White Slaves; or, the Oppression of the Worthy Poor Part 4

V.

THE RELATION OF WAGES TO MORALS.

"When the toiler's heart you clutch, Conscience is not valued much; He recks not a b.l.o.o.d.y s.m.u.tch On his gold; Everything to you he defers, You are potent reasoners; At your whisper Treason stirs, Hunger and Cold!"

--JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

When Henry W. Grady, the brilliant Southern orator, was in Boston on his last visit, only a few weeks before his sad and untimely death, he charmed us all by his entrancing word-picture of a happy country home.

The fields, the lowing kine, the well-appointed farmhouse, the n.o.ble farmer, the contented matron, the dutiful children, the hospitable welcome of their guest, the cheerful and reverent evening wors.h.i.+p--all these and more stand out on the glowing canvas under his words, as I have myself seen them in real life a thousand times. About such a home, and the toilers that support it, there is a halo of glory. There is, however, a great deal said about the dignity of labor which is nothing more than oratorical commonplace--the meaningless froth of the rhetorician. There is no dignity about labor in itself. What is there about piling bricks on top of each other, or mixing mortar, or sewing blue denim into overalls, or trading earthen jars for nickel coin, that has about it any inherent dignity? It is only as there is mixed with the mortar, or builded with the bricks, the holy cement of a moral purpose; only as there is st.i.tched into the cloth the diviner thread of hopeful love; only as the deed gathers the aroma of an aspiring human life, is it a dignified transaction. But when you make of the laborer a slave, degrade his work to a mere fight for bread, hara.s.s him by continual debt, put him in a vile tenement house that smothers all holy ambition, labor has no longer dignity, it smells rather of the dungeon and the pit.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FIND.]

Honest labor, continued through reasonable hours, paid at a rate which a.s.sures a wholesome support, is enn.o.bling; but overwork, that is hopeless of comfortable reward, is degrading in the extreme. On the continent of Europe, where men and women work in the factories for fourteen and sixteen hours in a day, the laborers are reduced simply to machines. They have a wooden look, when you meet them on the streets, that is startling to an American observer. Every observant European travelling in this country notices the difference in the intelligence of the average countenance of American working-people, both among men and women. But how long can we expect that to last if the dominion of the sweater is to spread in our midst? Reduce wages to the point where the laborer has to either remain at the shop or take his work home and work into the night, and drive it on through Sunday as well, and you simply brutalize the workman. It is idle, and pharisaical as well, for us to shrug our shoulders and say this is not a question for the pulpit. So intimate is the relation between the body and the soul, that every question which has to do with the feeding or clothing of a human body is, at the last a.n.a.lysis, a moral question. The great generals of history have understood that the moral force of their armies depended largely upon the provision wagon. Frederick the Great once wrote: "Where one desires a solid basis for the good organization of an army, it is necessary to have regard to the stomach." Napoleon once said: "The soldier has his heart in his abdomen;" and Von Moltke adds his testimony: "In a campaign no food is costly except that which is bad."

One of the greatest of physiologists, Moleschott, says: "Courage, readiness, and activity depend in a great measure upon a healthy and abundant nourishment. Hunger makes heart and head empty. No force of will can make up for an impoverished blood, a badly nourished muscle, or an exhausted nerve." All these tend to the one conclusion, that the moral and intellectual life is very largely subject to physiological conditions. A man, of course, may be a scoundrel and well-fed; but, on the other hand, poor food and undue exposure to cold and heat have tremendous influence in breaking down the resistance-power against temptation to evil. Courage is the safeguard both of truth and honesty.

Break down a man's courage by overwork, bad food, and poisonous air, and you have opened the way for lying, theft, and a whole brood of vicious tendencies. You may find this strongly ill.u.s.trated in Hugo's story of Jean Valjean, who in his despair begins his criminal career by stealing a loaf of bread to keep his sister's children from starving.

We get so in the habit of thinking of drunkenness as the chief cause of poverty, as it undoubtedly is,--for when a man drinks to excess his whole character falls to pieces like a child's house of cards,--that we forget, or fail to perceive, the companion fact, that poverty is, in turn, a great and serious factor in the spread of drunkenness.

When a man or woman is physically exhausted, there is a natural craving for stimulant, and the power of resistance is reduced to the lowest point, if not to zero. It will not do for us to forget that the drink habit is often a symptom of exhaustion. Here are a man and a woman who receive such low wages that they are driven into unhealthy quarters.

They ought to have four or five rooms in order to the least approach to wholesome living; but poverty herds them in two, or it may be only one, for within the past month I have myself seen many families of father and mother and as many as five children packed into one little room, in one case only seven by nine feet. The air is poisonous; and, after the rent is paid, the food-money is insufficient, and sickness is the result. I do not mean that large numbers of people in Boston are literally starved to death for lack of bread; but I do mean that thousands of men and women and children in this city are compelled to eat such a quality of food that the result is a condition of mind and body which is subject to an insatiable thirst for strong drink, and makes drunkards of those who would otherwise be sober people. In company with two gentlemen I was examining a filthy court a few weeks ago, when, in the rear of a bake-shop under a shed, we noticed some curious machinery, and were looking at it rather inquisitively when a young lad came up out of the bakery in the cellar, and, in answer to our inquiries, said in a matter-of-course way that it was a mill for grinding old bread and stale crackers into flour, which was again baked into a cheaper cla.s.s of bread. This grade of flour may make a very nouris.h.i.+ng food, but the incident left a most unpleasant taste in my mouth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SOUTH END MISSION.]

It is a commonplace thing, I know, to say that the American home is the strongest fortress of our civilization. It is one of those things, however, that needs to be said over and over again. Before the church or the state there must be the home. Destroy that, and the whole fabric of our civilization will come cras.h.i.+ng to the ground in a common ruin.

But the reduction of wages below the comfort point means, inevitably, the deterioration of the home. The father and mother and the children must know each other, if the home is to be welded together with mutual love. Acquaintance of that character, however, requires that they shall be together under such conditions that they may come to enjoy the gifts and talents that each possess. But wages are being reduced to the point where the home is only a sleeping-barrack and a lunch-counter for supper and breakfast. Remember that poor wages mean long hours; and long hours that exhaust all the energy of the laborer mean ignorance; and ignorance, when it is finished, means immorality.

There is only about so much vital force in the average human being. If all this force is put into one's daily toil, there is none left for helpful conversation, for sympathetic communion at home, for uplifting reading, or for wors.h.i.+p. Persevere in that course, and you reach barbarism: the road faces that way.

Insufficient wages have their relation to the demoralization of laboring-people in many ways that are not perceived by people who look no deeper than the surface. The city abounds in organized firms of sharpers who prey upon the necessities of the hard-pinched laborer. If you will examine a copy of "The Banker and Tradesman," published in this city, and look down the column of chattel-mortgages, for any week, you will see a very innocent-appearing column, to the unadvised, but one that is full of devilish wickedness to a man who has been behind the scenes. If there be anything in Boston that can rival the cruelty of the tenement-house sweat-shop, you will find it in the dens of some chattel-mortgage sharks, whose business methods I have investigated.

Here is a woman who made her living by making overalls at five cents a pair. Times, of course, were always hard with her. Her husband was out of work a good part of the time. At a period when they were in a specially hard place, they borrowed ten dollars of one of these human sharks. They were to pay two dollars a month interest on it. If at any time it ran over two or three days and the interest was not paid, so that the collector had to call for it, he charged and collected two dollars extra for calling. I should have stated that this money was secured by a chattel-mortgage upon every article of household furniture they possessed. These mortgages are ironclad, and put the people at the mercy of the man who holds them. In the course of fifteen months, under cover of this loan of ten dollars, this firm managed to squeeze forty dollars out of the hard earnings of these people; and then they came to foreclose the mortgage and take away the furniture, and would have removed every household article they possessed, had not the police-officer on the beat, a man of n.o.ble heart and generous instincts, stepped in and agreed to be responsible personally for the amount. Here is another case, all of the papers of which are now in my hands: A man and his wife borrowed twenty dollars; the firm charged two dollars for making out the papers, so that the note read twenty-two dollars. The agent called on them once, and charged two dollars for that. In the course of ten months they paid twenty dollars interest.

The matter then came to the attention of the secretary of a charitable a.s.sociation, who forced the brokers to settle up the case for six dollars. I know of another case of a Swede family who "got behind," and could not pay the rent. Sickness came upon them, and they borrowed fifty dollars. In a little over a year they paid sixty dollars interest, but the princ.i.p.al had not been reduced a dollar.

Some of the instalment firms are just as bad, and many times are in league with these sharpers. A case has come to my knowledge where a man with a wife and family of five children bought furniture amounting to a hundred and thirty-five dollars. After he had paid seventy dollars, he was taken sick and had to go to the hospital. The wife was unable to meet the instalments promptly, and the firm threatened to take away her furniture. She asked the agent of a charitable organization to intercede for her. This gentleman wrote to the firm and begged them to postpone their foreclosure, and mercifully give the poor family a little more time. But this they absolutely refused to do, and came in the midst of the raw winds of March, and took all the household furniture away, including the stove and the loaf of bread in the oven.

These are not hearsay stories, but facts that can be proved by undoubted evidence.

Women are the greatest sufferers from depreciation of wages.

Commissioner Carroll Wright's report on the working-women in great cities, given to the public two years since, contains some interesting facts. The investigation on which the report is based covered twenty-two of the larger cities of the United States, and three hundred and forty-two distinct industries, excluding the professional and semi-professional callings, such as teaching, stenography, typewriting, and telegraphy. The total number of women individually interviewed was 17,427.

This is only six or seven per cent of the whole number of women engaged in the cla.s.s of work indicated, but the Commissioner declares that the investigation is representative so far as the number of women whose affairs enter into it is to be considered. The average age of the women is given as twenty-two years and seven months, though the concentration is greatest at the age of eighteen.... The general average at the beginning of work is put at fifteen years and four months.

A great majority of the women interviewed are single, and the average weekly earnings for the cities, as a whole, are five dollars and twenty-four cents. Take your pencil and count it up--room-rent, board, and clothing--and see how much you have left for books or music, recreation or religion.

The twentieth annual report of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics for last year shows not only the poor pay of women, but the cruel and unjust disparity of wages between men and women doing the same work. Beginning with the lowest rate of wages, for the first comparison of relative male and female pay, it appears that of actual wages paid to 248,200 employees of both s.e.xes, 8.99 per cent of all males receive less than five dollars a week, 4.85 per cent less than six dollars, and 6.77 per cent less than seven dollars. That is, about 20 per cent of all males average less than one dollar per day. But the females working at this low scale of wages comprise 72.94 per cent of all the workers. In the higher scale of wages, 63.78 per cent of all the males receive a dollar and a half or more per day. But only a little more than 10 per cent of the females employed are paid wages as high. Out of 7,257 receiving twenty dollars a week and over, only 268 are women. But the cruelest part of all this is that women, standing side by side with men in the same shops and stores, are paid far less wages for the same work. This is an aristocracy of s.e.x that shames and belies all our claims to democracy.

This injustice in the wages of women is already beginning to bear a fearful fruitage. Miss Alice S. Woodbridge, the secretary of the Working-women's Society of New York, after a recent tour of investigation, sums up the result of her observations in the following words: "The wages paid to women average between four and four and one-half dollars per week, and are often reduced by unreasonable and excessive fines. The little cash-girls do not average two dollars a week. In one large house the average wages for saleswomen and cash-girls is two dollars and forty cents a week. In many fas.h.i.+onable houses the saleswomen are not allowed to leave the counter between the hours of eleven A. M. and three P. M., except for lunch, and if a saleswoman has a customer when the lunch-hour arrives, she is obliged to remain and wait on the customer, and the time so consumed is deducted from lunch-time.

"If mistakes are made, they are charged to the saleswomen and cash-girls. Generally, the goods are placed in a bin and slide down to the floor below. If a check is lost, the goods are charged to the saleswoman, though it may be the fault of the s.h.i.+pping-clerk. In some stores the fines are divided between the superintendent and the time-keeper. In one store where these fines amounted to three thousand dollars, the superintendent was heard to reproach the time-keeper with not being strict enough. Men's wages are very low," says Miss Woodbridge, "but it seems that they can not fall below the point where existence is possible. Women's wages, however, have no low limit, since the paths of shame are always open to them. Cases might be cited where frail, delicate women, unable to exist on the salaries they earn, are forced to crime or suicide. The story of Mrs. Henderson, who threw herself from the attic window of a lodging-house some time ago, is the story of many another.

"There have been many such instances in the last two weeks. Mrs.

Henderson could not live on the salaries offered her. She could live if she accepted the 'propositions' of her employers. The hope of an easier life, the fear of death, and the natural clinging to life, turn many working-women into the paths of shame." Miss Woodbridge further adds that "in Paris it is an understood fact that women who are employed in shops cannot exist without a.s.sistance from other questionable sources, and," she continues, "unless something is done at once, this must also become the case in our land, where we pride ourselves on our respect for honest toil."

Helen Campbell, in her "Prisoners of Poverty," opens a little window into the terrible temptation which comes to generous young souls under this pressure of unrequited toil. In her true story of Rose Haggerty, who was sewing her very life into the support of her orphan brothers and sisters, we have a practical ill.u.s.tration of the results of this injustice. "There came a Sat.u.r.day night when she took her bundle of work,--s.h.i.+rts again, and now eighty-five cents a dozen (it is worse than that under some of our Boston sweaters); there were five dozen, and when the dollar and a half was laid away for rent, it was easy to see what was left for food, coal, and light. Clothing had ceased to be a part of the question. The children were barefoot. They had a bit of meat on Sunday; but for the rest, bread, potatoes, and tea were the diet, with cabbage and a bit of pork, now and then, for luxuries.

"Nora (a little sick sister) had been failing, and to-night Rose planned to buy her 'something with a taste to it,' and looked at the sausages hanging in long links with a sudden reckless determination to get enough for all. She was faint with hunger, and staggered as she pa.s.sed a bas.e.m.e.nt restaurant, from which came savory smells, snuffed longingly by some half-starved children. Her turn was long in coming; and as she laid her bundle on the counter, she saw suddenly that her needle had 'jumped,' and that half an inch or so of band required re-sewing. As she looked, the foreman's knife slipped under the place, and in a moment half the band had been ripped. 'That's no good,' he said. 'You are getting botchier all the time.' 'Give it to me,' Rose pleaded. 'I'll do it over.' 'Take it if you like,' he said indifferently, 'but there is no pay for that kind o' work.' He had counted her money as he spoke, and Rose cried out as she saw the sum: 'Do you mean you will cheat me of the whole dozen, because half an inch on one has gone wrong?' 'Call it what you like,' he said. 'R. & Co.

ain't going to send out anything but first-cla.s.s work. Stand out of the way and let the next have a chance. There's your three dollars and forty cents.'

"Rose went out silently, choking down rash words that would have lost her work altogether; but as she left the dark stairs, and felt again the cutting wind from the river, she stood still, something more than despair on her face. The children could hardly fare worse without her than with her. The river could not be colder than this cold world that gave her no chance, and that had no place for anything but rascals.

"She turned toward it as the thought came; but some one had her arm, and she cried out suddenly, and tried to wrench away. 'Easy now,' a voice said. 'You're breakin' your heart for trouble, an' here I am in the nick o' time. Come with me an' you'll have no more of it, for my pocket's full to-night, and that's more than it'll be in the mornin' if you do n' take me in tow.' It was a sailor from a merchantman just in, and Rose looked at him for a moment. Then she took his arm and walked toward Roosevelt Street. It might be dishonor, but it was certainly food and warmth for the children, and what did it matter? She had fought her fight for twenty years, and it had been a vain struggle."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A BOSTON "BRIDGE OF SIGHS."]

When she poured her heart-breaking story into Helen Campbell's ears, she said, "Let G.o.d Almighty judge who's to blame most--I that was driven, or them that drove me to the pa.s.s I'm in."

Ah! but you say, even as you sigh over this fearful picture, "That is in wicked New York." Yes, but Boston has its tragedies equally as heartrending and shameful. During this past week a thoroughly respectable young married woman, whose evidence is indisputable, and who, prior to her marriage, had worked for several years as a saleswoman in the Boston stores, told me that at one time her employer told her that, on account of the dull season, he would have to discharge her, but that he would give her a good recommendation, and if she would take it to another prominent dry-goods house, which he named, he thought she would at once secure employment. She took the letter of commendation, and went as directed. The employing agent of the firm to which she was sent asked her how much salary she had been receiving, and she answered, "Five dollars a week." He replied, "I cannot pay you that much, I can only give you three dollars a week;" to which she answered, "I can hardly live on what I have now, and I could not possibly live on three dollars a week." He replied, with an insulting and meaning smile, "You would have to depend on the outside friend for that." She looked him in the eye, and said, "I want to earn an honest living, and I don't want any outside friend," and at that walked away.

She told her employer of her reception; and he said he did not intend to discharge her, but had heard that this firm was in the habit of doing that sort of thing, and was determined to find out if it were true.

I received a letter from a gentleman in Conway, N. H., this week, who writes, not knowing that I was intending to discuss this question: "After you have given the sweating-system one round, can you not take up the question of the girls working in the big stores? I have just heard a well-authenticated account of a man high in authority in one of the largest stores, suggesting the way to ruin to a young girl from the country, who said, when she learned what her wages were to be, that they would not be sufficient to give her a bare support. This not only shows the att.i.tude of these wealthy merchants to the souls of their working-girls, but it shows that they are conscious of their att.i.tude, and have deliberately chosen to take it." I am told, upon undoubtedly credible testimony, that another young woman who came to Boston from the country, and sought work in several stores, was so outraged at the vile suggestions which were made to her about means of adding to her salary, that she went back to the house of her friend,--a lady of as high standing as any in the city,--and cried and sobbed all night long.

She said she would beg or starve before she would submit herself to such outrage again.

It is impossible to turn these incidents aside as exaggerations. They are horrible, I know; but the most horrible thing about them is, that they are true. You will say perhaps, as some have said during the past few weeks of my exposure of the sweat-shops, "What good will it all do, this harrowing of people's minds with these cruel stories?"

I do not know how much good will be done. I only know that I could not retain my self-respect and keep silent.

Nothing is more foolish than for us to keep still, hoping that in some way these wrongs will remedy themselves. Shall we look to the sweater, the chattel-mortgage shark, the lecherous merchant, to reform themselves? They do not care how long, nor at what a pittance, men and women work, or to what fearful extremities they are driven. Reforms will never come from the gold-box of Mammon. We must cry aloud and spare not until these devilish cruelties and unblus.h.i.+ng crimes are impossible in our fair city.

The words of the Christ, as interpreted by James Russell Lowell, are ringing in my ears:--

"With gates of silver and bars of gold, Ye have fenced my sheep from their father's fold.

I have heard the dropping of their tears In heaven these eighteen hundred years."

Then if we reply with the selfish a.s.surance of some of these pharisaical political economists who are criticising me to-day:--

"O Lord and Master, not ours the guilt, We build but as our fathers built; Behold Thine images, how they stand, Sovereign and sole, through all the land."

How his answer will put us to shame and confusion:--

"Then Christ sought out an artisan, A low-browed, stunted, haggard man, And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin, Pushed from her faintly want and sin.

These set He in the midst of them, And as they drew back their garment-hem, For fear of defilement, 'Lo here,' said He, 'The IMAGES ye have made of Me!'"

VI.