where conditions are backward, and
that would leave unregulated much that has clearly shown need
of regulation in states where there is higher organization of industry.
Would it not, in fact, be absolutely necessary to mark out territorial
divisions that might not of course follow state boundaries,
but would not in the end differ essentially from them in character?
Again, such divisions mapped, what an impossible labor is put upon
the central body if it would legislate wisely for the several sections!
Would it not be necessary at least to appoint some advisory body
to study the local needs of each section and to report recommending
appropriate measures? In the end, what would we have in the
least better than the present system?
Within a single state the labor interest is united, the pros and
cons of the situation can be more easily investigated, effects more
easily watched and even more accurately predicted. Jevons might
indeed have considered it a well-fitted laboratory for his scientific
experimentation in legislation. The success of a local experiment
acts often as an incentive to labor elsewhere to demand like privileges,
and as against the argument of an insignificant tax upon
production, the political power of the labor party has very generally
won the day. The second state feels itself at no greater disadvantage
than that which took the initiative in the movement, and
may easily take the precaution of passing restrictions that are a
trifle under those of its neighbor.
This discussion, however, leaves us still face to face with a confusion
of local regulations, among which there is total lack of any
uniformity. The situation has for some time attracted public comment,
and there is a growing desire for uniformity especially in the
protection of child labor and in the curtailment of the hours of
labor, which are the regulations that particularly affect the interests
of capitalists. Quixotic attempts to force an amendment of the
Constitution, and to secure the passage of a national eight-hourday
246law, have been chronicled in the movement, which nevertheless,
with more moderate aims, has steadily gathered strength.
At last, under the Industrial Commission of 1898, the problem of
uniform legislation has been clearly recognized and carefully
studied, “in order,” the act reads, “to harmonize conflicting interests
and to be equitable to the laborer, the employer, the producer
and the consumer” (Sec. 3). Empowered to report with recommendations
either directly to Congress or to the several state
legislatures, the Commission addressed itself in this “matter of
domestic law” to the state legislatures. The report submitted is
of such interest and importance that I quote in full its recommendations
so far as they apply to factory labor:
“Perhaps the subject of greatest public interest to-day is that
of the regulation of the hours of labor permitted in industrial
occupations, and especially in factories.... Obviously
Congress has no power, without a constitutional amendment, to
legislate upon this subject. The Commission are of the opinion
that a uniform law upon this subject may wisely be recommended
for adoption by all the states. We believe that such legislation
cannot, under the federal and state constitutions, be recommended
as to persons, male or female, above the age of twenty-one,
except, of course, in some special industries, where employment
for too many hours becomes positively a menace to the health,
safety, or well-being of the community; but minors, not yet
clothed with all the rights of citizens, are peculiarly the subject
of state protection, and still more so, young children.
“The Commission are of the opinion, therefore, that a simple
statute ought to be enacted by all the states, to regulate the length
of the working day for young persons in factories (meaning by
‘young persons’ those between the age of majority and fourteen);
and in view of the entire absence of protection now accorded by the
laws of many states to children of tender years, we think that employment
in any capacity or for any time, under the age of fourteen,
should be prohibited. The question of shops and mercantile
establishments generally appears even more subject to local
conditions than that of factories; therefore the Commission see no
need for even recommending to the states any uniform legislation
upon this subject. But child labor should be universally protected
by educational restrictions, providing in substance that no child
may be employed in either factories, shops, or in stores in large
247cities, who cannot read and write, and except during vacation, unless
he has attended school for at least twelve weeks in each year.”[32]
These are certainly conservative recommendations and illustrate
again the difficulty of finding any common ground of action
even in the fundamental requirements of health and education.
The exception made with reference to shops and mercantile establishments
upon the ground of local differences in conditions is
interesting. So much evidence has been brought of abuse of child
labor in the mercantile houses of many large cities, especially in
respect to these two matters of overwork through long hours and
of interference with common-school education (above recognized)
that several states have voluntarily extended provisions of the
factory laws concerning minors to cover such establishments.
These conditions appear to reproduce themselves with remarkable
similarity in various locations, and it is not altogether clear what
local conditions could intervene to make the universal application
of the measure proposed for factories undesirable.
Notwithstanding all moderation and the exceptions allowed,
two of the commissioners still recorded themselves as considering
it “unjust and impracticable to attempt any uniform laws regulating
labor in all the states,” and a third concurring with these
adds that, “the conditions to be dealt with will work themselves out
better under local self-government than under any iron-clad rule
adopted by or suggested from a central power.”[33]
The protestors are from the Southern states and their protest
seems peculiarly pertinent at this time, when the prevailing conditions
of child labor in these states are attracting so much attention.
Not to digress into a discussion that would lead us too far afield,
let it suffice to sum up the evident facts of the situation in a single
paragraph.[34]
Whatever their previous condition of freedom, barbarism or
poverty, there are to-day, in the cotton mills of the South, large numbers
of little children, some under ten years of age, who can be and
are employed sometimes eleven and more hours a day, sometimes
eleven hours of the night. Indeed conditions parallel the times
248of Shaftesbury in England! Attempts to pass bills that can hardly
be deemed extravagant in the protection demanded, and even
compulsory education measures, have been opposed and frustrated.
The reasons given for such resistance of legal interference may be
summarized about as follows, at least in Alabama, which has been
the field of a recent encounter: That the bill presented by the
Alabama Child Labor Committee[35] is “outside interference” and
“only the entering wedge”; that “Georgia (facing the more difficult
task in) having double the number of spindles, should act first”;
that against the expressed desires of mill officers, parents insist
upon the employment of their children or “take their families to
other mills where no objection is made” (and this the law would
make impossible);[36] that the prodigiously early development of
this particular class of Southern children together with “the length
and heat of the day” which “are prime factors respecting the
hours that may be appropriated to labor”[37] make it inadvisable
to limit the hours of labor of children to ten out of a possible twenty-four,
or to require that they should sleep and not work at night.
We cannot say that the movement for uniform legislation or even
for labor legislation “under local self-government” is unopposed.
The recommendations of the Commission also include the
following:
“Further regulations, especially in the line of bringing states
which now have no factory acts up to a higher standard, is earnestly
recommended.
“In states which have many factories the well-known factory
act of Massachusetts or New York, based upon the English act
which served as a model to all such, is recommended for adoption.
“The sweat-shop law also, which is now practically identical in
the important states of New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania
and Ohio, is recommended for general adoption.
“A simple and liberal law regulating the payment of labor
should be adopted in all the states, providing that laborers shall
be paid, for all labor performed, in cash or cash orders, without
discount, not in goods or due bills, and that no compulsion, direct
249or indirect, shall be used to make them purchase supplies at any
particular store.”[38]
The report refers also to other statutes which reinforce certain
common law doctrines, such as those concerning intimidation,
strikes, boycotts and black-listing, to those protecting the political
rights and legal rights in suit of labor and to the recognition
accorded to trade unions in provisions for incorporation and protection
of labels, making however no special recommendation
concerning them to the states.[39]
We see, therefore, that beyond the elementary regulation of
child labor and hours of labor for minors, the Commission would
have the states establish a standard of good sanitation and of safe
conditions in factories everywhere, and above this, especially
suggests a scientific and well-tested law for adoption in states having
large manufactures. The restriction of hours is always looked
upon chiefly as a health measure, but it is certain that the general
bodily vigor of the worker has been more markedly affected by
modern improvements in ventilation, lighting and sanitation than
by any of the shorter day statutes. Factory acts assist materially
in forcing this advance and have received a due recognition of their
usefulness. In recommending the universal passage of a sweat-shop
act, the Commission endorses the old saying, that an ounce of
prevention is worth a pound of cure. As a matter of fact, such
laws have been passed, and in an incredibly short time (since 1892,
when New York passed the first of this series), in those states in
which the evil is important. Attempts to extirpate the evil in
these states threaten to drive it into neighboring sections.
Connecticut, for example, lying between Massachusetts and New
York, in both of which quarters the anti-sweat-shop war is being
vigorously pushed, has enacted a similar statute simply as a protective
measure.
It is clear that the ultimate effect of uniform labor legislation
will not be one law applying throughout the length and breadth of
this great land, but rather a graded system. It will determine a
minimum standard of regulations, a basal plane, of competition for
American industry. Above this it will still be necessary for the
local government in many places to impose stricter requirements
where there is complexity of organization, but in that which is
250fundamentally essential to the common well-being of the community
there will be one limit approved for all that may not be
transgressed.
The suggestion made in the Industrial Commission’s report
as to how this standard may be determined is especially well considered:
“In conclusion the Commission would recommend the establishment
by all the states of labor bureaus or commissioners, who
shall, besides their local duties as now defined, be charged with
that of exchanging their statistics and reports, and of convening
at least once in a year in national conference for general consultation,
which national conference shall have power to submit directly
to Congress its recommendations for such federal legislation as a
majority of the state commissioners may deem advisable, and shall
also submit to all the states, through the commissioners of each
separate state, their recommendations for such uniform state
statutes upon labor subjects as may seem wise and desirable.”[40]
If we rightly interpreted the action of local governments in
establishing these bureaus of labor, as a step towards more scientific
legislation in those states, surely this plan of a national conference
of state commissioners of labor stands for a still more important
extension of the scientific method in questions of labor legislation.
It also illustrates a tendency that is becoming more and more
evident, namely, the fuller reliance that is being placed upon
“intelligence as a social regulator” and “publicity for controlling
industry and commerce.” Make known the actual conditions that
prevail, point out the appropriate remedy, and the weight of an
informed public opinion will go far to force reform whether through
an act of legislation or through the influence which may be exerted
by consumers upon producers. Indeed the battle cry of the day
is, “Give us but an enlightened public opinion and our fight is
three-quarters won.”
The suggestion of regulating business relations through the
pressure of public sentiment has been seized upon with almost too
great avidity by some who would apply it as the immediate and
sufficient solution of all labor difficulties and as an argument against
the enactment of any statutory regulations whatever. Such a
proposition appears, however, of doubtful value at present under
251the conditions of unenlightenment that unfortunately prevail, and
it may be feared, does not proceed from the best friends of labor.
Recurring to this fact of opposition, already earlier noted, it
has been questioned whether this counter-movement does not offer
a real menace to the future growth of the labor laws, and indeed to
the continued existence of the present body of legislation. In a
number of instances where labor laws have been brought to the
test of a court decision they have been pronounced unconstitutional
and annulled upon the ground that they “contravene freedom of
contract,” are “class legislation” and so forth. This has been the
fate of statutes regulating the hours of labor for women over twenty-one
years of age in Nebraska, California and Illinois; of weekly
payment laws in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Missouri, West Virginia
and Indiana; of anti-truck acts in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and
West Virginia; and of those prohibiting company stores or coercion
of purchase in Pennsylvania, Illinois and Tennessee.
In Massachusetts, on the contrary, the regulation of hours was
sustained “as a health or police regulation.” Also at the time
when the bill for the extension of the act concerning weekly payments
was before the legislature the justices returned as their
opinion to the House of Representatives that such an act was within
the constitutional power of the General Court to pass. It is also
worthy of notice, that in spite of the decision by the Supreme Court
of Nebraska in 1894,[41] a new law defining hours of labor for women
was passed in 1899, and to-day applies not only in factories, but in
restaurants and hotels as well. Again, in the report just reviewed,
the commissioners have recommended the general enactment of an
anti-truck and freedom of purchase act in spite of the decisions of
Pennsylvania, Illinois and Tennessee courts.
Verdicts of unconstitutionality have therefore hardly affected
more than the very border of the factory laws; the regulation of
child labor, of workroom conditions, of hours of labor for minors,
252have never even been questioned. It hardly seems likely that any
of these laws will ever be put to the court test at all. Both in
England and in this country, they have proven generally beneficial
to public interest, they have been pretty cheerfully accepted and
obeyed; they have gained public approval; they have the political
support of a large labor party. Perhaps the apparently adverse
action of the courts ought rather to be looked upon as a healthfully
conservative influence against possible evil results of hasty and
ill-considered legislation or attempts to interpose legislation where
the object could be better obtained by the effective organization
of labor and should be left to the initiative of the unions.
Factory legislation has been inevitably necessitated by the
action of economic and social forces, and may, in fact, be regarded
as a natural phenomenon accompanying the growth of the factory
system of manufacture. It has developed against the opposition
of extreme doctrines of free contract, and having demonstrated
itself in the facts of actual life has also created a new theory of the
relation of the state to labor and industry.
“The state may determine the plane of competition; it may
equalize the conditions of contract as between employer and
employee; it may intervene to protect the standard of living of
the workers. The only limits that theory places upon these lines
of interference are considerations of the general good.”
In the historical development of factory laws, well-marked
tendencies are traceable. The early attitude of timidity has given
place to that of peremptory command. Progress has been steadily
toward increased severity in the regulations imposed, increased
exactness in detail and definition, towards distinctly placed responsibility
and towards more adequate inspection.
The expansion of industry in this country has of course been
accompanied by a like territorial extension of the labor laws. Accomplished
through the independent action of the several state
legislatures, the result has been an unfortunate confusion of unrelated
and non-uniform measures. One of the recent and most
important tendencies of this legislation is the movement for greater
uniformity, made especially prominent by the attention given to it
as a part of the study of the Industrial Commission. It indeed
seems probable that these efforts will eventually issue in the
determination of a minimum standard of labor legislation for the
253country as a whole, above which common basis the states will rise
in grade according to the development of industrial organization
and consequent increase of regulation demanded. This is necessarily
a matter of voluntary conformity on the part of the separate
state legislatures and therefore a fulfillment to be awaited with all
patience.
VI. Juvenile Courts — PROBATION AND JUVENILE COURTS — Union County Court of Quarter Sessions. RULES GOVERNING PROBATION. — THE JUVENILE COURT IN PHILADELPHIA — JUVENILE COURTS IN BUFFALO
255
257
By Mrs. Emily E. Williamson, Elizabeth, N. J.
President New Jersey State Conference of Charities and Corrections
259Perhaps the most practical movement in penal reform is probation,
putting a stop as it does to the source from which crime is
recruited. The principle involved in probation is prevention and,
where properly applied, has resulted in a very large diminution of
crime. Massachusetts reports a falling off of 75 per cent in juvenile
crime, owing to probation. Juvenile and first offenders should
never be dealt with as real criminals under the law except in special
cases of depravity. Penological science lays down general rules
for the treatment of juveniles and first offenders, absolutely prohibiting
imprisonment except for those convicted of flagrant
crimes, as it breaks down self-respect, placing a stigma on character
that is never removed. Its deterrent power is destroyed with its
relief from care and comfortable support and it hurts the physical,
mental and moral health of the prisoner. The main object in the
sentence of the convicted juvenile or first offender should be his
rescue from a criminal life; therefore a complete investigation
should be made of his character, home and environment before
trial. In Massachusetts the probation act requires a probation
officer to inquire into the nature of every criminal case brought
before the court, and he may recommend that any person committed
by the court be placed on probation. The question for the court,
upon the information of the probation officer, is to decide whether
it is safe for society to allow the prisoner to go at large. It has
become an established fact among the people of Massachusetts,
after several years of trial, that in the administration of justice the
probation system has been wise and beneficial.
The probation law enacted by the legislature of Illinois in
1899 declares the purpose of the law to be as follows: “This act
shall be liberally construed to the purpose that its end may be
carried out, to wit: that the care, custody and discipline of a child
shall approximate as nearly as may be that which should be given
by its parents; and in all cases where it can be properly done, the
child be placed in an approved family home and become a member
260of the family by legal adoption or otherwise.” The Illinois juvenile
court in its instructions to probation officers states that it will be
the endeavor of the court to carry out both the letter and the spirit
of the foregoing act, and to this end the court will have in mind the
following considerations: The Welfare and Interests of the Child.—To
save the child from neglect and cruelty and from the danger of
becoming a criminal or dependent. The Welfare of the Community.—Lessening
the burdens of taxation and loss of property through
the ravages of the criminal class and by preventing pauperism and
crime. Temporary Care.—The law forbidding the keeping of any
child in a jail or station-house, a place of detention is provided under
the care of the court. Whenever practicable the child is to be left
with his parents or with some suitable family. Supervision After
Action of the Court.—The probation officer is expected to keep a
special oversight of the child by frequent visits at regular intervals
and by reports from parents or custodians.
In Pennsylvania the law requires that the probation officer
shall be notified when any juvenile offender is brought before the
court, that he shall make such investigation as shall be directed by
the court, be present to represent the interests of the child when the
case is heard, furnish such information and assistance as the judge
may require and take such charge of any child before or after trial
as may be ordered.
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana,
Minnesota and New Jersey have state probation laws. San Francisco
and Washington, D. C., have probation officers for the cities
alone. New York has at last provided for probation and also for
children’s courts, but the plans are not yet completed.
Voluntary probation officers in many cases in the large cities
assist the paid officer, and in Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston and
New York the child-saving societies of all denominations have
placed officers—appointed by them for this purpose—at the disposal
of the court. Their services have always been accepted. In
New Jersey the State Board of Children’s Guardians greatly assists
the county probation officers. Wise child-saving work can be done
with this mutual co-operation.
In March, 1900, a bill prepared by Justice Franklin T. Fort,
of the Supreme Court, was passed by the New Jersey legislature,
providing for the appointment of probation officers and authorizing
judges of the Courts of Quarter Sessions to appoint one probation
261officer and, with the consent of the board of county freeholders, as
many other probation officers, not exceeding three, one of whom
may be a woman, as the judge deems wise. The classes of offenders
who may be probated, i. e., respecting age, etc., is left entirely to
the discretion of the judge. Seven counties in New Jersey have
probation officers—Hudson, Essex, Morris, Union, Middlesex,
Mercer and Atlantic.
In February, 1902 at my request, I was appointed, by the
court, probation officer for Union county, New Jersey, to serve
without salary, the court granting fifty dollars a month for a clerk
and allowing necessary expenses—in all not to exceed eight hundred
dollars annually. The following are the descriptive blanks and
rules prepared by me and allowed by the court. In addition, case
cards are kept in which all records in detail are entered. A synopsis
of each case is also entered in a history book which is easily referred
to by an index kept on the Dewey plan. Each probationer is visited
by the probation officer or her clerk once a month and in special
cases oftener. The probationer reports regularly at the office,
either in person or by letter, at such times as directed.
UNION COUNTY PROBATION OFFICER. RECORD.
No.
Name
Address
Age Height Weight
White or colored Color of eyes Hair
Complexion
Special marks
Religion Church
School Teacher
Nationality Married or single
Number of children, names and ages
Occupation
Employer’s name and address
Father’s name and address
Occupation
Mother’s name and address
Occupation
Other members of family
Previous offense
Present offense
Date committed to Probation Officer Years expire
262Fine, $ Costs, $
Re-arrested
Cause of Re-arrest
REMARKS:
Ledger number
The Probationer is required by the Court,
First.—To furnish promptly, by letter or in person, such information
as the Probation Officer may require.
Second.—To mail on the first of each month a letter, stating his present
residence and occupation, place of employment and the name of his employer;
also the number of days employed during the previous month, the
place or places of employment and the names of his employers. If the Probationer
is of school age, the number of days of school attendance must be
given. The truth of these facts must be certified by parent, employer, school
teacher or some other person satisfactory to the Probation Officer.
Third.—Evil companions and bad associations must be avoided. Strict
temperance must be observed. The Probationer must in every way conduct
himself as an upright and law-abiding citizen.
Fourth.—To report promptly to the Probation Officer every change of
residence. To consult the Probation Officer before moving out of the State
of New Jersey or out of Union County.
Fifth.—If the Probationer undertakes to pay fines or costs at stated
periods these payments must be prompt. If unable to meet the obligation
promptly he will send advance notice to the Probation Officer.
The probation period is three years. If during this period of trial the
Probationer fails to observe strictly each of the above rules, he is liable to be
taken into custody at any time by the Probation Officer to serve the full term
of his suspended sentence. Liberty depends entirely on the good conduct of
the Probationer.
During the three months that I have held this office twenty-six
cases have been probated to me by the judge of the county court
and forty-six by the police justices of the county. The ages of the
probationers and the character of the charges made against them
are as follows:
263
Total number.
White.
Black.
Catholic.
Protestant.
Jew.
County Court.
Police Court.
Embezzlement.
Larceny.
Disorderly conduct.
Assault.
Malicious mischief.
Mischief.
Truancy.
Previous Offenders.
Probated without trial.
Males over 16 yrs.
31
25
6
12
18
1
14
17
1
11
16
2
1
12
Males under 16 yrs.
28
28
20
6
2
6
22
7
9
1
5
1
5
13
Females over 16 yrs.
6
4
2
3
3
2
4
4
2
4
Females under 16 yrs.
7
6
1
6
1
1
2
6
1
4
72
63
9
41
28
3
23
45
1
24
30
3
8
1
5
29
4
The secretary of the New Jersey State Charities Aid Association
in his report says: “It is easier in Union than in most counties
to learn whether such an officer is needed by the court, by the
prisoner and by society, for the records of the Union County Jail
are exceptionally complete. The Warden’s report contains statistics
on two most important points—the ages of the prisoners and
the number of the commitments. These two points are most important
because the probation system presumes that all persons
who are inexperienced in crime, whatever their actual age, can be
better treated under supervision outside of jail than in idleness
within jail.
“The New Jersey law was made broad enough to include both
children of 7 years and adults of 83, except where safety demands
the prisoner’s incarceration. From the Warden’s report it appears
that 591 persons were sent to the county jail last year for terms
averaging twenty-nine days. Of this number only 181, or 30 per
cent, had served previous sentences. The great majority, 70 per
cent, or 410, had never been previously committed. Among these
first commitments are found persons of every age from 7 to
70 excepting 52, 56, 58, 62 and 69, while the years 71, 77 and
83 have one representative each. Take what age we will, public
sentiment would approve another chance outside of jail, for every
first offender, provided the dignity of the law and the welfare of
society would be in no way jeopardized by suspending sentence.
Our probation law provides for failures to reform outside of jail and
gives to the probation officer and the court power to inflict the
264original but suspended sentence at any time within three years from
the date of conviction. It is manifest that every successful case of
probation nips in the bud a potential and probable career of crime.”
The oversight of adult first offenders by a probation officer is
of immense value in reforming the offender and also results in a
great saving of expense to the taxpayer. The first is the primary
object and probably I cannot do better than cite some cases which
are under my care: J. E., aged 22, a bright Irishman, not intoxicated,
in a quarrel which took place in a saloon, interfered and
used too much strength in separating the combatants; charged
with malicious assault, court would have committed him to county
jail for six months had there been no probation officer. Probation
officer returned the man to his home, helped him to secure employment,
visited his accuser and warned him not to molest J. E.
Young man’s weekly calls to report have become friendly visits;
he is always well dressed and is entirely self-respecting.
N. M.; American; aged 59; painter; married; offence—grand
larceny; never arrested before; while drunk, stole mayor’s horse
and buggy from hitching-post on main street; man not an habitual
drunkard, character good, provided comfortable home for his
family, always industrious and kind. Had there been no probation
officer N. M. would have been sent to state prison. He is now
doing well and reporting regularly.
Two boys, 9 and 12 years, arrested on charge of disorderly
conduct (threw a fish-head at an old woman); belonged to the
“gang;” had fairly good homes; did not attend school regularly;
found upon investigation to be mischievous and truants only.
Probation officer handed boys to truant officer, who immediately
placed them in school. Boys report each week, come to office in
Sunday clothes and evidently enjoy these visits. One lad has been
employed on Saturdays, by probation officer’s clerk, doing odd jobs
and is very proud of this evidence of favor. There has been a great
improvement in the whole family owing to pressure through this
little fellow.
In cases of non-support which are always tried before police
justices, probation has proved of inestimable value. The following
is an example: Mr. B. drank occasionally, earned eighteen dollars
a week and failed to support his family; was arrested and handed
to the probation officer. After a thorough investigation, including
conditions in the home, the man was ordered to request his employer
265to hand Mrs. B. ten and one-half dollars every week—one
and one-half dollars for each of the five children and three dollars
for Mr. B.’s own board. Besides this the man was required to pay the
house rent, eight dollars a month. After the first month, at the
request of the wife, he was allowed to give her the money himself.
Each week the man reports the payment. Had Mr. B. been sent
to jail, he would have lost his self-respect and his situation, he
would have become an expense to the taxpayer and his family dependent
on the charity of the community.
Three little Polish girls, aged 9, 10 and 11 years, arrested and
indicted by the Grand Jury for grand larceny; on investigation
found parents, who could not speak English, were not implicated;
homes above the average. Children had stolen ribbons, lace and
other articles for personal adornment, saying some had been presents;
others were hidden between two old mattresses in a garret; parents
terribly frightened when discoveries were made. Upon arrest
of children and after bail had been secured, I began to take supervision
of them; examined each one separately at my office; sent
for priest, and arranged for daily instructions by the Sisters—little
girls had been regular attendants at school. Later, without trial,
they were probated to me by the court for an indefinite period.
The police magistrates of Hudson and Union counties avail
themselves of the services of the probation officers and it is in these
courts that good preventive work can be done by seeing the accused
as soon as a charge is made and by investigating the case
before trial, and also, in many instances, preventing the charge
being entered by talking the matter over and promising to see the
accused. In Elizabeth, the largest city of Union county, arrests
and commitments have fallen off 40 per cent since the work of the
probation officer has become known.
Three Italians appeared at my office, one to complain of two
boys and the others the fathers of the boys. These men had come
to ask me to take charge of the little fellows, who were mischievous
and annoyed the complainant. All three were satisfied with my
decision.
A Jew, who was in the habit of making charges of disorderly
conduct against mischievous boys, after a talk with me, promised
to bring no more children before the court until I had investigated
each case for him. He had not realized the serious harm inflicted
upon the boys’ characters by their being brought into court.
266At the end of an hour he was fully convinced. The railway
detectives also report cases to me before making charges and abide
by my decisions.
There is great danger of perfunctory work on the part of the
probation officer and very grave danger from the uneducated
officer. Public opinion has still to be aroused; therefore the need
of the best work along these lines. Where good work has been
done, the public has recognized that the practice of inflicting short
terms of imprisonment for minor offences is useless and harmful.
The need of men and women of sound judgment and high character
for this work is great, and in the development of the system
it is hoped that many specialists will devote some time to the
installation of the work and help to bring about the proper
administration of the law.
Boston was the first city to set apart special hours for the trial
of juvenile offenders, and the excellent way in which these trials
are managed is an object lesson worth studying. Persons not
connected with the trial are required to leave the court room,
the officer who made the arrest tells his story, the complainant his,
and the witnesses are examined. The child is called to the judge’s
desk and tells his story in a quiet voice. Confidential relations are
at once established between the child and the judge. The probation
officer then makes his report upon the case, after which the
judge announces his decision.
The same methods are employed in Chicago, Philadelphia
and Minneapolis and will be in New York. In Chicago, a judge has
been appointed who only tries children’s cases; in New York, a
judge is to be chosen from time to time. The value of this way of
conducting juvenile trials cannot be overestimated, as it robs the
trial of all the sensational element. It also makes it easy for the
various child-saving societies, such as the St. Vincent de Paul,
Children’s Aid and Prevention of Cruelty to Children and for
truant officers to co-operate with the court.
The following is a pen-picture of a trial held before the court
in which I am probation officer: Court room crowded, twenty-two
lawyers present; prosecutor reads the indictment. Boy eleven years
old arrested for stealing brass worth eighty dollars, from railroad,
and selling it to a junk man for twenty cents; had been bailed by
kind neighbor, who delivered the boy. Court officer calls witnesses;
boy brought; so small that his eyes are just on a line with the
267rail; boy weeping; prosecutor exclaims, and says boy should
be in day-nursery; audience in back of room rises and presses forward
to look at boy; lawyers inside of rail jump to their feet;
court raps for order; boy realizes that he has become an object
of pity and curiosity, cries louder and calls for his mother, who
comes forward with a baby in her arms; judge and prosecutor confer,
boy is handed over to probation officer to be produced to stand
trial when called, virtually ending the matter.
269
By Judge Abraham M. Beitler
Court of Common Pleas No. 1, Philadelphia
271At its session in 1901 the legislature of our state passed an
act, with a rather lengthy title, which has become known as the
Juvenile Court Act. It passed the Senate by unanimous vote and
in the House there were but three votes against it and one hundred
and forty-seven for it. The act commits to a Judge of the Court
of Quarter Sessions some new powers, and imposes upon him
some new duties.
The scope of these powers and duties is, I am sure, understood
by but few. That there may be a wider acquaintance with
the new law and a clearer appreciation of the benefits possible to·
be secured by its enforcement, I have tried to condense into a brief
article a statement of its salient features, and, besides, to give some
data as to the work done since the act was put into operation in
Philadelphia.
The act deals only with juveniles, and only with those under
sixteen years of age, and of juveniles under sixteen only with the
unfortunate and the erring. By its terms it applies to “dependent
or neglected” children, and “delinquent” children. The first
class, the act says, shall include any child who is destitute or homeless
or abandoned or dependent upon the public for support, or
who has not the proper parental care or guardianship, or who
habitually begs or receives alms, or whose home, by reason of
neglect or cruelty or depravity of the parents, is an unfit place for
such a child, or any child under eight years of age found peddling
on the streets.
A “delinquent” child is one who “violates any law of this
state, or any city or borough ordinance.”
The Court’s jurisdiction may be invoked by a petition, which
must be verified by affidavit, stating that the child therein referred
to is either dependent or neglected or delinquent.
Upon the filing of the petition, the Judge may issue either a
summons or a warrant. The former requires the party having the
custody of the child to produce it in court. The latter imposes the
272duty of bringing the child into court upon the officer armed with
the warrant. Pending the final disposition of any case, the child
may be retained in the possession of the person having it in charge,
or in some suitable place provided by any association having for
one of its objects the care of delinquent or neglected children.
As a matter of fact, very few cases are brought into court upon
either summons or warrant. The Judge holding the court finds,
upon the day fixed for the hearing of juvenile cases, that he has,
perhaps, twenty-five cases on his docket, and to him they are all
new cases. Most of them originated in the magistrates’ courts or
in the station-houses.
The parent or parents of a child or children, for instance, may
have been arrested for drunkenness or vagrancy. The magistrate
hearing the case sends the parents perhaps to the House of Correction,
and then something must be done for the immediate care of
the children. They are turned over to the Children’s Aid Society
or the Society to Protect Children from Cruelty. On the day for
the hearing of juvenile cases, the children will be brought in by the
Society’s agents, and a petition will be filed setting forth briefly
the facts.
Sometimes the children are abandoned or homeless waifs
turned over to the Society by the police.
The Judge sitting in the Juvenile Court proceeds to inquire
carefully into each case. He has the assistance of the prior examination
into the facts of each case by the Society’s agents. Sometimes
the power of the Court is invoked to compel the attendance
of relatives, or even of parents. After a careful hearing, the case
of each child is decided, and a decree made. The testimony heard
is taken down in a short narrative form by a stenographer, and
then typewritten and filed for future reference. If the Judge
is satisfied that the parent or parents of a child ought not to have
the custody of the child, but are able to contribute to its support,
he may make an order requiring the payment of such sum as the
circumstances warrant. Children are sometimes turned over to
relatives, and sometimes to a charitable society, regard being had
always to the religion of the child in selecting the society.
Delinquents generally come into court from the magistrates’
courts; sometimes directly, sometimes from prison.
Now that the act is being better understood, and its benefits
more generally appreciated by the magistrates and the police, a
273probation officer is usually advised when a “delinquent” is taken
into custody. The hearings are generally held by the magistrate
at the station-house, and in a large number of cases, perhaps in a
majority of cases, a probation officer is present to hear the testimony
against the child and to set on foot an investigation not only
of the charge on which the child is held, but as to his or her previous
record and home life and surroundings. It is earnestly to be hoped
that all our police lieutenants and police magistrates will speedily
come to appreciate how greatly the probation officer can assist
them and the Court, and will let no case be heard without having
previously notified the nearest probation officer.
It is in the handling of these “delinquent” cases that the
Judge has the most delicate and difficult tasks imposed on him.
Sometimes the boy or girl is charged with some trifling offence,
and the investigation made by the probation officer shows that the
child is not really bad. The probation officer goes to the child’s
home; if he attends school she calls on his school teacher; if he
attends Sunday school she communicates with the Sunday school
teacher; if he works, she goes to his employer, and endeavors in
every way to ascertain what the child’s previous life has been and
what his home surroundings are.
Sometimes it is apparent that even where the child is not depraved
or incorrigible, it is best for his sake that he shall not be
returned to his home. A single case will serve as an illustration.
Recently, a boy of thirteen was arrested for larceny. He was
guilty. His father was a drunken brute. His mother was a hardworking,
honest woman, but in the household she was a mere
drudge, without voice or influence. The father sent the boy upon
the street to steal. The Judge before whom the case came, heard
the father and mother. The father promised to behave himself.
The mother begged to have the boy returned to her. He was sent
home, and a probation officer appointed in his case. Two months
later, the boy was again arrested for larceny. The case against
him was clear. This time the Court refused to listen to the pleadings
or the promises of the parents, and committed the boy to the
House of Refuge. The first time the boy was in the Juvenile
Court was perhaps not the first time he had offended. Had we
had a Juvenile Court into which he could have been taken when
he made his first departure from the path of rectitude he would
have been perhaps committed to the Children’s Aid Society, and
274that Society would have found him a home with some Christian
family and his whole life would have been changed for the better.
As it is, he has been committed to an institution whose splendid
work in reclaiming incorrigibles gives every hope that the boy will
yet turn out a good citizen.
What to do with a bad boy is a problem as old as time. If the
wisdom of the past had given us one formula to follow, the task
imposed on the Judge dealing with “delinquents” would be simple,
but the question every time it arises is as new and as difficult as
when it was first presented. That some boys would be better off
if severely punished, the first time they lie or steal, is undoubtedly
true. That the way of the transgressor is hard ought to be taught
both as a moral precept and an actual fact. Still, the question in
every case is, how shall this boy be handled? With the best motives
and after the most careful and patient inquiry, the Judge
can at best but guess. To send the boy home from Court after
his guilt had been confessed or established, and do nothing more,
as was frequently the old way, was often to give rise to the belief
on the part of the boy that the law is not stern but lenient, and that
after all, to steal, to be caught, to be convicted and to face a Court
is not a serious but a trifling matter. To his companions the released
boy was often a sort of a hero. The bad effect on him reached
to all who were of his age and class and knew of his lucky escape.
On the other hand, to refuse to send the boy home left but one
alternative, to commit him to prison or to the House of Refuge.
Whether committed or sent home, the boy was given but little
chance in comparison to that which the Court can, under the Juvenile
Court Act, now extend to him.
This brings us to consider the probation officer.
The act says, Section 6:
“The Court shall appoint or designate one or more discreet
persons, of good character, to serve as probation officers during
the pleasure of the Court; said probation officers to receive no
compensation from the public treasury. In case a probation
officer shall be appointed by any Court, it shall be the duty of the
Clerk of the Court, if practicable, to notify the said probation
officer in advance when any child is to be brought before the said
Court; it shall be the duty of the said probation officer to make
such investigation as may be required by the Court, to be present
in order to represent the interests of the child when the case is
275heard, to furnish to the Court such information and assistance as
the Judge may require, and to take such charge of any child before
and after trial as may be directed by the Court.”
Section 9 is: “In the case of a delinquent child the Court may
continue the hearing from time to time, and may commit the child
to the care and guardianship of a probation officer duly appointed
by the Court, and may allow said child to remain in its own home
subject to the visitation of the probation officer, such child to report
to the probation officer as often as may be required, and subject to
be returned to the Court for further proceedings whenever such
action may appear to be necessary; or the Court may commit the
child to the care and guardianship of the probation officer, to be
placed in a suitable family home, subject to the friendly supervision
of such probation officer; or it may authorize the said probation
officer to board out the said child in some suitable family
home, in case provision is made by voluntary contribution or otherwise
for the payment of the board of such child, until a suitable
provision may be made for the child in a home without such payment;
or the Court may commit the child to a suitable institution
for the care of delinquent children.”
It is just here that the Juvenile Court Act, in my judgment,
offers its greatest good and opens up a new chance to
deal intelligently with the case of a delinquent. Instead of making
the child promise to be good, and sending him home, the Court
places him in charge of a probation officer, and then lets him go
home. Sometimes the result is that, for the first time a boy is given
a fair chance in the battle of life to make something of himself.
Many of the cases of delinquents brought into Court exhibit weakness,
incapacity, and sometimes a worse condition on the part of
the parents. Their offending is sometimes passive, sometimes active.
The probation officer becomes the boy’s watchman and his
friend, guarding him against himself, and, in some cases, against
his parents.
A few months’ practical working of the act has shown what a
wonderful agency for good the probation officer is. I shall speak
of the officer in the feminine, because most of them are women.
She has, by reason of her appointment by the Court, an official
position. Her station is one of grave responsibility and great
honor, but of no profit. The act distinctly says that the officer
shall receive no compensation from the public treasury. This will
276keep them from the contaminating touch of party politics, and
prevent this particular office being sought after.
The probation officer is the child’s friend, but the Court’s
adviser. Each boy is kept under surveillance. If, after the promises
he and his parents have made to the Court, he stays away from
school (if his parents can send him) or refuses to work or goes with
his former associates, if they are bad boys, he is warned, and if he
will not mend his ways, he is brought back to Court, and then the
Judge has more knowledge of the case to guide him in intelligent
action.
The first session of the Juvenile Court in Philadelphia was held
July, 1901. Since that time there have been, up to May 21, 1902,
1,378 cases before the Court. Of these, 481 have been dependents,
and 897 delinquents. But fifty-six have been sent to the House
of Refuge, and of the rest (returned to their homes in almost
every case) but thirty-three have been before the Court a
second time. Most of these were given a second chance, and in but
one case has the Court had a boy brought back more than once.
He was, on his fourth appearance before the Court, committed to
the House of Refuge.
One probation officer to whom since last July nearly one hundred
children have been committed, told me recently that she had
had but one child backslide. Surely such a record would be, if
there were no more like it, sufficient warrant for saying that the act
will do great good.
The whole scheme of the act is to prevent delinquents from
becoming criminals. It is an act for child-saving. Its benefits,
though conferred directly upon the child, are reaped by the entire
community. It is the ounce of prevention which is far, far better
than the pound of cure. It aims to place the erring child, of years
too tender to yet fully appreciate the dangers ahead, under the
restraining and guiding hand of an officer of the Court, who is at the
same time the child’s friend.
The restraint is that of oversight; the guidance that of kindly
admonition and advice, backed by that power everywhere recognized,
the power of the law.
277
By Frederic Almy
Secretary and Treasurer Charity Organization Society, Buffalo
279Juvenile probation is no new thing. It has been used in
Massachusetts since 1869, or for over thirty years, and for the
same length of time in that state a statute has required that
children’s cases should be “heard and determined by themselves,
separate from the general and ordinary criminal business of said
courts.” There is no separate children’s court in Massachusetts,
but in some of the courts the session for adults is formally adjourned,
and the room is cleared of all except those who have to do
with the juvenile cases; in other courts the session for juveniles is
held in a separate room or in the judge’s private room. In either
case there are evils, as is shown in a letter from Mr. Charles W.
Birtwell, secretary of the Massachusetts Children’s Aid Society:
“Unfortunately in all the courts juveniles under arrest are apt
to be mixed with adults while waiting during the hour or so preceding
the trial. If not under arrest but only summoned, they may
wait in the outside lobbies, but get more or less mixed with the
throng about and in the court room.”
The first juvenile court was opened in Chicago in 1899 and at
once had wide notice, largely through the excellent work of the
monthly periodical, the Chicago Juvenile Record. It was through
this juvenile court that the probation system first became general.
Mr. Folks tells us, in his “Care of Delinquent Children,” that “the
system did not secure formal adoption, so far as we are aware, in
any other state than Massachusetts until the enactment of the
juvenile court law in Illinois in 1899.” “In 1901,” he says, “the
probation system is in actual operation, or is provided for by
statute, in fifteen of the twenty-five largest cities of the United
States,” and the number is now rapidly increasing. It is another
instance of the contagion of ideas which in this century outstrips
the contagion of disease.
On February 26, 1900, the Buffalo Charity Organization Society
appointed a committee on probation which held several meetings,
but found that nothing could be done without legislation,
280which it was then too late to procure. A law passed May 1, 1901,
through the efforts of this committee, allowed the Buffalo police
justice to suspend sentence with juvenile delinquents, and place
them under probation for a term not exceeding three months. The
act allowed him to appoint five unsalaried probation officers, and
provided that when practicable the probation officer should be
of the same faith as the child placed in his care. The court
opened July 1, 1901. By an amendment passed in February, 1902,
the number of probation officers, still unpaid, was increased to ten,
and authority was given to extend the probation for additional
terms of three months in the discretion of the judge. A state
probation law was also passed in 1901, but was so amended that it
applied only to those over sixteen years of age. Consequently in
New York State, outside of Buffalo, a chance is given to adult
delinquents which is denied to little children.
Under the new New York City charter a juvenile court was
created for the boroughs of Manhattan and Bronx (excluding
Brooklyn), but with no provision for probation. This juvenile
court was to open January 1, 1902, but for some reason did not
do so.
Judge Murphy, of the Buffalo Police Court, was an active member
of the committee of the Charity Organization Society which
procured the probation law. Although the law was permissive
only, he at once put it into effect, and also on his own motion transferred
all his juvenile cases to a separate building, several blocks
distant from the police court, where he holds his juvenile court on
Tuesday and Friday afternoons. The great success of the court
in Buffalo is chiefly due to his interest. Where for any reason a
good judge is not available a juvenile court must suffer, for probation
gives many opportunities for favoritism to both the judge
and the probation officers. It is hardly too much to say that the
character of the court will be the same as the character of the judge.
Of the ten probation officers in Buffalo all are unpaid for this
special work, but two are truant officers, two are officers of the
Charity Organization Society, and one is the head worker of Welcome
Hall, a leading settlement. The city is divided into two
districts, in each of which there are a Catholic and a Protestant female
officer for the girls and the younger boys, and a Catholic and
a Protestant male officer for the older boys. There are a Jewish
officer and a Polish officer for the city at large.
281It is not perhaps desirable to recapitulate here the peculiarities
of all the juvenile courts. In Massachusetts and St. Louis the
probation officers are paid. In New Jersey the court costs are paid
them. In Chicago, Pennsylvania, Milwaukee and Buffalo they are
unpaid, or paid from private sources. In Chicago the probation
is until the child’s majority. In Boston, as in Buffalo, it is for
short terms renewable on their expiration. It seems as if the short
term would give the child a goal in sight and so help his striving.
The Buffalo juvenile court has not quite completed its first
year, and no definite records have been compiled, but two results
are already notable—the decrease in the number of commitments
to the truant school and to reformatories, and the increase in
the number of children arrested. The first result was expected, for
many children are now cared for in their homes under probation
who would otherwise have to be sent to the public truant school or
to a reformatory. The second result was not anticipated, but is
in this way excellent. Much juvenile lawlessness formerly ran riot
without arrest because the officers knew that the judge would not
send a child away for petty offences, and mere rebuke meant so
little that the child fresh from court would jeer at the officer
who had arrested him. With probation an arrest is taken more
seriously by the children. At a recent session of the court Judge
Murphy called attention to this increase in the number of arrests,
and recommended legislation which should make convictions in the
juvenile court inadmissible as evidence of character in either civil
or criminal actions, so that mere juvenile peccadilloes could not
constitute a criminal record.
The economy of probation greatly reinforces the support of
the system on ethical grounds. It is not often that a measure of
social reform makes an immediate appeal to the taxpayer, but
probation relieves him from the public maintenance of many delinquents
who under this plan are maintained at home at their
parents’ charge. In Massachusetts, where probation has been in
operation many years, the district attorney has prepared figures
showing that it has saved the state much more than the cost of
its operation, though it is administered there by salaried probation
officers. On the side of morality the saving is still greater,
though less definite. If this saving of character could be translated
into dollars and cents the cash gain to the state through the
282diminution of crime would be seen to be even greater than the
saving in maintenance.
Again, the presence daily in the court of a group of disinterested
men and women of character helps to maintain the moral
tone of the court. They sometimes see things which the court
unaided might not see. More than once in Buffalo pettifogging
lawyers, who have been reaping fees from parents on the pretence
that their services caused the judge to put children on probation
instead of sending them away, have been excluded from the court
on report of the probation officers as to their practices.
The teachers usually co-operate willingly in filling out the
weekly cards which show the behavior and the attendance of a
child while on probation, and they use their influence to hold
children to their best. Some have spoken with wonder of the
favorable effect of probation on the school work.
A day in a juvenile court is fascinating, and the experiences
of a probation officer are not less so. The little, curly-headed
culprits are so anxious to tell their story to the judge, or sometimes
so stolid, that either way it is pathetic. There is much weeping
when children are found guilty, and sudden relief when the
meaning of probation is explained to them, and the confidences
made to the probation officer are irresistible. In many of the courts
the proceedings are quite informal, and the children stand close
to the judge and talk confidentially with him, without fear.
The care taken to keep children from contact with the adult
criminal courts extends also to the jail. In several states the law
prescribes that children shall not be lodged either in the jail or in
the police court. If the child is unable to give bail, some place
other than the jail or police court must be provided. In Pennsylvania
a separate act, passed after the juvenile court law, authorizes
the establishment of houses of detention. In Wisconsin
it is provided that when a child has been sentenced he must be kept
wholly apart from adult prisoners until he is committed. The
period after arrest and before trial is also guarded.
It has been well said that the practice of arresting persons
accused of minor offences, who are not in the least likely to fail
to appear if merely summoned, is a relic of earlier times and should
be abandoned. In Buffalo it is the general practice on arrest to
take the child to a station-house and then let him go home under
283promise to appear in court at the time stated, and as yet there has
been no failure to appear.
Criminal law has relied too much upon confinement and compulsion,
both of which involve cost to the state and rancor and
sullenness in the individual. The features of probation are first,
the retention of natural conditions, in the home, if it is at all fit,
and second, loving, patient, personal service. Instead of withdrawing
the child from the environment in which it lives, it tries
to assist that environment. It is possible to draw many analogies.
In medicine we now give fewer drugs and rely on the natural powers
of the body with the personal service of trained nurses. In charity
we give fewer alms, and rely on the natural resources of the family
with the personal service of trained friendly visitors. In government
we use less law, but rely on natural forces with the aid of the
Church, the school and other instruments of social reform.
With children the question of reformation is especially important.
The chief cause of crime has been said to be neither
intemperance, nor avarice, nor lust, but neglected childhood, for
neglected childhood means neglected character, and at an age when
character is still plastic. Children under arrest for the first time
are more peculiarly susceptible to influence than even other children,
and the impressions made at this crisis go far to fix their lives.
If you catch character young, and at the right moments, you can
do almost anything with it. It is even possible to confine the baser
parts of a child’s life, as the Chinese do the feet of their children,
so that the development of these baser parts will be permanently
stunted. Swaddling environments, continued for years, can do
much to form character by compulsion, so to speak, and to thwart
the growth of what is undesirable. This exclusion of evil is the
method of the military school and of the reformatory of the military
type. There is something unnatural about it, but there is
no doubt that in this way habits can be formed; and there is an
inertia of character which makes good habits difficult to break as
well as bad ones.
The other method is to leave the natural conditions with as
little disarrangement as possible; to let the feet grow and become
a support for the whole body; to take the activity which might
become crime and turn it into industry; to take the affection
which might become lust and turn it into love; and to do all this
as far as possible under natural conditions. It is possible to do
284this, not by a high wall which wards off all contamination but casts
a shadow on the young life within, but by applying some antiseptic
which will make the contagions of daily life harmless. Those of
us who with Milton “cannot praise a fugitive and cloister’d vertue,
unexercis’d and unbreath’d,” believe that everywhere character
is better formed by liberty than by force. Antiseptics against
temptation are being found by modern charity. I would wish to
leave a child undisturbed in its home, if the home is decent, and
trust to the Church, the school, the tenement house law and the
settlements, as antiseptics against contamination; next to this I
would leave the child at home, but under probation; next I would
seek a foster home, well chosen and well watched; next, for some
children, an open reformatory of the free type exemplified in the
George Junior Republic; and last, a reformatory of the more
military type. In confinement a boy may find himself kindly and
wisely treated, but his social side is not much considered, and this
is not in keeping with modern pedagogy. Very much can be done
through a boy’s affections.
Where the germ of pauperism or of vice cannot be killed, may
there not be a treatment by antitoxin, as at the George Republic,
by deliberately helping the poison to run its course in a mild form
in order to prevent future attacks? It may be well to let a boy be
idle and lazy for a time and suffer all the consequences of hunger
and cold; to let him be violent, and as a penalty be duly and severely
punished by his peers; in fact, to give him a brief rehearsal
of life under natural conditions which will be very profitable when
life arrives in grim earnest. These lessons are taught in a reformatory
of the military type, but the more voluntary and natural the
lesson is, and the more the child can be made to feel that he has
chosen his own course and experienced its natural result, the
deeper will be the impress on his life.
It seems to be the lesson of the past century, the lesson alike
of charity, of Christianity, and of civilization, that, in forming
character, force must give way to freedom with love. A militant
Christianity has already been condemned, and a militant civilization
is as bad. I believe in civilization by contact, in civilization
by commerce, but not in civilization by conquest. Force
leaves rancor and reaction, and the slower method of Christian
example is more sure. The United States has been called the
pioneer in an age of republics, but it is not through its force, but
285through its example, that in neither North nor South America is
there to be found a king. The republics of Central and South
America stumble and fall and make many errors, but they are
slowly developing good secondary education and commercial stability.
India and Egypt, with an original civilization and under
as intelligent and benevolent tutelage as the world has ever known,
are less fit to-day for self-government. With boy life as with
national life, we may well stop to ask whether the least possible
interference and the largest possible freedom, even with all the
mistakes and struggles which this involves, will not build character
most surely in the end.
Appendix — SIXTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE American Academy of Political and Social Science Philadelphia, April 4 and 5, 1902 “SOCIAL LEGISLATION AND SOCIAL ACTIVITY” — Session of Friday Afternoon, April 4. — Session of Friday Evening, April 4. — Review of the Work of the Academy for the Year 1901–02. — Session of Saturday Afternoon, April 5. — Session of Saturday Evening, April 5.
287
289Report of the Academy Committee on the Sixth Annual Meeting.
The Sixth Annual Meeting not only met the expectations of
your Committee, but was generally regarded by those who attended
as completely fulfilling the high standards which were set by its
predecessors. The sessions were largely attended by members from
different parts of the country; in fact, the leading characteristic of
this meeting was the large attendance from points at a considerable
distance from Philadelphia. The Annual Meeting of the Academy
has assumed the proportion of a national convention to consider
the great economic and political questions that confront the
country.
Before proceeding to an account of the individual sessions your
Committee desires to express its thanks as well as those of the officers
and members of the Academy to the Provost of the University
of Pennsylvania, to the President and Directors of the Manufacturers’
Club and to the Committee of the Octavia Hill Association,
whose co-operation was of great value in making the meeting a
success.
The expenses of the Annual Meeting were met in part from an
appropriation from the treasury of the Academy, but in the main
by a special fund contributed by generous friends of the Academy.
Your Committee desires especially to express its appreciation of the
services of those who took active part in the meetings and whose
contributions give to this volume its chief importance.
290
Topic: “The Child Labor Problem.”
The President of the Academy, in formally opening the Annual
Meeting, said
Members of the Academy, Ladies and Gentlemen.
It gives me great pleasure formally to open the Sixth Annual
Meeting of the Academy. The series of meetings, beginning with
the discussion of “The Foreign Policy of the United States,” four
years ago, and taking up thereafter “Corporations and Public Welfare”
and “America’s Race Problem,” has furnished us with a series
of volumes which have come to be standard reference works on the
subjects with which they deal. It is safe to say that the Sixth
Annual Meeting, which is devoted to the subject of “Social Legislation
and Social Activity,” will not fall behind the others, either in
the interest of the topics or in the character of the discussions.
These Annual Meetings of the Academy focus the best thought
upon the questions which are in the foreground of public attention.
The subject for discussion this afternoon is one which, as you
know, has been agitating different sections of the country at different
periods. Your Committee has succeeded in securing a representation
of the different points of view in the discussion of the
afternoon. We are also fortunate in having, as presiding officer
of the afternoon, one of the leading manufacturers, and it is safe
to say, one of the most public-spirited citizens of Philadelphia.
You all know his services to our city, but I am not sure whether
many of you know how close and careful a student of industrial
conditions in both the North and South he has been. I take
pleasure in presenting to you Mr. Frank Leake.
On taking the chair, Mr. Leake said:
Mr. President and Members of the American Academy of Political
and Social Science.
It was with pleasure that I accepted your President’s invitation
to preside here to-day. The particular subject which you are
to discuss is one having a very important bearing on the future of
this country, because at the bottom of all progress is education, and
child labor, if not properly regulated, will certainly prevent proper
education.
291I am, as your President has said, a practical manufacturer, and
yet here in Philadelphia, where my work lies, we have very little of
the child labor problem to contend with; it is almost self-regulating.
There are very few manufacturers who do not fall in line, not only
gracefully but gladly, with the laws of our state which regulate that
matter for them. There is very little of child labor in the textile
mills of this city, or of this state, so far as I am acquainted.
Whatever is done in the way of regulating child labor should
be done in a very conservative and openminded spirit. The one
seeking progress should be willing to consider local conditions.
The key to the whole situation will be found in local conditions,
because child labor at one point in our country does not present
anything like the same problem that it does in another portion of
the country.
The Pennsylvania laws, for the most part, are wise in their
treatment of this question. I know of no organized opposition to
the entire and careful enforcement of these laws. I am speaking
more particularly in regard to textiles. That is my business and
that is the line in which the New South is finding her great industrial
development. In the South, textile mills started originally with
the idea that proximity to the cotton fields was the great desideratum.
It has been found that the question of proximity does not
have much to do with their success. Freights on raw materials
North are as low, or lower, than freights on the finished product,
and in the North and West is where the finished product finds its
largest market. Such being the case, the mills in the South have
had to study the other problems that have come to be talked about
in making their success sure, but in studying these problems they
have found instinctively that the same conditions make for their
success as made for the success of the mills in the North. Long
years ago our New England forefathers found a sterile and rocky
soil. They found it very difficult to get a living from the farm,
and so turned their attention to manufacturing. In the South along
the coasts and in the middle country the soil is very rich and very
fertile and the people get their profit from the farm. It has always
been an agricultural section, but the mountain farms are the ones
where the ground is sterile, where the soil is frequently washed into
the streams and where farming is on a very small scale. The
Southern mountaineer has his home in a little cabin with a little
patch of corn at the rear. Corn and bacon are the staple articles
292of food. The whites largely predominate in the mountain sections.
At the foot of the Allegheny Mountains, the Appalachian
Chain, extending through North and South Carolina, Northern
Georgia and Northern Alabama, are conditions which should be
considered in taking up the problem of child labor. The people live
in little mountain huts year in and year out, scarcely seeing ten,
twenty, very few of them seeing fifty dollars in cash a year. The
cotton mill has come in there, going on the farms, taking the workers
from them and bringing whole families into the manufacturing
town. The farmer takes the little cottage built for him by the
company, with a little patch of ground, given him on the supposition
that he will cultivate it. Frequently the ground is not cultivated,
and the man finds his employment in carrying the dinner-pail,
while the wife, the older daughters and the older boys work in
the mill. The younger ones are anxious to follow. These conditions
are an advance over what they have had, and they should
be advanced slowly and by degrees to anything which would be
more theoretically correct. Practically they have the advance.
In any question involving child labor, it is well to consider the local
situation and the previous condition of those whom you are seeking
to benefit.
The first speaker this afternoon is a gentleman who has had
every opportunity to study the subject given to him. I am very
glad that your President has had the wisdom, instead of picking
those who look at these things solely from an academic standpoint,
to take those men who have come into actual contact with the
subject itself, men who have brought their best thought to the
practical solving of this question, who desire in their everyday walk
of life to be of benefit to their fellow-men, and while they are solving
the hard problems of life, with which they must necessarily deal in
their business, are seeking always to help and uplift those around
them. Such a man is Mr. Franklin N. Brewer, General Manager of
the largest department store in this city, who will address you on
the subject of “Child Labor in the Department Store.”
Mr. Brewer then read his paper, which is printed on pages
165–177 of this volume.
In introducing Mr. Henry White, Mr. Leake said:
The discussion of “Machinery and Labor” has been given to
one who has distinguished himself for broadmindedness in dealing
with labor problems, who has recognized the broad principle that
293wherever advance is possible, either by machinery or by any other
human function or agency, humanity is bound to take advantage
of that possibility. As the latent forces are being developed in
machinery, he has also advocated that the labor which it represents
should recognize that and adapt itself to the new conditions with as
little friction and as little loss and with as little captious criticism
as possible. His attitude in all of these matters has been progressive,
not radically reformative, but always seeking the advantage along
the progressive, conservative lines which make for true progress.
I have pleasure in introducing to you Mr. Henry White, General
Secretary of the United Garment Workers of America.
Mr. White then read his paper, which is printed on pages
221–231 of this volume.
Following Mr. White’s paper and in introducing Mr. Hayes
Robbins, Mr. Leake said:
As Mr. White has just shown, machinery is a revolutionizer,
and machinery is so popular in this age of ours that it is revolutionizing
all of our methods. One of the chief questions we have before
us to-day is the harmonizing of the machinery of organization with
Christian ethics. Sociology to-day is advancing so far and calling
for answers to so many problems that it must of necessity merge
itself with Christianity; Christianity must broaden and take the
position the Master intended. All of the Master’s teachings were
positive, not negative. Li Hung Chang says that the Confucianists
have a rule which is very similar to our Golden Rule. He says very
truly, something very similar, but totally unlike in its operation.
I will quote it to you. It is in effect: “Thou shalt not do unto
thy neighbor what thou wouldst not have thy neighbor do unto
thee.” Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, is
our Golden Rule. Everything Chinese is negatived; Christ, on the
other hand, taught the positive. His teachings send men out into
the world unto a life of helpfulness and benevolence; the contrary
is producing the conditions which we find in China, where every
man tries to live unto himself. It is these conditions there and here
which sociology and Christianity must of necessity take cognizance
of and unitedly bring to a conclusion.
The next speaker to address you has made an extended tour
of the South in company with Dr. Gunton, and their findings coincide
with my experience in the same country. I have made several
trips to that section and they have brought me to practically the
294same conclusion. I have pleasure in introducing the gentleman
who will speak on “The Necessity for Factory Legislation in
the South,” Mr. Hayes Robbins, Dean of the Institute of Social
Economics, New York.
Mr. Robbins here presented his paper, which is printed on pages
179–188 of this volume, after which Mr. Leake commented as
follows upon the ideas contained in the paper.
The people employed in the Southern mills are for the most
part descendants of the Scotch-Irish. They are not seekers for
charity, nor anything of that sort, but the communities in which
they live, or many of them, are burdened with an illiterate population
composed of blacks, and they are being taxed to support that
population in schools. These people coming down from the mountains
are bringing to them an additional tax. The Southern Educational
Society, with its headquarters in New York, has of late
years taken cognizance of the conditions in which the poor whites of
the South are found, and it is doing magnificent work along proper
lines, without pauperizing, and is instilling in the hearts of these
people a desire for education. I am happy to add to the speaker’s
remarks that this work is bearing fruit. The movement toward
better education is increasing and it is for me and for you to help
it along.
In closing the meeting, the President of the Academy said:
I want to express to the speakers of the afternoon the sincere
appreciation of the Academy for their valuable contributions to the
subject. I may say, furthermore, that Dr. Murphy, who has led
the movement in the South for the betterment of conditions, fully
expected to be here, but has been taken seriously ill in New York
and is now gradually recovering from an attack which at one time
threatened his life. I regret very much that you had not the opportunity
of listening to him, as well as to the paper prepared by
Mrs. Kelley, but you will all have the opportunity of reading her
paper, as well as the addresses presented at this afternoon’s session,
in a volume containing the proceedings of the Annual Meeting.
The session of Friday evening was devoted to the Annual
Address, which was delivered by the Honorable Martin A. Knapp,
Chairman of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Professor
295Emory R. Johnson, of the University of Pennsylvania and member
of the Isthmian Canal Commission, presided at the meeting.
Prior to the Annual Address the President of the Academy,
Professor L. S. Rowe, of the University of Pennsylvania, presented
a review of the work of the year.
Professor Johnson, in introducing Professor Rowe, said:
The Annual Meeting of the Academy has come to be a permanent
and important part of the Society’s activity. The four
sessions lasting two days, enable the Academy to discuss with some
measure of detail several phases of the general subject which seems,
at the time of the meeting, to be of greatest public interest. The
most important of the four sessions of the Academy is the one at
which the President of the Academy reviews the work of the organization
and at which the Annual Address is delivered by some
distinguished scholar.
The work involved in arranging for this Annual Meeting is far
greater than one would suppose who has not undertaken such a
task. In order to make these meetings a success, thought and
labor must be given to the subject for many weeks. Success always
seems easy until one undergoes the labor by which success is
achieved; but onerous as is the work of arranging for the Annual
Meeting, that constitutes but a part, and indeed a small part, of the
administrative duties which devolve upon the President of the
Academy. We are an organization of two thousand members,
about one-fourth of whom live in or near the city of Philadelphia.
The activities of the organization are national rather than local.
To keep up this membership and to cause it to increase rather than
to decline, to manage successfully the finances of a scientific body
such as ours, and to pass upon the many questions of polity which
arise in the administration of the Society, require the exercise of
sound judgment and a devotion to detail. If the Society were to
pay its officers for their work, the Board of Directors would not
think of suggesting a remuneration for the President of less than
$2,000 a year; but, as you all know, none of the officers of the
Academy or editors of its publications receives any pay whatever.
The work is entirely gratuitous on their part.
The American Academy has been most fortunate in its Presidents.
During the first eight of the thirteen years of its existence,
the President and directing mind was the honored founder of the
Academy, Dr. Edmund J. James. When his academic duties
296called him to the University of Chicago, Professor Lindsay succeeded
him as the administrative head. Those who know Professor Lindsay
personally realize that he possesses in a very marked degree the
ability to organize and administer. He has most exceptional powers
of initiation and execution.
A few months ago, when President Roosevelt requested Professor
Lindsay to take charge of the important work of administering
the educational system of Porto Rico, the Board of Directors
knew exactly whom to ask to succeed Professor Lindsay as President
of the Academy. As First Vice-President of the Academy
and for many years a member of its editorial board, Professor Rowe
had manifested his zeal for the Academy and had in many ways
aided the growth of the organization. Like his predecessors, Professor
Rowe always thinks towards action, and this natural trait of
mind has been strengthened by the training which he has received,
not only in academic life, but in the execution of responsible public
duties. When President McKinley selected the Commission which
was provided for under the Foraker Act, to revise and codify the
laws of Porto Rico, Professor Rowe was made one of the body of
three men to whom that task was entrusted. The Commission
appointed by President McKinley was succeeded the following year
by one provided for by the laws of Porto Rico and appointed by
Governor Allen. Of this second Commission, Professor Rowe was
made the President, and in that position he has carried to successful
completion a thorough codification of the laws of the island,
has worked out a scheme of local government, and what is perhaps
most important of all, his work has been so practical that the Porto
Rican Legislature has adopted, with but slight changes, the recommendations
of the Commission.
At the beginning of this calendar year, Professor Rowe returned
to his duties at the University of Pennsylvania. He will now tell
you of the work which the Academy has done during the past year,
and I am sure we all feel that what he has already accomplished
in the brief period of his presidency of the Academy is an earnest
of a large and most gratifying growth of our organization during the
coming year.
Dr. Rowe then presented the following review of the work of
the Academy for the year:
297
The presentation of the work of the Academy during the last
fiscal year is so closely bound up with the activity of my predecessor
that any mention of the one necessarily involves reference to the
other. Those of you who have followed the work of the Academy
during the last few years thoroughly appreciate the great work
which he has accomplished and the splendid traditions which he
has left with us. During the three years of his direction of the
affairs of the Academy as Acting President and then as President,
the Academy has gradually drawn to its ranks the public-spirited
men and women of all sections of the country, until to-day it is the
most influential organization of its kind in the United States. Our
meetings are attracting the leading authorities of the country and
in the publications of the Academy the most advanced thought on
the great political, social and economic questions is presented.
These results were accomplished by Dr. Lindsay by reason of
his abiding faith in the mission of an organization such as ours, reinforced
by the high standards of public service and public duty
which he constantly kept in mind. His resignation as President
of the Academy, made necessary by reason of his appointment as
Commissioner of Education of Porto Rico, is a severe loss, somewhat
mitigated by the fact that he still retains a keen and lively
interest in our work.
The honor of succeeding him is commensurate with its responsibilities.
The activities of the Academy have become so manifold
and varied that the adequate performance of the duties of those
entrusted with the direction of its affairs must mean a severe strain
unless the co-operation and support of our members is assured.
We are, in a sense, a great co-operative body, each member of
which contributes his share in the study and solution of the great
industrial, social and political questions that confront our country.
The prospects of the Academy have never been brighter than
at present, nor have its opportunities ever been greater. Whatever
our view as to the direction which our national affairs have taken,
it is clear to everyone that we have reached a turning-point in both
our domestic and foreign policy. The need of a forum for the calm
and dispassionate discussion of the many questions arising out of
this change is felt in every section of the country. Our power as
one of the important enlightening forces of public opinion increases
298with each year and must be met with a keen sense of responsibility
not only towards our members, but also towards the community at
large. The Academy is a national, not a local organization, and
as such its activity must be national rather than local. Every
member of the Academy should feel it not only his privilege, but
his duty, to watch over the direction of Academy affairs and to
assure himself that the organization is fulfilling the high mission
which constitutes its reason for existence.
The period since the last Annual Meeting has been marked by
a number of important scientific sessions devoted to the following
subjects:
On October 31 last, the topic for discussion was: “The Outlook
for Civil Government in the Philippines,” at which addresses
were delivered by Dr. George F. Becker, of the U. S. Geological
Survey, and Mr. Abreu, a native Filipino connected with the War
Department at Washington.
On December 13 last, the topic discussed was: “The Policy
of Commercial Reciprocity,” and the speakers of the evening were
Hon. John A. Kasson and Mr. A. B. Farquhar.
On March 1 the subject of “The Extension of American Influence
in the West Indies” was considered; Dr. L. S. Rowe, of the
University of Pennsylvania, delivered the address of the evening,
and Captain W. V. Judson, of the Corps of Engineers, U. S. Army,
presented a discussion of the strategic considerations connected
with the topic of the evening.
The publications of the Academy, which constitute the main
channel of communication between our members, have kept in close
touch with the trend of affairs. The plan of issuing separate
volumes devoted to special topics has been further developed and
has met with great success. In January a special volume on
“Transportation and Commerce” was issued, with such eminent
contributors as Hon. Martin A. Knapp, John Franklin Crowell, B.
H. Meyer, Samuel Pasco, Emory R. Johnson, H. T. Newcomb and
Alfred Nerincx. In May a special volume on “The Government of
Dependencies” was issued, and the July number of The Annals
contains the proceedings of the Sixth Annual Meeting.
The membership of the Academy at the present time is 1,990,
of which sixty-two are life members.
The magnitude of the Academy’s work has forced upon your
Board of Directors the question of adequate quarters for the library
299and offices of the organization. At the present time the University
of Pennsylvania places at our disposal quarters in one of the
University buildings. The time is soon coming, however, when the
work of the Academy will require a separate building with adequate
library facilities. This is a question which I wish to bring to the
attention of every member of the Academy, and especially invite
their co-operation in devising means by which this end may be accomplished.
From whatever point of view, therefore, we examine the work
of the Academy, there is evidence of steady and healthy growth in
all directions. Our combined efforts must now be directed towards
the further extension of the work, for in an organization such as
ours lack of growth means retrogression and decay.
Professor Johnson, in introducing Judge Knapp, said:
When the Academy decided to devote the Annual Meeting to
a discussion of “Social Legislation and Social Activity,” it was felt
that the Annual Address should be devoted to the subject of transportation.
Social activity is everywhere, and at all times, conditioned
by the facilities for travel and shipment. They determine
the measure and direction of social progress; and the first and
possibly the greatest subject of social legislation is the regulation
of transportation.
For the consideration of this great question, it was felt that the
one man pre-eminently qualified was the Chairman of the Interstate
Commerce Commission, and not alone because of his official
position, although as the guiding mind of that most dignified and
influential body he has had unrivaled facilities for acquiring a clear
and comprehensive insight into the problems of transportation,
it was because of his exceptional personal qualities, because of his
calm poise of judgment, his judicial fairness that makes him command
the respect and admiration alike of the railway official and
the complainant shipper, and because of the clear and lofty diction
he has employed in all his numerous essays and public addresses.
The work of the Academy has had the benefit of Judge Knapp’s
frequent co-operation. On the occasion of the Thirty-fourth
Scientific Session he addressed our Society upon the subject of Railway
Pooling, and the able paper presented by him was published
in Volume VIII of The Annals of the Academy. Judge Knapp
again contributed to The Annals last January, when a paper by
him on “Government Ownership of Railroads” was published.
300Both of these papers have been highly serviceable to all students
of current transportation problems, and have done much to widen
the beneficent educational influence of the Academy.
The trained jurist is not infrequently a cultured scholar, but
it is seldom that a man possesses in addition to these attainments
the genius to instruct and the altruistic spirit that prompts to a
devotion of his talents to the furtherance of the public good. Judge
Knapp’s powers are generously active for the betterment of the age
in which he lives; and it is a source of satisfaction to the members
of the Academy that the Society has been one of the agencies by
means of which Judge Knapp has given to the public the results of
his valuable experience and sound thinking.
Judge Knapp then delivered the Annual Address, printed on
pages 1–15 of this volume.
Topic: “The Housing Problem.”
The President of the Academy, in introducing the presiding
officer of the afternoon, said:
Members of the Academy, Ladies and Gentlemen.
It is fortunate for us, both as members of the Academy and as
citizens of Philadelphia, that when a subject of great importance
is to be discussed by our organization, we are always able to call
upon some citizen of Philadelphia whose interest in the subject,
whose work, whose activity along these special lines enable him
to preside over our deliberations with the authority that the subject
calls for. I have very great pleasure in presenting to you this
afternoon as presiding officer the Honorable William W. Porter,
Justice of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania, in whose hands I now
place the meeting.
Judge Porter, in introducing the Honorable Robert W.
De Forest, said:
We Philadelphians are apt to pride ourselves on the descriptive
title which others have given to our city and which we have adopted,
namely, that it is a city of homes. This is true of it to-day. It
has ever been true. But none of us can shut his eyes to the facts
that the population of the poor and the vicious has become congested
in certain sections of the city, and that tenement houses,
301unknown to us for many years, are intruding in considerable
numbers. To us Philadelphians, however, the topic for discussion
would have greater significance had it been made the “Homing
Problem” instead of the “Housing Problem.” The workingman’s
struggle has ever been, in Philadelphia, not for a “house” in the
sense of a room in a tenement, but for a home where within the
four walls he may know privacy and proprietorship. We have
been wont to say that a man’s home is his castle and that he would
die in a struggle for its protection. This may yet be said of the
home owner who is a house owner. But there is no instance on
record, known to me, where there has been any serious loss of life
in the defence of a room in a boarding-house or tenement.
It is with great pleasure that I introduce to you the first participant
in the discussion of the topic before us, Hon. Robert W.
De Forest, Tenement House Commissioner of Greater New York,
a gentleman who comes from a city which has had to meet the
problem of housing the poor in its most difficult form, a gentleman
who, notwithstanding his large professional obligations and duties
and the time required by them, has been able to give much thought
and useful labor to the attempted solving of what is, up to the
present time, only a partially solved problem.
Mr. De Forest then presented his paper, which is printed on
pages 81–95 of this volume.
In introducing Miss Addams, Mr. Porter said:
There was a time when true charity, as we understand it, was
unknown. The knowledge and practice of it came only with
Christian civilization. The impulse to do for others was first and
strongest felt by women. The early administration of charity by
them was, however, largely of the heart, rather than of the understanding.
The time is here when women, with hearts just as warm
in the work, have tempered their enthusiasm with cool, deep,
serious, conscientious thought. These women are furnishing to us
the best type of the best citizenship in the department of altruistic
work.
It is with pleasure that I introduce to you a woman who exemplifies
what I have asserted; a woman who has been at the head
of a charitable work which has accomplished wonders; a woman
who has thought, wrought and written well. It is with very great
pleasure that I present to you one who will speak on the “Housing
Problem in the City of Chicago,” Miss Jane Addams, of Hull House.
302Miss Addams’ address will be found on pages 97–107 of this
volume.
Mr. Porter then introduced Mr. Nathaniel B. Crenshaw, who
presented the results of an investigation by the Octavia Hill
Association into the Housing Problem in Philadelphia. The paper
read is printed on pages 109–120 of this volume.
The President of the Academy, in closing the session, said:
In closing the meeting I desire to express to the speakers of the
afternoon, as well as to the presiding officer, the sincere thanks of
the Academy, and I feel that I am simply giving expression to your
feelings when I say that we all go away with new ideas and a new
inspiration in the work of bettering social conditions.
Subject: “Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration; Its Possibilities
and Limitations.”
In giving the meeting into the hands of the presiding officer of
the evening, Mr. Charles Custis Harrison, the President of the
Academy said:
Members of the Academy, Ladies and Gentlemen.
We have much of importance to hear this evening and there is
therefore little time for formal introductions. I have the honor of
presenting to you, as presiding officer of the evening, Dr. Charles
Custis Harrison, Provost of the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Harrison, in introducing Senator Hanna, said:
Ladies and Gentlemen.
The meeting to-night has to do with the questions which relate
to the maintenance of industrial peace or to the restoration of peace
relationships in industrial relations if they shall be disturbed.
Perhaps I may say that question has peculiar interest to myself
entirely outside of my academic connections, because many years
before I entered the service of the University I was myself a large
employer of labor. One of the testimonials, perhaps the testimonial
which I most value of any which I have received, was one
which the two thousand men in our service gave to us at the time
we went out of business.
We do not realize that the conditions under which we are living
are totally different from those of twenty-five years ago. During
303almost all my business life, and I suppose during Senator Hanna’s
business life, the maxim on which business was conducted was that
competition was the life of trade, and there was a constant struggle
of competition between producer and producer and between man
and man for a position, and it is only within a few years that it has
dawned upon the mind of the world that another economic maxim
might have weight, the maxim that where combination is possible,
competition is impossible. We are working now under that
maxim, and so we have federations of labor and we have federations
of capital. So long as justice is not universal there will be a conflict
of interests between labor and capital, and the practical question
seems to be, how to bring these two interests together.
All these matters are really solvable only in a practical way.
Most people need a mediator—somebody to intervene. We know,
ourselves, even in the matter of the rental or buying of a house, a
man is often not willing to disclose himself fully and must employ
a third party. The practical question is, how to get the men
together, because in that way difficulties are settled and only in that
way. Whosoever takes a part in preserving industrial peace or
in adjusting the conditions as between employer and employed
confers an extraordinary benefit upon the whole community.
In everything the man is greater than the scheme. What one
man finds impossible to do, another man succeeds in doing. The
first speaker of the evening is Senator Hanna, a man who translates
his oratory into action. He has consented to add to the extraordinary
responsibilities of state, which he has borne for so many
years, the duty of being one of the members of a board of conciliation
or arbitration, and I have the very great pleasure of presenting
him to you.
Senator Hanna’s address is printed in full on pages 19–26 of
this volume.
The next speaker of the evening was Mr. Samuel Gompers, who
spoke on “Limitations of Conciliation and Arbitration.” In introducing
Mr. Gompers, the presiding officer said:
Ladies and Gentlemen.
I shall now introduce as the next speaker the President of
the American Federation of Labor, who has devoted his life since
boyhood towards the betterment of the laboring classes, and not
only towards that question alone, but also to the philosophical
304side of everything which has to do with questions concerning
labor. I am glad of the opportunity of introducing to you Mr.
Samuel Gompers.
The address of Mr. Gompers is printed on pages 27–34 of this
volume.
The speaker following Mr. Gompers was the Hon. Oscar S.
Straus, who spoke on “The Results Accomplished by the Industrial
Department of the National Civic Federation.” In introducing
Mr. Straus, the presiding officer said:
The man to whom was referred the important duty of appointing
the Industrial Committee of Thirty-six of the Civic Federation,
to which reference has been made so often this evening, and who,
in response to his first invitation received thirty-five affirmative
replies, the Hon. Oscar S. Straus, is the gentleman whom I now
have the pleasure of introducing.
The address of Mr. Straus is printed in full on pages 35–42
of this volume.
The last speaker of the evening was Mr. William H. Pfahler,
who spoke on “Co-operation of Labor and Capital.” The paper
read by Mr. Pfahler is printed in full on pages 43–58 of this volume.
2. A strike was declared in the anthracite mines in May, 1902, and had not been settled when
this paper went to press.—Editor.
3. We have assurances from eminent corporation attorneys that the proposed issue of
deferred stock with the suggested limitations thereon is entirely legal and feasible, and that it
can be done without danger of having the concern forced into a court of equity by the holders
of such certificates.
4. The five wards are the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth and Seventh. One-half of the
Seventh extends out of the district towards the west, but shows many of the same characteristics.
9. The Board of Health, in their report for 1900, (p. 40) say: “A tenement house in Massachusetts
is one occupied by four or more families, while in New York it is one occupied by
three families which was the law in Massachusetts until the statute was amended in 1894.”
This sentence is rich in blunders. No amendment was made in 1894. The Health Act of 1885,
chapter 382, section 4, defined a tenement house as one with “more than three families.” The
Act of 1889, chapter 450, section 4, changed this to “more than two families.” But the
whole thing was repealed by 1892, chapter 419, section 138, so that since 1892 there has been no
definition at all of a tenement house in the health code of Boston.
10. Entrance to nine houses within these blocks was prevented by owners—seven of the
houses belonging to one person. While the Board of Health badge was worn by the investigator,
no actual authority was conferred therewith, so that entrance to houses or apartments
could not be insisted upon.
11. These 2,154 apartments make up 98 per cent of all occupied apartments in the houses investigated.
In the case of a few of the remaining apartments, information was refused by
tenants; in most cases, however, the apartments were not investigated because tenants could
not be found at home during the day, neighbors stating that they were absent regularly at
work.
12. A very few apartments were occupied by two families; hence the slightly greater number
of families than of apartments covered.
13. See topographical map prepared for the National Board of Health in 1880 by Spielman &
Brush. The only copy known to exist is in the Jersey City Public Library.
14. Very little overcrowding was found in apartments of more than four rooms.
15. John Wanamaker’s Store, of which Mr. Brewer is General Manager [Editor].
17. See “The Government Factory Bill of 1900,” by Gertrude M. Tuckwell, the Honorary
Secretary of the Women’s Trade Union League. Fortnightly Review for June, 1900.
18. Translated from the French by D. E. Martell, Ph. D., late Fellow in Romanic Languages,
University of Pennsylvania.
19. Eighteen volumes published by the Minister of Industry and Labor (Brussels, 1900 and
1901). We draw the greater part of these references from “General Statement of Methods and
Results of the Census” (Brussels, 1902), which this publication completes.
20. A penal law of May 28, 1888, relative to the protection of children employed in the
itinerant professions, forbids the feats of strength and dangerous exercises, inhuman, or of a
nature to affect the health of children and youths under eighteen, employed by those who
carry on the profession of acrobats and mountebanks, etc.
21. There exists a special regulation which puts under authorization and special watchfulness
those industrial establishments, which, by their nature, threaten the safety, health and
convenience of the public, or offer certain dangers to the health and safety of the workmen
who are employed there. These establishments are known as “Classified Establishments.”
22. See particularly the discourse of M. Renkin, Catholic Deputy of Brussels, proceedings of
June 13 and July 2, 1901.
23. This discussion is based upon the Report of the U. S. Industrial Commission, Vol. V, on
Labor Legislation.
24. Report of the U. S. Industrial Commission, Vol. V, pp. 100–101. N. H., Me., Mass., Vt.,
R. I., Conn., N. Y., N. J., Penna., Ohio, Ind., Ill., Mich., Wis., Minn., Neb., Del., Mo., N. Dak.,
S. Dak., Ga., La., D. C., Wash., Mont., Wy., Md., Cal., Tenn. These range from complete acts,
like those of N. Y. and Mass., to fire-escape provisions only, as in N. H., Me., Del., Va., Ga.
etc., while Ala., the Carolinas, etc., are still entirely outside of the group.
25. Child labor.—(14 yrs.) Mass., Conn., N. Y., Ind., Ill., Mich., Wis., Minn., Col.; (girls 14
yrs., and boys 12 yrs.), N. J., La.; (13 yrs.), Penna., Ohio; (12 yrs.), Me., R. I., Wis., Md.,
W. Va., N. Dak., Tenn.
26. Hours of labor.—(Women and minors), Mass., Me., N. H., R. I., Conn., N. Y., N. J.,
Penna., Wis., Neb., S. Dak., N. Dak., Okla., Va., La.; (Minors), Ind., Vt., Ohio, Ill., Mich.,
Minn.; Cal., Md., Ga.
27. Night work and meal hours.—N. Y., Mass., Neb., Ind., Mich.; (meal hours), La., Penna.,
Ohio.
34. See pamphlet upon “Child Labor in Alabama,” “An Appeal to the People and Press of
New England, with a Resulting Correspondence,” obtainable from the secretary of the
Alabama Child Labor Committee, P. O. Box 347 Montgomery, Alabama, and from Room 614,
205 East Twenty-second Street, New York City.
35. Alabama Child Labor Committee: Edgar Gardner Murphy, Rector of St. John’s Episcopal
Church, Montgomery; Thomas G. Jones, ex-Governor of Alabama; Lucien V. Lataste,
Montgomery: J. H. Phillips, Superintendent of Schools, Birmingham; John Craft, Member of
Legislature, Mobile; A. J. Reilly, Member of the Legislature, Ensley.
36. J. H. Nichols, Treasurer, Alabama City Mill, Boston Evening Transcript, October 30.
37. Report of Industrial Commission Vol. V, p. 10. J. W. Daniel, dissenting.
38. Report of Industrial Commission, Vol. V., pp. 4, 5, 7·
40. Report of Industrial Commission, Vol. V., p. 9.
41. 41 Neb., 127. Nebraska (1899, 197).—No female shall be employed in any manufacturing,
mechanical or mercantile establishments, hotel or restaurant in this state more than sixty
hours during any week, and ten hours shall constitute a day’s labor. The hours of each day
may be so arranged as to permit employment of such females at any time from six o’clock in
the morning to ten o’clock in the evening; but in no case shall such employment exceed ten
hours in any one day.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.
Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
Re-indexed footnotes using numbers and collected together at the end of the last
chapter.
