SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 of the 
 
 LABOR QUESTION 
 
 University of California 
 Department of University Extension 
 
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 RROLL D.WRIGH 
 
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 University of California 
 Department of University Extension 
 
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Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive 
 
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SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 of the LABOR QUESTION 
 
SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 of the LABOR QUESTION 
 
 By 
 CARROLL D. WRIGHT, Ph.D., LL.D. 
 
 UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER OF LABOR 
 
 Author of ^^ Industrial Evolution of the United States ''^ 
 '* Outline of Practical Sociology," etc. 
 
 AMERICAN UNITARIAN 
 ASSOCIATION: BOSTON: 1903 
 

 Copyright 1902 
 American Unitarian Association 
 
 Second Edition 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. Religion in Relation to Sociology, 3 
 
 II. The Relation of Political Econ- 
 omy TO the Labor Question ... 25 
 
 III. The Factory as an Element in 
 
 Civilization 81 
 
 IV. The Ethics of Prison Labor . . . 161 
 
 k,y4o48 
 
I 
 
 RELIGION IN RELATION TO 
 SOCIOLOGY. 
 
I \\ I 
 
 1 1 > > 
 > J > 
 
 RELIGION IN RELATION TO 
 SOCIOLOGY. 
 
 If we depend upon lexicographers for a 
 definition of religion, we find that it com- 
 prehends a belief in the being and perfec- 
 tion of God, in the revelation of his will to 
 man, in man's obligation to obey his com- 
 mands, and in man's accountableness to 
 God ; and it also includes true godliness^ or 
 purity of life, with the practice of all moral 
 duties. If we do not undertake to square 
 rehgion with dogmatic theological thought 
 and teaching, we shall come to the conclu- 
 sion that, as distinct from theology, religion 
 is godliness, or real purity in practice, con- 
 sisting of the performance of aU known 
 duties to God and our fellow-men and our- 
 selves. If we search the heart and the con- 
 science, this ^dll be the outcome. We shall 
 agree with Fichte, that religion is " faith in 
 
4 '•' ' /' '' •* b6M^ l&TRJCAL PHASES 
 
 a moral government of the world," and that 
 without it "morahty is superstition, which 
 deceives the unfortunate with a false hope 
 and makes them incapable of improvement." 
 We shaU agree, too, with Kant, that rehgion 
 is " reverence for the moral law as of divine 
 command," and with Dr. Martineau, that 
 religion is the "culminating meridian of 
 morals." Still, we shall go beyond this, and 
 recognize in rehgion, pure and simple and 
 undefiled, the great moving force which un- 
 derHes the formation of our characters, de- 
 termines our action, not only as to self, but 
 as to others, teaches us the rules of right 
 and wrong, and that through character and 
 conduct we show our sense of responsibility 
 and of our accountableness to God and to 
 our fellow-man, in the latter finding the 
 practical work in which we can show the 
 greatest honor to God and the greatest and 
 highest comprehension of our best emotions. 
 If we consult the lexicographer again, we 
 shall find that sociology is the science of 
 social phenomena, — the science which in- 
 vestigates the laws regulating human society ; 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION b 
 
 the science which treats of the general 
 structure of society, the laws of its develop- 
 ment, the progress of civilization, and all 
 that relates to society. If we go to our own 
 hearts and experiences, sociology becomes 
 something different from a science. It be- 
 comes a habit of social relations, — the moral 
 attitude of man to man, the comprehension 
 of the methods and processes by which men 
 grow out of self and into serviceableness to 
 their fellows. It is, in a reHgious and an 
 ethical sense, the soul of society, -v^ith man 
 as the expression of the soul, and the means 
 and the vehicle by which the soul of society 
 works out the redemption of its material 
 elements ; and ethics, which is not rehgion, 
 but which is not ethics unless stimulated by 
 it, means the truest, the highest, the divin- 
 est relations of men in society. 
 
 Again, we shall conclude that sociology 
 deals with the institutions which enable 
 society to perform its infinitely varied func- 
 tions, that every feature of society which 
 comprehends the action of a group of in- 
 dividual units represents some institution, 
 
6 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 and without regard to the theory which may 
 be adopted to account for the origin and 
 development of society ; for, whatever that 
 origin may have been, all organizations hav- 
 ing the purpose of regulation, government, 
 or defence are institutions created by in- 
 dividuals in their relations to each other. 
 Thus customs, laws, habits, traditions, re- 
 ligions, — everything that represents the 
 action of men in groups, — are institutions 
 in a sociological sense. 
 
 With these definitions we can appreciate 
 the facetious answer of a student when 
 asked. What is sociology? He said it was 
 an aspiration ; and, while the answer was 
 given to slur the science of sociology as 
 something nebulous and incomprehensible, 
 it has in it great truth. For the aim of 
 society in all its regidations is to reach an 
 ideal state, in which all units, individual and 
 social, shall be happy, and shall in their 
 methods conduce to the happiness of all. 
 
 Religion is something more than an as- 
 piration. It is a hope. In it and through 
 it and by it the human race has always 
 
OF TUE LABOR QUESTION 7 
 
 looked for the siiblimest consummation of 
 life, — that spiritual happiness which comes 
 through the hope of eternal welfare, which 
 comes through the hope of a relation to God 
 that shall make the man of hope something 
 more than human : something divine. Re- 
 Hgion and sociology, therefore, with this 
 comprehension, compass the highest ele- 
 ments of correlated forces. They involve 
 an interweaving of interests and a recog- 
 nition of a common source of existence of 
 action and of ultimate end. Neither religion 
 nor sociology can be studied alone, inde- 
 pendently of the other. They must be 
 studied side by side as correlated forces, 
 each acting upon the other, each determin- 
 ing the destiny of man, and hence of society. 
 The earher writers on sociology framed 
 their works upon what is known as the mate- 
 rialistic or biological theory of society, — 
 that society is an organism, developed on 
 the cellular plan, like the hiunan organism. 
 The later writers do not consider this theory 
 adequate to account for social organization ; 
 and they have advanced the theory that so- 
 
8 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 ciety is the result of psychic forces, — of 
 what Dr. Giddings characterizes "the con- 
 sciousness of kind." If later writers are 
 correct, — and they seem to me to be so, — 
 religion must have played an important part 
 in the evolution of society as a psychic 
 force ; for the emotional nature of man is 
 one of the principal elements of rehgious 
 nature, which is emotional in the highest 
 sense, as it relates to the deeper spiritual, 
 and even the supernatural, tendencies of the 
 human mind. 
 
 Dr. Albion W. Small, a philosopher, a so- 
 ciologist, and a believer in the deepest rehg- 
 ious life and in the influence of the teachings 
 of rehgion, concludes that sociologists are, 
 in the first place, subjecting social facts to 
 such minute analyses that all science will be 
 better understood ; second, that they are 
 trying to untangle the complexities of the 
 social process in all times and places, so that 
 we may presently teach men how to find 
 themselves in that portion of the process 
 which is working out in their particular en- 
 vironment ; third, that they are explaining 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 9 
 
 the operation of social forces and formulat- 
 ing the laws of their workings, so that we 
 may presently know better what resources 
 are available for human tasks and how they 
 may be most effectively appHed; fourth, 
 that they are trying to find standards for 
 judgment about the social products of one 
 time as compared with those of other times, 
 so that we may take more accurate account 
 of our stock of social achievements; and, 
 fifth, — and here is the deepest philosophy 
 of Dr. Small's analysis, — that sociologists 
 are trying to discover in the facts of social 
 conditions and resources material out of 
 which to construct more concrete and speci- 
 fic and coherent ideals of the appropriate 
 aims of human endeavor.* Dr. Small's ar- 
 ticle on " The Value of Sociology to Work- 
 ing Pastors " is commended. 
 
 The great question arises. What kind of 
 materials must be used to enable us to con- 
 struct more concrete, specific, and coherent 
 ideals of the appropriate aims of himian en- 
 deavor ? And the answer must be that an 
 
 ♦ Cf . the Outlook, June 17, 1899. 
 
10 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 ideal state of society is to be found only 
 when religious elements predominate; for, 
 in studying sociology, we are searching for 
 the philosophy of life, and both the rehgion- 
 ist and the sociologist find that, no matter 
 when society began, no matter when social 
 combinations first began to organize their 
 forces, rehgion played a prominent initiative 
 part. There has been no race in its prime- 
 val days, with or without organizations, that 
 has not had its religious ceremonials, with 
 their deep and lasting influence upon the 
 purpose, character, and results of their as- 
 sociations. It does not matter how crude 
 or how repulsive these ceremonials may 
 appear to us now, they were the deepest 
 expressions of the rehgious elements of 
 man at one time. 
 
 We now believe that some forms of theo- 
 logical dogma are simply the result of the 
 superstitious religions found in the crudest 
 races of men. A God or a number of gods 
 have always had possession of the minds of 
 men. We beHeve in one immanent God, 
 the source of all inteUigence, who is all in- 
 
OF TUE LABOR QUESTION 11 
 
 telligence. This only raises us in the stand- 
 ard of religious culture and, I believe, in the 
 power of religious force. We apply our 
 rehgious culture to the shaping of human 
 events, to the formation of human enterprise, 
 to the building of character, to the purpose 
 of human organizations, and hence to the 
 real purpose of society itself. We have 
 grown out of savagery and barbarism and 
 superstition in some degree ; but that degi*ee 
 is immense when we compare the present 
 with the far past, and whether we are deal- 
 ing with society or with reHgion as a force 
 in society. 
 
 The struggles of men assume a different 
 phase as the development of rehgious beUef 
 goes on, the development of social relations 
 accompanying the rehgious development. 
 We are just beginning to comprehend the 
 hving Christ in all the relations of men, — 
 the Christ who Hved before the Christian 
 era, and who has had a Hving personality 
 since then. We beHeve more and more in 
 the true essence of rehgion, which is the 
 absolute foundation of the very best society. 
 
12 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 This is found in the utterance, "Bear ye 
 one another's burdens." But this sentiment 
 is as old as creation, as new as to-day. 
 While all the races, crude and cultured, 
 have had their God or gods, aU races have 
 had their Christs ; and the Christ idea in 
 social development has been smnmed up 
 in the conmiand, " What you do not like 
 when done to yourself, do not do to others," 
 as the inspiration of the Chinese philosopher 
 five hundred years before our own great 
 Master, when from his inspiration came the 
 command, " Do unto others as ye would 
 that others would do unto you." The Christ 
 of the Buddhists gave the world the same 
 inspiration ; and so did Seneca, and so did 
 Kant. I have just read in a book entitled 
 Better World Philosophy that this is 
 the injunction which has been proclaimed 
 by the sublimest souls that have pondered 
 and agonized over the sins of beings. The 
 injunction is to put yourself in the place 
 of others. It is consideration of others as 
 ardent as consideration of seH. It is the 
 balancing of abilities, the social ideal.* So 
 
 *Cf. Better World Philosophy, J. Howard Moore, p. 194. 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 18 
 
 in the great command of the greatest teacher 
 of divine truth the world has ever seen, and 
 of inspired teachers before and since his 
 birth and death, — the command, " Bear ye 
 one another's burdens," — religion and soci- 
 ology find their deepest expression and their 
 truest harmony. 
 
 But sociology deals with practical prob- 
 lems, with the great difficulties constantly 
 besetting governments as the highest repre- 
 sentations of social organization. How shall 
 we deal with the poor and those needing the 
 assistance of the well-to-do ? Crude charity, 
 as a sociological force, says they must be as- 
 sisted. ReHgion, as a divine force, gives 
 charity the first place in hirnian quahties. 
 Religion and sociology, making a scientific 
 study of this very difficulty in hiunan rela- 
 tions, teach us that there is as much danger 
 in benevolence and philanthropy as in the 
 neglect of philanthropic and benevolent im- 
 pulses. Experience, examination, and re- 
 search show that crude charity is a menace 
 to society. We throw many young men and 
 women into penal institutions by our benevo- 
 
14 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 lent acts by bringing them up in reformatory 
 and charitable institutions until old enough 
 to earn their own living, and then sending 
 them out into the world without the knowl- 
 edge or the technical skill by which they can 
 sustain themselves. More enlightened re- 
 ligion and more scientific sociology will right 
 this wrong, and teach the true method under 
 which men shall be equipped for life-work, 
 and not simply educated to become pubhc 
 wards. Rehgion has invaded the prison, so- 
 ciology has furnished the facts, and the re- 
 ligious heart, allied to sociological science, 
 has developed penology into the science of 
 reclamation. Rehgion has forgotten the 
 wrathful God under which society justified 
 itself in avenging its wrongs upon the wrong- 
 doer, and has taught the world that the only 
 true method is to treat the prisoner as a 
 morally sick man, under the obligation that 
 he shall be returned to society supplied with 
 the knowledge the deficiency in which in a 
 majority of cases brought him to the prison. 
 Reli<rion is reaching: out into sociolo«:ical 
 lines in other directions. It is putting its 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 15 
 
 hand upon government and upon all the in- 
 tegral elements of government. It is influenc- 
 ing the individual units of society, so that 
 by their development and by their culture 
 the government itseK shall be as pure as its 
 source, — a long struggle, to be sure ; but 
 religion and sociology as allied forces, or, as 
 a better expression, rehgion as a force in de- 
 termining sociological work, is bringing about 
 the regeneration. 
 
 Sociology has as one of its departments 
 poHtical economy ; and, although the econo- 
 mists resent all encroachments of religion or 
 deny the existence of religion as a force in 
 poHtical economy, it is, nevertheless, an as- 
 sured fact that rehgion is making a new 
 political economy. The Ruskin school is 
 increasing its student roU, and that in- 
 creased student roll is developing new ele- 
 ments in the political and economic rela- 
 tions of man. We can join with Henry D. 
 Lloyd in his enthusiasm when he declares 
 that there is a new poHtical economy, which 
 looks first to the care and cidture of 
 men ; that there is a new seH-interest of 
 
16 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 the individual, who puts his family before 
 himself, his country before his family, man- 
 kind before his country, because there is 
 filtering into his conscience the vast fact that 
 his share of what is done for him by man- 
 kind is of far more value to him than what 
 he does for himself. This new political 
 economy, which Mr. Lloyd describes as a 
 new self-interest of the community, and 
 which is going into the slums, factories, 
 mines, and workshops, desires to make all 
 safe by making its weakest safe; and Mr. 
 Lloyd closes with the statement that there is a 
 new state, — the organized body of Christ, — 
 which feeds the hungry, heals the sick, and 
 visits those in prison, and gathers up the 
 children, — a new religion, in fact, a religion 
 of progress, and of man as a partner in the 
 creation of that progress, creating new ideas, 
 new species of plants and animals, new men, 
 and new society. In this light, can we deny 
 the force of religion in shaping our socio- 
 logical work ? Patriotism is born of religion, 
 and patriotism is a power in the development 
 of society ; but in religion is found the very 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 17 
 
 fundamental principle of patriotism, — that 
 is, loyalty to a principle, loyalty to country, 
 and, through loyalty to country, loyalty to 
 God. 
 
 A German evangehcal, Rudolph Todt, in 
 applying physiological science to society, 
 finds that political economy is the anatomy 
 which makes known the construction of the 
 body social ; that sociaKsm is the pathology 
 that describes the maladies of society, and 
 that the church represents the therapeutics 
 that prescribe the proper remedies. And on 
 the title-page of his book he has inscribed 
 the following : " Whoever would understand 
 the social question, and wishes to aid in 
 solving it, must have on his right hand the 
 works on political economy, on his left those 
 on scientific socialism, and before him must 
 keep open the New Testament." 
 
 How emphatically true it is that by the 
 adoption of this principle the labor question, 
 with all its ramifications, is lifted to a higher 
 plane than the mere consideration of some 
 of the narrow tenets which have accompa- 
 nied its discussion I The hours of labor, 
 
18 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 the question of wages^ in this light do not 
 constitute the labor question, but the great 
 struggle of hiunanity to secure a higher 
 standard of living, to be able to indulge in 
 the spiritual affairs of life, — those affairs 
 that are above and beyond the mere contest 
 for subsistence. And in the settlement of 
 labor difficulties — the contests between 
 labor and capital as represented by laborers 
 and capitalists — this principle is the only 
 one that can have any effective or lasting 
 influence. Very many strikes and lockouts 
 are the result of close observance of David 
 Harum's golden rule for the horse-trader, — 
 " Do unto the other fellow as you think the 
 other fellow is going to do unto you, and 
 do it fust." When this jockey rule in labor 
 matters is displaced by the true Golden 
 Rule, labor wars will cease, or be carried 
 on purely on ethical and economic lines, 
 avoiding those disastrous personal conflicts 
 which not only interfere with business, as 
 represented by the parties involved, but 
 disturb the whole community. The labor 
 question can be treated or solved only by 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 19 
 
 Mr. Dole's Coming People, — people who 
 apply religion and knowledge at the same 
 time to a specific question. 
 
 We must adopt the therapeutics taught 
 by religion. We must understand the mal- 
 adies of society through sociological science. 
 Each teaches that the greatest enemy of the 
 hiunan race, as well as the greatest impelling 
 force to human progress and civihzation, is 
 selfishness. The egoism of man has carried 
 him into the worst crimes, both individually 
 and collectively, the world has ever wit- 
 nessed. Egoism has also carried him into 
 the sublimest altruism and into the most 
 aggressive movements for the benefit of the 
 race at large. There is no act of altruism 
 that has not in it the elements of selfishness. 
 Rehgion would teach us that the selfishness 
 or the egoism shall be of the purest quaUty, 
 — shall be that selfishness which demands 
 of a man such service as shall increase the 
 happiness of those for whom it is intended 
 as much as for his own happiness. Man 
 lives by competitive force. He desires to 
 win in the race. Religion teaches him that 
 
20 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 his service must be for humanity, and not 
 for himself alone. It teaches that his rest- 
 lessness, which was born when man came on 
 the earth, must be shaped, guided, and used 
 in the interest of all. 
 
 So we can draw living principles from all 
 the reformers, of whatever name or dis- 
 tinction, the world has ever seen. The 
 sociaUst teaches that society should be con- 
 ducted on the basis of demanding from each 
 man according to his abihty and giving to 
 each according to his needs, — a doctrine 
 which has in it the essence of Christ's com- 
 mand, but which is dangerous unless intel- 
 hgently carried out. The facts of sociology 
 teach us the results of reckless adhesion to 
 it ; while religion, on the other hand, teaches 
 us the great benefits of its intelligent adop- 
 tion in the light of the principles of the 
 Christian reHgion. 
 
 Man is full of faults. Sociology under- 
 takes to reveal the faults of man in his 
 social relations, not in a theological sense, 
 but in a practical sense. The application of 
 the true essence of rehgion is correcting 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 21 
 
 these faults, and making the very passions of 
 men forcible in the service of God. 
 
 It is not my province to speak to the 
 clergy of the necessity of knowledge in the 
 science of sociology ; but it may be inti- 
 mated that the pulpit is not a lyceiun, is not 
 a platform for the especial discussion of 
 sociological questions, but that it is and 
 should be a mediiun of instruction in those 
 deep, practical, rehgious principles which, 
 applied to ordinary, every-day hmnan affairs, 
 will lead to a better understanding, to a 
 truer reform than we have seen, and to the 
 enlightenment of men. The attempt to 
 apply reHgion to sociological conditions, 
 without a knowledge of all that the science 
 of sociology can disclose in any particular 
 direction, comes very near being an intel- 
 lectual, if not a moral, crime. The pulpit 
 is the place for the deepest religious in- 
 struction ; but, as the deepest rehgious 
 instruction means the weKare of the hu- 
 man race in its social relations, the pulpit 
 has a power for good or evil in this di- 
 rection which cannot be estimated. Let 
 
22 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 the teaching of the pulpit be in the Hght of 
 actual sociological science, and then the 
 broadest and the most satisfactory results 
 will be reached. Whoever undertakes to 
 study science in any department, whether 
 geology or sociology or biology or anthro- 
 pology, without understanding the rehgious 
 interpretation of the facts which these 
 sciences disclose, falls short of his duty, 
 falls short in his comprehension of the real, 
 Hving Christ that pervades all elements of 
 all society and all revelations of science. 
 
n 
 
 THE RELATION OF POLITICAL 
 
 ECONOMY TO THE LABOR 
 
 QUESTION. 
 
n 
 
 THE RELATION OF POLITICAL 
 
 ECONOMY TO THE LABOR 
 
 QUESTION. 
 
 In the preceding chapter the general prin- 
 ciples of sociology, considered in the Hght 
 of religion, have been promulgated. These 
 principles form the treatment of this chapter, 
 in which I shall speak of the demands labor 
 is making or will make upon political 
 economy. 
 
 The labor question, a short term for the 
 evolution of industrial forces, includes a wide 
 range of sociological studies, a general treat- 
 ment of which would be impossible. I shall 
 not, therefore, undertake to discuss the labor 
 question in its comprehensiveness, but only 
 a phase of it. One must not, however, con- 
 sider the matters I do not touch to be held 
 in my own estimation as unimportant. I 
 simply treat a side I have considered to some 
 
 25 
 
26 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 extent, iuJlj recognizing the paramount 
 importance of those features I cannot even 
 mention. 
 
 The term "labor question" is used as 
 representing the problem of working people 
 in their struggle to secure a higher standard 
 of living, but in this place it is used in a 
 limited sense and as embracing the wants of 
 the wage-laborer, or in a general way as rep- 
 resenting the discussion of the just and equi- 
 table distribution of profits, or the products 
 of labor and capital. In this are to be found 
 the vital elements of the labor question, 
 whether from an economic or an ethical 
 point of view. Political economists grow very 
 learned and even fascinating over the wages 
 question, but usually on entirely economic 
 grounds; while the just distribution of 
 profits can best be discussed upon grounds 
 covering both economics and ethics, for jus- 
 tice and equity are involved in the considera- 
 tion of the subject. 
 
 A just distribution of profits, by which sup- 
 port and provision for old age may be secured, 
 depends much more upon the cost of Uving, 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 27 
 
 habits of frugality, temperance, good morals, 
 sanitary conditions, educational privileges, 
 and various forces of a moral nature than 
 upon purely economical conditions. We 
 must therefore view the whole superstructure 
 in looking at the labor question, and not 
 merely the economic shingles of the edifice. 
 
 If I were speaking from the pulpit, and 
 wished to frame a compound subject from 
 language taken from Scripture, I should say. 
 Whatsoever ye sow, that also shall ye reap, and 
 he that is faithful over a few things shall be 
 made ruler over many. At least, the princi- 
 ples underlying the sayings from which such 
 a subject would be drawn apply most forcibly 
 to the consideration of the relations of em- 
 ployers and employed, and of each to society. 
 
 During the past one hundred and twenty 
 years, political economy, as a separate branch 
 of philosophy, has sprung into existence. The 
 age has been one of material progress. Eco- 
 nomics has ruled almost at the expense of 
 ethics, although the same age has seen won- 
 derful structures of charitable and educational 
 design grow into existence. The strides civ- 
 
28 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 ilization has made command our admiration, 
 and its onward steps are marked by numer- 
 ous and convincing evidences ; but such evi- 
 dences are outside the science of political 
 economy, and are only considered by it as 
 the cost may enter into the distribution of 
 wealth it seeks to create, but not as means 
 for a happier and better condition wherein 
 wealth could be more successfully produced. 
 
 Material progress has surpassed that of 
 the arts, painting and sculpture, and litera- 
 ture, for they hve as well in the past ; and 
 present efforts are rather to approach and 
 equal than to excel the productions of old. 
 
 Under the spur of this progress political 
 economy has flourished, — first, by the pa- 
 tronage and through the admiration of all 
 classes. England gave it birth, and to it, 
 her writers claim, she owes her industrial 
 position in the past. It may be that to a 
 too blind following of later teachings she 
 owes to-day the partial loss of her old in- 
 dustrial supremacy. I am not speaking of 
 the Manchester school as such, but of the 
 whole orthodox school of economists, which 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 29 
 
 never admits to its curriculum the study of 
 conditions not purely economic. America, 
 if she desires to occupy the place England 
 is vacating, must take lessons of her mother, 
 and profit by her mistakes. 
 
 The old school has been content to teach 
 the laws that regulate the production, distri- 
 bution, and exchange of wealth ; and these 
 laws have formed the whole of the science 
 of pohtical economy, so far as it can be called 
 a science. It has studiously avoided all other 
 matters, and, in the endeavors of its devotees 
 to constitute it a science, has taken no cog- 
 nizance of the conditions which, favorable 
 or unfavorable, must attend the participators 
 in the production, distribution, and exchange 
 of commodities. It has been content to limit 
 itself to things and their relations to indi- 
 vidual and national wealth — more particu- 
 larly the latter — rather than to include in 
 its sphere of creed the vital relations of men. 
 Even Mr. MiE, perhaps the most brilliant 
 writer of the age upon the topic we are con- 
 sidering, informs us * that " pohtical economy 
 
 * Essays on Some Unpublished Questions, 1844. 
 
30 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 is concerned with man solely as a being who 
 desires to possess wealth, and who is capable 
 of judging of the comparative efficacy of 
 means to that end. It makes entire abstrac- 
 tion of every other human passion or motive, 
 except those which may be regarded as per- 
 petually antagonizing principles to the de- 
 sire of wealth ; namely, aversion to labor, 
 and desire of the present enjoyment of costly 
 indulgences. . . . Political economy considers 
 mankind as occupied solely in acquiring and 
 consiuning wealth." Professor John K. In- 
 gram * calls this a vicious abstraction, which 
 meets us on the very threshold of poHtical 
 economy; and Professor F. A. Walker,! 
 commenting upon this saying of Mill's, re- 
 marks : " If Mr. Mill had merely meant that 
 the political economist should begin by in- 
 quiring what such a monstrous race would 
 do under the impulse of the antagonizing 
 forces of greed and indolence, no one could 
 have taken exception. But Mr. Mill did 
 not mean this. He meant that the poHtical 
 
 * Penn Monthly, November, 1879. 
 t In Sunday Afternoon, May, 1879. 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 31 
 
 economist should end here, — should literally 
 make entire abstraction, once for all, of every 
 other human passion or motive, and at no 
 point in his reasoning should take account 
 of any one of a score of recognizable and 
 appreciable motives and feelings which enter 
 to influence the actions of men in respect to 
 wealth, love of country, love of home, love of 
 friends, mutual sympathy among members of 
 the same class ; respect for labor, and interest 
 in the laboring class on the part of the com- 
 munity at large ; good will between landlord 
 and tenant, between employer and employed ; 
 the power of custom and tradition ; the force 
 of inertia, ignorance, and superstition." 
 
 Mr. Mill's statements represent the tenets 
 of the old school, although the founder of 
 the science, Adam Smith, began his labors 
 in it as a professor of moral philosophy, and 
 taught it as a branch of that philosophy. 
 His followers, in their ambition, have 
 strayed far from the doctrines of their great 
 master ; and, with their departure from him, 
 pohtical economy has lost the sympathy and 
 even the attention of the wage-workers of 
 
32 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 English and American communities, the 
 very support it largely needs and should 
 have. But it would be unreasonable to 
 expect them to have much reverence for 
 what Carlyle has denominated " the dismal 
 science/' and George Howell "the grab-all 
 science " ; " for/' says the latter, " its funda- 
 mental principles seem to be based on the 
 Quaker's advice to his son, ^Make money 
 honestly if you can, but make money.' " 
 The majority of the followers of Smith have 
 forgotten that Christianity says, "Thou 
 shalt love thy neighbor as thyself " ; "Do 
 unto others as ye would that men should do 
 imto you " ; " Love one another " ; " Bear 
 ye one another's burdens." On the other 
 hand, they practically say. Love thyself; 
 seek thine own advantage ; promote thine 
 own welfare ; put money in thy purse : the 
 welfare of others is not thy business. 
 
 It is because of this hard, unsympathetic 
 nature of the so-called science of political 
 economy that the labor question has come to 
 be considered as distinct from it ; and, be- 
 cause of the departure from sound ethical 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 33 
 
 features of the science by most of the lead- 
 ing writers, there has sprung up within a 
 few years a new school, which bids fair to 
 include on its roll of pupils the men in all 
 civilized lands who seek by legitimate means, 
 and without revolution, the amelioration of 
 unfavorable industrial and social relations 
 wherever foimd as the surest road to com- 
 paratively permanent material prosperity. 
 
 This school is neither large nor as yet 
 powerful. Its first note came from Sis- 
 mondi in 1818, and was echoed by an emi- 
 nent Scotch divine. Dr. Thomas Chalmers, 
 in 1832, who undertook, as part of his duty 
 in a course of theological lectures to divinity 
 students in the University of Edinburgh, to 
 treat of political economy, which he defines 
 as aiming "at the diffusion of sufficiency 
 and comfort throughout the mass of the 
 population by a multiplication or enlarge- 
 ment of the outward means and materials of 
 hiunan en303nnent." "* He further declared 
 that his object would be gained if he coidd 
 demonstrate that even for the economic 
 
 * Introduction to Chalmers's Political Economy, 1832. 
 
34 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 well-being of a people their moral and relig- 
 ious education was the first and greatest 
 object of national policy, and that while 
 this is neglected a government in its anx- 
 ious and incessant labors for a well-condi- 
 tioned state of the Commonwealth would 
 only flounder from one delusive shift or 
 expedient to another, under the double mis- 
 fortune of being held responsible for the 
 prosperity of the land, and yet finding that 
 to be an element helplessly and hopelessly 
 beyond its control. That the theory of 
 wealth had to be examined in connection 
 with the theory of population was a truth 
 Dr. Chalmers recognized with the pohtical 
 economists ; but he beHeved the great result- 
 ing lesson of such examination to be the 
 intimate alliance which obtains between the 
 economical and the moral, inasmuch as the 
 very best objects of the science could not by 
 any possibility be realized but by dint of 
 prudence and virtue among the laboring 
 masses. 
 
 Could this spirit have been breathed 
 through all the wonderful voliunes on po- 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 35 
 
 litical economy which have been written 
 both sides of the Atlantic, there would 
 have been fewer works periodically pub- 
 lished upon the causes of depressions, and 
 upon remedies for labor difficulties. 
 
 The creed of the new school is finding 
 its way into the hearts and the minds of 
 men ; and it has for its advocates some 
 of the best thinkers in Europe, with a few 
 contemporaries in this country, who are ques- 
 tioning the logic of their old masters. I am 
 proud to sit at the feet of these new teachers, 
 and to declare my allegiance to such doc- 
 trines, which are the need of the world to- 
 day so far as economic questions are con- 
 cerned. They recognize as fundamental 
 elements of political economy the humanity 
 of the world and its moral condition, because 
 the best hiunanity is to be found where the 
 best morahty prevails. They recognize that 
 it is by the labor of the people employed in 
 various branches of industry that all ranks 
 of the community, in every condition of life, 
 annually subsist ; and that, by the produce 
 of this labor alone, nations become powerful 
 
36 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 in proportion to the extent of the surplus 
 which can be spared for the exigencies of 
 state ; and that, by the increase or diminu- 
 tion of the produce of this labor, states, 
 kingdoms, and empires flourish or decay.* 
 
 Had such principles foimed a part only 
 of the considerations of economists during 
 the past seventy-five or one hundred years, 
 there would not now be heard the lamenta- 
 tions concerning the decline or unpopularity 
 of the science which occasionally come up 
 from the old school, nor would the laboring 
 masses be averse to consulting and profiting 
 by the teachings of the masters of one of 
 the most attractive departments of human 
 knowledge. We have the testimony of Pro- 
 fessor Bonamy Price of England that politi- 
 cal -economy is undergoing a crisis, and is 
 passing through a revolution, both in the 
 region of thought amongst its teachers and 
 students, as well as in the great world, in 
 the practical life of mankind. This revolu- 
 tion will result well for the happiness and 
 
 * Cf. Colquhoun, Wealth, Power, and Resources of Britisk 
 Empire, 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 37 
 
 welfare of our kind; for it will bring to 
 their support, to their improvement, to their 
 education, the best and most thoroughly 
 digested thought of the first writers of the 
 world. Of this thought they have long 
 been robbed. This crisis will not take from 
 political economy one jot or one tittle of the 
 grand principles which make it, but will add 
 to it those vitalizing elements which will 
 make of it at once a science and a philosophy 
 which will commend itself to the under- 
 standing of the very workers whose prod- 
 ucts serve to create the want of the science 
 and the science itself. It will result in 
 bringing into the science the treatment of 
 the uses of wealth, as well as its accumula- 
 tion, distribution, and exchange, and incite 
 discussion upon the relations of labor and 
 capital on an ethical basis ; combining with 
 the old question the old school always asks, 
 " Will it pay ? " another and higher query, 
 "Is it right?'' 
 
 Pohtical economy has failed to see that 
 the highest industrial prosperity of nations 
 has attended those periods most given to 
 
38 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 moral education and practices. History is 
 full of lessons from which the new school 
 will attempt to teach that the growth of a 
 healthy, intelligent, and virtuous operative 
 population is as much for the pecuniary 
 interest of manufacturers themselves as for 
 civilization ; that the dechne of the morals 
 of the factory means the decline of the 
 nation ; and that the morals, the force, the 
 higher welfare of the nation, depend upon 
 the welfare of the working masses. 
 
 From these premises I predict that pohti- 
 cal economy will, in the near future, deal 
 largely with the family, with wealth, with 
 the state, as the three features of its doc- 
 trines, and not confine itseK to wealth alone. 
 Under family, it wiU take cognizance of the 
 relations of the sexes, marriage and divorce, 
 the position of woman, and the education 
 and employment of children ; the latter f omi- 
 ing the most vital element in the economic 
 considerations of the scientists, as well as 
 inviting the ardent sympathies of the phi- 
 lanthropists. Under wealth, the old chapters 
 will be revivified in the light of moral dis- 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 39 
 
 cernment, relative to all the delicate, but 
 always reciprocal, relations of labor and 
 capital. Under state, political ethics will be 
 taught as a direct means of securing the 
 highest material and social prosperity. 
 
 These considerations in the future will be 
 demanded to answer the question constantly 
 put, how labor may be rendered more gen- 
 erally attractive and remunerative, without 
 impairing the efficiency of capital, so that all 
 the workers of society may have their proper 
 share in the distribution of profits. This I 
 conceive to be the true labor question of 
 to-day in the limited sense. Of course it 
 is not that of the sociaHsts, nor of many 
 radical labor reformers who find themselves 
 on the verge of socialism, but have not the 
 courage to adopt its tenets; but it is the 
 sober question of the sober, industrious, and 
 thrifty workingmen, and the himiane, large- 
 hearted employers, of oui* country, — two 
 types of men I prefer to speak to, hoping 
 thereby to indirectly speak to the Shylocks 
 of both orders; for, while the capitalists 
 have their unprincipled Shylocks in one 
 
40 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 capacity, the reformers have theirs in 
 another. 
 
 The hmited labor question, as I have an- 
 nounced it, seeks no panacea. It recognizes 
 the faults of our civiHzation as those be- 
 longing to development, not to inauguration. 
 " And that there is not any one abuse or 
 injustice prevailing in society by merely 
 aboHshing which the human race would pass 
 out of suffering into happiness." * It rec- 
 ognizes the fallacy of attempting to win 
 advantages by isolated attacks at some 
 special point, and that, like Christianity, 
 civilization and its wonderful movements, it 
 must attack all along the line, and hence 
 make itself felt in all progressive steps and 
 attempts to reach a higher and better life. 
 It reaches beyond the hackneyed statements 
 of the old school, that the interests of labor 
 and capital are one, and incorporates them 
 with another, that they are reciprocal ; and 
 while it freely admits that capital loans 
 machinery and all the auxiharies of pro- 
 duction to the workingman, without which 
 
 * Chapters on Socialism, Mill. 
 
OF THE LABOE QUESTION 41 
 
 advance he could not labor, except at ruin- 
 ous processes, it wants capital to feel that it 
 depends for its vitaHty upon the ability of 
 labor to accept the loan ; that capital in- 
 vested in the machinery or the plant is dead 
 matter until the operative vitaHzes it with 
 his presence; and it knows well, that, if 
 either undertakes to do as it chooses, it 
 either falls or is obliged to accept the most 
 meagre results. It demands that each 
 should consult the other if both are to be 
 active and productive ; and its advocates 
 find that in all communities where reciprocal 
 interests prevail, and a moral standard act- 
 uates both parties, the best prosperity is 
 sustained. And, reaching farther than in- 
 dividuals and beyond industrial success, it 
 claims that a broad catholicity in trade is 
 essential to national success, and must take 
 the place of the grasping principles of the 
 old school, which have been sufficiently 
 disastrous to both individuals and to nations. 
 These demands, which seek to avoid adjust- 
 ments by all and every revolutionary means 
 suggested by enthusiasts, and which appear 
 
42 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 upon the surface at every recurrence of 
 industrial depression, are based upon ethical 
 grounds, and yet in them He the elements 
 of economic progress. 
 
 From these statements it will be seen how 
 thoroughly essential it is that pohtical econ- 
 omy should deal with all the conditions of 
 men, — their passions, crimes, appetites, — 
 and should teach them how to make their 
 passions subserve the highest interests of 
 hiunanity, instead of abusing them and mak- 
 ing them devilish. 
 
 PoHtical economy, when it has been 
 brought to the height of its grand mission, 
 should, above all other considerations, point 
 out the causes which have operated in lead- 
 ing people to good or evil, to prosperity or 
 decline. Investigation is bringing these 
 causes to light. When political economy 
 and history shall have progressed in these 
 directions sufficiently for general history to 
 become philosophical, the first places wiQ 
 not be allotted, as now, in most of the 
 works of our classic authors, to conquerors, 
 haughty governors who enriched cities by 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 43 
 
 ruining countries, and to pretended heroes, 
 who have been the seeming scourges of 
 hmnanity ; nor will the grand epochs of his- 
 tory be exclusively associated with such 
 celebrities, but will be dedicated to those 
 great men, the memory of whom has been 
 too often neglected. I mean those who 
 have loved peace, honored honest motives, 
 strengthened rural life, favored good local 
 government, given protection to smaller and 
 struggling nations, and contributed without 
 noise or ostentation to the development of 
 pubHc prosperity by the practice of the 
 highest morality in commercial and pohtical 
 life.* 
 
 Corruption comes from two sources, the 
 high and the low, but generally springs 
 from the governing or superior classes. It 
 sometimes derives its chief strength from 
 persons connected with estabhshments for 
 labor ; and in this case the evil may have 
 been propagated either by the proprietors or 
 the workmen : but, no matter in what way 
 it originates, it has really but one leading 
 
 *Cf. Le Play, Organization of Labor, pp. 66, 67. 
 
44 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 cause, — the transgression of the moral law ; 
 and with such transgression there always 
 comes industrial decHne. The prosecution 
 of this line of thought leads to the fullest 
 indorsement of Le Play, when he says that 
 " the best expression of the moral law is the 
 Decalogue. . . . The people who show the 
 most respect for these commandments are 
 precisely those who enjoy, in the highest 
 degree, competence, stability, and harmony. 
 In carrying on the useful arts under the in- 
 fluences of these divine laws and precepts, 
 the best organization of labor is everywhere 
 effected, — that organization which, par ex- 
 cellence, may be called the customs of work- 
 shops." Dependence upon such precepts 
 would carry the people of the world over 
 periods of depression without an avalanche 
 of solutions at every stage for depressions. 
 Just at this time, when prosperity has 
 opened all the factories in the land, and 
 crowded all our wharves with produce, the 
 danger is great ; for moral decline is espe- 
 cially provoked by a kind of error, finding 
 its support in the doctrine of uninterrupted 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 45 
 
 and absolute progress, signalizing the com- 
 ing of an indefinite era of prosperity, for 
 which the people are to depend upon bHnd 
 destiny, without being called upon to merit 
 it by devotion, personal sacrifice, or patriot- 
 ism. This tendency, always a positive evil, 
 is showing its influence at this time in sud- 
 denly inflated prices of commodities, a spirit 
 of speculation, and a willingness to extend 
 credits. The result can easily be foreseen 
 in the light of the political economy of the 
 labor question, — a few more years of re- 
 markable prosperity, and then a period of 
 depression, when everybody will be trying 
 to discover the cause of the hard times, 
 when, so far as history is reliable, the chief 
 cause will be the same as it ever has been, — 
 extended personal credits. Inflated com- 
 mercial credits will always bring disaster. 
 
 The principles of ethico-political economy 
 lie deeper down than the laws of rent, profits, 
 supply and demand, cost of production, the 
 wages-fund, and the like. The ti'ue matter is 
 the essential constitution of himian nature and 
 the fundamental relations of man to natural 
 
46 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 and moral forces. Out of these are drawn the 
 ultimate justification of economic laws.* 
 Without them, and with a too persistent ad- 
 hesion to absolutely economic laws, the 
 effect upon the industries of the world has 
 been discouraging. Ethical wisdom alone 
 can remedy such things. This suggests that 
 the precepts of the Decalogue cannot be pre- 
 served by a people, except when each gen- 
 eration has the power, and the desire which 
 gives the power, to teach them to the one 
 which follows ; and this can only be secured 
 by strong moral elements united with the 
 sacredness of the family. In the sacredness 
 of the family is found the strength of a 
 people. The desire to see a family growing 
 up begets the industry and frugality which 
 allows of its support; and any industrial 
 condition which prevents the young men 
 from becoming the heads of families is in 
 direct opposition to the best economical pros- 
 perity of the race. Statistics prove conclu- 
 sively three things, — 1st, That marriages are 
 decreasing in proportion to the increase of 
 
 * Cf . Henry A. James, Communism in America, p. 47. 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 4 i 
 
 population ; 2d, That divorces increase ; 3d, 
 That illegitimate births increase. These in- 
 controvertible facts are either the results of 
 definite causes, or the causes of results not 
 yet made clear ; and I contend that, in either 
 case, society, and certainly the labor ques- 
 tion, has the right to demand their recog- 
 nition in the science of political economy, as 
 directly affecting the equitable distribution 
 of the profits of production and the condition 
 of all engaged in the work of production. 
 
 The direct and sure bearing of the in- 
 fluences springing from a condition of debt 
 cannot be over-estimated so far as the evil 
 effects upon industrial prosperity are con- 
 cerned ; and when a family, in order to bring 
 to itself the ordinary necessaries of exist- 
 ence, is obliged to find a margin against it 
 at the close of the year, we may be sure, 
 whether the debt is the result of extrava- 
 gance, or want of work, or want of proper 
 remuneration, there is a lessening of moral 
 tone and an increasing carelessness of obHga- 
 tions incurred, results which have an imme- 
 diate and unmistakable bearing upon the 
 
48 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 welfare of the eommunity. Surely, as a matr 
 ter of economics only, the grand science of 
 Adam Smith should recognize these things. 
 
 The influence of stable family life upon 
 industrial prosperity leads us very naturally 
 to consider the position of woman in her 
 relations to the productions of a state. 
 
 The loss of proper respect to women al- 
 ways precedes decline of any description, 
 and especially marks the reign of iromoral 
 life. That dehcacy of sentiment which, 
 among Anglo-Saxons, shields women passing 
 alone through public ways, relying upon the 
 protection of all men, when wanting, is too 
 often replaced by gross impropriety. This 
 loss of respect has been, in the history of 
 the world, the result either of disorganization 
 in private family life, or in the place of 
 labor : but, however it grows, it always les- 
 sens resistance to corruption, — in fact, 
 blinds the mind to corruption ; for it saps 
 the authority of government to a greater 
 degree than it does that of the father or the 
 proprietor. 
 
 When woman is compelled by industrial 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 49 
 
 customs to cease to consider the highest con- 
 secration of her hfe to be to the duties of 
 maternity, she ceases to be the minister of the 
 domestic circle, the very foundation of ma- 
 terial prosperity. Nor does this consecration 
 prevent her highest intellectual development, 
 — in fact, it demands it, and her political 
 power and equahty, too ; but when her wages 
 and the wages of her little ones become nec- 
 essary for the support of the family, that it 
 may be kept intact, the natural result, in due 
 time, is that very loss of respect I have 
 counted so disastrous. 
 
 I have reference only to principles in- 
 volved ; and these principles teach that the 
 condition of inferiority into which people 
 plunge when respect for woman is lost from 
 any cause, whether from her work in a fac- 
 tory under modem conditions in England 
 and America, or beside a mule in Belgium, 
 or under a heavy burden in Italy, cannot 
 be too much dwelt upon. The mischief it 
 effects weighs upon society at large, and 
 especially upon the wage-receivers, whom it 
 renders too often incapable of satisfying 
 
50 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 that legitimate desire which prompts them 
 to seek promotion in social ranks. In fact, 
 whenever honest love has lost its attraction, 
 and the consent of the bride implies a finan- 
 cial recompense, young men make no efforts 
 to provide for marriage by securing a home 
 for a family, but estabhsh themselves prema- 
 turely, and roam about all their lives among 
 boarding-houses, depriving themselves of the 
 moral and material advantages intimately 
 associated with an indissoluble union of the 
 family and the fireside.* Such a man does 
 not, as a rule, hold himself bound to engage^ 
 in any thing which tends prospectively to 
 moral amelioration ; and, having taken no 
 pains to secure a home for a family, he has 
 lost the very best opportunity of acquiring 
 frugal habits. His family is compelled to 
 give the preference to city factories, and, as 
 a natural consequence of loss of respect, des- 
 titution and misery in time are sure to fol- 
 low, especially when the combination with 
 other manufactories, commercial crises, and 
 
 *Some of these thoughts on the family are taken in part 
 from Le Play, Organization of Labor, — a work I commend to 
 all students of social economy. 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 51 
 
 public and private reverses have led to a 
 stoppage of labor. Under such circiun- 
 stances the estabhshment of wages becomes 
 an embarrassing subject. Difficulties in- 
 crease, leading to irritating discussions ; and 
 the low moral tone of the operative, resiJt- 
 ing from his first loss of respect for his wife, 
 together with the grasping or impecunious 
 state of his employer, brings about most un- 
 happy conditions so often observed. Not 
 that other causes do not enter into the case, 
 but those I have stated are potent, and in 
 themselves so forcibly affect the prosperity 
 of communities, that they have their place 
 in the philosophy of economics, where the 
 poHtical economist of the future will find 
 them fully discussed. In the home Hes the 
 future welfare of oiu* country. It is a hope- 
 ful sign that in general these conditions 
 under modern industry, as will be seen in 
 the next chapter, are far more favorable 
 than of old. 
 
 The material prosperity of a community 
 depends much upon the health of its work- 
 ers, and the health of workers depends in 
 
52 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 a very large degree upon sanitary surround- 
 ings. In order that the physical condition 
 of the people may be improved by every 
 means, social economy deals with the sub- 
 jects of sewerage, tenement houses, Hght, 
 and ventilation ; and in this respect social 
 science teaches valuable lessons to poHtical 
 science. 
 
 In this connection I cannot refrain from 
 weaving in a few thoughts from W. R. Greg, 
 an English writer, with some of my own. 
 Dwelling upon the physical and moral devel- 
 opment of the race as essential to prosperity^, 
 it may be asked. What may we not rationally 
 hope for when the condition of the masses 
 shall receive that concentrated and urgent 
 attention which has hitherto been directed 
 to furthering the interests of more favored 
 ranks? what, when charity, which for cen- 
 tm-ies has been doing mischief, shall begin to 
 do good ? what, when the countless pulpits, 
 that so far back as history can reach, have 
 been preaching Catholicism or Anglicanism, 
 Presbyterianism or Calvinism, or other isms, 
 shall set to work to preach Christianity at 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 58 
 
 last? Do we ever even approach to a due 
 estimate of the degree in which every strong- 
 hold of vice or folly overthrown, exposes, 
 weakens, and undermines every other? of 
 the extent to which every improvement, so- 
 cial, moral, or material, makes every other 
 easier ? of the countless ways in which phys- 
 ical reform reacts on intellectual and ethical 
 progress and the prosperity of our indus- 
 tries? Under the constant teaching of a 
 moral philosophy which shall embrace the 
 political economy of the labor question, 
 what a transf oi-mation — almost a transfigu- 
 ration — will not spread over the condition 
 of civihzed communities, when, by a few 
 generations, during which hygienic science 
 and sense shall have been in the ascend- 
 ant, the restored health of mankind shall 
 have corrected the morbid exaggerations of 
 our appetites ; when, by insisting upon the 
 healthy environment of our toiling masses, 
 the more questionable instincts and pas- 
 sions, which, under such rule as I have indi- 
 cated, shall have been less and less exercised 
 and stimulated for centuries perhaps, shall 
 
54 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 have faded into comparative quiescence, and 
 have come under the control of the will; 
 when, from the expulsion of vitiated air, 
 disordered constitutions, whether diseased, 
 criminal, or defective, which now spread and 
 propagate so much mischief, and incur so 
 much useless expense to taxpayers, shall 
 have been largely eliminated ; when sounder 
 systems of educating the young shall have 
 prevented the too early awakening of natural 
 desires; when more rational, higher, and 
 soberer notions of what is needful and desir- 
 able in social life, a wiser simplicity in hving, 
 and a more thorough conformity to moral 
 law shall have rendered the legitimate grati- 
 fication of our appetites more easy and bene- 
 ficial, and when that which is needed for 
 a happy home shall have become attainable 
 by frugahty, sobriety, and toil ? 
 
 These conditions, so desirable to be 
 reached, are not impossible ones, and are not 
 to be reached by the revolutionary schemes 
 of any party or sect, but by the gradual 
 adoption of sanitary laws in the dweUings 
 and homes of the people ; and the new 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 55 
 
 school will teach that the secondary, and 
 often the primary, causes and encourage- 
 ments of intemperance are bad air and un- 
 wholesome food, which create a craving for 
 drink ; bad company, which tempts it ; 
 undue facilities, which conduce to it ; squahd 
 homes, which drive men forth for cheerful- 
 ness; and the want of other comfortable 
 places of resort, which leaves no refuge but 
 the pubhcan's parlor or den. And if, on 
 the other hand, we find that the conse- 
 quences are poverty, squalid homes, bru- 
 tahty, crime, and the transmission and 
 perpetuation of vitiated constitutions, who 
 can say they cannot be prevented by the 
 sound administration of sanitary laws, which 
 shall prohibit the existence of bad air, of 
 unventilated dwellings, the undue midtipH- 
 cation and constant accessibility of gin and 
 beer shops, and the poisoning of wholesome 
 food and drink? We cannot discuss the 
 labor question from either the ethical or 
 economic side without consideration of the 
 temperance question ; and from the results 
 of such consideration it is perfectly clear to 
 
56 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 my own mind that the solution of the tem- 
 perance question is largely in the control of 
 the employers of labor. The interests of 
 capital as well as of labor, the interests of 
 rehgion itself, demand a sober and indus- 
 trious community ; and, when the employers 
 of labor generally shall demand abstinence 
 from alcoholic drinks as a qualification for 
 employment, the ugly problem, so far as the 
 working masses are concerned, will be far on 
 the way to settlement. What will bring the 
 employers to the same issue is perhaps a 
 knottier problem. The presence of crime 
 works a direct injury upon the welfare of 
 the workingman in many ways. It costs 
 him more to live because of it ; it disturbs 
 his sense of justice because the convict 
 works at the same occupation which fur- 
 nishes his support : but, while the labor 
 reformer cries for the aboHtion of convict 
 labor, the pohtical economy of the labor 
 question cries for the reduction of the nmn- 
 ber of criminals by the prevention of crime 
 as the surest and most permanent remedy 
 for whatever evils may grow out of the 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION o7 
 
 practice of employing convicts in productive 
 labor. We make criminals now ; for three- 
 fourths of the crime committed is by young 
 men who are temporarily led astray, and the 
 fact that fifty per cent of all the convicts in 
 the states prisons of the United States are 
 under twenty-six years of age only confirms 
 the estimate. These accidental criminals we 
 make into positive convicts, to be fed upon 
 the production of men outside. We shall 
 learn better methods in the future civil state, 
 in which wise and effective legislation, 
 backed by adequate administration resulting 
 from a sound public sentiment, shall have 
 made all violation of law, all habitual crime, 
 obviously, and inevitably, a losing game, and 
 when the distribution of wealth, and its use, 
 shall receive both from the statesman and 
 the economist the same sedulous attention 
 which is now concentrated exclusively upon 
 its acquisition.*" 
 
 The intelligent workingmen of this coun- 
 try do not object to wealth, but to its mis- 
 use. They know that luxury — I speak of 
 
 * Professor F. A. Walker. 
 
58 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 enervating luxury — depopulates the coun- 
 try, and annihilates by degrees the class 
 of husbandmen ; for indolence and avidity 
 tempt them to quit a laborious occupation 
 for one which is more lucrative, though less 
 certain. The ease in which the artifices of 
 luxury live seduces the indigent peasantry, 
 draws them to the manufacturing centres, and 
 the country is deserted. Luxury corrupts 
 the morals of men, — a truth no ethical writer 
 will decline to adopt ; but morals may sub- 
 sist with wealth : it is luxury which vitiates. 
 It occasions continual variations of taste and 
 manners. The expense luxury requires in- 
 flames cupidity ; money is run after, and 
 purchased at any rate ; and from the moment 
 this mercenary greediness possesses the mass 
 of the nation, as it did to considerable extent 
 in 1873, virtue becomes ridiculous ; honor, a 
 chimera; and speculative credit takes the 
 place of a sound basis for commercial transac- 
 tions. Merit is then weighed by gold : digni- 
 ties and employments and offices are valued 
 only in proportion to the money they bring 
 in. The rigor of law yields to the impulse 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 59 
 
 of luxury. In this condition a fatal calm 
 exists as a sure corollary, which looks like 
 prosperity, but which simply forbodes a vio- 
 lent storm. 
 
 The ethical view of the matter insists that 
 luxury debases the soul and the mind, and 
 therefore demands that political economy 
 should teach the science of the use of wealth, 
 as well as of its acquisition ; and the best use 
 of wealth can only follow the possession of 
 high moral character by its owner. 
 
 The use of accumulation beyond the actual 
 needs of industry involves, of course, the 
 highest elements of character in both the 
 parties to its groy>^th : for the resources 
 which render organized or individual labor 
 most effective are on the side of capital, 
 while the industry, patience, skill, and disci- 
 phne which give life and action to the dead 
 masses of capital, are on the side of labor ; 
 and, in any community where there is no 
 combination of the two forces, both will 
 waste away, and the nation decline and per- 
 ish ; and unless there be an inteUigent settle- 
 ment, upon high moral grounds, of the re- 
 
60 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 spective claims of each force in the combina- 
 tion, ceaseless strife and conflicts will, by a 
 longer and more miserable route, lead to the 
 same catastrophe.^ These propositions must 
 be true if we recognize what labor truly is. 
 John Kuskin has given the best definition : 
 " Labor is the contest of the life of man with 
 an opposite ; the term ' life ' including his in- 
 tellect, soul, and physical power, contending 
 with question, difficulty, trial, or material 
 force. Labor is of a higher or lower order 
 as it includes more or fewer of the elements 
 of life ; and labor of good quality, in any 
 kind, includes always as much intellect and 
 f eeHng as will fully and harmoniously regulate 
 the physical force." t With this idea of 
 labor, that man is richest who, having per- 
 fected the functions of his own life to the 
 utmost, has also the widest influence, both 
 personal and by means of his accumulative 
 wealth, over the lives of others ; and, again, 
 that nation is the richest which nourishes 
 the greatest number of noble and happy hu- 
 man beings. J All this may seem to be 
 
 * Anonymous. t Unto This Last. t Cf. Ibid. 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 61 
 
 strange political economy ; but it is of that 
 nature which the future will demand as lead- 
 ing most directly to national and material 
 prosperity. The new school will recognize 
 all the good that comes from the doctrine of 
 laissez /aire, ov the "let alone" theory of 
 the old : but it will insist upon the Hvehest 
 activity on the part of capitaHsts to see to it 
 that their employes are put upon the best 
 possible footing as to all the material sui*- 
 roundings of Hf e ; that they have all the ad- 
 vantages to health, morals, and happiness, 
 which come from sanitary regulations and 
 practical education ; and it will teach em- 
 ployers that a larger dividend can be drawn 
 from the products of a community compara- 
 tively free from crime, intemperance, pov- 
 erty, and vice of all kinds, than from one 
 where these things are tolerated ; and it will 
 teach labor to demand of society the condi- 
 tions I have described as the surest means of 
 raising wages, shortening hours, and giving 
 it the most attractive and remunerative em- 
 ployment. 
 
 Laissez faire can never be a substitute 
 
62 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 for the higher principles of Christianity, and 
 they always demand action. " Society, when 
 at times it awakens, by periods of industrial 
 distress, from dreams of a new golden age, 
 to be realized by mechanical inventions, 
 march of intellect, accumulation of capital, 
 or by sound political economy, finds itself 
 compelled by terrible necessity to abandon 
 the system of laissez fairs, and obliged to 
 embark in a struggle for life, with the ele- 
 ments of disorganization and ruin." 
 
 The only effectual method of action is 
 that in which each person begins by improv- 
 ing and reforming himself ; that is, a revival 
 of feelings of duty and moral obligation, 
 whose decay is always the prunary source of 
 evil, leads to innumerable individual efforts, 
 and to an improved state of public opinion, 
 without which legislation can do but httle. 
 To be sure, we believe that Providence 
 which rules the destinies of nations will 
 bring about its appointed ends by its ap- 
 pointed means ; but it is no less certain that 
 each one of us, laborer or capitalist, has 
 duties to perform, the responsibihty of which 
 
OF TUB LABOR QUESTION 63 
 
 cannot be shifted to the shoulders of Fate, — 
 another and older name for the system of 
 laissez /aire. The new school avlU demand 
 that every one who, in his public or private 
 capacity, can do anything to relieve misery, 
 to combat evil, to assert right, to redress 
 wrong, shall do it with his whole heart and 
 soul.* 
 
 It will teach that government " should not 
 connive at what is openly and notoriously 
 immoral, even for revenue purposes ; nor will 
 it permit, by its sanction, a free trade in 
 vice, with only the restriction that it shall 
 be carried on wholesale instead of at retail." 
 
 The very best residts to be gained depend 
 almost entirely upon systems of industrial 
 organization with law and morality dominant 
 in society. Comte has told the world that 
 " the state of every part of the social whole 
 at any tune is intimately connected with the 
 contemporaneous state of all others. Re- 
 ligious behef, philosophy, science, the fine 
 arts, commerce, navigation, government, — all 
 are in close mutual dependence on one an- 
 
 * Cf. Laing's Essays. 
 
64 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 other, insomuch that, when any considerable 
 change takes place in one, we may know that 
 a parallel change in all the others has pre- 
 ceded or will follow it." 
 
 Every accession to "man's empire over 
 nature " may be, and probably is, productive 
 of good to mankind at large ; but we should 
 never forget that any increase in the material 
 forces at our disposal involves an increase of 
 intellectual and moral energy. Such doctrine 
 will inspire all classes with an endeavor to 
 remedy the defects of the present edifice, 
 rather than attempt a new construction upon 
 its ruins. Such endeavors may meet with 
 failure in one age, and be followed by suc- 
 cess in another, as grand mechanical projects, 
 instituted before their time, fail in the gen- 
 eration which saw their inception, yet be- 
 come the admired achievements of the next. 
 If the principle be true, let it be followed by 
 employers and by men till the requisite 
 higher notions of morality be planted firmly. 
 We can then join the passionate vehemence 
 of Carlyle in this utterance : " The leaders 
 of industry, if industry is ever to be led, are 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 65 
 
 virtually the captains of the world. If there 
 be no nobleness in them, there will never be 
 an aristocracy more." 
 
 The political economy of the coming gen- 
 eration of writers will insist upon proper 
 contracts respecting labor ; and, while it will 
 throw aside the idea of productive co-opera- 
 tion, it will be able to discover a system of 
 contract which shall improve the whole con- 
 dition of the employe so far as his relations 
 to capital and the management of capital are 
 concerned. In the recent past, social phi- 
 losophy has become more and more cog- 
 nizant of the distinctions between the ex- 
 change of commodities and the contract for 
 services ; and mildew will strike the political 
 economy which denies the validity of the 
 distinction. " Seventy-five years ago scarcely 
 a single law existed in any country of 
 Europe for regulating the contract for ser- 
 vices in the interest of the laboring classes. 
 At the same time the contract for commod- 
 ities was everywhere subject to minute and 
 incessant regulation. . . . Can there be won- 
 der that statesmen and the mass of the people 
 
66 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 entertain slight regard for political economy, 
 whose professors refuse even to entertain 
 consideration of the difference between ser- 
 vices and commodities in exchange, and 
 whose representatives in legislation have op- 
 posed ahnost every limitation upon the con- 
 tract for labor as unnecessary and mischiev- 
 ous ?"*' 
 
 Pohtical economy needs new life, a warmer 
 blood, and a more thorough appreciation of 
 the sinews of production ; and, when this 
 appreciation comes to it, or is forced upon 
 it, the science will become a moral philosophy 
 as well, and many of the dark places in the 
 life of labor will be made bright and lumi- 
 nous with the light of prosperity. 
 
 The experience of England since the first 
 years of the last century, when disorder in 
 the sphere of labor showed itself by un- 
 mistakable signs, furnishes striking illustra- 
 tion of the absence of the principles I am 
 contending for. Orthodox political economy 
 portrayed all the advantages of the division 
 of labor, the results of which are of the 
 
 » F. A. Walker, Sunday Afternoon, May, 1879. 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 67 
 
 greatest importance to mankind ; but, like 
 all great steps in advance, it carried certain 
 evils with it, which could not have existed if 
 carried on in accord with high moral con- 
 siderations. 
 
 The great proprietors of England did not 
 take into account the advantages the laborers 
 once secured to themselves by combining 
 domestic industries with their work in the 
 manufactories. They, being exclusively pre- 
 occupied by the technical details of pro- 
 duction, forgot the duties which good morals 
 woidd have imposed, but which pohtical 
 economy failed to teach. The proprietors 
 unscrupulously drew the workmen from all 
 rural employments by offers of tempting 
 wages ; and, without giving them any guar- 
 anties of security, and without giving the 
 new impetus a moral direction, they aggre- 
 gated them in towns, and caused the evil of 
 the excess of manufacturing labor from 
 which the old country is suffering to-day far 
 more acutely than has America at any period 
 of her history. 
 
 The English people, stimulated by the 
 
68 S03IE ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 doctrines of a false political economy, placed 
 too high an estimate upon the advantages 
 to be derived from the accumulation of 
 wealth, and at the same time gave them- 
 selves little inquietude in regard to the in- 
 conveniences and evils resulting from the 
 sudden crowding of populations, subject to 
 uneasiness, exposed to industrial instability, 
 and impelled thereby to feehngs of oppo- 
 sition irreconcilable with all social order. 
 They did not perceive, nor did their econo- 
 mists teach, as they will in the future, that, 
 by a continuance of evils resulting from the 
 extension of a vicious system involving the 
 inviolability of contracts between employer 
 and employe, wealth must, sooner or later, 
 cease to be a power, and the existence of 
 the most solid industrial State history pre- 
 sents to us be compromised. "^ The seeming 
 evils of this division of labor have been 
 propagated both sides of the Atlantic by 
 many writers, who, apparently ignorant of 
 the truths history teaches as to the usages 
 of prosperous places of labor, have persisted 
 
 * Cf . Organization of Labor, Le Play. 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 69 
 
 in a systematic distinction between economic 
 order and moral order. They have paid 
 no regard to the reciprocal duties imposed 
 by moral order upon employers and upon 
 workmen. For example, they have assimi- 
 lated the social laws, fixing the wages of 
 workmen to the economic laws which resfu- 
 late the prices of goods and products ; and 
 by this erroneous teaching they have intro- 
 duced a germ of disorganization into the 
 sphere of labor, and led proprietors every- 
 where in too large a degree to hold them- 
 selves no longer bound by conscience to 
 regard the salutary obhgations imposed by 
 moral order.* 
 
 Later writers will correct, and are correct- 
 ing, these false doctrines, but slowly, how- 
 ever. 
 
 In Mr. Herbert Spencer's work, The Data 
 of Ethics, we are informed that "ethics 
 comprehends the laws of right Hving; and 
 that, beyond the conduct commonly ap- 
 proved or reprobated as right or wrong, it 
 includes all conduct which furthers or hin- 
 
 * Organization of Labor, Le Play. 
 
70 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 ders^ in direct or indirect ways, the welfare 
 of self or others ; that justice, which formu- 
 lates the range of conduct, and limitations 
 to conduct hence arising, is at once the most 
 important division of ethics ; that it has to 
 define the equitable relations among individ- 
 uals who limit one another's spheres of ac- 
 tion by co-existing, and who achieve their 
 ends by co-operation ; and that, beyond jus- 
 tice between man and man, justice between 
 each man and the aggregate of men has to 
 be dealt with by it." 
 
 These are sound propositions, taken by 
 themselves, no moral philosopher can for a 
 moment reject, nor should they be rejected 
 by economists; for a moment's reflection 
 upon their bearing shows conclusively that 
 material prosperity is best subserved by their 
 incorporation as chapters in the laws of 
 trade, commerce, and production. 
 
 Are the principles I have endeavored 
 to apply as belonging to the relations of 
 political economy to the labor question 
 the outgrowth of mere theory, or are 
 they born of actual experiences, and do 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 71 
 
 history and investigation teach their practi- 
 cability ? 
 
 History is bright with illustrations of the 
 truth of the propositions laid down, — even 
 history back of the century of mechanical 
 progress. The story of feudal wrongs is 
 reheved by the grand life of Saint Louis, 
 who, in the thirteenth century, taught les- 
 sons of moral obhgations which should exist 
 between the lords and their followers the 
 employers of to-day might well imitate. 
 
 Forcible illustrations of prosperity result- 
 ing from moral influence and a pubHc virtue 
 could be drawn from the times of Louis 
 XIII. (1610-43), while the decHne of mate- 
 rial prosperity as the practical resultant of 
 immorality and profligacy became marked 
 under Louis XIV. and Louis XV. (1661 and 
 after). Later periods give frequent proof of 
 the positions taken ; but I need not accimiu- 
 late citations. I cannot, however, close 
 without caUing attention to the great prog- 
 ress which has taken place, and to some of 
 the experiments which have been made in 
 this direction. One of the most prominent 
 
72 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 experiments in the Old World was carried 
 out under the direction of Robert Owen at 
 New Lanark before he became imbued with 
 sociaHsm. At the period of his Lanark 
 experience (1819) Owen gained respect and 
 renown in distant lands, was sought by the 
 great, was consulted by governments, and 
 counted among his patrons princes of the 
 blood in England and more than one 
 crowned head in Europe. The main cause 
 of Owen's success began with the practical 
 improvement of the working people under 
 his superintendence as manager, and after- 
 wards as owner, of the cotton-mills in New 
 Lanark. He found himself surrounded by 
 squalor and poverty, intemperance and 
 crime, so common among the operatives of 
 that day, and not quite unknown in our 
 own. He determined to change the whole 
 condition of affairs. He erected healthy 
 dweUings with adjacent gardens, and let 
 them at cost price to the people. He built 
 stores where goods of proper quahty might 
 be purchased at wholesale prices, and thus 
 removed the truck system. To avoid the 
 
 i 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 73 
 
 enormous waste of separate cooking, he pro- 
 vided dining-halls, where wholesome food 
 might be obtained at reasonable prices. He 
 estabhshed the first infant school in Great 
 Britain. He excluded all under ten from the 
 workshops, and made the physical and moral 
 training of the young his special care. He 
 adopted measures to put down drunkenness, 
 and to encourage the savings of the people. 
 The employes became attached to their em- 
 ployer, took a personal interest in the success 
 of the business, labored ably and conscien- 
 tiously, and so made the mills of New 
 Lanark, in Scotland, a great financial suc- 
 cess, as did our own Lowell those on the 
 Merrimack a few years later. Mr. Griscom, 
 an American traveller, visited Owen's mills 
 in 1819, and concludes a report upon them 
 as follows : " There is not, I apprehend, to 
 be found in any part of the world a manu- 
 facturing village in which so much order, 
 good government, tranquillity, and rational 
 happiness prevail. It affords an eminent 
 and instructive example of the good that 
 may be effected by well-directed efforts to 
 
74 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 promote the real comfort, and, I may add, 
 the morality of the laboring classes." 
 
 "Thus one of these romantic valleys of 
 the Clyde, which have been invested with 
 the charm of poetry by Sir Walter Scott, 
 had also been rendered the scene of ^an 
 earthly paradise,' from a social point of 
 view, by Robert Owen. Kings and emper- 
 ors came to visit the model settlement, and 
 returned with the conviction that the eleva- 
 tion of the masses depends on the ready 
 earnestness and seK-denying sympathy of 
 those who try to improve them." * 
 
 Samuel Laing, an eminent traveller and 
 social economist, writing in 1842 of the evils 
 of the factory system of Great Britain, and 
 quoting Chevalier, the French economist, 
 who wrote from personal inspection, says : 
 " Fortunately there is evidence to show that 
 these are not necessary evils, and that, if 
 a due regard be paid by those concerned to 
 moral obHgations, the factory system may 
 be made to work well. The instance of the 
 American factories at Lowell, in the State of 
 
 * Kaufmann. 
 
OF TUE LABOR QUESTION 75 
 
 Massachusetts, is decisive on this point." 
 And, after describing the Lowell system, he 
 asks, " Why is it not universal ? Because," 
 he answers, " certain moral elements of the 
 American system are wanting in the Eng- 
 lish. . . . Instead of leaving things to shift 
 for themselves, public opinion and a sense 
 of duty have made the employers of labor 
 [at Lowell] responsible for the moral super- 
 intendence of those belonging to their estab- 
 hshments." These conditions, he further 
 remarks, " should make us pause before we 
 set down the Americans as a nation of in- 
 veterate dollar-hunters. In no country have 
 the claims of morality and himianity been so 
 remorselessly sacrificed to the right of prop- 
 erty as in England." ^ And he might have 
 added, in no country has there been such 
 bhnd following of a false notion which ex- 
 cludes moral considerations from the science 
 of political economy. 
 
 The experience of the Briggs Brothers at 
 their colliery in England, of the Cheney 
 Brothers at South Manchester, Conn., of the 
 
 *Laing's Notes of a Traveller, pp, 81, 82. 
 
76 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 Fairbanks Company in Vermont, of hun- 
 dreds of others who have recognized the 
 great fact of the Decalogue, testifies to the 
 soundness of the doctrines which will be 
 taught by the economists of the future. 
 When they are taught, and pohtical econ- 
 omy is reunited with moral philosophy (from 
 which it was divorced while a bride), we 
 shall find the heartiest support given to the 
 science by the producers of society in what- 
 ever walk their lives may fall. Periods of 
 depression, which formerly, in ages past, 
 used to alternate with periods of prosperity 
 on long sweeps, compassing a century, have 
 gradually been reduced in the swing to 
 shorter and shorter durations, so that now 
 the oscillations are distinguished by half- 
 decades of time. The growth of industrial 
 ethics will continue to reduce the length of 
 these periods, till we compass them within 
 the year. This is one of the tangible steps 
 in the progress of civihzation ; and no 
 greater can be recorded, or one having more 
 practical bearing upon the weKare and hap- 
 piness of the people. 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 77 
 
 I have not been ambitious to promulgate 
 these principles, or theories, with the idea 
 they were to cure existing difficulties, or 
 prevent the recurrence of past evils, but 
 simply to make a new apphcation to the 
 wants of the future industrial world of those 
 principles which alone have been successful 
 imder hke circumstances in the past; and 
 they are in accord with the Decalogue, the 
 surest platform for the labor question — 
 which involves capitalists and laborers — 
 to rest upon, and by which to insure success. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE FACTOKY AS AN ELEMENT 
 IN CIVILIZATION. 
 
m 
 
 THE FACTORY AS AN ELEMENT IN 
 CIVILIZATION. 
 
 A SUPERFICIAL study of the factory in 
 almost any community leads to the con- 
 clusion that it has a deteriorating influence 
 upon the operative as well as upon the pop- 
 ulation surrounding it, but this is only the 
 superficial view. Managers of factories are 
 perfectly familiar with the deeper, underly- 
 ing ethical aspects of the question. Thirty 
 years ago, before I began the investigation 
 of social and economic conditions, I very 
 naturally adopted the superficial view ; but 
 as my investigations proceeded, and as I 
 studied the real relation of the factory to 
 common, e very-day life, I was obliged to 
 change my attitude. It is only natural that 
 this superficial view should obtain in the 
 popular mind. Almost every writer, cer- 
 tainly with rare exceptions, adopts the view 
 
 81 
 
82 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 that the factory has been beneficial in a 
 purely economic sense. Few are ready to 
 adopt the idea that the factory has been of 
 itself and through its own influence an ele- 
 ment in civilization or an element in lifting 
 up the social life of any of the people. 
 
 The latter view results from a superficial 
 study, as I have said, and also from an in- 
 verted vision. The glamour which sur- 
 rounded the factory in the early days of its 
 estabHshment in this country has led to very 
 many erroneous conclusions. Some of us 
 remember, and all of us have heard of, the 
 Lowell factory girls, and the intellectual 
 standard which they attained. Then, look- 
 ing to the present textile factory operatives 
 in different parts of the country, the com- 
 parison becomes very sharp and the con- 
 clusion apparently decisive. In making this 
 comparison, however, the real conditions of 
 the factory in the early days at Lowell, 
 when the factory girls edited their own lit- 
 erary magazine, which achieved high rank 
 everywhere, are not clearly recognized. The 
 then existing prejudice of England against 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 83 
 
 the factory was well known here ; and man- 
 agers who built their factories in this coun- 
 try at that time were obliged, therefore, to 
 offer attractive wages as well as attractive 
 environment, and by such offers they drew 
 into Eastern factories the dauofhters of the 
 New England farmers and a high grade of 
 English girls. 
 
 In speaking and writing of this period I 
 have often called attention to my own recol- 
 lections, and such recollections are just those 
 which have led to false conclusions. My 
 first teacher was a weaver in the factories at 
 Lowell, Biddeford, and Salem. She was a 
 writer on the Lowell Offering, the factory 
 girls' publication, and a contemporary of 
 Lucy Larcom and the other noble women 
 who worked in the cotton-mills of those 
 days. 
 
 A change came over the industrial con- 
 dition, however, and the American and 
 EngHsh girls were forced out of the factory 
 through economic influences ; but they were 
 not forced downward in the scale of life. 
 They were crowded out, but up into higher 
 
84 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 callings. They became the wives of fore- 
 men and superintendents, teachers in the 
 common schools, clerks in stores and count- 
 ing-rooms ; and they lost nothing whatever 
 by their life and services in the factory. 
 The lower grade of operatives that succeeded 
 them brought the sharp comparison which 
 led to the conclusion that the factory is 
 degrading. The women who came in then 
 were very largely Irish girls, fresh and raw 
 immigrants, from the poorer and less devel- 
 oped localities of Ireland. Taking the places 
 of the English and American girls in the 
 Eastern factories, they soon began to im- 
 prove their condition ; and the result was 
 that they in turn were crowded out by an- 
 other nationality. But the Irish girl did 
 not retrograde. She progressed, as had her 
 predecessors, and enlisted in higher occupa- 
 tions. The daughters of the original Irish 
 factory operatives and scrub-women who 
 came to this country were no longer factory 
 operatives and scrub-women. They were to 
 be foimd standing behind the counters of 
 our great retail shops, well dressed, educated 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 85 
 
 in our schools, bright, active, and industri- 
 ous, and with a moral character equal to that 
 of their predecessors. 
 
 The war period created the necessity of 
 an increased number of factory operatives, 
 and brought into our mills a great body of 
 French-Canadian women. The opposition 
 in the New England States to the presence 
 of the French-Canadians was as great as it 
 ever had been against the coming of the 
 Irish. The opposition to the Irish had 
 ceased : it was transferred to the French- 
 Canadians ; but I venture to say that there 
 never has been a nationality coming into 
 the United States that has shown such great 
 progress in the same period of time as have 
 the French-Canadians. They are now grad- 
 uating from the factory, the Swedes, the 
 Greeks, and others coming in ; and the fac- 
 tory is performing the same civilizing opera- 
 tion for the new quotas that it has always 
 performed for the others. It is reaching 
 down and down to the lower strata of soci- 
 ety, and lifting them up to a higher standard 
 of Hving. 
 
86 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 Now we are in the presence of another 
 experiment, or experience, rather, which 
 teaches the soundness of the view I am try- 
 ing to convey, and that experience is in the 
 South. When the American girls left the 
 factories of New England, foreigners took 
 their places. The establishment of the 
 textile factory in the South led to the em- 
 ployment of a body of native people — those 
 born and bred in the South, popularly known 
 as the poor whites — who up to the time of 
 the erection of cotton-factories had lived a 
 precarious existence, and always in antag- 
 onism to the colored people, looking upon 
 work as rather degrading than otherwise, 
 because of the peculiar institution of the 
 South, and on the whole not constituting 
 a very desirable element in Southern popu- 
 lation. To-day these people are furnishing 
 the textile factories of the Southern States 
 with a class of operatives not surpassed in 
 any part of the country. This is the testi- 
 mony of the late Mr. Dingley in a speech 
 in the House of Representatives. It is the 
 testimony of English manufacturers who 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 87 
 
 have carefully studied the conditions in the 
 South ; and the testimony from all sources 
 is to the effect that the poor whites of the 
 South are entering the cotton-mills as an 
 opportunity which had never before been 
 open to them. They are becoming indus- 
 trious and saving in their habits ; and, com- 
 ing to the factory towns, they bring their 
 families, and they in turn are brought into 
 an environment entirely different from that 
 under which they were reared. They are 
 now able to educate their children, — to 
 bring them up in a way which was never 
 possible to them before ; and thus the poor 
 whites of the South are gradually, and with 
 more or less rapidity, becoming not only a 
 desirable, but a valuable, element in South- 
 ern population, on which the integrity and 
 prosperity of a great industry largely depend. 
 The experience in the South is simply that 
 of other locaHties, whether in this country or 
 in England. The factory means education, 
 enhghtenment, and an intellectual develop- 
 ment utterly impossible without it, — I mean 
 to a class of people who could not reach 
 
88 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 these things in any other way. It is an ele- 
 ment in social life. By its educational influ- 
 ences it is constantly lifting the people from 
 a lower to a higher grade. 
 
 When the textile factory was originally 
 established in England, it took into its em- 
 ployment the children of agricultural dis- 
 tricts, — paupers, charity boys and girls. 
 Much was said about the degradation of the 
 factory children. Parliamentary investiga- 
 tions and reports bewailed the conditions 
 found, but it was forgotten in every instance 
 that the factory really lifted these children 
 out of a condition far worse than that in 
 which the parliamentary committee found 
 them when employed in the factories. We 
 have had no such conditions to contend 
 with in this country, but we have this super- 
 ficial idea with which to contend. The no- 
 tion that the factory creates ignorance, vice, 
 and low tendencies is absolutely false. It 
 does bring together a large body of compar- 
 atively ignorant persons. It congregates 
 these persons into one community, and 
 hence the results of ignorance and of lower 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 89 
 
 standards of life become clearly apparent 
 because of the concentration. Before the 
 concentration the ignorance existed precisely 
 the same, but was diffused, and hence not 
 apparent. 
 
 These contentions can be fully sustained 
 by a brief historical discussion of the fac- 
 tory system of labor, in which the ethical 
 elements of its inception and growth consti- 
 tute an interesting study. 
 
 One of the most attractive departments of 
 human knowledge is what may be denomi- 
 nated the evolution of industrial forces. 
 The progress of the systems of labor gives 
 to science a field for the practical applica- 
 tion of the doctrines of evolution, entirely 
 relieved from the abstract philosophical dis- 
 tinctions which, in greater or less degree, 
 surround those doctrines when applied to 
 growth in other departments. 
 
 The philosophy of history will take into 
 account the vital elements of industrial 
 forces in all their grand development as 
 important factors in shaping civilization 
 itself, as well as in shaping the commercial 
 
90 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 policy of nations in their relations to each 
 other. 
 
 It is to be regretted, however, that his- 
 tory, as it is generally constructed, takes but 
 little account of such forces ; and he who 
 would understand the intimate connections 
 of apparently diverse interests in their in- 
 fluence upon the establishment of industrial 
 systems must do so upon the basis of his 
 own studies, expecting and receiving but 
 little aid from the historians. 
 
 The influences which led to the institu- 
 tion of the factory system are as diverse in 
 their nature, almost, as the ramifications of 
 the system itself. These influences, how- 
 ever, are not shrouded in any mystery, but 
 are clearly defined; and their power, not 
 only abstractly, but concretely, is fully recog- 
 nizable in the origin of the system. 
 
 The factory system is of recent origin, 
 and is entirely the creation of influences ex- 
 isting or coming into existence during the 
 last half of the eighteenth century. These 
 influences were both direct and subtle in 
 their character, but all-important in their 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 91 
 
 place and in their combination. As a great 
 fact, the system originated in no precon- 
 ceived plan, nor did it spring from any 
 spasmodic exercise of human wisdom. On 
 the contrary, " it was formed and shaped by 
 the irresistible force of circumstances, fortu- 
 nately aided and guided by men who were 
 able to profit by circumstances." * To bor- 
 row the expression of Cooke Taylor, . . . 
 " Those who were called the fathers of the 
 system were not such demons as they have 
 sometimes been described, nor yet were they 
 perfect angels. They were simply men of 
 great intelligence, industry, and enterprise. 
 They have bequeathed the system to this age, 
 with the imperfections incident to every 
 human institution ; and the task of harmon- 
 izing their innovation with existing institu- 
 tions, and with the true spii'it of righteous- 
 ness, belongs really to the great employers of 
 labor rather than to the professed teachers 
 of morality. It is too late to inquire whether 
 the system ought or ought not to have been 
 established ; for established it is, and estab- 
 
 * Taylor's Factory System, pp. 1-11. 
 
92 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 lished it will remain in spite of all the 
 schemes of the socialists or the insane pana- 
 ceas of quack economists." * 
 
 In its origin the factory system found its 
 appHcation in the textile trades of England ; 
 and we are very apt now, when the term is 
 used, to confine it in our minds to the pro- 
 duction of cotton and woollen goods, al- 
 though it has in reality embraced nearly all 
 lines of the products of machinery. 
 
 A factory is an establishment where sev- 
 eral workmen are collected together for the 
 purpose of obtaining greater and cheaper 
 conveniences for labor than they could pro- 
 cure individually at their homes, for pro- 
 ducing results by their combined efforts 
 which they could not accompHsh separately, 
 and for saving the loss of time which the 
 carrying of an article from place to place 
 during the several processes necessary to 
 complete its manufacture would occasion. 
 
 The principle of a factory is that each 
 laborer, working separately, is controlled by 
 some associating principle which directs his 
 
 *Cf. Taylor's Dedication to Factory System. 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 93 
 
 producing powers to effect a common result, 
 which it is the object of all collectively to 
 attain. 
 
 Factories are, therefore, the legitimate 
 outgrowth of the universal tendency to asso- 
 ciation which is inherent in our nature, and 
 by the development of which every advance 
 in human improvement and human happi- 
 ness has been gained. 
 
 The first force which tended to create this 
 system was that of invention, and the stimu- 
 lus to this grew out of the difficulty the 
 weavers experienced in obtaining a sufficient 
 supply of yarn to keep their looms in opera- 
 tion. 
 
 Invention, paradoxical as it may seem, had 
 really aggravated the difficulty by a device 
 for facilitating the process of weaving. I 
 have reference to the fly shuttle, invented in 
 1738 by John Kay. By this device one 
 man alone was enabled to weave the widest 
 cloth, while prior to Kay's invention two 
 persons were requu-ed. 
 
 One can readily see how this increased the 
 difficidty of obtaining a supply of yarn ; for 
 
94 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 the one-thread wheel, though turning from 
 morning till night in thousands of cottages, 
 could not keep pace either with the weaver's 
 shuttle or with the demand of the merchant.* 
 
 In 1738 the very first gleams of the gen- 
 ius which was to remove the difiiculties were 
 discovered, and wings v/ere given to a manu- 
 facture which had been creeping on the 
 earth. An elementary mechanical contriv- 
 ance was invented whereby a single pair of 
 hands could spin twenty, a hundred, or even 
 one thousand threads. I need not discuss 
 the details of the various inventions which 
 culminated in a grand constellation of me- 
 chanical devices as perfect and as wonderful 
 as any class of inventions, and which have 
 influenced the world in a deeper sense than 
 any other save printing. 
 
 It is true that, when this admirable series 
 of machines was made known, and by their 
 means yarns were produced far superior in 
 quality to any before spun in England, as 
 well as lower in price, a mighty unpulse was 
 given to the cotton manufacture. 
 
 *Baines's History of the Cotton Manufacture, p. 117. 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 95 
 
 It was an impulse, however ; and the in- 
 ventions would not have brought their full- 
 est fruition without the powerful influences 
 which came into existence through events 
 which have not usually been considered in 
 this connection, but which are as legitimate 
 in considering what I have called the evolu- 
 tion of industrial forces as the inventions 
 themselves, which simply constitute the ini- 
 tiatory outgrowth of such evolution. 
 
 While the processes of production had be- 
 come in England more efficient through the 
 invention of spinning-machines, whereby the 
 weavers were kept busy and allowed no rest, 
 it was only where a stream gave force to 
 turn a mill-wheel that the spinner or the 
 wool-worker could establish his factory ; 
 while, if this difficulty even had not existed, 
 the inefficiency of distribution would have 
 rendered useless, to a large degree, a greatly 
 augmented production. 
 
 Mr. Green, in his History of the English 
 People, speaking of the decade beginning 
 with 1760, remarks : " The older main roads, 
 which had lasted fairly through the Middle 
 
96 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 Ages, had broken down in later times before 
 the growth of traffic and the increase of 
 wagons and carriages. The new lines of 
 trade lay often along mere country lanes 
 which had never been more than horse- 
 tracks, and to drive heavy trains through 
 lanes like these was all but impossible. 
 Much of the woollen trade, therefore, had to 
 be carried on by means of long trains of 
 pack-horses. ... In the case of yet heavier 
 goods, such as coal, distribution was almost 
 impracticable, save along the greater rivers 
 or in districts accessible from the sea." But, 
 at the time when Hargreaves and Arkwright 
 were struggling to make their inventions 
 available, the enterprise of a duke and the 
 ingenuity of a millwright not only solved the 
 problem of distribution, which the trade of 
 the country was forcing upon England, and 
 which improved cotton machinery was sure 
 to complicate, but they paved the way, by 
 constructing canals, for the greatest appHca- 
 tion of the steam-engine, which could not 
 have played its part in estabhshing the fac- 
 tory system without means of distributing 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 97 
 
 coal ; and the system itself, without the steam 
 engine, would have been a feeble institution. "^ 
 
 England at once seized on the discovery 
 of the canal as the means by which to free 
 herself from the bondage in which she had 
 been held. "From the year 1767 a net- 
 work of water-roads was flung over the 
 country ; and, before the movement had 
 spent its force, Great Britain alone was trav- 
 ersed in every direction by three thousand 
 miles of navigable canals." 
 
 The free and cheap distribution of coal 
 and iron at once became an important fac- 
 tor, — in fact, the chief material element in 
 the development of the factory system ; and 
 now for the first time in the history of civili- 
 zation a new motive power became indispen- 
 sable to growth. For " what was needed to 
 turn England into a manufacturing country 
 was some means of transforming the force " 
 of the sun " stored up in coal into a labor 
 force ; and it was this transformation which 
 was brought about through the agency of 
 steam." t 
 
 * Green, vol. i. p. 279. t Green. 
 
98 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 The location of mills upon streams of 
 water was no longer a physical necessity. 
 They could be built and run near large 
 towns, where they could be fed from the 
 crowded population. The influence of this 
 change of location has been the cause of 
 most of the so-called factory evils. 
 
 The power-loom closed the catalogue of 
 machines essential for the inauguration of 
 the era of mechanical supremacy. What in- 
 ventions will come during the continuance 
 of that era cannot be predicted, for we are 
 still at the beginning of the age of in- 
 vention. The wonderful results of its first 
 twenty years of life are sufficient to indicate 
 something of the future. 
 
 When the period of which I have spoken, 
 the score of years from 1765 to 1785, had 
 closed, England found herself possessed of 
 powers which needed only the support of 
 the silent forces of the nation to carry her 
 to the very highest point in industrial su- 
 premacy. 
 
 Inventions were the material forces, pow- 
 erful, indeed, as agents in building the fac- 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 99 
 
 tory system. What were the spmtual forces, 
 so to speak? The inner, subtle, but also 
 powerful agencies at work to render the ma- 
 terial forces successful ? A body without a 
 spirit is but dead matter. This is certainly 
 true, in one sense, of all the mechanical 
 bodies which have served as expressions of 
 mind. A machine is really embodied action. 
 A grand combination of inventions must em- 
 body not only all the actions represented, 
 but the spii'it of the age ; for without this 
 they are powerless. 
 
 While the inventions of which I have 
 spoken were being perfected, Adam Smith 
 was working out his memorable Inquiry into 
 the Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 
 When he was lecturing with applause, in 
 Glasgow, from the chair of Moral Philoso- 
 phy, James Watt was selling mathematical 
 instrimients in an obscure shop within the 
 precincts of the same university, and was 
 working out his inquiry into the practicable 
 methods of applying steam. 
 
 It may seem as if no two departments of 
 human thought were more widely separated 
 
100 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 than those in which these two men were en- 
 gaged. One was a region purely mental, 
 the other purely physical. The one had 
 reference to the laws of mind, the other to 
 the laws of matter; and yet the work of 
 Adam Smith and that of James Watt were 
 inseparably connected, not only as involving 
 analogous methods of investigation, but as 
 showing in their result the blending and co- 
 operation of mental and material laws.*" 
 
 Dr. Smith treated of the philosophy of 
 trade, and by his philosophy prepared the 
 English mind to receive for England's bene- 
 fit the commercial results not only of her 
 inventions, but of her losses from the war 
 with her colonies, and the diversion of her 
 slave-trade capital. 
 
 Adam Smith published his work in 1776, 
 and during the seven years of strife with 
 this country his doctrines had taken silent 
 and almost unobserved possession of the 
 minds of the thinking men of England ; so 
 that at the close of the war it was not diffi- 
 cult to turn the thoughts of manufacturers 
 
 * Duke of Argyle, Reign of Law, p. 339. 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 101 
 
 and merchants to the industrial possibilities 
 of Great Britain. 
 
 Guizot remarked that " England's liberties 
 are owing to her having been conquered by 
 the Normans." The truth of this statement 
 is easily discernible under the light of the 
 philosophy of history. It is also true, to a 
 great extent, that England owes her indus- 
 trial supremacy to the loss of her American 
 colonies. 
 
 With the close of the war, the industry 
 of England was exerted to its fullest power 
 in the task of supplying the world with cot- 
 ton goods. She flooded America with cheap 
 goods, and demoralized our merchants and 
 our people, and actually drove them into a 
 fever for foreign goods. The capital of 
 England, released by the war, was free to 
 engage in industrial and commercial enter- 
 prises ; and well did the business brains of 
 the country apply the doctrines of the Glas- 
 gow economist. But a stranger power than 
 war, or the pauperism of agricultural dis- 
 tricts, from which the factories were largely 
 supplied with cheap labor, was added to the 
 
102 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 combination of forces essential to the estab- 
 lisment of a new industrial order. Disgrace- 
 ful and tedious as had been the contest with 
 the colonies, the years devoted to it were 
 years of as grand and mighty a revolution 
 for the mother as for the child. '^ This rev- 
 olution took the shape of a great moral and 
 rehgious power, which seemed to roll with- 
 out obstacle over the land, changing the 
 politics of the country and changing the 
 directions of the employment of active cap- 
 ital. 
 
 The religious revival work of the Wesley s 
 brought a nobler result than mere rehgious 
 enthusiasm. A philanthropic impulse grew 
 out of the Wesleyan impulse. The writings 
 and the personal example of Hannah More 
 drew the sympathy of England to the pov- 
 erty and crime of the agricultural laborer. 
 A passionate impulse of human sympathy 
 with the wronged and the oppressed grew 
 with amazing strength, and under its influ- 
 ence Clarkson and Wilberforce were sus- 
 tained in their crusade against the iniquity 
 
 * Green. 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 103 
 
 of the slave trade. This grand enthusiasm 
 carried Howard through the moral chivalry 
 of his labors ; so each and all who sought 
 the elevation of the oppressed thus gave a 
 shot at the slave trade either directly or in- 
 directly, for all helped to create the public 
 sentiment which insisted upon its abolition. 
 "HaK the wealth of Liverpool was drawn 
 from the traffic of its merchants in human 
 flesh." * 
 
 As the spirit of humanity told upon the 
 people, apathy suddenly disappeared. Phi- 
 lanthropy allied itself with the Wesleyan 
 movement in an attack on the slave trade. 
 The first assaults were repulsed by the oppo- 
 sition of the merchants, who argued that the 
 aboHtion of the trade meant their ruin. But 
 the movement gathered strength from year 
 to year, and the traffic was suppressed ; and 
 the vast amount of capital employed in it 
 was forced into new channels, and naturally 
 into commercial and industrial entei-prises. 
 
 The philosophy of these events in their 
 relation to the establishment of the factory 
 
 * Green. 
 
104 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 system cannot be denied. To be sure, inven- 
 tion alone would in time have succeeded in 
 instituting the new system, but not for gen- 
 erations upon an enduring basis. 
 
 It required all the forces I have con- 
 sidered — physical, mental, philosophical, 
 commercial, and philanthropical, working in 
 separate yet convergent lines — to lay the 
 foundation of an entirely new system of in- 
 dustry ; and these forces coming into exist- 
 ence during the twenty years following the 
 success of the efforts of Hargreaves and 
 Arkwright, and extending in their wonder- 
 ful influences over the earth wherever civili- 
 zation has a foothold, constitutes that period 
 one of the most remarkable since the Chris- 
 tian era. In fact, no generation since then 
 has so completely stamped itself upon the 
 affairs of the world. 
 
 England at the close of the Eevolution 
 held, as she supposed, the key to the indus- 
 trial world in cotton manufactures. Certainly, 
 she held the machinery without which such 
 manufactures could not be carried on in 
 competition with her own mills. 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 105 
 
 The planting of the mechanic arts in this 
 country became a necessity during the war 
 of the Revolution ; and afterwards the spirit 
 of American enterprise demanded that New 
 England, at least, with her barren soil, should 
 improve the privileges she did possess, which 
 were water-power and skill. 
 
 Of course, most industries whose products 
 were called for by the necessities of the 
 war were greatly stimulated ; but with peace 
 came reaction, and the flooding of our mar- 
 kets with foreign goods. A new patriotism, 
 which sought industrial as well as political 
 independence of the mother country, re- 
 sulted in the new constitution, the second 
 act under which was passed July 4, 1789, 
 with this preamble : " Whereas it is neces- 
 sary for the support of the government, for 
 the discharge of the debts of the United 
 States, and for the encouragement and the 
 protection of manifactures that duties be 
 laid on goods, wares, and merchandises im- 
 ported, be it enacted," etc. 
 
 Patriotism and statute law thus paved the 
 way for the importation of the factory sys- 
 
106 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 tern of labor, and so its institution here as 
 well as in England was the result of both 
 moral and economic forces. These forces, 
 existing at the time of the coming of Samuel 
 Slater, the father of American manufactures, 
 as President Jackson designated him, made 
 Slater's work a success; and his success 
 firmly estabhshed the factory system in this 
 country. Slater came in 1789, equipped 
 with the knowledge of the manufacture of 
 cotton-machinery gained as an apprentice to 
 Arkwright himself. He constructed the 
 machinery for a small mill in Rhode Island 
 in 1790, from which period the progress in 
 the establishment of factory manufactures 
 was uninterrupted save by temporary causes. 
 
 From the textile industries the system has 
 extended to almost all branches of produc- 
 tion, till a large proportion of all manufac- 
 tured articles in use to-day in civilized coun- 
 tries are factory-made ; and yet one-half the 
 population of the globe is still clothed with 
 hand-made fabrics. 
 
 The statistics of the industries of Great 
 Britain and the United States are the sta- 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 107 
 
 tistics of industries conducted under the 
 system. 
 
 In France, Germany, and Belgium the 
 system predominates, although the domestic 
 system of labor in these countries has con- 
 tinued to exist to considerable extent. 
 
 The new system, which has found its 
 most rapid extension in the United States, 
 has enabled the manufacturers of this coun- 
 try, with our wonderful stores of raw ma- 
 terials at hand, to become the successful 
 rivals in the mechanic arts of any country 
 that desires to compete with them. 
 
 It has changed the conditions of masses 
 of people. It has become an active element 
 in the processes of civilization, and has 
 changed the character of legislation and 
 of national policy everywhere. 
 
 Is this great, powerful, and growing sys- 
 tem a power for good or for evil ? Does it 
 mean the elevation of the race or its retro- 
 gression ? 
 
 When we speak of civilization, we have in 
 mind the progi*ess of society toward a more 
 perfect state, as indicated by the growth of 
 
108 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 a long period of time. We do not simply 
 contemplate specific reforms or especial evils, 
 but the trend of all social influences. 
 
 When we speak of the factory system, we 
 are apt to let our thoughts dwell upon the 
 evils that we know or imagine belong to it. 
 This is certainly true when civilization and 
 the factory system are suggested in the same 
 sentence. This is wrong, for we should con- 
 template the factory system in its general 
 influence upon society, and especially upon 
 that portion of society most intimately con- 
 nected with the factory. 
 
 My position is that the system has been 
 and is a most potent element in promoting 
 civilization. I assmne, of course, — and the 
 assumption is in entire harmony with my 
 thoughts, — that the civilization of the twen- 
 tieth century will be better than that of the 
 eighteenth and nineteenth. 
 
 We hear a great deal about the sweating 
 system, and the popular idea is that the 
 sweating system is the product of modern 
 industrial conditions. The fact is that it is 
 a remnant of the old industrial system. It 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 109 
 
 is the old hand system prior to the establish- 
 ment of the factory, and has been projected 
 into our tiaie. Once universal, the sweating 
 system is now limited to one or two indus- 
 tries, and is gradually being eliminated 
 through the very system which is sometimes 
 condemned. Just as fast as the sweat-shops 
 are developed into the factory, and brought 
 under the laws which relate to factory regu- 
 lation, just so rapidly is the sweating system 
 being eliminated. The only cure is to make 
 of the sweat-shop the factory. The social 
 life of sweaters can be improved only by lift- 
 ing them to the grade of factory operatives. 
 An examination into the conditions exist- 
 ing under the factory system, and those of 
 the domestic or individual system which pre- 
 ceded it, fully sustains this position. 
 
 None of the systems of labor which ex- 
 isted prior to the present, or factory system, 
 was particularly conducive to a higher civi- 
 lization. Wages have been paid for ser- 
 vices rendered since the wants of men in- 
 duced one to serve another, yet the wage 
 system is of recent origin as a system. It 
 
110 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 arose out of the feudal system of labor, and 
 was the first fruits of the efforts of men to 
 free themselves from villemage. The origin 
 of the wage system cannot be given a birth- 
 day as can the factory system. It is true, 
 however, that the wage system rendered the 
 factory system possible, and they have since 
 grown together. The first may give way to 
 some other method for dividing the profits 
 of production ; but the factory system, per- 
 fected, must, whether under socialistic or 
 whatever political system, remain until dis- 
 integration is the rule in society. 
 
 The feudal and slave systems had nothing 
 in them, so far as any progressive elements 
 were concerned, from which society could 
 draw the forces necessary to growth. On 
 the contrary, while modern civilization owes 
 much to the feudal system, and slavery was 
 in its origin a great step in civilization, these 
 systems reflected the most depressing influ- 
 ences, and were in great measure the allies 
 of retrogression. 
 
 The domestic system, which clauns the 
 eighteenth century almost entirely, was woven 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 111 
 
 into the two systems which existed before 
 and came after it. In fact, it has not yet 
 disappeared. 
 
 It is simple fact, however, when we say 
 that the factory system set aside the domestic 
 system of industry. It is idyllic sentiment 
 when we say that the domestic system sur- 
 passed the former, and nothing but senti- 
 ment. 
 
 There is something poetic in the idea of 
 the weaver of old England, before the spin- 
 ning machinery was invented, working at his 
 loom in his cottage, with his family about 
 him, some carding, others spinning the wool 
 or the cotton for the weaver; and writers 
 and speakers are constantly bewailing the 
 departure of such scenes. 
 
 I am well aware that I speak against popu- 
 lar impression, and largely against popular 
 sentiment, when I assert that the factory sys- 
 tem in every respect is vastly superior as an 
 element in civilization to the domestic system 
 which preceded it ; that the social and moral 
 influences of the present outshine the social 
 and moral influences of the old. The hue 
 
112 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 and cry against the prevailing system has not 
 been entirely genuine on either side of the 
 Atlantic. Abuses have existed, great and 
 abominable enough, but not equal to those 
 which have existed in the imagination of 
 men who would have us believe that virtue 
 is something of the past. 
 
 The usual mistake is to consider the fac- 
 tory system as the creator of evils, and not 
 only evils, but of evil-disposed persons. 
 This can hardly be shown to be true, al- 
 though it is that the system may congregate 
 evils or evil-disposed persons, and thus give 
 the appearance of creating that which 
 aheady existed. 
 
 It is difficult, I know, to establish close 
 comparisons of the conditions under the two 
 systems, because they are not often found to 
 be contemporaneous ; yet sufficient evidence 
 will be adduced, I think, from a considera- 
 tion of the features of the two, and which 
 I am able to present, to estabhsh the truth 
 of my assertions. 
 
 Do not construe what I say against the 
 domestic system of industry as in the least 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 113 
 
 antagonistic to the family, for I am one of 
 those who believe that its integrity is the 
 integrity of the nation ; that the sacredness 
 of its compacts is the sacredness and the 
 preservation and the extension of the race ; 
 that the inviolability of its purity and its 
 peace is the most emphatic source of anxiety 
 of law-makers ; and that any tendency, 
 whether societary or political, toward its 
 decay or even toward its disrespect deserves 
 the immediate condemnation and active 
 opposition of all citizens as the leading 
 cause of irrehgion and of national disinte- 
 gration. 
 
 It should not be forgotten that " the term 
 factory system, in technology, designates 
 the combined operation of many orders of 
 work-people ... in tending with assiduous 
 skill a series of productive machines contin- 
 ually propelled by a central power. This 
 definition includes such organizations as cot- 
 ton-mills, flax-mills, silk and woollen mills, and 
 many other works ; but it excludes those in 
 which the mechanisms do not form a con- 
 nected series, nor are dependent on one 
 
114 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 prime mover." It involves in its strictest 
 sense " the idea of a vast automatum, com- 
 posed of various mechanical and intellectual 
 organs, acting in uninterrupted concert for 
 the production of a common object, all of 
 them being subordinated to a self -regulated 
 movnig force." ^ 
 
 So a factory becomes a scientific structure, 
 its parts harmonious, the calculations requi- 
 site for their harmony involving the highest 
 mathematical skill; and in the factory the 
 operative is always the master of the machine, 
 and never the machine the master of the 
 operative. 
 
 Under the domestic system of industry 
 grew up that great pauper class in England, 
 which was a disgrace to civilization. It was 
 fed by the agricultural districts more than 
 by those devoted to manufactures. It con- 
 tinued to grow until one-fourth of the 
 annual budget was for the support of pau- 
 pers. The evil became fixed upon the social 
 life as one of its permanent phases. Legis- 
 lation, philanthropy, charity, were utterly 
 
 * Dr. Ure, Philosophy of Manufactures^ p. 13. 
 
 J 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 115 
 
 powerless in checking it; and it was not 
 checked till the inventions in cotton manu- 
 factures came, since which events it has been 
 on the decline, taking the decades together. 
 The factory absorbed many who had been 
 under public support. On the other hand, it 
 drew from the peasantry by the allurements 
 of better wages, and without any guaranties 
 as to permanency or care as to moral respon- 
 sibility ; yet on the whole the state was bene- 
 fited more than any class was injured. 
 
 The domestic laborer's home, instead of 
 being the poetic one, was far from the char- 
 acter poetry has given it. Huddled together 
 in what poetry calls a cottage, and history a 
 hut, the weaver's family lived and worked, 
 without comfort, conveniences, good food, 
 good air, and without much intelligence. 
 Drunkenness and theft of materials made 
 each home the scene of crime and want and 
 disorder. Superstition ruled and envy swayed 
 the workers. If the members of a family 
 endowed with more virtue and inteUigence 
 than the common herd tried to so conduct 
 themselves as to secure at least self-respect, 
 
116 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 they were either abused or ostracized by 
 their neighbors. The ignorance under the 
 old system added to the squalor of the homes 
 under it, and what all these elements failed 
 to produce in making the hut an actual den 
 was faithfully performed, in too many in- 
 stances, by the swine of the family. 
 
 The home of the agricultural laborer was 
 not much better ; in fact, in Great Britain 
 and France he has been exceedingly suc- 
 cessful in maintaining his ignorance and his 
 degraded condition. 
 
 Sentiment has done much, as I have said, 
 to create false impressions as to the two 
 systems of labor. Goldsmith's Auburn and 
 Crabbe's Village hardly reflect the truest 
 picture of their country's home life. 
 
 The reports of the Poor Laws Commis- 
 sioners of England are truer exponents of 
 conditions, and show whether the town was 
 during the first fifty years of the new sys- 
 tem staining the country or the country the 
 town. " From the documents published by 
 these commissioners it appears that, but for 
 the renovating influence of her manufac- 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 117 
 
 tures, England would have been overrun 
 with the most ignorant and depraved of men 
 to be met with where civilization has made 
 much progress. It has been in the factory dis- 
 tricts alone that the demoralizing agency of 
 pauperism has been most effectually resisted, 
 and a noble spirit of industry, enterprise, 
 and intelligence called forth." * Agricult- 
 urists gave children and youth no more 
 than half the wages paid them in factories, 
 while they filled the workhouses with the 
 unemployed. Under the operation of the 
 miserable poor laws, which the domestic sys- 
 tem fathered, the peasantry were penned up 
 in close parishes, where they increased be- 
 yond the demand for their labor, and where 
 the children were allowed to grow up in 
 laziness and ignorance, which unfitted them 
 from ever becoming industrious men and 
 women. 
 
 But in the chief manufacturing districts, 
 while the condition of the factory children 
 became the subject of legislation for pro- 
 tection, their condition was one to be envied 
 
 *Ure, p. 354. 
 
118 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 beside that of the children in mining and 
 agricultural districts. 
 
 The spasmodic nature of work under the 
 domestic system caused much disturbance, 
 for hand working is always more or less dis- 
 continuous from the caprice of the operative, 
 while much time must be lost in gathering 
 and returning materials. For these and 
 obvious reasons a hand weaver could very 
 seldom turn off in a week much more than 
 one-half what his loom coidd produce if 
 kept continuously in action during the 
 working hours of the day, at the rate which 
 the weaver in his working paroxysms im- 
 pelled it.*" 
 
 The regular order maintained in the fac- 
 tory cures this evil of the old system, and 
 enables the operative to know with reason- 
 able certainty the wages he is to receive at 
 the next pay day. His life and habits be- 
 come more orderly ; and he finds, too, that, 
 as he has left the closeness of his home shop 
 for the usually clean and well-lighted factory, 
 he imbibes more freely of the health-giving 
 
 * Ure, p. 333. 
 
 i 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 119 
 
 tonic of the atmosphere. It is commonly 
 supposed that cotton-factories are crowded 
 with operatives. From the nature of things, 
 the spinning and weaving rooms cannot be 
 crowded. The spinning-mules, in their 
 advancing and retreating locomotion, must 
 have five or six times the space to work in 
 that the actual bulk of the mechanism re- 
 quires ; and, where the machinery stands, the 
 operative cannot. In the weaving-rooms 
 there can be no crowding of persons. Dur- 
 ing the agitation for factory legislation in 
 the early part of the last century it was 
 remarked before a committee of the House 
 of Commons " that no part of a cotton-miU 
 is one-tenth part as crowded, or the air in it 
 one-tenth part as impure, as the House of Com- 
 mons with a moderate attendance of mem- 
 bers." ^ This is true to-day. The poorest 
 factory in this country is as good a place to 
 breathe in as Representatives Hall during 
 sessions, or the ordinary school-room. In 
 this respect the new system of labor far 
 surpasses the old. 
 
 *Ure, p. 402. 
 
120 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 Bad air is one of the surest influences to 
 intemperance, and it is clearly susceptible of 
 proof that intemperance does not exist and 
 has not existed to such alarming degrees 
 under the new as under the old system. 
 Certainly, the influence of bad air has not 
 been as potent. 
 
 The regularity required in miQs is such as 
 to render persons who are in the habit of 
 getting intoxicated unfit to be employed 
 there, and many manufacturers object to em- 
 ploying persons guilty of the vice. Yet, not- 
 withstanding all the efforts which have been 
 made to stop the habit, the beer-drinking 
 operatives of factory towns still constitute a 
 most serious drawback to the success of in- 
 dustrial enterprises ; but its effects are not so 
 ruinous under the new as under the old sys- 
 tem. 
 
 At Amiens, France, the two systems were 
 in existence, side by side and in full force, 
 in 1860, and are now to considerable extent. 
 From the investigations of Reybaud, it is 
 shown that the domestic system exists in the 
 country around Amiens, while the factory 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 121 
 
 system prevails in the city itself. The 
 country workers have had a very bad reputa- 
 tion. The evil of intemperance is invet- 
 erate. 
 
 " The people living under the old system 
 resisted improvement. They wished to live 
 and die in the houses of their parents, and 
 expressed no desire to leave them.'' The 
 great mass of these workers were at home, 
 even at a date as late as 1860, under a roof 
 that was never abandoned. The investiga- 
 tion just referred to proves that the homes 
 of the factory workers were incontestably 
 better than those of the home workers, for 
 they were free from the inciunbrances and 
 clogging influences which existed when the 
 means and materials for manufacture dis- 
 puted with the necessities of housekeeping 
 for a great part of the room. This differ- 
 ence in the houses under the two systems is 
 also the result of circiunstances easily ex- 
 plained. The factory workers as a rule earn 
 more than the home workers. By having 
 fixed and regular hours, they are kept from 
 faUing into habits of idleness. They know 
 
122 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 to a centime what they will have at the end 
 of the week. Their dependence is their se- 
 curity. Their wages have the merit of 
 steadiness. The condition of the home 
 workers is precarious. Weeks and months 
 pass at times, and they out of work. Finan- 
 cial crises, derangements of commerce, 
 change in fashion, — all these affect them 
 far more seriously than they do the factory 
 people. To-morrow is never sure with the 
 workers under the domestic system, and pri- 
 vation in the future is always staring them 
 in the face. All these bad conditions are 
 aggravated by the serious intemperance of 
 the home workers about Amiens. 
 
 There are no heads of estabhshments to 
 influence these men. They occupy an inde- 
 pendent and really an isolated position. 
 Under the factory system in France, intem- 
 perance is often dealt with effectually, and 
 the first honor belongs to the heads of the 
 establishments. By concerted action, which 
 should be taken for example, they closed 
 their doors against those addicted to intem- 
 perance, and where drunkenness marked 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 123 
 
 them as the ones to be excluded. Efforts 
 were made to secure pledges, and with suc- 
 cess. To-day drunkenness is not an obsta- 
 cle to the success of manufacturing estab- 
 lishments either in this country or in 
 England. 
 
 In this country the proprietors of factories 
 have taken a position in regard to intemper- 
 ance, in many instances, which reflects the 
 highest honor upon them. Many years ago 
 at York Mills, in Maine, Mr. Samuel Batch- 
 elder, the agent, issued regulations prohibit- 
 ing the use of intoxicants by the operatives. 
 When his example is followed generally, we 
 shall have less of the beer-shop in factory 
 towns. 
 
 The statistics of crime usually offer evi- 
 dence of the tendencies of different classes 
 in a community. In studying these statistics 
 for large manufacturing centres in Great 
 Britain, I have found that neither the crimi- 
 nal ranks nor the ranks of prostitution are 
 fiUed up from the factories. Much has been 
 said about Manchester, England, and its 
 "hoodlum" class cited as the operative pop- 
 
124 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 ulation. Nothing could be farther from the 
 truth. It is the miserable hovel tenantry 
 outside the factory workers which makes 
 Manchester's criminal list so large. 
 
 The common mistake writers have made 
 is in taking a place like Manchester by 
 which to judge the factory system. Man- 
 chester is not purely a factory town. Visi- 
 tors make the double blunder of believing 
 that all its working classes belong to the 
 factory population, and that all the miscon- 
 duct they witness or hear about among 
 females of the lower rank must be ascribed 
 to the factory system. The testimony from 
 a return from the penitentiary of Manches- 
 ter "proves how far the ranks of prosti- 
 tution are recruited from factory girls in 
 proportion to other classes." This report 
 stated that only eight out of fifty proceeded 
 from factories, while twenty-nine out of fifty 
 were from domestic service.* I could quote 
 many statistics upon kindred points. It is 
 sufficient to know that the attempts made to 
 support charges of the abundance of crime 
 
 * Taylor, p. 45. 
 
OF THE LAB OB QUESTION 125 
 
 and prostitution in operative towns in Eng- 
 land by statistical tables have all been based 
 on the supposition that the great town 
 nuisances are identical or connected with the 
 factory system. My own inquiries and ex- 
 amination of criminal records disprove the 
 common assumption. 
 
 I have no doubt that immorality exists 
 among factory operatives the same as it 
 exists on Fifth Avenue and everywhere else 
 on earth where men and women are found, 
 but I do not believe that it exists in any 
 greater proportion in the factory than in 
 any other walk of life. On the other hand, 
 I beheve that immoral lives are less frequent 
 among the factory population than among 
 any other class in the community ; and in- 
 vestigations, and extensive ones at that, in 
 this country and abroad teach the truth of 
 this assertion. 
 
 Some years ago it was my good fortune 
 to look over some of the great thread works 
 in Paisley, Scotland ; and this very question 
 of immoraHty was discussed with the fore- 
 man of one of the works. One gentleman. 
 
126 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 who had been connected with the Coates 
 factories for forty years, informed me that 
 during that period he had known but one 
 girl who had departed from a strictly honest 
 life ; and she, as soon as her habits were 
 known, was ostracised by the coldness of her 
 associates. This I found to be true in almost 
 every factory I have ever visited. As soon 
 as a girl loses her character, her mates frown 
 upon her, and she is fairly driven from the 
 field. Women in cotton-mills and in aU 
 other factories are as careful of their charac- 
 ters as is any other class. The charge that 
 the factory breeds immorality among women 
 is not true, and cannot be sustained by any 
 facts that have ever been collected. This 
 one condition constitutes the factory an im- 
 portant element in social li£e ; for the women 
 who are there, and are working for low 
 wages, — lower than any of us would like to 
 have paid, but which are governed according 
 to economic conditions and law, — are work- 
 ing honestly and faithfully, and living honest 
 and virtuous lives. It must be so. Women 
 cannot work eight or ten or twelve or more 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 127 
 
 hours in a cotton-factory, and live a dissolute 
 life the rest of the day. 
 
 What has been said is equally true of 
 France. In one locality, out of a criminal 
 Hst of 4,992, but 216 were workers in the 
 textile factories.'^ 
 
 It is a fact that the factories in France 
 are increasing in number, and consequently 
 operatives are drawn into them. Now in this 
 process of change from the old to the new 
 industrial system, which has been watched 
 by careful investigators, the direct results 
 are easily seen. If the factories have a bad 
 influence on morals, crime should remain in 
 proportion as the number of factory workers 
 increased. The contrary, however, is the 
 case ; for in the locality already alluded to 
 the criminal list in 1855 was 2,214, while in 
 1859 it had, by steady reduction, fallen to 
 1,654, and in a constantly increasing factory 
 population. 
 
 These facts are representative, not isolated, 
 in their nature ; and they prove conclusively 
 the falsity of prevailing impressions. They 
 
 * Reybaud, Cotton, p. 108. 
 
128 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 are witnesses that the newer system, by secur- 
 ing more competency, fights bad instincts 
 with the very best of weapons, — the interest 
 of those it employs. 
 
 In great towns the factories have had to 
 contend with all the nuisances which a rapid 
 increase of population beyond the due limits 
 of accommodation must necessarily produce. 
 The only places where the factory system 
 can be fairly tested on its own merits are the 
 small towns in which the factory makes the 
 place. Oldham, England, is the true type, 
 not Manchester. 
 
 Mr. N. W. Senior has given abundant 
 evidence of the truth of these positions. 
 
 There is another supposition relative to 
 the factory to which I wish to call attention, 
 and which relates emphatically to the topic 
 of this paper. It is that the factory has a 
 dwarfing influence upon skill : that skill is 
 degraded to common labor. This supposi- 
 tion also arises from a superficial examina- 
 tion of modern establishments, wherein a 
 cheap and often ignorant body of laborers is 
 employed, the appearance being that skilled 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 129 
 
 and intelligent workmen are replaced by 
 unskilled and unintelligent workmen, and 
 the conclusion being that the modern system 
 forces the skilled and intelligent workman 
 downward in the scale of civilization. This 
 is not the true sociological conclusion, which 
 is that the modern system of industry gives 
 the skilled and intelligent workman an oppor- 
 tunity to rise in the scale of employment, 
 in intellectual development, in educational 
 acquirements, in the grade of services ren- 
 dered, and hence his social standing in his 
 community, while at the same time it enables 
 what was an unskilled and unintelligent 
 body of workers to be employed in such 
 ways and under such conditions and sur- 
 rounded by such stimulating influences that 
 they in turn become inteUigent and skilled, 
 and crowd upward into the positions formerly 
 occupied by their predecessors, thus enabHng 
 them to secure the social standard which 
 they desire. This conclusion, it seems to 
 me, is the true one, and makes the discus- 
 sion of the question whether the modern 
 system of industry, the factory, really has 
 
130 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 a stimulating effect upon the intellectual 
 growth of the people not only an inter- 
 esting, but a pecuHarly appropriate, one 
 at all times. ^ 
 
 What is the truth as to wages ? The vast 
 influence of wages upon social life need not 
 be considered here, but the question whether 
 the factory system has increased them may 
 be. I am constantly obliged, in my every- 
 day labors, to refute the assertion that wages 
 under the factory system are growing lower 
 and lower. The reverse is the truth, which 
 
 * " As to the abasement of intelligence which is said to follow 
 in proportion as tasks are subdivided, it is a conjecture more 
 than a truth shown by experience. This abasement is presumed, 
 not proven. It would be necessary to prove, for example, that 
 the hand weaver, who throws the shuttle and gives motion to 
 the loom, is of a superior class to the machine weaver who 
 assists, without co-operating, in this double movement. Those 
 who really know the facts would have just the opposite opinion. 
 Employing the muscles in several operations instead of one has 
 nothing in it to elevate the faculties," and this is all the oppo- 
 nents of machinery claim. In their view, the most imperfect 
 machines, those which require the most effort, are the ones which 
 sharpen the intellectual faculties to the greatest degree. We 
 can easily see where this argument would carry us if pushed to 
 the end. 
 
 " There is nothing in the working of machinery which, com- 
 pared with the old methods, resembles an abasement of labor. 
 The easing of the arm does not lead to an enfeeblement of the 
 mind." Cf. Reybaud. 
 
OF TUB LABOR QUESTION 131 
 
 is easily demonstrated. The progress of im- 
 provement in machinery may have reduced 
 the price paid for a single article, yard, or 
 pound of product, or for the services of a 
 skilled and intelligent operative ; but the 
 same improvement has enabled the workman 
 to produce in a greater proportion and 
 always with a less expenditure of muscular 
 labor and in less time, and it has enabled a 
 low grade of labor to increase its earnings. 
 At the same time, a greater number have 
 been benefited, either in consumption or pro- 
 duction, by the improvement. 
 
 Experience has not only evolved, but 
 proven, a law in this respect, which is, the 
 more the factory system is perfected, the 
 better will it reward those engaged in it, ii 
 not in increased wages to skill, certainly ir- 
 higher wages to less skill.* 
 
 Better morals, better sanitary conditionSj 
 better health, better wages, — these are the 
 practical results of the factory system as 
 compared with that which preceded it ; and 
 tlie results of aU these have been a keerei 
 
 * Reybaud, Cotton, p. 19. 
 
132 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 intelligence. Under the domestic system 
 there existed no common centres of thought 
 and action. Religious bigotry has fought 
 against the new order, because it tends to 
 destroy the power of the church. Associa- 
 tion kills such power in time. One of the 
 chief causes of trouble in Ireland, outside 
 land difficulties, is its individual system of 
 labor, which predominates. Fill Ireland with 
 factories, and her elevation is assured; in- 
 deed, the north of Ireland, with its linen 
 factories, is prosperous to-day. 
 
 The factory brings mental friction, con- 
 tact, which could not exist under the old 
 system. Take our own factories in New 
 England to-day, fed as they are by foreign 
 operatives. When they go back to their own 
 land, as many do, they carry with them the 
 results, whatever they are, of contact with 
 a new system ; and the effects of such con- 
 tact wiU tell upon their children, if not upon 
 themselves. The factory brings progress 
 and intelligence. It establishes at the centres 
 the pubhc haU for the lyceum and the con- 
 cert, and even literary institutions have 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 133 
 
 been the result of the direct influence of the 
 system. 
 
 Such things could not, in the nature of 
 conditions, find a lodgment under the 
 domestic system. It is in evidence that 
 " the book-trade of Great Britain flourishes 
 and fades with its manufactures in vital 
 sympathy, while it is nearly indifferent to 
 the good or bad state of its agriculture." 
 
 While the factory system is superior in 
 almost every respect to the individual sys- 
 tem, the former is not free from positive 
 evils, because hmnan nature is not perfect. 
 These evils are few compared to the magni- 
 tude of the benefits of the system ; but they 
 should be kept constantly in mind, that pub- 
 lic sentiment may be strong enough some 
 day to remove them, — in fact, it is removing 
 them. 
 
 Whatever there was that was good in the 
 old household plan of labor, so far as keep- 
 ing the family together at all times and 
 working under the care of the head are con- 
 cerned, was temporarily lost when the fac- 
 tory system took its place, in so far as the 
 
134 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 old workers entered the factories. This 
 evil, like most others attendant upon the 
 new order, has been greatly exaggerated. 
 The workers under the old system strenu- 
 ously opposed the establishment of the new ; 
 and this led to the employment of great 
 numbers of parish children, a feature of 
 employment which was eagerly fostered by 
 parish officers. Yet, while the working of 
 young children in mills is something to be 
 condemned in our own time, when it began 
 it placed them in a far better condition than 
 they had ever been in, or could have ex- 
 pected to be in, for it made them self-sup- 
 porting. 
 
 The children have been excluded from the 
 factories in all countries gradually, till the 
 laws of most States, European and Ameri- 
 can, prohibit their employment under four- 
 teen years of age, except on condition of 
 their attendance at school for a prescribed 
 length of time. 
 
 A great evil which even now attracts at- 
 tention, and in our own country, too, is the 
 employment of married women. This occurs 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 135 
 
 more generally with foreign women, and too 
 often is the result of the indolence or cupid- 
 ity of the father. Employers have done 
 much to check this evil, which is not so 
 much an evil to the present as to the future 
 generations. It is bad enough for the pres- 
 ent. It robs the young of the care of their 
 natural protectors, it demoralizes the older 
 children, it makes home dreary, and robs it 
 of its amenities. The factory mother's hours 
 of labor in the mills are as long- as those of 
 others ; and then comes the thousand and 
 one duties of the home in which, although 
 she may be aided by members of the family, 
 there is little rest. No ten-hour law can 
 reach the overworked housewife in any walk 
 of life, — certainly not when she is a factory 
 worker. Her employment in the mills is a 
 crime to her offspring, and, logically, a crime 
 to the State ; and the sooner law and senti- 
 ment make it impossible for her to stand at 
 the loom, the sooner the character of mill 
 operatives will be elevated. I count their 
 employment, with the consequent train of 
 evils, the worst, and the very worst, of the 
 
136 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 evils of a system which is the grandeur of 
 the age in an industrial point of view. 
 
 It is gratifying to know that in Massachu- 
 setts cotton-mills only about 8 per cent, of 
 the females employed are married women. 
 This is equally true of English factories, 
 and I believe that in both countries the 
 number is gradually decreasing. So, too, 
 the number of operatives who live in indi- 
 vidual homes is increasing. 
 
 The employment of children is an evil 
 which has been stimulated as much by the 
 actions of parents as by mill owners. 
 
 These evils, however, have been the result 
 of development rather than of inauguration, 
 and thus will disappear as education, in its 
 broad sense, takes the place of ignorance. 
 
 The evil effects of the kind of labor per- 
 formed in mills, so far as health is concerned, 
 have been considerable, while less than those 
 attending the household system. 
 
 All employments have features not con- 
 ducive to health. These features or con- 
 ditions are incidental, and cannot be sep- 
 arated from the employment. In mining 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 137 
 
 coal, for instance, the nature of the occupa- 
 tion is bad in nearly all respects ; but coal 
 must be had, and there is never any lack of 
 miners. What, then, shall be done ? 
 
 Operators are in duty bound, of course, 
 to make all evils, whether incidental or arti- 
 ficial, as light as possible, and should intro- 
 duce every improvement which will lighten 
 the burden of any class who, by their mental 
 incapacity or other causes, are content to 
 seek employment in the lowest grades of 
 labor. Machinery is constantly elevating 
 the grades of labor, and the laborer. The 
 working of mines, even, is to-day an easy 
 task compared to what it was a few years 
 ago. 
 
 The workers themselves have much re- 
 sponsibility on their own shoulders, so far as 
 the healthfidness or unhealthfulness of an 
 occupation is concerned. 
 
 Let the children of factory workers every- 
 where be educated in the rudiments of san- 
 itary science, and then let law say that bad 
 air shall be prohibited, and I believe the 
 vexed temperance question will not ti'ouble 
 
138 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 US to the extent it has. Drunkenness and 
 intemperance are not the necessary accom- 
 panying evils of the factory system, and 
 never have been ; but, wherever corporations 
 furnish unhealthy home surroundings, there 
 the evils of intemperance will be more or 
 less felt in all the directions in which the 
 results of rum find their wonderful ramifi- 
 cations. 
 
 The domestic system of labor could not 
 deal with machinery : machinery really ini- 
 tiated the factory system ; that is, the latter 
 is the result of machinery. But machinery 
 has done something more, — it has brought 
 with it new phases of civilization ; for, while 
 it means the factory system in one sense, it 
 is the type and representative of the civiliza- 
 tion of this period, because it embodies, so 
 far as mechanics are concerned, the concen- 
 trated, clearly wrought-out thought of the 
 age. While books represent thought, ma- 
 chinery is the embodiment of thought. 
 
 Industry and poverty are not handmaid- 
 ens ; and, as poverty is lessened, good morals 
 thrive. If labor, employment of the mind, 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 139 
 
 is an essential to good morals, then the high- 
 est kind of employment, that requiring the 
 most application and the best intellectual 
 effort, means the best morals. This condi- 
 tion, I take courage to assert, is superin- 
 duced eventually by the factory system, for 
 by it the operative is usually employed in a 
 higher grade of labor than that which occu- 
 pied him in his previous condition. For this 
 reason the present system of productive in- 
 dustry is constantly narrowing the limits of 
 the class that occupies the bottom step of 
 the social order. 
 
 One of the inevitable results of the fac- 
 tory is to enable men to secure a livelihood 
 in fewer hours than of old. This is grand in 
 itself ; for, as the time required to earn a liv- 
 ing grows shorter, our civilization advances. 
 That system which demands of a man all his 
 time for the earning of mere subsistence is 
 demoraHzing in all respects. 
 
 The fact that the lowest grade of opera- 
 tives can now be employed in mills does not 
 signify more ignorance, but, as I have said, 
 a raising of the lowest to higher employ- 
 
140 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 ments ; and, as the world progresses in its re- 
 finement, the lowest, which is high compar- 
 atively, seems all the lower. Society will 
 bring all up, unless society is compelled to 
 take up what is called a simpler system of 
 labor. We should not forget that growth in 
 civilization means complication, not simplifi- 
 cation, nor that the machine is the servant 
 of the workman, and not his competitor. 
 
 It is obvious that the factory system has 
 not affected society as badly as has been 
 generally believed ; and if it has, in its intro- 
 duction, brought evils, it has done much to 
 remove others. " The unheard-of power it 
 has given labor, the wealth that has sprung 
 from it, are not the sole property of any 
 class or body of men. They constitute a 
 kind of common fund, which, though irreg- 
 ularly divided," as are all the gifts of nature 
 to finite understandings, " ought at least to 
 satisfy the material and many of the moral 
 wants of society." * 
 
 The softening of the misery caused by the 
 change in systems has occurred, but in sub- 
 
 * Reybaud, Cotton, p. 22. 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 141 
 
 tie ways. Transition stages are always harsh 
 upon the generation that experiences them. 
 The great point is that they should be pro- 
 ductive of good results in the end. 
 
 The mind recoils at the contemplation of 
 the conditions which the vast increase of 
 population would have imposed without the 
 factory system. 
 
 " It is a sad law, perhaps, but it is an in- 
 variable law, that industry, in its march, 
 takes no account of the positions that it 
 overturns nor of the destinies that it modi- 
 fies. We must keep step with its progress, 
 or be left upon the road. It always accom- 
 plishes its work, which is to make better 
 goods at a lower price, to supply more wants, 
 and also those of a better order, not with 
 regard for any class, but having in view the 
 whole human race. Industry is this, or it is 
 not industry. True to its instincts, it has no 
 sentiment in it, unless it is for its own in- 
 terest; and yet such is the harmony of 
 things, when they are abandoned to their 
 natural course, notwithstanding the selfish- 
 ness of industry, directed to its own good. 
 
142 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 it turns finally to secure the good of all ; and, 
 while requiring service for itself, it serves at 
 the same time by virtue of its resources and 
 its power."* 
 
 Recent writers, notwithstanding all the 
 facts of history, find a solution for whatever 
 difficulties result from the production of 
 goods under the factory system in the dis- 
 persion of congregated labor, and a return 
 to simple methods when they would have 
 the machines owned and manipulated as in- 
 dividual property, under individual enter- 
 prise ; but it is safe to assert that " a people 
 who have once adopted the large system of 
 production are not likely to recede from 
 it." Labor is more productive on the system 
 of large industrial enterprises : the produce 
 is greater in proportion to the labor em- 
 ployed ; the same number of persons can be 
 supported equally well with less toil and 
 greater leisure ; and, in the moral aspect of 
 the question, something better is aimed at as 
 the good of industrial improvement than to 
 disperse the workers of society over the 
 
 * Reybaud, Cotton, p. 13. 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 143 
 
 earth to be employed in pent-up houses and 
 the sin-breeding small shops of another age, 
 where there would be scarcely any commu- 
 nity of interest or necessary mental com- 
 munion with other human beings. "If 
 pubHc spirit, generous sentiments, or true 
 justice and equahty are desired, association, 
 not isolation of interests, is the school in 
 which these excellences are nurtured." * 
 
 It is from such influences we discern the 
 elevation of an increased proportion of 
 working people from the position of un- 
 skilled to that of skilled laborers, and the 
 opening of an adequate field of remunerative 
 employment to women, — two of the most 
 important improvements which could be de- 
 sired in the condition of the working classes. 
 Since, therefore, the extension of the factory 
 system tends strongly toward both these 
 results, it may be considered as one of the 
 features of the present age which is the 
 most favorable to their more permanent 
 advancement.! 
 
 * Mill's Political Economy, vol. ii., pp. 351, 352, fifth London 
 edition. 
 
 t Cf . Morrison, Labor and Capital, p. 195. 
 
144 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 It is also true that the factory system has 
 stamped itseK most emphatically upon the 
 written law of all countries where it has 
 taken root^ as well as upon the social and 
 moral laws which lie at the bottom of the 
 forces which make written law what it is. 
 
 With the exception of laws relating to the 
 purely commercial features of the factory 
 system, the legislation which that system 
 has produced has been stimulated by the 
 evils which have grown with it. 
 
 It is the worst phases of society which 
 gauge the legislation requisite for its pro- 
 tection. Laws other than those for the 
 regulation of trade, and the protection of 
 rights as to property, by definition of rights, 
 are made for the restraint of the evil-dis- 
 posed, and do not disturb those whose mo- 
 tives and actions are right ; so, if it were not 
 for the evils which creep into existence with 
 every advance society makes, laws would 
 remain unwritten, because not needed. We 
 have a way of judging by the worst ex- 
 amples. 
 
 The social battles which men have fought 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 145 
 
 have been among the severest for human 
 rights ; and they mark eras in social condi- 
 tions as clearly as do field contests, in which 
 more human lives have been lost, perhaps, 
 but in which no greater human interests 
 have been involved. 
 
 At the time of the institution of the fac- 
 tory system, there was upon the statute 
 books of England but few laws relating to 
 master and man. Those which did exist 
 were largely of criminal bearing, establish- 
 ing punishment for various shortcomings of 
 the men ; but, with the coming of the new 
 system, the evils of poor-law abuses came 
 into full view, and, while pauper children 
 were vastly better off in the factories than 
 in the parish poorhouses, they attracted at- 
 tention, and became the subjects of parlia- 
 mentary protection. For the first time there 
 appeared some of the consequences of con- 
 gregated labor, or, rather, the effects of the 
 congregation of one class of labor appeared. 
 A whole generation of operatives was grow- 
 ing up under conditions of comparative 
 physical degeneracy, of mental ignorance, 
 
146 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 and moral corruption, all of which existed 
 before, but which the factory system brought 
 into strong Hght. 
 
 And now the great question began to be 
 asked, "Has the nation any right to in- 
 terfere? Shall society suffer, that individ- 
 uals may profit ? " Shall the next and suc- 
 ceeding generations be weakened morally 
 and intellectually, that estates may be en- 
 larged ? 
 
 These questions forced themselves upon 
 the public mind, and the fact that pauper 
 apprentices might be better off under such 
 apprenticeship than in the workhouse could 
 have no weight under the influence of the 
 great religious and moral waves which swept 
 over England in the last quarter of the 
 eighteenth century. 
 
 The result was the factory act of Sir Rob- 
 ert Peel, 1802. While this act was of no 
 great value to the operatives, it was of the 
 greatest value to the world ; for it made the 
 assertion, which has never been retracted, 
 that the nation did have the right to check 
 not only open evils, but those which grow 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 147 
 
 individually through the nature of employ- 
 ment. 
 
 As legislation progressed in England, the 
 education of factory children was provided 
 for ; so through the factory came public ed- 
 ucation in England. 
 
 The greatest poverty and ignorance pre- 
 vailed in the agricultural and mining dis- 
 tricts of England ; and, after the reports of 
 the Poor Laws Commissioners had exposed 
 the demoralizing results of the want of edu- 
 cation in the agricultural hamlets, it was 
 really a piece of singular effrontery on the 
 part of the legislators to accuse the manu- 
 facturers of being the main authors of the 
 miserable state of affairs found among the 
 tillers of the soil, and to require the em- 
 ployers of factory labor, under heavy pen- 
 alties, to be responsible for the education of 
 all juvenile operatives whom they employed. 
 Until a recent date, law has insisted upon 
 the education of factory children only, so 
 far as England is concerned ; and, whether 
 from good or bad motives in the framers of 
 such laws, the factory system has been made 
 
148 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 the central point upon which popular educa- 
 tion in England has turned. And this ac- 
 coimts in a large degree for the superior in- 
 telligence of the factory population of that 
 country when compared with those engaged 
 in agriculture. In this very direction the 
 influences of the new order of industry upon 
 legislation is clearly marked. 
 
 After 1847 the provisions of factory acts 
 were extended first to one industry and then 
 another, until now they comprehend very 
 many of the leading lines of production. 
 
 It should be remembered that the abuses 
 which crept into the system in England 
 never existed in this country in any such 
 degree as we know they did in the old coun- 
 try. Yet there are few States in America 
 where manufactures predominate, or hold an 
 important position, that law has not stepped 
 in, and restricted either the hours of labor or 
 the conditions of labor or insisted upon the 
 education of factory children, although the 
 laws are usually silent as to children of agri- 
 cultural laborers. 
 
 Factory legislation in England, as else- 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 149 
 
 where, has had for its chief object the regu- 
 lation of the labor of children and women ; 
 but its scope has constantly increased, by 
 successive and progressive amendments, imtil 
 it has attempted to secure the physical and 
 moral Avell-being of the workman in all 
 trades, and to give him every condition of 
 salubrity and of personal safety in the work- 
 shops. 
 
 The excellent effect of factory legislation 
 has been made manifest throughout the 
 whole of Great Britain. "Physically, the 
 factory child can bear fair comparison with 
 the child brought up in the fields," and in- 
 tellectually progress is far greater Tvdth the 
 former than with the latter. Public opinion, 
 struck by these results, has demanded the 
 extension of protective measures for chil- 
 dren to every kind of industrial labor, until 
 ParHament has brought under the influences 
 of factory laws the most powerful industries. 
 
 The conditions belonging to the factory 
 system are constantly forcing themselves 
 into view as the levers which overturn old 
 notions and establish precedents at variance 
 
150 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 with the opinion of judges, as is seen in the 
 British legislation as to the liabihty of em- 
 ployers for damages resulting from acci- 
 dents. 
 
 There is a class of writers who are very 
 fond of drawing comparisons between con- 
 ditions under the factory system and those 
 which existed prior to its establishment. 
 They refer to the halcyon days of England, 
 and call attention to the EngHsh operative 
 working under hand methods as a happy, 
 contented, well-fed, moral person. History 
 teaches just the reverse ; for it shows, as has 
 been pointed out, that prior to the establish- 
 ment of the factory the working classes of 
 England lived in hovels and mud huts that 
 would not be tolerated even in the worst coal- 
 mining districts in this country or in Eng- 
 land to-day. The factory graduated all these 
 people from the mud hut. But what was 
 that old system ? Degrading, crime-breed- 
 ing, and productive of intemperance in the 
 worst form as compared with the factory of 
 to-day. 
 
 So the whole matter of the consideration 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 151 
 
 of the workingman to-day becomes intel- 
 lectual. He is carried onward and upward 
 by the power of mental activity, and can- 
 not be treated separately as one of a class, 
 as he could in the olden time, because iq the 
 olden time he was neither a social nor a po- 
 Htical factor. Changed conditions in all di- 
 rections have brought mankind to a new 
 epoch, the distinguishing feature of which is 
 the factory itself, or machinery, which makes 
 it. This, we see, is true when we comprehend 
 that machinery is constantly lifting men out 
 of low into high grades of employment, con- 
 stantly surrounding them with an intellectual 
 atmosphere, rather than keeping them de- 
 graded in the sweat-shop atmosphere of the 
 olden time. 
 
 The weal or woe of the operative popula- 
 tion depends largely upon the temper in 
 which the employers carry the responsibility 
 intrusted to them. I know of no trust 
 more sacred than that given into the hands 
 of the captains of industry, for they deal 
 with human beings in close relations, — not 
 through the media of speech or exhortation, 
 
152 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 but of positive association ; and by this they 
 can make or mar. Granted that the ma- 
 terial is often poor, the intellects often dull : 
 then all the more sacred the trust and all the 
 greater the responsibility. The rich and 
 powerful manufacturer, with the adjuncts 
 of education and good business training, 
 holds in his hand something more than the 
 means of subsistence for those he employs. 
 He holds their moral well-being in his keep- 
 ing, in so far as it is in his power to mould 
 their morals. He is something more than 
 a producer : he is an instrument of God for 
 the upbuilding of the race. 
 
 Of course, we aU know that the condition 
 of the worker is not the ideal one. We all 
 know that every employer who has the wel- 
 fare of his race at heart, and who is guided 
 by ethical as well as economic motives, would 
 be glad to see his work-people receiving 
 higher pay and hving in better houses, — liv- 
 ing in an environment which should increase 
 rather than diminish their social force. At 
 the same time, we all recognize that the 
 sanitary and hygienic condition of the fac- 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 153 
 
 tory is vastly superior to the sanitary and 
 hygienic condition of the homes of the 
 operatives in many cases. When the factory- 
 operative in his home reaches the same high 
 grade that has been reached in the factory 
 itself, his social force and life will be in- 
 creased and his standard raised to a much 
 higher plane. All these things are matters 
 of development; but, when we understand 
 that manufacturers in this country are 
 obHged constantly to deal with a heterogen- 
 eous mass, so far as nationahty is concerned, 
 while those in other countries deal with a 
 homogeneous mass of operatives, the wonder 
 is that here we have kept the standard so 
 high as it has been. In considering all these 
 aspects as briefly as they have been touched 
 upon, we cannot but feel, as I have indi- 
 cated, that the factory reaches down and 
 lifts up ; that it does not reach up and draw 
 down those who have been raised to a 
 higher standard. This is the real ethical 
 mission of the factory everywhere. 
 
 Gentlemen in charge of factories are the 
 managers of great missionary establishments. 
 
154 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 In their conduct of them as industrial insti- 
 tutions they must recognize economic laws 
 and conditions. It would be suicidal to take 
 the purely ethical view at the expense of 
 the economic; but, while recognizing the 
 economic conditions which compel certain 
 actions, I believe there is no great difficulty 
 in recognizing also the ethical relations 
 which ought to exist between employer and 
 employe. These ethical relations are be- 
 coming more and more a force in the con- 
 duct of industry. Whether the new develop- 
 ments of concentrated industrial interests 
 will lead to a still higher recognition of the 
 ethical forces at work is a question which 
 cannot at present be answered. My own 
 behef is that the future developments of in- 
 dustry will be on this line, and that the 
 relation of the employer and his employes 
 will rest upon a sounder basis than here- 
 tofore. 
 
 The social condition of the workingman 
 and his education, which we have insisted 
 upon, have led him into the strike method 
 as a means of asserting what he calls his 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 155 
 
 rights. He has in this adopted the worst 
 examples set him by his employers in the 
 past. Greater intelligence, a broader recog- 
 nition of the necessity of higher social 
 standards, will lead to a recognition of other 
 principles that will enable him to avoid in- 
 dustrial war, and his employer to recognize 
 the intelligence which is willing to avoid it. 
 
 This may sound like sentiment. I am 
 wilhng to call it sentiment ; but I know it 
 means the best material prosperity, and that 
 every employer who has been guided by such 
 sentiments has been rewarded twofold, — 
 first, in witnessing the wonderful improve- 
 ment of his people, and, second, in seeing 
 his dividends increase and the wages of the 
 operatives increase with his dividends. 
 
 The factory system of the future will be 
 run on this basis. The instances of such 
 are multiplying rapidly now ; and, whenever 
 it occurs, the system outstrips the pulpit in 
 the actual work of the gospel, — that is, in 
 the work of humanity. It needs no gift of 
 prophecy to foretell the future of a system 
 which has in it more possibihties for good 
 
156 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 for the masses who must work for day wages 
 than any scheme which has yet been devised 
 by philanthropy alone. 
 
 To make the system what it will be, the 
 factory itself must be rebuilt, and so ordered 
 in all its appointments that the great ques- 
 tion for the labor reformer shaU be how to 
 get people out of their homes and into the 
 factory. The agitation of such a novel 
 proposition will bring all the responsibility 
 for bad conditions directly home to the in- 
 dividual, and then the law can handle the 
 difficulty. 
 
 With true men at the head of industrial 
 enterprises, with a political economy which 
 shall recognize the power of moral forces in 
 the accimiulation and distribution of wealth, 
 modern productive industry will be not only 
 the most powerful element in civihzation, 
 but, as Dr. W. T. Harris has said, " a step in 
 the problem of life." We recognize the 
 truth which underlies this statement, as well 
 as another of his, that '^ the central fact in 
 civil society is the division of labor." I 
 have considered the factory system, by the 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 157 
 
 historic and comparative methods, as the 
 supreme material result of the division o£ 
 labor. The profound philosophy of the 
 results of the division of labor, which in- 
 volves, of course, the machinery question 
 and the factory system, can receive but pass- 
 ing hints in a limited chapter. The subject 
 is too rich, too vast, too important, for more 
 than suggestive treatment at the present 
 time. 
 
IV 
 THE ETHICS OF PRISON LABOR. 
 
IV 
 
 THE ETHICS OF PRISON LABOR. 
 
 Notwithstanding all the facts, the ex- 
 perience, and the observation which go to 
 prove that civihzation has made wonderful 
 advances in almost every direction during 
 the last hundred years or more, the assertion 
 is constantly made that it is an appearance 
 of progress, and not real progress, that at- 
 tracts public attention ; and, however much 
 popular education may be stimulated and 
 supported by pubHc funds, and material 
 prosperity may attend our affairs, and music 
 and art be nearer the common people than 
 ever, nevertheless the pessimist insists that 
 real moral conditions have not changed for 
 the better, that crime increases, that mar- 
 riages decrease relatively, that vice in great 
 cities is more strongly intrenched than ever. 
 These assertions can be answered in nearly 
 every particular, and in various and con- 
 
 161 
 
162 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 vincing ways to any one who is able to see 
 beyond present existing evils. 
 
 One of the purposes of this chapter is to 
 answer the charge that progress is apparent, 
 and not real, by citing one phase only of 
 social science, — the condition of prison labor 
 as an index of real moral progress. A httle 
 more than a hundred years ago prisoners 
 were either kept in idleness, to the destruc- 
 tion of their moral and physical being, or 
 else were employed in what is known as 
 penal labor. Penal labor had no piu'pose 
 except as it resulted in a supposed discipHne 
 of the prisoner. He was kept at work turn- 
 ing a crank, or in a treadmill, or throwing 
 shot-bags, or doing something else that had 
 no utiHty whatever as an incentive. It was 
 not productive labor in any sense. It was 
 grinding, demorahzing. It may have had 
 some advantages over idleness in the way of 
 physical exercise ; but the mental and moral 
 consequences were such as to quite overcome 
 the physical benefits. Philanthropists, phi- 
 losophers, penologists, began to see that mere 
 penal labor was not much better than idle- 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 163 
 
 ness ; and some of these men long ago de- 
 scribed prison policies that are carried out 
 to-day. 
 
 Mabillon, a famous Benedictine monk, 
 Abbe of St. Germain in Paris, and one of 
 the most learned men of the day of Louis 
 XIV., was one of the earliest of those who 
 foreshadowed many of the features of mod- 
 ern prison discipline and of prison labor. 
 In his dissertations he discussed the matter 
 of reformation in prison discipline. He was 
 born in 1632, and died in 1707. It was 
 during the last half of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury that he made known his ideas and plans. 
 It was his opinion that penitents might be 
 secluded in cells, like those of the Carthusian 
 monks, and there employed in various sorts 
 of labor. To each cell might be joined a 
 little garden, where at appointed hours the 
 penitents might take an airing and cultivate 
 the ground. 
 
 At a time later than that of Mabillon, 
 Clement XI. built a juvenile prison at St. 
 Michael, Rome, over the entrance to which 
 there was placed this inscription : " Clement 
 
164 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 XI., Supreme Pontiff, reared this prison for 
 the reformation and education of criminal 
 youths, to the end that those v/ho, when 
 idle, had been injurious to the state, might, 
 when better instructed and trained, become 
 useful to it." This prison was erected in 
 1704. 
 
 Later still. Viscount Vilain XIV., Burgo- 
 master of Ghent, built the celebrated prison 
 of that town, the construction of which has 
 had its influence upon prison building in our 
 time ; but the architectural merits of the 
 prison built under his plan are the least to 
 commend it. Dr. F. H. Wines, in his valu- 
 able work, PimisJiment and Reformation, 
 gives Vilain the credit of being the father 
 of modern penitentiary science. He made 
 rules for the government of the prison and 
 the organization of labor in it, and reaUzed 
 that in the use of prisoners in productive 
 labor was to be found the primary agency 
 for reformation of criminals. He appre- 
 ciated the importance. Dr. Wines goes on to 
 say, of the selection of prison industries, 
 choosing, so far as practicable, such as would 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 165 
 
 come least into competition with free labor 
 on the outside. There was a great diversity 
 of vocations followed in his prison, among 
 which were carding, spinning, weaving, shoe- 
 making, tailoring, carpentry, and the manu- 
 facture of wool and cotton cards. He had 
 some purely penal pursuits for disciplinary 
 purposes, and he paid great attention to the 
 classification of prisoners. The prison was 
 opened in the year 1775. 
 
 Howard and Beccaria, the first an Eng- 
 lishman and the latter an Italian, h^ang and 
 working in the latter part of the eighteenth 
 century, showed the utility and necessity for 
 labor and the education of convicts. 
 
 Thus during the last two centuries the 
 elements underlying what may be called the 
 philosophy or the ethics of prison labor 
 were laid. Penologists, philanthropists, and 
 politicians, not only in the old coimtry, 
 but in this, long ago saw that purely penal 
 labor had no reformatory elements in it, and 
 that convicts must be put upon some prac- 
 tical, productive work, in order best to 
 secure their reformation. At the same time 
 
166 SOME ETHICAL PEASES 
 
 the State, through its representatives every- 
 where, felt obliged to so conduct its prison 
 industries as to secure the best returns to 
 the treasury ; and until about a quarter of a 
 century ago there was no serious discussion 
 of the systems of labor other than on a treas- 
 ury basis, — the profits which could be se- 
 cured to the State by the economic utiHza- 
 tion of prison labor. 
 
 The great changes which have come in 
 methods during that period, — the last 
 twenty-five years, — by which more sane 
 considerations have been followed, and by 
 which and under which many of the evils in 
 prison discipline have been brought to hght, 
 are due primarily to the agitation of the labor 
 reformers ; but, Hke all reforms, the real ele- 
 ments of the question involved soon passed 
 out of the hands of the initiators through 
 the recognition by the public of the crucial 
 principles involved. The labor reformers 
 made their attack along certain restricted 
 hues. They alleged that the employment 
 of convicts in productive industry interfered 
 largely with the rates of wages and with 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 167 
 
 prices, and hence prison industries were a 
 menace to their welfare. They were never 
 able to make out a very strong case on these 
 lines ; but great credit is due them for per- 
 sisting in their agitation, and thus aiding 
 penologists and philanthropists in calling at- 
 tention to the greater question of how re- 
 formatory measures coidd be introduced in 
 the conduct of prisons. Thus the prison- 
 labor question became something more than 
 a mere economic one. Here and there prison 
 labor did affect wages and prices, but in all 
 the investigations which I have made on this 
 subject during the last twenty years I have 
 never found much influence in either direc- 
 tion growing out of the employment of pris- 
 oners. The question was there, neverthe- 
 less, and demanded attention ; and it has 
 received it. 
 
 Political platforms on this subject were as 
 inconsistent, and even as amusing, as in 
 other directions. Parties would insist in 
 their platforms that the administration 
 should keep the prisoners at work, but in 
 such ways as to relieve outside labor of com- 
 
168 SOME ETHICAL PRASES 
 
 petition. Such a platform is in line with 
 another, which we have often seen, demand- 
 ing of administration a reduction in taxation 
 and a hberal expenditure for public uses. 
 
 In the first attacks the labor reformers in 
 many places demanded that prisoners should 
 not be employed at all. They soon saw that 
 this would not do, — that taxation for the sup- 
 port of prisons would cost them more than 
 the slight losses they might meet through 
 competition. They further saw that any 
 work done anywhere by any man, whether 
 in or out of prison, was in competition with 
 the work of some other man who wished to 
 perform the same service. They never quar- 
 relled when a large factory of a thousand 
 hands, for instance, was erected in a com- 
 munity ; but, when a thousand convicts were 
 set at work, they felt that their employment 
 was a menace to them. The reports that 
 have been pubhshed from time to time, both 
 by State governments and by the federal 
 government, have convinced the public that 
 the volume of labor performed in all the 
 prisons of the country was not and could 
 
OF TUB LABOR QUESTION 169 
 
 not be a menace to general industry. Nev- 
 ertheless, there was enough in it, as I have 
 said, to demand attention; and it has re- 
 ceived the most thoughtful consideration of 
 those men who are anxious not only to pre- 
 serve and strengthen economic conditions, 
 but to adopt those reformatory measures 
 which shall in the end prove of the greatest 
 advantage to society at large. 
 
 It was natural that the employment of 
 prisoners should assume various forms, and 
 hence we have haK a dozen systems of prison 
 labor. These have been known generally 
 as the Contract System, the Piece Price Sys- 
 tem, the Lease System, and the Pubhc Ac- 
 coimt System. Mr. Victor H. Olmsted, one 
 of the statistical experts of the United States 
 Department of Labor, in making up a digest 
 of convict labor laws in force in the United 
 States at the present time for the use of the 
 Lidustrial Commission, has very properly 
 classified the various systems authorized by 
 statutes for the employment of convicts into 
 two groups, as follows : — 
 
 First, systems under which the product 
 
170 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 or profits of the convicts' labor is shared by 
 the State with private individuals, firms, or 
 corporations. Under this group three dis- 
 tinct systems are authorized, known respec- 
 tively as the Contract System, the Piece 
 Price System, and the Lease System. 
 
 Second, systems under which convicts 
 are worked wholly for the benefit of the 
 State or its political subdivisions or public 
 institutions. Under this group he classes 
 three systems, also authorized by statutes, 
 known as the Public Account System, the 
 State Use System, and the Public Ways and 
 Works System. 
 
 All these systems or methods of employ- 
 ing convicts have been discussed over and 
 over again, their advantages and disadvan- 
 tages considered, and their effect upon the 
 treasury, upon the convict, and upon what is 
 known as free labor. In fact, all the ele- 
 ments concerning the employment of con- 
 victs have received very great attention, 
 not only from members of prison associa- 
 tions, but from legislators, economists, and 
 sociologists everywhere. 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 171 
 
 Looking back to the sentiments announced 
 by the men cited at the beginning of this 
 chapter, who may be denominated the pio- 
 neers in advanced thought relative to dis- 
 cipline in prisons and the employment of 
 inmates, it is found that at the present day 
 there have been modifications which lead to 
 conclusions entirely different from those 
 which formed the basis of statutory pro- 
 visions a quarter of a century ago. These 
 modifications have come through experience 
 and enlightenment. We have all changed 
 our views more or less. Personally, I am 
 very glad to say that, while studying this 
 question of prison labor officially for more 
 than a score of years, I have seen the 
 changes which have caused me to enlarge 
 my ideas in some respects, to modify them 
 in others. Contact with a system, practical 
 observation of it or any phase of it, are in- 
 structive and broadening. We all remember 
 how every one — especially in the north — at 
 all interested in penology and the effects of 
 prison labor would condemn in most unmiti- 
 gated terms the Lease System of the South. 
 
172 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 At the same time, they praised the Contract 
 System, which prevailed generally in northern 
 prisons. Afterwards we all began to con- 
 demn the Contract System ; while the labor 
 and prison reformers in the South, in begin- 
 ning to condemn their own system, demanded 
 the application of the Contract System of the 
 North. The enlightening influence of knowl- 
 edge in this respect was well illustrated 
 during the session of the National Prison 
 Association at Atlanta in 1886. During 
 that session the prison authorities of Georgia 
 invited the members of the association to 
 inspect a convict camp. It was my pleasure 
 to be one of the party. Going out on the 
 train, one could hear only general condem- 
 nation of the Southern system. Coming 
 back to the city, the remark was frequently 
 made, and by some of the most distinguished 
 penologists of the country, that they had 
 seen a great light ; that the employment of 
 the class of prisoners which prevailed most 
 generally in the South must, for a time, be 
 under the odious Lease System, for it fur- 
 nished them with outdoor work, and at the 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 173 
 
 same time helped the treasury. It would 
 have been insane on the part of the Southern 
 authorities to have placed the negro convicts, 
 especially, in such prison constructions as we 
 have in the North. It was made plain to 
 the Northern visitors that any such course 
 would have resulted in an enormous death- 
 rate, without any substantial economic re- 
 sults. They found that the Southern au- 
 thorities regretted the necessity of the Lease 
 System ; that, after the war, when the South- 
 ern States were obhged to take care of a 
 large class of criminals that had been dealt 
 with in different ways prior thereto, they 
 were compelled to resort to the most primi- 
 tive methods of employing them. So the 
 Lease System was really a valuable sug- 
 gestion at the time. It is outgrowing its 
 usefulness. The evils of it have proved 
 greater than its advantages, and the South- 
 ern authorities are considering this ques- 
 tion of prison labor along broader and 
 more enlightened lines. I refer to this 
 simply to show how any great question 
 changes with the conditions accompanying 
 
174 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 it, and with the thought and study of its 
 students. 
 
 The Contract System was and is probably 
 the best for the treasury, but for reformatory 
 purposes it lacks the elements of control. 
 The facts shown by investigation prove that, 
 on the whole, and without regard to systems, 
 all prisons are run at a loss to the State; 
 and the conclusion has been forced upon the 
 public mind that, if thousands of dollars 
 have to be paid for the support of prisons, 
 and the return for labor is not more than 
 from 50 to 75 per cent, of the cost, prison 
 labor might as well be turned into reforma- 
 tory measures as to be used simply for any 
 profit it brings to the treasury. This is the 
 greatest advance in the prisonrlabor question, 
 — the ignoring of the treasury, except in- 
 cidentally, and the adaptation of the work 
 and the education of convicts to the very 
 best results to the individual inmate. Hence 
 the Contract System had to go, and with it 
 the Piece Price System, which was only a 
 modification of it. I need not dwell upon 
 the evils of the Contract System, — which 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 175 
 
 was once thought, on the whole, the very 
 best that could be adopted, — for we all 
 know them. 
 
 The crude State Account System, under 
 which goods were made in the prisons, under 
 the control of the prison authorities, instead 
 of under outside contractors and the super- 
 intendence of outside instructors, and sold 
 for the benefit of the treasury, seemed at one 
 time to offer a fair solution of the diffi- 
 culties ; but this system proved insufficient, 
 for it was soon found that goods made by 
 convicts, and at the cost of the State as a 
 manufacturer, were sold on the market with- 
 out any very great regard to market prices. 
 And thus this system left a greater impres- 
 sion upon outside industry than the Contract 
 System itself ; at least, this was so in theory, 
 and it proved so in practice in many in- 
 stances. Yet the PubHc Account System 
 had in it reformatory elements which were 
 not found in either the Lease or the Contract 
 System. 
 
 The next step in the evolution was a 
 natural one, and one against which many 
 
176 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 objections were raised, and in carrying out 
 which some serious obstacles seemed to exist. 
 This step was the application of what is 
 properly called the State Use System, a phase 
 of the Public Account System of employing 
 prisoners. Under this system prisoners 
 were to be engaged in the manufacture of 
 things to be used by the prison itself, and 
 by other State or public institutions. It is 
 curious to note how rapidly this idea has 
 been adopted by State governments and by 
 the United States government. ' The Eng- 
 Hsh prisons gave the results of some expe- 
 rience in utilizing prisoners on public works, 
 and this led to the partial adoption of the 
 system of employing convicts in the manu- 
 facture of things which the State itself could 
 use. 
 
 The history of the adoption of the State 
 Use System in this country becomes interest- 
 ing at this point. Broadly, this system is, 
 as already intimated, the PubHc Account 
 System in all respects, except that the prod- 
 ucts of the convicts' labor manufactured 
 from raw materials purchased by the institu- 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 177 
 
 tions, and under the sole direction of prison 
 officials, or produced in agricultural or other 
 employments, are used in the penal, reform- 
 atory, or other pubHc institutions instead of 
 being sold to the general public. 
 
 Twenty-eight States of the Union provide 
 for the Contract System, six for the Piece 
 Price System, twenty-five for the Lease 
 System, forty-seven States and Territories, in- 
 cluding the District of Columbia, for the 
 PubHc Account System, and twenty-four for 
 the State Use features of the Public Account 
 System. In some of the States providing 
 for the State Use System there is still pro- 
 vision for the use of the Contract System, 
 and even for other phases of the different 
 systems; but, directing our consideration 
 now specifically to the State Use System, it is 
 found that the first State in the Union to 
 provide for it was Nevada, by an act of the 
 legislature approved Feb. 28, 1887. Ne- 
 vada did not adopt the broad State Use Sys- 
 tem as it is now conducted in some States ; 
 but it provided that State prison convicts en- 
 gaged in the manufacture of boots and 
 
178 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 shoes should make all the boots and shoes 
 required for the use of the inmates of the 
 prison and by wards of the State and other 
 institutions, to be paid for by such institu- 
 tions. By later acts, the State required the 
 employment of its convicts in preparing 
 stone and other materials for use in the con- 
 struction of public buildings. 
 
 The next State to indulge in any legisla- 
 tion upon this new system was Massachu- 
 setts, by an act approved June 16, 1887, in 
 which act it is provided that, — 
 
 " The general superintendent shall, as far 
 as may be, have manufactured in the State 
 prison, reformatories, and houses of cor- 
 rection such articles as are in common use 
 in the several State and county institutions. 
 He shall, from time to time, notify the of- 
 ficers of such institutions having charge of 
 the purchase of suppHes of such goods as 
 he has remaining in hand ; and said officers 
 shall, as far as may be, purchase of said 
 articles as are necessary to the maintenance 
 of the institutions which they may represent. 
 The articles manufactured in said prison, 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 179 
 
 reformatory, or house of correction shall be 
 sold at the wholesale market price of goods 
 of like kind and grade." 
 
 The legislation of other States providing 
 for the application of the State Use System 
 was secured at later periods, mostly since 
 1890, although some of them passed laws in 
 1888 and 1889. The States now providing 
 for the State Use System, or some general 
 feature of it, are Arkansas, California., Indi- 
 ana, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, 
 Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, 
 Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New 
 York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, 
 Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, 
 West Virginia, and Wisconsin. The United 
 States government, by acts passed in 1894— 
 95, provides that convicts m the United 
 States penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, 
 Kan., shall be employed exclusively in the 
 manufacture and production of articles and 
 supplies for the penitentiary and for the 
 government. 
 
 There are other States which adopt the 
 State Use principle in the employment of 
 
180 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 convicts in quarrying and preparing stone 
 for the building of roads and upon public 
 works, thus recognizing the principle in- 
 volved. These States are Delaware, Georgia, 
 Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, New Mex- 
 ico, South Dakota, Oregon, and Virginia. 
 
 It is not necessary for the purposes of 
 this chapter to discuss the experience of all 
 the above-mentioned States that have adopted 
 the State Use plan, even if the information 
 for such discussion were at hand. The in- 
 formation is not at hand, for there has been 
 no general investigation covering all the 
 States ; but we may learn of the value of this 
 system by looking to the experience of 
 Massachusetts and New York, two States 
 which have felt the effects of the agitation 
 of the prison-labor question as much as any 
 other State, and more than most of them. 
 
 Under the law of Massachusetts already 
 quoted, passed in June, 1887, that State had 
 no experience. Her experience has been 
 under the act of 1898, providing for the 
 employment of prisoners in making goods 
 for public institutions. New York's expe- 
 
OF THE LAB OB QUESTION 181 
 
 rience has been under the law of 1896, 
 which authorizes the employment of con- 
 victs in State prisons, penitentiaries, jails, 
 and reformatoiies in the production of com- 
 modities for use in any pubHc institution in 
 the State, such commodities to be paid for 
 thereby. In the application of the State 
 Use System, therefore. New York has had a 
 longer experience than Massachusetts. The 
 new constitution of the State of New York, 
 which went into effect Jan. 1, 1895, pro- 
 vides that, on and after the first day of 
 January in the year 1897, no person in any 
 prison, penitentiary, jail, or reformatory 
 shall be required or allowed to work, while 
 under sentence thereto, at any trade, indus- 
 try, or occupation wherein or whereby his 
 work, or the product or profit of his work, 
 shall be farmed out, contracted, given, or 
 sold to any person, firm, association, or cor- 
 poration ; but this section, by specific lan- 
 guage in the constitution, is not to be con- 
 strued to prevent the legislature from pro- 
 viding that convicts may work for, and that 
 the products of their labor may be disposed 
 
182 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 of to, the State or any political division 
 thereof, or for or to any public institution 
 owned or managed and controlled by the 
 State or any political division thereof. 
 
 The State Use System is therefore the 
 system of New York, both by constitutional 
 and statutory provision. The failure or the 
 success of this system in these two States 
 (New York and Massachusetts) must be 
 taken as indicative of the failure or success 
 in the other States that provide for it ; for 
 the obstacles and the disadvantages, as well 
 as the advantages, of the system are on trial 
 there more perfectly, probably, than in any 
 other Commonwealth. 
 
 The first obstacle or disadvantage to the 
 State Use System which suggested itself to 
 the minds not only of those who were thor- 
 oughly in favor of it, but of its opponents, 
 related to the volimie of demand by State 
 institutions for prison-made goods. It was 
 assumed by many, and with considerable 
 reason, that the niunber of convicts available 
 for the production of goods needed by the 
 State would be vastly in excess of the de- 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 183 
 
 mand therefor. The fallacy in the reason- 
 ing of the advocates of the system consisted 
 in a lack of real conception of the relation 
 of producers to consumers. It was loosely 
 argued that the prisoners would consume 
 what they made. 
 
 By the census of 1890 there was one 
 producer of manufactured goods to 14 of 
 the population. This statement involves all 
 manufactured products, whether consimied 
 in this country or exported. Taking a 
 single industry, that of men's clothing, it is 
 found that there was one producer to 248 
 of the population. Calculations based on 
 the actual needs of some States showed that, 
 in supplying those needs, only a small pro- 
 portion of the prisoners would be required. 
 This caused apprehension that many prison- 
 ers would have to be kept in idleness. For- 
 tunately for the system, this objection, it is 
 now thought, can be overcome, and, in fact, 
 has been partially overcome in two ways : 
 New York has solved the problem, if it can 
 be solved so far as this particidar objection 
 is concerned, first, by pro\dding that the 
 
184 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 product of prisons may be used in supplying- 
 all State institutions and those of any politi- 
 cal division, thus broadening the real market 
 for prison-made goods on the basis of the 
 State Use plan ; second, by the introduction 
 of methods of technical and trade education, 
 such methods to be applied whenever and 
 wherever there are any idle prisoners com- 
 petent to be instructed under the system. 
 
 Massachusetts has sought to solve this 
 problem, following the obstacle named, — 
 that is, lack of demand, — by providuig in 
 the preliminary stages of the system that, if 
 goods are manufactured beyond the demand, 
 they may be sold in the market under cer- 
 tain restrictions, and by allowing the Con- 
 tract System to prevail for a while. The 
 law under which the State Use System is 
 applied in Massachusetts was passed April 
 14, 1898 ; and this law declares that it shall 
 be the duty of the general superintendent 
 of prisons to cause to be produced, so far as 
 possible, in the State prison, the reforma- 
 tories, the State farm, and the jails and 
 houses of correction articles and materials 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 185 
 
 used in the several public institutions of the 
 Commonwealth and of the counties thereof. 
 It gives the managers of the different insti- 
 tutions controlled by the State or the coun- 
 ties the right to purchase their supphes of 
 outside producers, provided they cannot be 
 supplied by the prisons ; but it introduces a 
 very severe check on any pretence that they 
 cannot be suppHed by the prisons by specify- 
 ing that no bills for articles or materials 
 named in the list which the general superin- 
 tendent is obliged to furnish all institutions 
 in the State or counties purchased otherwise 
 than from a prison shall be allowed or paid 
 unless the bill is accompanied by a certificate 
 from the general superintendent that such 
 goods could not be supplied upon requisition 
 of the prisons. So, if articles or materials 
 are not on hand in the prison storehouses, 
 and are needed for immediate use, the super- 
 intendent shall at once notify the officer 
 making requisition that the same cannot be 
 filled; and then, and then only, can the 
 articles or materials be purchased elsewhere. 
 The particular fault of the law is that it does 
 
186 S03IE ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 not provide that all institutions in any politi- 
 cal division — those less than counties — are 
 to be supplied in the way provided for State 
 and county institutions. The New York 
 law is much better in this respect. 
 
 To learn how far this question of demand 
 and supply offers any obstacle to the success 
 of the State Use System, we must consult 
 the facts alone. Theories and wishes and 
 views are of no account. The superintend- 
 ent of prisons of New York states that the 
 system is working fairly well in this respect. 
 During a recent fiscal year there was a de- 
 crease in Sing Sing shipments of over 
 $113,500 and an increase in the shipments 
 from Auburn and CKnton of nearly $36,000, 
 or a net decrease for all of nearly $67,000. 
 The causes contributing to the decrease at 
 Sing Sing are to be found in the fact that 
 in 1897 and 1898 large quantities of supphes 
 were made there for the national guard. 
 The attorney-general held that the guard is, 
 under the special law governing it, exempt 
 from the provisions of the law requiring 
 purchases to be made of the prison ; so Sing 
 
 i 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 187 
 
 Sing is doing no work for the national 
 guard, that not being considered a State in- 
 stitution in the interpretation the attorney- 
 general puts upon the present law. 
 
 During the same year, 1897-98, $50,000 
 worth of street-brooms were shipped to the 
 city of New York ; but at present none are 
 being shipped to the city, as the State com- 
 missioner of prisons assigned the street-broom 
 industry to the Kings County Penitentiary, 
 and the brooms for New York City are now 
 made at that institution. The result of this 
 was that a thoroughly organized, instructive, 
 and prosperous industry, which during the 
 previous year was worked to its full capacity, 
 later on practically did nothing. Another 
 reason for the decrease in demands upon the 
 Sing Sing industries was the establishment 
 in several State hospitals and other chari- 
 table institutions of plants for the manu- 
 facture of their own supplies in the way of 
 boots, shoes, clothing, etc. The industries 
 at Auburn and Clinton prisons are such that 
 they have not been so seriously affected by 
 the causes just enumerated, and thus each 
 
188 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 of these prisons shows a slight increase in 
 shipments. 
 
 Varying demand for supplies and diffi- 
 culties in selecting industries belong to this 
 feature of the system; but, with the ex- 
 tension of the supplies under the New York 
 law to municipal as well as to State and 
 county institutions, these difficulties are 
 likely to disappear. Already the demand 
 for school furniture from Auburn has been 
 nearly doubled, while from another institu- 
 tion it has increased nearly 50 per cent. 
 The superintendent for New York reports 
 that in some kinds of supplies the requisi- 
 tions have much exceeded the capacity of 
 such industries for production, this bemg 
 true in respect to underwear, hosiery, 
 blankets, and school and office furniture. 
 Some other kinds of manufactures have been 
 for a season very active in meeting the actual 
 demands, but the requisitions diminish in 
 some degree and at times. 
 
 Of course, there is great difficulty in se- 
 lecting the right kind of industries. The 
 short experience of two years in New York, 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 189 
 
 however, has demonstrated that bottom facts 
 need to be studied and thoroughly digested 
 in selecting and organizing an industry for 
 permanent use in the prisons. These facts 
 indicate that the quahty and quantity of the 
 supplies required shall be satisfactory ; that 
 the prisons shall manufacture the supphes 
 successfully at market prices; that the de- 
 mand for the goods shall be permanent ; that 
 the amount of such supplies consumed shall 
 maintain such demand for them that their 
 production will furnish employment for a 
 sufficient number of prisoners to insure earn- 
 ings to meet the fixed charges of the indus- 
 try, — the compensation of instructors, fore- 
 men, officers, and the incidental expenses, — 
 and also afford a reasonable return to the 
 State for the labor of the convicts ; that such 
 production, furthermore, shall not exces- 
 sively compete with free labor or to its detri- 
 ment. These complex demands, which nec- 
 essarily enter into the choice of an industry, 
 make the exercise of the most careful and 
 discreet judgment of prison authorities vital 
 in organizing, adjusting, and operating in- 
 
190 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 dustries, so that successful production shall 
 not outrun the demand for the supphes. 
 
 Thus it is seen that the prison authorities 
 of New York are thoroughly alive to this 
 very question, constituting the first obstacle 
 that has been met in estabhshing the State 
 Use System. All the obstacles were sug- 
 gested many years ago by Sir Edmund Du- 
 Cane, one of the highest authorities in the 
 world on prison labor. 
 
 The experience of Massachusetts has been 
 practically that of New York, but it is in a 
 way fairly to meet the demand. When it 
 extends the system, as already intimated, to 
 municipalities, as can be done under the 
 New York law, it is believed the obstacle 
 now being treated will be overcome. 
 
 The second obstacle which has been raised 
 to this system relates to the variety of goods 
 needed by State institutions, it being feared 
 that the labor of the prisons is not of suf- 
 ficient skill to produce everything that may 
 be needed. This was also one of DuCane's 
 chief objections to a system which he thor- 
 oughly favored, and there is something in it. 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 191 
 
 Nevertheless, with the attachment to the 
 system of methods of technical and trade 
 education, there is no reason why nearly all, 
 if not all, the supplies requu-ed by public in- 
 stitutions cannot be produced. 
 
 If at any time the reader should be in Al- 
 bany, it is suggested that he go to the Capitol 
 and visit the office of the superintendent of 
 prisons of the State of New York. There he 
 will see a room finished in beautifully carved 
 panels of quartered oak. The workmanship 
 is fine, the designs beautiful, and the room as 
 handsome as any that can be found in a pub- 
 lic building ; yet the carving was all done by 
 the prisoners at Sing Sing, worked out to a 
 plan of matching, and the pieces shipped to 
 Albany, where they were put in place by 
 workmen of that city. It is an illustration 
 of the efPect of the efforts to educate pris- 
 oners in high-grade work. Of course, the 
 superintendent would not have fitted up tliis 
 beautiful room had it not been for the fact 
 that he wished to illustrate by this object- 
 lesson the results of the educational side of 
 the system. 
 
192 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 Dr. Brockway, late of the Elmira Reform- 
 atory, gives much information relative to 
 the results of technical and trade educa- 
 tion as carried on in the magnificent institu- 
 tion under his charge. The work has been 
 carried so far there that that prison has been 
 denominated a great technical university. 
 In this lies the solution, probably, of the 
 question relating to variety of products. 
 Time must be given the system to demon- 
 strate its fullest utility, but only in the edu- 
 cation of convicts can the obstacle relating 
 to variety be fully overcome. Without it, 
 it can only be partially overcome. 
 
 The third obstacle is one of sentiment, 
 purely and simply. Army officers in Ger- 
 many have objected to their commands 
 wearing uniforms made in prisons. Militia 
 officers in this country have offered the 
 same objection, yet they are glad to sleep 
 under blankets that are made by the pris- 
 oners; and I have been informed that 
 samples of uniforms made in prison, even 
 for officers' wear, are superior to those 
 usually furnished by the State through the 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 193 
 
 ordinary method of contract with outside 
 manufacturers. This obstacle will pass away 
 in time. It is not one that will effectually 
 block the progress of the State Use System. 
 It has been effective in some respects, but 
 it is believed that the objection is purely 
 temporary in its working. 
 
 The above are the main reasons which 
 have been offered why the State Use System 
 should not be adopted. As already stated, 
 at one time they had some weight ; but now, 
 in the Hght of practical experience, short as 
 it has been, they have no very great weight. 
 Certainly, the advantages of the system in 
 great measure offset the disadvantages or 
 objections. There are no permanent dis- 
 advantages to the system. There are only 
 temporary obstacles. The advantages are, 
 that the system makes the least possible 
 impression upon the rates of wages and the 
 prices of goods. To be sure, the amount of 
 products of the prisons consumed by the 
 State or any of its institutions reduces the 
 products of outside establishmentspro tanto ; 
 but there is no impression upon the vital 
 
194 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 elements of industry outside, — prices and 
 wages, — and it is conceded by all that the 
 prisoners must be kept employed if any 
 reformatory measures are to be adopted. 
 
 The workingmen, who found much fault 
 with the Contract System, are almost uni- 
 versally satisfied with the working of the 
 modern system, as are also the manufact- 
 urers, who do not have to compete with a 
 producer not obliged to consider cost in fix- 
 ing prices. If this satisfaction becomes gen- 
 eral, our legislatures will be reheved of great 
 pressure from two avenues of approach. 
 The paid lobbyist of the contractor will not 
 be found in the lobbies of the legislature, 
 nor will the committees of labor unions be 
 found antagonizing them. The subject it- 
 self will also be eliminated from pubHc dis- 
 cussion in large measure. Politics will in- 
 terfere now and then ; and in some States 
 where the State Use System has been adopted 
 it will be abolished, and older methods, or 
 something more injurious, be resorted to as a 
 makeshift. 
 
 One of the most powerful reasons for the 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 195 
 
 introduction of the State Use System is that 
 under it machinery is not employed to any 
 great extent. The use of machinery, the 
 making of the prison a factory for the rapid 
 production of goods, was one of the most 
 aggravating sources of annoyance to the 
 workingman. The use of hand machines, 
 or the production of goods by hand, reduces 
 this cause of attack to its minimum. At the 
 same time, it enables the prison authorities 
 to keep the prisoners themselves almost con- 
 stantly occupied in producing the goods 
 required of them. It also has an educa- 
 tional benefit that must be fully considered 
 and appreciated. If technical and trade 
 education is to accompany or become a part 
 of the State Use System, hand-labor methods 
 must be utilized to the fullest extent. Of 
 course, in the production of some goods, or 
 in the preparation of the raw material for 
 some of them, machinery must be used, as, 
 for instance, in the carding of wool for hand- 
 woven blankets and other goods. The set- 
 ting up of much powerful machinery in a 
 State prison will be avoided. 
 
196 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 The remunerative character of the State 
 Use System has been well exemplified in the 
 experience of both Massachusetts and New 
 York ; and, on the whole, the effect upon the 
 treasuries of these States has been as satisfac- 
 tory as, if not more so than, under the Con- 
 tract System. The testimony of Mr. Petti- 
 grove, the general superintendent of prisons 
 of Massachusetts, is to this effect. With 
 the small working capital appropriated by 
 the legislature, he has been able to establish 
 the industries called for by the law, and to 
 conduct them in such a way as to meet some 
 of the financial objections to the State Use 
 System. 
 
 In addition to the testimony of the 
 prison officials, or those immediately con- 
 nected with the administration of the law 
 relative to the State Use System in New 
 York and Massachusetts, we have the tes- 
 timony of several legislative committees 
 appointed to investigate different prison 
 systems, and to make recommendations to 
 their respective legislatures. Attention 
 will be called to but two of these, and first 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 197 
 
 to that of the Pennsylvania Legislative Com- 
 mittee, acting under authority of the law of 
 May 21, 1895, and resolutions of July 26, 
 
 1897. This committee, of which Hon. 
 Jacob Krouse, of Philadelphia, was chair- 
 man, submitted a report adopted Dec. 20, 
 
 1898. In this report the committee say — 
 and the report is understood to be unani- 
 mous, and was made after the members had 
 familiarized themselves with the systems of 
 convict labor prevailing in Pennsylvania and 
 other States — that from the information 
 obtained there was one gleam of Hght, and 
 that was exhibited by the State of New 
 York. The committee might have added, 
 had they made the report a few months 
 later, that there was light also from other 
 States. They stated that, prior to the pres- 
 ent law of New York, that State had been a 
 producer, manufacturer, and seller of com- 
 modities in the open market, competing with 
 other makers of the same products, but that 
 by the constitutional provision the State en- 
 forced a mandatory clause which would have 
 thrown every one of her convicts into a state 
 
198 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 of idleness except for a suggestion which 
 seemed to afford a solution of the difficulty. 
 That suggestion, which the committee state 
 was exactly in line with one which they had 
 made to the legislature of their State in a 
 report of 1897, related to the labor of pris- 
 oners for the benefit of charitable, benevo- 
 lent, and political institutions which the 
 State controlled or supported either in 
 whole or in part. After examining this sys- 
 tem, the committee concluded, after a labor- 
 ious investigation from all sides of the pres- 
 ent system prevailing in the State of New 
 York, and its applicability to Pennsylvania, 
 that there appears to be no objection offered 
 to it from any source. The committee had 
 before them very many prison officials, and 
 gathered a large amount of testimony ; and 
 they found that the unanimity with which 
 the State institutions of Pennsylvania gave 
 their assent to the new plan of operations 
 was remarkable. They found that the New 
 York prisons were enabled to employ their 
 inmates, and to teach new trades to such of 
 them as were willing to learn ; that the 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION • 199 
 
 State-supported institutions get their wants 
 supplied with the best quahty of goods, at 
 prices satisfactory to them ; that whatever 
 economies or earnings may result are fully 
 realized by the State, and the State alone, 
 without any injury to or complaint from the 
 representatives of labor outside, and, further, 
 with their acquiescence. The committee, 
 therefore, reported a bill providing for the 
 production in the several prisons of goods 
 required by all State-supported institutions. 
 This is the testimony of a most industrious 
 committee after long and patient investi- 
 gation. 
 
 New York has also had its legislative 
 committee investigating this subject ; and its 
 chairman, Hon. F. R. Peterson, made a 
 report on the subject of prison labor. The 
 resolution of the assembly appointing this 
 committee instructed its members particu- 
 larly to inquire into the efPect of the present, 
 or the State Use System qf convict labor 
 upon free labor. The general conclusions 
 of the committee were as follows : — 
 
 1. That the present system has not yet 
 
200 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 succeeded in furnishing employment for all 
 the convicts in State prisons. 
 
 2. That the financial results are as yet 
 inadequate and unsatisfactory. 
 
 3. That the labor classes of the State are 
 not at the present time suffering from the 
 competition of convict labor, as the same is 
 carried on in the prisons and penal institu- 
 tions of the State. 
 
 4. That the unsatisfactory results up to 
 the present time will be, in some degree, 
 obviated by greater experience and organiza- 
 tion. 
 
 5. That the principle of the greatest 
 diversification of industries, coupled with a 
 complete supply for the special market for 
 any line of goods manufactured, will best 
 preserve the laboring classes from convict 
 competition in the future. 
 
 6. That the industries in the peniten- 
 tiaries, and marketing of the products, 
 should be placed under the same control 
 as industries in the State prisons. 
 
 7. That the cell systems of the three 
 State prisons should be rebuilt by convict 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 201 
 
 labor, and also that a new wall should be 
 constructed at Sing Sing in the same man- 
 ner. 
 
 8. That the policy of prohibiting by 
 legislative enactment the employment of 
 convicts upon certain industries should be 
 discountenanced ; and, generally, that if the 
 present system be carried out faithfully and 
 intelligently, and without interference, it will 
 demonstrate within a few years the wisdom 
 of those who caused its adoption, and will 
 prove a better system of convict labor than 
 has ever before been employed in this State. 
 
 With the experience which has been out- 
 lined, and the testimony of the committees 
 referred to, there is, nevertheless, some 
 grumbling or condemnation of the system; 
 but this condemnation, it seems to me, results 
 from a lack of understanding of the system 
 and its workings. There will be deficits 
 here and there, a decrease in the demand 
 for goods sometimes, and other difficulties 
 that will have to be met by legislatures and 
 by prison officers. One way of meeting the 
 objection relative to the non-employment of 
 
202 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 a portion of the prisoners relates to the use 
 of them in the reclamation of waste lands by- 
 trenching or reforestization, where such 
 things can be carried on ; to the building of 
 canals and roads, and other public works; 
 and to the utilization of prisoners in prepar- 
 ing material by hand labor for the many 
 purposes of the State. These supplementary 
 provisions will probably result in overcoming 
 all the obstacles that are now raised against 
 the State Use System, the general adoption 
 of which is still a matter which experience 
 alone can determine. Such experience must 
 be secured under varying conditions, and to 
 such extent as will demonstrate the prac- 
 ticability of the new methods. 
 
 I have purposely avoided discussing at 
 length the merits and demerits of other 
 systems than the State Use System, and 
 have made no attempt whatever at being 
 consistent with what I may have stated 
 in the past in any place or in any official 
 report. Nevertheless, it is gratifying to 
 find, on consulting articles and reports 
 which I have written, that I am not very 
 
OF TUE LABOR QUESTION 203 
 
 inconsistent after all, for in 1879 I recom- 
 mended to the Massachusetts legislature 
 the enactment of laws looking to the pro- 
 duction in the prisons of the State of all 
 goods required by them or by any depart- 
 ment of the State ; that the greatest diver- 
 sity of employment consistent with the 
 capacity of the prisoners be insisted upon, 
 and that, whenever possible, farms be car- 
 ried on by the prison administration for 
 the supplying of institutions ; and, again, 
 in 1880, that the use of all power ma- 
 chinery be prohibited in prison shops, and 
 the convicts employed upon hand work, 
 as upon hand-made boots and shoes, hand- 
 woven goods for prison wear, and other 
 State purposes ; and, further, that all 
 idea of making prisons self-supporting be 
 abandoned, and the convicts be taught 
 to turn their hands to any trade requir- 
 ing skill and training. Nevertheless, in 
 the study of the subject of prison labor 
 for more than a score of years, I have, 
 with all other students of the same sub- 
 ject, been willing to abandon some no- 
 
204 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 tions, to modify some views, and to accept 
 the results of practical experience. 
 
 Under the agitation, the idea has grown 
 that the convict or the criminal should be 
 treated from the physician's point of view, — 
 as a man morally sick, restricted in his lib- 
 erty for the sake of society, but, while 
 being restricted, given the best possible 
 opportunity for moral development and 
 also for the development of his working 
 powers, so that when he is freed he may 
 take up self-sustaining work as a good 
 citizen of the community. 
 
 This state of affairs shows the remark- 
 able changes in prison discipline and the 
 development of the prisoner, and is one 
 of the strongest answers to the allega- 
 tion that progress is apparent and not 
 real. Here is a concrete illustration of 
 the real moral and economic progress. 
 Now, instead of the old degrading condi- 
 tions, in all prisons everywhere civilized gov- 
 ernments are conducting prison industries 
 in such a way as to leave the least im- 
 pression on prices and wages. They are 
 
OF THE LABOB QUESTION 205 
 
 recognizing the force of the suggestion 
 that it is the interest of labor and capital 
 to reduce the number of prisoners as an 
 initiative to means of greater reform; that 
 they must so deal with criminals as to ef- 
 fect a cure of moral maladies ; that prisons 
 should be conducted in the interest of the 
 prisoners and of society primarily, and 
 that the interest of the treasury should 
 be only incidental to the best effect upon 
 the prisoners themselves and upon the 
 community. 
 
 With these comments, I may be indulged 
 in stating a few conclusions, although the 
 facts which lead to all of them have not 
 been discussed in this paper. These con- 
 clusions are : — 
 
 1. That it is wisest to conduct prison in- 
 dustries in such a way as to leave the least 
 impression on prices and the rates of wages. 
 
 2. That for incorrigibles and recidivists 
 that form of labor should be adopted which 
 requires the largest expenditure of muscle in 
 proportion to the cost of raw materials and 
 the least outlay of capital. 
 
206 SOME ETHICAL PHASES 
 
 3. That there is not so much reformable 
 material in prisons as philanthropists and 
 others would have us believe. 
 
 4. That very many persons now sent to 
 prison by the courts should be sent to in- 
 sane asylums, or institutions for the treat- 
 ment of the feeble-minded. 
 
 5. That it is the interest of labor and cap- 
 ital to reduce the number of prisoners rather 
 than constantly to attack the systems of 
 prison labor. 
 
 6. That in the conduct of prisons and the 
 employment of prisoners the physician's 
 point of view should be followed ; that is, 
 the cure of moral maladies in State prisons, 
 as well as the cure of mental and physical 
 maladies in other institutions, should be the 
 basis of management. 
 
 7. That in the employment of convicts 
 the effect upon the treasury should be inci- 
 dental to the best effect upon the prisoners 
 themselves and upon the community at 
 large. 
 
 8. That it is wise to let the system now 
 on trial in the States that have provided for 
 
OF THE LABOR QUESTION 207 
 
 it — the State Use System — alone until it 
 can be fully tried, and determined whether 
 it involves the very best elements of reforma- 
 tion, remimeration, and the constant and 
 healthy employment of the convicts. 
 
 9. That the State should always conduct 
 its prisons and employ its prisoners in such 
 a way that the individual shall not be de- 
 graded. 
 
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