The Arena

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As against the opinion often expressed that foreign workers are in the
majority, we find that of the whole number given, 14,120 were native
born. Of the foreign born Ireland is most largely represented, having
926 and Germany next with 775. In the matter of parentage, 12,904 had
foreign born fathers, and 12,406 foreign born mothers. The number of
single women included in the report is 15,387; 745 were married and
1,038 widowed, from which it is evident that as a rule it is single
women who are fighting their industrial fight alone. They are not only
supporting themselves, but are giving their earnings largely to the
support of others at home. More than half--8,754--do this, and 9,813,
besides their occupation, help in the home housekeeping. Of the total
number, 14,918 live at home, but only 701 of them receive board from
their families. The average number in these families is 525, and each
contains 248 workers.

Of those who reported their health condition at the time their work
began, 16,360 were in good health, 883 in fair health, and 183 in bad
health. A distinct change in health condition is shown by the fact
that 14,550 are now in good health, 2,385 in fair health, and 489 in
bad health.

Concerning education, church attendance, home and shop conditions,
15,831 reported. Of these, 10,456 were educated in American public
schools and 5,375 in other schools; 5,854 attend Protestant churches;
7,769 Catholic, and 367 the Hebrew. A very large percentage,
comprehending 2,309 do not attend church at all. In home conditions
12,020 report themselves as comfortable, while 4,693 give the home
conditions as poor. "Poor" is, to the ordinary observer, to be
interpreted wretched, over-crowding, all the numberless evils of
tenement-house life, which is the portion of many. A side light is
thrown on personal characteristics of the workers, in the tables of
earnings and lost time. Out of 12,822 who reported, 373 earn less than
a hundred dollars a year, and this class lost an average of 86.5 for
the year covered by the investigation. With the increase of earnings
the lost time decreases; the 2,147 who earn from two hundred to two
hundred and fifty losing but 37.8, while 398, earning from three
hundred to five hundred dollars a year, lost but 18.8 days.

The average weekly earnings by cities is no less suggestive. In
Atlanta the wages are the lowest of any of the twenty-two cities,
being only $4.05; in San Francisco they are the highest, being $6.91.
The wages in the other cities vary between these two extremes. In New
York the average wage is $5.85; in Boston, $5.64; in Chicago, $5.74;
in St. Paul, $6.02; and in New Orleans, $4.31.

These sums represent the earnings of skilled labor. Many women under
this head can earn eight and ten dollars a week, but the general
average is only $5.24. The large proportion of unskilled workers whose
wage does not exceed one hundred dollars a year, include cash girls
and the least intelligent class. It is this class that suffer most
from the fine system, since punctuality and thoroughness are the
result of educated intelligence. The largest number earn from two to
two hundred and fifty dollars, and, as has been said, lose an average
of thirty days in the year. The highest average wage, $6.91, is little
more than subsistence, and the lowest, $4.05, is far less than decent
subsistence requires.

Absolute violation of sanitary laws, overcrowding, and a host of other
evils are specified as part of the factory system. Deliberate cruelty
and injustice are met only now and then, but competition forces the
working in as inexpensive a manner as possible, and so makes cruelty
and injustice necessary to continued existence of the employer as an
industrial factor. Home conditions are seldom beyond tolerable. For
the most part, they must be summed up as intolerable. Inspection, the
efficiency of which has greatly increased; the demand, by the
organized charities, for women inspectors, and the gradual growth of
popular interest, are bringing about a few improvements, but the mass
at all points are as stated. Ignorance and the vices that go with
ignorance, want of thoroughness, unpunctuality, thriftlessness, and
improvidence, are all in the count against the poorer order of worker,
but for the most part they are living honest, self-respecting,
infinitely dreary lives. This fact is emphasized in every Labor Report
in which the subject of women wage-workers is treated, and impersonal
as figures are usually counted to be, from each one sounds a warning
which, if unheeded, must in the end mean the disaster to which these
returns point as inevitable. Even in Colorado, a State not included in
the government report, where opportunity is larger, it has been said,
than at almost any other point in the Union, Mr. Driscoll's report for
that State shows an average wage for women of about six dollars,
which, considering the cost of living, is less than the New York
rate.

It is a popular belief that the working class forms a large proportion
of the numbers who fill the houses of prostitution, and that
"night-walkers" are made up largely from the same class. Nothing could
be farther from the truth than the last statement, the falsity of
which was demonstrated in the fifteenth annual report of the
Massachusetts Bureau of Labor, its testimony being confirmed and
repeated in the report we have under consideration. For the first,
diligent investigation in fourteen cities showed clearly that a very
small proportion among working-women entered this life. The largest
number classed by occupations came from the lowest order of workers,
those employed in housework and in hotels, and the next largest was
found among seamstresses, employees of shirt factories, and cloak
makers, both of these industries in which under-pay is proverbial. The
great majority receiving not more than five dollars a week, earn it by
seldom less than ten hours a day of hard labor, and not only live on
this sum, but assist friends, contribute to general household
expenses, dress so as to appear fairly well, and have learned every
art of doing without. More than this. Since the deepening interest in
their lives, and the formation of working-girls' societies and guilds
of many orders, they contribute from this scanty sum enough to rent
meeting rooms, pay for instruction in many classes, and provide a
relief fund for sick and disabled members. Aids, alleviations, growing
interest, all are to-day given to the worker. "Homes" of every order
open their doors, some so hedged about by rules that self-respect
revolts and refuses to live the life demanded by them. In all of these
homes, even the best, lurks always the suspicion of charity, and even
when this has no active formulation in the worker's mind, there is
still the underlying sense of the essential injustice of withholding
with one hand just pay, and with the other proffering a substitute in
a charity, which is to reflect credit on the giver, and demand
gratitude from the receiver. Here and there this is recognized, and
within a short time has been emphasized by a woman whose name is
associated with the work of charity organizations throughout the
country,--Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell. I doubt if there is any one
better fitted by long experience and almost matchless common sense to
speak authoritatively. Within a short time she has written: "So far
from assuming that the well-to-do portion of society have discharged
all their obligations to man and God by supporting charitable
institutions, I regard just this expenditure as one of the _prime_
causes of the suffering and crime that exist in our midst. I am
inclined, in general, to look upon what is called charity as the
_insult_ which is added to the _injury_ done to the mass of the people
by _insufficient payment for work_."

Disguise this fact as we will; bear testimony to the inefficiency and
incompetency of the workers; admit every trial and perplexity of
employers, every effort to better conditions, yet there remains in the
background always this shadow, in which the woman who elects to earn
an honest living must walk. No more heroic battle has ever been fought
than this daily one, waged silently and uncomplainingly in our midst
by these workers. Their lot is all part of the general evolution from
disorder, ignorance, and indifference, into the larger life, opening
so slowly that impatient spirits demand dynamite to hasten the
process, but as surely as the earth marches forever on its round
toward that central sun that draws each smallest star of that system
we call our universe.

It is certain that this is a transition period; that material
conditions born of a phenomenal material progress have deadened the
sense as to what constitutes real progress, and that the working-woman
of to-day contends not only with visible but invisible obstacles, the
nature of which we are but just beginning to discern. Twenty years ago
one of the wisest of modern French thinkers, M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu,
wrote of women wage-earners: "From the economic point of view, woman,
who has next to no material force, and whose arms are advantageously
replaced by the least machine, can have useful place and obtain fair
remuneration only by the development of the best qualities of her
intelligence. It is the inexorable law of our civilization--the
principle and formula even of social progress, that _mechanical
engines are to accomplish every operation of human labor which does
not proceed directly from the mind_. The hand of man is each day
deprived of a portion of its original task, but this general gain is a
loss for the particular and for the classes whose only instrument of
labor is a pair of feeble arms."

Untrained intelligence finds earning a more and more difficult task,
and for all of us it has become plain, that in the mighty problem
given us by a civilization which at so many points fails to civilize,
every force must be brought to bear upon its solution. These pale,
anaemic, undeveloped girls swarming in factory and shop, are the
mothers of a large part of the coming generation, defrauded before
birth of all the elements that make strong bodies and teachable souls.
It is not alone the present with which we deal. Out of the future
comes a demand as instant, and justice to-day bears its fruit in
larger life for other days to come. For this must be two awakenings.
One for the looker-on in the struggle who has no eyes for what lies
still in shadow. The other for the worker, who must join the army
already aroused, realizing its limitations, reaching out for training
and larger opportunity, and seeking with the eagerness born of hard
conditions, some permanent way of escape. And for watcher and worker
alike the word is the same:

"Light, light, and light! To break and melt in sunder
All clouds and chains that in one bondage bind
Eyes, hands, and spirits, forged by fear and wonder,
And sleek fierce fraud with hidden knife behind;
There goes no fire from heaven before their thunder,
Nor are the links not malleable that wind
Round the snared limbs and souls that ache thereunder,
The hands are mighty were the head not blind."

THE INDEPENDENT PARTY AND MONEY AT COST.

BY R. B. HASSELL.

A political revolution is in progress and has attained such
proportions as to command attention and repay study. The magnitude of
the movement and the definiteness of its aims are not understood and
appreciated by those who live far from its field of operation. The
reader is asked to lay aside his preconceived notions of the subject,
and consider observations made, at short range, by one whose
information is gleaned not from partisan newspapers, but from the
field of action.

Before passing to an analysis of the platform demands of the new
party, let us adjust the perspective; consider the work already done,
and the method, motive, and _personnel_ of the party.

Scarcely twelve months have passed since the birth of the party,--one
political campaign. In that short period, an organization has been
perfected which carries upon its rolls 1,200,000 voters; and an
_esprit de corps_ has been created which is worthy of comparison with
the enthusiasm of the old parties. It has elected two United States
senators and a respectable body of congressmen. It has won its
victories in the strongholds of the hitherto dominant party,
overcoming in one instance an adverse State majority of 80,000. An
army of lecturers has been set at work, most of them well equipped.
About a thousand newspapers have been established in the interest of
the movement. A national bureau of information has been created which
keeps a large force of clerks constantly busy. A committee has been
appointed on organization. Under its direction, State after State is
being organized, and the prophecy is freely made that, before the snow
flies again, an efficient branch of the central body will have been
established in nearly every hamlet in the nation.

The surprising advance already made by the Independents would not need
to concern us, were it not that the national conditions which made it
possible, in the first instance, still exist to sustain and accelerate
it. If asked to explain this advance, most partisans would say, at
once, poor crops, extreme poverty and demagogism; or, as South Dakota
campaign speakers were known to say, hot winds and Mr. Loucks. But
these are mistaken ideas. Poverty of the people made many listeners
and voters who, under other circumstances, would not have deemed it
worth their while to leave the plow. An examination, however, of the
vote in the counties of one State, from which a United States senator
has been elected, shows that the heaviest majorities for the new party
were cast in counties where farming is most diversified, and where the
people have been blessed with a succession of good crops. In the
counties where the people were poorest, they were more effectually
under the thumb of money loaners and bankers, who held chattel
mortgages over their heads. In such counties a corruption fund had a
powerful influence toward keeping voters in line. Extreme poverty is
always a menace to the purity of the ballot. In the well to do
counties, or rather the counties where good crops had prevailed, and
in which the people were reputed well-to-do, and where the heaviest
vote was cast for the party, the writer has made a careful study of
conditions and finds none that do not exist in most agricultural
districts of the United States. The herds of cattle and bursting
granaries, years ago, would have been sure indications of competence
and contentment.

A little inquiry now, however, reveals discontent and a hand to hand
struggle with adversity and against odds. Market values leave no
margin for profit. Abundance at harvest time, disappointment on market
day. Men can understand the connection between short crops and lean
pocket-books, and are easily reconciled to such conditions. They may
grumble but they are sensible enough to understand that they must sow
again and wait for the heavens to smile. But when great heaps of corn
lie in their fields awaiting sale at twelve cents a bushel, when a
mighty crop of wheat brings its possessor but fifty cents a bushel,
when cows are worth but fifteen dollars apiece, and good butter sells
for eight cents a pound, while thousands in the land are known to be
suffering because of the lack of these things, a leanness of
pocket-book results which the farmer may understand, but to which he
is not easily reconciled.

His eyes are open. The over-production theory explains nothing to him
while the mouths of a multitude go unfed; while the beef that he sold
for one and a half and two cents a pound on foot, retails in the
eastern market, when dressed, for from ten to eighteen cents a pound;
and while his corn and his wheat, at the other end of the line of
transportation, brings twice the price he received for it here. He is
able to put two and two together. He knows that primarily all wealth
comes from the soil, in response to the toil of himself and his
fellows. His eyes rest upon the 31,000 millionnaires of the land who
roll in wealth. He says, "I helped produce that. How did they get it?"
He knows that the money could not be had last fall to handle his grain
and that, in consequence, a ridiculously low price was offered him in
order to keep it off the market. He knows that a few men take
advantage of his necessities and dictate prices just at the time when
he must sell. He knows that railroads absorb nearly fifty per cent. of
crop values for transportation charges, in order to pay dividends on a
capitalization, fifty per cent. of which is fictitious, and that when
the laws forbid it the courts of the land step in and declare it
"reasonable compensation."

In a word, it does not take a very sharp farmer to see that although
hot winds, or murrain, or hog cholera increase the leanness of his
pocket-book, these things do not explain that irresistible and
invariable current which bears such a large portion of what he does
earn into the plethoric pocket-books of the few rich. The farmer has
become, perforce, a student of economics; and, although we may laugh
at some of the vagaries in which he indulges, a close study of the
situation and of his demands will probably show him to be about as
reasonable as those are who champion the present order of things.

If the symptoms of an unnatural and unnecessary agricultural
depression were confined to the Dakotas, and Kansas, and Nebraska, the
farmer student might be nonplussed in his investigations. He might be
led to consider his inexperience and extravagance as the source of
the disease so deeply fixed upon him. But the farmer of to-day reads
and travels. A Dakota farmer, a few weeks since, visited the paternal
homestead in Ohio. He found, to his surprise, that his father's farm,
which fifteen years ago lay within three miles of a thriving town of
two thousand inhabitants, paying an annual tax of fifteen dollars, and
worth a hundred dollars an acre, now pays a tax of seventy-five
dollars, and is worth but forty-five dollars an acre, although the
neighboring town has increased its population to ten thousand, and is
noisy with shops and factories. He found that this was not an isolated
case, but a fair example of the depreciation of farm values. He was
not surprised to learn that the Ohio farmers were even then gathering
to organize a State alliance. A careful survey of the United States,
we are sure, will measurably confirm the conclusion of the western
farmer, that farming, except in those localities where it has taken on
the form of market gardening, or where it yet monopolizes some
specialty, is unprofitable and disappointing.

Most farmers are ready to admit that their surroundings are better and
their comforts more numerous than in ancestral days, when stoves were
unknown, and the women slaved over the hand-loom and spinning-wheel,
when medical men bungled and schools were luxuries; but they can see
with half an eye that the mighty material advances of the last half
century in this country have been made to serve the rich rather than
the poor, the strong instead of the weak. They do not object to
railroads, and the constantly increasing facilities for travel and
transportation; but they do object to laws and customs which make
railroads a means of transferring the hard earnings of the farm to the
coffers of money kings. The farmer has received comforts at the hands
of our civilization, but he has paid a good price for them, not to the
genius which created, but to the plutocrat who bought. It is not
because the farmer is facing starvation that he moves politically; but
because, in the midst of plenty, comparative poverty is his portion.
As a legitimate result of the civilization in the presence of which he
lives, his tastes have improved, and his desire for education and
comfortable living has increased, and with this improvement and
increase has come a widening of the distance betwixt his possessions
and his desires. In other words, the shadows of contrast in social
conditions in our country are hourly deepening, and it is at such
times that the canker of discontent eats closest. It will serve no
purpose for us to spend time in condemning this spirit, and making
light of it, because it is a natural result and a political fact that
can only be remedied by a removal of the immediate cause. It is not
possible or desirable to rid the people entirely of the spirit of
discontent, but it can be so minimized that it will be no longer a
menace to national life but an incentive to progress.

It is necessary to understand thoroughly the conditions under which
the work already described has been done. We have discussed the
general social and financial condition of the farmer. How about his
intellectual standing? We hear a great deal about the stupid, foolish
farmer, easily led by demagogues. It is well to remember in this
connection that those States where the Independent party has had
greatest influence are the States where the smallest per cent. of
illiteracy exists and, by parity of reasoning, the highest per cent.
of intelligence. The fact is that the farmer of the West is not the
clodhopper, at whose expense the funny man of the modern journal likes
to crack jokes. He reads more widely and thinks more deeply than
tradesmen or city people do, as a class. Tradesmen wear better
clothes, are more urbane, and obtain a certain polish and
self-possession which comes only from close contact with one's fellows
in the business and social world; all of which is very useful to them
in improving the "main chance" in a competitive struggle, and might be
labelled finish and sharpness. They live an intense life, within a
limited circle, and have little time and less inclination to weigh
questions from the larger world. To this fact may be attributed the
slight interest such people take in municipal government and the
dominance of slum and saloon influences. It is not so with the farmer.
He reads much and widely, and the solitary plow-furrow and the quiet
country road conduce to thought. A certain sturdy intelligence
follows, which again and again has proven the salt of the world, the
re-inforcing element of society, and is to-day the hope of our nation.
While the tradesman dwells much on commercial law, trade customs, and
the means of attracting trade, the farmer thinks more naturally of the
general law of the land, under which he is protected or robbed,
prospered or ruined. His sales are made at wholesale prices. His
eyes, therefore, seek out not so much the local factors in the make up
of prices as the world-wide influences which are supposed to determine
them. It is a large world in which he lives, and his vision, from
necessity, sweeps the whole of it.

The people of the East will never understand the merit and magnitude
of the present political movement, until they give the farmer credit
for intelligence of a superior order. Those who think of him as the
easy prey of demagogues are mistaken. He has been such in the past. We
have convincing proof that it is otherwise now. Those who are familiar
with the campaign plans of the dominant parties in these days, the
shameless misrepresentation of facts by party organs, the open use of
large sums of money to keep so-called leaders in line, and the
tremendous power of public patronage can understand how much of
demagogism in every community the farmers have had to meet and
overcome in order to conquer an eighty thousand majority. It has
required patriotism, common sense, and a Spartan-like heroism to face
their organized foes and come off victorious. To their honor be it
said that few Judases have been found among them at the ballot-box, or
in the halls of legislation.

The work of the Independent party, so far, has been educational in two
directions. It has increased the sum of information and developed a
much needed self-confidence among the farmers. The alliance meetings,
to which most of us object because of their secret and exclusive
nature, are schools of economics and parliamentary tactics. The
secrecy of the order, however, is not as objectionable as some of us
have been inclined to think. As the leaders say, the veil of secrecy
in this order is quite gauzy,--intended to keep out individuals rather
than to conceal deliberations and doings. It throws the farmer on his
own resources. He becomes a chairman, an investigator, a committee
man, and a debater. If it were otherwise, the aggressive members of
the professions would frequent the meetings, and naturally assume such
functions. We are confident the farmer will come to see that these
same ends may be attained by methods less objectionable to the thought
and spirit of our people. Justice requires us to say that the secret
order of the alliance and the Independent party have no necessary
connection, although they are natural allies, and the former is the
source of the latter. In fact, scores of men belong to the alliance
who have not yet committed themselves to the political movement, and
many who are bitter in their opposition to it. Political affiliation
has nothing to do with membership, and all actual farmers and their
families are entitled to it. Freedom in the expression of opinion is
courted and strong, ready men are being developed.

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