Press Illustrating Service.

CUTTING STEEL FOR SHIPS WITH GIGANTIC SHEARS.

These workers are the servants of civilization and without them we would have no such trade as we have to-day.

MEN AND THINGS

BY
HENRY A. ATKINSON
SECRETARY, SOCIAL SERVICE DEPARTMENT OF THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES
AND ASSOCIATE SECRETARY OF THE COMMISSION ON THE CHURCHES
AND SOCIAL SERVICE OF THE FEDERAL COUNCIL OF THE
CHURCHES OF CHRIST IN AMERICA

NEW YORK

MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT
OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA
1918

COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY
MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT OF THE
UNITED STATES AND CANADA

CORRESPONDENCE CONCERNING MISSION STUDY
Send the proper one of the following blanks to the secretary of
your denominational mission board whose address is in the “List of
Mission Boards and Correspondents” at the end of this book.
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suggestions that you can send that will help in organizing and
conducting it.
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Below is the enrolment.
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which class is held:
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TO MY FATHER
THE REV. THOMAS A. ATKINSON

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

“Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.”

FOREWORD

A friend said to me this last week, “There are two things that I instinctively distrust, one is prophecy, the other is statistics. Now that the war has lengthened into the fourth year and America has taken her place by the side of the Allies, I find my gorge rising every time any one attempts a prophecy and quotes statistics. All prophecies have proved false and statistics are utterly unreliable. Even the clocks have been made to lie by official decree.”

Granted that my friend is pessimistic, at the same time we must all sympathize with him in this feeling. In writing this book, I have tried to keep out of the realm of prophecy and have used just as few statistics as possible. Most of the facts were secured by investigations made prior to August, 1914. I have endeavored to check up every statement with all the reports I could secure from the Department of Labor at Washington, through the Survey and the New Republic, and through other sources. I feel reasonably certain that all the statements concerning conditions will bear investigation and are substantially correct. If there are discrepancies, it will be found after making due allowance for the judgment of others, that they are due to changes brought about by unusual conditions in industry. The principles are unchanged and it is upon these that I have attempted to place the most emphasis. Concrete facts are but illustrative of the principle involved. Conditions affect cases but leave principles undisturbed.

I am greatly indebted to the help in research given me by Miss Lucy Gardner, of Salem, Massachusetts. As far as possible I have given credit to the proper authorities for material used. If I have failed to do so I take this opportunity of acknowledging my indebtedness to all unknown authors and authorities who have contributed in any way.

This book goes forth to the young people of America in the hope that they will find in it some small inspiration that will prove an incentive to them to give themselves to the cause of humanity, realizing that through service, and through service alone, can any one make the fullest contribution to his generation.

“Men and Things,”—a nation is great only in its citizens. The great task before the church to-day is to help to readjust the conditions existing in all industries so that men and women may labor and enjoy the fruits of their labor and profit physically and spiritually in the wealth which they help to create.

Henry A. Atkinson.

New York, May, 1918.

CHAPTER I
The World of Work

One of the commonest sights in the city is that of the people going to work in the early morning; the streets are thronged with men carrying dinner pails, and girls and women carrying bundles. Many are hurrying with a worried look on their faces as if fearful of being a minute or two late. At night the same people are again on the streets with their faces turned in the opposite direction going home after the day’s work. A few hours’ rest, then a new day, and the same people may be seen in the same streets, hurrying to the ever unending tasks.

The country holds the same urge of work. Nothing is more interesting than a trip through the country early in the morning. With the first hint of dawn you see a thin pencil of smoke begin to stream from the chimneys of the farmhouses. Bobbing lanterns appear by the barn. You hear the clanking of chains and the rattle of harness as the teams are being made ready for the day’s toil. As the morning grows older, you meet the workers out on the road with their faces set sturdily toward the field of their labor.

All night long from a thousand centers massive trains are rushing toward other centers. In each engine two men, with nerves alert and eyes peering out into the darkness ahead, guide the power that pulls the train. Every few minutes the door of the firebox is opened and a gleam of light makes an arc through the darkness of the night as the fireman mends his fire.

During the daytime thousands of trackmen have inspected the rails; other thousands have been at work repairing the ties, putting in new rails, and improving the grade. Telegraphers are continuously flashing their messages along the wires; their invisible hands guide these flying trains. In factories, workshops, mills, mines, forests, on steamships, on the wharves, wherever there are human beings, there is work being done. Work is as ceaseless and persistent as life itself.

The Song of the World of Work. You remember, perhaps, the first time that you visited a big city. From your room in the hotel you could hear the roar of the streets. That roar is made up of hundreds of separate sounds. It is the voice of work from the throat of the city. It changes with each hour of the night. Just before dawn there is a lull and the voice is almost quiet but only for a short period; then it takes on a new volume of sound and grows in intensity to the full force of its noonday chorus. What is this voice saying? It is telling the story, and pouring out the complaint, and singing the song of the world of work. The idler or the parasite is the exception. People can live without working, but such is human nature that the person is rarely found who is willing to bear the odium of being a member of the class that never toils.

Work and Life. “What are you going to do when you grow up?” This is a common question asked of every girl and boy. Very early in our lives we begin to try to answer this question. Our environment shapes our attitude toward life, and helps us to choose the type of work to which we think we are adapted, but, having once settled the question of the kind of work we are to do, that choice eventually determines, in a large measure, our character. Work is so much a part of our lives that it marks us and puts us in groups. All ministers are very much alike, doctors are alike, lawyers are alike, business men are alike, business women resemble each other, so do miners and woodsmen. In fact, the work that we do groups us automatically with the others in the same profession or trade. Work creates our world for us and also gives us our vocabulary. A man who made his fortune on a big cattle-ranch in the West moved with his family to Chicago. His wife and daughter succeeded in getting into fashionable society and with the money at their command made quite a stir in the social world. Foolishly they were ashamed of their old life on the ranch. They had difficulty in living down their past, and the husband never reached a place where his family could be sure of him. He carried his old world with him into the new environment. One of the standing jokes among their friends was the way in which this man told his cronies at the club how his wife had “roped a likely critter and had him down to the house for inspection.” This was his description of a young man who was considered eligible for his daughter’s hand. The men who have been brought up in mining communities use the phraseology of the mines. One of the most prominent preachers in America was a miner until he was past twenty years of age. His sermons, lectures, and books are filled with the phrases learned in his early life. A preacher in a fishing village in the northern part of Scotland, in making his report to the Annual Conference, stated: “The Lord has blessed us wonderfully this year. In the spring, with the flood-tide of his grace, there was brought a multitude of souls into our harbor. We set our nets and many were taken. These we have salted down for the kingdom of God.” Needless to say, he and his people were dependent upon the fishing industry for a living.

Purpose of Work. Life is divided into work and play. Work is the exertion of energy for a given purpose. People accept the claim of life as they find it with little or no protest because one must work in order to eat. The compulsion of necessity determines the amount of work and the amount of play in the average life. Even a casual study of the industrial life of to-day convinces one that work absorbs a large part of the time and conscious energy of all the people. The letters T. B. M. meaning “Tired Business Man” are now used to typify a fact of modern life. Business takes so much time and effort that it leaves the individual so worn out at the end of every day that he is not able to think clearly, or to render much service to himself or to his friends. He is simply a run-down machine and must be recharged for the next day’s work.

In one of the American cities a group of nineteen girls formed themselves into a Bible study class, and met at the Young Women’s Christian Association building on Thursday nights. A light, inexpensive dinner was served and the pastor of one of the churches was asked to teach the group. All of these girls were members of the church and were engaged in work in the city. One was in a secretarial position, four were stenographers, two were saleswomen, and thirteen were employed in a department store. The hours of work were long for the majority of the class. On Saturday nights they were forced to work overtime. The average wage for the group was $7.25 a week. Out of this they had to buy their food, pay for their rooms, buy their clothes, and pay their car-fare. Whatever was left they could save or give away just as they pleased. After the classes had been meeting for about six weeks, it developed that only four of the girls went to church with any degree of regularity. Ten of them gave as a reason for not going that they were so tired on Sunday mornings that they could not do their work and get up in time to go to church. When they did get up, there were dozens of hooks and eyes and buttons that had to be sewed on, clothes which had to be mended, and the week’s washing to be done. In telling of their experiences one girl said, “Sunday is really my busiest day.” These girls can be taken as typical of a large number of workers, men and women. Life to the majority becomes simply the performance of labor. Work is the whole end of existence. All brightness and cheer is squeezed out by the compulsion of labor.

In a Pennsylvania coal town the employees of the company live in a little village built around the coke ovens. There is not a green thing in the whole village. A girl from Pittsburgh married one of the men who was interested in the mines. They moved to this town, and she took all her wedding presents and finery with her. In three weeks the smoke had ruined her clothes, had made the inside of her little home grimy, and the dirt and soot had ground itself into the carpets and floor, till she said, “I feel that all the beautiful life that Frank and I had planned to live together has become simply an incidental adjunct to the coke-ovens.” We often hear it said that the minds of people are stolid, stodgy, or indifferent, and that they do not appreciate the best things in life. The wonder is that the masses of the people appreciate them as much as they do.

The Purpose of Life. A well-known catechism teaches that, “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” Herbert Spencer says, “The progress of mankind is in one aspect a means of liberating more and more life from mere toil, and leaving more and more life available for relaxation, for pleasure, culture, travel, and for games.” The struggle for existence consumes so much time that it becomes an end in itself. This ought not to be. The true purpose of life is not work, nor wealth, nor anything else that can be gained by human striving, but it is life itself. Therefore, the work that people do ought to contribute to an enrichment of life. We are indebted to Henry Churchill King for the splendid phrase, “The fine art of living.” William Morris said that whatever a man made ought to be a joy to the maker as well as to the user, so that all the riches created in the world should enrich the creator as well as those who profit by the use of the riches. Under the old form of production, where every man did his own work with his own tools, it was easy for him to take pleasure in the thing that he was making. The factory system breaks the detail of production into such small parts that no one worker can take very much pride in the actual processes of his work. It is not a very thrilling thing to stand by a machine and feed bars of iron into it for ten hours a day, and to watch the completed nuts or screws dropping out at the other end of the machine. The pleasure in the work must be secured from the conditions under which the work is performed—the cooperation in the production, and the feeling that the worker is a part, and is being blessed by being a part, of the modern industrial system.

Specialization in Work. Specialization has been carried so far that to-day there are very few skilled workers in the sense in which this term was used several years ago. Shoemakers very rarely know how to make shoes, for they now make only some one part of the shoe. The automobile industry, by methods of standardizing, is organized so that each worker performs some simple task. He repeats this over and over, but his task added to that done by the others, produces an automobile. In the glove factory one set of workers spend their lives making thumbs; another group stitch the back of the gloves. In the clothing industry some make buttonholes, others sew on buttons; some put in the sleeves, and others hem; each has a very small part to do. This specialization in industry has been carried so far that it is seldom that a worker knows anything about the finished product.

A study of the organization of labor shows to what extent specialization has been carried. One of the chief complaints of the American manufacturer is that his men and women are not loyal. There is undoubtedly ground for this complaint, but on the other hand it must be conceded that it is very difficult for a worker—in the garment trade, for instance—to be loyal to a long succession of buttonholes; and for glovemakers to be loyal to a multitude of thumbs. The lack of loyalty comes largely from the failure of the directors of modern industry to bring their workers into that relationship with the business which would give them a feeling that they are an essential part of the industry. Loyalty grows by what it feeds on. The specialization that has been going on has been the very force which has made the worker simply a part of the machine, and as such, detaches him from the business of which he ought to feel himself an integral part.

Unity of the Workers. The extent to which specialization has been developed has had another effect. While the process of differentiation has been carried on at a rapid pace, and the individual worker has known but little about the finished product, he has come to know a great deal about the other disintegrated units in the workshop, the mine, the factory, and the mill. Consequently, with the differentiation in the work there has been a growing solidarity or feeling of unity among the workers themselves. Evidence of this is found in the philosophy that there are only two classes of people in the world, the people who work and the people who do not work, and which is used by the revolutionary groups with tremendous force. We do not like to think of classes in America, but the forces of industrial life have created classes in spite of ourselves.

A World Apart. The workers live in a world apart. Unconsciously they drift together. They talk each other’s language; they understand each other’s point of view. In every town and city we find groups of the workers living to themselves. The work which men do inevitably groups them together; and social life centers so completely about their work that it is really the factory and mill that mark out the lines and define the limits within which the classes must live. Consequently, in our American cities we find such designations as these: “Shanty Town,” “Down by the Gas Works,” “Across the Tracks,” “Murphy’s Hollow,” “Tin-Can Alley,” “Darktown,” “On the Hill,” “Out by the Slaughter-Pen,” “Over on the West Side,” and “Down in the Bottoms.” Just think of your own town, and you probably can add some new phrase that tells where your laboring group lives. In one Western town the community was divided by the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks. The boys in the school on the north side of the tracks were all known as “Sewer Rats.” On the opposite side of the town they were known as “Depot Buzzards.” Whenever one group met the other there was always a war. A friend tells of a similar condition in a Canadian village where the Scotch boys were banded against the Irish and the Irish against the Scotch. Whenever the Macks met the Micks, or the Sandys met the Paddys, there was a row. A large part of this classification is temporary and need not be considered very seriously. Underlying it, however, is the deeper fact that we have come to recognize that there is a world of the workers, and that it is a world apart. In this world of the workers the rewards and the profits of toil are barely adequate to take care of the needs of the families of the workers.

It is assumed that in pre-war times it required from $800 to $900 a year to support a family in the average American community. Since 1914 the cost of living has increased approximately 60 per cent. It is estimated that even to-day with the advances that have been made in the wages by nearly all industries, 61 per cent. of the workers of America are receiving an average wage of less than $800 a year. “Shanty Town” and that section “Down by the Gas Works” have been built of poor material and allowed to become dilapidated not because the people living there like that sort of thing, but because the returns for the labor of these people are totally inadequate for their needs. The housing and living conditions of the people who live in the world of the workers is determined by the wages which they receive.

McGraw-Hill Company.

The work which men do inevitably groups them together.

The Interdependence of All. Now, if we do recognize that the world of work is a world apart, we must not fail to recognize also that behind this disintegration that has been going on, there is an integration of society more comprehensive than we have ever known before in the history of the world. While the people may be allowed to live by themselves in a part of the town that is less desirable as a dwelling-place than other parts, yet we are all dependent one upon the other. There is an old story which illustrates this point. A boy complained to his father about being poor and said that he wished that he had been born in a rich man’s home. The father told him that he was mistaken, for he really had wealth which he had never considered. That night the boy had a dream. It seemed to him that there came and stood at his bed a little fellow dressed like a farmer. The boy asked him who he was. He replied that he was the soul of all the farmers that were working to produce the flour that went into bread. Another little figure appeared beside the first, a black man with a turban on his head; he was the spirit of the workers in the tea and spice gardens of India. Another black man dressed in the rough clothes of a day-laborer joined the others; he was the spirit of the workers on a Southern plantation who make the cotton and produce the sugar. Other workers appeared so fast that the boy could hardly keep up with their approach—the coal-miner, the iron-miner, the woodsman, the carpenter, and the girl workers in the flax-mills of Dublin, who produce the linen in the rough, red-checked tablecloths. When they had all gathered together there was a multitude, and all were in reality the servants of this one boy.

Our dependence upon each other was clearly illustrated in the shut-down of non-essential industries on certain days in the winter of 1917–18. In order to keep people from starving and freezing, the government of the United States ordered the suspension of certain industries so that the conservation of fuel might protect the lives of the people.

The Good Neighbor. We are “members one of another.” The basic industries provide the necessities of our lives—feeding, housing, clothing, warmth, means of traveling, and the things which are part and parcel of our very being. The workers who are engaged in producing these things are true servants of humanity, and we are all under deep and abiding obligations to them. Just in the proportion that we produce something that adds to the wealth and happiness of the world, we are discharging the obligation which others by their labors have placed upon us. The division into classes, and the setting off of groups by themselves, the creating of the world of labor as a world apart, makes the practise of neighborliness a difficult thing. Now neighborliness is the very essence of Christianity. To be a friend of man ought to be the supreme desire of every individual. In the parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus defined the meaning of Christianity in terms of neighborliness. The church must answer this question: How can Christian people be good neighbors in modern industrial society?

Neighbor to the Group. We recognize the call to neighborliness in individual cases. If a man is knocked down by an automobile when he is crossing a street, people will run to help him to his feet, will call a cab or an ambulance, and he will be cared for just as carefully by the stranger as if he were a near relative. The individual idea of neighborliness is thoroughly appreciated. We have learned how to practise it. When it comes to a group, however, we find it difficult. The same men that would rush into the street to help an individual that is hurt, will live in a community and not appreciate the needs of the people living in the same block. The industrial class may be knocked down by adverse social conditions, and no one will recognize just what the situation means; or, recognizing it, will know how to apply the remedy, or even how to offer intelligent assistance.

In a small city in Ohio there lived an old man and his wife. Their children had married and moved away, leaving the old people to shift for themselves. The man was nearly blind and his wife was paralyzed and unable to take care of herself. The neighbors used to go to see them once in a while but no one felt any special responsibility for them and the community knew very little about the conditions under which they lived. One of the neighbors remarked one day that he had not seen anybody around the house and no smoke coming from the chimney. An investigation was made and it was found that the old man had been dead three days and was lying in bed with his paralyzed wife who could not help herself, nor could call for assistance. For three days she had been suffering unspeakable agony beside the form of her dead husband. The whole community was shocked. No one could believe that such a lack of neighborliness could exist. No one was particularly to blame; it was merely one of those things that occur because the man and his wife had dropped out of the main-traveled path of the city’s life.

The church is making every effort to meet the needs of the individual, but when it preaches the need of regeneration, it must meet the group needs as well, and the minister of a church for a world of labor must be minister to the group as well as to the individual. The world war has impressed upon us many facts, none with more insistence than this—that we are living in a very small world; and that nations, as well as groups of people everywhere, must learn to appreciate each other for what they are, and for the contribution which they are making to the well-being of humanity. Recognizing this, however, does not mean that we are all to try and think alike, to be alike, or to live alike. As Americans we are very likely to think that our way of doing things is entirely right, and that enlightenment comes in proportion to the degree in which other people copy our example in clothes, methods of living, and even our manner of speaking.

A Specialized Program for Group Needs. The church’s program for a world of work must be a specialized program. It must be based upon a thorough knowledge of the facts incident to the life of the people, an appreciation of their view-points, and must take into consideration the ultimate ends to be achieved, the means by which these ends can be reached, and a willingness to subordinate the program of the church to the needs of the group. The program of a city church appealing to well-to-do, middle-class people, will utterly fail in the average rural community. A program for a mining community must consider the needs as well as the character of the miners, and the quality of their work. The church is sharply challenged by the specialization in industry, and by the fact that there are classes who do not hear, or at least fail to heed its appeal. In the growing demand for democracy, the church must not only be the most democratic of all institutions but it must be the leader in setting before the people the ideals and in keeping before their minds the great ends of democracy.

Approach to the Subject. In the following chapters are set forth some of the conditions under which the workers in the basic industries toil and live; also the great needs of each group and what the church is doing, what it ought to do, and what it can do. We will consider each group in relation to the contribution it makes to the life of us all. Food is a first need of each individual, therefore, we will study the rural workers first, for they are the ones who feed the world. Next we will study the makers of our clothing; then the mines, for they provide for our warmth and shelter; then the steel workers, who are the real builders of our material civilization. We are a restless race, and demand the labor of thousands of men and women to move us from place to place, so we will study the lives of these providers of transportation. We will also think together of that large group who amuse us and who labor to produce the luxuries which we enjoy. There are certain groups that we will find in each of these larger groups, such as the seasonal workers, the women in industry who toil. We will take a glimpse at these.

Men and Things. Men produce things, and often the created thing seems to become greater than its creator. We will hope through these discussions to show that man is infinitely greater than all the things which he produces. We will also endeavor to arrive at some decision as to what constitutes a proper message and ministry for the church in the midst of a world of work, so that working men and women may be protected in their toil, and freed from the incessant and always present danger of becoming slaves to the wealth they create.

CHAPTER II
The World of the Rural Workers

There have grown up on the western plains of Canada a number of large cities and a great many small villages and towns. These are the direct results of a process of civilization dependent upon the fertile soil from which vast quantities of wheat are reaped each year. Just before harvest the sea of grain extends as far as the eye can see. The first settlers built their little cabins, bought as much seed grain as was available, and planted it; doing nearly all of the work themselves. Improved methods of planting and harvesting have added thousands of acres to the wheat-fields. Railroads have been built to carry the wheat to the great shipping and milling centers. Cities such as Winnipeg have grown rich through being the connecting-links between the farmer, with his field and his wheat, and the breakfast tables all over the civilized world.

Our Daily Bread. The development of the grain-belt of western Canada is similar to that which has taken place in Minnesota, the Dakotas, and other Northwestern states. In California, Oregon, Washington, Oklahoma, and Kansas we find great areas devoted to the growing of wheat. The wheat that is put on the market is of two general varieties: what is known as winter wheat sown in the autumn, and spring wheat that is sown early in the spring. These great wheat areas have been called the bread-basket of the Western world. Few of us realized the importance of wheat to the life of the world until Mr. Hoover began to tell us that we must save it by having wheatless days and by eating more corn bread and war-breads of various kinds. The total annual consumption of wheat is 974,485,000 bushels, and of this amount the United States produced, in 1917, 678,000,000 bushels. The needs of the world have been figured as calling for about 20 per cent. advance upon all that is available under normal conditions.

Not many of us who live in cities stop to consider the man who made possible the roll or the piece of white bread that we eat with our meal. We forget the long day’s work, the painstaking toil, and the grim struggle of the pioneers who first worked the land. We seldom think of the planting and reaping year after year, the construction of transportation, the building of warehouses, the venturing of money in mill-building, until finally were developed not only the vast farms but also cities, railroads, wheat-carrying steamship lines, elevators, and the mills that go to make up the great bread-making industry. Only when the war interfered with the processes and threatened to cut off the supply of wheat, did we begin to realize how important the wheat farm is to the very life of the nation. If bread is the staff of life, wheat is the chief material out of which that staff is made. Other grains when used for bread, as we are forced to use them to-day, are all substitutes for wheat.

Press Illustrating Service.

Not many of us stop to consider the man who made possible the white bread that we eat at our daily meals.

The Cane-Sugar Makers. If we travel in a direction a little east of south from the wheat-fields of Canada, we come to the great plantations of Louisiana and Mississippi where sugar-cane is grown. Here we find people of a different type living under different conditions. Sugar-cane is grown in fields that have been won from the swamps by hard toil. In this rich soil, cultivated and ridged by the plow, the sugar-cane is laid in long parallel rows. After it has been buried a few days it begins to sprout, and from each one of the joints on the stalk of cane there grows up a new plant. These are tilled and come to maturity in October. The stalks grow from eight to fifteen feet high and at harvest-time are cut down and then stripped of their leaves by the workers, who take them up in their hands and with a flat knife slash off the long, bladelike leaves, leaving them clean and smooth. The stalks are piled in rows to be picked up later and put into wagons, taken to the siding, loaded into freight-cars, and hauled to the mill, where they are crushed between rollers, and the juice pressed out. The liquid so obtained is then put into large vats and evaporated, leaving brown sugar and molasses. The crude or brown sugar is sent to the refinery and passed through various processes until we get the white sugar that comes to our tables. Practically all of the work on the sugar plantation is done by Negroes. These people live in small cabins and work for a very small wage, ranging from 75 cents to a $1.25 a day. Their tiny houses, which are usually whitewashed and surrounded by a little plot of ground, are the property of the owners of the plantation. The Negro is expected to buy everything from the company’s stores. The prices are high and it is rarely that one finds a family that is not in a perpetual state of debt to the owner of the plantation.

When the migration of Negroes from the South to the North began some few years ago, a great concern was felt in many quarters as to what the result would be. A meeting was held in one of the Southern cities and the Negroes were invited to be present. One of the Negroes said: “If you let me tell you what I think, it is about like this. We-all have been working here for about 75 cents to $1 a day, but we never see the time when we have any money of our own. It takes more than we make for the things we use. Folks in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Massachusetts offer us $15 to $18 a week, tickets for ourselves and our families, and a free house to live in with two weeks’ rations provided and in the house. Now none of us wants to leave Louisiana, and if you want to keep us here just raise our wages to $2 a day. We would a heap rather stay here than go North.”

Sugar from Beets. Not all the sugar that comes to our tables is made from the cane; in fact only a small proportion is cane-sugar. Most of it is produced from the beet which is grown in large quantities in the West. Montana, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, and California are the extensive sugar-beet producing states. The beets grow to an enormous size; they are planted in rows and cared for much as the beets that grow in our vegetable gardens. In California the Japanese are entering very largely into the sugar-beet culture.

The beet-fields call whole families to work. Several towns in the Northwestern states have sections made up entirely of Russians, and people from other lands, who have been attracted by the opportunities for employment offered by the beet industry. One family consisting of a father, mother, thirteen children, and the mother’s sister worked all last summer in one of the beet-fields. The youngest child was only five years old but he put in long hours every day. This family is typical of many. The statistics regarding child labor in the United States show that the vast majority of children employed in gainful labor are the children in the rural districts. Thus sugar comes to your table through two sources: from the workers, including a large number of children, in the beet-fields and the workers on the Southern plantations.

The Corn Belt. In the Middle states we have the great corn-producing areas. A great deal of the philosophy of this region is summed up in the reply of a farmer to the question as to why he was planting more corn than usual. He said: “So that I can feed more hogs.”

“What will you do with the hogs?” he was then asked.

“Sell them and buy more land to plant more corn to raise more hogs to buy more land.”

The price of hogs and the price of corn, in normal times, keep on a level with each other. When corn is high pork is high, and when corn falls we find that pork falls with it.

Food and the Land. It is impossible within the limits of this book to give more than a glimpse of a few of the great food-producing industries of America. The packing-houses and canneries contribute their share to the feeding of the people; but when all is said and done, we get back to the fact that even in this age when factory and city make claims, all values finally rest on the land. The growth of our cities has emphasized their dependence upon the country. People in the city must be fed, and the food comes from the soil. It is now claimed that the gravest mistake made by Kerensky, a leader of the Russian revolution, was in not giving sufficient attention to the food question in Russia. After the revolution became a fact Kerensky tried to spur the army to greater activity, but the people, unused to the new ways of freedom, failed to keep up the processes that would produce food. The railroads were congested; fuel was scarce; lacking fuel—the railroads and boats still further failed in their undertaking. The result was that the food supply became less and less in Petrograd and other centers. Behind the lines hungry people grew restless. Leon Trotzky would not have succeeded in overthrowing Kerensky but for the hunger of the people. These people were willing to accept any change of government because there was at least a hope, however desperate it might be, that the new government would furnish the food which they needed so badly. One writer dealing with this subject said: “Oratory and precepts failed to feed the hungry people.”

We have heard over and over again the phrase, “An army travels on its stomach.” It is also true that the civilian population of a country lives and labors on its stomach. Food is the foundation of life. “Give us this day our daily bread” is the first demand of man upon God and upon his fellow man. The solution of all our problems depends finally on the question of bread. “Who shall be king?” The answer to this question is very likely to be, “The one who will give us bread.” The peace of the world must finally be based upon an appreciation of economic values. Justice means that conditions will be such that in each nation food for all the people will be produced in abundance.

The Country and the City. Much has been said of the freedom and independence of farm life. The producer of food is a real benefactor of the race. The farmer works in the open air and lives a simple life, and so gains an opportunity for developing the very finest traits of human character. But when we compare the changes that have been taking place in the rural districts, we find strong reasons for the exodus from the country to the city. The city offers a more interesting and profitable life which makes it difficult to maintain the center of attraction on the farm. The history of humanity began in a garden and ends in a city. The word “city” comes from the old Latin word which means the citizen, the place where the citizen lived.

The city is really the center of authority and governmental power. It offers the best and at the same time the worst; has the best in intellect, which it attracts and claims for its own, and it has the best in amusement and entertainments. We have heard people say: “The country is a good place in which to rest and work, but the city is the place to have your fun.” The city has the best and the worst of morals, and the best and the worst health conditions. Side by side with the city mansion are the tumble-down hovels and the cramped, narrow tenements that are a disgrace to our land. The robust, strong man pushes his weaker fellow to the wall. The worst forms of disease and the most acute physical suffering are found in the city. In the city there are many intellectual giants and many half-sane intellectual weaklings. The man dwelling in the country has a greater independence than these. He can at least have three meals a day, and knows how to take care of himself. Hundreds of thousands of people in our cities have just brains enough and just education enough to do one thing; if hard times throws one of these out of his job, he is left utterly helpless—a derelict on the sea of humanity. The culprit is safer in the city than in the thickest forest. Men without character and women without principle huddle together in its sordid districts. The tides of the city wash up queer specimens to the light of day, and reveal to the passer-by the saddest and most gruesome sights, and the worst types of humanity.

The best in the city is matched by the worst. Philanthropy cures, or tries to cure, what rogues have created. Just as the incentive to goodness in the city is highest, so the temptations to the opposite course of life are of the strongest. The artificial life creates new and unusual wants, and together with the excitement caused by city conditions, makes temptations hard to resist. The city is the rich man’s paradise and the poor man’s hell. The lure of the city is strong upon us all. There are a thousand voices calling us there; and this is impoverishing our rural districts and making the question of food a more serious one every year. In the country one can plod along and with the present prices be independent, but this does not satisfy. The men of to-day think in thousands where their fathers thought in terms of hundreds. Hundreds of dollars are made on the farm and millions in the city. The city calls every young man and young woman. Everybody who is at all familiar with the small towns knows that one of the hardest facts which must be faced is that just as soon as the young people finish school they leave for the city. Church work is made hard by the continual drain on the best life in the community.

The Tenant and the Absentee Landlord. Over against this question of the lure of the city there is that of the tenant farmer. The Industrial Relations Commission, making its study of the rural conditions in America, finds that there is a very grave danger that America will produce a peasant class like that of some of the European countries. The independent landowners are decreasing; in Mississippi 62 per cent. of the land is tilled by tenants, in Louisiana 58 per cent., and Kansas 36 per cent. So many of the owners of the farms have moved to the city that the actual production of food has been left to the people who are known as “birds of passage.” Most of these tenants are here to-day and gone to-morrow. The retired farmer presents the problem of the absentee landlord. The tenant farmer suffers under the handicap of his limitation, and his poverty is often his undoing. The absentee landlord of the farm enjoys the fruits of the labor of another. We must not forget, however, that the retired farmer has contributed his share toward the development of our nation. He has helped to make his community. The man who actually remains on the soil to produce the food is producing less, and takes less interest in his community, than the man who owns the land and who made a success of production in years gone by. The tenant does not cultivate the land as intensively as it can be cultivated; he does not attempt soil conservation, and takes but little interest in the community and its institutions.

Study of a Rural Community. It is interesting to make a study of the rural community and to compare present conditions with those of the past. Such a study convinces one that the success of the church is closely bound up with the economic situation of the community. An investigation was made in three townships in the central part of Wisconsin just a few miles from the state capital.[1] The land in this section is rich, the homes of the people are comfortable, the barns and sheds substantial, and everything about the farms well kept. Fences are up and all the buildings are neatly painted. The land produces anything that can be grown in a temperate climate: peas, grain, barley, potatoes, oats, hay, cattle, sheep, and hogs. Other parts of Wisconsin produce more milk and butter; but the large herds of Holstein cows and the number of creameries and cheese factories found in this part of the state convince the visitor that no small part of the farmer’s income is derived from this source.

[1] Survey made by Social Service Department of Congregational Churches, 14 Beacon Street, Boston.

The state university is the Wisconsin farmer’s best friend. Through its instruction at Madison, its extension department, experimental stations, and institutes held throughout the state, it shows this friendship; and the splendid economic conditions found in rural Wisconsin prove that this friendship is not wasted. The land in these townships is valued at $100 to $150 an acre, but upon inquiry at a dozen or more farms it was learned that no one knew of any farm land that was for sale.

About 2,500 people live in the three townships described. Sixty years ago nearly all the people were Americans, many of them having emigrated from New York State. In later years the Americans have been supplanted by Germans and Scandinavians. The old settlers now lie at rest in the beautiful cemeteries which are taken care of by the communities with the same care and affection that is bestowed upon private homes and grounds. Many of the descendants of the first settlers are scattered far and wide throughout the United States. The Rev. Hubert C. Herring, Secretary of the National Council of the Congregational Churches of the United States, and one of the best known among home missionary leaders in America, was born and spent his early life in this section of Wisconsin. The school he attended is at the country cross-roads and near the school is the Presbyterian church which he joined. Dr. Herring’s first efforts at oratory were practised upon the neighboring boys and girls in the Philomathean Society, a country debating society, at that time a leading social and literary organization among the people of the community. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, one of the most popular and prominent of the magazine and newspaper writers, and who is well known to every reader in America, was born in this same township. Twelve other people who are influential nationally and internationally were born and reared in this community.

Most of the people hold their own farms and most of them have money on interest in the bank. The few families who rent farms are working, planning, and saving so that they can buy land and own their farms. The school-buildings are adequate and the grounds well kept; the teachers are efficient and intelligent; and the high school maintains an advanced standard. The young people go directly from these schools into the state university. Here, then, we have the material conditions that would seem to guarantee success in the work of the church. There is no poverty, and very few people can be said to be living on the fringe of the community. There is no overcrowding on the part of the churches, for there are only two American churches and they have a parish twelve miles wide and fifteen miles long, and the pastor serving both is the only English-speaking preacher in this whole district. Now what are the facts? One of these churches was closed for a number of years and now has services only once in every two weeks; the other was also closed for a number of years. One church has a Sunday-school with fifty members and a Christian Endeavor Society of thirty-six members; the church service is attended by twenty-five to forty people. One of the men in the community said: “Many of the people are foreign and have their own churches, of which there are seven in this district; but they have their troubles, for the children are breaking away from the old churches as they have broken from the old languages, and are beginning to come to our Sunday-school.” The community has a good moral record. There has never been a saloon, except at one point, and the two saloons that were located there were voted out years ago. The people are home-loving and law-abiding, but the two churches are not as successful as they were fifty years ago when they were filled at every service.

The first minister in the district was a graduate and honor man of Williams College, and the church was the center of the community life. People looked to the church, were helped and inspired; it sent out teachers, preachers, and other men and women trained in thoughtfulness, to enrich the world. Contributions of such a range cannot spring from the conditions in which the church finds itself to-day. What are the reasons? Some of the people blame the universities. When the young people return from college they seem to take no interest in the church. But the universities are really not to blame. The church fills so small a circle in the community that when the young man has finished his course at the university he cannot fit himself back into the narrow groove of the church activities. In sixty years the old methods of farming have changed. Tools and machinery are of another type. Conditions on the farm are totally different, because the farmers have recognized that new methods are demanded. When the old settlers have their picnics and reunions, one of the older men shows the young men how they used to “cradle” the grain. It is an interesting thing, but compared to the modern reaper the cradle is simply an archaic tool, and no man would think of harvesting his crop with it to-day. The fields of the church life of rural Wisconsin and in other sections of the country are “white to the harvest,” but the ministers are forced to use the old-fashioned “cradle” in harvesting the whole crop. The university is showing the church its opportunity and at the same time pointing out its failure. In the particular locality under discussion the churches have no program. Religion is limited to a very small part of life. The farm demands all the time of the people during six days of the week. On Sunday the work clothes are changed for Sunday clothes and part of the day given over to the church. This is religion. The line of demarkation between the sacred and the secular is much more clearly drawn in the country than anywhere else. The average minister of the country church is much more a man apart from the rest of the community.

The program of the church must be made a part of the whole life of the people. The church out in the districts where the people live who are producing the food for the world is responsible in a large degree for the pleasures of the people. Country people find it difficult to think in terms of the community. It is hard for them to cooperate. The church must shape its program with a clear understanding of the great facts of the community life, and appeal primarily from this standpoint and not simply from that of the needs of individuals.

Another rural study shows a community where 80 per cent. of the people were living on land owned by somebody else. There were five churches, and each of them was struggling for a pitiful existence. Less than 20 per cent. of the people had any connection with the church or any other organization. A minister was sent into this district to make a study of the situation with a view to possible work by the home mission board of his church. In his report he stated that the needs there were just as pressing and demanded just as much statesmanship as any field in India or China. He was furnished with sufficient money to put up a good church building, and the plans of the building provided for social and game rooms. He brought a doctor into the community and attached him to the church as a lay worker. He promoted an interest in better farming methods, and began with organized groups a course of lessons in thrift. Gradually this minister gained the interest of the boys and girls through baseball, basket-ball, singing school, and other community exercises and agencies. People began to come to church. They wanted to hear this preacher, for as one of the farmers said, “A feller who knows enough to talk about the things that we are interested in must know something about heaven. I want to hear what he’s got to say.” The church in this community succeeded, but its success was primarily dependent upon the program that considered the economic needs of the people, and studied to find a remedy for the bad, and to build up the good.

Socialism’s Message to the Church. Socialism has been sneered at as being a “stomach philosophy.” There is ground for this criticism, for a great deal of socialism is purely materialistic; but the fact that it interests itself in the feeding of the people is not a serious fault. Socialism has emphasized many things that the church has failed to appreciate. Consideration of the food problems and of the economic basis of our civilization is something that the church cannot afford to ignore. The great mass of workers who are producing the food of the world are truly ministers to the needs of humanity.

The World of Rural Workers. Figures are dull or they would be marshaled here to show that the producers of the world’s food live in a world to themselves. There are many divisions in this world, and many cross-sections of the life of the people. That the rural church is not succeeding is evident. Its sons and daughters of the past generation are the leaders in the world of finance, art, commerce, and letters; but are the conditions within it to-day such that may produce sons and daughters to fill the places of those who are now occupying the positions of trust and honor? The call and the opportunity of the church are urgent in that great part of the world of work which produces the things that we eat. Shall those who feed others themselves be denied the bread of life? It is a call for leadership, for statesmanship, for planning, for devotion, for sacrifice, and for heroic service.

CHAPTER III
The World of the Spinners and Weavers

“Now when we cross this bridge, look north and you will see the soul of our city symbolized in brick and mortar.” These were the words of a business man who had taken an afternoon off and was showing his friend the wonders of a New England city that had grown up about the textile industry. The soul of the city, as he thought of it, lived in the huge mills lining the banks of the canal which runs through the city. When his friend looked, he saw more than the mills. He saw a road beside the canal paved with cobblestones and, on the other side, the company houses overshadowed by the mills and factories. The towers and huge smokestacks threw shadows that completely covered the houses where many of the workers lived.

So thoroughly is this city dependent upon the mills and their output that a brilliant writer in a recent work of fiction said of it, that if there were bridges and a portcullis you could easily think of their being raised to protect the mills against an invasion from the workers; just as in medieval times the feudal castles were protected by the moat and bridge. The bells in the many towers and the siren whistles of the mills call the people from sleep in the morning, telling them when to begin work and when to quit. Within the mills are long lines of machines set in parallel rows down which the workers easily pass. Each worker tends eight to twenty machines. Here is a broken thread to be tied, and there a new pattern to be set up. The clatter and roar of the machinery is unceasing. It is a part of the composite voice of labor that is sounding around the world. As the shuttles fly the finished fabric is rolled up ready for inspection, and, when passed, goes to the market, and later is made into garments.

It is a huge task to clothe the modern world. No one realizes how much it means until he looks into the work of the textile-mills which have grown up in our own and in other countries. Cities like Lawrence, Lowell, and Fall River, Massachusetts, are what they are because of their great factories. In these places they produce miles of cloth every week.

Men and Clothes. Of all the animals in the world man is the only one that provides himself with artificial covering. All the others have perfectly fitting coats provided by nature, and these coats are adapted to the conditions under which the individual animal is forced to live. Man calls in the help of plant and animal life to supply himself with clothing for his protection against the cold of winter and the heat of summer. He also uses clothing as an adornment. We have come to consider clothing as a badge of civilization and a mark of man’s superiority to all the other animals. Those races that pay the least attention to clothing are the lowest in the scale of civilization. Such races are found in South America, in Central Africa, and on some of the islands of the South Seas. There is scarcely a trace of civilization to be found among them. They have a kind of community life, but they live in a most primitive fashion. Their food consists chiefly of roots, plants, fish, and game which can be easily secured. They have rude shelters or crude huts; wear very little clothing; and their religion is a belief in witches and evil spirits. Where they have idols they are of the most hideous workmanship, representing in a most grotesque way bad influences and vicious passions.

The Materials. The first clothing man wore was made from the skins of animals and from the bark of trees. Later on it was learned that wool could be spun, and that by using crude needles cloth could be sewed together. Wool, silk, cotton, linen, paper, and many others materials have come into common use. All of these are produced by groups of people of whose working conditions we are in ignorance and whose very existence is unknown to most of us. Among civilized people the use of wool has grown to such an extent that the sheep-raising industry has become one of the biggest businesses in all sections of America. The sheep-herder lives a lonely life and yet rarely complains, and is never happier than when out in the fields with his charges. At shearing time the sheep are brought into a shed, and after a few futile struggles in an effort to escape the process, they sit quietly head up while the fleece is taken from them. When they go into the shed they are grimy gray; after the shearing when they leave it they are a light yellowish white. Thousands of people are employed in the wool industry; in securing the product, spinning it, weaving it into cloth, and making it into garments for our use.

Silk has been used for many centuries in the manufacture of garments. A Chinese legend tells of a wife of one of the early emperors of China who lived more than thirty-five centuries ago and who learned to make silk from the cocoon of the caterpillar. From this discovery has come a great industry. The caterpillar lives upon the leaves of the mulberry tree, and it has to be fed and tended with infinite patience. The process of gathering the cocoons and of preparing them for spinning is a business that can be learned only by years of apprenticeship. Caring for the caterpillar is a task that does not always appeal to people, and yet it is one that engages the attention of a large number of workers.

Cotton was first used in India, but its cultivation and manufacture developed in three continents at just about the same time. In a Vedic hymn written fifteen centuries before Christ reference is made to “the threads in the loom,” which indicates that the manufacture of cloth was already well advanced. Cotton was used in China one thousand years before Christ. It was held to be so valuable that a heavy fine was imposed upon any one who stole a garment or any piece of cotton cloth. Alexander the Great found cotton in use when he invaded India, and tradition says that it was he who introduced its use into Europe. In Persia cotton was exclusively used before the days of Alexander. Thousands of years before the invention of machinery for the making of cotton cloth Hindu girls were spinning cotton on wheels, making it into yarn, and using frail looms for weaving these yarns into textiles. The beauty of the fabric was so striking that they were known as “Webs of the Woven Wind.”

Cotton and History. Cotton has played a large part in the history of the United States. It was just one hundred years after the discovery of America that the first cotton plant was introduced into the land. The short-staple cotton plant did not mean much until 1814 when an enterprising New Englander assembled in one building the several processes of spinning and weaving. His shop at Waltham was the first complete cotton factory in the world. The South made the mistake of turning its attention to the planting of cotton and allowing the North to do the manufacturing. Cotton became an important factor only when the cotton-gin was invented. This was in 1833. When cotton became profitable, Negro slavery took on an added meaning. The value of cotton was really the factor that led men to demand that slavery should continue as a national institution.

Why Increase Production? Having secured the material suitable to be made into cloth the next step was to improve the process of manufacture. The first wool that was woven was rolled in the hand, made into threads, and woven in a very crude loom. The task was a tedious one, and the cloth was produced very slowly. But, as time went on, man by practise learned more about weaving. He had been weaving linen from flax in the days when the Pyramids were being built in Egpyt, but it was not until the power-loom was invented that cloth-making could be carried on as a profitable industry. Early man had just about all he could do to provide himself with food, shelter, and the clothes that he needed. To-day these things are provided in quantities sufficient for all and with little exertion. Hence, we find the basis for the division of labor. A machine for spinning cotton can produce enough thread in a very few hours to make clothes for the families of all the men who are interested in operating the machine. This thread is then turned over to the operator of the power-loom; the machinery is started and the cloth begins to roll itself up into a huge bundle. Very soon enough is produced to clothe all of those who are interested and occupied with this operation. The cloth is then turned over to the garment-makers and the process of fashioning the clothes is carried forward so that each individual has his or her part to perform; and in a very short time there are enough garments fashioned and finished so that all the garment-makers can be provided with clothes. Now comes the question that is so often asked. If there is plenty of clothing for everybody, why should some people not have clothes enough? If a man interested in the production of cloth makes more than enough for him to wear, why should he go on working? The answer to this is that, in the modern world, man must trade off his specialized product in order to satisfy his own needs and those of his family.

The Machine. The enterprise of clothing the world is made possible by machinery. Man has never produced more marvelous results than in the development of the intricate, huge, and costly machines which fashion the fabrics from which we make our clothes. These tools give man a thousand hands where before he had only two. If each person did only a moderate amount of labor the people of every country that employed machinery would be provided with all the necessities of life. A supply could be insured without overworking any one, and a few hours’ work each day would be enough. In that time all that is necessary for each individual would be produced. The machine, then, is the instrument that increases the possibility for leisure; by the multiplied productive power it increases the number of things that a man may have, and at the same time it enlarges his possibilities for leisure. We accept the machine as we accept the weather. As a matter of fact it is not at all certain that since the machine has been with us we have been any happier because of the enormous production of our times. The machine has carried on the divisions in our industrial life. The new methods and improved devices save labor, time, and energy. At the same time they increase the output. A man’s hand is no more mighty than it was centuries ago, but backed by the tireless energy of machinery he can with slight effort turn out a production that a story-teller would not have credited to the mightiest giants of mythology.

The United States Bureau of Labor tells the story in figures. Five hundred yards of checked gingham can be made by a machine in 73 hours; by hand labor it would take 5,844 hours. One hundred pounds of sewing cotton can be made by a machine in 39 hours; by hand labor it would take 2,895 hours. The labor costs are proportionate. The increased effectiveness of a man’s labor aided by the use of machinery, according to these reports, varies from 150 per cent. all the way up to 2,000 per cent. Hence, we see that the machine is not so much a labor-saving device as it is a production-making device. As has been said already, it is man’s energy and strength multiplied many times. The machine has become so potent that the question is, “What relation shall the created thing be to the creator?” The machine sets the pace. The man or woman working with it must follow. It is exacting, implacable, produces through long hours; is set up in the midst of high temperatures, and is utterly indifferent to the fate of the individuals operating it. It works at night, it works by day and under conditions which are humanly impossible; but human beings are forced to keep the pace. The textile cities of America with their rows of tenements are practically built by the machinery in the mills and factories. The system has grown up, and men and women are forced to adjust themselves to this system. The welfare and happiness of the individuals working at the machines are very likely to be matters of secondary importance to the value of the production of the machinery itself.

The Workers. At the present time in the United States there are about 1,000,000 people employed in all the textile industries and about $500,000,000 a year paid in wages. About one and three quarter billions is the total value of the production. The worker in these mills is a worker and little or nothing else. The struggle for mere existence takes so much of his time that he has slight opportunity and but small inclination to take part in any social or civic affairs. He usually lives in a tenement or in a barrack type of building provided by the company for which he works.

The Southern Mill Village. In the Southern mill towns the companies usually own all the houses in which the people live. These houses are generally one-story buildings with a porch extending along the entire front. All of them are alike, and most of them are painted gray or drab. The streets of the mill village are unpaved and in most places cut into gullies by the rains. In a few places running water, bathtubs, electricity, and other modern conveniences have been provided, but these are the rare exceptions. More often the houses are barren of all comforts, and living is reduced to the lowest possible terms. The mill village has ordinarily but one store and this is owned or controlled by the company. The food eaten by the people is of the simplest kind; corn bread, pork side-meat, and coffee make up the staples of diet. Nearly all the members of the family work in the mill. At an investigation made by a state commission in Atlanta, Georgia, one of the men testified that he, his wife, five of his children, and his wife’s sister all worked in the mill; there were three younger children who stayed at home, the oldest one of the three acting as housekeeper and nurse. The improvements that most people expect as a matter of course, such as fire-proofing, sanitary plumbing, lighting, heating, storage, bathing, and washing facilities are utterly unknown. If you spent a day in one of these mill villages, you would find one or two members in almost every family sitting on the porch of the house and away from work because of sickness. If a neighbor happens to pass, you would hear some such conversation as this: “Howdy? How are you feeling?” “Poorly, thank you, I have never felt worse in my life; my victuals just don’t seem to agree with me, an’ I just feel like I was of no account.” The vitality of the people is being sapped by the insanitary conditions under which they live. It was discovered some years ago that hookworm is the cause of the illness that has been preying upon these workers for generations. The dangerous worms thrive in the midst of filth. A clean-up of the village and the building of better homes almost certainly eliminates the disease and its cause.

The people of the mill village find most of their recreation in the near-by city. Nearly all of the principal Southern cities have a number of these villages contributory to it. In many a home the only piece of finery is the tawdry dress made up in what is supposed to be the latest style—certainly the most exaggerated style—and usually in the most striking colors. This is the Sunday dress of the young lady of the house. When she is ready for her day off in the city, her costume will be completed by the addition of a hat of the most marvelous and striking make and color.

The Motion-Picture’s Contribution. The motion-picture theater has been a godsend to the people of the mill village. Most of these workers are very ignorant. Hard living and incessant toil have deprived them of the opportunity of attending school, and even if there were the will to get an education, the schools have not been accessible in many instances; consequently, the people have merely the rudiments of an education, and many of them can neither read nor write. Hundreds of homes in these villages have no books except an almanac and a Bible. The needs of the workers are almost overwhelming, so that one hardly knows where to begin even to tell about the changes that must be made in a community before much benefit can be secured in the lives of the individuals. The motion-picture has brought to these workers scenes from the outside world and has enlarged their ideas of life. Any one can understand the lesson a picture teaches.

Copyright, H. C. White Company.

In the cotton-mills a worker is a worker and little or nothing else.

The motion-picture furnishes amusement and recreation, and it gives a glimpse of larger aims and new motives. The girls who dress up in their fine clothes and gaudy hats and go to the city whenever they have a chance are trying to express themselves. Inherently they have fine traits of character, but out of their ignorance and lack of experience they are unable properly to balance the proportion of color and style and make these to fit in with the facts of every-day life. There is no one to teach them; they are unable to go to dressmakers for advice, and the people with whom they associate admire the kind of finery that they wear. But when they see these pictures presented on the screen they get a chance to know how people in other places really live and act. As one girl said: “I only learned how to be a lady when I got to see ladies’ pictures at the movies.”

Improvements. Some of the mills have built model villages, have furnished good schools, churches, playgrounds, and other recreational features. There have been discouraging failures made in attempting to lead the people to accept the better things; but the failures are insignificant when compared to the successes that have been achieved by the companies that have really had the welfare of the workers at heart. One mill owner has put in the finest kind of equipment in the homes of the people. The hours of labor have been materially reduced: first they began with eight, now they have seven, and this reformer says that he believes that they will be able to reduce the hours still further and make the six-hour day the standard. He intends to put on four shifts of workers for each twenty-four hours and believes that he will get a better result than could be achieved even with the eight-hour day. It is interesting to note that this man, by paying higher wages than others and by reducing the hours of labor, has been able to secure permanence among his workers; and at this period when other mills are shorthanded, he has all the labor that he needs. “It is not philanthropy but good sense” is his way of defining the splendid work he is doing.

Workers in the Northern Textile Cities. In the Northern textile cities we find a different situation, for most of the workers live in tenements. The stores, shops, and theaters are built and operated with the demands of the workers, rather than their needs in view. In one of these textile cities the average wage is $11.25 a week. Consider the case of just one family living in this city under these conditions. The family lives in a tenement with barely room enough for the father, mother, two daughters, and a son. The mother is devoted to the home; the father is a loom-fixer in the mill and a member of the union. All attend the Congregational church on Sundays. This man has been able to send his children through grammar school. His wages are above the average for the kind of work he is doing. The two girls started work just as soon as they finished school. The son also went to work, but he was so tired of the town where he had always lived that he went to New York and secured a position there. Everything went well for many years, and the prospects, while not bright for the future, were not especially dark. Then trouble came. First, the father was sick, and his illness dragged on through the whole winter, but by spring he was able to go back to work. It was the beginning of the slack season, however, when he applied for his old position. He went to work, but the wages were not as good as they had been when he left. The daughters found that in order to have any society they had to spend more money for clothes. “You can’t expect us to dress in a dowdy fashion, for if we do we never will have any friends,” was their assertion. Ten dollars was the wage of one of the girls and eight dollars the wage of the other girl. This amount did not go very far toward supporting them and buying the necessary clothes, and gave but little chance for a good time. Nothing was left to help the family fund. Before the winter was over a strike was called and the father lost his position. The family now became dependent upon the funds of the union to which the father belonged and the small amount the girls could squeeze out of their wages.

The winter passed as do all other mundane things and the strike came to an end. Those who were members of the union were not allowed to come back. The managers of the mill proclaimed that they had won a great victory for democracy and that the mill should be operated strictly as an “open shop.” The father found that “open shop” meant a closed shop to him until he tore up his union card and promised not to join any other labor organization. This he did in order to go back to work. He was forced to it, but he never quite gained the confidence of the foreman, for he was a marked man. Added to the hard struggle for existence with its attendant worries there is an increasing feeling of bitterness in the heart of this man, because he knows that he is being discriminated against for his former membership in the trade union. The family lives on, as thousands of others in the neighborhood are doing, but there is hostility toward the factory and all it represents. Not all the workers in the mill have this experience. Some have managed to save, and by good fortune have been able to save enough so that they are fairly comfortable and independent, owning their homes and living in comparative ease, although very simply. We must not think for a moment that there is only one side to this life and that always a disheartening one. The challenging thing, however, is that the men and women who are actually operating the machines are nearly all living harassed lives, with a heavy burden of trouble and worry, and are not finding the pleasure that should come from work well done.

The Machine and Human Happiness. The machine has been hailed as a savior from trouble and want. It promised happiness and well-being to all mankind. This promise has not been fulfilled, for instead of the prophecy of the future being one of cheer growing out of the development of the machine, it is rather one of warning. The machine has subordinated the man; thrust him aside and denied him a fair share of the things he has helped to create. As one of our keen-minded writers has said, “The machine has developed a new kind of slave and doomed him to produce through long and weary hours a senseless glut of things; and then forced him to suffer for lack of the very things he has produced.”

The Church and the Factory. What about the church in the midst of the factory city? The minister is no longer the most important personage in town. The business man dominates the life of the community. The mill has pushed itself into the place of influence once held by the church. In one of the New England cities a factory has been built around three sides of one of the oldest established churches. The church still remains, embraced by this factory. It is a fit parable of the present situation in the mill town. The church has a place but industry holds the outstanding position.

One of the most interesting pieces of work undertaken in recent years was that of a pastor in one of the mill villages in Georgia. He built the church; put in club rooms and provided features that would appeal to the people. At first the cotton-mill owners were favorably disposed toward the undertaking. They supplied a portion of the money toward erecting the building, and made a regular contribution for the support of the enterprise. The rector of the church soon found that the young people did not attend the social functions as much as he had hoped that they would, and they were conspicuous by their absence from the Sunday services. Upon inquiry, in addition to the usual reasons given by people for not attending church, he found that it was principally the economic factor that was at work against the church. Low wages and long hours left the people without energy enough to take part in anything that had to do with their culture or spiritual welfare. The sad thing about it was that the minister soon found to his deep sorrow that even his questioning of the people was resented by the authorities, who began to refer to him as a trouble-maker and a busybody, and eventually he was forced to resign his church and leave the community.

How is the church going to meet this situation? The church must continue its helpful agencies, open its club rooms, offer opportunity for play, for service, and for worship. But it must do more than that, for it must be the champion of the people, help them to secure a fair degree of leisure, and then direct them in a wise spending of their leisure hours. Unless the church can do this, it can never be the instrument for leading men and women in these communities to accept Jesus as a personal Savior from sin.

CHAPTER IV
The World of the Garment Makers

Fifth Avenue in New York is one of the world’s great thoroughfares. Years ago it was devoted exclusively to residential purposes. The wealthy people built their homes along the lower end of the street. As the city grew, these people followed the avenue north until at the present time the finest homes in the city are located in the neighborhood of Central Park in the upper reaches of the street. Between Fourteenth Street and Washington Square there are now a number of business houses, two fine old churches, and a portion of the city that still retains the residential quality of dignity and worth. From Fourteenth Street to Fiftieth Street the avenue is given over almost exclusively to business. From Thirtieth Street to Fifty-seventh Street are found the finest shops and stores in New York City. Below Thirtieth Street this stately avenue, and the numbered cross streets for many blocks running east and west have been invaded by great skyscrapers known as loft buildings in which is being carried on the greatest garment-making industry in the world.

The workers in the garment trade in New York are nearly all Jews and Italians. At any time of the summer and winter thousands of these workers will be Found spending their leisure on the street between twelve and one o’clock. When the workers are free it is almost impossible to pass along the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue from Fourteenth to Twenty-third Street. This solid mass of men and women, all speaking a tongue that is unintelligible to American ears, pass round and round, back and forth, up and down, a resistless tide typifying the steady resistless rise of labor to a position in society where it must be considered.

These big loft buildings occupied by the garment-making industry have been constructed in recent years, and so rapidly have they been erected that the storekeepers and business men of upper Fifth Avenue have formed an organization and are exerting every effort “to save the avenue from this advancing tide of foreign workers.”

Press Illustrating Service.

When the workers are free it is almost impossible to pass along the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue from Fourteenth to Twenty-third Street.

Many shops and department stores have been forced to give way before the onward sweep of this enterprise. The area in New York occupied most exclusively by the garment workers is about a mile long and about one-half mile wide; in this district there are thousands of workers employed exclusively in making garments of one kind and another. The Garment Makers’ Union has a membership of 60,000. How much do we know about these workers? When the Triangle Shirt Waist Company’s loft caught fire and scores of girls were burned to death or killed by jumping from the building, the country was shocked, but up to that time we had not known that thousands of girls work every day behind closed and locked doors. We have almost forgotten the incident. Where was the factory? What was done about it? The girls were, however, our servants working at the task of furnishing us with clothes!

Fashion and Clothes. In the last chapter we considered the workers who produce the material from which clothes are made. The question that is still of vital significance to most of us is, how shall we make our clothes? “I have not a thing to wear,” is a very common statement, yet it does not mean what it says, for the people that use this complaint most frequently are the ones who have literally trunks full of clothes. What they mean is that they have nothing in the latest fashion. Fashion is a hard taskmaster. Some one has said that the length of the stay of a society woman at any hotel can be determined by the number of gowns she brings with her to the hotel. “She would no more think of wearing the same gown twice to the same place than she would think of insulting her best friends,” was a woman’s description of her companion to prove that she was a “real lady.” The frequent changes in style bring rich returns to the manufacturers of clothing and call for a ceaseless outgo by people who feel that they are obliged to follow the dictates of fashion. “I hate rich people,” said a little shop-girl. “For every time I see a woman wearing a fine dress I cannot help thinking how hard I work and how useless the dress is for any practical purpose.”

Dressmaking in the Home. Dressmaking was at one time carried on entirely within the family. It was a domestic employment. The only garments that were made outside of the home were men’s clothes, and the journeyman tailor was a skilled mechanic. He made the entire garment himself; but even in this industry very often the work was carried on in his home and all the members of the family assisted more or less.

The Sweat-Shop. The sweat-shop, in most cases, is a home that has been turned into a factory. The father or mother goes to the manufacturer of clothing and agrees to furnish so many pairs of pants or waists or shirts for so much money. The worker carries these garments to the home and all the family go to work upon the job. Many of these homes are one-room affairs, so that in many instances the work is carried on in the room where the cooking is done; where the meals are eaten and where the family sleeps. Legislation has done much to eliminate the sweat-shops, and sweating as a system is under the ban. Every church and every individual in the church ought to know all about the work of the National Consumers’ League. This organization inspects factories and workshops and issues a stamp or label that is attached to all garments made under clean, humane, healthful, and fair conditions. Information can be secured by writing to Mrs. Florence Kelly, 289 Fourth Avenue, New York. Look for this label when you buy any garment.

Low wages make possible the continuation of the sweat-shop system. In a family where the wage-earner receives less than enough for its subsistence, or for some reason or other the earnings are decreased to a rate at which the family cannot live, it becomes necessary to supplement the family income. Wife and children go to work, boarders and lodgers are taken into the home, and the standardization of living is so lowered that normal conditions of home life are impossible. In a study made of the garment trades it was found that in the homes where work is being done for a profit only about 11 per cent. of the husbands in these families earned $500 or more a year, while more than one half of them earned $300 or less a year.

The Task System. A study of conditions in the dressmaking industry was made by the United States government. The results of this study showed that we never can get back to the old state of affairs. We have entered into a new period of production and this must continue. The task system prevails in a large number of the garment-making shops. By the task system is meant that the work on a garment is done by a team of three persons consisting of a machine-operator, a baster, and a finisher. Every three teams have two pressers and several girls to sew on the pockets and buttons that are necessary for the completion of the garment. There is essentially a fine adjustment within the team, so that each one completes his work in time to pass it on to the next one as soon as the latter is ready to receive it. A certain amount of work is called a task, and this amount is supposed to be done within a day. Forced competition has gradually increased the amount of the task, until frequently even with the most strenuous activity the task cannot be completed without working twelve and fourteen hours a day. The wages paid are based upon the utmost that the best individual in the team can do in a day.

This system came in with the influx of the Jews into New York in the early eighties. These workers, with their intense desire to accumulate money, get on in the world, and then be emancipated from hard work, are peculiarly adapted to the system. Just as soon as a few of the workers save enough money they become proprietors of small factories. Another thing that enters into the situation is the characteristics of the people themselves. Jews are a restless race and resent the rigid routine and supervision of the factory, but the comparative freedom in a small shop under the task system appeals to their desires to get on in the world and gives them a degree of freedom which they cannot have under the factory system. The task system lends full opportunity for the cupidity of worker and owner to exploit other workers, and in the end every man in the shop comes to be looked upon as an opportunity for more profits.

The Modern Factory. Another stage in the evolution of the clothing industry is found in the factory itself. Just as the task system was an improvement over the sweat-shop in the home, so the factory is a big advance over the task system. The factory has grown very rapidly owing to the demand for tailor-made clothes, to the continual change in the styles, and to the large supply of cheap labor always at hand. In recent years the demand for men’s and women’s ready-made clothes has so increased that now large department stores which formerly sold only cheap grades of ready-made clothes are stocking up with expensive garments in order to cater to the class of customers who used to order their clothes directly from the custom tailor.

This movement toward standardizing the clothing industry aids the factory in overcoming the competition of the smaller shops. There is going on a sure but slow movement toward the elimination of the bad conditions in the garment trades, and the factories are increasing because people of even moderate means are demanding higher-priced and better-grade garments. “I got such a wonderful bargain to-day, you just ought to see the shirt-waists that are being sold for one dollar and seventy-five cents. Why, you couldn’t even buy the material for that price, to say nothing of the work and trouble of making it.” This is an accurate report of a conversation overheard on a street-car one evening. It sounds familiar to you, now, doesn’t it? When you got your bargain, did you ever consider the girls who work to make you that waist? The manufacturer is not alone responsible for bad conditions. It is impossible for him to pay good wages and continue in business unless he can sell his goods at a decent profit. If you force him to compete with the sweat-shop, you drive him out of business and subsidize the sweat-shop at the same time.

Our selfishness in desiring to get the best possible bargains makes us thoughtless partners of the exploiters of the men and women who are working to make our clothes. Progress costs money, time, and thought. We are all bound together and go forward or backward with the group. Next time you buy a dress or a suit, try to picture the girls and men who worked on it. Consider the hours of labor which they spent and the responsibilities that rest upon them; then figure against the price which you are paying a fair proportion of the cost for wages to these workers, and ask yourself would you be willing to make the garment for that price? If you would not, providing, of course, that you had the skill, you are not playing fair with your sister and brother who live somewhere and are being cheated out of a decent wage.

Groups by Races. The workers in the garment industries in New York live in groups made up not by industrial conditions or interests so much as by racial interests. The Jews tend to live in certain quarters of the city confined to themselves, and the Italians have their quarters also. As a family accumulates a little money, plans are made to move out of these sections in lower New York and to settle in different surroundings in the upper part of the city, on Lexington Avenue or in the Bronx.

Seasonal Work in the Garment Trade. In spite of the tremendous advance made in late years in these industries in matters relating to conditions of work, such as the eliminating of excessive overtime, shortening of the regular hours of labor, and raising rates or earnings, the matter of unemployment is still a serious problem. The garment trades are affected by seasonal demands. Everybody wants a new suit at just about the same time. “If I cannot have my spring suit by Easter, I would just as soon not have it at all,” was the complaint of a young girl whose family was trying to make retrenchments during war time. The improvement in conditions has been marked; but in no way has it been found practicable to lengthen the work season. And since payment by the piece is widely prevalent in the clothing industries, in the case of home workers a record of the time and the payment is not strictly kept, and statistics are not available.

Health Conditions. The health conditions among the workers in the garment industries show an interesting relationship to the wages paid and the method of payment. The United States Public Health Service, reporting on conditions among the garment-workers in New York City, states that the strain was more prevalent where wages were paid on the piece basis than by the week or other time basis. With the increased use of machinery another series of health hazards appears, according to this report. These are the result of fatigue and overstrain caused by the close application to the same process through long hours. The monotony of the work contributes to the bad industrial conditions. At its best the wage of the garment-worker is pitiably small. Among the girls, especially, there is keen competition. They cut one another down, and they underbid and undersell each other. The average wage paid barely affords a living. One little Italian girl in a recent shirt-waist strike in New York said, “Me no live verra much on forta-nine cent a day.” This wage of forty-nine cents it must be said is not usual, and is largely the result of the ignorance of the girl, but there are others like her who are forced to go to work unprepared and therefore are unable to earn a better wage.

In many communities there still lingers the employment of the women and children in home trades, making garments under sweat-shop conditions. The contractor who formerly depended for his living upon letting out his work to the sweat-shops has largely disappeared; but there are still many homes in which work is done and no serious attempt has been made as yet to reach the evils incident to it. Here the workers are driven by the pressure of poverty to labor under conditions and for wages that destroy life, and to work their children in the same manner. Here disease breeds and is passed on to the consumer.

A recent study of the home conditions shows that the worst abuses of child labor linger in this remnant of family work. No child labor law that has been passed in the United States seems to be adequate to the situation. To control this there must be a special provision made in the factory laws of each state regarding the work done by families in their own homes. Several of the states do provide in their laws that no work for pay shall be done in the homes except by the members of the families themselves. Other states provide that this work shall be done under certain conditions, and standards are required of the factory. Massachusetts issues a license to the family to do work in the home, and like New York, requires a “tenement made” tag attached to the article; also holding the owners of the property responsible for any violation of the law. At the Chicago Industrial Exhibition a picture was shown entitled “Sacred Motherhood.” It was that of a woman nursing her child and driving a sewing-machine at the same time. It was a terrible portrayal of unchecked, unregulated industry, which does not stop to reckon the effect upon the future, but imperils the well-being of both the mother and the child.

Labor Disturbances. The fundamental cause of the troubles in the clothing industry in Boston prior to the spring of 1913, was similar to that in the same industry in New York before their abolition by concerted action of the employers and employees in the spring of the same year. There have been serious disturbances in the garment trade in Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and other cities. The difficulty was right in the trade itself and many of the causes of discord will continue for some time to come.

Among these causes of disturbances are long hours, low wages, poor sanitary conditions, sub-contracting, unequal distribution of the work, work in tenement-houses, failure to state the standard price for piece-work, playing of favorites in the giving out of the work, lack of cooperation between the employers and the employees, prevalence of the piece-work system, and the difficulty of determining what shall be paid or what constitutes a just basis for computing hours and wages.

For instance, three girls work in one factory and are put upon work that is to be a test upon which a new wage is to be based. One of the girls is put to work upon a certain task in shirt-waists. They are made of thin material; the thread used is very fine and the stuff shirrs easily, so that it is almost impossible to make any speed. The second girl is put to work upon a pile of plain waists. The third girl has a still different task. Each girl at the beginning of the day has an equal amount of work to do. They all put in the same number of hours and expend approximately the same amount of energy; but at the end of the day one of the girls has finished her task, the other has probably two hours’ work to do on the day following, while the third girl, the one who was working upon the thin waists, has more than a day’s work ahead of her. It will be readily seen that it is almost impossible to determine what pay would be a fair price for making shirt-waists, or for doing any part of the work connected with the making of these garments unless a different and more equitable basis of reckoning is established.

Cost and Selling Price. Another matter that enters into the situation and complicates it is the fact that there is a different selling price put on each garment. Of course, we must all recognize that wages cannot be made except in proportion to the selling price of the garment. No business can be run unless it is able to make enough on its products to pay a decent wage. The cost of production, including the cost of materials, a fair price for the superintendent, and a proportion of the general overhead cost of the factory must be charged against each garment, together with a proportion of the interest on the investment and the approximate cost of the wear and tear on the machinery. Add to this the cost for advertising and marketing the garment. All of these things have to enter into consideration, and the wages must be determined by the amount of money that will be received for the finished garment. Now, how are we to bring about a just settlement of this vexed question? There is only one way in which it can be done, that is, by bringing the workers themselves into partnership with the firm. Just as long as the destiny of the worker is in the hands of the foreman and there is no chance for these workers to be heard, or to have any voice in the decisions that are made, so long there will be fruitful cause for trouble.

Arbitration. The experience of the Massachusetts Board of Arbitration warrants the conclusion that there is a proper and very useful sphere of activity for a permanent State Board of Arbitration. A number of questions arise from time to time in almost all trades which do not require a detailed knowledge of the industry on the part of the arbitrating body. There are, for example, questions of discharge in alleged violation of a clause in an agreement covering discharges. There are certain other controversies which both sides are willing to have decided by the application of standards which are matters of fact ascertainable upon investigation. For instance, in many piece-price controversies, both sides are willing to have the questions decided on the basis of what competing manufacturers pay for the same operations under similar working conditions; but each is unwilling to accept the figures presented by the other side in support of its contention. This has been done by the Massachusetts Board in the boot and shoe industry, and recently in a textile case. The Arbitration Board should be given all the powers in the way of compelling the attendance of witnesses and testimony under oath, and the production of books and papers, which it requires to secure the information necessary to reach a decision.

The Religious and Social Problems. Twenty-five per cent. of all the effort put into the processes of industry and commerce is concerned with the supply of clothing. Most of the clothing is made under conditions which determine the life and welfare of such a large proportion of the people that we find in the garment-making industries themselves a distinct and definite challenge to the religious and social agencies. There are some fundamental considerations which must be borne in mind and which will help us to see the problem as it affects the workers. Most of those in the garment trades are foreigners unused to our way of thinking. At noon on Fifth Avenue and again at night as the workers leave for their homes, the newsboys sell papers printed in Yiddish characters almost exclusively, and only a few English papers are sold for several blocks below Twenty-third Street. In religious matters the garment-workers represent three groups: those who are devoted to the faith of their fathers and who are Jews in the truest sense of the word; those who have drifted away from the old faith in the rush of life in America, and, antagonistic to the domination of the Roman Catholic faith, have not been attracted or won by the Protestant faith; and a third class composed of those who are bitterly hostile to all religions because of the corruption of the church as they view it, because of the social injustice of which they are the subjects, and which is identified in their own minds with the church and religious leaders.

It is an interesting thing to visit a social center in either Boston or New York. Ford Hall or Cooper Union serves as a good illustration. Here the majority of the people are Jews, radical through and through. They are intelligently awake and thoroughly skeptical. The Bible is not an open book to many of these people, and they have not learned to read history or current events with an open mind. Social conditions and economic pressure make it almost impossible for them to render a straight and just judgment. They have monstrous misconceptions of Protestants and the Protestant religion, for they see for the most part only the worst side. America means to them, instead of freedom, hope, and independence, only extortionate profiteering.

The Gospel for the Garment-workers. How can we overcome this prejudice? How can we give these people an adequate and intelligible interpretation of the gospel? We must respect their faith. It will not solve the problem to make proselytes of a large number of our new Jewish citizens. We need to be definite, concrete, and practical, and to leave controversial matters and philosophical discussions out of the situation. We need to cultivate more reverence in our American churches, and a finer regard for the associations and experiences of the past of these people. As these words are being written, I can see from my window the tower of a church surmounted by a cross. It is the Judson Memorial Baptist Church on Washington Square. Sunday after Sunday there are gathered together large groups of people. Most of them live under sordid, cramped conditions, but they find in this church a ministry that appeals to them. The church is more interested in making good Americans out of these people, and in interpreting America to them than in securing their membership in the church. And rightly this church is justified in its attitude. By ministering to the people it is gaining their allegiance to the principles of Christianity as it could in no other way.

To sum up the chapter, the making of garments, like other industries we have considered, is highly specialized. It has been taken out of the hands of the American group. The old-fashioned dressmaking and tailor shops have given way to the huge lofts where many factories are turning out clothing for men, women, boys and girls in large quantities. The workers are all city dwellers. They are all foreigners, most of them Jews, with a large intermingling of Italians. To meet their needs and to interpret the gospel to them the church must first of all come to know the conditions under which they live. It must create a public opinion that will demand an adjustment of the difficulties in the trade itself and then in the homes of the people. In the community in which they live it must show that the members of the Protestant churches are the best of friends and neighbors.

CHAPTER V
The World of the Miners

According to the old Greek story Prometheus stole fire from heaven and thus drew upon himself the anger of the gods, because with fire he was able to work miracles and do wonders that rivaled the gods themselves. The metals of the earth are the instruments in the hands of man for accomplishing the material wonders that mark our time. Our age has been rightly termed the steel age, but, as we shall see in subsequent chapters, this period has its important and unique character only because man knows how to use fire, and because he has coal at his command.

The Riches of the Earth for Man. It is not surprising that the ancient Hebrews taught that God made everything for the benefit of the human race, and that man was the child of his supreme favor, for in every place over the entire earth are found the things essential to man’s happiness and comfort. Even in the most desolate regions, with very few exceptions, a man is able to make his way against adverse elements. The most valuable minerals are coal, iron, copper, zinc, lead, gold, and silver. Of course there are many others that are mined and used extensively. The supply of coal produced for 1916 in the United States alone was 67,376,364 tons of anthracite coal and 502,518,545 tons of bituminous coal. During the first nine months of 1917 the mines produced 57,778,097 tons of anthracite coal, which is an increase of 7,847,681 tons over a similar period in 1916, or an increase of about 16 per cent.

In the United States the absolute necessity for coal was never felt so keenly as during the winter of 1917–18, when the Fuel Administrator shut down all the business places for five days and declared workless Mondays as a measure of relief. The war has demanded extraordinary measures, and these have been taken with a vigor and decision that have been really startling. The call for metals made by the warring nations has been so great that mining is now carried on at a furious rate. One of the Western mining papers uses as a slogan, “Get the ore while the prices are high.” The reason that the Germans hold so stubbornly to northern France is because of the rich coal and iron mines in the region. For years following the war there will be an extraordinary demand for an increased output of coal, iron, copper, and zinc, in fact, for all of the metals. The task of rebuilding the areas will demand not only ingenuity, but all the resources of all the nations combined.

Copyright, Underwood and Underwood.

We forget the men who are toiling underground.

The Producers of Coal. You have no doubt seen the women and children with their baskets picking up coal along the railroad tracks on the edge of the city. That small basket of coal will probably be all the fuel that many of them have. It is a common sight to see the little foreign boys bringing home packing-boxes and the lids of boxes that they have begged from the stores to take the place of the coal they cannot get. Those among us who live in steam-heated apartments, or in communities near the coal-fields or wooded areas, do not realize what a constant struggle is required on the part of the poor people in the cities to keep coal enough in the stove to prevent the family from freezing. “The only times I was really warm enough last winter,” said a Slovenian woman in Chicago, “was when I went to church, and then I had to keep my head muffled up.” It was said of a group of Italians in Boston, “The men go to the saloon, the women to the church, both for the same purpose,—to get good and warm.”

Just as we sometimes fail to realize how many people are working for us to make our clothes or to produce our food, so we forget the men who are toiling underground to dig the coal and mine the iron upon which we are so dependent for our every-day living. The city dweller especially is dependent upon the supply of coal that comes to him through retail sources, but in order to bring that coal to the city there has been a long line of workers, each one putting his hand to the task of producing the necessity.

Where the Coal Is Mined. If you should visit the coal-mining community, you would first of all be impressed with the desolation of the place. The village is an ugly, straggling affair with nothing to add to its beauty or hide its deformities. Nearly all the houses are built alike, two and three rooms being the average size. In all probability not one painted house is to be found in the whole town, unless possibly it is the front of a saloon on the main street. In many of the old-time mining communities the fronts of the saloons were all painted blue. Whether or not this was done to match the color of the patrons’ noses, no one seems to know. The fences are of rough pickets and so broken and out of repair that, as one person visiting the coal town for the first time said, “The pickets look like broken teeth in an old, dried-up skull.” There are very few flowers or gardens, and the deep black mud of the winter-time, the black smoke, and the dust of the dry season during the summer deepen the sense of desolation one feels in the midst of these villages. The schoolhouse is a poor one-room affair; and if there is a church, it has a weak organization and is housed in a building that is little if any better than the average in the community. Very few coal-mining towns in Colorado have a church of any kind. The Home Missions Council looked into this matter some years ago and reported extensively its investigations.

The Cœur d’Alene mining district of northern Idaho is rich in ores, but poor in cultural and religious opportunities for the people. In a region lying along the north fork of the Cœur d’Alene river there are half a dozen small towns where there is not a church, and it is rarely that a minister visits the region.

The Mining Areas. Never before have the common necessities of life seemed so important as they do now. Canada produces large quantities of minerals, the chief of which is copper. The production for 1916 of all the minerals was valued at $177,417,574. The coal and principal metals produced in Canada, with their respective amounts for the year named, are as follows:

To transport this amount of coal (the smallest tonnage of all) there would be required 482,056 freight-cars. This would make a train almost 4,000 miles long, a distance greater than from Nova Scotia to British Columbia.

The mining areas in the United States are fairly well defined. Practically all of the anthracite coal comes from central and northern Pennsylvania, only a little being mined in Colorado. The largest bituminous coal-fields are found in Virginia, Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee, southeastern Kansas, southwestern Missouri, Colorado, Alabama, and some in the west-central part of Pennsylvania. Iron is mined in the northeastern part of Minnesota, northwestern Wisconsin, upper peninsula of Michigan, Tennessee, Georgia, western Pennsylvania, and in southeastern Kansas. The copper regions are in the upper peninsula of Michigan, Arizona, and northern Idaho. The chief lead district is the Joplin district of southwestern Missouri. This region is matched in large measure by the Cœur d’Alene of northern Idaho. Lead and zinc are almost always found together. Gold and silver are mined on the Pacific Coast, and in Colorado, and northern Idaho. Some gold is found in all of the Rocky Mountain states and small amounts in Georgia. There is scarcely a state in the Union but what produces to a greater or less amount all of the metals that go to make up the mineral wealth of the United States.

The Miners of King Coal. Coal is mined in three ways: by sinking a shaft and then running tunnels out from it following the vein of the coal; by driving a tunnel straight into the heart of the mountain; or by scooping it up with a steam shovel and loading it into cars. The first two methods are used in all the mines of Colorado; the latter method is used in the mines in southeastern Kansas and southwestern Missouri. In a mine where the shaft is sunk the hoist is directly over the mouth of the pit. The cages are just like elevators and drop to the bottom of the pit; there the loaded cars are pushed upon them and at a signal the car is brought to the top of the superstructure above the mine known as the tipple. The car is unloaded automatically and runs back upon the cage, and is lowered into the mine as the second car is brought up to the surface very rapidly. At the bottom of the mine and following it out along the vein of coal there are little railway tracks. The cars on these tracks are pulled by mules. Some mines have electric cars, but the mule is still the motive power in general use. These mules are sentenced to the mines for life. Stables are made for them by digging a cave in one side of the main shaft or tunnel, and here in the underground mine the mule lives, moves, and has his being. Sometimes the animals are brought to the surface and turned out to pasture. It is really pathetic to see with what joy they accept the light, air, and freedom of God’s good world above ground.

The only light in most of the mines is that given off from the little lamps carried on the caps of the miners. It is a weird sight to walk through a mine and see the bobbing lights; to catch the sound of pick and shovel in the tunnels that cross and recross each other at intervals; to hear the creak of the wheels, the slamming of the doors; and to see the mules as they strain at their task like phantom engines hauling the loaded cars of coal. When the men go to work in the morning, they are checked in and let down in the cage; when they come up they are checked out. In the morning when they check in they are white; at night they are black. Thus the color line is completely eliminated by working in a mine. The work is done in little rooms or pockets. Each miner has to work out his own room. He drills the hole, puts in the charge of powder; and when he has everything in readiness, fires the charge that brings down the coal; then he and his partner (for two men work together, one is called the miner, the other is known as the buddy) shovel the coal into the cars, and push them out into the main line of the mine tramway track. The miner and his buddy may be both white men, or the miner may be a white man and the buddy a Negro. They look alike as they work in the semi-darkness and the common tasks eventually make them appreciate each other for what they are and what they do.

The miner has to follow the vein. He must put in the braces to protect himself against the falling roof, must remove all the stone and slate, and mine only clean coal. This he shovels into his car. It is weighed and tagged, tally is kept, and at the end of the day he is credited with so many tons and is paid accordingly. When the vein is thick and the miner can stand upright, his work is hard and monotonous enough; but when the vein is thin, it is necessary for him to stoop or to lie down in order to get the coal. This makes the work hard almost beyond human endurance. It is no wonder that mining greatly affects the character of the men involved in it. No one can spend eight or ten hours underground every day doing that kind of work without having the place and the work stamp itself upon his mind and his character. Life underground spoils even the temper of a mule!

Accidents. Mining develops the spirit of adventure. There is always a risk. Mining is a dangerous operation and is classified as extra hazardous. There is continual danger from falling stones, and the miner is always gambling with fate. A study of the coroner’s report in any country where mining is carried on supplies concrete evidence that a large number of men are killed in the mines from one cause and another. There is the danger from the deadly carbon-monoxide gas and another danger from the explosion of the coal-dust. As the coal is mined a certain proportion of it is ground into powder, and this fills the air and becomes a powerful explosive. Precautions are taken in most cases. The mines are sprinkled and state and national governments have done much to make mining safe, but at the best the occupation claims an unusually heavy toll in life and limb.

According to statistics regarding deaths of miners during the years 1907 to 1912, it is shown that 23.2 out of every hundred died from accidents; and among the metalliferous miners 24.7 per cent. of all deaths were caused by accidents. A great many industrial accidents are due to failure on the part of the management to make proper provision against accident, and to keep abreast with the increase in efficiency of the machinery and output in the matter of precautionary measures. Also it is now known that industrial accidents are caused by excessive fatigue, carelessness, and ignorance on the part of the workers themselves. Taking all of these things into consideration, however, we must realize that a large proportion of the accidents and fatalities in the coal-mines are inherent in the business itself.

Returns for Labor Received by the Miners. Coal has to be dug where nature put it. Therefore, the mining village is almost certain to be located in a desolate region, and thus the miner and his family will be denied many of the good things that other people enjoy, because of the conditions under which they are compelled to live. We hear a great deal about the enormously large wages paid to the miner. Unfortunately this condition is not true; for the stories we hear of the big wages the miners receive are very largely fictitious. In the Colorado mines it is shown by actual study of the statistics taken at the time of the last great strike in 1914, that the average wage for the miner when actually employed was $4.58 a day; but other figures given at the same period show that other miners were paid an average wage of only $2.61 a day. It is impossible to get at the facts as to wages.

The miner is forced to buy his powder, oil, pay doctor’s fee, blacksmithing charges, union dues, and other expenses. These are deducted, so that the wage is reduced to the point where perhaps not more than one per cent. of the entire number of workers receive as much as $25 a week. In fact, the wage is so small compared to the difficulties of the work and the hardships of living, that the miner finds it almost impossible to move freely in order to better his condition. The result of this situation has been that, whereas formerly nearly all the miners were English-speaking men, they are now practically all non-English-speaking immigrants. In the camp at Ludlow, where the miners lived after they and their families were driven out of their homes in Colorado during the strike of 1914, there were twenty-two nationalities, and they were living together in some sort of amity.

Workers in the Metal Mines. The workers in the metal mines have a problem different from that of the workers in the coal-mines. The copper country of Michigan located on Lake Superior in the upper peninsula is the most famous metal-producing region of the United States. These mines have been operated for half a century; and for the most part a humane policy has been followed and, consequently, the cities and towns in the region have developed some civic pride, and have an unusually high reputation for orderliness and morality. There are very few of the bad features which one is accustomed to find in such communities. The district has approximately forty-two mines and the products from these mines amount to fifty million dollars a year. The shafts of these copper mines are the deepest holes that have ever been dug in the earth as far as we know. The “Red Jacket” mine is almost a mile and a quarter deep. The shaft of a copper mine is pierced every one hundred feet by levels or tunnels. The trams run in these levels to the chambers where the rock is cut and are known as stopes. Drills are operated by compressed air; the miner bores the holes, places the dynamite charge in readiness, and touches off the charge as he leaves his work at the end of the shift. The broken rock is picked up during the next shift, loaded into the tram-cars by the trammer, and then dumped into the skip or little car by means of which it is raised to the surface.

Press Illustrating Service.

The new U. S. Bureau of Mines Rescue Car is manned by a mining engineer, a mine surgeon, a foreman miner, a first aid miner, and a clerk.

In the Cœur d’Alene field the process of mining in the lead and zinc mines is very much the same as that in the copper mines of Michigan. The Cœur d’Alene region of northern Idaho is a district in itself. It might almost be called a province, it is so extensive. The drills that are used by the miners are protected in some cases by a stream of water which pours off the end of its point as it comes in contact with the rock. This prevents the dust from flying and being breathed by the worker. These drills are just now being introduced. The old-fashioned drill had no such protection and is called by the miner the widow-maker, because of the gruesome effect on the worker.

Wages. The wages in the Calumet district as well as in the Cœur d’Alene section are not, and never have been, adequate to the needs of the men, nor are they proportionate to the returns received from the work that these men have been doing. Wages must be considered on the basis of comparative value. The type of the worker, however, and the risks incurred, and the opportunity for improving the worker himself must all be taken into account. When we remember the enormous profits made on the metals, especially within the last few years, we will find that the increase in the wages of the men has not been enough to meet the increased cost of living. Wages have advanced about 20 per cent. and living expenses 140 per cent. Some welfare work is being undertaken in almost all of the mining communities. But welfare work cannot supplement poor wages, nor does it do away with the feeling of unrest always present in the community and which threatens to break out in rebellion and throw the whole district into disorder.

The Church and the Miner. The pastor of the miners’ church told the story of the desolation in the life of his people. He said: “There are no chances for cultural work. When I talk about the higher life the people listen to me as if I were giving a lecture on Mars. It is something that is more or less interesting because I am able to make it interesting, but there is no special personal interest in it. All of my people live in this desolate and isolated village. There is nothing attractive anywhere around. The superintendent and a few of the English-speaking workers live five miles away in a place that calls itself a city. There are five other villages like mine; no one from the other places ever comes here except on business. Every Saturday night most of the men go to the ‘city.’ On Saturday, or pay-day evening, the stores, amusement places, saloons, and the principal streets of that center are filled with a heterogeneous mass of people of all races and there is a regular babel of tongues. The destroying forces work havoc with my people. Now what can I do to meet the conditions?” Listening to him I wondered and went away still wondering. In these places where men are working to produce the coal for us, and the metals that form the foundation-stone of our civilization, there must be something more than merely the touch of charity; there must be worked out a plan by which true brotherhood may become a reality. We are accepting the gift of these men, the things that they produce at such risk, and we are forgetting the men themselves. They are serving our interests and we have a responsibility for them, but what are we doing to meet the situation?

At the close of the Colorado coal strike a plan was inaugurated for bettering conditions throughout the state. This plan has much to commend it to the public favor. It is not wholly democratic and it has many features that can be criticized. Even viewed in the best light it fails to solve the fundamental difficulties in the situation—but it is a long step ahead of anything that has ever been done before. One of the miners, while discussing the plan, said: “It is all right as far as it goes. The best thing about it is that the company promises to allow us to join our union. When we get the district organized 100 per cent. we will put some real democracy into the plan.”

The features of the plan may be stated broadly in these four propositions:

First of all, the men working the mines are to be recognized as partners in the enterprise and are to have a voice in the management of the mines. They elect their representatives who meet with the representatives of the company and together they work out their own problems.

Second, the bad conditions which are chronic in the mines and which have disturbed the peace are to be corrected as far as possible.

Third, the physical conditions in the village are to be improved. Better houses are to be built and they are to be painted. Provisions are made so that the miners can have gardens.

Fourth, special arrangements are made for the establishment of better schools, Young Men’s Christian Association with club privileges, and help is given in organizing and maintaining churches and other religious agencies.

All of these things point to a better day that is coming, and is a great advance over the attitude taken by the old-time mine owner who replied to a committee which warned him of impending trouble, “Let them start something if they want to find out who is boss.”

The battle has not been won, and will not be won, until the church makes a demand for industrial justice its chief object, and makes democracy really applicable in every mining district and community throughout the whole nation.

CHAPTER VI
The World of the Steel Workers

“The sky-line of your cities is the monument of your civilization.” These words summed up the impression of an Oriental visiting America for the first time. He had seen everything of America that could be shown during his two months’ visit. Boards of trades in the various cities entertained him. Figures concerning miles of pavements, hundreds of miles of trolley lines, millions of dollars in the various banks, thousands of bales of cotton, millions of tons of coal, iron, steel, potatoes, rice, wheat, corn, and all the rest of the things that go to make America great had been quoted to him. He was apparently impressed by what he saw but did not become enthusiastic, and accepted every statement with becoming politeness. No one could tell what moved him most. When he summed up his total impressions and expressed his opinion, it showed that he had really formed a most exact judgment of that which makes the true material basis of our national life. The skyscraper building is the only important contribution that America has made to the art of architecture. This structural development, which is so truly American, has been made possible only because we have learned how to use steel for the framework of the gigantic construction.

The Steel Industry. Interesting statistics as to the extent of the steel industry have been compiled. The United States and Canada together produce about half of the world’s output. According to the last figures, there are employed in the iron and steel industry of this country 1,426,014 workers. At the present time the capacity of all the shops is taxed to the utmost and hundreds of new factories have been erected. Canada and the United States are cooperating in the production of ships. The huge bridge works are giving over all of their machinery and time to the building of new boats to carry men and food in support of the Allied armies in France.

The Use of Steel. Steel is made by melting iron and combining it with a certain proportion of carbon. The softest grade of steel contains less than one per cent. of carbon, the hardest contains about thirty per cent. Iron furnishes almost every useful thing that is necessary to our life in the community. When we have food and clothes, we are then ready to take up the routine of living a part of the common life of our city or town. Iron is used extensively in building our homes. The house is held together with nails made of iron; its plumbing, its lighting, its heating are all made possible by the use of steel.

Possibly the building in which we work is a steel building, if not, it may be made of reenforced concrete and this form of construction is dependent upon the use of iron. The product toward which we are contributing our industry, whatever it may be, is dependent upon commerce, transportation, and communication; and these great branches of activity are dependent upon steel. Iron can be melted and cast into a thousand different shapes. It is used to make the most simple kitchen utensil and the largest and most complicated machinery. Again, it is melted in larger quantity, combined with carbon, and put through the rolling-mills. By this process it may become steel rails, or be made into plates and huge sheets that form the protective outer skin of the great ships of war. It is rolled out thin and corrugated to be used as sheeting for houses, and sides of freight-cars, and roofs of houses; or it may issue in things as delicate as knitting-needles or the finest springs which form the adjustment and motive power in the most costly watches. It is used in the construction of buildings that tower up hundreds of feet above the level of the street, and is the only thing that has been found so far that can be used successfully for such a purpose. At the same time this most necessary substance is formed into pliable rope and used to draw the miner and the minerals he mines from the depths of the earth, and to keep the elevators running up and down in hotels, office buildings, and apartment houses. The finest cambric needles are first cousins to the great guns with which the Germans were able to shell Paris from a distance of seventy-five miles.

The advance in recent years in invention and new processes as applied to the manufacture of steel has brought about more changes in the industrial life of the world than any other thing. The cities of the future will all be steel cities. We have already built our cities twice—once of wood and once of brick—and we are now building them of steel. An advertisement in a hotel in a Middle-Western city reads: “This hotel is built without a stick of wood. We could roast an ox in the room next to yours and never disturb you.” Steel mesh is replacing lath in ceilings, and ornamental steel ceilings are replacing plaster. In subway systems quantities of steel have been used for tunnels; the elevated railroads are prolonged bridges. Williamsburg Bridge between New York and Brooklyn cost $20,000,000, and 45,000 tons of steel were used in its construction. One pound in every ten of all the steel manufactured is made into wire. The Brooklyn Bridge cables have each 6,400 strands of wire. Other wires made of steel have approximately a dimension of one tenth the thickness of a hair. A carpet tack is an insignificant sort of thing, but one factory in Chicago produced 3,000,000 pounds of these tacks in a year. Steel goes into furniture, is made into barrels; utilized in art work, so that the value of common iron when refined and drawn out to the highest possible utility makes steel the most precious of all metals to-day. Watch-screws cost $1,600 a pound and hair springs twice this amount.

McGraw-Hill Company.

Commerce and transportation are dependent upon steel, and to-day there are employed in the iron and steel industry of this country, 1,426,014 workers.

The Making of Steel. The workshop of civilization is now on the west side of the Atlantic because of the vast manufacturing establishments producing steel on this side of the ocean. The so-called Bessemer process in making steel has brought about a change that is almost as revolutionary in its far-reaching results as any of the great revolutions in the past. Within thirty years American resources have been developed, and American methods have been reorganized with such amazing rapidity that the United States has to-day, together with the natural advantage, the means at hand for utilizing its almost inexhaustible supplies of fuel and iron. The world needs these supplies and America is glad that she is able to do her part in supplying them.

Steel has been made for centuries, but until a few years ago, the process was slow and costly, and the tools with which the men worked were really treasures. In those days a pocket-knife was a thing of great value. The railroads used iron rails but these soon wore out. If it had been suggested that steel be used a protest would have been made on the grounds that steel is too expensive. Trains had to be shortened; coaches and locomotives built of light material because iron rails and bridges could not stand the strain. As land in the cities became more valuable and taller buildings were needed, stone and brick not proving adaptable and too expensive, the Bessemer process, which manufactured steel cheaply and in great quantities, came to meet a long-felt need. Iron was plentiful but the process of converting it into steel had not been mastered. The great difficulty in manufacturing steel is to get just the right proportion of carbon mixed with the iron. The Bessemer system takes all the carbon out and then puts back into it the quantity that is needed. Tons of molten iron are run into an immense pear-shaped vessel called a converter. Blasts of air are forced in from below. These unite with the carbon and the impurities such as sulphur and silicon are destroyed. There is a roar and clatter and a terrific din. A great bolt of red flame shoots forth many feet from the mouth of the converter. Its color changes from red to yellow and then to white. When the flame becomes white the workers know that the carbon and other impurities are all gone; and this is the signal for the blast of air to be turned off. Then a quantity of special iron ore in melted form, containing the right amount of carbon to convert the whole into steel of the desired degree of hardness, is poured into the purified molten iron in the converter. This huge converter is perfectly poised upon pivots so that it can be moved with very little effort. The molten steel at the next stage is poured from the converter into square molds and the blocks resulting from it are called blooms. These are then started through the mill, passed under and between rollers of different shapes and kinds, and drawn out into plates, rails, or beams.

The Steel Factory or Rolling-mill. One of the foremost pictures in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is a picture of a steel-mill. It seems to be a prosaic subject but it makes an appealing picture, and one typical of our modern world. Some one has described a steel-mill as a modern materialization of Dante’s Inferno. The sky above Pittsburgh, Birmingham, and other steel centers is aflame at night as the process of manufacturing is carried on in the miles of buildings that contain the workers and the machinery. To step into one of these steel factories even in broad daylight is to step out of the world of reality into the semi-reality of a new and unknown world. Most of the men work stripped to the waist. The long ribbons of red hot steel writhe and twist about the length of the room. The jangle of chains mingles with the creaking of the machinery above our heads. The sparks are flying and a bluish haze hovers about the heads of the men like some unholy halo as they move back and forth appearing as gnomes in the unnatural light of the place. There is a peculiar odor that we instinctively associate with the blacksmith shop that used to stand at the side of the street on the way between our house and the butcher shop where we used to be sent every day for the meat for dinner. Everything moves with feverish haste. No one lags. Every man knows his task and does it. He must keep up.

The days are unusually long in the steel-mills. It used to be that the men worked twelve hours a day and seven days a week. This has been changed now in most of the mills, but even yet there is a great deal of twelve-hour work and a great deal of Sunday labor. The rumble of the cranes above the heads of the gnome-like men at work in the building fills our ears with an unearthly sound. The peculiar glare of the gigantic open hearth changes at frequent intervals as the white cascade of molten metal announces the beginning of the shaping process of the new rail or the new plate for some new man-of-war, or the beam that is to live for centuries in some skyscraper. These men working in this mill are kneading the metal into shape, for as it goes under the rollers it is pressed and twisted until the final process is completed.

Accidents. If it was a lucky day when we visited the steel-mill there were no serious accidents. Men are being continually hurt in the works. A report concerning one says: “John Schwobboda and Joseph Mikelliffyky were standing near one of the hearths. Something went wrong, and instead of the steel coming out in an orderly stream it broke out and before these two could get away they were caught in the midst of the stream and absorbed by the burning metal.” This thing has happened many times. The percentage of deaths due to accidents and injuries during the last ten years among soldiers and sailors of the United States has been about twelve to the thousand; in the same period with the workers in the steel-mills it has been about sixteen to the thousand.

Wages and Conditions of Labor. The toil is strenuous and the hazards great; the hours are long and the product is of almost incalculable value. What do men get out of it? They are the servants of civilization and without them we would have no such trade as we have to-day, we would have no commerce and no progress. Steel is king. When the price of steel is up to normal, times are good; when the price of steel is down, times are bad. A Pittsburgh man said that steel is the elevator which carries civilization, “The world goes up or goes down with the price of steel rails.” The workers are the subjects and the slaves of this king. They are giving their lives as well as their time in fealty to him. Yet how little the average person knows of the lives of these men.

A genius for mathematics has estimated that if the 587 rolling-mills in the United States were set end to end in a circle around Pittsburgh it would be 100 miles in diameter. Inside of this circle can be formed another circle three quarters as large if we set end to end the 532 smaller steel-mills and 3,161 puddling furnaces, where the iron is first melted and made into bars called pigs. There are 577 open-hearth works, or factories that manufacture steel by another process much slower than the Bessemer, but having certain advantages because the process does not have to be carried on so rapidly. These works would make a third circle 50 miles across. The 410 other furnaces of various kinds would form a fourth circle 35 miles in diameter. If all the Bessemer converters were made into one great big converter and put in the center, it would be a mile in circumference and would pour a river of molten steel every hour.

The furnaces are fed literally mountains of ore every year. The families dependent upon the iron and steel trade for their living, if gathered together, would form a state more populous than Illinois. The steel business thinks its own thoughts, prints its own literature, and very largely makes its own laws. There is no trade on the face of the earth equal to it. The results of the present world war hang in the balance. The needs come back definitely to the steel industry. If we can get more workers we can get more steel. If we get more steel, we can build more ships, and if we can get more ships, we can get more soldiers, more ammunition, and more food with which to fight the war for democracy.

The year 1916 was the most prosperous one which the American steel trade has ever known; manufacturers especially were driven to the limit of their capacity. The purchases amounted to startling proportions. Wages were increased so that the workman shared in a measure in the general prosperity. Three advances were made, each time approximating 10 per cent. The workmen are paid on a sliding schedule thus benefiting by the rise in the value of the product they make. Never have workmen received such wages as are now being paid to the workmen of America. But over against this increase in wages must be considered the increase in the cost of living, and also the base line, or average wage in days before the war upon which these increases are figured. Hours are still very long and no process has been devised for making the work very much easier or less wearing upon the individual worker. Investigators who made their report in 1912 said that during the year 1910, the period covered by their investigation, 29 per cent. of the employees in the blast furnaces and steel works and rolling-mills ordinarily worked seven days a week; 24 per cent. worked eighty-four hours or more a week. This means a twelve-hour day seven days a week.

These long hours were not confined to the men in the blast-furnace department, where there is a real necessity for continual toil, but to a large extent to the other departments, where no such necessity existed, except the necessity of making all the profits possible from the workers. When the shift was made from day to night work or from night to day work, the employees making the shift were required to remain on duty without relief for periods of from eighteen to twenty-four hours consecutively. No one can visit a steel-mill and not feel that there is something merciless in the way the workers are being goaded by invisible forces to keep their speed at the topmost notch. The very nature of the work is such that men are forced to labor at high tension. The mill stops for nothing either day or night. “You must draw or be dragged to death,” said one of the workers.

A steel employee in South Chicago made good wages but was a hard drinker and with his companions spent most of the evenings in the saloons so that there was rarely a night that he went to bed sober. A friend of the family had a chance to talk with him about the situation and tried to argue with him to show him the folly of drinking. His reply was, “Why, who cares? The mill drives me all the day long and dries me all up. I have to draw, draw, draw, or be dragged. By the end of the day there is only one thing that I want and that is beer.”

A large proportion of the workers in the steel-mills are immigrants. There are Magyars, Poles, Slovaks, Croatians, Italians, as well as Austro-Hungarians, and all the other races mixed in. Many of the men are single, or if they are married they have left their wives in the old country. The wage is very largely based on the needs of a single man. Nearly all the families take boarders. This reduces the cost of living and in some of these families, the “boarding boss” as he is known, is the head of the household consisting of himself, his wife, his children, and anywhere from four to sixteen boarders or lodgers. Each lodger pays the boarding boss a fixed sum, usually two or three dollars a month for lodging, cooking, and washing. The food is bought by the boss and its cost shared individually by the members of the group. A study was made of a community in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and it was found that the food consumed was cheap beef, bread, and coffee. Some of the people used vegetables sparingly. The Italians ate only a small quantity of meat, but used large quantities of vegetables, spaghetti, bread, and olive oil. The Austro-Hungarians used vast quantities of meat.

Houses and Homes. The housing conditions among the poorly paid steel workers are invariably bad. In a part of Pittsburgh known as the “strip” the living conditions are bad almost beyond belief. The reason given for this situation is that the wages are so low no better is possible. The standard of living among all the steel workers is low. Comfort or ordinary provisions for decency are almost entirely lacking in nearly every steel-producing district. The housing conditions are congested, the children play in the streets, and only the cheapest and most dangerous forms of recreation are open to the young people. A large proportion of the workers are members of the Roman Catholic Church. The men, however, for the most part have no use for the church and rarely if ever attend. The women cling to it, since they are naturally more devout.

The children suffer from the hard circumstances in the laboring communities. The mothers have generally gone to work too early in life to give proper vitality to the child. The lack of conditions that make for decent home life brought about through inadequate incomes of the fathers and the overcrowded housing conditions taxes life heavily by infant mortality, and mortgages the future health and morals of the children, thus threatening the future efficiency of the state. Investigations conducted by the Children’s Bureau in Washington show that the chances of life for a baby grow appallingly small as the father’s earnings grow less. For instance, the cases of one thousand babies in eight representative cities were studied. The returns show that in families where the father earns less than $550 a year every sixth baby dies; while in families where the father’s income is $1,050 or more a year only one baby in sixteen dies.[2]

[2] See “Infant Mortality,” a pamphlet issued by the Children’s Bureau, U. S. Department of Labor, Washington, D. C.

The church in this age of steel must preach from the text, which interpreted in modern times will be, “A man is more precious than a bar of steel.”

The Church and the Homes of the Workers. The disorganizing influence on the social and industrial life incident to the war accentuates the importance of protecting mothers and children. The churches have a remarkable opportunity here, for it is to the homes that the church makes its first and strongest appeal. Jesus set a little child at the very center of his system for regenerating humanity and saving the world.

The church must produce and train skilled leaders who can direct affairs; it must set in motion forces that will counteract the evil in these industrial communities; and must help to create public sentiment so that the city that allows bad housing to exist and the industry that forces it will be looked upon as murderers of little children. Playgrounds, recreation centers, and the strict enforcement of all the laws that protect the home must be urged upon the church as a part of its program. Without these the gospel fails.

The Church and the Workers. Another feature incident to the life in the steel-mills is the apathy that develops in the workers themselves. Their attitude toward life is characterized by a dumb, brutish fatalism. The editor of a paper in one of the steel cities when discussing this attitude of mind remarked: “A Finlander cares less about being killed in the mill than I do about having my tooth pulled.” It is almost impossible to enforce the necessary precautions. Life becomes of little value to the worker pressed as he is for production. This thing called steel looms big and human; life looks small in proportion. Jesus, appealing to the rural-minded people of his day, said that man is more precious than a sheep. The church in our great steel centers must often and persistently preach the gospel from this text which interpreted in modern times will be, “Man is more precious than a bar of steel.”

Progress Toward Justice. The process of adjustment between manufacturing, the cost of labor, and the selling price of the material is a difficult one. Labor conditions have been such, and competition so keen, that it has been very difficult to safeguard the men employed in this industry. Union labor has had a hard time to establish itself. Nearly all of the mills and factories are run as open shops. Of late years, however, it has been found that there must be closer cooperation between the management, the owners, and the workers; and certain concessions have been made and new elements have been introduced into the system which are bettering conditions. It is now possible for the workers to have shares of the common stock of the United States Steel Corporation. The workers are suspicious of this scheme as well as of all other forms of profit-sharing and welfare work because they believe that it leads to a deepening of the dependence of the worker upon the concern for which he works, and thus hinders the coming of industrial democracy. It must be said, however, for a plan which makes it possible for the employees to buy stock in the concern, that it is a step toward democracy if it is democratically carried out. The difficulty at present is that only the better paid, higher class of laborers in the steel-mills can or will take the stock. Until the wages of all the laborers are increased to the place where each one can have a decent home located in a desirable part of the city, and a degree of leisure so that he can give some time and attention to other things than the mere process of making steel, the distributing of stock will not go far toward settling the labor difficulties that so often embarrass the great steel companies.

A Successful Experiment. Democracy means that each worker shall have a voice and a vote in determining the conditions under which he works as well as some share in the ownership of the business. The only answer to the argument against democracy is a successful experiment in democracy. A manufacturing plant in a democratic country must recognize in these days that the only scheme that will succeed must make for a larger control of the business by a larger number of the people employed. The Baker Manufacturing Company, of Evansville, Wisconsin, has carried out a stock-owning, profit-sharing plan with great success. Since 1899 the lowest additional wage paid to the employees has been 60 per cent. and the highest 120 per cent. based on average wages. Every employee has a vote in the company, and the annual meetings are held in the town hall. The stock issued each year represents real value, for every dollar of it is put into material improvements in the shop and its equipment. I visited Mr. Baker some years ago and he told me of the success of his plans. Just before I left I said: “Mr. Baker, do you think that you have been wise in putting so much effort into the creation of this new form of industrial organization?” He replied: “Well, I am past seventy years of age and have all the money I can use conveniently. I enjoy life and have the friendship of my workmen. I do not need to station detectives about my home to protect me while I am asleep; and another thing, we never have had a strike in this town. We are all friends and fellow workers.” Surely these are the things that accumulations of money cannot produce and their possession is beyond value. What has been done in this factory connected with the steel trade ought to be possible everywhere.

The Church and Its Approach. The scheme of adjustment is a difficult one, and the church is not meeting the situation in any adequate way. Its task is before it and must be attacked with persistence, with skill, and with patience. This means, first of all, that the church in the communities where the steel workers live must find a method of approach through the home and the school to the heart and the life of the people. Until this is done, it will be futile for the church to even attempt to minister to the people in the deeper things of life.

CHAPTER VII
The World of the Transportation Men

“Here, boss, jes’ take fo’ dollars’ worth of ride out of this here bill.” This was the response of an old Negro riding on a Southern train when asked for his ticket by the conductor. Without a word the conductor gave him the change from a ten dollar bill and a ticket to tuck into his hat and which allowed him to ride to a town approximately two hundred miles distant. When the train reached its destination the old Negro began to fumble in his pockets and then he picked up his bundles and slowly got off. Three hours later, as a train coming in the opposite direction stopped at the station, the same Negro got aboard, paid his fare back to the starting-point and arrived early in the morning. Going up the street he met the judge of the district, who said to him, “Hello, John, what are you doing out so early? Where have you been?” “I ain’t been nowhere, Judge; I jes’ been doing a little traveling.” This is not an isolated case by any means. I told this story as I had heard it to a conductor on another road and he said it was a very common thing to have fifteen or twenty white people as well as Negroes “ride out” the mileage covered by a five dollar bill.

The American is the most restless person in the world. We are always on the move and a large amount of our traveling is purposeless. We simply travel because we like to be going somewhere. This trait in us is a survival from a long past age in man’s development. This primitive love of change is strengthened by the economic pressure under which most of us live. Early man wandered from place to place in search of his food. Modern man does the same, the only difference being that he does not now look for his food ready to his hand, but looks for a place to work, so that he can earn money with which to buy his food. “We have been married twelve years,” said a vivacious little lady, “and I have lived in six states. It seems that my husband is always getting a chance to better our condition, and we both have come to look forward to a move about every two years. If we just live long enough, we will have lived in every state in the Union.”

But transportation as we understand it to-day refers to the moving of freight, express, and mail, as well as to the moving of men and women. Man himself was the original burden-bearer and became the first transportation system, carrying combined freight and express. He simply took his bundle on his shoulders and used his legs as the means of moving from one place to another. Then he used other men to help carry his loads. There has been much speculation as to how the stones used in the building of the Great Pyramids were brought to the desert and put into place. Many theories have been advanced. One of the latest is that the Pyramids are made of concrete and that they were poured rather than quarried. However the material was secured, or in whatever way the work was accomplished, we can be sure of one thing and that is that all of the material was carried by men. They were the slaves of Pharaoh and this was the usual form of the transportation system of Egypt. There were auxiliary lines which employed camels, asses, and some horses; but the slave was the principal carrier just as he is in Africa to-day. The rivers and the oceans were used as highways of travel, but the boats were very crude affairs and the slaves chained to the seats and pulling on heavy oars formed the motive power. The oars were made in graduated lengths, one bank above another. The three-tiered Roman boat was known as the trireme and it was the great-grandfather of the ocean liners with their triple screws. It is a long development from the primitive methods of travel and burden-bearing in the early days of Egypt to the great transcontinental railway lines and the ocean steamships of our day!

Progress and Transportation. The word progress carries within it the implication that there is a road over which the race of men is passing. The roadmaker has always been the pioneer of civilization. The advent of steam and the perfecting of railroads marks a period of development throughout civilization itself. Some one has said that it would be far more interesting and informing concerning the facts that will transpire in the next one hundred years, if we could see the railroad map showing all the transportation lines in the different continents to be published in the year 2018, than if we could have a map that would simply show the national boundaries. A nation may be compared to a human body. The railroad lines are the arteries along which flows the life-blood of the nation. Industry is the center of a nation’s life, and it pumps commerce over the rails and thus keeps the body growing and in a healthful state.

Age of the Engineer. The great world war has been characterized in many ways, but perhaps the best characterization of all is that it is an engineers’ war. Eliminate the work of the engineers, civil and mechanical, from this war and it could not have been fought. For that matter the last seventy-five years of the world’s history has belonged to the engineers. Ninety per cent. of all our comforts, conveniences, and practical achievements is due to their work, and what wonders have been wrought in this time! The engineer has accomplished more in the field of transportation than in any other realm. Transportation, represented by the railroads, the steamships, the automobiles, and the better roads that have been built to accommodate them, makes up the chief differences between our age and all those ages preceding.

The Railway Systems. There is being operated in the United States at the present time 230,000 miles of railroads. The mileage which they cover if stretched about the earth would belt the globe nine times. The total mileage for the whole world is about 700,000; all of Europe has 215,140 miles. The United States and Canada together have almost half the total mileage of the world and as much as all of Europe and Asia combined. In 1915 the railroads of the United States carried 976,303,602 passengers and moved 1,802,018,177 tons of freight. The railway companies employed 1,654,075 men and women. The average hourly pay for these workers, figured on the basis of the eight-hour day, is twenty-six cents. Railroading is a most difficult and dangerous occupation, and yet there is something in the work itself that appeals to the worker. “Once a railroad man, always a railroad man,” as one brakeman put it.

There was a railroad wreck on the Southern Pacific line just south of Livermore, California, some years ago. The engine fell over into a creek and the engineer was caught underneath, and pressed down into the soft sand. It was eighteen hours before he was rescued; his chest was crushed and he was horribly burned but by some miracle he lived. The railway company gave him a pension in recognition of his faithful services of about twelve years, and he was able to live on the income without working. This invalided engineer was idle for almost ten months; he then went back to the company and asked to be put on an engine again. He was not considered strong enough to run a passenger engine, but was supremely happy when put in charge of a switch engine in the train-yards of Sacramento. He said, “It was the happiest day of my life when I pulled the throttle, and again felt the engine begin to move out under my touch and control.”

Casualty Lists. In the year 1916, the steam railways of the United States injured 196,722 people and killed 10,001. The electric railways for the same period injured 4,606 and killed 518. Of these persons, 4,928 were killed while riding as passengers, or while at work in the performance of their tasks. The remainder were killed while walking upon the railway tracks or in other ways trespassing.

One bitter cold day a Lackawanna train from New York going to Buffalo was nearing a little village near Binghamton when the brakeman, muffling up his ears, stepped out on the rear platform to be ready to signal as the train stopped at the near-by crossing. The train stopped and then gave four blasts on the whistle calling in the brakeman. There was a delay and the conductor went back to find out why the brakeman did not come, but could not see him anywhere down the line. The train was late and running badly, so instead of backing up to look for the brakeman, the conductor gave orders for the train to go ahead and reported the fact at the next station. Two stations beyond word reached him that the body of the brakeman had been found beside the track. He had stepped out on the rear platform just as the train rounded a curve and the platform being slippery he lost his footing and was thrown off and killed instantly. The brakeman’s family was protected because he was engaged in interstate commerce, but one more human being was lost in the performance of his daily task. The inventions such as patent coupling devices, block signals, and the vestibule cars, have done away with a great many accidents, but in the very nature of the case, there will always be danger in the work done by the men who operate our trains.

The Human Factor. The railroads of the country are made as safe as possible by installing wonderful devices which work automatically. The tracks are inspected, old ties replaced by new ones; bolts are tested, yet in spite of all the excellent devices to secure safety, accidents occur in sickening succession. An entire circus company was recently wiped out by an accident on the Michigan Central Railroad. The members of the circus were nearly all asleep when a train from the rear plunged through their cars killing nearly one hundred and injuring over one hundred others. The wreckage caught fire and many of the bodies were cremated. Reports would indicate that this accident was one of those unavoidable things that happen so often in railroading.

Experiences in speaking before groups of railroad men prove that the question of danger is always before the minds of the workers. These men literally carry their lives in their hands. For after all, no matter how perfectly the track may be laid, and in spite of the fact that the signals are all set, there is always the human factor to be taken into consideration. The flagman may not go back far enough from the train that is stopped so that the one following can be brought to a halt before crashing into the train ahead. Another thing that enters into the situation is the fact that men who are working surrounded by constant perils are likely to become careless. “I carry with me a sense of responsibility for the life of every man, woman, and child who rides on my train.” This was the statement of a conscientious railroad engineer. “But,” he continued, “I am in constant fear that my train will be wrecked through the carelessness of somebody else.” This man recognized a need that is essential in securing safety in traveling on our railroads, that is, a sense of corporate responsibility; by this we mean, that the entire group of men, all the workers and all of those who are responsible for the operation of the roads should feel the same sense of responsibility that the individual engineer feels. To secure this condition the railroad companies must realize that they are dealing with human beings; and that the men who furnish the human element in the railroad equation are entitled to a voice and a share in the management of the line.

Wages and Hours of Work. When the railroad employees threatened to strike in 1917 and asked for an eight-hour day and an increase of wages, there was a great deal of discussion as to whether the companies or the men were in the right. Most people sided with the companies against the men, because there is an idea among the people that the railroad men are the best paid employees in any of our industries. Contrary to the general understanding, the railroad employees for the most part are not well paid. The government has recognized the need for increased wages and has made advances to nearly all classes of railway employees since federal control went into effect. The average rate for a normal day’s work for engineers in the freight service throughout the eastern territory is $4.85, conductors $4, brakemen $2.67, and firemen $3.25. These are the best paid of all the railroad employees. Tower men, who have in their care the lives of millions of passengers as they protect crossings, receive from $40 to $50 a month. Telegraphers, train dispatchers, track inspectors, and other employees, outside of the four great brotherhoods, made up of the engineers, conductors, brakemen, and firemen, are very poorly paid. And even the wages for the best paid and most skilful operators, the brakeman and the fireman, for instance, are so low that it means that in order to earn a living wage they must make a great deal through overtime.

The effect of this low wage is shown in the number of employees who are changed every year. In the first nine months of 1917 in the eastern territory three men were employed for every one job filled. This is known as the turn-over in employment and it is unusually high because the wages are below standard, the hours long, and the work hard and dangerous. There is a continual change in the operating forces and a consequent lack of efficiency. Another consideration to be taken into account in studying the wages and lives of railway workers is that of the effect of the work upon the workers. An engineer must put in years as a fireman before he can secure the right to run an engine, and then a dozen or fifteen years is about the length of time that he can depend on keeping his job. He is fortunate indeed if he earns a good wage for this length of time. The wear and tear on muscles, nerves, eyes, ears, kidneys, and heart is almost certain to break down the strongest body in a few years. Some few men stand the strain and hold on for twenty years but these are the rare exceptions.

Fictitious Values and the Railways. The railroad business deals in a commodity that may be termed public service. Almost more than any other business it is dependent for success upon the good-will of the public. The earnings of the railroads have been enormous and even if their operating expenses are high, there have been big profits made, and these profits have been taken up to a large extent in paying dividends upon fictitious values. This is the most serious situation that threatens the railroad system of the United States. For instance, a road is built and a certain amount of money put into the equipment and rolling stock, such as engines, coaches, and freight-cars. The employees are hired and the road begins to do business as a regular passenger and freight carrier. Out of its total receipts it must pay a fixed amount for up-keep, for new equipment, and for wages, besides the interest on the money it has borrowed. The balance that is left from the amount of money received by the road and the amount it must pay out marks its own profits. This is given to the owners of the road.

For many years the railroads felt that they needed special legislation; and money was spent in buying up legislators, in corrupting city councils, and in gaining the influence of noted men who would agree to return certain favors to the road for certain concessions given. A common practise in connection with this was the giving of free passes to all statesmen and newspaper men. In addition to this the railroad property became valuable as a factor in the stock market, and new stock was continually being issued. This stock would be sold and in many cases no new equipment put into the road, so that at the present time some of the railroads of the United States have three or four times as much stock as they have actual physical value for their stock.

A good illustration of this business situation would be that you as owner of a house worth $4,000 should make or form a cooperative housekeeping company and sell shares in this new company, basing the value of the total amount of shares upon the $4,000 that the house is worth. You could sell forty shares each for $100. This would be perfectly legitimate and a good business transaction, because at any time every share would have back of it one-fortieth of the total value of the house. But suppose instead of selling forty shares, you should capitalize your house at $40,000 and sell 400 shares at $100 a piece, instead of the forty shares. The extra valuation would be known as watered stock, because there would be no real value attached to it. You would be selling something that neither you nor anybody else possessed.

It is said that the term watered stock came from the practise of one of the early financiers who brought cattle from the West to sell in the New York market when New York was a very small city. He drove the cattle a long distance on the last day, and then gave them salt the night before arrival, so that they were inordinately thirsty. Just before they were sold and weighed he would let them drink all the water they wanted, so that the man who bought them was paying for a great deal of water in addition to the actual amount of beef he received. The result of this financial device known as watered stock has been disastrous for many of our railway companies, and the plight of the United States railroads has been a scandal for years.

Regulating the Railroads. The legislature of nearly every state has tried to remedy the railway situation. The commissions in the various states have frequently found themselves in each other’s way. The Interstate Commerce Commission appointed by the United States government for the purpose of regulating railroads is one of the most efficient bodies in the entire government and has rendered remarkable services. The citizens of the United States are individualists and believe strongly in letting each business adjust its own difficulties as best it can. With the growth of the world commerce without, and the development of the country’s trade within, however, many men are coming to believe that the only way out of difficulties is through a larger degree of government control, tending finally to government ownership of all the means of transportation. The strongest argument in favor of government ownership is the success of the Interstate Commerce Commission. During the last ten years there has come about a very radical change in the relations existing between the various railways and the general public. During the period between 1850 and 1900 the railways were masters of the situation; and the financiers who built and operated them were despots, more or less benevolent or the opposite according to their personal temperaments. The railway presidents during that period really regarded their roads as private property to be managed as they saw fit. This theory built up a great railroad system in the country, but the theory is not big enough to meet the new national demands that are put upon the common carriers of the day. The railroads are now pleading with the public to recognize them as public institutions primarily interested in serving the people.

Press Illustrating Service.

In New York harbor and on other waterways, living upon the canal-boats and barges, are the families of the workers.

Railroads and Churches. The railroad situation is too complicated for us to attempt a solution of it in a church study class. It will demand years of experimentation and a degree of personal service on the part of the best and ablest men of our nation. What the church can and must do is to try to estimate the value of the principles that are involved in the railroad development and management. This can be done by following the story of the railroad as told by the writers in the public magazines of the last ten years. The history of our railroad legislation is also available for us in the records of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Each study group should write to Washington and get the literature issued by this commission. Much of it will be found to be dry reading, being largely a compilation of statistics; and these statistics dealing in figures so large that they mean very little to us. The recommendations, however, and the conclusions are of practical value and will be found to be extremely helpful in the wise and just conclusion regarding our attitude toward the railroad as a national institution.

Other Means of Transportation. The work of the men engaged in transportation is not by any means confined to the workers on the railroads. In our cities there are thousands of men employed on the street-cars, elevated railroads, and subway railways. The interurban traction lines employ hundreds of thousands of men. A careful study has been made of the situation affecting these workers by the Department of Labor of the United States, and its report is based upon facts ascertained from actual conditions found in all the principal cities of the country. Without exception the street-car men, including conductors, motormen, linesmen, and ticket-sellers, are poorly paid. Many of the cities are paying the men much less than a living wage. What do you know about the conditions in the street-cars in your own city? Where do the men who operate these cars live? What about their families? A motorman on one of the elevated railway lines of Chicago shot himself a few years ago. The note he left said: “I have four children and it is impossible with the rising cost of living for me to maintain my home on $2.12 a day. I have a Life Insurance policy for $2,000 and this is worth more to my wife and children than I earn at present.” The street-car lines in most of our cities are owned and controlled by capitalists living in some other city, and they are operated, not for the benefit of the city, but simply for profits. The frequent strikes on the street-car lines are the direct result of this foolish policy of our cities of allowing themselves to be exploited by groups of business men who have no interest in the city, but hold toward it, its citizens, and its own workers, the attitude of a set of political and social freebooters. A few places only have attempted municipal ownership, and in these cases it has met with a large measure of success. The lines owned and operated by the San Francisco municipality have proved so successful that the business men are all enthusiastic over the policy.

Another group that aids in providing transportation is made up of the men on boats on the lakes, rivers, and canals; those who come to our shores from other nations traveling by sea in foreign boats; the sailors on our merchant marine; and the thousands of workers on the docks and lighters in our harbors. In connection with this great work, Andrew Furuseth, president of the International Seamen’s Union, stands out as a remarkable figure. He is a Scandinavian by birth, and worked his way up from the simple life of a sailor before the mast until he is now the best known sailor in all the world. Mr. Furuseth has a great heart, and has fought long and hard for his fellow workers; he might be rich to-day, but as head of the union he accepts only the pay of a first-class seaman and is literally giving his life for others. At a meeting of the City Club in Rochester which he addressed some years ago, one of the gentlemen present turned to his companion and said: “Just look at Furuseth. In every line of his face there is written a chapter of the tragedy and pathos of the men who go down to the sea in ships.”

The sailor has been practically a prisoner always. When he signed his work papers he put himself under the control of an absolute autocrat. Until recently the master of a ship at sea recognized no authority greater than himself, and when the boat landed at any port, no matter what the treatment might have been, the seaman could not desert, otherwise he would be arrested and imprisoned. Furuseth protested against this inhuman treatment, and through a long period of years kept demanding that seamen, “the last slaves” as he called them, be made free. Finally his efforts were successful and on March, 1915, there was approved by the Congress of the United States an Act which promotes the welfare of the American seaman in the merchant marine. It abolishes arrest and imprisonment for desertion, and it secured the abrogation of treaty provisions between the different nations which guaranteed that American sailors would be treated as felons if they deserted in a foreign port. It also provided additional safety at sea for all persons upon a boat; one of its provisions being that there shall be carried on every passenger-carrying steamer or sailing vessel enough life-boats so that each passenger and each man of the crew will have a seat and a chance for escape in case of an accident. It is interesting to note that this Act was passed as a direct result of the sinking of the Titanic.

The World of the Transportation Men. The transportation men live in a world apart. How many sailors do you know? How many street-car men? How many railroaders? Have you ever wondered where the conductor on the street-car upon which you ride so often lives? “Yes, we have a little church, but it is over across the tracks where the railroad men live, and I always attend the Presbyterian Church here.” This was the excuse given by a gentleman for not attending the church of the denomination to which he had belonged before he moved into a new community near Chicago. We do not want a church to be known as the Railroad Men’s Church or the Sailors’ Church or the Street-Car Workers’ Church. This is not the way to be the best kind of a neighbor. What we do want is for the church everywhere to take an interest in these men who are providing for our transportation and also carrying the necessities of life for all the world. We come into personal relationships with many of them in a business way, and they all do much to add to our wealth, our happiness, and our comfort. We in turn as individuals and as members of the church should acquaint ourselves with the conditions surrounding them.

For instance, in the waters of the New York harbor, living upon the canal-boats which move in and out carrying coal, hay, and other rough freight, are the families of the workers, and in these families there are approximately 5,000 children. They are at one place to-day and another place to-morrow. These people have no citizenship in the best sense of the word. Many of the men do not vote because they live in no locality long enough to register. The questions of schooling, of church privileges, and of all social contact are serious ones. Yet how many people in New York City, or for that matter in any of the smaller towns and villages where these boats land, have ever once thought of the status and social conditions of these men, and women, and their children? Things we know. The things which the boats and the railroads carry and that other thing that looms so large, the profits that are made from transportation, are regarded as very important; but we have paid scant attention to the men who produce things and carry them from place to place.

CHAPTER VIII
The World of the Makers of Luxuries

“I would not like to work in a candy store,” said a young lad, “because then I could not have the fun of buying candy.” A visitor to Atlantic City stepped into one of the shops to make a purchase. She said to the little girl in charge, “It must be delightful to be able to live in Atlantic City and work right here on the boardwalk.” “You may think so,” replied the girl. “But I guess if you put in all your time in this store, and had to come to work at eight in the morning and work until nine at night every day; and all the time saw these thousands of people passing along outside, going up and down, with nothing to do but just enjoy themselves, you would not think it is such a snap.” Two boys were playing the game of “wish.” When the turn of the youngest came, he said, “I wish that I worked in a chocolate factory, then I could have all the chocolate I wanted to eat.” When we become acquainted with the people who are at work producing the luxuries, we find a common and far-reaching disillusionment. The hardest work in the world is to work when other people are playing, or work hard ourselves just for the purpose of giving other people enjoyment. And yet there are literally hundreds of thousands of people who spend their lives in producing luxuries.

Oliver Wendell Holmes used to say that if he could just have the luxuries, he would not care anything about the necessities of life. This was a whimsical way of stating a fact that is common to all experience, that is, that life is enriched by the luxuries we enjoy. I asked a man of the typographical union what he considered the one thing that had done most for the advancement of printers. He replied, “Pianos in their parlors.” By this he meant that when hours were decreased and wages increased, printers began to have something to hope for; and with a margin of money they bought luxuries, and in the margin of time enjoyed them. Thus they laid the foundation for future development.

Luxuries. What constitutes a luxury? This is a difficult question to answer. Some people think that it is a luxury to take a bath. In fact, many of the monastic orders put special virtue on foregoing the use of soap and water. An old gentleman living in a little town near Chicago who owned a great deal of the property in the town, fought every effort to put in water-works and a sewer system. As the climax of an impassioned speech at a public meeting in which he had denounced the extravagances of the present time, he said: “These new notions of our young people are going to ruin us. My daughter made such a fuss that nine years ago I put a bathtub in our house, but I never use it and I guess I am about as healthy as any man in town.” One of the religious sects forbids its members the use of buttons on their clothes, as they are regarded as useless luxuries. They fasten their clothes together with hooks and eyes. Cutting the hair, shaving the beard, wearing gold and silver, adorning the person in any way, all of these things are considered luxuries by some persons. Luxury is really a thing that we can get along without. But at best it is a relative term, for what one person would consider a luxury another would consider a necessity.

Growth by Wants, Not Needs. A merchant in Memphis had a carload of supplies arrive early one Saturday morning. He was very anxious to get the goods unloaded so that he could release the car. He started out to get help, but every Negro on the street had some good excuse why he could not help. Meeting an old fellow on the corner he said to him, “Look here, Bob, what is the trouble with all these Negroes? Not one of them wants to work and yet they all seem to have plenty of time and nothing to do.” “It’s just like this, Boss,” replied old Bob. “All the worth-while niggers is out working, ’cause you see they’s got to support their Fords. These here fellers ain’t no good; don’t want cyars and won’t work nohow when the sun shines on both sides of the street at de same time.” In this statement we have summed up the philosophy of all workers. It is only when we desire something better than we have and are willing to work for the thing desired that we begin to advance. Luxuries are the things that are not essential for mere existence, but they are the things that are of infinite value in enriching and adding to the meaning of life.

Classes of Luxuries. Luxuries can be roughly divided into two classes, those that are harmless and those that are hurtful. The extra dress, the piece of cake, the sugar in our coffee, the coffee itself, and in fact a great many of the things we wear, eat, and drink are luxuries. The line between these things and necessities is such a thin one that it is hard to know just when a thing ceases to be a necessity and becomes a luxury. Most things are harmless in and of themselves, and it must be acknowledged, luxuries have the effect of increasing the value and meaning of life. There are, however, luxuries such as beer, wine, whisky, brandy, and other alcoholic stimulants used as beverages, also tobacco used as snuff, for chewing or for smoking, which add nothing to life; but on the contrary must be classed with the habit-forming drugs so injurious to the race. In this chapter we are considering luxuries from the standpoint of production, and not the moral value involved in their use. Therefore, we must think of the workers in the brewery, the cigar and cigaret makers, the makers of artificial flowers and willow plumes as all belonging to the same class. They are the ones who are making the things that are not absolutely necessary for our existence. Were the production of bread to stop we could not live. Iron, steel, coal, and transportation are all part and parcel of our very existence, but we could get along very well if not another artificial flower, cigar, or fancy dress were made.

The Cigarmakers. The cigarmakers living in Tampa and Key West form the most complete compact group of workers to be found anywhere in the United States who are interested solely in producing luxuries. Tampa is known as “The city that furnishes the world’s smoke.” Last year this city shipped (in round numbers) 300,000,000 cigars! Havana and Key West have always been considered the principal cigar cities, but the production in these latter places has been declining for a number of years, while it has been increasing in Tampa. It was a clash between the Cuban and Spanish workers at Key West which led the first manufacturer to move from that city and build his factory at Tampa. To-day there are 15,000 Cuban and Spanish workers employed in Tampa in making cigars. A person could live in the city, and by restricting his business to certain districts, from one year’s beginning to the end would never hear a word spoken in any language except Spanish. The city is a foreign city, and a city of workers producing a luxury that all the world demands. Since the time that Columbus sent his men to explore the island of Cuba in November, 1492, and found the natives “carrying and smoking firebrands” made from loosely rolled leaves of a weed which grew extensively on the island, until the present time men everywhere have found enjoyment and pleasure in the narcotic value of tobacco.

The Making of a Cigar. In its manufacture a cigar goes through a process dependent upon the knowledge and skill gained from years of practise on the part of the worker. The tobacco that is used in making the best cigars still comes from the island of Cuba. It is grown very carefully, cured, baled, and shipped under bond to the United States government. The bales as they are received at the tobacco factory weigh from 80 to 120 pounds. The tobacco is of two qualities, that to be used as a filler (which makes up the body of the cigar), and that which is known as the wrapper or the outside covering. From the time that the tobacco begins to grow until the cigars are packed in the boxes ready for shipment the weed requires special care and attention. As the bales of tobacco are brought into the factory they have to be piled in a certain way. Some of them are piled high, some of them low, some on their sides, and some on their ends; all depending upon the quality and conditions of the leaves.

The tobacco is cured by a process which adds to its value; and the curing must be carried on with precision, for a faulty method will spoil the best tobacco that can be grown. Any one who has visited Tampa is impressed with the humidity of the atmosphere. The climate of Cuba is more nearly reproduced there than in any other city in America, and because of its equable temperature, it being neither too hot nor too cold, the city has become famous as the manufacturing center for cigars.

The cigarmakers sit at long tables in parallel rows throughout the room. In one room in a large factory eight hundred workers sit as close together as possible. The tools of the trade are a flat, broad-bladed knife, a hard block, a gage, and a rule. This gage is simply a hole bored through a piece of board and as the worker makes up the cigar, from time to time he puts it through the hole in the board to see that it is the proper size and places it against the rule to see that it is the proper length. Should it be too large it must be rolled tighter, if too small it must be loosened up a bit. Much depends upon the way a cigar is rolled. “I learned to make a cigar in three months,” said a Cuban cigarmaker, “but it took me two years to learn how to put an end on it.” This is the real test, and until a machine is invented which can turn this trick, the hand-made cigars, rolled, and finished according to the old Spanish method, will hold first place.

The Reader in the Factory. The Tampa cigarmakers are all either Spanish or Cuban, and in conversation they gesticulate with their hands to such an extent that it is impossible for them to talk and work at the same time. Hence, the manufacturers are very sympathetic with the old custom of maintaining a reader in the factory. This reader has a little balcony from which he reads to the employees while they are at work, making his selections from current magazines, newspapers, novels, telegrams, dispatches from abroad, and extracts from books on national history. It is an interesting sight to see a factory of four or five hundred workers busily engaged in plying their trade, and listening at the same time to a story read by the paid reader, who, with coat off and suspenders hanging, gesticulates and shouts at the top of his voice. One of the readers in a Tampa factory has held his position for twenty years. He reads daily from the New York Herald, translating the news articles into Spanish as he reads them. The reader is well paid, for each worker gives him twenty-five cents a week; and it is reported that some of these men receive as high as $300 a month. The workers decide what shall be read. Some years ago there was a strike in one of the factories occasioned by a protest on the part of the women workers against the reading of an especially vulgar novel. The management ordered the reading of this novel stopped. The men then laid down their tools and refused to go back to work until they were assured that the story would be continued. Among the cigarmakers the tradition is that the custom of reading grew out of the desire of the early workers for a more liberal education than was offered by the church and its schools.

Wages and Unions. The wages of the cigarmakers are based on the piece-work system. An expert may make as high as $35 a week; the average is a little higher than in other employments using the same grade of labor. Some years ago, when a bitter strike was conducted in Tampa, the question of wages was one of the grievances of the men but was not the real trouble, for the problem in Tampa now as well as then is racial and psychological rather than economic. The strike was settled on the basis of an agreement called the “equalization agreement.” This provided for the appointment of a board to be composed of three manufacturers and three cigarmakers who would meet regularly, hear complaints, and make adjustments. Most of the workers belong to the union, and under this agreement there is a fair degree of peace in the industry.

One great difficulty is that the workers in the cigar industry carry into their trade no moral enthusiasm. They are doing something that is not absolutely requisite for human welfare, and while they make good money, they have no commanding purpose to impel them to carry on their work. The people live simple lives for the most part. On Saturday nights the streets of the city are filled with people, and every one is in a holiday mood. The majority of the cigar workers in Tampa are communicants in the Roman Catholic Church and it is the finest building in the city. It is constructed of marble and decorated with magnificent windows. The church takes little interest, however, in social or economic matters. One of the workers said to me the last time I was in the city, “When the business men forced us back to work, and through their private army guarded the city with sawed-off shotguns, the church was back of them. All the priests want is our money.” To the cigarmakers a church is a church whether it be Catholic or Protestant. They remember the days in Cuba under the domination of Spain when the priests held them in a kind of bondage of fear, and made it easy for the political forces to exploit them. In America they do not intend to give the church a chance at them.

The Cuban is easily pleased; very emotional, and more inclined to be fickle than the American or Englishman. A few years ago the butchers of Tampa raised the price of meat. Just at that time there happened to be a representative of the Industrial Workers of the World in the city. He gathered some of the people together in East Tampa, harangued them regarding their wrongs, and called a second meeting. He aroused so much enthusiasm that nearly two thousand of the cigar workers quit their jobs; procured sticks, and bought beefsteaks and stuck them on the end of the sticks. Carrying these over their shoulders as though they were banners, the whole mob marched through the streets to the City Hall, where they demanded of the startled mayor, that he force the butchers to reduce the price of beef. The mayor gave the necessary order and the people then dispersed and went quietly back to their homes. Union organizers complain that it is very difficult to maintain a union of any strength among the cigar workers in Tampa. “They are very enthusiastic for a time, but it is difficult for them to persistently and constantly follow the union rules,” said one of the leaders.

The city of the cigarmakers swarms with children, many of these youngsters play in the street, and as the climate is warm most of the year, during the summer they wear very little clothing. Until recently there was no provision made for organized play among the children of the city. Even now the provision is totally inadequate.

The Protestant Churches. The Protestant churches have attempted to do what they could among the cigarmakers; but the needs have been so great and the equipment so inadequate that the best results have not been secured. In West Tampa there is a very interesting piece of work being conducted by the Methodist, the Baptist, and the Congregational churches. One of the churches has a plant consisting of a church, a school, and a house that is used as a social center for the entire community. For many years two homes were operated by this church; one for boys and one for girls. Some seven hundred children attend the school in connection with the church. The services on Sunday are in Spanish, and while it has not been possible always to secure a large attendance from among the people, still there is usually a representative and interesting group present. A man who served as pastor of the Cuban church was for a number of years a regular worker in one of the big cigar factories. This gave him a peculiar relationship to the community. He was accepted as a friend and equal; and was listened to with reverence and respect where another man would not have secured a hearing.

Photo from National Child Labor Committee.

The workers in the cigar industry carry into their trade no moral enthusiasm, for they are doing something that is not absolutely requisite for human welfare.

Some Results of the Work. A little girl in the community where one of the church homes is situated was arrested for being a vagrant. Her face was dirty; she was barefooted and wore a torn, buttonless, brown gingham dress that was positively filthy and which was held in place by a safety-pin fastened in such a way as to give the whole dress a weird, elfish look. The child’s picture was taken on the day that she was arrested and committed to the care of the church. This picture is a typical portrayal of childish rebellion against life and all that it holds in store for the human race. Her mother was a worthless woman, and the child had never known a father. All her life she had really lived on the streets of the city. Her case was brought before the Juvenile Court; she was put on probation and given into the care of the workers in one of the little Protestant churches. She objected to having her hair combed and refused to wash her face. Those in charge of the home were almost in despair of being able to do anything with her. However, they won her confidence by allowing her to go to a party where they had a phonograph and motion pictures. They told her she could have all the cake and lemonade she wanted; so once in her life under happier conditions she had a chance for simple enjoyment and to be her natural self. From that time on she began to take an interest in herself and to gain in intelligence. Two years later she had her picture taken and it was exhibited as the picture of the typical Cuban girl, for she had developed into a perfect little beauty and showed capability. This story illustrates better than almost anything else the infinite possibilities in the Cuban people.

Some one said of the cigarmakers in Tampa that they were not Americans and never could be, and further stated: “They are interested only in their theaters, their clubs, their cock-fights, their coffee-houses, and their gambling rooms.” It is true that they are interested in these things; because they are by temperament a pleasure-loving, happy-go-lucky sort of people and these resources are the expression of their idea of life. If the church would meet the needs of these people, it must be able to appreciate them, and sympathetically to interpret life for them. They can all become, as indeed most of them are now, good American citizens, but they will never be like the Americans in our Northern cities. We must allow them to develop along the lines of their own racial interests. How can we ever expect to be friends with Latin America if we cannot learn how to be good neighbors to the Latin Americans living in our own land?

The Challenge of Conditions in the Factories. The conditions in the factories are not ideal by any means, nor is the nature of the business such as to promote the highest type of character. The work is hard, and it is performed in a heavy atmosphere poisoned with the breath of many individuals, and vitiated by the odors of human bodies and damp tobacco. The rooms where cigars are made have to be kept closed to save the weed; and every window is down, and no matter how hot the weather, not a breath of fresh air is allowed to enter the place. The atmosphere is so bad that it gives one a headache even to pass through; imagine what it would mean to spend your life working in such a place.

Tuberculosis makes deep inroads in the ranks of the workers. Statistics show that the proportion of mortality among the cigar workers from tuberculosis of the lungs is higher than in almost any other occupation. Between the ages of 15 and 24 the proportionate mortality from tuberculosis is 48.5 per cent. of the total deaths as compared with 33.8 per cent. for all occupations.[3] The reason for this is that the workers must sit for long hours at a table in a bad atmosphere and surrounded by others, many of whom are suffering from tuberculosis. There are nearly 50,000 members of the union and these men have been fighting for years for a betterment of conditions. However, just as in other trades, the employers claim that it is impossible to make cigars without sacrifice of the working men and women. The workers have accepted it there, as other workers have accepted it in other occupations, with the stoic attitude that marks so many of the laborers of our country.

[3] U. S. Bulletin of Labor, 1917.

One of the most noted social workers in America, a woman with strength and charm of character, who is a leader in every radical movement, began her life in a cigar factory. Later on she married a man of wealth and has lived a life of ease ever since. She says of her early experiences: “For twelve years I was a cigar worker in Cleveland. I was ill-nourished and poorly clad. I worked at night as well as by day to help piece out my family’s existence. I never had anything I wanted.” This might be said of a great many of the cigar workers and their families. The only difference would be that she did not tell all of her story. In addition to the long hours there is an undermining of the health that goes with it. Now all these people are working for some one’s pleasure. They are making luxuries. The most radical person I ever knew in my life was an eighteen-year-old girl whose parents had lost their money. She was forced to go to work in a cigar factory when she was twelve years old. She was bitter toward life and had no faith or confidence in anything or in any person. Said she, “When I look around and see people who have all the money and all the clothes and all the good things that I want and can never have, I know that conditions are unjust and must be changed. I don’t care what it costs; I am going to do my part in fighting and agitating until there is a change.” This is an attitude that is now growing very common. There are deep-seated forces at work perpetuating these ideas. By valuing things more than men these conditions are made a permanent part of our life.

Furs. “Why do you want to wear furs in the summer-time?” I asked a young lady. It was an extremely hot day and she was wearing a white dress with very short sleeves and cut low in the neck, but she had a fox fur around her neck; there was quite a margin between the lower edge of her fur and the upper edge of her dress. “Why,” she replied, “I think it is pretty, don’t you?” This fur had come on a long journey and gone through many processes before it came into her hands. Many men and women had labored to produce it. The man who had caught the fox probably had a line of traps stretched over nine or ten miles of some stream in the northern part of Canada or Alaska. All through the bitter cold of the winter he had lived alone in a cabin, and day after day had tramped that line to take out the animals that had been caught. Bringing them back to his cabin he skinned them; turned the hide over a piece of board and stood it behind the stove to cure. Later the pelts were brought out of the wilderness and sold into the hands of a group of fur workers. They were then more fully cured, and passed on to the makers of scarfs. All of these workers were producing a luxury.

The Trappers’ Community. In one of the regions of the Northwest where trapping is carried on through the winter there are three little settlements. There are only three white people and one white family in two of them, and the third settlement, which is a trading post, has about half a dozen white families. From the time that the snow falls in the autumn until late in May of the following spring, no one comes into these communities except the man carrying the mail who comes once in about ten days. No one goes out from the community unless it is absolutely necessary. The only ministers that ever visit there are those who come in the summer to enjoy the fishing in the near-by streams. The wife of a trapper in this region said to a minister: “Our oldest girl is nearly thirteen years old. She has never been to Sunday-school and never heard a sermon. She has never seen a church and you are the only preacher to whom she has ever talked. When I was married fifteen years ago in Missouri and we started for this country, I had no idea that a girl who had been brought up in the church and was a teacher in the Sunday-school could live so long in a community where there is no church or religious service of any kind.” When we learn of places like this where there are no churches, and then hear of some small community that has six or eight churches and only about five or six hundred people, we wonder if there is not a call for a new kind of missionary effort and zeal. The church is not alone to blame nor is any one wholly responsible for this condition, and yet we are all to blame, for if it is necessary that a man should live on the outpost of civilization it should be made possible for some of the good things of civilization to be taken to him. In the foreign missionary work we have crossed oceans, traversed mountains, translated the Bible into new languages, and made every effort to reach new groups of people. In our own land we have neglected people just because they seemingly live in a world outside of our own. While they are producing the things we demand and use, we have forgotten the men who have brought these things to us.

The Theater. People have always been interested in seeing life presented in a play. The theater has had a large place in the history of every nation. It has furnished the means of recreation and amusement, and in a large measure it has been a great educator of the people. Religion was once taught through the theater. In fact, much of our church ritual is taken from performances that were meant to symbolize great facts and emotions of human life. The modern theater has become highly commercialized, and those who attend the performances continually demand more magnificent scenery, more elaborate costumes, and more thrills. What of the performers? Have you ever wondered, as you looked at the play, just how the people who are taking part would look if you saw them off the stage? For instance, there is a girl that is playing the part of an old woman. She is dressed in a plain black, close-fitting gown, and hobbles across the stage leaning heavily upon a stick. In actual life she is a young woman under twenty-five years of age, has bright red hair, a charming smile, a figure that her friends describe as willowy, and walks with a springy step like that of a high school girl. Another character in the play is a woman who plays the part of the vampire. At home surrounded by her three children, she is a demure, domestic little body.

A few years ago one of our theatrical critics said that a glimpse behind the scenes would cure almost any girl of the desire to become an actress. The glamor is all in front of the curtain. Behind the scenes we come face to face with a hard-working group of men and women who are doing their best to furnish amusement. One of the leading actresses, in writing the history of her life, said that the only opportunity for success on the stage was for the person who comprehends fully that the theater offers but one thing—a chance for long hours of drudgery and the uncertain rewards that come from the hands of a fickle public. She described vividly the actors’ boarding-house, with its narrow cramped bedrooms; its dimly-lit halls, with the faded and worn carpet; the smell of cooking that permeated the whole place “like the ghost of a thousand dead dinners;” the bitter loneliness, the jealousies, the misunderstandings, and she added, “my whole being revolts against all the petty details of the life.” Then there is the traveling; nights on the train and days spent in the hotels until time to go to the opera house; then the feverish excitement of dressing; the play; and back to the hotel for a few hours’ sleep and away again to another town.

The trouble is that most of the young people who think that they would like to go on the stage think only of the theaters in New York, Chicago, Boston, or in one of the other large cities. The great majority of the actor-folk spend most of their time traveling from place to place. There are comparatively few plays that enjoy long runs. Nowadays in one-night stands there are few places where special rates at the hotels are secured for actors. Usually the worst rooms in the house are assigned to them. In fact, the rooms that are given to the actors and actresses are known in a great many hotels as the Soubrette Row. The best rooms are saved for the regular patrons of the house, such as traveling salesmen, while anything is “good enough for the actor.” In China the player folk live to themselves. They have no other companions but form a class of their own. We have not recognized the caste system in this country, and we do not officially ostracise the players, but in effect this is what we do. Their world is a world apart, yet they are the ones that help to amuse us. Each year we pay millions of dollars into the coffers of the theaters to see plays that are produced by these men and women who work hard, and who receive but little for their toil.

Once in a while the newspapers tell the story of some old actor, who has just died poor, broken down, and forgotten by the public. One of the most pathetic figures of these modern days was that of an old actor in Brooklyn, who had to be buried at the expense of his friends. They took up a collection to buy the casket in which he now rests; otherwise he would have been buried in the potter’s field although thirty years ago he was one of the most popular men on Broadway. There are thousands of actors and actresses and they live for the most part to themselves. The Actors’ Church Alliance was formed some years ago and has branches in many of our cities. There is, too, an organization known as the Actors’ Fund, which provides relief for the poor found among these hard-working men and women who give so much pleasure to millions of people.

The Motion Pictures. The motion-picture business has become one of the greatest enterprises of our day. In 1914 there were over 20,000 motion-picture theaters in the United States. The year before that three hundred million dollars was spent for films, and over five billion paid admissions were recorded throughout the country. The motion-picture has made possible the reproduction of the best plays, and they are offered to the people at a very low price. Five and ten cents will permit any one to be amused for a whole evening. The motion-picture theater possesses great educational possibilities. It has revolutionized our ideas of entertainment. The best books have been put into films and more people than ever before are having a chance to read. This is having a profound effect upon our lives, for as has been said, “the thing we see impresses us more than what we hear.” We often say, “it went in one ear and out the other” but no one ever says, “it went in one eye and out the other.” The making of films requires the work of thousands of actors; besides carpenters, masons, machine operators, directors, and managers. It is a huge business!

A crowd gathered in New York at Thirty-fourth Street and Second Avenue one Saturday afternoon. A man was beating a boy when a disheveled woman ran out from the side entrance of a saloon and threw herself upon this beast. He grasped her by the throat and was just about to strangle her, when the boy, released from the clutches of the man, stabbed him in the back with a knife and thus freed his mother. It happened so quickly that many of the crowd thought that they were looking upon a real tragedy. It proved to be simply a “movie” being enacted upon the street.

In a Florida city an automobile dashed into town; a young girl was in the back seat, while in the front was a young man driving the machine with one hand and holding a preacher down with the other. They stopped in front of a church; went inside, and there they were met by two other men, accomplices of the young fellow, and who stood one on either side of the minister with revolvers at his head and forced him to perform the marriage ceremony. An outrage in real life, but really played for the movies.

In the West there are cities devoted entirely to the motion-picture industry. In some of the elaborate plays hundreds of thousands of dollars are expended in getting the scenic effects. Cities have been built and then burned to give the effect of a sacked town being destroyed by the enemy. Shipwrecks have been shown where real ships have been purchased, and then run upon the rocks and deliberately wrecked to get the proper setting for the pictures and the necessary thrills for the people. What of these people who follow the motion-picture industry for a living? Their lives are apart from the rest of the community. It seems fascinating, but it is one filled with hard labor, uncertain hours, and affords rather scanty pay. The pastor of one of the Los Angeles churches attempted to reach the people living in the near-by “movie-city” but he failed. A plan should be devised whereby a sympathetic understanding might bring these hard-working people into relationship with the church. The influence of such a tie would be far-reaching in results.

The Makers of Other Luxuries. Another group of workers are those who make jewelry; others are at work making fancy costumes, special designs in millinery, and artificial flowers. In fact, when we take a census of all of the people who are at work serving the demands of this age, which loves the extraordinary and insists upon luxuries as a right, you find that there are in reality hundreds of thousands of these workers who are in every sense of the word serving humanity. Whether they are serving in the highest and best way is not the question we are discussing. As long as we tolerate an age of luxury and draft an army of thousands of men, women, and children to help produce these luxuries, so long must we consider the needs of the men, women, and children so drafted. The church, if its appeal is to reach all the groups, must reach all the workers who are making possible the abundance of things that minister to an age of luxury.