THE WORKING-CLASSES IN THE UNITED STATES. BY ROBERT CONINUSBY.

No. V.

VERY young children are employed in many factories in the United States. It is illegal, but very widely done. There is a fine of 50 dols., but it is seldom inflicted. I was one evening in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the city above all others which New Englanders point to with exultation as a model for the manu- facturers of the earth, in the arrangements for the health and comfort of the workpeople. The hands were returning from their work in crowds, and I stood watching both men and women with great interest, and noticed that the latter were far superior in appearance to our factory girls ; they were all neatly dressed, and had an eminently respectable appearance. The men looked tired, as men generally do returning from work, and serious as Ameri- cans generally do, whether going or coming from anywhere. Here and there among the stragglers, when the majority had gone by, I saw little boys and girls who had, as I thought, been out to meet their fathers, and thought it a praiseworthy thing to do. But how grave they looked, and what a sedate carriage they had, as compared with the hop-and-jump step one would have expected from English children under the circumstances, and none of them seemed to have met their fathers ! All at once it flashed upon my mind that the little creatures had been at work, and stopping two of

the most diminutive girls, of the respective ages of seven and eight, I found that my suspicion was correct. " Are you not very tired, my little dear ?" said I, addressing the elder of the two. " I'm not," she replied, briskly ; " but she is," pointing to the other with a commiserate look, " real tired." In many other places besides Lawrence I saw very young children held to factory labour, and in the rural districts babies are scarcely out of their cradles before they are set to work upon some monotonous employment about a farm. Of course the scarcity of labour in great measure accounts for this, but it is nevertheless greatly to be regretted. The managers of the Pacific Mills in Lawrence, the largest and per- haps the best regulated in the Union, are very particular on this point ; not a single child under age is on any account permitted to enter their doors ; and for their young people they provide night schools, a reading-room, and a well-stocked library.

As mentioned in my last paper, the great question which agitated the Working-Classes while I was in the States was the one known as the Eight-Hour movement. A special Commission was appointed in Massachusetts to inquire into the whole matter, and collect the opinions of the advocates and opponents of the reduction in the hours of labour. The following are a few of the frequently-used arguments pro and con Co-operative stores and societies are to be met with in most ok the large towns in America, but do not seem to be remarkably successful ; the management is changed more frequently than in England, and the members appear to be much less settled than in our northern towns where co-operation has succeeded. Restless- ness is a prominent characteristic of the American workman, and, in fact, the American generally. It is rare to find a man who has not been something else besides what he is when you meet him. The world in the United States is truly a stage on which, one man in his time plays many parte. I have met men who have- been clergymen and keepers of grog stores by turns ; Harvard. University men who were trappers in the Black Hills ; generals issuing cabin tickets to old ladies on river steamers ; engineers and cabinetmakers travelling about the country with " blowing-machines " and " strength-testers," and so on ad //if/atm. This state of things is fatal to any movement of which a local or class feeling is essentially the main-spring-

"Pao.

" Overwork is the fruitful source of innumerable evils. Ten and eleven hours daily of hard labour are more than the human system can bear, save in a few exceptional cases,—more than would be needed if each would do his share. It cripples the body, ruins health, shortens life. It stunts the mind, gives no time for culture, no op- portunity for reading, study, or mental improvement. It leaves the system jaded and worn, with no ability to study. It tempts to spend the little time between work and sleep in trashy reading, that amuses rather than improves. It tends to dissipation in various forms. The exhausted system craves stimulants. This opens the door to other indulgences, from which flow not only the degeneracy of individuals, but the degeneracy of the race. Working-men as a class are thus let down, and the whole community suffers. Reduce the hours of labour, and you will see a change. Give the working- wan time for home duties, for self- improvement, and then if he does not use it wisely, it is his own fault. He asks for an opportunity to show himself a man, for a fair chance to use his brain as well as his muscles. Not only tho interest of the labourer, but of labour, demands a reduction of hours. You must make labour tolerable before you can make it honourable. It is degraded by ignorance, it is elevated by intelligence. To dig- nify work, you must dignify the workman. This is the working- man's country. The welfare of the State and nation demand that time be given him to fit himself for worthy citizenship. A free country demands an intelligent as well as a free people. Now, while the nation is being reconstructed, is the time to reconstruct our labour system."

" CON.

"Men are injured by idleness more than by overwork. Ten die of nothing to do,' whore one dies of doing too much. Men and women used to work twelve or fifteen hours a day without injury.. It is only the drones who plead for a reduction. Grant them eight hours, and soon they will work only- six. The race is degenerating for lack of good honest work. It is not labour, but vice in various forma, that cripples the body and stultifies the mind. More leisure would lead' to more vice and crime. Hours- saved from labour would be gives to dissipation. What men most need for improvement is not leisure, but disposition. One who really wishes to improve will find or make- opportunity. Where there's a will there's a way.' Men of mark are- men of work. Reduce hours and you reduce pay. Reduce pay and you reduce the facilities of living. Reduce the facilities of living and you reduce the means of improve- ment. So the working-men actr against their own interest in asking legal restrictions. To legislate- upon labour is to degrade it. Reduce the hours of labour in one- State, and you drive business and capital into another. Let the matter alone and it will regulate itself_ Thelaw of supply and demand is better than any statute. Things- are well as they are, wages are- high, all kinds of business are pros- perous, poor people are laying up money as never before. It is the worst time in the world to agitate such a subject. We are loaded down with a national debt. We must pay it off. We need all hands at work for this. Let us all take hold with a will, quit grumbling,. and labour itself will be a means not only of wealth, but improve- ment, physical, mental, and moral."

Over and over again the active spirits in working-men's move- ments have complained to me that there is no " holding together" among American working-men. " You cannot get them to act in masses," and " they are so right-down suspicious that you can never get them to subscribe to anything unless the money is to be spent right away." By the way, I may say, in passing, as an evidence that this does not arise from niggardliness, that I was present at a meeting of bricklayers during their strike, when a donation of 5,000 dollars was banded to the chairman, amidst much cheering, by a delegate from the National Working-Men's Union. Besides the trades' unions and co-operative societies, there are " Odd Fellows," " Foresters," and Sons of Temperance, and all kinds of Irish and German societies, the members of which keep the streets of the principal cities in a lively state during the summer months, with their processions and music.

There is one matter upon which almost all American working- men seem agreed, and it is not an unimportant one, if, as I have reason to believe is the case, there is a great deal of sympathy with them among the workmen here. I allude to the subject of Protec- tion, as opposed to a policy of Free Trade. The " middle-class " in America are, 1 think, generally in favour of free trade ; but the mass of the people have decided that, however well it may answer elsewhere, it shall not be the policy of the United States. Without giving an opinion upon the arguments, or sophisms, whichever they may be styled, I will endeavour to give the principal ones I have heard from working-men and others in support of protection in America. First, protection is the poor man's friend, as it pre- vents the labourer in Europe from competing with the better-paid workman in America. America is a young country, and manufac- tures, like children, must be everywhere protected during their infancy.

The policy of protection keeps wages high, and so draws labour to America. Nothing induces the poor of Europe to flock to America so much as the prospect of higher wages. Even if he is no better off when he arrives, he thinks he will be, and that draws him. It is more economical to induce the poor of Europe to go to America to eat, than to remain at home and manufacture while Americans grow the food and send it. Much crossing of the ocean to and fro and consequent enhancement of price is saved by the one journey of each man.

Only thickly populated countries are likely to benefit by free trade, for in them, the mass of the people, not having land to go upon, are compelled either to manufaeture or starve, which Americans are not.

An American citizen is richer per se than a citizen of any European state, because he is, as much as any other citizen, joint proprietor of all the natural wealth of the wealthiest land in the world. In other words, America's chief wealth is not yet gathered into private hands, and every man has an equal chance to gather it, with free education to aid him in the task, and no class distinctions as a barrier in his way. This being the case, he cannot afford to abandon his opportunities of obtaining wealth for the same small consideration in the way of wages as one of the " common people " in Europe may properly accept for his services. In short, the American workman is socially of a higher rank than his European fellow-labourer, and has a greater number of wants, which he has the power to have supplied, by keeping up wages, and no consideration for the convenience of European populations shall induce him to let their manufactures into the country to compete with his.

England is only a free-trading country as far as it suits her con- venience; she is a protectionist in dealings with America. In 1859 the amount of duty levied in English ports on tobacco from the United States was 19,724,420 dole., which sum exceeded by more than half a million dollars the who of the duties on English manufactures collected during that year in the United States.

Protection is only another form of monopoly, and capital can be more easily got to flow into useful channels by the promise of a monopoly than by leaving every enterprise to stand or fall entirely upon its own merits. In England and everywhere else this principle is acted upon. Railway, gaswork, telegraph, and steamboat companies are all protected against other railway, gaswork, telegraph, and steamboat companies which in most cases could and would if not prevented undersell them. Then why not the owners of mills and factories (which are mostly com- panies in the United States)?

The protective policy has been tried in this respect against the free-trade, and found to answer better. Numerous mills and factories have sprung into existence after the passage of each restrictive measure.

Protection in the infancy of an industry is no more than are the restrictive measures of guilds and apprenticeship. It is found to conduce to the production of articles of sound workmanship, and has a tendency to drive bad and showy goods out of the market. This is instanced in a variety of cases. American rails have been better since they have been made in the United States, than when the cheapest Welsh rubbish could be imported at such low rates that it did not pay to make use of the enormous stores of iron which nature has given to America. The experience of Russia was the same as that of America in this respect. In 1824 Prince Nesselrode inaugurated a policy of protection, and since that date Belgian and English rails of vile quality have been excluded from Russia.

The American cotton-manufacturing industry sprang entirely out of the adoption of the protective policy. Five millions of spindles are now bus y where the only occupation for the hands would have been hard field-work if the free-trade system bad been adhered to.

America pursues a policy of general amelioration of the condition of the poor, rather than the encouragement of the acquisition of wealth. Thus, she not only taxes articles coming into the country to compete with American labour, but lays an embargo upon certain staple articles peculiar to her, such as cotton, and thus reserves some of the national advantages for her own people. As the rich will always get as much as they care to personally consume of anything, no matter what its price, and as the rich do not directly produce any articles of manufacture, but derive profit from natural products sold and sent out of the country, it follows that the American poor are protected, first, against their own wealthy classes, and next, against the poor of the rest of the world. To make the meaning plainer, by levying a duty on all raw cotton leaving the country, the price of raw cotton is kept down, and the poor get more of it when it is manufactured, because it is cheaper than it would be if the people of Europe could compete for it with Americans. To show how this would work in England, I have heard coal taken as an example. " If," say the Americans, " you laid such a tax upon coal leaving your country as would keep it all at home, the price at home would be lower, your poor would get better fires, and, at the same time, their rivals, the poor of other countries, would not be able to compete with them so closely in the manufacture of articles in which coal is chiefly used."

There is a very active free-trade propaganda going on in the Union, chiefly in the large towns of the Eastern States, but the working-classes regard the movement with great disfavour. They say that the chief fallacy of the free-traders consists in their per- sistently regarding articles of comparative luxury as being equally necessary for the community with the bare necessities of life. For instance, so long as bread and meat are cheap, it is to a poor man relatively unimportant what price must be paid for ivory- handled knives. All must eat, they say, but let those who wish to cut their food up " elegantly" be content to pay for the luxury.