BY HELEN CAMPBELL.
The story of working-women, of those women forced by changes in industrial and social conditions into occupations outside the home, is limited to the last hundred years. The division of labor resulting in the factory system, and the multiplication of trades, has opened many employments hitherto unknown, in which the use of female labor has become almost a necessity. Woman has had her share of work from the beginning, often much more than her share, but it ran usually in the simple lines of household requirements; and if it chanced, here and there, to be of larger scope, this was, after all, mostly tentative. Work with deliberate intent to earn a living is chiefly a fact of the nineteenth century, and any tangible estimate of woman as a competitor of man in the struggle for existence must be based upon the facts of the past hundred years. It is within hardly more than a generation that the importance of the subject has become plain, and now we are all questioning as to what is included in the life of the working-woman; what is her economic and social condition; what are her rights and her wrongs; what bearing have they on society at large, and what concern is it of ours why or how she works, or what wage she receives?
We are well aware that humanity has always had the enforced work of women as an essential part of its development, enforced not by law but by the necessities of life. In any new country, the work of women is a vital factor in its success or failure, in its growth and general prosperity; and in the early days of our own country this was far truer than now. There were then no trades open to women, because the organization of society was much less complex than it now is, and the family represented a union of trades. This had been the case in England and, indeed, in all civilized countries, and is even true of those early days when skins were all that was needed, and thorns were the only needlesand pins. But from the day of that disastrous experience in the Garden, clothing, and the necessities involved in it, has been the synonym of sorrow for women, and the needle stands as the visible token of disaster, sorrow, and wrong of every order—“the asp upon the breast of the poor.”
Civilization has always in the nature of things meant war. It is only out of the conflict of class with class, interest with interest, that advance comes. “Strife is the father of all things and the king of all things,” was the word of Heraclitus the Wise. “It hath brought forth some as gods and others as men, and hath made some bond and others free. When Homer prayed that strife might depart from amongst gods and men, he wist not that he was cursing the birth of all things, for all things have their birth in war and enmity.”
It is only in this later day that we begin to realize other possibilities, and to wonder if the world has not had enough of wars and tumults, and cannot bring about the desired end without further expenditure of blood and tears. With war has ever been, and ever will be, the forcing of women left with no breadwinner into the ranks of the earners, and only later centuries have given an opportunity beyond domestic service. It is the last fifty years that has suddenly opened up the myriad possibilities in the more than four hundred trades into which women have thronged.
The field is so enormous that one is tempted aside from the real point at issue. What we have to do is to consider work for women as a whole, with all that it involves for womankind. It is not alone the worker herself, but the woman who uses the product of the worker’s labor that should understand what obligation is laid upon her. She is not free from responsibility, for certain conditions which have come to the surface, that form part of the life of the day, and must be dealt with in wiser fashion than heretofore, if we are to attain the “consummation devoutly to be wished.”
In the beginning of our history, women were at as high a premium as they are now in the remote West, but this was a temporary state, and as more and more, Fortune smiled on the struggling colonies, many forms of labor were transferred from male to female hands. Limitations were of the sharpest. That they were often unconscious ones, made them no less grinding. To “better one’s self” was the effort of all. Long before the Declaration of Independence had formulated thethought that all men possess certain inalienable rights, amongst which are “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” this had become the faith of those who, braving the perils of the deep, had settled in an unknown country, that they might enjoy the rights to which they had been born. The largest liberty for the individual consistent with the equal liberty of others was demanded and received, nor did it lessen as time went on. Liberty begat liberty. The ideal was always a growing one. Less limitation, not more, was the order of each fresh day that dawned. To every soul born into the colony, to every descendant of these souls, was a larger hope, a higher ambition. The standard of living altered steadily even in that portion of the country which retained longest the old simplicity, and best knew how to combine “plain living and high thinking,” until in course of time the family remained no longer a colony in itself. Clothing and every necessary, which was formerly of home manufacture, could now be obtained from without, and women found outside the family practicable work to do.
The first factory established in New England, early in the present century, ended the old order or rather was the beginning of the end. But long before machinery had made the factory a necessity, there had been the struggle to break the bonds which held all women save the few who had wealth fast to the household. The same spirit that brought the pilgrim over the sea stirred in his descendants. The kitchen had proved itself a prison no less than now, and women and girls flocked into this new haven and worked with an enthusiasm that nothing could dampen.
“Oh, those blessed factories!” said to me one day, a woman, herself an earnest worker for present factory reform, and who began her literary life as contributor to the LowellOffering. “You people will never know the emancipation they brought. I loathed the kitchen, and life went by in one. So many New England kitchens were built with no outlook, and ours was one. I used to run round the house to see the sunset over the mountain, and I can hear Aunt Nabby now: ‘There goes that child again! I’d lock her up if she were mine!’ We were all locked up! No chance for more than the commonest education; no money for any other. And then came these blessed factories! You laugh, but that was what they seemed then. We earned in them and saved, andin the end got our education, or gave it to our brothers, who were almost as shut in. They have altered—yes; but they were deliverance in the beginning, I can tell you, and in spite of present knowledge, I never see one of the tall chimneys without remembering and being thankful.”
Such has been the story of most of man’s inventions. Beginning as blessing they have in the end shown themselves largely as instruments of oppression. But in this case it is not the factory; it is the principle of competition, carried to an extreme, that has brought in its train child labor and many another perplexing problem. So many changes for the better are also involved; the general standard of living is so much higher, that unless brought into direct relation with workers under the worst conditions, it is impossible to know or realize the iniquities that walk hand in hand with betterment.
To one who has watched these conditions, the question arises, does the general advance keep step with the special? Mental and spiritual bonds are broken for the better class. Does this mean a proportionate enlightenment for the one below? Has the average worker time or thought for self-improvement and larger life? Are hours of labor lessening and possibilities increasing? These questions, and many of the same order, can have no definite answer from the private inquirer, whose field of observation is limited, and who can form no trustworthy estimate till facts from many sources have been set in order, such order, that safe deductions are possible for every intelligent reader.
It is to Massachusetts that we owe the first formal, trustworthy examination into the status of the working-woman, and the remarkable reports of that Bureau of Labor, under the management of Mr. C. D. Wright, have been the model for all later work in the same direction. As the result of a steadily growing interest in the subject, we have now under the same admirable management, the first authoritative statement of conditions as a whole. The fourth annual report of the United States Bureau of Labor, entitled, “Working-women in Large Cities,” gives us the result of some three years’ diligent work in collecting information as to every phase of the working-woman’s life, from the trade itself, with its possibilities and abuses, to the personal characteristics of the woman who had chosen it. It is not only the student of social science who needs to study the volume, but the working-womenthemselves will find here the answer to many questions, and to some of the charges now and then brought against them as a class.
The value of figures like these is seldom at once apparent, since many facts seem isolated and irrelevant. But the fact that they have not been gathered in the interest of a theory but are set down merely as material for deduction, gives them a value, not always attached to figures, and will make them serve as the basis of many a practical reform.
It is women earning a living at manual labor who are meant by working-women, and thus all professional and semi-professional occupations, such as teaching, stenography, typewriting, and telegraphy, with the thousands who are employed in them, are excluded from the report. Outside of these occupations, three hundred and forty-three distinct industries have been investigated. Twenty-two cities have given in returns, all representative as to locality, and ending with San Francisco and San Jose for the Pacific slope. Personal interviews were had by the government agents, with 17,427 women, this being, according to the estimate of the report, from six to seven per cent. of the whole number of women engaged in the class of work coming under observation. I am convinced that this estimate of the United States report is very misleading. The 17,427 women being six per cent. of all those engaged in the three hundred and forty-two industries investigated, the total so employed in the twenty-two cities would be 290,450, which on the face of it appears to be absurd. The New York Commissioner of Labor, in the report of his Bureau for 1885, estimates that there were, in 1884, over 200,000 women employed in the various trades in the city of New York alone. Neither of these reports includes women employed in rougher manual labor, such as scrubbing, washing, and domestic service. If the New York Commissioner’s estimate for New York City is correct, and I confess it seems to me to be nearly so, and if Mr. Wright’s estimate is as much too low in all the other cities as it seems to be in New York, the actual number employed in trades in the twenty-two cities instead of being only 295,450, cannot be far from 1,200,000. With the exception of certain statistics on prostitution, the entire work of the United States report has been done by women appointed by the Bureau, and Mr. Wright bears cordial testimony to the efficiency of each one in a mostdifficult and laborious task, adding: “They have stood on an equality in all respects with the male force of the Department, and have been compensated equally with them. It was considered entirely appropriate in an investigation of this kind, that the main facts should be collected by women. The wisdom of this course has been thoroughly established.”
Here, then, for the first time since labor questions began to attract the attention of students of social science, is an aid to stating definitely certain facts hitherto unknown to the public at large, and only surmised by those interested in the subject. Save for the Massachusetts reports already mentioned, and the valuable one of the New York Commissioner, Mr. Charles H. Peck, for 1885, with that of the first report of the Colorado Bureau of Labor Statistics, for 1887 and 1888, prepared under the very competent and careful supervision of Mr. E. J. Driscoll, there has been no authoritative word as to numbers employed, ages, conditions, average and comparative earnings, hours of labor, nationalities, and the many points most difficult to determine.[13]Few but students, however, are likely to read these volumes, and thus a resumé of their chief points might find place here were I not limited as to space. Having in mind the injunction of the editor ofThe Arena, to be brief, I shall quote only from the United States report. As all three of the Commissioners named agree in the most important details, except as to numbers employed, the United States report will speak for them all.
In the twenty-two cities investigated by the agents of the United States Bureau, the average age at which girls begin work is found to be fifteen years and four months. Charleston, S. C., gives the highest average, it being there eighteen years and seven months, and Newark the lowest, fourteen years and seven months. The average period during which all had been engaged in their present occupations, is shown to be four years and nine months, while of the total number interviewed 9,540 were engaged in their first attempt to earn a living.
As against the opinion often expressed that foreign workers are in the majority, we find that of the whole number given,14,120 were native born. Of the foreign born Ireland is most largely represented, having 926 and Germany next with 775. In the matter of parentage, 12,904 had foreign born fathers, and 12,406 foreign born mothers. The number of single women included in the report is 15,387; 745 were married and 1,038 widowed, from which it is evident that as a rule it is single women who are fighting their industrial fight alone. They are not only supporting themselves, but are giving their earnings largely to the support of others at home. More than half—8,754—do this, and 9,813, besides their occupation, help in the home housekeeping. Of the total number, 14,918 live at home, but only 701 of them receive board from their families. The average number in these families is 525, and each contains 248 workers.
Of those who reported their health condition at the time their work began, 16,360 were in good health, 883 in fair health, and 183 in bad health. A distinct change in health condition is shown by the fact that 14,550 are now in good health, 2,385 in fair health, and 489 in bad health.
Concerning education, church attendance, home and shop conditions, 15,831 reported. Of these, 10,456 were educated in American public schools and 5,375 in other schools; 5,854 attend Protestant churches; 7,769 Catholic, and 367 the Hebrew. A very large percentage, comprehending 2,309 do not attend church at all. In home conditions 12,020 report themselves as comfortable, while 4,693 give the home conditions as poor. “Poor” is, to the ordinary observer, to be interpreted wretched, over-crowding, all the numberless evils of tenement-house life, which is the portion of many. A side light is thrown on personal characteristics of the workers, in the tables of earnings and lost time. Out of 12,822 who reported, 373 earn less than a hundred dollars a year, and this class lost an average of 86.5 for the year covered by the investigation. With the increase of earnings the lost time decreases; the 2,147 who earn from two hundred to two hundred and fifty losing but 37.8, while 398, earning from three hundred to five hundred dollars a year, lost but 18.8 days.
The average weekly earnings by cities is no less suggestive. In Atlanta the wages are the lowest of any of the twenty-two cities, being only $4.05; in San Francisco they are the highest, being $6.91. The wages in the other citiesvary between these two extremes. In New York the average wage is $5.85; in Boston, $5.64; in Chicago, $5.74; in St. Paul, $6.02; and in New Orleans, $4.31.
These sums represent the earnings of skilled labor. Many women under this head can earn eight and ten dollars a week, but the general average is only $5.24. The large proportion of unskilled workers whose wage does not exceed one hundred dollars a year, include cash girls and the least intelligent class. It is this class that suffer most from the fine system, since punctuality and thoroughness are the result of educated intelligence. The largest number earn from two to two hundred and fifty dollars, and, as has been said, lose an average of thirty days in the year. The highest average wage, $6.91, is little more than subsistence, and the lowest, $4.05, is far less than decent subsistence requires.
Absolute violation of sanitary laws, overcrowding, and a host of other evils are specified as part of the factory system. Deliberate cruelty and injustice are met only now and then, but competition forces the working in as inexpensive a manner as possible, and so makes cruelty and injustice necessary to continued existence of the employer as an industrial factor. Home conditions are seldom beyond tolerable. For the most part, they must be summed up as intolerable. Inspection, the efficiency of which has greatly increased; the demand, by the organized charities, for women inspectors, and the gradual growth of popular interest, are bringing about a few improvements, but the mass at all points are as stated. Ignorance and the vices that go with ignorance, want of thoroughness, unpunctuality, thriftlessness, and improvidence, are all in the count against the poorer order of worker, but for the most part they are living honest, self-respecting, infinitely dreary lives. This fact is emphasized in every Labor Report in which the subject of women wage-workers is treated, and impersonal as figures are usually counted to be, from each one sounds a warning which, if unheeded, must in the end mean the disaster to which these returns point as inevitable. Even in Colorado, a State not included in the government report, where opportunity is larger, it has been said, than at almost any other point in the Union, Mr. Driscoll’s report for that State shows an average wage for women of about six dollars, which, considering the cost of living, is less than the New York rate.
It is a popular belief that the working class forms a large proportion of the numbers who fill the houses of prostitution, and that “night-walkers” are made up largely from the same class. Nothing could be farther from the truth than the last statement, the falsity of which was demonstrated in the fifteenth annual report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor, its testimony being confirmed and repeated in the report we have under consideration. For the first, diligent investigation in fourteen cities showed clearly that a very small proportion among working-women entered this life. The largest number classed by occupations came from the lowest order of workers, those employed in housework and in hotels, and the next largest was found among seamstresses, employees of shirt factories, and cloak makers, both of these industries in which under-pay is proverbial. The great majority receiving not more than five dollars a week, earn it by seldom less than ten hours a day of hard labor, and not only live on this sum, but assist friends, contribute to general household expenses, dress so as to appear fairly well, and have learned every art of doing without. More than this. Since the deepening interest in their lives, and the formation of working-girls’ societies and guilds of many orders, they contribute from this scanty sum enough to rent meeting rooms, pay for instruction in many classes, and provide a relief fund for sick and disabled members. Aids, alleviations, growing interest, all are to-day given to the worker. “Homes” of every order open their doors, some so hedged about by rules that self-respect revolts and refuses to live the life demanded by them. In all of these homes, even the best, lurks always the suspicion of charity, and even when this has no active formulation in the worker’s mind, there is still the underlying sense of the essential injustice of withholding with one hand just pay, and with the other proffering a substitute in a charity, which is to reflect credit on the giver, and demand gratitude from the receiver. Here and there this is recognized, and within a short time has been emphasized by a woman whose name is associated with the work of charity organizations throughout the country,—Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell. I doubt if there is any one better fitted by long experience and almost matchless common sense to speak authoritatively. Within a short time she has written: “So far from assuming that the well-to-do portionof society have discharged all their obligations to man and God by supporting charitable institutions, I regard just this expenditure as one of theprimecauses of the suffering and crime that exist in our midst. I am inclined, in general, to look upon what is called charity as theinsultwhich is added to theinjurydone to the mass of the people byinsufficient payment for work.”
Disguise this fact as we will; bear testimony to the inefficiency and incompetency of the workers; admit every trial and perplexity of employers, every effort to better conditions, yet there remains in the background always this shadow, in which the woman who elects to earn an honest living must walk. No more heroic battle has ever been fought than this daily one, waged silently and uncomplainingly in our midst by these workers. Their lot is all part of the general evolution from disorder, ignorance, and indifference, into the larger life, opening so slowly that impatient spirits demand dynamite to hasten the process, but as surely as the earth marches forever on its round toward that central sun that draws each smallest star of that system we call our universe.
It is certain that this is a transition period; that material conditions born of a phenomenal material progress have deadened the sense as to what constitutes real progress, and that the working-woman of to-day contends not only with visible but invisible obstacles, the nature of which we are but just beginning to discern. Twenty years ago one of the wisest of modern French thinkers, M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, wrote of women wage-earners: “From the economic point of view, woman, who has next to no material force, and whose arms are advantageously replaced by the least machine, can have useful place and obtain fair remuneration only by the development of the best qualities of her intelligence. It is the inexorable law of our civilization—the principle and formula even of social progress, thatmechanical engines are to accomplish every operation of human labor which does not proceed directly from the mind. The hand of man is each day deprived of a portion of its original task, but this general gain is a loss for the particular and for the classes whose only instrument of labor is a pair of feeble arms.”
Untrained intelligence finds earning a more and more difficult task, and for all of us it has become plain, that inthe mighty problem given us by a civilization which at so many points fails to civilize, every force must be brought to bear upon its solution. These pale, anæmic, undeveloped girls swarming in factory and shop, are the mothers of a large part of the coming generation, defrauded before birth of all the elements that make strong bodies and teachable souls. It is not alone the present with which we deal. Out of the future comes a demand as instant, and justice to-day bears its fruit in larger life for other days to come. For this must be two awakenings. One for the looker-on in the struggle who has no eyes for what lies still in shadow. The other for the worker, who must join the army already aroused, realizing its limitations, reaching out for training and larger opportunity, and seeking with the eagerness born of hard conditions, some permanent way of escape. And for watcher and worker alike the word is the same:
“Light, light, and light! To break and melt in sunderAll clouds and chains that in one bondage bindEyes, hands, and spirits, forged by fear and wonder,And sleek fierce fraud with hidden knife behind;There goes no fire from heaven before their thunder,Nor are the links not malleable that windRound the snared limbs and souls that ache thereunder,The hands are mighty were the head not blind.”
“Light, light, and light! To break and melt in sunderAll clouds and chains that in one bondage bindEyes, hands, and spirits, forged by fear and wonder,And sleek fierce fraud with hidden knife behind;There goes no fire from heaven before their thunder,Nor are the links not malleable that windRound the snared limbs and souls that ache thereunder,The hands are mighty were the head not blind.”
“Light, light, and light! To break and melt in sunder
All clouds and chains that in one bondage bind
Eyes, hands, and spirits, forged by fear and wonder,
And sleek fierce fraud with hidden knife behind;
There goes no fire from heaven before their thunder,
Nor are the links not malleable that wind
Round the snared limbs and souls that ache thereunder,
The hands are mighty were the head not blind.”
BY R. B. HASSELL.
A political revolution is in progress and has attained such proportions as to command attention and repay study. The magnitude of the movement and the definiteness of its aims are not understood and appreciated by those who live far from its field of operation. The reader is asked to lay aside his preconceived notions of the subject, and consider observations made, at short range, by one whose information is gleaned not from partisan newspapers, but from the field of action.
Before passing to an analysis of the platform demands of the new party, let us adjust the perspective; consider the work already done, and the method, motive, andpersonnelof the party.
Scarcely twelve months have passed since the birth of the party,—one political campaign. In that short period, an organization has been perfected which carries upon its rolls 1,200,000 voters; and anesprit de corpshas been created which is worthy of comparison with the enthusiasm of the old parties. It has elected two United States senators and a respectable body of congressmen. It has won its victories in the strongholds of the hitherto dominant party, overcoming in one instance an adverse State majority of 80,000. An army of lecturers has been set at work, most of them well equipped. About a thousand newspapers have been established in the interest of the movement. A national bureau of information has been created which keeps a large force of clerks constantly busy. A committee has been appointed on organization. Under its direction, State after State is being organized, and the prophecy is freely made that, before the snow flies again, an efficient branch of the central bodywill have been established in nearly every hamlet in the nation.
The surprising advance already made by the Independents would not need to concern us, were it not that the national conditions which made it possible, in the first instance, still exist to sustain and accelerate it. If asked to explain this advance, most partisans would say, at once, poor crops, extreme poverty and demagogism; or, as South Dakota campaign speakers were known to say, hot winds and Mr. Loucks. But these are mistaken ideas. Poverty of the people made many listeners and voters who, under other circumstances, would not have deemed it worth their while to leave the plow. An examination, however, of the vote in the counties of one State, from which a United States senator has been elected, shows that the heaviest majorities for the new party were cast in counties where farming is most diversified, and where the people have been blessed with a succession of good crops. In the counties where the people were poorest, they were more effectually under the thumb of money loaners and bankers, who held chattel mortgages over their heads. In such counties a corruption fund had a powerful influence toward keeping voters in line. Extreme poverty is always a menace to the purity of the ballot. In the well to do counties, or rather the counties where good crops had prevailed, and in which the people were reputed well-to-do, and where the heaviest vote was cast for the party, the writer has made a careful study of conditions and finds none that do not exist in most agricultural districts of the United States. The herds of cattle and bursting granaries, years ago, would have been sure indications of competence and contentment.
A little inquiry now, however, reveals discontent and a hand to hand struggle with adversity and against odds. Market values leave no margin for profit. Abundance at harvest time, disappointment on market day. Men can understand the connection between short crops and lean pocket-books, and are easily reconciled to such conditions. They may grumble but they are sensible enough to understand that they must sow again and wait for the heavens to smile. But when great heaps of corn lie in their fields awaiting sale at twelve cents a bushel, when a mighty crop of wheat brings its possessor but fifty cents a bushel, whencows are worth but fifteen dollars apiece, and good butter sells for eight cents a pound, while thousands in the land are known to be suffering because of the lack of these things, a leanness of pocket-book results which the farmer may understand, but to which he is not easily reconciled.
His eyes are open. The over-production theory explains nothing to him while the mouths of a multitude go unfed; while the beef that he sold for one and a half and two cents a pound on foot, retails in the eastern market, when dressed, for from ten to eighteen cents a pound; and while his corn and his wheat, at the other end of the line of transportation, brings twice the price he received for it here. He is able to put two and two together. He knows that primarily all wealth comes from the soil, in response to the toil of himself and his fellows. His eyes rest upon the 31,000 millionnaires of the land who roll in wealth. He says, “I helped produce that. How did they get it?” He knows that the money could not be had last fall to handle his grain and that, in consequence, a ridiculously low price was offered him in order to keep it off the market. He knows that a few men take advantage of his necessities and dictate prices just at the time when he must sell. He knows that railroads absorb nearly fifty per cent. of crop values for transportation charges, in order to pay dividends on a capitalization, fifty per cent. of which is fictitious, and that when the laws forbid it the courts of the land step in and declare it “reasonable compensation.”
In a word, it does not take a very sharp farmer to see that although hot winds, or murrain, or hog cholera increase the leanness of his pocket-book, these things do not explain that irresistible and invariable current which bears such a large portion of what he does earn into the plethoric pocket-books of the few rich. The farmer has become, perforce, a student of economics; and, although we may laugh at some of the vagaries in which he indulges, a close study of the situation and of his demands will probably show him to be about as reasonable as those are who champion the present order of things.
If the symptoms of an unnatural and unnecessary agricultural depression were confined to the Dakotas, and Kansas, and Nebraska, the farmer student might be nonplussed in his investigations. He might be led to consider his inexperienceand extravagance as the source of the disease so deeply fixed upon him. But the farmer of to-day reads and travels. A Dakota farmer, a few weeks since, visited the paternal homestead in Ohio. He found, to his surprise, that his father’s farm, which fifteen years ago lay within three miles of a thriving town of two thousand inhabitants, paying an annual tax of fifteen dollars, and worth a hundred dollars an acre, now pays a tax of seventy-five dollars, and is worth but forty-five dollars an acre, although the neighboring town has increased its population to ten thousand, and is noisy with shops and factories. He found that this was not an isolated case, but a fair example of the depreciation of farm values. He was not surprised to learn that the Ohio farmers were even then gathering to organize a State alliance. A careful survey of the United States, we are sure, will measurably confirm the conclusion of the western farmer, that farming, except in those localities where it has taken on the form of market gardening, or where it yet monopolizes some specialty, is unprofitable and disappointing.
Most farmers are ready to admit that their surroundings are better and their comforts more numerous than in ancestral days, when stoves were unknown, and the women slaved over the hand-loom and spinning-wheel, when medical men bungled and schools were luxuries; but they can see with half an eye that the mighty material advances of the last half century in this country have been made to serve the rich rather than the poor, the strong instead of the weak. They do not object to railroads, and the constantly increasing facilities for travel and transportation; but they do object to laws and customs which make railroads a means of transferring the hard earnings of the farm to the coffers of money kings. The farmer has received comforts at the hands of our civilization, but he has paid a good price for them, not to the genius which created, but to the plutocrat who bought. It is not because the farmer is facing starvation that he moves politically; but because, in the midst of plenty, comparative poverty is his portion. As a legitimate result of the civilization in the presence of which he lives, his tastes have improved, and his desire for education and comfortable living has increased, and with this improvement and increase has come a widening of the distance betwixt his possessions and his desires. In other words, the shadows of contrast insocial conditions in our country are hourly deepening, and it is at such times that the canker of discontent eats closest. It will serve no purpose for us to spend time in condemning this spirit, and making light of it, because it is a natural result and a political fact that can only be remedied by a removal of the immediate cause. It is not possible or desirable to rid the people entirely of the spirit of discontent, but it can be so minimized that it will be no longer a menace to national life but an incentive to progress.
It is necessary to understand thoroughly the conditions under which the work already described has been done. We have discussed the general social and financial condition of the farmer. How about his intellectual standing? We hear a great deal about the stupid, foolish farmer, easily led by demagogues. It is well to remember in this connection that those States where the Independent party has had greatest influence are the States where the smallest per cent. of illiteracy exists and, by parity of reasoning, the highest per cent. of intelligence. The fact is that the farmer of the West is not the clodhopper, at whose expense the funny man of the modern journal likes to crack jokes. He reads more widely and thinks more deeply than tradesmen or city people do, as a class. Tradesmen wear better clothes, are more urbane, and obtain a certain polish and self-possession which comes only from close contact with one’s fellows in the business and social world; all of which is very useful to them in improving the “main chance” in a competitive struggle, and might be labelled finish and sharpness. They live an intense life, within a limited circle, and have little time and less inclination to weigh questions from the larger world. To this fact may be attributed the slight interest such people take in municipal government and the dominance of slum and saloon influences. It is not so with the farmer. He reads much and widely, and the solitary plow-furrow and the quiet country road conduce to thought. A certain sturdy intelligence follows, which again and again has proven the salt of the world, the re-inforcing element of society, and is to-day the hope of our nation. While the tradesman dwells much on commercial law, trade customs, and the means of attracting trade, the farmer thinks more naturally of the general law of the land, under which he is protected or robbed, prospered or ruined. His sales aremade at wholesale prices. His eyes, therefore, seek out not so much the local factors in the make up of prices as the world-wide influences which are supposed to determine them. It is a large world in which he lives, and his vision, from necessity, sweeps the whole of it.
The people of the East will never understand the merit and magnitude of the present political movement, until they give the farmer credit for intelligence of a superior order. Those who think of him as the easy prey of demagogues are mistaken. He has been such in the past. We have convincing proof that it is otherwise now. Those who are familiar with the campaign plans of the dominant parties in these days, the shameless misrepresentation of facts by party organs, the open use of large sums of money to keep so-called leaders in line, and the tremendous power of public patronage can understand how much of demagogism in every community the farmers have had to meet and overcome in order to conquer an eighty thousand majority. It has required patriotism, common sense, and a Spartan-like heroism to face their organized foes and come off victorious. To their honor be it said that few Judases have been found among them at the ballot-box, or in the halls of legislation.
The work of the Independent party, so far, has been educational in two directions. It has increased the sum of information and developed a much needed self-confidence among the farmers. The alliance meetings, to which most of us object because of their secret and exclusive nature, are schools of economics and parliamentary tactics. The secrecy of the order, however, is not as objectionable as some of us have been inclined to think. As the leaders say, the veil of secrecy in this order is quite gauzy,—intended to keep out individuals rather than to conceal deliberations and doings. It throws the farmer on his own resources. He becomes a chairman, an investigator, a committee man, and a debater. If it were otherwise, the aggressive members of the professions would frequent the meetings, and naturally assume such functions. We are confident the farmer will come to see that these same ends may be attained by methods less objectionable to the thought and spirit of our people. Justice requires us to say that the secret order of the alliance and the Independent party have no necessary connection, although they are natural allies, and the formeris the source of the latter. In fact, scores of men belong to the alliance who have not yet committed themselves to the political movement, and many who are bitter in their opposition to it. Political affiliation has nothing to do with membership, and all actual farmers and their families are entitled to it. Freedom in the expression of opinion is courted and strong, ready men are being developed.
The writer has met old farmers, during the last twelve months, who are as well posted in the history of finance as the Shermans and the Allisons of the country, and who read the lessons of that history with as clear a vision. They do not get their facts from demagogical documents, as many suppose. We call to mind a laughable incident in the last campaign. A joint discussion was progressing between a bright member of the legal fraternity, who was advocating the present order and extolling the Republican past, and an uncouth but clever old farmer, who took up the cudgel in behalf of financial reform. The lawyer vociferously declared the demand notes never sold at par with gold. The farmer calmly insisted that they did, and read from an authority. The lawyer demanded the authority. The farmer asked the lawyer if he would read to the audience the name of the authority, if it was shown him. The latter could only say yes. The pamphlet was opened at its title page, and the lawyer read with best grace he could, to an audience that fairly rolled in the chairs with merriment, “Report of the Treasurer of the United States.” The farmers are going to a school where imagination is given small play, and facts are studied, uncolored by party traditions. Shall we not expect from this some good? Have we not reason to believe that the reading, intelligent majorities of the western prairies are to bring us some light and benefit?
It is useless to deny that these farmers have some intense prejudices. What class has not? And these prejudices must necessarily color opinion, and somewhat determine action. The farmer is bound to look at things from the standpoint of the poor man rather than from that of the corporation and the money loaner. The latter have had the thought and service of our statesmen for years past. As a consequence, the account between the rich and the poor is in an abnormal condition. Perhaps it is only right that the selfishness of the laboring classes should have its ownway for a time, and even things up somewhat, before a new start is made.
But the class prejudice and selfishness of the farmer has been greatly over-estimated by his political enemies. His sub-treasury bill and plan for loaning money on real estate, to be sure, are intended to afford immediate relief to the farmer; but he believes, in his soul, that they would result in great advantage to the whole business world. He says, moreover, that condemnation of his plans comes with bad grace from the men who are even now supporting a financial system which delivers the money of the country over to the few and trusts them to distribute it among the many. His plan may have the same selfish ear-marks, but they are not so deep. We have been trusting a few men to distribute the currency of the nation, and have made it extremely profitable for them to do so. He asks now that this trust be transferred to the many, and gives good assurances, in the nature of things, that the many will touch the remotest needs of our people, and so diffuse currency that competition, if such a principle ever can be effective, will keep interest at a rate where labor can live and prosper.
That the independent movement is not considered a class movement, in a bad sense, but decidedly in the interest of all the middle classes, we have some proof in the citizens’ alliances and the labor unions, which have united forces everywhere with the farmers, brought about by a recognition of the simple fact that where the farmer has money, the tradesmen of his market town have money and industries of all kinds thrive. Here lies the strength of the movement. The farmers are, perhaps, the largest distinctive class of citizens, and can exercise great political influence by themselves; but they are not numerous enough to work radical changes without aid from other classes. As it is, however, in the strictly political movement among the farmers, all who sympathize with their political views are welcomed. The best evidence of this is the election of such men as Rev. J. H. Kyle and editor Peffer to the United States Senate. While the farmer has a great deal to say about the utter absence of farmers from the national halls of legislation, he is not disposed to say that farmers alone should be sent there. He is willing to send the men who are best fitted to do the work that is to be done, but they must beworshippers of the common people as distinguished from the bankers and “financiers.”
It is not possible to discuss the platform of the new party at any length within the necessary limits of this article. We shall be content to undeceive, if possible, those of our readers who have been charging that the platform is indefinite.
One of the chief recommendations of the Independent platform, to the voters of the West, was its brevity and definiteness, refreshing qualities in the minds of a people who had been accustomed for years to the platitudes and straddles of the old parties. Most of the Independent county and State platforms could be summed up under three heads, money, transportation, land. They declare in favor of a full legal tender currency to come direct from the government to the people, in volume sufficient to meet the demands of business; the government ownership and control of railroads and homes for the American millions. The main planks were summarized in the flaring posters which announced the great rallies of the party last fall. “Money at Cost! Transportation at Cost!” These were the headlines which everywhere caught the public eye, and drew the crowds. Opponents saw in these advertisements traces of a demagogue’s hand. If it is demagogism to awaken curiosity, arouse thought, and in a terse sentence to express the party faith, then are the Independent leaders guilty of it. But whether guilty or not, these two expressions have awakened echoes that will not cease reverberating until our ideas and systems of finance and transportation are quite revolutionized. As we are not proposing here to discuss the wisdom of the farmer’s demands, we need waste no time on the land and transportation questions. So much has been written on these questions, and the dividing line between disputants is so clearly drawn, and farmers have settled down so decidedly on one side of that line, that they are no longer open to the charge of juggling with words when they declare in favor of “homes” and “transportation at cost.”
With the money question it is different. “Money at cost” is one of those essences of thought which will bear analysis. We desire to show that with the farmer’s party it means but one thing,—that it is a declaration of warwith the piratical system of the present. “Money at cost” is a sentiment and conviction which has grown up in the minds of the producing and laboring classes of this country out of a deep sense of the injury done them during the last quarter of a century, and a pretty clear conception of the nature of money and the duty of government.
Money, they say, is a medium of exchange necessary in the transaction of business between citizens; that it is the first duty of government to provide this medium for its citizens directly and at the minimum expense; that it should not be considered property in any sense, and that every incentive to the hoarding of it should be removed; that there is no such thing as “cheap money” under a proper system, because only commodities are cheap or dear according to the market price of them, and money is not a commodity; that money can be issued by government or by authority of government, safely and honestly, in but two ways: in return for services rendered, or as a loan on adequate security, and should always represent days of toil or material of value; that the present bank systems by which money is farmed out for private gain, furnishes a fairly reliable currency but an unreliable means of distribution; that loans should be made on lands or imperishable products to the many who have personal need of the money with which to improve homes and develop enterprises, thus giving not only a safe currency but providing also for a wide and safe distribution of it; that government creates money out of anything it chooses; that it should create only the best money, by which is meant a stable, full, legal tender currency; that the curse of an unstable currency is now upon us blighting our people; that an unstable currency is one whose volume is regulated by the owners of private banks, dependent upon the uncertain output of mines, and varying with the caprice of the few who hold and control it; that a material scarce by nature is not fit to receive the stamp of government, because it is sure to vary in supply; that the medium of exchange should be of material so plentiful that blind nature or designing men cannot reduce the supply of it below the government demand for it; that the money so created should be durable, easy of transportation, and difficult of counterfeiting; that paper money is the easiest of transportation, the most difficult tobe counterfeited, and in a sense the most durable, because so easily replaced when lost; that to base the medium of exchange upon value is as effectual as to stamp it upon value; that out of deference to foreign customs and the necessities of foreign trade, our government should buy up the gold and silver bullion of the country and hold for resale to those who have foreign balances to settle; that the country to-day is suffering from a contracted and contracting currency, on account of which the debtor class has had its burden doubled, to the corresponding advantage of the creditor class; that if contraction has been good for creditors, inflation must be good for debtors; that any measure, therefore, which looks toward an increase of the circulating medium is to be favored; that free silver coinage is to be favored; that instead of flying to the relief of the stall-fed speculators of Wall Street in times of financial stringency, it is time that the government was coming to the relief of the common people; that loans from the government should be made at a merely nominal rate of interest, not to exceed two per cent., because any higher rate is a congestor of wealth and gives capital a leverage over labor; that money-loaning as a business, except on such a basis from the government to its subjects, should go out of fashion, and might be expected to disappear under a proper financial system; that the unemployed capital of the country would then seek investment, labor would then be employed, factories would hum and the credit system might go to the dogs; that rates of interest cannot be satisfactorily regulated by law until we have banks that are national in fact as well as in name, managed by salaried officials of the nation whose duty it shall be to make loans at cost, under wise and conservative rules, to those needing them who can bring themselves within the rules; that the proposed sub-treasury and land loan plans are suggestions in the right direction and calculated, when perfected, to bring the government into touch with the needy citizen, and make of it a distributor as well as a creator of money; that paper in the shape of checks and drafts already transacts ninety-one per cent. of the business of the country, and might be trusted to properly supplement our currency and make supply equal demand, were it not that the great bulk of our people are not known beyond the communities in which they live, and therefore are debarredfrom using checks to any extent in the outside world; and that each piece of national currency, issued as a full legal tender, in the hands of the people, would be in the nature of a certified check, enabling the citizen to do business with despatch anywhere.
Running through the above statement of the independent doctrine of finance, we see that three ideas are most prominent. First, a desire that the government supersede avaricious man and blind nature in the creation and distribution of money, in order that money may be a stable purchasing power. Second, a determination that money shall no longer be a commodity to be bought, and sold, and manipulated, a leech upon labor in the hands of a few, but a convenience of trade, accessible to the many at first cost. Third, a demand that the misnamed national bank system of the present shall have its spirit of greediness exorcised, so that it may hereafter serve the people instead of its management. Are these ideas indefinite? Do they not mean “money at cost”?
We would now call attention to those facts which the western farmer says have opened his eyes, made him indifferent to the sneers of the banking class and its servitors, and fixed him in his purpose to effect a permanent change in the financial system of the country.
He says that the average profits of business enterprises in this country do not exceed three per cent.; that money loaning at six and seven per cent. of necessity congests the wealth of the nation; that eighty cents’ worth of silver, stamped by government as a dollar, or a cent’s worth of paper, bearing the same stamp, buys as much for him in the markets of the country as a gold dollar; that it is easier for him to pay his debts when money is plentiful; that the paper demand notes of ‘62, a full legal tender, stood at par with gold while the greenbacks, repudiated in terms by the very bill which created them, went skyward; that a contraction of currency has preceded every serious financial panic in the history of the country; that prosperity for the laborer, the producer, and the debt-payer has always accompanied currency expansion; that money loaners are strangely interested in keeping money scarce, and for that purpose fought gold in ‘50 when California and Australia threatened to flood us, the greenback in Lincoln’s administration,and silver in ‘73, ‘78, and ‘91; that the farmer’s products have been refused a market within a year past because there was not money to handle them; that present rates of interest consume him; and that, with good security to offer, he is obliged to pay exorbitant rates for money and in many cases is refused it altogether.
Let us remember that the last word has not yet been spoken upon the financial question; that the world, even the financial world, has not seen all of truth and wisdom yet; that reason is better than authority, especially if the authority is open to a suspicion of prejudice; and that there may be a financial bigotry as hateful and unprogressive, and as much out of sympathy with this growing age, as is the dry-as-dust ecclesiasticism of the day. Every citizen should give courteous attention to the new voices that come to us from the West, and be careful that his decision, on the whole matter, is not influenced by his position as one of the creditors of the land.
BY SARA A. UNDERWOOD.