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were willing to remain in the service were allowed to go, material of every kind was disposed of at auction as rapidly as possible, and nothing was provided to take its place. The numerical force of the standing army was reduced more and more until even the Indians held us in contempt. Indian massacres on the border have frequently been charged to the rascality or duplicity of the white men. Undoubtedly the Indians have had a great many provocations, but, so far as restraint through fear is concerned, they have been subjected to very little of this very necessary discipline. Large bands of armed Indians have been able to keep brave but small detachments of United States troops within small camps or forts, to isolate them and taunt them for days in succession, to steal cattle, murder settlers, desolate the country, all because they had contempt for an army which was so small that it never could oppose more than a handful to any Indian raid which might suddenly be made.
Just look at some of the warnings we have had during recent years. In his last report as commander of the army (1887), General Sheridan said: “The condition of our sea-coast defences has continued to deteriorate during the year, and the majority of them, both as regards the material of which they are built, their location and present armament, would prove of but little real service in time of foreign war.”
What was done about it? Nothing.
General Sheridan further advised that we should adopt some modern magazine rifle for our soldiers, as all foreign nations had refitted their armies with these guns.
What was done about it? Nothing.
General Sheridan further said: “I am strongly in favor of the general movement extending all possible aid to the National Guard of the different States, as they constitute a body of troops that in any great emergency would form an important part of our military force.”
What was done about it? Nothing.
Before Sheridan, General Sherman made clear, vigorous, sensible protests every year against our neglect to maintain good defences, but nothing came of it in the way of improvement. After Sheridan’s death, General Schofield, the ranking officer of the army, continued the good work; only two or three months ago General Schofield said in his report that the new guns we are making will make an increase in the number of artillerists indispensable, and he urged the formation of two new regiments at once. Does any one expect to see them?
Admiral Porter has been hammering away valiantly for years at Congressional thick-heads for the neglect of the navy, but it was not until the late Samuel J. Tilden gave his own party a blast on the subject did we begin to construct anavy. Even now there is persistent halting; Congress, regarding the navy, is like the girl of a certain class regarding her suitors—so anxious to get the very best that she is in danger of not getting any.
Both political parties seem agreed on the reduction of the regular army to the smallest possible numerical force. While the Republicans were in power some officers of the army used to hope for a change of administration, and consequently change of party at the head of affairs so that the army might “have a show.” But when the Democrats came in with President Cleveland, there was no perceptible difference, except that there was more trouble than before in obtaining ammunition with which to salute the flag morning and evening. The army, small as its maximum strength is according to law, has not been full in years, and there are grave doubts among some of the higher officers of the army as to whether it can be made full.
Why? Because men desert—run away at a rate unheard of in the army of any other nation. General Schofield, in his annual report, saysthere were two thousand four hundred and thirty-six desertions last year—more than ten per cent. of the entire army!Fear of punishment seems to have no effect, and General Schofield felt obliged to recommend that a full half of each enlisted man’s pay shall be retained until the endof the period of enlistment. Isn’t this a humiliating state of affairs for the army of the freest nation in the world?
There must be serious reason for this anomalous condition of the military force. Our soldiers are better fed, better clothed, and far better paid than those of any other country. An American soldier receives, outside of his allowance for rations and clothing, more money in a day than the British soldier can show to his credit in a week. His term of enlistment is shorter and his possibilities of duty are pleasanter, or should seem so to men of intelligence. Yet to enlist, which is the first suggestion that presents itself to a man out of work in a foreign country, seems to be the least popular in the United States.
Undoubtedly one reason is, that among the inducements to enlist, we are entirely lacking in anything that approaches the glory of war. Our only enemies are Indians, the meanest, most sneaking, most treacherous foemen that any civilized nation is fighting at the present time, and there is less glory in capturing one of them or a great many of them than in any taking of prisoners in ordinary war. The soldiers of other countries see at least a great deal of the pomp of war, if very little of its circumstance. Showy dresses, frequent parades, numerous occasions of display, encampment in the vicinity of large cities and towns, freedom to go about and spend moneyamong civilized people, are all inducements to men to join and remain in a foreign army at the present time.
But what inducement is offered the American soldier? He is put in a camp of instruction as soon as he enlists, and sent to the border as soon as he is fit for service. The border is a delightful country, according to dime novels, but no sober man with his eyes open finds it anything but dull. It is a sparsely settled country, uninteresting to every one but the speculator and hunter. The soldier has nothing to speculate with, and is very seldom allowed to go hunting. He is kept within narrow bounds, sees almost no one but his own officers and comrades, has nothing but camp duty to do, except when on long scouts outside camp lines, or, still more unpleasant, when detailed for police, gardening, or other laborious duties within the camp. It naturally occurs to the American soldier that if he is to work eight hours a day in building houses or stables, or digging wells, or throwing up embankments, or ploughing the soil, or hoeing garden crops for the benefit of the post, that he might as well be doing the same sort of work in the States at a dollar and a half a day, and have his freedom between sunset and sunrise.
Except that police precautions against the Indians are still necessary, the only excuse that any one, except the military officer, seems inclined todiscover for the existence of our army at all, is that we should have a nucleus of a military establishment in case of necessity. But what is the nucleus worth? Two thousand officers, among whom undoubtedly are a number of the best educated soldiers in the world, constitute nearly all of our military force upon whom we could confidently rely in case of trouble. The enlisted man, taking him as an average character, is practically worthless at a time when the enlargement of the army may suddenly become necessary. In France or Germany officers may at any time be selected from the ranks. Of course the systems of the two countries differ greatly from ours. Conscription and the requirement that every adult man shall serve a portion of his time in the army, makes a soldier of every one.
But is it not rather significant that the better class of men, to whom we would have to look for additional officers in case of the necessity of suddenly making a large army, are seldom found among our own regulars? Some of the reasons for this deplorable deficiency of valuable material have already been suggested. There is nothing to induce a man to enter military life, and the enlisted man is too frequently used as a common laborer.
But beside this, there is a greater grievance. It is that ours is as aristocratic an army as anyin the world, and that the distance of the officers from the enlisted men is so great as to be simply immeasurable. Volunteers used to grumble that some of their officers “put on airs.” It is scarcely fair to say that regular officers put on airs, but it certainly is true that the enlisted man, as a rule, is generally treated by his superiors as a being of an entirely different order. Few men rise from the ranks. Some men now high up on regimental rosters used to be private soldiers, and a few instances of the kind occur nowadays, but the vacancies are too few to attract good men to the ranks. Let any one live at a military post a little while and explain, if he can, how any one with sufficient self-respect to be fit for military rank of any kind can bring himself to enlist in the United States army at all.
All this could be changed, without increasing the numerical strength of the army, by an entire change of method which would not create any friction, disorganization or reorganization, but which nevertheless would encourage a better class of young men to enlist—a change which, indeed, would secure some of the very best in the country. An army so small as ours should be in the highest sense a military school. There is nothing to prevent it. There is no army which has more leisure at its disposal or officers more competent to act as instructors. No army in the world has a greater percentage of highly educatedofficers. No country can show a larger proportion of well-educated, restless, unemployed, aspiring young men. There is no engineering party for a railroad, a mine, a river improvement association, a drainage company or anything else requiring applied mathematical and mechanical skill but can secure a large staff of intelligent young men at an expense not exceeding that of the ordinary soldier. These men generally work harder and fare worse, regarding personal comfort, than the meanest of soldiers, yet they are not only entirely satisfied with their chance, but elbow each other fiercely in their desire to get it.
Suppose that instead of selecting men merely for their physical quality and their supposed capacity for obedience, the standard of admission to the ranks of the army should be as high as that of admission to West Point. Suppose the Government were to assure the people that the recruits would be treated as well as the cadets at the military or naval academy; in an instant the army might have its choice from a hundred thousand intelligent, well-born, well-bred, honorable, aspiring young men. As already said, there is no trouble in getting any quantity of men of this class to go out under the control of engineers for hard and unpleasant duty. The inducement, beside the financial compensation, is that they will be enabled to fit themselves, at least to some extent,for the class of work which their superiors are already engaged in. They are close observers, earnest students, intelligent assistants, and the beginning of many an engineer, now prominent, has been in just such parties.
The United States army might as well be one great school of engineering and military tactics. It is well known that the mere company drill, which is almost all the drill the American soldier is ever subjected to, thanks to the distribution of the force in such a way that scarcely any regiment has been together within a single period of enlistment of any soldier in the army, requires very little time. It is no harder to become proficient in than that of the militia of the various States and cities. Indeed, with company drills once a week, almost any militia regiment or company can present a finer appearance upon parade than any but two or three “show” companies of regulars. The remainder of military life consists in guard duty, the details of camp duty and of applied engineering, which each man can learn as rapidly by experience as an equal number of assistants in a construction party anywhere else. It is known well enough at the West that the construction parties of railways contain, beside a mass of common laborers, a great many intelligent young fellows who have put on flannel shirts and cow-hide boots, have taken pick and shovel and wheelbarrow, not so much for the wages thatare paid them as for what they are learning of the art of railroad building. If such men can put up with the treatment ordinarily accorded the section hands of a railway constructing party, they certainly would be satisfied with the manners of officers of the United States army.
But—and here is an important distinction—no railway boss, however much of a tyrant he may be, would dare to order one of his hands to cook his supper or wait at his table or groom his horse or do any other service of the quality commonly known as menial, but the American soldier in the regular army is sometimes obliged to regard such demands as a matter of course.
A plan was suggested a short time ago, by a military officer of experience, by which the army might be reorganized on this basis without any additional expense and without any possibility of friction. Several years ago Major Sumner, of the regular army, himself a son of an old regular of national fame, suggested a similar plan regarding a single branch of the service—the cavalry. His plan was to select from among the floating population of wild boys of the different cities a number of the more intelligent, and organize from them a single regiment of cavalry, to be carefully trained and specially educated, the more promising and deserving recruits to be placed in the line of promotion, and all to be encouraged to look to possible rank, responsibility,and position as part of the compensation for the necessary restraint to which they might be subjected. This restraint could by no possibility be more severe and continuous than that of West Point.
All that has been said about the army applies with equal force to the navy. When the apprentice system was formulated there was hope expressed by hundreds of officers who had served in one branch or other of the service during the late civil war, that it might afford a stepping-stone to ambitious young men who wished to adopt a seafaring career, but were unable to obtain admission to the naval academy, or in any other way to gain a sufficient education in seamanship and gunnery, which are the two principal requirements of the American naval officer. But if any number of naval apprentices have yet reached officers’ uniforms or see before them any hope of such advancement, the country has not heard of it; neither has the naval department. The boys are treated kindly, well fed, well clothed, educated to a certain extent and trained by officers carefully selected for their intelligence, forbearance, patience, and tact. But has any one seen any recommendation either to the naval department or to members of Congress that the apprentice ships should be schools for naval officers?
The consequence is that in case of our becomingsuddenly involved in war with any power we would be in as bad a position as we were when the civil war broke out. At that time there was a sudden demand for twenty times as many trained military officers as the regular army and the graduating class at West Point could supply, and the demand became greater every month during the time in which our first million of men were enlisted. The scarcity of available material was so deplorable that many lieutenants of regulars were called to the command of volunteer regiments. Did any one think to go to the ranks of the regular army for officers? At that time there were in the army thousands of sergeants, any one of whom, had he been in the militia in a corresponding position, would have been considered amply fit to organize, drill, and otherwise care for a company of a hundred men. But there were no such demands, and had they been made the proper men would not have been forthcoming to any extent. The lack was not of military skill, but of the many other qualities which go to the make-up of a soldier. And first among these is a high degree of self-respect—a quality which has never been nourished among enlisted men of the regular army of the United States.
The real trouble is lack of proper public spirit. During a recent chat with Admiral Porter, thatfine old sea-dog and fighter bemoaned the lack of any proper public sense of caution.
“Why don’t you write up the subject yourself?” I asked.
“Write!” exclaimed the veteran, in his energetic way; “I’ve almost written my finger-nails off, and do not believe it has done a particle of good. Nothing would please me more than to be able to infuse a patriotic spirit into the American people—make them feel that they have a flag and need a navy to protect it. I wish we had some of the energy and patriotism exhibited by our forefathers, for, according to present indications, we will one day be humiliated by some fifth-rate naval power which will come to our shores and teach us a lesson. No reason exists why we should be exempt from war, for we are easily excited, and, like the school-boy, dare any one to knock the chip from our shoulder, though not able to fight.”
So say we all of us—all who give the subject intelligent thought.
LABORING men—this is their own title for themselves—do not work any harder than the remainder of their fellow-beings. But those who come under this title as it is generally understood have some grievances that must be removed before several million men can transverse the long distance between dissatisfaction and comfort.
The Labor party, so-called, has made an ass of itself a great many times, but its blunders cannot change the fact that many of its complaints have a great deal of ground to stand on. The farmer who shoots the man that stole his horses may be a murderer, but that does not alter the fact that his horses, upon whose work depend his crops, his family’s fate, and the ownership of his farm, have been stolen. So, when a railroad strike prevents thousands of travellers not owning any railway stock, not having any part or influence in railway management, from reaching their destination, the strikers may be absolute scoundrels in their disregard of the rights of their fellow-men;nevertheless it is entirely true that their own wages may have been ground down to starvation basis, and consequently the men have a right to complain.
Labor is sure to be imposed upon just as much as the laboring class will endure the imposition. The poorer the man the more necessary is it that he shall work in order to live. This being so, he is sure sooner or later to encounter somebody who will take advantage of him. No man need be a scoundrel in order to drive a sharp bargain if he gets the chance. To drive a sharp bargain is something that all of us rather pride ourselves upon. Probably the laboring man would do it himself if he got the opportunity. Nevertheless, the purpose and aim of the laboring man should be to be so “fixed” that no one can catch him at a disadvantage.
Labor—that is, organized labor, must be in ceaseless conflict with the spirit of competition that prevails among employers. In every manufacturing industry that admits of competition, all the way from making door-mats to building houses and railroads, men try by underbidding one another to get business. The energy of a new country is always in excess of its capital and also of its demand. This is very encouraging so far as the outlook for energy goes, but it does work a great many wrongs and unpleasantnesses. In business it does not take long to reach bedrockas to cost of raw material. After that, the strain of competition must come entirely upon labor, and, if labor does not resist, it must starve.
Consequently the workingman must fight, and fight continually, to keep from being reduced to slavery in one form or other. The word slavery has a dreadful sound, but there are ways of muffling it so that the slave himself does not always see himself in a true light.
It is only a short time ago that New England was thrown into a fervor of patriotic indignation by the spectacle presented in one town of a native bringing a laborer in chains to the market-place to be sold. The owner regarded himself as entirely in the right, and explained his position very distinctly. He had obtained his vassal on a contract that a certain amount of labor would be given for a specified sum of money. The sum was small; nevertheless it was paid and accepted, and the man afterward imagined that he could escape from the terms of his contract. Consequently the employer, or purchaser, as he seemed to consider himself, put chains upon the fellow, and as literally brought him for sale as any slave was ever offered in any slave-mart in the world. The beholders rose in their wrath, dragged both men before the court, the slave was freed and the owner was fined.
But the point is here: this was simply a case
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in which the slave-dealer, taking advantage of an ignorant, unthinking man, was found out. How many thousands of similar cases exist in the United States at the present time of which the public know nothing? All newspaper men at the principal sea-ports know that people come to this country by the thousand on contracts to do a certain amount of labor for specified prices. The prices may be below the cost of living, nevertheless the contracts hold good in all courts of law, and the men are obliged to do their duty. We are sorry for them, but, according to the practice of all countries, man seems to be made for the law and not the law for man.
Do I really mean to say that slavery is possible in the United States? Why, such a question is behind the times, for slavery practically exists. What else but slavery can you call the condition of some of the coal-miners, tanners and factory hands of the United States? Men with their wives and families go to a small town which practically belongs to their employer. They live in houses owned by their employer, buy their household supplies at stores owned by their employer, take their pay in checks, tickets or orders signed by their employer, and get the remainder of their pay when their employer is ready. Suppose they wish to improve their condition and go away; how can they move at all unless they have saved some money, the saving ofwhich, by a peculiarity well understood in all such localities, is simply impossible?
The method is practically that of South America. In some of our sister republics the laboring men who are on a plantation are called aconsistado. Men are obtained, in the first place, by a small advance of money, and are told that they can obtain additional sums at such times as they may need them, provided the money is already due them for work done. But these laborers are improvident. When they wish to spend money, the employer good-naturedly—so it is supposed—allows them to draw slightly in advance, and by the laws of the country the laborer can never leave until his indebtedness to the employer is paid.
In some of the South American republics there areconsistados, from which no man can escape to work elsewhere without being claimed and returned by forms very similar to those which prevailed in the United States under the old fugitive slave law in slavery times. If a workman on the plantation of Don Tomas recovers from a feast-day celebration in a state of mind which leads him to run away and go to the plantation of Don Jorge, he is missed at roll-call, his absence is reported to his employer, and straightway a lot of notes are sent out to the owners of surrounding estates notifying them of the runaway and requesting them to return himto his employer, who will pay the expenses incurred by the return. The request is always honored, because what neighbor knows when some member of his ownconsistadomay disappear in the same manner, and be, of course, slightly in debt to his employer?
The same state of affairs prevails practically in a number of our mining and manufacturing regions. Men who are paid only once a month or once in two months get advances from their employers in the shape of orders for family supplies upon stores in the vicinity, stores probably owned by the employer. So long as the purchaser is in debt he may be stopped if he attempts to leave the country, and if he goes alone, as usually he must, his family is unable to follow him, and, still more, unable to retain a home and get food, for the roof which shelters them belongs also to the employer, as does the only store which gives credit. Only a few years ago I met in the State of New York a tanner, who was said to be one of the ablest men in his business, who told me that he had been seven years in the town and house in which I found him, trying to work out his indebtedness to his employer, so as to take his family somewhere else where they could have better society and where his children could have better facilities for education, but in spite of all efforts at economy he was still in debt to his employer. As the saidemployer fixed the rate of wages, the tanner could not possibly see how his condition would ever be otherwise.
This apparently anomalous feature of our civilization may appear to the reader to be accidental and exceptional, but it is not. In the larger cities the same conditions prevail under different forms. There are a great many shops in New York and other cities where men and women, principally the latter, work at starvation wages, and are so assisted by the pretended kindness of their employers that they always are in debt and cannot possibly leave without fear of suit and possibly arrest. The so-called slave marts of certain districts of the city of New York on Sundays are not overdrawn pictures, as the reading public may imagine them. There are hundreds of thousands of people so absolutely bound to their present employers that their only method of escape seems to be death.
Public sentiment does not countenance slavery, though, and public sentiment is all-powerful? The will of the people is the law of the land? Yes, yes; that sounds very well. There is a good deal of truth in it, too, but the truth is all on one side. Public sentiment does not concern itself with anything which is not brought closely to its attention. Public sentiment in the United States did not countenance African slavery long after the Constitution was adopted, neverthelessthe institution grew and flourished until it almost destroyed the nation. Public sentiment did not approve of any of the abuses of the colored race which individual overseers and owners might be mean enough to indulge in. Nevertheless, as in everything else, the public acted upon the old-fashioned principle of not interfering in other people’s business. The general public does not handle the slaves, still less does the general public manage the employers. It hears once in a while of abuses and cruelties, and thinks these are outrageous, but they are not its affair. Each man must look out for himself, Heaven helps those who help themselves,etcetera, etcetera. There are a good many ways of getting rid of moral responsibility in this world, and nearly everybody is mean enough to take advantage of them when the moral responsibility does not affect any one of his own family, much less his own pocket-book.
But can the condition of labor be improved? Yes, if labor is entirely in earnest about it. Labor’s principal need is brains. I don’t mean they must increase their own brains; but in their conflicts with employers the laboring men should be led, or their interests should be managed, by men who know both sides of the question. Are there such men in the ranks of the laborers? It appears not; if there were, such men would not be laborers at all. How manymen there are whose hearts have been strongly stirred up by the wrongs endured by labor in the United States, who have longed for an opportunity to assist the working classes with their sympathy and counsel, but who have been repelled again and again by the utterly unbusinesslike and senseless methods of the very men whom they desired to help! During the strikes in the cotton mills of New England, a few years ago, it was remarked by a millionaire, a man of leisure, who desired to assist the operatives with his time, his money and his legal ability, that could he have such a faculty of working as the laboring class had of blundering he would be the greatest man who ever lived.
There is no objection, on the part of Americans, to workingmen enjoying all proper rights and protection under the law; the only trouble is in unwise methods of procedure. President Cleveland puts the whole matter in a nutshell as follows:
“Under our form of government the value of labor as an element of national prosperity should be distinctly recognized, and the welfare of the laboring man should be regarded as especially entitled to legislative care. In a country which offers to all its citizens the highest attainment of social and political distinction, its workingmen cannot justly or safely be considered as irrevocably consigned to the limits of a class andentitled to no attention and allowed no protest against neglect. The laboring man, bearing in his hand an indispensable contribution to our growth and progress, may well insist, with manly courage and as a right, upon the same recognition from those who make our laws as is accorded to any other citizen having a valuable interest in charge; and his reasonable demands should be met in such a spirit of appreciation and fairness as to induce a contented and patriotic co-operation in the achievement of a grand national destiny. While the real interests of labor are not promoted by a resort to threats and violent manifestations, and while those who, under the pretexts of an advocacy of the claims of labor, wantonly attack the rights of capital, and for selfish purposes or the love of disorder sow seeds of violence and discontent, should neither be encouraged nor conciliated, all legislation on the subject should be calmly and deliberately undertaken, with no purpose of satisfying unreasonable demands or gaining partisan advantage.”
The press of the United States, as a rule, is on the side of abused men of any class, not excepting laboring men who strike against oppression of any kind or against reduced compensation, but often and often within a very few years, within the memory of men who are still young, the press has been obliged by common-sensealone to condemn strikes of men whose condition they regarded as deplorable, but whose immediate purpose was absolutely indefensible. A business man in a position which he does not entirely understand seeks the counsel of a lawyer or of some one who fully comprehends the case in all its bearings. The laboring man seems to think such a course unnecessary, and he suffers the consequences.
Will any unions, guilds, Knights of Labor, help the workingmen to maintain such rights as they have and gain such as they need? Yes, if there are brains behind them. “In union is strength,” but strength may be just as effective in a bad sense as a good one, and the more of it there is the worse will be the showing made if the cause is not just. If workingmen were divine, all their past efforts would have done a great deal of good, but they are only human, and there is no getting away from the fact that when any lot of men first are brought together through sense of wrong, their first thought is revenge, which never meets the public’s views. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” is an expression from authority so high that we are obliged to treat it with respect, and it is certain that during the present generation a desire for vengeance by any one or for any reason whatever has never called forth the sympathy of the public.
Human nature is a very weak article. No oneknows this better than the wise man who has a great deal of it himself; so in all quarrels he assumes that there is a great deal of right on both sides and that reconciliation or adjustment must be brought about by conciliation and compromise. The laboring man on strike is not given to either conciliation or compromise. Whatever his wrongs may be, he has first endured them for a long time and when he has begun to complain of them his complaints have never been made directly, but simply are voiced among his fellows, then increased in volume. The argument on the other side has never been brought to his attention, and consequently he regards himself as the only person wronged and almost as the only person who has any interest in the matter in any way. It never occurs to him that his employer, like nineteen in twenty of all the employers of the United States, is doing his business on the basis of general confidence and borrowed capital, and that what might seem fair to the employer as an individual may be utterly impossible when demanded of the employer as a business man.
In all the manufacturing centres outside of large cities the majority of employers do business with money borrowed from savings banks which have obtained this money by deposits from the laboring men themselves. An injury done to one is an injury to all. If labor goes back upon the employer, the banks also must goback upon him, and after this nothing but a very wise head can prevent injury to both. When upon such a complication there comes the spirit of revenge nothing but a special interposition of Providence can prevent injury for everybody.
One fact that should be constantly borne in mind is that trades unions, no matter what their titular name may be, can never be sure of support from men in the same trade who have most sense and influence. Protests, whether with words or blows, are always made by the discontented, but the better class of workingmen are not of that variety. They either have better sense than their associates or make better use of the sense they have, so they are in positions with which they are fairly contented. Men who have been “inside” of a great many labor movements are no less vigorous in their denunciation of the stupidity of labor than the most earnest or most hypocritical employer that can be named. They say or they have said to newspaper men whose business it has been to interrogate them closely that “if” so-and-so had happened the results would have been different, but A or B or C, each of whom had a number of personal retainers, thought differently, and consequently the trouble was prolonged. Had certain other men in the business belonged to the unions or guilds, or whatever associations made the formal protest against wages or hours, or whatever the grievancesmight have been, there would have been a chance for compromise, or arbitration, or some other method which would have brought the conflicting interests into harmony. But these men “stayed out,” as the saying is. They were men who saw opportunities for something better before them; consequently they did not intend to compromise their own position and future prospects by taking part in a fight.
Neither can the unions depend upon support from mechanics and laborers outside of the large cities and of villages and manufacturing centres which are tributary to large cities. The carpenter, mason and blacksmith in a country town feels insulted when asked to organize or join a trade union. He does not feel the need of any protection. He, with good right, considers himself as smart as any merchant or manufacturer or capitalist in his vicinity, and he not only does not see the need of any protection against such people, but he thinks himself smart enough to overcome them all in matters pertaining to his own business. Experience proves that he is right. Such a man slowly but surely becomes a proprietor, and thus an employer himself. The idea that he is always to be a laborer is extremely distasteful to him, and even if he were convinced that such were to be the fact he would not admit it. He would feel that he would be voluntarily taking a lower level by making any such admission.The natural consequences may be seen by any man who has done business in a number of small towns or villages. The journeyman workman in any trade whom he knew ten or fifteen years ago, in his beginning, is probably now an employer and a proprietor himself. Quite possibly he has “struck a big thing,” as the saying goes, and has money of his own; his sons are being as well educated, his daughters as well dressed, as those of any of his neighbors, and his wife associates on terms of equality with the families of the judge or Congressman or whosoever else the local magnate may be.
So far as labor expects to be helped by public sympathy, which is always on the side of the unfortunate and oppressed, it cuts its own throat by denying the right of any laborer to work at cheaper rates than his fellows. The abuses and indignities to which so-called scabs have been subjected have alienated public “sympathy” from labor movements to a most deplorable degree. No American, not even the millionaire, is free from the influence of competition in business, and the richest are sometimes those who suffer the most. Competition has been defined as the soul of business, and no one yet has been skilful enough to deny or modify the assertion. If employers may compete, if clerks, teachers, salesmen, lawyers, physicians, even clergymen, may compete with one another for wages or compensationfor their services, why may not workmen? Can any one imagine a body of clerks, or dry-goods salesmen, or lawyers, forming a clique and standing at dark corners with clubs and pistols to bully other men of their own profession into demanding certain wages on penalty of refusing to do any business at all?
“What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.” If one class of labor is entitled to take as much wages as it may get for such services as it can render, why should not another be entitled to the same privilege? It is very true that the laboring man often sees in free competition by a large number of men a possibility that he shall be deprived of his daily occupation. But whose fault is it? That of the competitor who will work for lower wages or of the man who has done so little outside of his daily stint of labor as to be obliged to stand in the position of a highwayman or bully toward any one who can do the same work for less money than he?
Can law improve the condition of the workingman? Can you make a horse drink by leading him to the water? The law has done a great deal for the laborers in many States by giving workmen a first lien upon the results of their work, but it cannot and will not compel the community to regard the inefficient worker as the equal of the good one, which is the point upon which some trade unions and other organizationsseem inclined to insist. Neither will it allow the employee to manage his employer’s business. The employer may occasionally find himself “in a hole,” where he must submit to any terms imposed by the only men who can help him out, but if he gets in any such fix a second time his bankers and customers will go back upon him, after which he will have no use for labor at any price.
Then can law and public opinion do more for laboring men than they have done? Not much. Why? Because law and public opinion are made by people who themselves work—people who stand just as much of this world’s wear and tear as any common dirt-shoveller, to say nothing of any skilled mechanic. There are more farmers than mechanical laborers, and they work longer hours, but how often do they demand help of the law or the public? In every large city there are tens of thousands of clerks who are driven to their utmost capacity at less compensation per day than the common laborer receives. It has been ascertained that a bank-teller who recently defaulted was getting a salary of only six dollars per week, though he had long hours and great responsibility.
Does not underpaid labor, outside the mechanical arts, frequently improve its own condition? Yes, frequently. Well, how? Why, by using its brains. If it were to insist that its wholeduty was done when its daily work was over the public would laugh at it. The clerk, the teacher, the salesman considers it his duty to continually improve himself in order to be fit for such opportunities as may arise. A man in any one of these positions who would spend his non-working hours in indulgence, carelessness, or, worse still, at the nearest beer-shop, would be considered by his employers as unfit for confidence and by his associates as a man who never would rise. If such men are so badly paid, so severely worked, yet are skilful enough to rise from the low financial level upon which their work places them, why should not the laboring class in general rise in the same manner? It is useless to say they cannot, because thousands upon thousands have done it for years. It has already been said that the mechanics of a few years ago are the employers and managers of to-day. A great deal more might be said in the same direction, for there are great mills, factories and industries of the United States to-day controlled by men who were merely poor laborers at day wages a few years ago. The question is not one of a class or of an industry; it is entirely one of individual manhood, and the man stands or falls by himself. The more he depends upon an association or his fellow-men the less strength there is in himself to resist injury or to make his way upward.
IF the laboring man doesn’t want to be in a state of slavery, he must refrain from putting himself into chains.
He is a good deal like the rest of us; he always blames somebody else for his condition. He won’t be able to get out of trouble until he lays most of the blame on himself.
If a man feels obliged to enter into business relations with a lion he does not begin by putting his head into the animal’s mouth. If a workingman begins life with the belief, which seems prevalent now, that all employers will enslave a man if they can, he should not allow himself to be in such condition that he cannot take care of himself. Why, even a dog or a cat going into a strange room spends its first moments in looking around to see how it can get out again in case of necessity.
Employers as a class have so many sins to answer for that there will be lively times for them on judgment day, I suppose, but that is no reason why the employee should be a fool. If a
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man sticks a knife into you, and is sent to State’s prison for it, his sentence punishes him, but it does not pay your doctor’s bill, or make up to you what you have lost in time and money while you have been lying in bed under the surgeon’s care.
The workingman is too often satisfied to do whatever is before him without fitting himself to do anything else in case of accident or change of business, or lack of demand, or any one of the various other accidents that may occur to disturb the even routine of his life. No man in any other line of business dare be so careless. There are clerks and book-keepers and men in the highest mechanical arts who are very good in their places, but who never fit themselves for anything better or anything else. These men are slaves—literally. Their employers know it, if the slaves themselves don’t. No matter how honest they may be, no matter how capable they are in their own specialties, these are the men who always are passed over when promotions are to be made, or when men are to be selected for higher positions.
By a strange coincidence these are also the men who grumble most at their rate of pay, their hours, the amount of work they have to do, and the manner in which their employers treat them. Many of them are such good fellows personally, so full of human virtues that are notspecially business virtues, that they excite a great deal of sympathy among their acquaintances, but in the case of any acquaintance who happens also to be an employer there is no sympathy whatever.
The American workingman, above all others on the face of the earth, needs to take this warning to heart, for one result of competition has been the subdivision of most varieties of mechanical labor to a degree which requires twenty or thirty men sometimes to complete a bit of work which once was done by a single individual. Undoubtedly work can be done cheaper in this way, and both capital and labor have some obligations to fulfil toward the consumer, but the less a man is a “full-handed workman,” which means that he can do all branches of the business in which he is engaged, the more necessary it is for him to be prepared to do something else in case of emergency.
To illustrate: there was a time, almost within the memory of the present generation, when miniature painting was the most profitable division of art work in the United States. A fine miniature would bring more money than an oil painting. Suddenly the process of daguerreotyping was discovered. Then came the ambrotype and photograph, and other cheap methods of making accurate likenesses, and as a consequence miniaturepaintings became less and less in demand, and the few members of the profession who still survive have none at all of the work at which they once were famous. Some of them took to drawing on wood, others went into oil portraits, some devoted themselves to water-colors, and others went into mechanical businesses where a good and accurate eye for color and proportion commanded good pay. But if the miniature painters, whose misfortunes were greater than those of any class of common laborers now complaining to the public, had insisted that the public owed them a living and they were going to have it, and that Congress should make laws enabling them to get a living out of their business, they would have been laughed to scorn. The miniature painters had no more brains than mechanics. What is fair for one is fair for another.
One of the first things that the young laboring man does is to take a wife. A wife is a desirable object of possession. So is a horse, a yacht or a handsome house, but the man who would load himself with either while he sees no means of supporting it except by weekly earnings which might be stopped at short notice by any one of a dozen accidents to life or business, would be regarded as a fool. Some people would call him a scoundrel. Yet when financially pushed a man can sell a horse or yacht, and getat least part of the value while getting rid of responsibility. He cannot sell a wife, though, even if he is willing. That sort of business has become illegal. Even if it had not, the probabilities are that a wife, taken by a fellow who is so reckless as to marry before he is able to properly care for so precious and complicated a bit of property as a woman, would not be in salable condition.
The possession of a wife implies, quite implies, occasional bits of income, but also of responsibility, in the shape of children. “He who has wife and children has given hostages to fortune.” The rich man knows this to his cost, though he may get enough delight out of the experience to pay him a thousand times over. But to the poor man dependent upon daily wages, and with no property or savings to fall back upon, a family is often fetters, with ball and chain to boot. Thank God, such bonds often feel as light as feathers and soft as silk, but these sensations do not decrease the weight or dragging power one particle. If a man determines to marry while he has nothing to marry on, let him at least be honest with himself, tell himself that he is going to be the slave of whoever employs him, and blame himself instead of employers, or capital, or public opinion for the consequences.
There is a large class of workingmen who donot seem to think they are fit for anything but what they are doing. Such men may be honest, cheerful, obedient, industrious, painstaking and obliging. Well, slaves have been all this and more. Such men are bound to be slaves. Nothing that trade unions, Knights of Labor, law, religion or public sentiment can do, can save them from practical slavery.
The men who organized any State, county or town in this Union had no bigger or healthier brains than the workingmen of to-day; but if each of them had imagined he could do but one kind of work, the map of our country would not look as it does now. Any of these men considered himself equal to taking a hand at building houses, clearing land, shoeing horses, digging post-holes, following the plough, planting corn, tending stock, loading steamboats, acting as deck-hand of a flatboat, carrying mails, or doing whatever else had to be done. They blundered terribly at times, but who did not and who does not? Each new kind of work they laid their hands to sharpened their wits and widened their view of what might be done in the way of getting ahead in the world. That is the reason why trade unions do not flourish in new countries. Men there have been taught by experience to take care of themselves. The common laborer in a new country thinks himself the equal of the judge, the doctor, the lawyerand the railway president. And so he is, so far as a fair impulse and a fair show can make one man equal to another in the race for life.
It is a great pity that representative workingmen in our large cities cannot once in a while be sent on a tour of observation by their respective trade societies. It is the custom of almost every man to regard every one in his own business as about in his own condition. But an observing man going outside of the large cities and the manufacturing towns will quickly be undeceived regarding the possibilities and future of his own business, or of himself, or of any of his associates who have any spirit in them. He may find men of his own specialty doing work longer hours per day and for less money than he is accustomed to get, and they may seem to be having terribly hard times, but there is one significant difference between the two classes: the men in new countries never grumble at whatever their hard times may be. If nature refuses a crop, or makes a river overflow and washes away a town, or a plague of locusts comes upon them, they can grumble quite as badly as any one else. But so far as they have free use of their own wits and their own hands, they “don’t ask nothin’ of nobody,” to use their own emphatic expression.
The mechanic who works all day in the newer countries can seldom be found in the beer-shopat night. He drops into the post-office, or the store, or the office of the justice of the peace, or wherever he sees a crowd of men, or knows that men will congregate, so that he may learn what is going on. He will change his business six times in the week, and then be guilty of doing it twice on Sunday, if there is any money in it. You never know the business of a man in a new country for more than a week at a time, unless you have your eye on him. It may seem awfully stupid to the stranger, but among people where his lot is cast the workingman manages to keep his end up, as the saying is, and the man who attempts to depress that end is dealt with by the individual himself. If a laboring man aggrieved in any of the newer countries were to go to his fellow-workmen for relief, he would be called either a fool or a coward. If he does not like what he is doing he is expected to try something else, just as every one else in the country does. The banker does not restrict himself to one single business, or one subdivision of business. Neither does the merchant, or the manufacturer, or any of the few farmers who have become “forehanded.” He does whatever he sees most money in, and he has blind faith in his ability to do it. It may not be the finest variety of finished labor, but that is not found anywhere except in the competitive trades.
It should not need any argument to prove allthis. There seldom is a great strike at any manufacturing centre during which a large number of the operatives do not disappear. Some of them find work elsewhere in their own specialty, but the oldest inhabitant, or the village gossip, or some one else who has time to pay close attention to other people’s business, can tell you that some of these men have struck out for themselves in some other direction, and they very seldom are able to tell you that any such change of business has brought unfortunate results. It has already been said in this book that some of the great industries of the country to-day are managed by men who once were common laborers.
However ignorant the workingman may be of the fact, or however willing he may be to ignore it, the truth is that the workingman half a century ago was a great deal worse off than his successors to-day. He worked longer hours, he got smaller pay—I mean smaller pay in proportion to the purchasing power of money, and his social position was very bad. Even the Revolutionary war, the Declaration of Independence, the rights of man, and all that sort of thing, didn’t break down at once the laws of caste that had come to us from the old country. It was not so very long ago that even the students of Harvard University were classified according to their ancestry, the list being led by gentlemen,which was followed by the profession and then brought up by the general assortment of what the late Mr. Venus called “humans various.”
The apprentice was not only household servant as well as work-boy to his employer, but he was kept in order by a strap or a club, and the law not only could give him no redress for personal abuse, but it recognized the right of the employer to treat his boys in that manner. Boys brought up in that way had not much independence when they became men, and the independent spirit of the present generation was a thing almost unknown in the more thickly settled communities at that time. The workingman in that day was more religious than his successors in the present generation, but when he went to church he sat in the poorest seats; generally he sat in the gallery. When he was out of work he went to the poor-house. The poor-house was built especially for people of his kind. Perhaps in some of the large cities workingmen and their families go to the poor-house to-day, but most of them will take pains to go to another community than that in which they are known before they allow themselves to be supported in such manner.
The people of the United States cannot afford at any price to support a class which proposes to stay in one spot, making no endeavor to go further or go higher. No grade of society canafford to support such a class. The class itself cannot afford to remain in any such position. Allusion has already been made to the willingness of men of the present generation to enslave their fellow-men when they get special opportunity. The methods are not the same as of old, but the fact is the same and the practice is steadily fostered by the inability of a great number of men and women to impress upon the public any ability to be anything better than slaves.
The workingman may take such consolation as there may be in the fact that this rule does not apply to him or to his own class alone. It exists everywhere. There are plenty of business houses who keep their men under their power, body and soul, by a custom, apparently founded on good nature, of lending them money in excess of their earnings. It is a modification of the South Americanconsistadoplan, to which allusion has already been made, and it works just as well in New York or Chicago, or any other manufacturing centre, as it does in South America. A man who will not spend his earnings in advance if he can get them is pretty hard to find. If this were not so there would be very little of running to banks, by business men, for discounts and loans, and “shaves.” The impulse to discount the future is almost as old as the world itself. It dates all the way back tothe Garden of Eden, when our first parents began to devour some fruit which they were not yet entitled to.
It may be that slavery sometimes is pleasant. Indeed, it often is. In spite of all the bad stories that were told about the treatment of the southern blacks during old slavery days, there were a great many plantations from which the slaves did not run away, even after they heard of the Emancipation Proclamation, and knew, from what they heard in the dining-room and parlor, that the South was on its last legs, and that the good old times could not possibly come back again. There were many plantations found by the Union army, during its tramps through certain States, which the masters and the mistresses had abandoned, but to which the colored people clung closely, from old association alone, and were found there when the owners came back again. Slavery exists still in many portions of the world, principally eastern countries, and Europeans of high character and close observation have declared that the condition does not inflict cruel or unfair burdens upon the enslaved.
But this is a free country. All our institutions are based upon the theory that one man is just as good as another, and not only so, but that he ought to be expected to be as good as his neighbors, and that as soon as he ceases to be anindependent being, the master of his own time and of his own family, including all their interests, he is not equal to his duties and responsibilities as a citizen. We hear a great deal about votes purchased for money and whiskey and offers of office; but does any one realize how entirely the political status of certain States and counties and towns depends upon the opinions of even the temporary whims of certain large employers? There are thousands of men in each of at least three New England States who would not dare vote any way than they are requested to do by their employers. Fac-similes of cards and written notices have been printed to show that in certain mills the proprietors announced that their operatives were expected to vote for certain candidates which were named. If an American, an inhabitant of the freest country of the world, cannot vote as he pleases, what does his personal liberty amount to? Even a tramp has a right to his own vote, or to sell it to the highest bidder, if he has been long enough a resident of the locality in which he attempts to deposit his ballot. There are slaves in banks and mercantile houses as well as in manufacturing establishments, so the laboring man need not feel hurt at the intimation that he is in danger of being subjected to an involuntary servitude which not only will control his time, but also his mind, to such an extent that he is not a freeagent in anything regarding moral opinion or his duties as a citizen.
The principal outlet for the energies of the workingman at the present time is undoubtedly in the newer parts of the country. There is where he is almost sure to be found if he is a man of proper spirit and has not handicapped himself so it is impossible for him to reach there. This outlet will be practicable for at least a generation to come. We hear a great deal about the new countries being filled up and there being no chance for a man any longer, but some thousands of men who have footed it half-way across the continent can tell us differently, and show substantial proofs that they are right.
The man who resolves not to take any heavy responsibilities upon his time or pocket until he considers himself fairly settled in life, can always make his way to the new country, and there in no part of this land, although it is not a land flowing with milk and honey, in which he cannot find something to do. I once was made curious, by the conversation of a number of workingmen in a large pork-packing establishment in a small town in the West, to know where they had come from, and what their previous occupation had been, and among twenty-seven men I found twenty-one businesses and professions represented, not one of which was pork-packing. Nevertheless each of these men wasearning two dollars and a half a day, and keeping an eye open for something better, which I am happy to say I saw some of them realize within a few months. At that very time at least one-half of the trades which these men had originally learned, and in which they were all supposed to be experts, were languishing in the East, and a great number of those engaged in them were in that desperate condition of mind that in other countries has often precipitated riots and brought about bloodshed and prolonged disorder.
But—let workingmen note the distinction—only two of these twenty-seven men were already married. What they had earned already was their own. They were able to move about from place to place until they found a satisfactory opening in life. Some of them afterward went to the dogs. It is impossible to find any lot of men together by chance in which there will not be some incompetents and some who, through one failing or other, would be their own enemies if they were in the best of hands. There were only twelve men in the first company of assistants organized by Jesus Christ, and one of them turned out to be a scoundrel in spite of the excellent company in which he found himself.
BECAUSE this is a land of liberty a great many foreigners imagine it a land of license. To do them justice, they do not know any better. But we do, and it is our duty to teach them the difference. If we don’t, we, not they, will be the principal sufferers.
The subject of immigration has been largely discussed by the newspapers of late, and a good deal of demagogy has been got off in Congress on the same subject. But sensible people are pretty well agreed that it is time to put some restriction upon the use of America as a common dumping ground for the world’s offal and rubbish. This country is not an asylum for criminals or paupers. That ought to go without saying and it should not require any argument to prove, but it seems we have been very careless in this direction. A short time ago the New YorkHeraldsaid: “America is no longer to be considered the legitimate dumping ground for the paupers, the idiots, the insane and the criminals of Europe,” and Congressman Ford, chairman of the ImmigrationCommittee and father of the bill which was presented in January, made the statement that “if the law could be strictly enforced I believe our immigration would be decreased from these sources at least one hundred and fifty thousand per annum.” This is an awful proportion of the aggregate of immigration, for the entire figure exceeds half a million per year very little. Still Mr. Ford may be supposed, from his position, to know what he is talking about, for his committee has spent a great amount of time in examining a great many witnesses who are supposed to understand the nature of the immigration to this country of the peoples of the whole world. But enough about paupers, idiots, insane and criminals; everybody is agreed that we do not want them.
Are there any other classes whom we do not want? Yes; we cannot afford to have the contract laborer. The native labor organizations have talked a good deal of nonsense about the foreigner, but not on this one subject. The importation on contract of men to do a certain amount of work for a smaller sum than American citizens would accept, and to carry back almost all their earnings to be spent in another country, is a very successful way of making a nation poor. If we were to send all of our money to Europe for the purchase of supplies and Europe were to buy nothing of us in return, it would soon be