Chapter 9

The city of Holyoke, another great cotton center, having 23,000 inhabitants, is in some respects the most remarkable town in the State of Massachusetts. It was brought into existence, 35 years ago, by the construction of a great dam across the Connecticut River; and, around the water power thus created, mills have sprung up so rapidly that the population, whose normal increase is eighteen per cent. every ten years in Massachusetts, has doubled, during the last decade, in Holyoke. But eighty out of every 100 persons in the city are of foreign extraction, the prevailing nationality being French-Canadian, a people who are so rapidly displacing other operatives, even the Irish themselves, in the manufacturing centers of New England that they must not be dismissed without remark.

The Canadian-French were recently described in a grave State paper as a "horde of industrial invaders," and accused of caring nothing for American institutions, civil, political, or educational; having come to the States, not to make a home, but to get together a little money, and then to return whence they came. The parent of these immigrants is the Canadian _habitan,_ a peasant proprietor, farming a few acres, living parsimoniously, marrying early, and producing a large family, who must either clear the soils of the inclement north, or become factory operatives in the States. They are a simple, kindly, pious, and cheerful folk, with few wants, little energy, and no ambition; ignorant and credulous, Catholic by religion, and devoted to the priest, who is their oracle, friend, and guide in all the relations of life. Such are the people--a complete contrast with Americans--who began, some twelve years ago, to emigrate to the mills of New England. They came, not only intending to return to their own country with their savings, but enjoined by the Church to do so. Employers, however, soon found out the value of the new comers, and Yankee superintendents preferred them as operatives before any other nationality, not only on account of their tireless industry and docility, but because they accepted lower wages, and kept themselves clear of trade-union societies. Thus, finally, it has come about that nearly 70 per cent. of the cotton operatives at Holyoke are of French-Canadian origin, and the social condition of all these people is precisely similar to that which has already been described as characterizing the inhabitants of "Little Canada" in Lowell.

It has already been said that the average rate of inhabitancy is six persons per house in the State of Massachusetts, but the presence of the French in Holyoke actually doubles the inhabitancy of the whole town, with what effect upon their own special quarter may easily be imagined. Probably nowhere in Europe could there be found more crowded houses, and worse physical conditions of life, than in the quarters inhabited by certain alien operatives in many manufacturing towns of the United States.

Sharp contrasts as they are, these sketches fairly picture the heights and depths of industrial conditions in a region which, as I would again remind you, contains nearly one-half of all the factory operatives in America. More than this, while the States in question would yield to no others their claims to represent advanced civilization, Massachusetts, the creation of the Puritan refugees, and the cradle of American independence, stands confessedly at the head of all her sister States for enlightened philanthropy. There are no greater lovers of right, honorers of industry, and friends to education in the world than its people, yet the present social condition of Holyoke and of Lowell, as of many other manufacturing cities, would have shocked all America thirty years ago, and been impossible less than half a century back. It is time we should ask, How is America going to treat a problem, formerly the danger and still the perplexity of Europe, for which democratic institutions have failed to furnish the solution once confidently, but unfairly, expected from them?

The State, the Church, and the School are all doing their best to prevent the lapse to lower conditions which seems to threaten labor in the States, each of them trying their utmost to "make Americans" of alien laborers, by means of the political, religious, and educational institutions of the country. How inadequate these unaided agencies are for the accomplishment of their gigantic task is nowhere so clearly realized as in the common, or free, schools of the States. These, in districts such as I have distinguished as "American," are filled with boys and girls, of all ages from five to eighteen, whose appearance and intelligence bespeak high social conditions. Whatever the occupation which these young people may ultimately adopt--and all of them are destined for work-a-day lives--an observer feels quite sure that they are more likely to raise the character of their several employments, than to be themselves degraded to lower social levels, on quitting school.

But no similar confidence in the future of American labor is engendered by visits to the schools where sits the progeny of alien labor. In the case of the Canadians, indeed, parents and priests alike bend all their energies to the establishment of "parochial schools," which, if they forward the cause of the Church, do little for education in the American sense of requiring good citizens, even more than good scholars, at the hands of the national teachers.

The primary schools of great industrial towns, such as Fall River, the Manchester of America, are filled, to quite as great an extent as similar schools in Europe, with ignorant, ragged, and bare-footed urchins. These children are, indeed, no less well cared for and taught than their Yankee fellows, and one cannot sufficiently admire the energy and enthusiasm with which school-teachers generally endeavor to "make Americans" of their stolid and ragged little alien charges. In these cases, however, where often the children have had no schooling at all before they are old enough to work, it is quite clear that the school cannot do all that is required to raise the labor of to-day up to the levels it occupied in the past. And, if the school itself is ineffective in this regard, how much more so must be the Church, to which immigrant youth is a comparative stranger; or those democratic institutions which are based, to quote the words of Washington himself, upon "the virtue and intelligence of the people."

Whether the present condition of labor in America will ever again be lifted to the levels of the past depends, in truth, less upon the State, the Church, and the School, than upon the part which the American employer is taking or about to take in this question. It is impossible for any unprejudiced observer to be long in the States, and especially in the New England States, without coming to the conclusion that a large number of employers are very anxious about the character of the labor they employ, and willing to assist to the utmost of their power in improving it. In spite of the love of money and luxury which is so conspicuous a feature of certain sections of American society, a high ideal of the proper function of wealth has arisen in the States, where large fortunes are chiefly things of recent date, among large and influential classes having an enlightened regard for the best welfare of the country. This regard finds expression now in the establishment of a factory, managed with one eye on profits and another on the elevation of the artisan, and now in the endowment of free libraries or similar institutions, offering opportunities of improvement to all.

To give only a few instances of the former movement: Mr. Pullman, the great car-builder, has recently established, on Lake Calumet, a vast system of workshops and workmen's homes, a description of which reads like a chapter from More's "Utopia." The Waterbury Watch Company has lately built a factory, employing 600 hands, on similar lines to those of Mr. Pullman. Cheney Brothers' silk mills at South Manchester remain now, after Irish labor has entirely taken the place of native hands, at almost the same high level as that which, in common with Lowell, they held forty years ago. Messrs. Fairbanks, of St. Johnsbury, in Vermont, conduct a large establishment, where every married _employe_ owns a house in the village, almost an Eden for beauty and order, which has grown up around these remote but remarkable scale works. Similarly, the Cranes at Dalton, in Massachusetts; Messrs. Brown, Sharpe and Co., at Providence, Rhode Island; Mr. Hazard at Peacedale, Narragansett; and last, not least, Col. Barrows, at Willimantic, in Connecticut, have all succeeded in restoring the past conditions of native American labor among operatives, now, for the most part, of alien origin.

I wish that time permitted me to sketch, however briefly, the mills to which I have last alluded. It must suffice to say that the devoted labors of Col. Barrows, President of the Willimantic Thread Co., have succeeded in creating, out of Irish labor, social conditions of industrial life which approach ideal perfection as nearly as the work of imperfect man can possibly do. And, better still, the high morality and intelligence of Col. Barrow's 1,600 operatives, the comfort and seemliness of their homes, the cleanly and cheerful character of the mill work, even the refinements of the music and art schools attached to the mill, can be proved, by hard figures, to be paying factors in the undertaking, viewed from a purely commercial standpoint.

So far, I have endeavored to show that a great contrast exists between what once was and now is the condition of factory labor in America. I have, further, described certain survivals of an earlier and happier state of things, and indicated the forces now at work tending to lift the Holyoke of to-day, for example, to the social levels of old Lowell. I have given my reasons for believing that the democratic institutions of America are incapable, unaided, of accomplishing such a task as this charge implies, and concluded that its accomplishment depends mainly on the action of the American employer. What this action as a whole, and what, therefore, the future of labor in America is likely to be, I confess myself in grave doubt--doubt from which I turn, with something like a sense of relief, to discuss those economical considerations affecting wage-earners which have hitherto been made to give place to social inquiries.

We have now to ask what are the wages of labor in the States, their relation to the cost of subsistence, and to wages and cost of subsistence in our own country? Finally, I shall briefly consider certain propositions of the American political economist which are so inextricably mixed up with the question of labor and wages in the States that it is impossible to discuss the one without taking some note of the other.

Until quite recently, no complete investigation, bringing the rates of wages paid in industries common to the United States and European countries, has ever been made, although the results of such an investigation have been constantly and earnestly called for both by the press and people of America. Permit me to remark, in passing, that we know little in this country of the desire for full, trustworthy, and accessible statistics, concerning all matters of national interest, which dominates the public mind of America; and as little of the willingness with which American citizens of all classes place the particulars of their private business at the service of the statistician. This desire for statistical bases whereon the statesman and economist may build, is vividly illustrated by that publication, perhaps the most wonderful in the whole world, entitled a "Compendium of the Census of the United States," issued with every decade. These volumes, accessible to everybody, and arranged with marvelous skill and lucidity, offer to the social observer a complete, accurate, and suggestive survey of every field comprised within the vast domain of the national interests. An evening's address would not more than suffice to indicate the scope and appraise the value of this work, which is a mine wherein, the ore ready dressed to his hand, the politico-economic or industrial essayist might work for years without exhausting its riches.

But the United States Census does not treat specifically of wages and subsistence, and it is to the Massachusetts Labor Bureau that we must again turn for such information as we now require. Dr. Edward Young, indeed, the late chief of the United States Bureau of Statistics, published an elaborate work upon this subject in 1875, but his comparisons as to the relative cost of living in America and Europe, good in themselves, are rendered of little value by the absence of such statistics as would give the true percentage of difference between American and foreign wages. Several elaborate wages reports were also published between 1879 and 1882, which, while they gave the American side of the question with great fullness, presented foreign wages very incompletely.

Always, however, impressed with the importance of making an accurate comparison between wages and the cost of subsistence on the two sides of the Atlantic, but unable to undertake a very wide inquiry with the funds at its disposal, the Massachusetts Bureau determined, in the fall of 1883, upon reducing to narrower limits than heretofore the field of investigation. Instead of America and Europe, Massachusetts and Great Britain were selected for comparison, the former as the chief manufacturing State of America, the latter as her leading competitor.

With this view, a number of agents were sent to gather personally, from the pay rolls of American and English manufactories, the rates of wages paid in twenty-four of the leading industries which are common to the two districts respectively. It was, at first, sought to extend the inquiry to thirty-five different industries, a number which would practically have covered the whole ground, but nine of these were finally abandoned for want of sufficient British information.

It is a perfectly easy thing, as already indicated, to gather wage or other statistics in the counting-houses of Massachusetts manufactories, but quite a different matter when a collection of similar information is attempted in this country, where most proprietors are unwilling, and many altogether refuse, to give any information regarding their industries.

The following table, of which an enlarged facsimile, marked A, appears on the wall, specifies the twenty-four industries from which the returns in question were made, and the number of establishments making such returns in each industry in either country:

_Table A_.

Industries. Massachusetts. Great Britain. Total

Agricultural implements 4 1 5 Artisans' tools 3 4 7 Boots and shoes 18 2 20 Brick 3 1 4 Building trades 32 24 56 Carpetings 1 1 2 Carriages and Wagons 11 3 14 Clothing 10 4 14 Cotton goods 10 9 19 Flax and jute goods 2 3 5 Food preparations 5 2 7 Furniture 11 1 12 Glass 1 3 4 Hats (fur wool and silk) 3 2 5 Hosiery 5 3 8 Liquors (malt and distilled) 10 1 11 Machines and machinery 12 15 27 Metals and metallic goods 25 13 38 Printing and publishing 12 7 19 Printing, dyeing and bleaching etc 3 4 7 Stone 10 1 11 Wooden goods 12 1 13 Woolen goods 4 2 6 Worsted goods 3 3 6

210 110 320

Thirty-two cities in Massachusetts, and twenty-six in Great Britain, were visited in search of returns, of which almost all our great industrial centers yield their quota.

It being, of course, impossible to obtain wage returns for all the _employes_ of these various industries in either country, the investigation aimed at covering at least 10 per cent. of such totals, and, in the case of Massachusetts, succeeded in getting returns for 36,000 hands, or 13 per cent. of the whole number of artisans employed in the twenty-four industries examined. Great Britain, on the other hand, made returns for about half that number of hands, but their proportion to the totals employed cannot be similarly stated, first, because we have here no specific industrial census, and, second, because many of the English returns were made for an indefinite number of _employes_.

The comparison was made in the following way: For each of the twenty-four industries, a table, consisting of four sections, was constructed, viz., "Occupation," "Aggregation," "Recapitulation," and "Comparison." The first gave the names of the various branches of each industry, classifying these as minutely as possible, because the names indicating subdivisions of labor are, generally, so different in the two countries that the actual "matching" of occupations, desirable for a perfect comparison, is impossible. The second, or "Aggregation" section, brings the various occupations in the same industry into juxtaposition, and supplies opportunities for direct comparison. The third, or "Recapitulation" section, is drawn from the "Occupation" section, and shows the number of men, women, young persons, and children for whom wages are given; whether these are paid by the day, or by piece; and whether the wage returns show the actual amounts paid to a definite number of _employes_, or an average wage for a definite or an indefinite number of _employes_. The fourth, or "Comparison" section, brings the highest, lowest, and general average weekly wages into final comparison.

The first three sections of the table, being either simply enumerative or collective in character, are easily understood without illustration, but an example of the "Comparative" section, marked Table B, hangs on the wall, and shows all the final comparisons at a glance.

_Table B_. ------------------------------------------------------------------- | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 --------------------------------------- Classification. |Massac- | Great | Massac- | Great |husetts.| Britain.| husetts.| Britain. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Average highest weekly | dols. | dols. | dols. | dols. wage paid to-- | | | | Men | 37.00 | 13.39 | 25.41 | 11.36 Women | 5.50 | ... | 8.57 | 4.10 Young persons | 7.00 | 3.65 | 6.94 | 3.04 Children | 5.70 | ... | 4.64 | 1.05 | | | | Average lowest weekly wage | | | | paid to-- | | | | Men | 7.60 | 3.21 | 7.09 | 4.72 Women | 5.00 | ... | 4.62 | 2.27 Young women | 4.50 | 1.46 | 4.26 | 1.66 Children | 3.00 | ... | 3.09 | .60 | | | | Average weekly wages | | | | paid to-- | | | | Men | 12.04 | 8.07 | 11.85 | 8.26 Women | 5.12 | ... | 6.09 | 3.37 Young persons | 5.76 | 2.52 | 5.10 | 2.40 Children---- | 5.31 | ... | 3.81 | .79 --------------------------------------- General average weekly wage | | | | paid to all _employes_ | 11.75 | 8.07 | 10.32 | 6.96 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Result: General average | | weekly wages higher in | 45.60 | 48.28 Massachusetts by per cent | per cent. | per cent. -------------------------------------------------------------------

The two first columns of the table are simply illustrative of the method applied to a single industry, exhibiting the highest average, lowest average, and average weekly wages, whether to men, women, young persons, or children, in the particular business of "machine-making," together with the general average wages paid to all the _employes_ in such industry. The general average weekly wages in this industry are thus shown to be 45.6 per cent. higher in Massachusetts than in Great Britain.

The 3d and 4th columns of the table consolidate all the twenty-four industries, and yield, in similar terms, as in the case of machine-making, an average comparison applying to the whole group of industries under examination, giving, as a grand result, that the general average weekly wages of Massachusetts are higher by 48.28 per cent. than those of Great Britain.

It is, however, explained that the British wage returns were made in three different ways, viz., for a definite number of _employes_, by percentage returns, and by general returns; both of the latter being for an indefinite number of _employes_. Where more than one wage-basis was given, the highest figure was used in the calculations, and, this being the case in eighteen out of the twenty-four industries, its effects on the grand result are considerable; for, by crediting Great Britain with the _average_ instead of the _high_ weekly wage, the average percentage in favor of Massachusetts rises from 48.28 per cent. to 75.94 per cent.

In order truly to indicate the higher percentage of average weekly wages in Massachusetts, we must, therefore, agree upon a figure somewhere between these two extremes, viz., that of 48.28 per cent., derived from tables in which Great Britain is credited with the high wage, and that of 75.94 per cent., derived from those tables in which she is credited with the average of the returns made upon the different bases. The mean of these figures is 62.11 per cent., which is considered to be the result of the investigation, and may be formulated as follows: The general average weekly wages paid to _employes_ in twenty-four manufacturing industries common to Massachusetts and Great Britain is 62 per cent., higher in the former than the general average weekly wages paid in the same industries in the latter country.

But the question of wages forms only one side of the working man's account; on the other stands the cost of living, and no comparisons of prosperity, in given industrial communities, are of any value which omit to take into consideration the relative ease with which such communities can procure the means of subsistence. Table C presents a summary of prices, gathered in 1883, of the chief items in a working man's expenditure, and their cost in Massachusetts and Great Britain.

_Table C_.