AMERICA'S WORKING PEOPLE.*
IF, as we gather to be the case, the chapters of this volume have appeared in the pages of the American paper, the Outlook, they count greatly to the credit of Transatlantic journalism. The author, Mr. Charles B. Spahr, is a remarkably frank and open-minded student of industrial questions, ready at any time to modify opinions which he may have previously formed when he finds new facts at variance with them, and is also endowed in a high degree with that blend of the gifts of the interviewer and the cross-examiner which is needed for the successful pursuit of social investigations. His book does not profess to be a complete or exhaustive treatment of his sub- ject, but it deals in a very illuminating fashion with several of the most important departments and aspects of industrial life in the United States. Included among these are the old factory towns of New England and the new factory towns of the South; the negro as an industrial factor and as a citizen; the " iron centres " of Pennsylvania, where Trade-Unionism is suppressed, and the building and other trades at Chicago, where it is flourishing almost to the point of triumph ; the coal-mines of Pennsylvania; and farming, both in the back- woods of Arkansas and under the influence of State education, and experimentation in agriculture, in Minnesota.
The mere enumeration of these topics illustrates the immense diversity of industrial and economic conditions presented by the United States as compared with those to be found in this country,—a diversity so profound, and so cogent in its influence, that there are not wanting thoughtful citizens of the Republic who believe that in the long-run the centri- fugal forces so developed will overmaster those making for political cohesion. No such apprehension is suggested by Mr. Spahr. He is an intense believer in the educating and unifying influence of life under the flag of the great Republic of the West Speaking of the constant influx of foreigners with traditions as remote as possible from those of the States, he says : " The ideals, the opportunities, the responsibilities of our democracy change the immigrants into a new order of men The power of our democracy to transform hands into men awakens new faith in American institutions." We do not question the general truth of this proud claim, and yet there is a good deal to be found in Mr. Spahr's volume which shows that powerful combinations of individuals and interests may avail to arrest, and for a time, at least, even to reverse, the tendencies making in the States for freedom, at any rate as it is understood in England. Notably there is the case of
• America's Working People. By Charla B. Spahr. London : Longmanaand Co. ps. net.]
th3 colossal Carnegie Works. There, where from a manufac- turing point of view the most conspicuous successes have been achieved, liberty of combination among the workmen has been completely crushed. Mr. Spahr seems to have satisfied him-
self that wages had been lowered at the Homestead Works since the great strike in 1892, but it was not that which— "Caused the most bitter complaints amongst the men. Their wages, even when lowered, were not low, and most of them realised it. Their real grievances were the long hours, the Sunday labour, the strain under which they were compelled to work, and above all—or rather at the basis of all—the want of freedom to organise. Nobody in Homestead dared openly to join a Trade-Union. The President (Mr. Charles IL Schwab) said without reserve that he would discharge any man for this offence, and the men all understood that this was the foundation principle of the present order. So far as I could see, no secret Union had yet grown up. . . . . . The Union movement to all appearances was dead, except in the hopes of the workmen. The management, I afterwards learnt, believed that it was dead even here, and that most of the men were glad to have the Union out- lawed; but I saw nothing to support this view. Some of the men I met did not wish to be connected with Trade-Unions. But there was not one of them but regarded the loss of the right to organise as a restriction to freedom."
This state of things is attributed by Mr. Spahr not princi- pally to Mr. Carnegie, who is said to have sympathised with organisation among his employes, but to the present head of this vast business, Mr. Schwab, who is a convinced believer in the pernicious operation of Trade-Unions. Institutions, it is true, of the best kind, and on the most liberal scale, have been established and are maintained by the management for the benefit of the workmen; but freedom to organise them- selves is resolutely withheld from them. Mr. Schwab
holds that Unionism is incompatible with that complete in- dividual independence which is essential to the best welfare of the men, and he relies on English experience as showing that the arbitrary regulations of Trade-Unions are inimical to the free development of industries on the most enlightened lines. There is much to be said for the truth of Mr. Schwab's position, from the manufacturer's point of view, and it is interesting to notice that the writer of the able and interest- ing series of articles on American engineering competition which has lately been appearing in the Times plainly holds that to give English engineering a fair chance Unionism must be broken down here. That is as it may be, but one thing is
quite certain, and that is that individual freedom secured by a benevolent despot's prohibition of combination is not real
freedom. And no one who knows anything of life in any of the great centres of the metal and engineering trades in the North of England can read Mr. Spahr's account of Home- stead without feeling that it is here, and not there under the Schwab regime, that conditions are on the whole most favour- able to the wholesome development of individual character. Still more markedly unfavourable to the States must be a comparison between, let us say, life in any of the pit villages in which the householders are mainly members of the North- umberland Miners' Union, whose secretary is Mr. Burt, M.P., and that in the town of Harwood, Pennsylvania, mainly in- habited by Hungarians working in the neighbouring collieries. Mr. Spahr visited it with a Welshman who had been dis-
charged from his mining employment on account of his sympathy with the Huns on the occasion of a calamitous riot, but who appeared to Mr. Spahr a remarkably fair-minded man. Mainly, as it appears, on his authority, we learn that— "Only the men who were not now employed by the coal com- pany dared talk with me about labour troubles. It was not a free town. One point of freedom, however, the people had gained by the great strike. They were now allowed to employ their own doctor • The more important object of the strike, however —the removal of the company-store system—has not been attained at all. Conditions in this respect were almost as bad as in the South. Pay-day was the fifteenth of the month, but the men were paid only tip to the first. Their wages, therefore, were never less than two weeks in arrears. In this way only the thrifty were able to buy at other than company stores, and even the thrifty did not dare to do so. Upon this point," proceeds Mr. Spahr, " my escort laid none of the blame upon the head of the company. Mr. Pardee,' be said, tells the men to trade
where they please, and I believe he means it. But the under- officers managing the different departments work together to make good returns, and when they make them their management isn't criticised.' Justly or unjustly, the men were firmly con- vinced that their jobs were in danger unless they traded with the company."
The law passed by the Pennsylvania Legislature for the protection of these miners contained two words nullifying its ostensible intention. For it prescribed that all mine labour should be paid for in money " on demand" ; and " for any individual miner to demand money when the company pre- ferred to pay in scrip—or checks on the company store—was considered the equivalent of demanding a discharge and change of residence." The state of things thus depicted is not freedom or anything like it, and there seems no reason what- ever for confidence that the range within which capital can work its will, good or bad, unchecked will not be widely extended in the States. Thus we learn that the cigarette-making trade is already controlled by a Trust, "to the utter suppression of Unions," and the cigar-makers, whose Union, from Mr. Spahr's account, seems to be a vigorous and in many ways useful one, feel that if the same agency of concentrated capital were to enter their trade, the prospect would be gloomy indeed. Nor would it seem unnatural that, in various directions, employers should be tempted to seek for the same kind of exemption from Trade-Union interference with their business as has been secured by the Carnegie Company, from whose works come, be it remembered, some three-fifths of all the steel produced in Pennsylvania. Mr. Spahr's visit to Chicago revealed to him a state of feeling with regard to machinery among the well-organised carpenters there• which convinced him that "the omnipotence of Trade-Unions would mean industrial stagnation as surely as the omnipotence of Trusts." We should have doubted whether " industrial stagnation " was one of the evils to be expected from the omnipotence of Trusts, but that there are very serious evils connected with such a state of things is quite certain. Among other things, it would seem likely to contribute to the enhancement of the strain at whiCh labour is carried on in many trades in America, and which, apparently, is already widely pro- ducing, premature exhaustion of industrial efficiency. Mr. Spahr gathered the impression that in steel-rolling mills a man is " old at forty." In the cotton-spinning factories of New England he noticed an absence of men over forty-five, except at such work as sweeping, and was told by the head of the Spinners' Union •that before that age "the strain of the work wore men out, and their fingers were no longer nimble enough to keep up with work demanded." He even found many " households upside down," where the women did the factory work and the men took care of the home. Mr. Spahr's picture of the new factory towns in the South is, on the whole, distinctly more cheerful than that which he gives of the old factory towns in New England, but the early retirement of adults is carried even farther. At Lindale, in South Carolina, the superintendent of the mills told him that they had few men in the cotton mills over thirty- five ! " He suggested that early marriages had much to do with it. The people marry young, and when they get to middle life, they expect their children to support them." And it appears that in the South there is no legal restriction' with regard to the age at which children may be required by their parents to begin factory life.
Whatever the explanation, it is difficult to regard the various evidences afforded by Mr. Spahr's book of the premature dis- use of workpeople in early middle life, of the oppressive power exercised by masses of capital, and of the temper animating many Trade-Unionists, as combining to throw an encouraging light on the industrial outlook in the States. Nor can we be surprised that our author himself, great as is his general faith in the " American " spirit, looks upon the rural districts as its real stronghold. His concluding paper on " The Northern Farm " is full of interest and attraction, and exhibits much good reason for the hope that is in him.
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