CONSUMERS AND
WAGE-EARNERS

CONSUMERS
AND WAGE-EARNERS
THE ETHICS OF BUYING
CHEAP

BY
J. ELLIOT ROSS, Ph.D.

NEW YORK
THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY
1912

Copyright, 1912, by
The Devin-Adair Company

NOTE

J. Elliot Ross is a member of an old and prominent Southern family. He has long been an ardent student of economics, of sociology, and of the enslaved condition of the Wage-Earner,—and who, save the idle rich and the social drone, is not a wage-earner? Dr. Ross is a graduate of George Washington University. The Catholic University of America conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Philosophy for this, his excellent work in behalf of the Consumer, the Wage-Earner, and the Oppressed.

[TABLE OF CONTENTS]

[CHAPTER ONE]

THE POINT AT ISSUE

Have you ever stood in a country store and from the superior heights of mature wisdom watched a chubby-faced, bright-eyed boy invest a penny in a prize-bag? To you it is simply a paper enclosing a few nuts, a piece of candy, and a variable quantity in the shape of a tin flag, an imitation ring, etc. But to the child there is an excitement in getting one knows not what. All the gambling instincts of the race that squanders thousands upon the turf, all the love of adventure that peopled our continent, are summed up in that one act. The child has, perhaps, contentedly endured the routine of the farm for weeks in the anticipation of this one moment of blissful joy when his anxious fingers nervously reveal the delight or the disappointment.

Years have brought wisdom (or is it disillusionment?) and imitation rings no longer have the same importance in our eyes. No matter how wistfully we may look back, those days will never return. Yet prize-bags may once again loom large in our intellectual horizon, though with a difference. This time we look beyond the rosy-cheeked, healthy country lad, bred amid the beauties of God's fields and nourished with unadulterated home products, to the pale, nervous, over-worked girls who spend their days filling these bags. In an ill-lighted, ill-ventilated room, in a great dusty, dirty city they work feverishly for ten hours at the rate of four cents a hundred bags. "They stand at a table with boxes before them, from which they take peanuts, candy and prizes with quick automatic motion. They turn down the corners of each bag, and string the bags when full in long bulky curls of seventy-two."[1]

Speeding to the utmost they cannot make enough to live on. A room in a cheap boarding-house, morally and physically dirty, insufficient food, and no chance for legitimate pleasures—this is the prize-bag life holds for them. What wonder if the temptation to supplement these wages in the way always possible for women prove too strong? Who is to blame?

Is the little chap hundreds of miles away in the country, happily unconscious of their existence, in any way responsible? This is the question with which we are going to busy ourselves.

Our little boy and over-worked girl are not, probably, typical Consumers and Producers. Still they represent large numbers of the economic world, and the solidarity of industry is such that one could not exist without the other. In a way, the country lad is a shadow of President Taft pressing a button to start the machinery of a world's fair. The child, with wonderful effect on others, furnishes a portion of the nation's industrial mechanism. In the satisfaction of his own desires, he is all unconscious of this, and unconscious, too of the responsibilities of power that modern social workers would thrust upon him.

It was once, indeed, the object of reformers to excite a sense of wrong in the oppressed. The fashion found expression in Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man." Now their purpose is also to arouse a sense of obligation in the powerful, and the change of front is indicated by Mazzini's "Duties of Man." One duty after another has been forced upon the race's conscience, and to-day the attempt is made to compel the final, and some say the most powerful, element of the industrial world,—the Consumer,—to shoulder his share of responsibility.

Briefly, the line of argument is this: Laborers have a right to "a fair wage for a fair day's work." If employers fail in their duty of meeting this right, then the obligation neglected by the employers must be assumed by those who also benefit by the laborers' work,—by the Consuming Class. At first, the obligation is made abstract and hypothetical in this way because of difficulties in establishing the concrete content of the workman's right to a fair wage, and just what line of conduct is incumbent upon the individual Consumer confronted by this situation. Persons who readily agree that the laborer has a right to a fair wage, and that if this right is violated the Consumer ought to do something, will wrangle unendingly as to just what is a fair wage and just what a Consumer ought to do.

After fixing this general obligation upon the Consuming Class, however, the other question as to whether the employers are actually neglecting their duties towards their employees, and what the individual Consumer can and should do, will be considered.

The fixing of an abstract, hypothetical obligation for a whole class, rather than a concrete duty for a particular individual, is not useless. If it is proved, that, provided employers neglect their duties and the Consuming Class can do anything to fulfill them, there is an obligation upon the Consuming Class to carry out these duties—if this is established, it is only necessary when a particular case presents itself to ask: Have the men through whose labor this Consumer is benefiting been unjustly treated by their employers, and can this Consumer, without a disproportionately grave inconvenience, do anything to help them?

Unless both questions are answered in the affirmative, this particular individual Consumer can have no duty of fulfilling the abstract obligation. This is much easier than working out the principle anew for each case. It is the difference between blowing bottles and molding them.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "Women and the Trades," The Pittsburgh Surrey, by Elizabeth Beardsley Butler: N. Y., 1909: p. 47.

[CHAPTER TWO]

OBLIGATIONS OF THE CONSUMING CLASS

Practically all are agreed on the fundamental point that laborers have a right to a fair wage for a fair day's work. Leo XIII has said, that though contracts between laborers and employers are free, "nevertheless, there is a dictate of natural justice underlying them more imperious than any bargain between man and man, that remuneration ought to be sufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner."[2] Later in the same encyclical, he indicates that this wage should be large enough to enable a workman to "maintain himself, his wife and his children in reasonable comfort" (p. 237), and allow a margin for saving against a rainy day.

The present Pope, Pius X, has quoted these words of his predecessor and agreed that workmen have a strict right in justice to a fair wage, time to fulfill their religious duties, and freedom from work unsuited to their age, strength, or sex.[3] The Rev. J. Kelleher, one of the most recent and respected writers on the question, goes even further. "The right to work," he says, "or some other right that will secure an opportunity of providing for reasonable living to the less fortunate members of the social body who do not happen to be possessed of property, is an essential condition of any equitable economic system."[4]

Cardinal Capecelatro has said that each one has "a right to raise himself towards the infinite, a right to the intellectual nourishment of religion, and, therefore, a right to the time necessary for the worship of God, a right to repose, a right to honest enjoyment, a right to love in marriage, and the life of the home. In woman Christianity recognizes with her function of child-bearing in Christian marriage, a right to the time for the nurture of her children. In children it recognizes a right to the supreme benefit of health, given them by God, but endangered by overmuch work. In young girls it recognizes a right to such moderation in their duties as may assure them health and strength. In all, finally, it acknowledges the immortal soul, with its rights to education, to salvation, to the time that these things need."[5]

Now when Pope Leo and the other authorities quoted used the words "right," "just," "duty," what did they mean? These words are often employed vaguely and carelessly, but we may be sure that here they were taken in a strict and well-defined sense, such as usually found among Catholic ethicists.

A right, as it is thus ordinarily defined, is "a legitimate power of doing or acquiring something for one's own good."[6]

The word power is not taken here in the sense of physical ability. It means that moral potency or capacity without which nothing can be acquired or recovered: for a person may have a right to do what he has not the physical power to perform. "Legitimate" means granted by or conformable to law: hence we have not a right to do everything for which we have the physical power.

Once we get this idea of "right" firmly fixed in our minds, the concepts of "justice," "injustice," and "duty" easily follow. For "justice," in a definition of Ulpian that has been accepted all down the ages since, is simply the constant and perpetual will of giving to each one his right.[7] And injustice, naturally, is merely a voluntary violation of another's right.

A "duty" is simply the obverse of a right, it is the obligation corresponding to a right. Or as Bouquillon put it, it is "something reasonably due from one person to another because of a necessary connection between the end to be attained and the means used."[8] As the end varies between justice and charity, so does the duty. In the one case, our object is to fulfill the precept, "love thy neighbor as thyself"; in the other, to give to each man what he has a right to have.

The fundamental concept of a "right" may be looked at from four points of view: (a) the subject, or who has the right; (b) the matter, or content of the right; (c) the title or reason for the right; (d) and finally, the term, or who has to respect the right.

Asking these questions about the right at present under consideration, we find that the subject of the right is each individual who contributes to the production or distribution of the articles purchased by the Consumer. The content of this right we have already given in the words of Leo XIII and others. Briefly, it may be summarized as the right to a decent living.

On what grounds have employees these rights? By the very fact that they are men; that is, intelligent beings destined for a supernatural end. Therefore these rights are connatural, as belonging to them by their nature; inalienable, because they cannot be renounced; perfect, because so strict that the duties corresponding to them are matters of commutative justice.

And who has the duties corresponding to the workman's right to a decent living? Primarily, the direct employer. He has a strict duty of justice in the matter. If he fulfill it, then no one else is bound. But in the case before us, we assume that the direct employer has failed to do his strict duty of commutative justice to his employees. It makes no difference whether the direct employer be formally guilty or not. He may be unable to perform his duty, or he may wilfully neglect it. That does not matter. De facto, he does neglect it. What then is the duty of the Consuming Class?

We think that the Consuming Class is bound to assume the obligations that the direct employers have neglected. And we are going to support this contention by four arguments. These arguments are:

I. The devolution of duty argument: the direct employer has failed to fulfill his duty, and this duty thereupon devolves upon the indirect employer, the Consuming Class.

II. The value argument: ideally, the buyer of an article is bound to pay its value, and, as a general rule, if proper economy has been exercised in its production, this must be sufficient to pay a living wage to the men engaged in producing and distributing that article.

III. The co-operation argument: the direct employer is guilty of an injustice in which the Consuming Class is bound not to co-operate.

IV. The social argument: it is for the common good that the average employee should be paid a living wage. And since the Consuming Class is merely the body politic, from one point of view, it is bound to sacrifice the advantage of cheap buying for the sake of the rounded advantage of the whole.

I. We have explained briefly to what every employee has a right—that is to say, what every employer must give his workmen, or commit injustice. We have assumed, further, that the employee often does not get what he has a right to have.

Now, this is not always the employer's fault. Often an employer would be glad to raise wages, to improve sanitary conditions, to shorten hours, but the stress of competition prevents him.

But the employer being unable or unwilling to pay a proper wage, etc., what becomes of the employee's right? Does it cease? Has he no claim upon anyone else?

Those who would fix an obligation on the Consuming Class say that the employee's right does not cease. He has a claim, they contend, upon all who in any way benefit by his labor, the strength of the claim depending upon the closeness of the relationship, the importance of the benefit derived, and the injustice suffered.

First of all, they point out, there is the rent-taker. But for the labor of these men (assumed to be underpaid, etc.), there would be no return out of which to pay rent. For the mere fact of ownership, which in itself may not stand for any addition to the ground's productive capacity, these men are allowed to take a part at least of what would be necessary to raise the condition of the men producing the wealth to a just standard. Therefore, because the rent-taker seems to receive the most gratuitous benefit from the employee, the duty of the employer devolves first upon him. If the employer fail, wilfully or not, to fulfill his duties to his men, then they become binding upon the rent-taker.

Should he, too, fail, the laborer still has a claim. There is another very important sharer in distribution—the interest-taker. It is true that the product is the joint result of labor and capital. But when there is the case of anonymous, impersonal capital receiving interest, and living, breathing, human machines being under-fed and unprotected, then humanity's claims supersede those of capital.[9] The inalienable rights of the laborer, which Cardinal Capecelatro has so excellently summarized, replace the alienable rights of the individual capitalists based upon the mere possession of property. The interest-taker is bound to give even the whole of his share to maintain a just standard of wages, etc. And this principle is admitted in civil law by making wages a first lien upon the product and exempting wages from legal action.[10]

But if the interest-taker, also, be unwilling to fulfill his duties, there is still an economic element upon which the laborer has a claim—the Consuming Class. Production on a huge scale, the interposition of wholesalers and middlemen of all sorts, shopping by mail or telephone, should not disguise the fact that the Consuming Class are really employers. It is only in an indirect way, it is true, but still a real way for all that. If the direct employer, the rent-and interest-taker refuse or are unable to perform their duties, then (leaving aside the legislature for the present) these devolve upon the Consuming Class in so far as they benefit by the laborer's work.

This argument for the obligation of the Consuming Class is based upon the devolution of duties. Here it may appear new and strange, because applied to a new field, but it is admitted elsewhere as beyond contradiction. If, for instance, parents will not or cannot support their children, then the grandparents have just as real a duty towards them as if they were their own immediate children. And if they, too, neglect this duty, then it devolves upon collateral relatives until finally it falls on mere neighbors.

Likewise, the Consuming Class, it is claimed, if those whose duty is prior to theirs refuse to perform it, must fulfill the duty that has devolved upon them. The rent-and interest-taker may be unjust to the employee and to them, but that is not a valid excuse.

The same principle, though arrived at by a different process of reasoning, underlies the dictum, coming to be more and more recognized by legislators and economists, that the costs of production should be borne by the Consumers. That is to say, that the risks of professional hazard and accidents due to the carelessness of fellow-servants have been transferred from the employee to the employer. Naturally then, the employer compensates himself out of the price.

II. This question of the duty of the Consuming Class towards the men who make or sell the goods they buy, may be viewed from another angle than that of the devolution of duties or the obligation of indirect employers. Leaving out of consideration the idea of indirect employer, it is further contended that the Consuming Class, simply as purchasers, may be guilty of injustice in another sense.

For what are the duties of the buyer? To pay the true "value" of an article.[11] And what determines the true value of an article? Not necessarily the price.

This may be fixed by law, as is the case with bread in many large cities. A loaf of a certain weight must be sold for five cents. Or we may have the natural or market price, which is determined by common consent. This is nothing more than the price resulting from the interaction of supply and demand.

But although ordinarily, justice is fulfilled if a person pay either the legal or market price, neither is really based on justice. The price fixed by law will come closer to being a just price. In a self-governing community, it probably will not do a great injustice to either party for any length of time. In this country its field is so limited, that it may be disregarded in the present discussion.

The market price, however, makes no pretense of being determined by justice. It is the shrewdness of one man pitted against the shrewdness of another, or even the greed of one against the other's need. One wants to sell for as high a price while the other wants to buy for as low a price as he can. When there are numerous buyers and numerous sellers, all knowing their business pretty well, the result will be a close approximation to what would be a just price, if the cost to the entrepreneur producing the commodities or the person managing the distributing agency were all that should be taken into consideration. In a society where the actual producer sells directly to the Consumer, where there is no production on an enormous scale employing hundreds and thousands of hands who have no voice in fixing the price of the product, then the price reached by the higgling of the market is likely to be just.

Under the medieval system of craftsmen and one or two journeymen or apprentices who formed part of the household it was possible (by lack of competition) to maintain the rate of reward by limiting the supply. "No serious attempt was made to push trade or develop business, but only to carry on each trade according to the habitual rate of reward. According to this policy, the conditions of the producer were allowed to be the first consideration, and the consumer had to pay a price at which these conditions could be maintained."[12]

But conditions of business have changed immensely since the Middle Ages. The Industrial Revolution has brought big scale production, driving out of existence the small producer ministering directly and immediately to the wants of the community. Department stores have supplied the same principle in the distributing end of industry, and very largely replaced the small retailer. The employees of the big producer and distributor, the ones most concerned, have no voice in fixing the price of the article made or distributed by their labor. As a consequence competition will often depress the price below the point where it will yield a living wage to them. Not their rights determine this point, but what crude irresistible hunger will force them to accept. Many times it is only a difference between starving rapidly or slowly. But competition is inexorable.

It is true, that sometimes the actual producers or distributors may not be getting living wages because the entrepreneurs or the rent-or the interest-takers are absorbing too much. But ordinarily it is probable that stress of competition between capitalists and between managers will keep their shares within fairly moderate bounds. Capital competes with capital for a share in production just as one firm competes with another to secure a market for its product. Hence it may be reasonably presumed in any given case, when nothing is known to the contrary, that where the laborers are insufficiently remunerated, it is because the price obtained for their product will not cover just wages. Nor are appearances always a safe guide. A man who owns and manages a factory (thus drawing by himself alone wages of management, rent, and interest) may seem able easily to afford higher wages. Yet to divide his whole income among all his employees might give only an inappreciable increase to each.

Therefore, it would seem that the principle of the market price being just, cannot be applied strictly to-day. On the contrary, many persons are claiming that the market price fixed by competition is usually unjust. A better principle, a more fundamental principle, one that really strikes its roots down into justice itself, would be to say that a just price is one that will yield a just return to all concerned—the actual laborers who produce the commodities, the clerks in the stores that distribute them, wages of management to the entrepreneurs concerned, and interest on the capital invested.

Certainly if this be not done, the equality between the "value" of the article and the price is not preserved. And as Ballerini says, "when the equality is not preserved, so that the seller sells for more than the highest price or the buyer buys for less than the lowest ... injustice is committed."[13]

But even though the price asked were sufficient to pay the employees just wages and the entrepreneur simply refused to do it, would the Consuming Class be justified in buying the article? It is contended that they would not. For one of the duties of the seller is to give a just title. And it would seem clear that one who hires a person to make a certain article, playing upon his necessity to avoid paying what his labor is worth, has not acquired a just title to the object produced. There is something in that article for which he has not paid. Human flesh and blood that has not been compensated for have gone into its making. The seller not having a good title himself, cannot transfer such to another. Persons who buy from him do not, therefore, secure a just title, and hence, it is argued, commit a grave injustice by buying such an article.[14]

III. The third argument adduced in favor of an obligation on the part of the Consuming Class is, that the purchase of articles made under unjust conditions is co-operation in the injustice. It makes no difference whether or not the employers are formally guilty of injustice. They may be forced by the competitive system, as many contend, to underpay their workmen. Nevertheless, material injustice at least is committed, and the Consuming Class have no right to co-operate formally in what may be merely material injustice for another. Yet the Consuming Class by buying goods made under unjust conditions does co-operate, it is alleged, in three ways: (A) as the recipient of the result of the injustice; (B) by furnishing the means for the act; (C) and by counselling the action. "For a co-operator is one who at the same time with another is the cause of the injury, whether secondary or equally principal, whether positive or negative. For there is not the same manner of co-operation in all cases, but this is common to all, that one person should concur with another to commit an injury."[15]

(A) One of the ways of positively co-operating with an injustice, is by receiving the results of the injustice. Thus a thief will not steal a bulky piece of silver unless he has a fence to receive it, and the fence becomes guilty of the theft by receiving the article. So a business man will not manufacture an article and thus commit an injustice against the laborers whom he underpays, unless he is reasonably sure some one will receive this article after it is made. The persons who receive it, then, or the purchasers, it is argued, are in the position of the thief's fence: They are receiving an article that was obtained by injustice; and it matters not whether the article was stolen outright or the injustice committed in a more gentlemanly way. Nor does the fact of the manufacturer committing the injustice to increase his profits, rather than (as has been shown elsewhere) to meet a demand for cheapness on the part of the Consuming Class, alter the situation. For a thief steals for his own enrichment, not for the advantage of the recipient of the stolen goods.[16]

(B) One can co-operate in an injustice not only by receiving the results, but by furnishing the means for committing the injustice, and it is contended that the Consuming Class co-operate also in this way. Nor is this simply a different name for the co-operation just considered. For in the previous case, the Consuming Class co-operated with an act already performed in anticipation of this co-operation. Whereas in the phase now under discussion they co-operate with an act to be done in the future. A concrete example will make this clear. Mr. ---- invests $50,000 in the shoe business. After paying for his plant, raw material, and the wages of his men until he has produced marketable articles, he has practically nothing left. His continuance in business depends upon his selling these articles to gain money for current expenses. The purchasers of these goods co-operate (by receiving the articles) in the injustice under which they are assumed to have been manufactured, and also, by furnishing the necessary means, in the injustice he will commit by manufacturing more under the same conditions.

(C) Nor is the Consuming Class's co-operation yet exhausted. For they may be looked upon as truly counselling, voting for this injustice on the part of the manufacturer. The Consumers do not go personally to the manufacturer and urge him to produce a certain article at a certain price, nor do they vote as specifically as an alderman for a contract with a factory, but their action amounts to practically the same thing. They go from one store to another seeking the cheapest price, and the manufacturer knows this. To meet this demand (a very real, though to some extent impersonal) demand for cheapness, the manufacturer commits the injustice of underpaying his employees. It makes no difference whether you call this "demand," or "counsel," or "voting," it is the real cause of the injustice, and hence the Consuming Class are guilty of co-operation.[17]

It makes no difference if the Consumer knows that the injustice will continue whether he purchase or not.[18] In purchasing he is guilty of a moral wrong. For as a man who buys a ticket for an obscene show, co-operates in this obscenity even though his money be not necessary for its production, so do they participate in the manufacturer's injustice.[19] Or, to give Ballerini's illustration, if ten men suffice to launch a ship and an eleventh helps, certainly he is truly said to be helpful.[20] In the same way, Consumers who buy an article that was made under unjust conditions co-operate in this injustice even though it would have taken place without the money received from their purchase.

For these reasons, it is contended, the Consuming Class, in buying goods made under unjust terms, co-operate in this injustice by receiving the goods, by furnishing the means for committing the injustice, and by urging such production by practical financial support.

IV. We now come to the social argument, that is especially popular to-day, though it is by no means new. It was familiar to the Scholastics, and it was pithily formulated by Suarez as, "Public is to be preferred to private good."[21] Aquinas expresses it more at length: "For any individual in respect to what he is and has is related to the multitude, just as a part is related to the whole: whence nature sometimes injures a part to save the whole."[22] Elsewhere, Suarez confers upon the civil law the power of binding in conscience because "this power is necessary for the good government of the republic."[23]

Various extremely important and far-reaching rights and obligations are fixed by this argument. It is lawful, for instance, for the state to kill criminals "if they are dangerous and injurious to the community."[24] Ballerini says it is lawful to kill a criminal in so far as it is ordained for the safety of the whole society.[25] But only the properly appointed persons have this right, because greater evils would befall the state if each one were the judge in his own case. (L. c.) And not only may the state directly kill a guilty person, it may also, when necessary for the common good indirectly kill an innocent person.[26] Wholesale organized slaughter, called war, is right and proper when the good of the state requires it.[27] Whereas sedition is wrong, because it violates the good of "public quiet and civil concord."[28]

Again, while suicide is unlawful, because, for one reason, a man is part of the community and whoever kills himself does an injury to the community, a man may yet lawfully expose himself to certain death for the good of the community. Similarly, though it is illicit to cut off a member of the body, because it is a part of the whole and cannot be removed without injuring the whole (Aquinas, l. c., Q. 65, A. 1), Liguori approves of at least one form of serious mutilation for the good of the community.[29]

Private property is justified because it tends to the peace of the state.[30] Lehmkuhl determines the gravity of an injustice not only from the injury done to the individual, but also, "from the injury and danger which the public good and security would suffer, if it were allowed with impunity."[31]

Social necessity, then, is widely recognized as a valid proof for a right or duty. The binding force of civil law, the wickedness of suicide and self-mutilation, the morality of executing guilty and innocent, the righteousness of private property, are all settled by this norm. Therefore, since the social necessity of the average workman getting a living wage is beyond contradiction, the Consuming Class, who benefit especially by the labor of these workmen, are especially bound to see that these rights are obtained.

We have now considered the arguments advanced to prove that justice binds the Consuming Class to see to it that goods are made under fair terms. These arguments may be summarized as follows:

I. Because as indirect employers the Consuming Class are bound to maintain just conditions for those whom they indirectly employ.

II. Because as buyers the Consuming Class are first bound to pay the full value of the article, which must include sufficient to give the persons employed in its manufacture and distribution a living wage, etc.; and secondly, because the Consuming Class are bound not to buy an article to which the seller has not a just title, the seller of an article made under unjust conditions not having a just title since there is work in the object for which he has not paid.

III. Because the Consuming Class would co-operate in an injustice in three ways: (A) by receiving the goods made under unjust conditions; (B) by furnishing the means for committing the injustice; (C) by urging such production by this practical financial support.

IV. Because the Consuming Class are bound to seek the social good, and that demands the payment of fair wages.

II

So far we have considered only the arguments for an obligation of justice on the part of the Consuming Class. But may there not also be a duty of charity?

Certain general considerations relating to this second of the two greatest commandments, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," must be referred to before answering that question.

The precept of charity requires us to love our neighbor as ourselves. And by the term neighbor we mean everyone. No religion, "race, color, or previous condition of servitude" removes a man from the category of our neighbor. A Christian's love must be all embracing. T. H. Green has well said that progress in civilization has been an enlargement of the meaning of neighbor and neighborliness. The meaning of these terms, once confined to one's relatives, then extended to one's city, tribe, nation, has now widened out until it embraces the world.

But while we must look upon everyone as our neighbor, and love him as ourselves, this does not mean that we must love each one in the same degree. We must love him as ourselves, but not necessarily as much as ourselves. We must have a universal internal love by which we wish our neighbor well in his spiritual, corporal, and material goods and succor him in necessity.

Yet the amount of good we wish him, and the strength of the obligation to effect it, vary both with the special relationship existing between us and our mutual conditions. By mutual conditions, is meant his state of indigency and ours of prosperity. Almost innumerable grades of necessity may be distinguished, but for present purposes four will be sufficient: (1) extreme necessity, in which a person is in danger of death, or will be very shortly; (2) quasi-extreme necessity, in which one is in danger of falling into extreme necessity or a grave evil, either perpetual or lasting for a long time; (3) grave necessity, where one suffers a serious evil, but not for so long a period, or not so great; (4) common necessity, when one experiences some inconvenience, but not grievous inconvenience.

The obligation varies, too, with the conditions existing on our part. For if the duty of succoring our neighbor from our own goods is to bind, we must be in possession of superfluous goods. Otherwise our own need would have a prior claim. Material possessions may be superfluous to life, that is, just more than enough to keep body and soul together; superfluous to our state in life, or goods without which we should have to sink to a lower social plane; or superfluous to the decency of our state, those over and above what are required even for the proper support of our family in accordance with the usual custom of those in the same position, the education and starting of our children in life, the giving of charity, gifts, entertainment of guests, etc. This last class of goods may be called absolutely superfluous.

Now, it would not seem rigoristic (especially in these days when the right to any private property is seriously questioned) to say, that a person in extreme or quasi-extreme necessity is to be succored from goods that are necessary to the decent support of our station in life. One merely in grave or common necessity need be helped only out of absolutely superfluous goods. This would certainly be the minimum that any Christian would require.

But this obligation also varies directly according to the closeness of our relationship with the person in want. A connection of blood, whether direct as between father and son, or collateral as between uncle and nephew, evidently produces stronger reciprocal obligations of charity than simple kinship through Adam. So, too, there is a stronger bond between those who have assumed artificial relationships, such as a pastor to his people, or those of the same religious faith, or those in the same social class, or those who have acquired, whether voluntarily or not, associational or economic ties. A captain, for example, has greater obligations of charity towards a man in his own company than towards one in another company, towards one in his regiment than towards one in another regiment, and so on.

Certainly not least strong among these artificial relationships of society is that of employer and employee. There was a time in social organization, when the permanent subjection of Gurth to Cedric brought out more clearly the mutual obligations. The ties of the relationship seemed stronger because more lasting. Fortunately or unfortunately, the right of free contract has abolished this permanency. Men wander from one employer to another, from one city to another, from one country to another. But no transitoriness of employment, no mobility of labor, should obscure the fact that while the relationship of employer and employee lasts, there also exist special and stronger obligations of charity between the two.

Not as strong, probably, as between master and serf, yet nevertheless too strong to be entirely fulfilled by the simple payment of the current wage. As Carlyle says, "Never on this Earth was the relation of man to man long carried on by Cash-payment alone.... Cash-payment never was, or could except for a few years be, the union-bond of man to man. Cash never yet paid one man fully his deserts to another: nor could it nor can it, now or henceforth to the end of the world.... In brief, we shall have to dismiss the Cash-Gospel rigorously into its own place: we shall have to know, on the threshold, that either there is some infinitely deeper Gospel, subsidiary, explanatory, and daily and hourly corrective to the Cash one: or else that the Cash one itself and all others are fast travelling."[32]

That infinitely deeper Gospel is the teaching of Christian charity. This tells us that there is another bond between employer and employee than a mere "cash-nexus." The needy employee has a claim upon his employer in preference to others, and the employer must discharge it before dispensing charity to those in no greater necessity who stand in no such relation to him. Charity begins at home, and the employee is closer home than one related simply by the tie of a common nature.

Of course, the relation between the direct employer and his workmen is more obvious than that between the Consuming Class (which we have called the indirect employer) and these same men. But the relation of the latter is none the less real and important for being obscure. Ordinarily it will probably be less close than that of the direct employer, but circumstances are conceivable in which the situation would be reversed.

And certainly it would seem that the benefit which the laboring class confers upon the Consuming Class is such that there is some special claim arising upon their charity. Not labor in itself but consumption is the object of work, and this terminus of all activity, the Consuming Class, would seem to be bound both in justice and charity to see that their own satisfaction is not attained at the cost of the comfort and happiness of those who minister to it.

We may conclude, then, that if the direct employers fail to fulfill their duties towards their employees, that the Consuming Class, as being a beneficiary of the work done, are bound to assume these duties. As yet, however, the obligation is abstract as being fixed upon a class and not some particular individual about to purchase an article; and it is hypothetical as simply assuming that employers neglect their duties.

The further question now presents itself: Do employers actually neglect their duties, and what can and should the Consumer do?

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Great Encyclicals of Leo XIII, "On the Condition of Labor," p. 236: N. Y., 1903.

[3] "Pope Pius X on Social Reform," London, 1910: p. 8.

[4] Kelleher, "Private Ownership," Dublin, 1911: p. 174; cf. also p. 179. Italics added.

[5] "Christ, the Church, and Man," p. 74: St Louis, 1909.

[6] Gury: "Compendium theologiæ moralis," n. 579: De just. et jure: Ratisbon, 1874.

[7] See Appendix, 1.

[8] See Appendix, 2.

[9] Cf. John A. Ryan, "The Church and Interest-Taking," p. 31: St. Louis, 1910.

[10] Cf. Bull. U. S. Bur. Lab., Jan. 1, 1911, pp. 876, 878, 881.

[11] Cf. St. Thomas, Summa, 2a 2ae, Q. 77, A. 1-2; St. Alphonsus, Lib. IV, Tr. V, n. 793.

[12] W. Cunningham, "Christianity and Social Questions," p. 114: London, 1910.

[13] See Appendix, 3.

[14] Cf. Liguori, l. c.

[15] See Appendix, 4.

[16] Cf. De Lugo, XIX, II, 4-5.

[17] Cf. De Lugo, L. c., XVII, II, n. 37.

[18] L. c., n. 16, n. 19.

[19] Liguori, Lib. IV, Tr. IV, n. 427.

[20] Ballerini, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 696-7.

[21] See Appendix, 5.

[22] See Appendix, 6.

[23] See Appendix, 7.

[24] Aquinas, l. c., Q.64, A.2.

[25] L. c., Pt. I, Tr. VI, Sec. V, n. 49.

[26] Liguori, l. c., Lib. IV, Tr. IV, n. 393; Ballerini, l. c, n. 62.

[27] Liguori, l. c., n. 402.

[28] Ballerini, l. c., n. 126.

[29] Liguori, l. c., n. 374.

[30] Aquinas, l. c., Q.66, A.2; Noldin, l. c., De Sept. Praec., n. 368, ed. 8a.

[31] See Appendix, 8.

[32] "Past and Present," Bk. III, Ch. X.

[CHAPTER THREE]

WHAT IS A JUST EMPLOYER?

The terms "fair wages," "reasonable comfort," "living wage" have often been used in the previous discussion. No attempt was made to make them more definite because it was not necessary at the time. Employers were simply assumed to violate the standard represented by these expressions. But if we are going to decide de facto that employers are actually neglecting their duties, we must manifestly have some norm by which to judge them.

What is this standard?

At first sight, this may seem easy to define. But its apparent ease is an illusion. Even the simplest and least questionable standard, that of bare subsistence (and to simplify it still further, restrict the consideration entirely to the question of food), is extremely elusive. Of course a man needs some clothing, a certain amount of fresh air, and a shelter from the weather. But we shall have a sufficiently complicated problem without introducing these factors.

How much food, then, does a man need to repair the daily waste and keep him in good physical condition? This depends to some extent upon the character of the work he does. A stevedore needs more food than a clerk. It will depend, too, upon the climate. Those in northern latitudes require more food, and usually of a more expensive kind, than those living in the tropics, and they ought to have more in winter than in summer. Again, racial characteristics must be taken into account. A Chinese coolie may get fat on fish and rice, or an Italian may do well on cheese and macaroni, while an Anglo-Saxon would starve on such a diet.

In addition to all these points, there is an individuality about the digestive organs that must be weighed. With our exact chemical science it looks simple enough to calculate how much muscle and blood and nervous force are lost in doing a certain amount of work, and just how much food would be required in a given time to make good that loss. This would be easy if we could buy muscle and nervous force done up in neat packages and simply apply them where needed just as we apply a coat of paint to a weather-beaten house. But, unfortunately, we cannot do this. The brawn and nerve must be bought in entirely different forms, broken up by certain interior organs, and gradually sent by a long and complicated assimilating process to the point requiring them. And what becomes of the subsistence standard if the organs of some people refuse to assimilate what those of others heartily relish? or if at different periods, and for no apparent reason, the same man can get no strength or satisfaction from what he formerly craved?

But if we cannot tell what mere subsistence requires are we not getting even vaguer when we add an indefinite "more" to it? When people talk of "frugal comfort," "decent livelihood," "living wage," etc., what do they mean? Do these terms mean to-day just what they did fifty years ago or will mean half a century hence?

A little reflection will show us that they do not. They are largely relative. When the gentry scorned to read and write, farm hands could hardly consider it an injustice not to have instruction in the three Rs; and when everybody went barefoot, it would have been foolish to riot for shoes. As means of production are perfected, as we get away from the danger of starvation, always threatening primitive nomadic peoples, the standard of living of the more fortunate rises, as does that standard which they are willing to allow the lower classes, and which the lower classes demand.

As a consequence, what is looked upon in one age as just and generous, may in another be considered thoroughly unfair. Concrete standards of justice vary with the time and are soon superseded by others. This is an important fact, and it must be mastered before one can use the current standard with honesty or intelligence. The principle of justice upon which the changing concrete standard is based, the moral right of each individual as a human being to the fullest development of all his faculties consistent with such rights in others, is doubtless unchanging. But it is conditioned by the stage of production that society has reached, upon how much there is to go round; and the wage necessary to secure this standard is conditioned by governmental supplement such as free education, insurance, etc. It would seem impossible, therefore, to determine the exact wage that a particular individual is entitled to until we can determine the total net product and this individual's contribution to it as compared with other individuals. We are not aware that this has been done.

The attempt has been made, however, to establish both the absolute minimum standard and this relative standard. In the sixteenth volume of the report of the United States Bureau of Labor on "Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United States," the former is fixed at $400.00. But have we an absolute minimum below which wages could not fall without endangering existence when a girl of ten and a boy of six are allowed more money for clothing than their mother?

Upon the relative living wage, whole volumes have been written. But they would seem either to deal with the concrete expression of the standard of a particular class, or, if they do attempt to establish the right of individuals here and now to a particular remuneration in money, they do not quite prove their contention.

But there are people who believe that the right of the laborer to a specific wage (and hence the employer's obligation of paying it) can be demonstrated. Dr. John A. Ryan, whose treatise on "The Living Wage" has attracted marked attention, has made such a claim for an estimate of $600.00 as a family living wage in cities of five hundred thousand or over in the United States.[33]

This was in 1906 and the cost of living has advanced considerably since then. Dr. Ryan would probably, therefore, not consider too high the estimate of the Bureau of Labor (l. c.) of $600.00 for cotton mill operatives in the South. Under this standard, the father supports the family, the mother stays at home looking after the house, and the children go to school. It includes insurance.

Now for the sake of argument let us assume that laborers have a strict right in justice to a standard represented by $600.00 a year in a Southern mill town. I must reluctantly admit that $600.00 cannot be proved conclusively to be the sum to which all laborers have a right. But for the time being we shall take it for granted, and from the standpoint of this assumption judge the justice or injustice of industrial conditions.

I have said that I do not think that this obligation can be proved conclusively, that is, as conclusively as a proposition in geometry. But I do think that it is capable of the same proof that we have for many other moral truths that pass unquestioned. We must beware of applying to new propositions that corrosive logic which, if impartially exercised on old and new alike, would destroy the very basis of morality.

This principle, that moral truths cannot be absolutely demonstrated, is generally admitted and many concrete examples could be given from prominent ethicists: thus De Lugo in speaking of so fundamental a question as the unlawfulness of suicide, does not hesitate to say: "The whole difficulty consists in assigning a reason for this truth: for though its [suicide's] turpitude is immediately apparent, it is not easy to find the foundation of this judgment: whence (a thing that happens in many other questions) the conclusion is more certain than the reason adduced by various authors for its proof."[34]

Again, Ballerini, in treating of the unlawfulness of one of the sins mentioned by St. Paul in the sixth chapter of his first Epistle to the Corinthians, remarks that "it is most difficult to assign a reason for this." Then, after rejecting all the reasons usually brought forward, he adds: "It must be admitted that there are some practical truths necessary for the right association of men with each other, which men feel and perceive by a sort of rational instinct, whose reason, nevertheless (at least a demonstrative one), when these same men seek it analytically, they find it hard to discover. It would seem that nature, or the Author of our nature, wished to supply the defect of the exercise of reason by an instinct or rational sense of this kind: ... Among the truths of this nature, the one of which we treat happens to be found."[35]

If unquestioned authorities like Ballerini and De Lugo admit their inability to prove such fundamental and important obligations (it will be noted that De Lugo says there are many such) as those of refraining from the above mentioned sins, it need not surprise us to find that the obligations of Consumers cannot be proved apodictically. It would be foolish, therefore, to claim absolutely to demonstrate this obligation. All that can be done is to adduce the same proofs that Aquinas, Suarez, and other master minds have used to fix other duties, and show that they have equal force in the present discussion. It is simply the familiar argument a pari, and the claim would seem reasonable, that any objectors meeting these arguments on purely rational grounds, must show that they do not equally apply to this obligation, or else deny their force as proof for the other duties.

FOOTNOTES:

[33] Others have approximated this estimate, though possibly without giving it exactly the same ethical implications as Dr. Ryan. Thus Chapin, "Standard of Living in New York City," N. Y., p. 245, claims $800.00 as the minimum for New York City. Miss Butler, "Women and the Trades," N. Y., p. 346, says $7.00 a week for a single woman in Pittsburgh. The United States Bureau of Labor in the third volume of its report on "Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United States," p. 560, declares for $2.00 a week per capita.

[34] See Appendix, 9.

[35] See Appendix, 10.

[CHAPTER FOUR]

THEORY OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION

Modern industrial conditions may be considered either a priori or a posteriori, either theoretically or de facto. We may examine the principles of economic organization, and conclude that they will or will not lead to low wages; or we can go to the facts themselves, and decide from an examination of actual conditions whether or not wages are low, etc., always remembering the standard we have adopted.

Beginning with the first method, we may, speaking roughly and with sufficient allowance for monopolies, say that we live under a competitive system. Men compete with others for their share in the product of industry. Goods are not put in one general fund and distributed according to each one's needs. Nor are they awarded to suit the whim of some ruler. Undoubtedly our present industrial organization is individualistic rather than socialistic, and its chief characteristic is probably a rivalry between its various members. Some assume that competition is universal and unrestrained. Then they draw conclusions as to the present system from what would happen if such competition prevailed. Others forget that competition is as universal as it really is, and that it exists not only between laborer and laborer to get the job, but between capitalist and capitalist to secure the laborer.

To subscribe to either of these errors will vitiate any conclusions as to social policy. For if unrestrained competition have certain evil tendencies, we cannot therefore assume that the present restricted form will have such results. And the fact that competition exists between capitalists as well as between laborers has very wide-reaching implications. It means no less than that competition may raise wages as well as lower them.

The average person is apt to look upon an object as drawn only to the earth by gravitation. He forgets that the same force is also pulling at it in an opposite direction. And in the same way the average person is likely to forget that competition is continually pulling wages both up and down. If we imagine some object suspended between the earth and the moon, and being constantly drawn towards each according to some power inherent in them which varies from time to time so that the object now approaches one and now the other, we shall have a rough illustration of how competition affects wages.

We can look upon the amount of wages as the object of attraction between competition on the part of laborers and competition on the part of capitalists. According as competition among capitalists is keen as compared with that among laborers, wages will rise, and vice versa; just as when, in our illustration, gravity was strong in the moon, the object rose towards it, and when it was stronger in the earth the object fell towards that body. But in both cases the result is due to the same force, though acting from different points. It would be an error, therefore, to attribute all the evils of our present system to competition, and all the good to some other agency. Competition has good results as well as bad, and this two-fold influence must always be remembered.

Doubtless absolutely unrestrained competition between laborers with no corresponding rivalry between capitalists would depress wages. But such competition does not exist. Competition is not absolutely unrestricted. It is limited by organization among the workmen, by legislation, by natural ability, and in various other ways. As a result, the effects are limited in various ways. If a bricklayers' union is strong enough practically to eliminate competition between this class of laborers while capitalists compete with each other to obtain their services, then the working out of competition has been modified in such a way as to have an upward effect upon wages.

Competition, then, is not necessarily bad. In many cases, competition is not only the life of trade, but the builder of character as well. As a whole, those who have to earn their living amid keen business rivalry are more energetic, quickwitted and resourceful than those government employees who live in a somewhat listless, non-competitive atmosphere. And the superiority of Western to Eastern civilization and character may be due to the fact that there competition has been too much limited by caste systems, repressive legislation, and unchanging custom.

Under the restricted form of competition existing to-day, many employers pay living wages and treat their employees fairly in every way. Indeed, the entrepreneur sometimes finds it to his advantage to give his employees even more than strict justice would demand. When competition for workmen is keen between employers, certain inducements may be necessary to prevent experienced men leaving and to avoid the consequent loss of breaking in new laborers.

At any rate we find that many employers do all that can reasonably be expected. For instance, in contrast with the conditions of the garment trade prevailing in many places, the Pittsburgh Survey found two factories in that city to be run on excellent lines. They were well-lighted by large windows, the ventilation was good, the walls newly whitewashed, and the floors swept and scrubbed. In one, indeed, the upper windows were opened at intervals, and the work-rooms had windows on three sides. (Butler, l. c., p. 109.) Nine others were good because they were swept daily and exhibited a manifest standard as to a work-room (l. c., p. 107). One firm, too, was found to allow its employees to share in its progress. Thus when new buttonhole machines were introduced a few years ago the girls could turn out a third more work than formerly, but they were paid at the same piece-rate (l. c., pp. 119-120).

The variation between individual stores as regards wages will be shown from the following table, adapted from page 121 of the first volume of the Pittsburgh Survey:

Such differences are reproduced in all the needle trades.[36]

Similar distinctions are also found in laundries. A very few have properly constructed plants, with wash-rooms on the upper floors and some arrangement for carrying off the inevitable steam (Butler, l. c., p. 170). In one, however, there are "exhaust pipes over the mangles, and fans in the walls, and there are windows along the side. The feeders are seated while handling small work, and the folders have comfortable benches" (p. 174). Wages, too, are considerably higher here than in other laundries. Four laundries in Pittsburgh have adopted an improved cuff-ironing machine which saves the operator from the extreme physical exertion of the old style (p. 182). A North Side laundry has set aside a bright sunny section of the building "for a lunch-room; there are attractive dishes, tables covered with white cloths, comfortable chairs. The noon interval is an hour and a half" (p. 312).

Turning to mercantile houses we also find a great contrast. Some provide only half a dozen chairs for five hundred girls, while others do not allow chairs to be used at all.[37] Many stores have a working week at Christmas of from seventy-two to eighty-four hours without extra pay (Butler, l. c., p. 303). "Some employers are generally reputed among salesgirls to assume that their women employees secure financial backing from outside relationships, and knowingly pay wages that are supplementary rather than wages large enough to cover the cost of a girl's support." (L. c., p. 306.) Indeed, some employers frankly admit this and advertise for sales-women, "preferably those living at home."[38]

Compare with these stores the one that "exemplifies a higher standard at each point under discussion; in the comprehensiveness of its ventilating system; in its observance of the spirit of the law in providing an average of four seats to a counter for its employees; in the fact that it has no Christmas overtime; ... and finally in its wage standard.... Seven hundred girls are paid $7.00; ... one hundred girls are paid $8.00 to $10.00, and sometimes $15.00 in the case of a head of stock." (Butler, l. c., p. 304.)

Some glass factories furnish shutters over the leer-mouths to protect employees from heat;[39] prevent radiation from the melting tanks by various devices (l. c., p. 79); provide blue glass screens at the glory holes (ib.); artificially cool the shops in summer (l. c., p. 80); work shorter hours (p. 98); eliminate night-work (p. 104); provide hoods and exhausts for the etching baths (p. 322) and the sand blasts (p. 317). In one woolen factory the milligrams of dust in a cubic centimeter of air were reduced from twenty to seven by the installation of an exhauster.[40]

The fact, too, that organizations such as trade unions and consumers' leagues can allow the use of their labels to certify that an article has been made under fair conditions, is a striking confirmation of the fact that some manufacturers do maintain proper factories and treat their employees justly.

Nevertheless, competition has a black as well as a silver lining. It is self-evident that for any length of time laborers cannot get more than the total product of their work coupled with the necessary capital. Nor will it be denied that capitalists will always be in a position to appropriate a part of this joint product, how much depending very largely upon the relative supply of capital and labor and the keenness of competition between them. The share that is left and which goes to the laborers is not divided equally. It is distributed competitively. Those who are economically strongest seize what they can, and the weaklings must be content with the remainder. Frequently this is not sufficient to afford them the standard we are considering, but they are helpless to remedy matters.

And there are some things that tend to keep this share at a minimum. Industrial organization is not simply a case of competition between capital and labor, but capitalists are competing with capitalists as well as with laborers, and laborers with each other as well as with capitalists. The result is that the weakest parties to this fray get hit hardest, and their only hope would seem to be the addition of some other check to competition that will prevent the present distressful consequences. This is not to say, as Socialists argue, that competition is to be abolished entirely, for we have seen that it may really have excellent effects for the workman. Rather it is to be harnessed and guided into beneficent channels, as a miller directs a stream to turn a wheel. He does not destroy the stream but makes it do his will.

An analysis of industrial society will show, I think, that despite the good work the stream of competition is doing, there is a little eddy undermining the bank and working havoc in some places. The description of one phase of competition, even though it be isolated from the rest, will probably give a correct enough idea of how this force while working out to the advantage of some, is resulting in harm to others. The considerations that must be omitted in a short sketch do not change the matter essentially. They limit the hardship wrought, but they do not prevent a considerable number of workmen from being mercilessly ground down.

Modern industry, then, is organized for sale, not use. Business men care nothing about what they manufacture so long as they can find a profitable sale for the article. The typical employer makes shoes not because he likes to, as an artist may paint a picture. He does it because he thinks a sufficient number of purchasers will want this commodity at a price paying him for his trouble.

But to get these purchasers he must (unless he have some sort of monopoly) offer his product at a price no higher than other manufacturers are willing to take for the same article. If he deviate only a few cents, the expert buyers of retail stores will know it and go elsewhere. There is a constant demand for cheapness, a universal eagerness to "get your money's worth"; and factories and retail firms must meet it, or see their trade taken away by competitors. The intense desire of individual buyers for minute savings of a cent here or a fraction of a cent there, becomes, in the aggregate, an irresistible Demand with a capital D, "a blood-power stronger than steam," compelling the retailer (who in his turn reacts upon the manufacturer) to sell cheap. "The phenomena of sweating are a standing warning against the dangers that are inherent in unregulated competition.... The underlying cause of the evil," affirms a noted English economist, "is certainly to be found in the indiscriminate preference of the public for that which is low-priced."[41]

The seller, then, must meet the Consumer's demands; and since these are for cheapness, he must sell cheap. But how can cheapness be obtained? Only by cutting down the expenses of production. Other manufacturers possess the same machinery, about the same advantages of location, and approximately the same talent. Given a system of unrestrained competition, each firm will have to count costs to within a fraction of a cent and reduce expenses to the lowest possible amount. To this end wages are often cut, workmen speeded, and the health of employees endangered.

"No one of us," says the manager of a big department store in St. Louis, "has any particular consideration in the purchase price of goods; the ease of communication and the large amount of advertising make it impossible for us to have any serious advantage over others in point of selling price. The women can go from one store to another, effectually preventing one store from being materially higher priced on the same goods than another.

"The great struggle is over the expense account. This brings up the whole question of salaries, the amount that can be paid to employees directly, the amount that is spent by us in caring for them, compensation for length of service.... All these have to be handled from the expense account, and it is on this point that some of the most delicate questions of morals arise, and they involve both the employer and the customer in the treatment of the employee."[42]

It is true that some economists have maintained that the price of an article must cover its cost of production.[43] But as Professor Carver says, such an opinion "is probably the source of more error and confusion in economic discussions than any other mistake." (Loc. cit.) It may be granted, indeed, that the price will never be much below the expenses of production, understanding by "expenses of production" what the entrepreneur must pay out in wages, interest, etc. Yet even this is not because the expenses of production directly govern prices. They affect the price only indirectly by limiting the supply. For no entrepreneur will long continue in business if he be not able to sell his product at a profit, and his going out of business will decrease the supply and so raise the price by the well-known law of supply and demand.

But "costs of production," being the sum of the efforts and sacrifices of all concerned in making an article, are very different from "expenses of production."[44] It is by no means true, as Professor Sidgwick pointed out twenty-five years ago, that the amount necessary to enable a laborer to keep himself in good physical condition and reproduce himself forms a minimum below which the self-interest of an employer will not allow wages to fall.[45]

For in the first place, there is no assurance that a laborer is going to spend his wages for this purpose. How, then, can it be to his employer's advantage to pay him more than he is willing to take, when the surplus may be squandered in drink? And even assuming that the generality of laborers must receive such an amount in order to meet the demand for workmen, still they need not all receive it from their employers. An industry, such as the department stores, may try to get girls who obtain part of their support from fathers or brothers employed in other businesses.[46] Or wages of large classes may be supplemented by public or private alms. This was long the case under the English Poor Law. As the land-occupiers paid the greater portion of the rates, it was to the Manufacturers' advantage to have wages really come partly from the parish.

And the numbers of laborers can be kept stationary without each workman, or even every class, receiving enough to perpetuate himself. For their ranks can easily be recruited from an over-supply of some higher class. There is a constant pressure upon the upper strata, forcing down the unfit, and it is readily conceivable that these failures should take the places of still greater failures below.

There is, then, no physical or economic necessity forcing employers to pay fair wages to each individual worker, in the sense in which we are using the word "fair" for the sake of argument. "The effort to organize business with a view to cheap production, may be carried on in such fashion as to press unduly on those who work for wages; employers are in a position in which they may be able to drive hard bargains as to hours of work and rates of pay, and to pass on the risk of loss, which arises from fluctuations of business, to be borne by those who are thrown out of employment."[47] And not only may this, but there is every inducement and almost necessity urging that it should, be done except where the workmen are organized. No employer can afford to pay a workman more than his surplus over and above what would be produced without him, and it will be to his advantage to pay less. He is a purchaser of labor, and like every other purchaser wants to get that commodity at the lowest figure. And there are several differences between him and the purchaser of any other commodity that give him a distinct advantage in the bargain.

In the first place, not merely increased profits, what would be represented by a housewife's saving in shopping, urge him to buy cheap labor, but his own industrial existence, which will be lost if he does not get his workmen as cheap as his competitors. Having a greater prize at stake, he develops a greater skill. He has a wider view of economic conditions, a better knowledge of the state of trade elsewhere, and so he can outbargain the unorganized laborer.

Again, the laborer is in a worse position than the seller of almost any other commodity. For what he does not sell to-day disappears absolutely. If he does not dispose of it now he cannot to-morrow. A fruiterer can keep his oranges until the next day, if he is not satisfied with the current price. But to-day's labor can be sold only to-day. And if it be not sold, it is probable that the workman will be physically less fit to-morrow. Yet even if he does accept the wage offered, and it is less than enough to repair the daily waste of force, the same result will be brought about gradually. He is, therefore, confronted by the dilemma of taking what the idle are willing to accept, or becoming idle himself.

It needs only the imagining of one's self in the position of the unemployed to see that there is hardly any limit below which the wages of the weakest may not fall. A man without special skill and without savings, with not only himself but others to look out for, will be glad to get even what he knows will not completely support him.

"Without organization and by means of individual bargaining, wages are drawn downward toward the level set by what idle men will accept, which may be less than they will produce after they receive employment and will surely be less than they will produce after they have developed their full efficiency. When labor makes its bargains with employers without organization on its side, the parties in the transaction are not on equal terms and wages are unduly depressed. The individual laborer offers what he is forced to sell, and the employer is not forced to buy. Delay may mean privation for the one party and no great inconvenience or loss for the other. If there are within reach a body of necessitous men out of employment and available for filling the positions for which individual laborers are applying, the applicants are at a fatal disadvantage."[48] Such is the opinion of a conservative economist with an especially kindly feeling towards the competitive system.

It would seem, therefore, that the competitive organization of industry has a tendency to crush out the weaklings. How numerous are these weaklings, we shall now discuss.

FOOTNOTES:

[36] L. c., pp. 121, 122, 134, 152; U. S. Bur. Lab., "Men's Ready-Made Clothing," p. 303.

[37] Butler, p. 301; U. S. Bur. Lab., "Women Wage-Earners in Stores and Factories," pp. 109, 178.

[38] U. S. Bur. Lab., l. c., p. 22; Report Minneapolis Vice Commission, 1911, p. 127.

[39] U. S. Bur. Lab., "Glass Industry," p. 54.

[40] U. S. Bur. Lab., "Industrial Hygiene," 1908, p. 79.

[41] W. Cunningham, "Christianity and Social Questions," pp. 122-123: London, 1910.

[42] "The Socialised Church," p. 120, address on "The Relation of the Church to Employees in Department Stores," by Hanford Crawford, B.S.: St. Louis, N. Y., 1909.

[43] Cf. T. N. Carver, "Distribution of Wealth," p. 31: N. Y., 1908.

[44] Cf. H. R. Seager, "Introduction to Political Economy," pp. 53-54: N. Y., 1908.

[45] H. Sidgwick, "Principles of Political Economy," p. 297: London, 1887.

[46] Cf. "Wage-Earning Women in Stores and Factories," p. 22: U. S. Bureau of Labor, 1911.

[47] W. Cunningham, "Christianity and Social Questions," p. 118: London, 1910.

[48] J. B. Clark, "Essentials of Economic Theory," pp. 453 and 456: N. Y., 1907.

[CHAPTER FIVE]

INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: WAGES

What has been said regarding industrial conditions is not mere theorizing. Private, state and federal investigations into actual conditions confirm the contention that there is a large margin of unemployed, and that a considerable portion of those who do find employment are overworked and underpaid regardless of life and limb. Anyone who studies the various official reports on this subject, must conclude that Dr. Devine's summary of the Pittsburgh Survey was well within the truth and is applicable to practically the whole country:

"Low wages for the great majority of the laborers employed by the mills, not lower than in other large cities, but low compared with the prices—so low as to be inadequate to the maintenance of a normal American standard of living; wages adjusted to the single man in the lodging house, not the responsible head of a family.

"Still lower wages for women, who receive, for example, in one of the metal trades, in which the proportion of women is great enough to be menacing, one-half as much as unorganized men in the same shops and one-third as much as men in the union.

"The destruction of family life; not in any imaginary or mystical sense, but by the demands of the day's work, and by the very demonstrable and material method of typhoid fever and industrial accidents; both preventable, but both costing in single years in Pittsburgh considerably more than a thousand lives, and irretrievably shattering nearly as many homes."[49]

Assuming, throughout this discussion, that $6.00 a week ($1.00 a week less than Miss Butler's estimate), or $312.00 a year is the lowest fair individual wage; and $11.00 a week, or $572.00 a year is the lowest fair family living wage:[50] it is easy to show from reliable reports that scores of thousands of individuals and heads of families fall below this standard. But in considering any figures quoted here, or to be found elsewhere, it should always be remembered that the actual wage may be much below the rate of wage. One employed at the rate of $6.00 a week may not make anything like that because of loss of time.

How much is lost through unemployment, it is hard to say. The United States Industrial Commission was of the opinion, that "it is impossible to collect statistics of any value whatever relative to the unemployment of unorganized labor, among whom lack of employment is a much more serious thing than it is with skilled or organized labor."[51] It would seem, however, that in the clothing trades, the employees lose at least one day in every six.[52] According to a Federal report issued in 1911, in Baltimore one-fifth of the force worked between five days and full time; one-tenth between four and five days; one-seventh between two and three, and five per cent, two days or less.[53] A report of the New York State Bureau of Labor for 1906[54] contains the following suggestive table regarding the unemployment of certain classes of organized labor. It may rightly be assumed that among unorganized workmen conditions are worse.

TABLE I.
NO. AND PROPORTION OF UNEMPLOYED WAGE-EARNERS

Other deductions that must be made from the apparent wage are the withholding of pay for long periods, exorbitant prices and rents obtained through company stores and houses, fines, and increases in the cost of living.

Therefore, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the per diem or weekly wage rate as given by the Bureau of Labor and other reports, affords, by itself, an accurate statement only of the maximum yearly wage. This should always be remembered in judging any facts hereafter adduced.

In the fifteenth volume of the bulletins of the Bureau of Labor will be found many interesting tables bearing on this question of wages. But as it is impracticable to quote them at any length here, a few of the more salient facts must suffice. Laborers in the flour mills of the South were working twelve hours a day for 11c. an hour.[55] Women in the carpet factories of the North were getting no more.[56] In the factory product of the clothing trade great numbers received less than 10c., 11c., and 12c. an hour (p. 35), and the compensation in sweatshops was much less. Male boarders in the knit-goods factories of the North-Central section were averaging less than $387.00 per annum. Women in the same factories were getting much less, some even as low as 7c. and 8c. an hour (p. 43). Silk-spinners in the North-Atlantic section were making only $5.00 a week, or less than $260.00 a year, for a nine and one-half hour day (p. 58). Male cigar-stemmers in the same section were making $6.00 a week (p. 59). In Michigan, in 1905, there were 3414 boys between fourteen and sixteen earning on an average 77c. a day, and 1725 girls making 64c. a day. In 1904, the average yearly earnings in the food preparations industry was $441.00; in salt production, $451.00; on tobacco and cigars, $393.00 (p. 334).

In New Jersey, in 1904-5, the average earnings in the cigar industry were $316.70; silk-weaving, $480.11; woolen and worsted goods, $373.43. In the same State in 1903-4, there were 1985 adult males receiving less than $3.00 a week; 3234 between $3.00 and $4.00; 5595 between $4.00 and $5.00; 6037 between $5.00 and $6.00; 12,406 between $7.00 and $8.00; 14,300 between $8.00 and $9.00, though $9.00, working full time every week, would be only $468.00 a year.

The very latest reports available confirm these figures. In the cotton textile industry alone, 29,974 employees, or 53.77% of the total number investigated (11,484 men and 18,490 women) were being paid at a rate less than $6.00 a week.[57] If we take the $11.00 rate, or family living wage, we find that 19,382 men (89% of the total) fall below it (l. c.). And as only 55% of the men employed in this industry were single (l. c., p. 132), at least 7285 of these men must have been married, and hence receiving less than the normal family living wage. It must be remembered, too, that these figures are based upon the assumption that full time is made. Could we get the actual wages, these groups would be much larger. This is shown by the table on page 329 of this report, where actual wages average $1.32 less than computed full time earnings.

If we turn to the clothing industry, we find conditions even worse. In the five cities investigated (New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Rochester, and Philadelphia), 6788 employees, or 37% of the total (1217 men and 5571 women) were being paid at a rate less than the individual living wage of $6.00. Taking the family living wage of $11.00 as our standard, 3499 men, or 62% of the total, fail to reach it.[58]

Again it must be repeated, that the actual wages are from 7½ to 20½% lower than these figures (l. c., p. 161). In one New York special order shop, the earnings for December fall to 55% of the average (l. c., p. 178).

These figures, however, are for shop-workers only. The average wages for home-workers are: Chicago, $4.35; Rochester, $4.14; New York, $3.61; Philadelphia, $2.88; and Baltimore, $2.24. "Here again the caution must be borne in mind that home-workers' wages, low as they are, often stand for the earnings of more than one worker. Sometimes, as reported on the books of the firm, it represents the earnings of more than one week" (l. c., p. 139). Ninety-eight per cent. of the married shop-finishers, and practically all of the home-finishers, too, earned less than $350.00 a year (l. c., p. 226). The average yearly earnings of home-workers are given as varying from $120.00 in New York to $196.00 in Rochester. From page 235 to 239 inclusive, the details of the earnings, size of families, and number of those working is gone into at great length. It must suffice here to say that families of five are recorded whose total yearly earnings are less than $100.00. One family of eleven is chronicled whose yearly income was $445.00, sixty-five dollars of which was earned by home-work. Working six days a week for ten hours a day, the home-worker cannot hope to make more than $156.00 a year.[59]

Seventy-six per cent. of the women employed in the glass industry earned less than six dollars a week.[60] Their average annual earnings, in fact, are stated as ranging from $163.00 for those sixteen years old to $292.00 for those from twenty-five to twenty-nine (l. c., p. 544). Nearly one-third of the female department-store employees receive less than $6.00 a week.[61] Yet many of them had other persons depending upon them (l. c., p. 55). One family, consisting of a mother, seventeen-year-old daughter, and three younger children, was supported by the daughter's $5.00 a week. They managed it by living in two rooms and eating practically nothing besides bread and tea or coffee (l. c., p. 56).

In New York State in 1906,[62] it was found that even among organized laborers reporting to the Bureau of Labor, 6078 men and 2011 women were earning less than the lowest individual living wage ($300.00), and 59,226 men and 8881 women (17.6% and 63.8% respectively) were earning less than the lowest family living wage ($600.00). If conditions were so bad among union men, they were probably much worse among unorganized workers.

In Pittsburgh, in the canneries, 59% of the girls make only $6.00 a week, or less (Butler, l. c., p. 38). Of those employed in the confectionery trades, only twenty-one earn as much as seven dollars (l. c., p. 50). And these two trades have inevitable dull seasons that cut wages much below these figures. Seven hundred out of nine hundred girls in the cracker business receive less than $6.00 a week (l. c., p. 70). Laundries are amongst the worst paying establishments, and there is practically no chance of advancement. The shakers-out never earn more than $4.00 a week, and usually only $3.00 or $3.50 (l. c., p. 170). No mangle girl makes more than $6.00 and most between $3.00 and $5.00 (p. 173). Broom-making often gives only $2.50 a week, and the highest is $5.00 (p. 252). Many box-makers earn only 60c. or 80c. a day, and 80% of the girls are being paid less than $6.00 a week (p. 261). Packing soap-powder in stifling rooms pays $4.50 (p. 270). Nearly 50% of the girls in the printing trades are below the $6.00 standard.

These, then, are the facts concerning wages. But no social fact can be entirely isolated. It is always intimately connected with many others, and no treatment of wages can be at all satisfactory without going to some extent into the ramifications of this subject along other lines. A chapter, therefore, will be devoted to the question of health and of morals as affected by industrial conditions and low wages.

FOOTNOTES:

[49] Report of annual convention of the American Sociological Society, 1908, or Charities and the Commons, now the Survey, March 6, 1909.

[50] Cf. p. 36f for discussion of fair wage.

[51] Vol. XIX, p. 754.

[52] Loc. cit., p. 755.

[53] U. S. Bureau of Labor, "Men's Ready-Made Clothing," p. 113.

[54] P. XI.

[55] Loc. cit., p. 37.

[56] P. 31.

[57] U. S. Bureau of Labor, "Cotton Textile Industry," p. 305, 1910.

[58] U. S. Bureau of Labor, "Men's Ready-Made Clothing," p. 129.

[59] L. c., p. 301; cf. also 20th Annual Report Bureau of Labor Statistics of N. Y., pp. 66-67, here quoted.

[60] U. S. Bureau of Labor, "Glass Industry," p. 405, 1911.

[61] U. S. Bureau Lab., "Wage-Earning Women in Stores and Factories," p. 46, 1911.

[62] Report of Bureau of Labor Statistics of New York for 1906, p. XXXI.

[CHAPTER SIX]

INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: HEALTH

The inevitable result of low wages is poor health. Bad housing conditions and insufficient food must follow upon the heels of scanty pay, unless the wages are supplemented in some other way; and that means anemia, tuberculosis, typhoid, and general physical debility. "In the New York block" bounded by E. Houston, Mott, Prince, and Elizabeth Sts., "one of every nine children born dies before it attains the age of five years. The death and disease rates are abnormal. The death rates for all ages in the City of New York in 1905-6 was 18.35 per thousand, and for those under five years it was 51.5; but in this block it was 24.0 for all ages and for those under five years it was 92.2."[63] "Nothing could be added to or taken away from these homes to add to their squalor." (P. 296.)

The conditions of many workers' homes can be learned in detail from pages 254-259 of the Federal report just quoted. Here only a few of the leading facts can be mentioned. Thus in Pittsburgh 51.1% of the families investigated had as many as three persons per sleeping room.[64] Eleven per cent. of female factory and miscellaneous employees and nine per cent. of store girls are rated as having "bad" housing conditions and bad food.[65] Very few girls doing "light housekeeping" get proper breakfasts (l. c., p. 18), or, indeed, any other meals. It is not because they can't cook, but because they have to keep food expenses to a minimum in order to buy clothes, pay room-rent, doctors, etc.

"'You see I'm dieting,' said a frail slip of a department-store girl as she held out her tray upon which the cafeteria cashier, in the presence of the Bureau's agent, put a two-cent check, covering the cost of the girl's lunch—a small dish of tapioca. She may have been dieting, but the evidences were pathetically against the need thereof, and there were some things telling other tales to a thoughtful observer. The girl's shoes and waist and skirt were plainly getting weary of well-doing, and to hold her position as sales-woman they must soon be replaced" (l. c., p. 17).

The tables on pages 80 and 81, to one who practises the "great transmigratory art" (as Charles Reade calls it) of putting yourself in another's place, tell pitiful stories of making ends meet (l. c., pp. 54-55).

NUMBER OF WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS KEEPING HOUSE CLASSIFIED BY COST OF LIVING AND WAGE GROUPS

[A] 16.6% of those for whom the information necessary was secured. In the cities investigated (New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Boston, Minneapolis, and St. Paul) there were, in 1905, 400,000 women employed in stores, mills, factories, and other similar establishments.

NUMBER OF WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS KEEPING HOUSE WHO HAVE SPECIFIED
NUMBER OF PERSONS WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY DEPENDENT
ON THEM FOR SUPPORT, BY WAGE GROUPS

But bad food and bad housing are not the only enemies of the workman's health. The nature of his daily toil and the conditions under which it is performed are often against him. Even ventilation becomes important when one has to spend ten, eleven, or twelve hours a day in one room, and yet this is almost entirely neglected.

In 1908 a special officer was appointed in New York State to make tests of the atmospheric conditions in places of business. One hundred and thirty-six factories were examined, and in some printing establishments as many as forty parts of carbonic-acid gas (CO₂) in ten thousand volumes of air were found, though a legal limit of twelve is recommended. One cigar factory, with windows partly open,had eighty such parts. The following table will exhibit the results of this investigation.[66]

Sometimes the exigencies of the trade require that there should be no draft, as in the handling of carbon filaments for incandescent lamps, and then the conditions of the atmosphere become acutely unhealthy. In addition, in some of the rooms numerous bunsen burners are always lighted and all currents of air carefully excluded to prevent their flickering.[67]

Elsewhere, the process of manufacture often vitiates the air, as the "blow-over" in bottle shops. "In some factories, at times the air is so full of this floating glass that the hair is whitened by merely passing through the room. It sticks to the perspiration on the face and arms of the boys and men and becomes a source of considerable irritation. Getting into the eyes it is especially troublesome" (l. c., p. 66). Something similar occurs in etching glass by a sand-blast. Unless a hood and exhaust are provided, a pressure of from fifty to ninety pounds scatters fine sand and glass dust through the air and is breathed in by the operator (l. c., p. 440). Even worse, however, is the acid etching, as the fumes of hydrochloric acid cause severe irritation to the throat and lungs (l. c., p. 442).

Even when there is no such irritant in the air as just mentioned, extreme differences in temperature between the work-room and the outside, or between various parts of the shop, may be a source of serious danger to health. In the glass industry, many persons have to work in temperatures ranging from ninety to one hundred and forty degrees, and as high as fifty degrees above the outside air (l. c., p. 75). Industries where an artificial humidity is required, such as silk, cotton and flax spinning, are likely to induce rheumatism, pleurisy, etc. After working ten hours in a room filled with live steam to prevent breaking of threads, to pass into a New England blizzard is apt to produce serious results. The boys in bottle-making shops are obliged to pass continually from a temperature of 140 degrees at the "glory-hole" to one of 90 degrees or less in other parts (l. c., pp. 49ff.).

And even if conditions of atmosphere and ventilation are good, the mere fact of continuing work for thirteen hours seven days a week tells seriously upon the physical endurance of the strongest.[68] When night work is required in addition to the day's labor, as in the glass industry, the consequences are likely to be worse, especially where children are concerned.[69] Night work frequently means a presence in the factory of at least twenty hours out of the twenty-four. "During the course of the investigation there were found two cases of recent death, both children, which could be directly attributed to exhaustion due to double-shift work in the furnace room" (l. c., p. 122).

In the clothing trade, "some piece and task-workers reported that they commonly worked seventy-two and even seventy-eight hours a week during busy periods" (l. c., p. 115). "There were instances where women said they worked from 6 or 7 o'clock in the morning to 9, 10, or 11 o'clock at night" (l. c., p. 241). For store girls, "thirteen and one-half hours on Saturday is not only excessive but works considerable hardship."[70] "One girl worked 24½ hours at one stretch with but two half-hour intermissions for meals.... Four girls working in one establishment on the 'night force' one day for each week reported their 'longest day's' labor as 16¾, 20¼, 22½, 24¼ hours" (l. c., p. 205). On the elevated railways in Chicago, at the time of the investigation, 1907-08, women worked for 80½ hours a week (l. c., p. 208).

When the business requires the maintaining of practically one position all day, whether standing or sitting, such long hours are bound to have a bad physical effect. This is the case, for example, in department stores (l. c., p. 178); in the glass industry where many growing boys are cramped before the furnace holes all day long;[71] in many processes in the manufacture of incandescent lamps (l. c., p. 482-483); and numerous other occupations.

But there is frequently added to mere length of hours a feverish haste in working induced by starvation piece-rates or by the necessity of keeping up with a machine. When a woman perforates 3100 bulbs a day and welds tubes to them, there must be a constant nervous tension to attain such rapidity (l. c., p. 469). The even more complex operation of stem-making for these bulbs proceeds at a rate varying from 2600 to 3500 a day (l. c., p. 467). Three thousand stems and bulbs are assembled each day (p. 470), while in one day, an expert will test the candle-power of 5000 lamps (p. 472). The operation of mounting Tungsten filaments in small copper wire is very much like threading an exceedingly small needle. If one imagines this repeated 3000 times a day, with thread that has to be handled with the greatest care to prevent breaking, he will have some idea of the strain on eyes and nerves (p. 478). Twenty thousand completed lamps are tested daily at a piece rate of 6c. per thousand lamps (pp. 486-487).

Very frequently, too, these long hours at an intense strain must be spent at work positively dangerous on account of the process, such as matchmaking[72] or painting lamps.[73] Chemical poisoning is frequent in hatters' and furriers' work, and plumbism, which is very similar to phosphorous poisoning, besets any trade in which lead is used. This is the case, in the production of white, red, or yellow lead, industries in which goods dyed with them undergo the process of building, winding, weaving, etc., and such an apparently innocuous occupation as the manufacture of earthenware and pottery. "One of the first symptoms of plumbism is a blue gum, followed by loosening and dropping out of the teeth. Blindness, paralysis, and death in convulsions frequently follow. Besides plumbism there are serious indirect results from lead-poisoning in a number of industries."[74] Readers of George Bernard Shaw will remember that Mrs. Warren adopted her profession through fear of contracting this disease. Her sister had fallen a victim to it and the frightful ravages made among her friends drove her to this course. In other industries such as wool sorting, blanket stoving and tentering, and warp dressing, lock-jaw is an incident.

Closely allied to a question already discussed, that of ventilations, is the insidious injury wrought by dust in the air. Some trades in which this condition is pronounced, seem materially to shorten life, as shown by a bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor for May, 1909, on "Mortality from Consumption in Certain Occupations." The proportion of those reaching the age of 65 and over among tobacco and cigar factory operatives was 1.8%; glove-makers, 2.3%; bakers, 2.4%; leather curriers and tanners, 2.9%; and confectioners, 3.1%: as against 4.7%, the average expected normal on the basis of all occupied males in the United States (l. c., p. 623).

Eighty-nine per cent. of the clergymen who died in 1900 were over 44, and 55% over 65 years of age; 76% of the lawyers dying in this year were over 44, and 41% over 65; 73% and 41% of the physicians had passed these respective ages; 80% and 37% of the bankers, officials of companies, etc., were over 44 and 65: yet more than half of the compositors dying in the United States for the year were under 49 years of age. About one-half of these died of pulmonary tuberculosis. Only 18% were over 60.[75] Between 1892 and 1898, 32% of the deaths of glass bottle-blowers were due to tuberculosis, largely induced, probably, by the strain on the lungs, the "blow-over," and conditions of temperature.[76]

Industrial mortality insurance statistics show that 23% of the deaths of those employed in trades exposed to organic dust are from consumption and 14% from other respiratory diseases, as against 14.8% and 11.7%, the expected respective averages for the United States.[77] The following table taken from the bulletin just quoted will probably exhibit the results more strikingly (p. 626):

It will be seen from this table, that deaths from consumption in these trades exposed to organic dust were more than half again as much as might reasonably have been expected. And it must be remembered that statistics indicate, "that general organic dust is less serious in its fatal effects than mineral or metallic dust, and as a result the proportionate mortality from consumption and other respiratory diseases in this group is more favorable than in the groups of occupations with exposure to mineral and metallic dusts" (l. c., p. 627).

More evident dangers of occupation, because more directly traceable to their causes, are industrial accidents. Manufacturers and employers sometimes wantonly, sometimes through ignorance, neglect the precautions and appliances necessary properly to safeguard their workmen. The introduction of complicated machinery, the use of high-power explosives, the strenuous conduct of production, without corresponding efforts to offset the natural tendencies of these conditions and tools, has made peace more horrible and dangerous than war.

Of all such sources of accident, mines are probably the most prolific. "The percentage of miners killed in this country is greater than in any other, being from two to four times as large as in any European country."[78] "Every year of the past decade," 1890-1900, "has seen from 500 to 700 Pennsylvania miners killed and from 1200 to 1650 injured. By comparing these figures with the total number employed, it will be found that on the average about one man in every 400 employed in the mines is killed yearly and about one out of every 150 injured."[79]

In 37 New England cotton mills in 1907, 1428 employees were injured.[80] The Bethlehem Steel Works alone had a record of 927 accidents in 1909.[81] In New York State, during a year of industrial depression, 1907, there were 14,545 accidents recorded,[82] and we know that they are more numerous in prosperous years.