MWKWOEK5* t$&8 BY THE Rev. R. HEBER NEWTON. I. Philistinism : Plain Words Concerning Certain Forms of Unbelief. Pp. ix. 4- 322. i6mo, cloth, $1.00; paper . . 50 CONTENTS. Concerning Philistinism and its Goliath Christianity and its Critics Dogmas : The Trinity and Original Sin Election and Atonement The Resurrection of the Body and Future Pun- ishment. The Mystery of Matter Mind in Nature Design in Nature The Problem -of Pain in the Animal World The Problem of Pain in the Human World The Historic Fact Jesus the Christ Immortality in the Light of Physical Science. " We would commend these sermons to the thoughtful souls who want more light and stronger reasons for the old faiths." inter-Ocean. II. Womanhood. Lectures on Woman's Work in the World. i2mo, pp. 315 . . . . i 25 " All earnest women, and candid, unselfish men, will read this series of chapters with warm gratitude to its author." The Nation. " No woman, young or old, can read these lectures without great profit. . . . We wish they might find a place in every home where mother, wife, or daughter dwells.' National Journal of Education. III. The Book of the Beginnings. A Study of Genesis, with a General Introduction to the Study of the Penta- teuch. i6mo, cloth, pp. xv. -(- 37 .100 Paper 40 " He has read the best books intelligently, and stated their results clearly, in a not unattractive style and in a reverent spirit. These ' talks ' will be acceptable to the general public, who wish to see on what grounds the critics base their conclusions re- specting the Pentateuch." The Nation. IV. The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible. i6mo, cloth, pp. 264 75 " It is impossible to read these sermons without high admiration of the author's courage, of his honesty, his reverential spirit, his wide and careful reading, and his true conservatism." American Literary Churchman. V. Social Studies. i6mo, cloth . . . .100 CHIEF CONTENTS. A Bird's-Eye-View of the Labor Problem The Story of Cooperative Production and Cooperative Credit in the United States The Story of Cooperative Distribution in the United States Is the State Just to the Workingman ? Old-Time Guilds and Modern Commercial Associations The Prevention of Intemperance Moral Education in the Public Schools The Free Kindergarten in Church Work The Religious Aspect of Socialism and Communism. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, NEW YORK AND LONDON. SOCIAL STUDIES R. HEBER NEWTON ' * RECTOR OF ALL SOULS* CHURCH, NBW YORK NEW YORK & LONDON G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS &\t Jmiclurbochtr |!ss 1887 fft COPYRIGHT BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 1886 I Press of G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS New York CONTENTS. PAGE I. A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE LABOR QUESTION . 3 II. THE STORY OF CO-OPERATIVE PRODUCTION AND CO-OPERATIVE CREDIT IN THE UNITED STATES 85 III. THE STORY OF CO-OPERATIVE DISTRIBUTION IN THE UNITED STATES . . . . -113 IV. Is THE STATE JUST TO THE WORKINGMAN ? . 133 V. OLD-TIME GUILDS AND MODERN COMMERCIAL ASSOCIATIONS . *53 VI. THE PREVENTION OF INTEMPERANCE . . . 175 VII. MORAL EDUCATION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS . 199 VIII. THE FREE KINDERGARTEN IN CHURCH WORK . 215 IX. THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF SOCIALISM . . 261 X. COMMUNISM. 299 XI. NOTES 359 A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE LABOR PROBLEM. OUTLINE. The labor question coming on two sides of it. 1. Faults of labor (i) Inefficiency and lack of interest in its work (2) Lack of identification with its employers (3) Thriftlessness (4) Lack of power of combination and of wisdom in using its power Trades unions Strikes Arbitration The provident features of trades unions Trades unions and legislation Trades unions and bureaus of labor statistics Co- operation In Europe In the United States Trades unions and co-opera- tion Correction of labor's faults. 2. Social conditions partly responsible for these faults (i) Conditions causing labor's inefficiency Heredity Environment Defective legislation Defective education Society's duty touching education State's duty touching education (2) Conditions creating labor's lack of interest Changed character of industry in modern world Employers have failed to appreciate this, and to provide for the better social condition of working- men Examples of the true relation of capital to labor in Europe and the United States Arbitration as a substitute for strikes (3) Conditions en- gendering thriftlessness of labor Lack of education in habits of saving Intermittent occupation Discouraging influence of poverty How poverty is aggravated by monopolies (4) The task before society. 3. Social forces favoring capital and land against labor (i) Legislation works against labor (2) Industrial development works against labor Effect of machinery Labor must control mechanism What the State may do to help this The problem of distribution (3) Land works against labor Land the basis of industry Labor's relation to the soil in a simple state of society Changes in the tenure of land Monopolies of land Effects upon civilization Relations of rent to labor The problem of land nation- alization First step towards the people's proprietorship of land. 4. Summary Suggestions-r-Objections to governmental action con- sidered. A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE LABOR PROBLEM.* The broad fact that the United States census of 1870 esti- mated the average annual income of our wage-workers at a little over $400 per capita, and that the census of 1880 esti- mates it at a little over $300 per capita, is quite sufficient evi- dence that there is a labor question coming upon us in this country. The average wages of 1870, after due allowance for the inclusion of women and children, indicated a mass of miserably paid labor that is, of impoverished and degraded labor. The average wages of 1880 indicated that this mass oi semi-pauperized labor was rapidly increasing, and that its con- dition had become twenty-five per cent, worse in ten years. The shadow of the old world proletariat is thus seen to be stealing upon our shores. It is for specialists in political economy to study this problem in the light of the large social forces that are working such an alarming change in our Ameri- can society. In the consensus of their ripened judgment we must look for the authoritative solution of this problem. I am not here to assume that role. I have no pet hobby to propose, warranted to solve the whole problem without failure. I do not believe there is any such specific yet out. *Read before the United States Senate Committee on Education and Labor, September 18, 1883, on' invitation of the committee. 3 4 LABOR'S OWN FAULTS. While I await hopefully the broad study of these problems by trained specialists, and while I thoroughly recognize that mighty natural laws are driving the world of industry and trade, yet I do not think we ought to make fetishes of such laws, and sit down before them with the impotence of despair. The natural laws which adjust the affairs of man take up into themselves, as factors in their forces, reason, sentiment, con- science and will. Man weights these laws by his ignorance and folly and selfishness, and can weight them on the other side by his wisdom and conscience and brotherliness. He can largely command the natural law of society, just as he so largely commands the natural law of the physical world. My vocation leads me to study natural law as the expression of mind and will. And so in political economy I see the laws of man as he is, of the average existing man, and find at the core of the evils human fault, the errors and wrongs and imperfections of the beings who are the atoms in the social world, in the correction of which things will be bettered. Tregarva, in "Yeast," summed his conclusions upon the imbruted state of the peas- antry in an English village into one sentence " Somebody deserves to be whopped for all this." Who ought to be whopped here ? Like every other dispute of which I know any thing, there are two sides to the question as to where the fault lies for the present state of labor. I. Plainly, labor's first fault must be found with itself. (i.) Its inefficiency and Jack of interest in its "work. Leaving upon one side the class of skilled labor, a large proportion of our wage workers are notoriously inefficient. In the most common tasks, one has to watch the average workingman in order to prevent his bungling a job. Hands are worth little THKIFTLESSNESS. 5 without some brains as in the work done, so in the pay won. Our labor is quite as largely uninterested having no more heart than brains back of the hands. Work is done mechani- cally by most workingmen, with little pride in doing it well, and little ambition to be continually doing it better. (2.) Lack of identification with its employers. There is too commonly as little sense of identity with the employer's inter- ests, or of concern that any equivalent in work should be ren- dered for the pay received. In forms irritating beyond ex- pression, employers are made to feel that their employees do not in the least mind wasting their material, injuring their property, and blocking their business in the most critical moments. Under what possible system, save in a grievous dearth of laborers, can such labor be well off, and incompetence and in- difference draw high wages ? (3.) Thriftlessness. Our labor is for the most part very thriftless. In the purchase and in the preparation of food the chief item of expense in the workingman's family, and that wherein economic habits count for most men and wo- men are alike improvident. The art of making money go the farthest in food is comparatively unknown. Workingmen will turn up their noses at the fare on which a Carlyle did some of the finest literary work of our century. I remember some time ago speaking to one of our butchers, who told me that work- ingmen generally ordered his best cuts. Now an ample supply of nutritious food is certainly essential for good work, whether of brain or of brawn. The advance of labor is rightly gauged, among other ways, by its increasing con- sumption of wheat and meat, but the nutritiousness of meat is not necessarily dependent upon its being the finest cut. I should like to see all men eating lamb chops and porter- house steaks, if they could afford it ; but, when I know the 6 THRIFTLESSNESS. average wages of our workingmen and the cost of living on the simplest possible scale, it is discouraging to learn such a fact as that which I have mentioned, since all the elements of necessary sustenance can be had in so much cheaper forms. The French artisans and peasants could give our people many a hint how to make money go the farthest in food supplies. Comparatively few of our workingmen's wives know much about real economy in the preparation of food. Quite commonly they do not bake at all at home, but buy bread, poor in quality and dear in price. They are, for the most part, ignorant of the art of making a soup which, if so solid a figure could be applied to so liquid an object, might be the piece de resistance of a dinner. Most of their processes, as I have learned of them in this city, are very wasteful. As in their food, so is it in their dress and other ex- penses, and notably in indulgences, such as smoking, drinking, excursioning, etc. Labor's drink-bill alone is enough to ac- count for a considerable share of its present poverty. In this city there are some ten thousand licensed drinking places ten miles of shops one to every 115 inhabitants or to every thirty families. New York fairly represents other cities. Nor are our towns and villages much better in this respect. I know of one factory village where there is a liquor shop for every 80 in- habitants, that is, for every sixteen families ; and nearly all these shops are thriving. The retail liquor trade of the United States in 1878 was given as over seven hundred millions of dollars, a large share of which stands for the wastage of our workingmen. Three dririks and three cigars a day, at the low- est prices, five cents apiece, would represent in the course of a year over $100, or one-third of the average wages of our work- ingmen ; that is, one dollar in every three earned thrown away in such habits. LACK OF COMBINATION. 7 The reckless multiplication in their families is a thrift- lessness about which it is not pleasant to say much, while it cannot be ignored in the study of this problem. These are but specimens of the thriftlessness of the average workingman. The same fault runs through his life in many other ways. The old-fashioned thrift, by which our fathers and mothers climbed the lower rounds of the ladder, and which all experience shows to be the secret of success in the first and hardest pull of life, seems quite gone out of vogue ; and how without it men are to forge ahead honestly in this world whatever may be true in other worlds I for one do not know. The Franklin type of the genus workingman seems wellnigh extinct among us. (4) Its lack of power of combination and of wisdom in using its power. Labor must fault itself further, on the ground of its lack of power of combination and of its defective methods in combination. It has been by combination that the middle class has arisen, and by it that capital has so wonderfully in- creased. The story of the Middle Ages, familiar to us all, is the story of the rise of the industrial class by combination in guilds. Labor's numbers, now a hindrance, might thus become a help. In a mob men trample upon each other ; in an army they brace each other for the charge of victory. Trades unions represent the one effective form of combina- tion thus far won by American labor. Trades unions need no timid apologists. Their vindication is in the historic tale of the successful advances which they have won for workingmen. Called into being to defend labor against legislation in the in- terests of capital, in the days when to ask for an advance in wages led to workingmen's being thrown into prison, they have in England led on to the brilliant series of reforms which mark our century, as told so well in the articles by Mr. Howell (The 8 TRADES UNIONS. STRIKES. Nineteenth Century for October, 1882) and by Mr. Harrison (The Contemporary Review for October, 1883). Doubtless they have committed plenty of follies, and are still capable of stupid tyrannies that only succeed in handicapping labor, in alienating capital, and in checking productivity that is, in lessening the sum total of divisible wealth. Such actions are inevitable in the early stages of combination on the part of uneducated men, feeling a new sense of power, and striking blindly out in angry retaliation for real or fancied injuries. Trades unions are gradually, however, outgrowing their crude methods. The attempts, such as we have seen lately, of great corporations to break them up, is a piece of despotism which ought to receive an indignant rebuke from the people at large. Labor must combine, just as capital has combined in forming these very corporations. Labor's only way of defend- ing its interests as a class is through combination. It is the abuse, and not the use, of trades unions against which resist- ance should be made. The chief abuse of our trades unions has been their concen- tration of attention upon the organization of strikes. Strikes seem to me, in our present stage of the " free con- tract system," entirely justifiable when they are really neces- sary. Workingmen have the right to combine in affixing a price at which they wish to work. The supply of labor and the demand for goods, in the absence of higher considerations, will settle the question as to whether they can get the increase. The trying features of this method of reaching a result are in- cidental to our immature industrial system. Strikes have had their part to play in the development of that system. We note their failures, and forget their successes ; but they have had their signal successes, and have won substantial advantages for labor. Their chief service, however, has been in teaching STRIKES. 9 combination and in showing labor the need of a better weapon by which to act than the strike itself. The strike requires long practice and great skill to wield it well. Practice in it is more costly than the experiments at Woolwich. Mr. Bolles, in his new work on political economy, gives some statistics which abundantly illustrate the folly of strikes ; although he only gives one side of the case, namely, the losses which fall directly upon the laborers themselves. If to these were added the losses of capitalists, the aggregate would become colossal. In 1829 the Manchester spinners struck, and lost $1,250,000 in wages before the dispute was at an end. The next year their brethren at Ashton and Stayley- bridge followed their example in striking and losing $1,200,000. In 1833 the builders of Manchester forfeited $360,000 by vol- untary idleness. In 1836 the spinners of Preston threw away $286,000. Eighteen years afterward, their successors, seven- teen thousand strong, slowly starved through thirty-six weeks, and paid $1,200,000 for the privilege. Heavy losses marked, too, the strike of the London builders in 1860, and that of the tailors in 1868, and that again of the northern iron workers in 1865. The strike of the Belfast linen weavers, which was ended a few weeks since by the mediation of the British Asso- ciation for the Advancement of Science, cost the operatives $1,000,000. The cost of strikes is expressible only in an aggregate of the savings of labor consumed in idleness, of the loss to the pro- ductivity of the country, of the disturbance of the whole mechanism of exchange, and of the injury wrought upon the delicate social organization by the strain thus placed upon it. The famous Pittsburgh strike is estimated to have cost the country ten millions of dollars. When so costly a weapon is found to miss far more often than it hits, it is altogether too dear. 10 ARBITRATION. Labor ought to have found out that a stunning blow between the eyes is not the best method of inducing a kindly feeling and a just judgment on the part of capital. It ought to have found out that the strike is a boomerang, whose hardest blows are often dealt backward on the striker. Trades unions in this country seem to me to be gravely at fault in clinging to such an obsolete weapon. They should have turned their attention to our modern improvements upon this bludgeon. Arbitration is a far cheaper and more effective instrument of adjusting differences between capital and labor a far more likely means of securing a fair increase of wages. It places both sides to the controversy in an amicable mood, and is an appeal to reason and conscience, not wholly dead in the most soulless corporations. It costs next to nothing. It is already becoming a substitute for strikes in England, where the trades unions are adopting this new weapon. Mr. Frederick Harrison writes, in his address before the late trades union congress of England, as follows : There are no men, I believe, in the country more opposed to a policy of strikes more convinced of the suffering they cause than the officers and managers of the great permanent societies. There is a fine passage in the admirable report before you : " The measure of value in a strong union lies not so much in the conduct of successful strikes as it does in the number of disputes its moral strength prevents. Their influence and that of your con- gress has been steadily exerted to substitute arbitration for strikes. Even now in this melancholy dispute [a local strike of some magnitude], it is the workmen who offer and the employers who reject arbitration. Your influ- ence in favor of arbitration is shown in the steady progress of that principle, and in the steady diminution of actual strikes, until their cost does not reach to one per cent, [of the expenditures of the unions] ; but you have done all that you can do, and you will continue to do all you can to insure that even this small percentage may be spared to you, and that arbitration may pre- vail in all labor disputes. ENGLISH TRADES UNIONS, ' 1 1 Trades unions ought, among us, to emulate the wisdom of European workingmen, and use their mechanism to organize forms of association which should look not alone to winning higher wages but to making the most of existing wages, and ul- timately to leading the wage system into a higher development. The provident features of the English trades unions are com- monly overlooked, and yet it is precisely in these provident features that their main development has been reached. Mr. George Howell shows that a number of societies, which he had specially studied, had spent in thirty years upward of $19,000,000 through their various relief funds, and $1,269,455 only on strikes. Mr. Harrison speaks of seven societies spending in one year (1879) upward of $4,000,000 upon their members out of work. He shows that seven of the great societies spent in 1882 less than two per cent, of their income on strikes ; and states that 99 per cent, of union funds in Eng- land " have been expended in the beneficent work of support- ing workmen in bad times, in laying by a store for bad times, and in saving the country from a crisis of destitution and strife." Trades unions ought to be doing for our workingmen what trades unions have already done in England. Mr. Harrison, in the address already quoted, after enumerating some of the beneficial actions of the unions, says : Besides many others, too numerous to specify, I have no hesitation in saying that the labor laws passed within the last twelve years alone form a body of legislation for the good of the working classes of this country such as no other civilized country in the world can show. Not Germany, where the all-powerful chancellor has now taken labor under his special protec- tion ; not even France or the United States, with their republic and man- hood suffrage. It cannot be denied that this great body of legislation is to a great degree directly due to the efforts of this congress. It has been by the power of combination among the work- 12 OUR UNIONS. ingmen, developed through the trades unions, that this long list of beneficent legislation factory acts, mines' regulation acts, education acts, tenant right acts, employers' liability acts, acts against "truck," acts against cruelty to animals, etc. has been secured. It has been wrested from reluctant parlia- ments by the manifestation of strength on the part of the laboring classes. In comparison with this brilliant showing, what have our trades unions done to affect the legislation of our States ? That legislation has thus far been notoriously and shamefully in the interests of one class as against another in the interest of capital as distinguished from labor. We have had bushels of bills for the furthering of capitalistic schemes, with here and there a grain chucked in for labor. Our trades unions might be the means of securing one of the great necessities of labor in this country accurate and generally diffused information concerning the state of the labor market. Were there any thorough combination in existence on the part of these unions, there could be diffused through the great centres of labor in the East regular reports of the labor market in the different local centres of the country, such as would guide workingmen in their search for opportunities of work. Such information would be trusted because it would come from their own class, and would be reliable because it would be given from those on the spot ; and yet our trades unions, so far as I know, have made next to no attempt, even within their own" peculiar spheres, to give to their members any such information in the' hardest of times. In their hands is already existent needing only to be used the mechanism for a bureau of information which would prove of incalculable value to our workingmen. Another action that our labor unions might take in the inter- CO-OPERA TION. 1 3 est of the workingmen is in the development of co-operation. The story of European co-operation is one of the most encour- aging tales of our modern industrial world. Germany, for example, had in 1878 some 3,730 credit societies : of which 806 reported 431,216 members ; advances for the year, in loans to their members, $375,000,000, with a loss of one mark to every 416 thalers, or 23^ cents on every $297 an indication of soundness in their financial operations that many capital- istic corporations might well envy. The rapid growth of these societies is bringing the omnipotence of credit to the aid of the workingman in Germany. We have within the past decade had a most encouraging growth of a somewhat similar form of co-operation in the building and loan associations, which are now estimated to number probably about 3,000 in the nation, with a member- ship of 450,000, and an aggregated capital of $75,000,000. The co-operative stores have reached a wonderful develop- ment in England, with most beneficent results. There were 765 stores reporting to the congress in 1881, which showed aggregate sales of $65,703,990, with profits of $435,000 ; while Scotland reported 226 stores in the same year, represent- ing sales of $17,423,170, and profits of $113,665. Against this showing, our workingmen have comparatively little to offer. We have, it is true, had a great deal more experimenting in co-operative distribution than is ordinarily supposed. Co-operative stores began among us between 1830 and 1840. The Workingmen's Protective Union developed a great many stores at this time, which together did a business in their best days ranging from $1,000,000 to $2,000,000 per annum. In the decade i86o-'7o there was an extensive revival of co-operative stores ; plans for wholesale agencies being discussed. A few of these earlier stores still live. Two great 14 CO-OPERA TION. national orders have arisen, seeking to build up co-operative stores, among other aims. The Grangers had in 1876 twenty State purchasing agencies, three of which did a business annually of $200,000, and one of which did an annual business of $1,000,000. They claimed to have, about the same time, five steamboat or packet lines, fifty societies for shipping goods, thirty-two grain elevators, and twenty-two warehouses for storing goods. In 1876 one hun- dred and sixty Grange stores were recorded. In 1879 it was officially stated that " local stores are in successful operation all over the country." The Sovereigns of Industry also developed co-operative distribution largely. In 1877 President Earle reported that " ninety-four councils, selected from the whole, report a mem- bership of 7,273, and with an average capital of $884 did a business last year of $1,089,372.55. It is safe to assume that the unreported sales will swell the amount to at least $3,000,000." There have been numerous stores started apart from these orders. The finest success won is that of the Philadelphia In- dustrial Co-operative Society. Starting in 1875 with one store, it has now six stores. Its sales for the quarter ending February 18, 1882, were $5i,4 T 3.63. A considerable increase of interest in such stores marks the opening of our decade. Stores are starting up in various parts of the country. The Grangers claim to have now hundreds of co-operative stores, upon the Rochdale plan, in successful operation. Texas alone reports officially (1881) seventy-five co-operative societies connected with this order. Yet while we have had a great deal more co-operative distri- bution than is usually supposed, we have had nothing compar- able with the splendid development in England. CO-OP ERA TION. 1 5 In the line of co-operative. production, which has been so successfully essayed in France, we have scarcely a handful of real successes. We had an epoch of brilliant enthusiasm over co-operative agriculture in 1840-50, but little now remains from it. One form of agricultural co-operation, a lower form, has been astonishingly successful the cheese factories and creameries. It is estimated that there are now 5,000 of them in the country. In co-operative manufactures, we have had many experiments, from 1849 onward, but few successes. Massachusetts reported twenty-five co-operative manufactures in 1875. All of them, however, were small societies. Now, co-operation has its clearly marked limitations. It is of itself no panacea for all the ills that labor is heir to. But it can ameliorate some of the worst of those ills. It can effect great savings for our workingmen, and can secure them food and" other necessaries of the best quality. If nothing further arises, the spread of co-operation may simply induce a new form of competition between these big societies ; but no one can study the history of the movement without becoming per- suaded that there is a moral development carried on, which will, in some way as yet not seen to us, lead up the organiza- tion of these societies into some higher generalization, securing harmony. It is constantly and rightly said that business can never dispense with that which makes the secret of capital's success in large industry and trade namely, generalship. Co- operation can, it is admitted, capitalize labor for the small in- dustries, in which it is capable of making workingmen their own employers ; but it is said that it can never, through committees of management, carry on large industries or trade. I can, however, see no reason why hereafter it may not enable large associations to hire superior directing ability, at high salaries, 1 6 USES OF CO-OPERATION. just as paid generals give to republics the leadership which kings used to supply to monarchies. There are in the savings banks of many manufacturing centres in our country amounts which if capitalized would place the workingmen of those towns in industrial independence ; moneys which, in some in- stances, are actually furnishing the borrowed capital of their own employers. In such towns our workingmen have saved enough to capitalize their labor, but, for lack of the power of combination, they let the advantage of their own thrift inure to the benefit of men already rich. They save money and then loan it to rich men to use in hiring them to work on wages, while the profits go to the borrowers of their own savings. But the chief value of co-operation, in my estimate, is its educating power. It opens for labor a training school in the science and art of association. Labor once effectively united could win its dues, whatever they may be. The difficulties of such association have lam in the undeveloped mental and moral condition of the rank and file of the hosts of labor. The history of the various attempts at a higher association among our workingmen forms a sad story of ignorance, suspicion, timidity, irresolution, fickleness and lack of self-control ; by which wise plans and heroic labors have again and again come to naught. The several forms of co-operation present the best means of educating our working- men in the qualities wherein they are most lacking, and thus of fitting them for that action of self-help which must prove the first step to their salvation. Now, of this effort at cb- operation I find scarcely any trace in the trade organizations of our workingmen. Trades unions have until very lately passed the whole subject by in utter silence. What has been done by workingmen in this country in the line of co-operation has been done outside of the great POLITICAL ACTION. \J trade associations, which form the natural instrumentalities for organizing such combination. They offer the mechanism, the mutual knowledge, the preliminary training in habits of combi- nation, which together should form the proper conditions for the development of co-operation. Is it not a singular thing, considering the manifold benefits that would come to labor from such a development, that the attention of these great and powerful organizations has not heretofore been seriously called to this matter ? It is a hopeful sign that two of our later trade organizations avow distinctively in their platforms the princi- ple of co-operation. The Central Labor Union of this city and the Knights of Labor both profess to seek the development of co-operation. It remains to be seen whether there will be any thing more than -the profession. Out of our trades unions, by combination among them, there might be already developed on our soil a power representing the labor element of the country which, with universal fran- chise, would be practically omnipotent. Could our trades unions enter the field of politics, with reference to measures in the interests of their own classes ; measures justifiable, rTeces- sary, and on which reasonable minds could be readily con- vinced ; not many elections would be held in our various States before these reforms would be accomplished. Is there not a certain aspect of childishness on the part of so vast and power- ful a body of men as is represented by those trades unions, in their pitiful appeals to government for the help which they have it already in their power to force from government ? The story of such attempts as have already been made in this direction is one of a sad and discouraging nature to all who feel the gravity of this problem. Again and again great organizations have arisen on our soil, seeking to combine our trade associations and promising the millennium to labor, only 1 8 SELF-HELP FIRST. to find within a few years suspicion, distrust and jealousy eat- ing the heart out of the order, and disintegration following rapidly as a natural consequence. The time must soon come, let us hope, when the lesson of these experiences will have been learned. These are some of the salient faults of labor faults which are patent to all dispassionate observers. The first step to a better state of things lies through the correction of these faults. Whatever other factors enter into the problem, this is the factor which it concerns labor to look after, if it would reach the equation of the good time coming. No reconstruction of society can avail for incompetent, indifferent, thriftless men, who cannot work together. Self-help must precede all other help. Dreamers may picture Utopias, where all our present laws are suspended, and demagogues may cover up the dis- agreeable facts of labor's own responsibility for its pitiful con- dition, but sensible workingmen will remember that, as Renan told his countrymen after the Franco-Prussian war, '* the first duty is to face the facts of the situation." There are no royal roads to an honest mastery of fortune, though there seem to be plenty of by-ways to dishonest success. Nature is a hard school-mistress. She allows no makeshifts for the discipline of hard work and of self-denial, no substitutes for the culture of all the strengthful qualities. Her American school for workers is not as yet overcrowded. The rightful order of society is not submerged on our shores. There are there- wards of merit for those who will work and wait. No man of average intelligence need*s to suffer in our country, if he has clear grit in him. " The stone that is fit for the wall," as the Spanish proverb runs, " will not be left in the way." WHY LABOR IS INEFFICIENT. 19 II. BUT for there is a very large " but " in the case when all this is said, only the thorough-going doctrinaire will fail to see that merely half the case has been presented. There is a shallow optimism which, from the heights of prosperity, throws all the blame of labor's sufferings on labor's own broad shoul- ders ; which steels the heart of society against the worker be- cause of his patent faults, and closes the hand against all help, while it sings the gospel of the Gradgrinds " As it was and ever shall be. Amen." Labor itself is not wholly responsible for its own faults. These faults spring largely out of the defective social condi- tions amid which the workingman finds himself placed. Be- fore we proceed to administer to him the Avhole measure of the "whopping" due for his low estate, we should better look back of him, to see why it is that he is as he is. (i.) Some causes of labor s inefficiency. The inefficiency of labor is by no means the fault of the individual laborer alone. Heredity has bankrupted him before lie started on his career. His parents were probably as inefficient as he is and most likely their parents also. One who sees much of the lower grades of labor ceases to wonder why children turn out worth- less, knowing what the parents were. General Francis A. Walker, in opening the Manufacturers' and Mechanics' Insti- tute in Boston lately, said : There is a great virtue in the inherited industrial aptitudes and instincts of the people. You can no more make a first-class dyer or a first-class machinist in one generation than you can in one generation make a Cossack horseman or a Tartar herdsman. Artisans are born, not made. Our incompetents may plead that they were not born com- petent. It does not readily appear what we are going to do 2O WHY LABOR IS INEFFICIENT. about this working of heredity against labor, except as by the slow and gradual improvement of mankind these low strata of existences are lifted to a higher plane. Meanwhile we must blame less harshly and work a little more earnestly to better the human stock. The environment of labor handicaps still further this organic deficiency. In most of our great cities the homes of the work- ingmen are shockingly unwholesome ; unsunned, badly drained, overcrowded. The tenements of New York are alone enough to take the life out of labor. City factories often are not much better. The foods sold in the poorer sections of our cities meat, bread, milk, etc., are defectively nutritious, even where they are not positively harmful. The sanitary con- ditions are thus against labor. This could be largely rectified by the state and city authori- ties, and ought to be rectified in simple justice to society at large, which is now so heavily burdened by the manifold evils bred under such conditions. Government guards carefully the rights both of land and capital, by an immense amount of legislation and administration. Has not labor a fair claim to an equal solicitude on the part of the state ? Health is the laborer's source of wealth, but it is by no means as carefully looked after as are the resources of the other factors of pro- duction. It is only within the last three years that we have had in New York a satisfactory tenement-house law, or a fair administration of any law bearing on this evil. There ought to be the exercise of some such large wisdom as that which led the city of Glasgow to spend $7,000,000 in reconstructing three thousand of the worst tenements of that city, with a con- sequent reduction of the death rate from 54 per thousand to 29 per thousand, and with a corresponding decrease of pau- perism and crime. WHY LABOR IS INEFFICIENT. 21 To this end municipal government should be taken out of party politics and made the corporation business that it is in : German cities. We have in none of the States of our Union any such legisla- tion as that of the thorough system of factory laws in England, and we ought to supply the lack promptly. Whatever may be said as to interference on the part of legislation with the rights of capital, the sufficient answer is that the whole advance of society has been a constant interference on the part of legisla- tion with the merely natural action of the law of supply and demand ; and that only thus has England, for example, secured the immense amelioration in the condition of the prob- lem of labor and capital which marks her state to-day. It can be said also in this connection that if government has one business more peculiarly its own than another it is to look after the class that most needs looking after ; and that not simply in the interest of the class itself, which would rarely supply a basis of governmental interference, but in the interests of society at large of the state itself. The state's first concern is to see her citizens healthful, vigorous, wealth- producing factors ; and to this end bad sanitary conditions, which undermine the " health-capital " of labor, imperatively demand correction. The deeper seated the roots of labor's inefficiency, in hered- ity and environment, the greater the need for an education that will develop whatever potencies may lie latent. Inefficiency will rarely correct itself. Superior ability must train it into better power. Where is there any proper provision for such an education ? Inefficient parents can hardly be expected to teach their children better skill than they themselves have won. The old system of apprenticeship has almost completely died out, partly 22 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION, owing to the stupid policy of trades unions, and partly owing to the change going on in most of the old handicrafts, through the introduction of the factory system and of mechanism. No other system of industrial training has come generally into use among us to take the place of home training and of appren- ticeship. The churches have of late years been carrying on certain forms of industrial education in many places, but the work has only been, for the most part, rudimental. Here and there they are now adopting kitchen gardens (as introductory to domestic service), sewing schools, and in some places classes for training boys in manual handicrafts. Philanthropic soci- eties have been essaying the simpler forms of industrial educa- tion, chiefly for girls as, notably, in the industrial schools of the Children's Aid Society of this city. In a few cities, through individual or voluntary associative action, art industrial educa- tion has been considerably developed, as, for example, in Phil- adelphia and Boston ; and our own city has within a few years received fine illustrations of what individual wealth can do in the line of industrial education, in the schools of Mr. Auchmuty and in the noble Cooper Union. State governments and our national government have for a number of years been fostering certain branches of industrial education, chiefly in the line of agriculture. The late report of the Bureau of Education upon industrial education presents a very encouraging summary of what is thus being done under the guidance of the State. It reports concerning forty-three colleges, which are aided by state grants to give agricultural and mechanical training, besides referring to a large number of technical departments in other colleges, industrial schools, evening classes for such instruction, etc. Probably the finest example of industrial education that the country possesses is found in the Hampton schools in Virginia. Of attempts, how- INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 2$ ever, to combine general and intellectual education with prac- tical training and handicrafts we have few examples. The Hampton schools, already alluded to, present one of the best. Professor Adler's school in this city is very interesting in this respect. Our common schools have until lately passed by the whole field of practical education. Drawing is at last being generally introduced, and sewing is also being introduced to a small ex- tent, I believe, especially in New England. But the schools which are supposed to be intended for the mass of the people, and which are supplied at the public cost, have made next to no provision for the practical training of boys and girls to become self-supporting men and women wealth-producing citizens ; while the whole curriculum of the school system tends to a disproportionate intellectuality, and to an alienation from all manual labor. It requires no argument, I think, to satisfy all but doctrin- aires that a great mass of inefficient labor in a nation demands of its cultured and wealthy classes, of its churches and philan- thropists, and of its government an ample provision by which it may be trained to efficiency. Charity dictates this as the wisest help. Self-interest suggests it to capital for its own in- creasing productivity. The true function of the state calls for this task, in the discharge of its duty to society at large, and in order to the exemption of society from the present onerous burden of taxation imposed by poverty and crime. There is room in our country now for all these agencies. Churches can do no better work than by adding to their Sun- day schools of moral and religious instruction industrial schools, which will train their boys and girls to habits of effi- cient toil a toil wherein shall be the best safeguards against the temptations that infest life and that peculiarly appeal to the poor. 24 KIND ERG A R TEN. Individuals can find no more promising field for their efforts of philanthropy than in organizing and endowing such schools. Our manufacturers might well study, in their own interests, the example of the French firms which are suc- cessfully carrying on, in connection with their factories, schools for technical training. The story of Mulhouse, one of the towns of Alsace, is a brilliant homily to all employers of labor. Above all, it seems to me that it is bounden on the state to provide such training and education. The necessity of the state's entering the educational field is disputed by no one ; but if it is to educate children at the public cost, it is bound, I think, to so educate its wards that they shall return to society the taxation imposed for their education. Its justification in becoming school-master lies in the necessity of making, out of the raw material of life, citizens who shall be productive fac- tors in the national wealth and conservators of its order. If, therefore, it is justified in teaching the elementary branches of education, if it is justified in adding to those elementary branches departments that may be considered as luxuries, how much more is it justified in training the powers by which self- support shall be won and wealth shall be added to society ? What it might do, and ought to do, as it seems to me, is, first of all, to lay the foundation of a complete education, which shall include the bodily powers, as well as the mental powers, by establishing the kindergarten system as the pre-primary de- partment of our public schools. While there is no technical training in any handicraft in the kindergarten as, indeed, there could not well be, owing to the age of the children, and should not be, since it looks simply to the symmetrical opening of all the powers of the human being there is none the less an habitual training of eye and hand, of the taste and of the imagination, and of the originating power, which goes far to TRADE SCHOOLS. 2$ create a love of manual labor and to develop skill in it. Its clay modeling and block-building and stick and strip combina- tions teach and train in the elements which lie at the basis of art industry. No better beginning than such an education can be conceived. It inspires in the child mind that joy in work itself and that pride in doing work well which labor so sadly needs to-day. Upon 'this basis the state should rear a care- fully graduated course of instruction and training, calculated to develop manual skill as an essential element of a complete education and as a general preparation for technical trade edu- cation. The means for this fall into the line of the specialist, and need not be entered upon here. Finally, it should in some way, though I am not myself clear what way would be best, foster the development of trade schools, either by supplying them as annexes to its general course, or by granting subventions for the founding of training schools, or at least by the publishing of documents that would call the attention of manufacturers to the need and to the pos- sibility of such schools, and that would illustrate what is already being done in this line in the Old World. The story of any of the successful training schools of Paris would be a revelation to most of our manufacturers. There is the JEcole frofessionale, for example, a printing establishment, under the management of Messrs. Chaix et Cie. This school has some thirty apprentices connected with it. The apprenticeship lasts four years. The wages are paid on a rising scale. The teach- ing lays its foundation in a special primary course for those whose previous schooling has been insufficient. It then adds a technical course, which covers grammar and composition, the reading of proofs and correcting for the press, the study of different kinds of type and engraving, and the reading and composing of English, German, Latin and Greek ; in the two 26 WHY LABOR IS UNINTERESTED. latter cases, from a purely typographical point of view, without any attempt to understand or translate. Lastly it builds a sup- plemental course, which includes the history of printing, simple notions of economics, a little mechanics and physics, and a little smattering of chemistry, dealing with the materials they will have hereafter to employ, such as acids, oxides, oils, car- bons, soda, etc.; the result of which on the general intelligence and interest of the workingmen employed in such an establish- ment must be striking, and the return from which to the manufacturer in increased efficiency must be equally note- worthy.* That such efforts to encourage industrial education would pay our government is best seen in the example of England. The International Exhibition of 1851 revealed to England its complete inferiority to several continental countries in art indus- tries, and the cause of that inferiority the absence of skilled workmen. The government at once began to study the prob- lem, and out of this study arose the Kensington Museum, with its art schools, and similar institutions throughout the country, which have already made quick and gratifying returns in the improvement of the national art industries, and in the vast en- richment of the trade growing therefrom. (2) Some causes of labor's lack of interest. Concerning labor's lack of interest in its work and its failure to identify itself with capital we must also look beyond labor itself to find the full responsibility of this evil. The whole condition of industrial labor has changed in our country. Contrast the state of such labor a century ago with what it is now. Then the handicraftsman worked in his own home, surrounded by his family, upon a task whose processes he had completely mastered. He had thus a sense of interest * Contemporary Review, September, 1880. HOW CAPITAL CAN CURE IT. 2/ and pride in his work being well and thoroughly done. Now he leaves his home early and returns to it late, working during the day in a huge factory with several hundred other men. The subdivision of labor gives him only a bit of the whole process to do, where the work is still done by hand, whether it be the making of a shoe or of a piano. He cannot be master of a craft, but only master of a fragment of the craft. He can- not have the pleasure or pride of the old-time workman, for he makes nothing. He sees no complete product of his skill growing into finished shape in his hands. What zest can there be in the toil of this bit of manhood ? Steam machinery is slowly taking out of his hands even this fragment of intelligent work, and he is set at feeding and watching the great machine which has been endowed with the brains that once were in the human toiler. Man is reduced to being the tender upon a steel automaton, which thinks and plans and combines with marvellous power, leaving him only the task of supplying it with the raw material, and of oiling and cleansing it. Some few machines require a skill and judgment to guide them proportioned to their astonishing capacities, and for the elect workmen who manage them there is a new sense of the pleasure of power. But, for the most part, mechanism takes the life out of labor, as the handicraft becomes the manufacture, or, more properly, the machino-factvLro. ; and the problem of to-day is how to keep up the interest of labor in its daily task, from which the zest has been stolen. Manufacturers ought to see this problem, and hasten to solve it. Those who profit most by the present factory system ought, in all justice, to be held responsible to those who suffer most from it. They ought to be held morally bound to make up to them in some way the interest in life that has gone out 28 MODEL ESTABLISHMENTS. with the old handicrafts. They could interest their hands out of the working hours, and in ways that would give them a new interest in their working hours. Let me give two examples of this wise action in Europe. The Messrs. Faber (of the celebrated pencil company), on their premises at Stein, Bavaria, have established kindergartens, schools, churches, libraries, archer clubs and other institutions for the education and recreation of their men, while they sup- ply provisions, etc., at wholesale prices. They sell land in lots and build houses for the men, which the men pay for through a term of years. They have founded a savings bank and a hospital, and pension their workmen in old age. The famous Bon Marchd establishment, in Paris, presents a fine example of what may be done to make life cheerier for employees. Three thousand hands have their meals in the building. Concerts are given them, and lessons in English, German, instrumental and vocal music and fencing. The clerks have an amusement-room, with billiard tables, chess, checkers and other games. The women clerks have a parlor to themselves, in which they find various games, a piano and other means of recreation. A physician is employed by the store, and his services are free. All are pecuniarly interested in the store, receiving a small commission on every article sold and delivered, and, after a certain number of years, each per- son receives an interest in the house, which increases yearly. Let me give three illustrations from our own soil of what can be done by employers to render life more attractive to their men. A pamphlet by B. G. Northrop, Secretary of the Connecticut Board of Education, thus describes two villages that ought to be famous. One of these ' ' models " is the silk factory of the Cheney Brothers, in South Manchester, Conn. , by far the largest and most successful factory of MODEL ESTABLISHMENTS. 29 the kind in the world, making over 25,000 yards of ribbons and broad silks a day. This business, started here by the Cheney family in 1836, has steadily grown in extent and prosperity to the present time. The factory village covers about eight hundred acres of land and includes some two hundred houses. A fine lawn, laid out with winding concrete walks and adorned with shrubs and flowers, fronts the mills, and usually each of the houses. No fence or visibly dividing line separates the front yards from the roads. The Cheneys have encouraged their hands to build and own their homesteads, and to this end furnish the land, and loan money for building at a low figure, with a " liquor reservation " in the interest of temperance, and with the understanding that all houses shall be on a plan provided or approved by their architect, and that all shall be neatly painted some neutral tint. Not a house in glaring white here offends the eye. The beautiful grounds of the Cheney mansions, of the operatives, and of the factories all present the appearance of an extended park, and give a look of refinement, kindliness, and good neighborhood to the whole village, which is like a well- kept garden. No private yard is left in an untidy state. No debris or rubbish is seen around or near any dwelling. There is evidently a public sentiment in favor of neatness and order that pervades the entire community and allows no dirty nooks to be found. Creeping vines cover " the office " and some of the factory buildings and dwellings. No block houses are found here. The cottages stand apart and vary in style, giving an individu- ality to each place. A capacious aqueduct carries water to every house. This village seems like a community in the best sense of the term, with common interests, pursuits and sympathies. The providing of a large and commodious lecture hall, costing $50,000, together with interesting and in- structive lectures and entertainments and a free library and reading-room, solely by the Cheney Brothers, shows their intelligent and liberal methods of promoting the well-being and content of their employes. The hands highly appreciate the liberality of their employers, and feel a manifest inter- est in their work and a pride in the place. Hence strikes and alienation between capital and labor are here unknown. The other model manufacturing village is that of the Fairbanks Company, at St. Johnsbury, Vt. There is the largest manufactory of scales in the world, employing in the factory and branch departments elsewhere, over one thousand men, and manufacturing over 60,000 scales annually, the sales now amounting to over $2,000,000 a year. There is a superior class of workmen in this establishment. All are 3~ labor, such as they are, are still further burdened by the needless taxation which is imposed, directly by the government and indirectly by the monopolies of the country. This taxation claims annually what would otherwise make a very substantial margin for possible savings on the part of the average workin^man. I do not wish to enter the mazes of tariff discussion, and so simply observe that over against the higher wages which may possibly grow out of protection, if this much be admitted, there remains to be placed the higher prices imposed on so many of the necessaries of life by our revenue system. In addition to this burden we have a heavy load laid on our working people, as on us all, from the indebtedness of our national, State, and municipal governments. The United States census for 1880 puts the debt of the National Govern- ment at $2,120,415,370.63, and the indebtedness of States, ter- ritories, counties, cities, etc., at $1,201,803,177. One of the urgent needs of our workingmen's movement is that it shall turn its forces in the direction of purified govern- ment, and especially of purified municipal administration. All burdens fall ultimately upon labor, and although the taxes may seem to be paid by wealthy capitalists they all come out of the pockets of the laborer, in increased rents and increased prices. The corruption and maladministration of our munici- pal governments, which have imposed a gigantic burden of taxation upon our citizens allowance being of course made for the proper works of public utility mean simply so much per annum taken out of the pockets of the workingmen. The debt of New York in 1877 was $132,096,992 ; imposing a taxa- tion of $31,105,533. And yet to-day the cry of municipal re- 46 LABOR AND MUNICIPAL REFORM. form is one of the last which seems to show any power of appealing to the workingman. He will throw up his cap for all manner of political schemes, but when a citizen's movement is originated in a great city like this to place the administration of municipal affairs upon a strict business platform, it seems only to appeal to the nominally tax-paying community ; and the portion of the community which thinks itself to be non- tax-paying passes it by in entire indifference, and so saddles these burdens anew upon its own shoulders. Mr. Frederick Harrison, in his address to the Trades Union Congress already noticed, calls upon the workingmen of England to throw every influence, through their organizations, at once into the problem of uplifting and purifying municipal administration. The ap- peal is still more urgent in our country, where municipal gov- ernment is less developed than in most other portions of Christendom. Berlin, a city of about the same size as New York, and, like it, having grown very rapidly, with immense public works thus necessitated, had a budget for 1882 of nearly $6,000,000, of which "every penny has been well spent and accounted for."* New York's budget for 1880 was $29,642,- 991.98 ; nearly five times as much as that of Berlin. But, in addition to the burdens of extravagant, wasteful, and dishonest government, we have another heavy burden laid upon the working people, as upon all others in the community, from the irresponsible power left in the hands of our great cor- porations. Take the case of a few prime necessities. The Anti-monopoly League issues the following statement, which I have not seen refuted : The following is an itemized statement of the approximate cost of mining and delivering anthracite coal in New York at the present time, with profits I * Nation, No. 958. CORPORA TION TAXA TION. COAL. 4f included. By varying the items and distance the rightful cost can be calcu- lated at any point : Royalty to land-owner I2^c. to 25c., say . . . . . $o 25 Paid to miner per 2,850 Ibs., 6$c, yielding when prepared and placed on cars, say 2,500 Ibs., or per ton of 2,240 Ibs., say . 58^ Expense of preparation and placing on cars, maintenance of mine, profit of operator, etc., say . . . . . . . 55 Transportation to tide water, say 120 miles at fc. per ton per mile, say . 90 Lighterage from railroad terminus to New York, say . . . 22^ Discharging from lighter, say ........ 14 2 65 Less difference between gross ton (2,240 Ibs.) and net ton (2,000 Ibs.), say ten per cent. 26 2 39 Cartage ............ 30 Profit of retail dealer, say 75 / Waste, say ........... 5 3 49 If delivered from yard, or in small quantities, it would cost a little more, but most of it is delivered direct from boat, and at above figures full weight of coal can be afforded in New York on the sidewalk of the consumer, and pay every person connected with the business a fair profit. The difference between this price and what consumers of coal are now paying represents the tax paid to monopoly. For considerable periods during 1878 and 1879 coal sold at an average of $2.25 per ton of 2,240 pounds at the railroad termini, or say $3.25 per ton of 2,000 pounds delivered to the consumer. The coal roads formed a pool and prices were nearly doubled. The Legislature ordered an investigation. The evidence showed that $3.25 to $3.50 was a fair price for coal, and that the coal roads had watered their stocks so that it was not reasonable to expect that ordinary dividends could, with justice to the public, be paid upon the enormous mass of obligations outstanding. The words of the committee referring to this were as follows : " During the receipt of these enormous profits many of the coal corpora- tions, as was the case with railroads not engaged in the coal-carrying trade, 48 TAXATION ON MILK. OIL. unable, under their charters, or for other reasons, to declare dividends upon their stocks that would absorb their unexpended surplus, issued additional stock to the stockholders, for which they paid nothing, inaugurated what is commonly known as stock-watering, or a capitalization of surplus earnings, which is in substance exacting money from the people, creating an in- debtedness representing the same, and making this the basis for forever asking the public to pay interest upon their own money so exacted. " Yet owing to railroad influence in the Legislature nothing was done to put a limit to such extortion. We have just seen the Harlem Railroad reduce its rates on milk heavily, as a result of official investigation. Those rates had been, I believe, about triple the rates of roads running into Boston. And milk is the food of young children their vital necessity ; on which this heavy taxation was laid by a wealthy corporation. The chief light of the poor is oil. Gas is too expensive for them, even where it is at its cheapest. Oil is now supplied by a corporation which has established an almost complete monop- oly ; an organization, doubtless, with many good qualities, but an organization which is none the less irresponsible to the peo- ple, and which taxes every can of oil that the poor man buys in a manner wholly unregulated by any law. Competition, the only self-regulating action which our society theoretically ad- mits, is crushed out, and the Standard Oil Company can affix its own price, and that price must be paid. Mr. Lloyd (Atlantic Monthly, March, 1881) thus estimates this tax : To-day, in every part of the United States, people who burn kerosene are paying the Standard Oil Company a tax on every gallon amounting to sev- eral times its original cost to that concern. ... In Pennsylvania, the tax levied by the Standard a*bove all expenses and legitimate profits is cal- culated by an expert at fourteen cents a gallon. This makes a yearly tax on the light in most general use in that State of $2,555,000. The whole country consumed last year, at a low estimate, 22,000,000 gallons of kero- MONOPOLY DEFINED, 49 sene. Putting the Standard tax, to avoid all possibility of exaggeration, down to five cents a gallon, we have a levy on the whole country of $11,- 000,000, besides the millions taken from the railroads in rebates. One need be no foe to corporations to speak thus of the de- fects of a governmental system which provides no superintend- ence of such mammoth companies. The term " monopoly " is often used loosely against corpora- tions. In the case of the Standard Oil Company its use is, strictly speaking, somewhat inaccurate. An accumulation or concentration of business which grows of itself naturally, by the superior force of the brains of one man, or by the natural tendency of things in trade, can scarcely be called a monopoly ; but the moment that legislation intervenes to give special rights to any corporation, that moment true monopoly enters, and where a monopoly enters, the play of competition ceases. Where, then, monopoly does enter, there is bounden upon gov- ernment as special an interference on behalf of society at large as it has given to the corporations in their own interests. And even where, as in the case of the Standard Oil Com- pany, there has been no legislative privilege, yet if a corporation has grown to so colossal a size as to absorb all rivals, we have the substance, if not the form, of a monopoly, and the State is bound, as the representative of the commonwealth, to see that the wealth of the commons is not impoverished to build up the private property of a company. The transient monopolies produced by gambling combina- tions in the necessaries of life are coming to be a powerful fac- tor in the disordering of prices, opening opportunities of im- mense profits by "corners," which drive the prices of wheat and other staples up into exorbitant figures and as such they demand some wise and careful exercise of governmental super- vision. The remedy for the existing speculations in food 50 MINERAL MONOPOLIES. stuffs is difficult to define, since this evil has existed and been legislated against from the time of Edward III. and his statutes against " engrossing," and since our business has become so largely a dealing in " futures " ; but that some remedy needs to be found is plain to all thoughtful people, and that such remedy shall be found is the specially appointed task of legislators. The private or corporate possession of mineral resources, which the Creator has stored up in the earth for the needs of life, with the consequent power of taxing the necessaries of ex- istence, is a right of so dubious a character that any monopoly in such resources seems to me to call peculiarly for the inter- vention of government, at least in so far as to secure some thing like an equitable adjustment of prices. And yet the irresponsible greed of great corporations, to- gether with the absence of proper governmental superintend- ence and of restrictive legislation in the interests of society, has allowed the access to these supplies of the most vital necessaries of life to be monopolized. The mass of the com- mon people have thus been shut off from their due rights in the bountiful provisions of the Almighty. The corporations which have assumed the charge of the transfer of mineral resoures to our cities have entered into the speculative development of those mineral resources ; the two agencies have become one ; and the practical conclusion of the whole matter is that which was bluntly avowed by a leading stockholder of one of those great corporations a few years ago. When asked what the price of coal would probably be during the winter, he replied : " As high as Providence allows and as low as necessity com- pels." In other words,* then, we have placed in the hands of almost wholly irresponsible companies the royal right to tax our citizens as they will, and we sit supinely under the yoke that we have imposed upon our own necks. PATENT RIGHTS. 51 I recognize the tendency to consolidation as an inevitable one in the world of business, and, under proper safeguards, as a useful one. But all power needs to be limited and watched, and the greater the power, the more carefully denned should be the limits of its exercise, and the more thorough the inspec- tion which is kept over it by the State. Government owes it to all its citizens, especially to the largest and poorest classes, to see that the private fortunes for which it provides the oppor- tunity, by its facilitating legislation, do not impoverish the commonwealth. The whole question of our administration of privileges needs, perhaps, to be more carefully considered than it has been hitherto. The inordinate extension of patent rights cre- ates monopolies of what, with an advancing civilization, come to be the necessities of the people. While the just rights of the inventor should be regarded which, however, is a different matter from the unjust rights of the patent agent, who usually intervenes, or of the combination of capitalists, who buy out the rights of the discoverer while, I say, the just rights of the inventor should be regarded, at the same time consideration should be given to the just needs of the people. As it is, every modern tool of labor is " protected " by a patent, which saddles upon the neediest workman and workwoman an oppressive tax for its use the use which alone can keep them from starvation. Franklin declined to patent his inventions, but then Franklin was an old fogy. Perhaps the notion is not so wild, as at first sight would seem, that the State should buy patents from dis- coverers, at liberal prices, and then give the results of these in- ventions to the mass of the people. When these facts as to the burdens which society lays upon the wageworker are duly weighed, a just judgment will, to say the least, greatly mitigate the sentence otherwise to be pro- 52 EXCUSES FOR THRIFTLESSNESS. nounced upon the thriftlessness of workingmen. That thrift - lessness will thus be seen to be gendered in the anarchic busi- ness system of our age, and in the low level to which it and our vast system of taxation reduces the wage-workers, and the demand for thrift on their part will appear to be almost a mockery, when made by the classes who profit by our industrial and political systems. These and other similar considerations, for I have only touched upon the more salient features of the situation, should, as it seems to me, effectually disabuse candid minds of the illusion that the fault of the present condition of labor can be saddled entirely upon labor itself. Capital has its just share, and it is a large share, in bringing about the low estate of labor. Society at large needs to make the confession, " we have left undone those things which we ought to have done." And in all that has been said there is nothing, as it seems to me, to which any just and open mind can take exception. These neglacted duties of labor, of capital, of government and of society at large, form, therefore, the tasks to be taken up at once, if any improvement is to be made in the present state of labor, or if the undoubted tendencies towards a worse condi- tion are to be arrested. Whatever other things may remain to be done, when all these reforms have been carried out, will be much more readily perceived, and much more easily effected, after the education of both labor and capital has been led up to the level indicated in these proposed changes. Indeed, I can see no way to any peaceable securing of more radical read- justments of the relations of capital and labor, such as must eventually take place, except through the gradual improvement of labor itself, and of capital's attitude toward labor. Most of the reforms which have been indicated involve a moral element. The whole problem is indeed quite as mucn REFORM VS. RECONSTRUCTION. 53 a moral problem as an economic problem. Now, all reforms of character and conduct have this peculiarity, that one sees further and more clearly into what there is to be reformed as one earnestly tackles the job of righting the wrongs that are seen. However imperfect may be the perception of what is needful to be done, when one really sets at work to do what is seen, his eyes open wider ; and thus he grows gradually into a vision of the immensity of the task upon which he has entered, a vision that in the outset his conscience was not edu- cated to recognize, or his will to undertake. I understand this committee to have, as its primary aim, the drawing forth of suggestions that might lead to practical meas- ures of immediate relief, and only secondarily the ventilation of ideas that look beyond the present to the future, to a radical reconstruction of society on the ground-plans of justice. My suggestions have looked, therefore, to practicable improve- ments. But before I close, I would like to say frankly that, in all which I have suggested, I clearly recognize that only the surface of the problem has been uncovered. There are far deeper and more serious aspects of the question, which will have to be opened when the time comes ripe. If all that I have suggested were carried out, the evils of the present con- dition of labor would be ameliorated, but not cured. The old troubles would recur again, after an interval of comfort. Not until the seat of the social disease, whose ugly developments have called out this consultation, is reached, and an alterative is found, will any permanent cure be effected. It seems to me that all thoughtful people ought to be at least opening their eyes to recognize the possibility of there being graver complications in our case than is ordinarily sus- pected. And I would like, therefore, to offer a few hints as to the nature of those complications, in so far as I can read 54 LEGISLATION AND LABOR. them, and as to what may now be begun in the way of consti- tutional treatment, and thus contribute my little bit towards the second aim of the committee, as I understand it. III. *- SOCIAL FORCES FAVORING CAPITAL AND LAND AS AGAINST LABOR. As I read the problem of society to-day, there are large forces making for the interests of capital and land, as against the interests of labor these three factors together creating all wealth. (i) Legislation works against labor. Legislation has thus far been in the hands of the well-to-do classes, /. e., of capital and of land, and it has been shaped in this free country, as in Europe, in the interests of these two classes. Our Legislatures are overburdened with all sorts of special bills devised to bene- fit private parties, but the measures of purely public utility are few and far between. There is very little legislation recorded on our statute-books that looks to the care of the rights of labor, while there is a vast body of laws in existence guarding every possible interest of capital. We have in no one of our States any legislation at all comparable with the elaborate fac- tory acts of England. Only fifteen of our States have labor bureaus, and these are all, with one exception, the growth of the last half dozen years. This great State has only just cre- ated such a bureau. This metropolitan city has only within three years, as the result of a long agitation, obtained adequate sanitary laws for the tenement-houses which shelter 500,000 human beings, and a proper staff of officers to enforce them. Rich men have all sorts of carefully drawn-up acts guarding the loaning and borrowing of money, but the poor man, when PARTIAL LEGISLATION. 55 he wants to borrow, has to go to the pawn-shops, over which, as he finds, to his cost, there is next to no restraint of law ; so that after he has once deposited a valuable article in time of need, and agreed to pay a ruinous rate of interest, he has no security that he will ever get back his property, even though able and anxious to redeem it. It is the same story everywhere. The men at the top of the heap cry out, whenever an attempt is made to secure legislation for labor : " Hands off ; the sacred principle of self-help must not be interfered with ; the less legislation the better"; and so on to the end of the gamut of stock phrases which the press and the professors roll off with unctuous glibness. Meanwhile, these very many-millionaires, and these very gigantic corporations, whose counsel are so eloquent upon the danger of over-legislation, have climbed to their high pros- perity by the helping hand of law, through legislation specially enacted to further their schemes. They never could have been what they are but for special legislation. The hypocrisy of the cant of non-legislation is sickening to honest minds, and must be irritating beyond description to those who are silenced by it. Labor is opening its eyes to see at last that a demo- cratic country which rarely legislates for the demos, the people, is some thing of a fraud. Labor is preparing to enter the po- litical field, and is making tentative essays in this direction. In England, the pressure of the trades unions has already wrested solid victories from Parliament, and, under the grow- ing mental enlightenment and the deepening moral sentiment, an immense stride is being taken towards a new era of states- manship ; an era in which the State will look, first of all, for its own safety and prosperity, to the rightful ordering of the con- ditions of life among the vast mass of labor, on which the whole social structure rests. We shall never gain a satisfactory ad- 56 INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT AND LABOR. justment of the problem until our governments, municipal, State and national, concern themselves at least as much with the interests of labor as with those of capital. And this will never be until labor takes the field of politics in dead earnest, and compels attention to its long-neglected claims. (2) Industrial development works against labor. There are more puzzling factors than privileging legislation at work to handicap labor. Our century has witnessed a revolu- tionary change in the character of the industrial system a change which has been steadily making for capital against labor, except in so far as its own excesses have wrought local and partial protest and reaction. The introduction of the system of aggregated labor in the factory, and the develop- ment of the principle of the division of labor, thus made practicable, have gradually reduced the once free artisan to a new serfdom, in which he is completely at the mercy of capital, save as by union he makes resistance. He no longer is master of a craft. He is a bit of a process. He does a fraction of a complete job. Of the rest of the process he knows nothing. Consequently he cannot stand by himself. If he lose his place he cannot set up, in a small way, for himself, even if the general conditions of the business would give him a ghost of a chance. In losing the home work of the artisan of the olden time, he loses with it the foothold on the soil, though that soil were but a bit of a garden, which gave him the sense of free- dom. He literally has no base for personal independence. He no longer offers his wares, the products of his handicraft, for sale in the market. He has neither the workshop, the tools, nor the knowledge o,f any complete process by which to make any thing himself. Only large wealth commands the means of production, and only combined labor supplies the power of production. The FACTORY VS. FREEDOM. 57 workman awaits the offer, on the part of the capitalist, of a workshop, of tools, and of the fellows who can complete his fractional skill. He has become part of a gigantic mechanism that is run by capital. He is utterly, absolutely helpless in himself. He therefore has to enter the " labor market " and offer for sale no longer his works, but his working. He sells himself. Under what is, with grim sarcasm, called " the sys- tem of free contract," he engages on his part to make over to an employer his labor, in return for that employer's finding him the means and conditions without which he is no longer able to work. A new feudal system is set up, in which, through all the de- scending gradations, labor holds its little all by the grace of the feudal lord. It draws the feoff of life from its master and suzerain. Of course it is true that under the old home-work- shop system there were journeymen who were in a certain sense dependent on the master ; for whom the master found the workshop, to whom he paid wages, and whose products he sold ; but each man might in time become a master of his craft and of his tools, and thus of himself. Each man looked forward to thus becoming a master workman and hiring other workmen ; an expectation which, while we hear much about its being still a possibility, is growing increasingly difficult of realization with each fresh turn of the wheel in the evolution of the factory system, and which, to all intents, is practically unrealizable already in most branches of industry. It is not speaking too strongly to say that such a radical revolution as has thus been wrought in the condition of labor is without a parallel in the previous history of Christendom, and that it is fraught with dangers of the most ominous kind to society at large. Unarrested or perhaps, let me rather say, led on to no further and higher evolution, in which its present 58 MACHINERY VS. MANHOOD. action shall be corrected, this system would crush out the free manhood of the workingman. This factory system has been still further aggravated by the introduction of mechanism and of steam. Increasingly, the labor formerly wrought by man is being done by machinery driven by steam. One after another, the processes of every old-time handicraft are being transferred to vast and complicated ma- chines, and production is no longer to be called a manufacture, but a machino-facture. The skill which of old lay in the deft fingers of the craftsman is becoming lodged in steely mechanisms. Men become the tenders upon the costly and cunning machine. As such mere tenders, whose work is to feed and wait on the intelligent labors of these giant looms and presses, skilled workmen are often no longer requisite. Poorer work men take their place ; women take the place of these inferior men ; children at last come into demand in lieu of women. Poor workmen demand less pay than skilled crafts- men, women less than men, and children less than women. Thus wages fall, and a man's foes are they of his own house- hold, very literally. The contrast between the New England operatives of a generation ago and those of to-day is very significant of the change which the factory is steadily working. Nor is this all of the evil effect of the system. The intro- duction of mechanism displaces all human labor to an ever- increasing extent. One machine does the work of a host of hands. So these hands are thrown out of employment, and thus, as mechanism enters one field of production after another, men retire. Of course this action is mitigated, to some extent, by the opening up of other lines of occupation. The enor- mous development of industry in our age, and especially in our country, prevents us from feeling the full force of this ten- dency. But it is working among us at an alarming rate of speed. INFLUENCE OF MECHANISM. 59 Thus, in these various ways, labor suffers severely from our mechanical improvements, and from the monster forces which science has broken in to drive our engines. Its work is first robbed of interest and educating power, as already pointed out in the early part of this talk, and then taken from it. The labor market is crowded with the disposessed " hands," who bid against each other and bid their common wages down. The one beneficent effect of mechanism upon labor has been the cheapening of goods. Great as this benefit may be, its value seems to me much overrated when we consider the in- ferior quality of cheap goods, while it is as largely negatived when we note the lowered wages by which it is generally accompanied. Thus far it is questionable whether labor has derived any substantial benefit from the marvellous development of mechan- ism, at all comparable with the injury which it has experienced from this revolution. It was fondly hoped, in the dawning of our era of mechanism, that all servile and exhausting toil was to be lifted from man ; that all necessities were to be so mul- tiplied that the poor would cease to want, and that leisure and its opportunities of culture would come to be a common bless- ing, through the immense increase of production that is to say, of wealth. What a mockery these dreams seem now ! Yet these dreams were clearly no wild fancies. They were true visions of what might be, under any just system of con- trolling these genii whom science has summoned to the service of man ; visions which may come true if ever man becomes their master instead of men the commonwealth, and not private rich men. In any equitable distribution of the im- mensely increased wealth which mechanism has created labor would have been much better off. But it is precisely against such equitable distribution that mechanism has worked. 60 MECHANISM FAVORS CAPITAL. The party owning the plant and controlling the means of production has found its power multiplied portentously. It has been those means of production which have received the increase of productive power, and he who owns them gains the benefit of their increased productivity. Capital reaps the golden harvest. Capital's yoke takes a new clasp around the neck of labor more its slave by each new improvement that dispenses with human skill. It is thus that capital the party possessing the means of production is becoming ever richer and more powerful, while labor is becoming ever poorer and weaker, save as it combines, and, not being as yet wholly superfluous, stays the downward tendency ; and save as other factors enter the problem, changing the equation. Labor's eyes are at last becoming opened to the fact that the present system plays almost wholly into the hands of capital. It is coming to see that the control of the increased produc- tivity developed by mechanism must always remain with those who control the mechanism ; that the bulk of the wealth thus created must go to capital. This is the meaning of the de- mand, now beginning to make itself heard from the ranks of labor, that the means of production shall not be left wholly in the hands of capital ; that either directly, in great co-operative organizations, or indirectly, in the person of the state, labor shall have a share in the control of these monster forces. Sweeping measures truly, which, as a radical cure of the pres- ent disease of the industrial system, are coming to take pos- session of many minds, naturally impatient of mere mollifying ointments for organic disorders ideas which, if they once master the workingmen of a land where there is universal suffrage, may work a rapfd revolution, that, alike for labor and capital, is to be dreaded. Unripe revolutions always fail. No power on earth can LABOR MUST CONTROL IT. 6l make a new industrial system work ahead of its time. Men must be educated for all higher institutions. The greater the advance which a new institution would effect, the more the need of its coming in slowly, step by step, as we work up to pre- paredness for it. Those who believe that the principle of such a theory is right, as I do, should be all the more careful to point out that it is an ideal, which can be won alone by patient education in co-operation and by general advance of intelli- gence and power on the part of workingmen. If such a change were to be made to-day, by any power under heaven, it would, in the present state of our working- men, simply bring industry to a stand-still and introduce worse evils than those now endured. If the co-operative commonwealth ever comes, as I trust it may come, it will come as the final generalization of a long series of integrations, of which the co-operative societies, now so much neglected, form the immediate step in advance. But, none the less, the general discussion of the relative rights of capital and labor, growing out of these new powers of production, is likely to go on with a deepening sense of unrest under the existing conditions. Under the able tutor- ship of German economists, whose sympathies are strongly with the workingman, wage-workers are beginning to reopen the whole case of capital versus labor, and to study it afresh from the standpoint of labor ; with surprising conclusions, flowing from a changed order of the premises. Charles Kings- ley said many years ago that the equation of the social prob- lem, stated thus : " Given the few in affluence, how to find the condition of the many," would differ rather widely from the equation reached when the problem should be stated thus : " Given the many in comfort, how to find the condition of the few." Labor is coming to state the problem thus, and to draw 62 CAPITAL'S PLEA. its own conclusions. It says : " Labor creates wealth, ac- cording to good authorities ; why should it have only the fraction that is left after the quotient has been entered on the side of capital ? " Of course, answers, more or less full, are ready at hand for such a question. It is open to capital to point out that hands need a head ; that brawn needs brain to direct it, to feed it with the ideas which give value to one form of labor over another, and to give it the grasp of affairs necessary for indus- trial generalship to-day ; that the worker needs still the man of resources, to provide the costly plant that is indispensable to modern industry ; that the chief share of productive power is now really lodged in these marvellous machines, which the human hands only tend ; and that to draw the profits of the machines they must first earn the capital which buys them ; that a fair return is due as interest on the plant, as insurance against risks, and as wages for the directing services, which are becoming more onerous as business grows more complicated. Wise men among our wage-workers are quite ready to admit all that is true in these propositions, and to yield all that falls due to capital on these grounds. Only, they are then very likely to drop into the despairing feeling that, since these claims eat up all the profits, the very order of nature is against them, and that there is no hope ahead, except through a growth so slow that not only will it never benefit them, but that not even their children or their children's children will find their lot substantially improved. And it must not be forgotten that wisdom is not any more lavishly scattered among workingmen than among other human beings, and that there are plenty of foolish and unreasonable people in the class which by its num- bers is everywhere a power, and which by its franchise may be here at any time the controlling power. THE GUIDANCE NEEDFUL. 63 There are portentous significances in such an attitude, in which the sense of injustice en the part of man deepens into the sense of injustice on the part of nature ; dark shadows of revolution and anarchy which may well " give us pause." Wise men among our capitalists and in our governments, it seems to me, ought to be stirring themselves to prevent such contingencies. Capital ought to be seriously endeavoring to ally labor with itself, and to train it into capacity for a share in the possession and control of the means of production. The ownership of the means of production by the people and for the people seems to me just as certainly the ultimate form of the social order as government by the people and for the people is the oncoming form of the political order. And in society, as in the state, the choice for men is not that of accepting or rejecting an evolution of nature, but simply of resisting it and blocking its pathway, which means always French revolutions, or of guiding it slowly and peacefully along safe channels. Perhaps the greatest benefactors of mankind to-day are those capitalists who, like M. Godin, are wisely training their work- ingmen for the higher order. No nobler discernment is shown to-day than where capital recognizes that the gospel of demand and supply is after all an apocryphal gospel, not holding the secret of social salvation ; that competition must needs be "ranked" by co-operation, as the next step toward an order in which the mighty resources and the monster forces of nature shall be the genii not of a few rich men, but of the commonwealth. Government's part in helping on this proprietorship of the people is not very plain. Yet that the state is supremely con- cerned in this matter of preventing the impoverishment of its people, and of seeing the mass of its citizens enter upon the 64 THE STATE'S PART. possession and enjoyment of the productive power of our present civilization needs no argument. The national gov- ernment might certainly, for one thing, establish a national bureau of labor, to investigate the problem in a way that no one student has the opportunity of doing, and to spread light upon it.* Such a bureau might easily encourage and stimulate the self-acting efforts of both capitalists and workingmen tow- ard the joint proprietorship of the means of production. I am not sure that, since the state grants subventions to rail- roads and steamers, and imposes a high tariff to aid manufac- turers, it should not also grant subventions to properly organ- ized societies of workingmen, seeking to develop co-operative production, as yet scarcely attempted with seriousness here. The problem of poverty is to be solved not only by a larger production, but by a juster distribution. We do, indeed, need a vastly greater productivity in order to insure the comfort that all crave ; but we have enough now, if fairly divided, to do away with the worst horrors of our poverty. And, in any possible productivity, the real question is of getting it equally distributed. So level-headed an authority as Mr. Edward Atkinson, in an address made at the opening of the second annual exhibition of the New England Manufacturers' and Mechanics' Institute, showed that the average annual productivity of our country, if equally divided among the men, women and children, would give an income of 50 cents a day per capita to all our people. That would be the equivalent, for an average family of seven, to the present wages of a skilled mechanic. The moral is one that I will leave so practical a thinker as Mr. Atkinson to draw. lie says : * Since this testimony was given before the Senate Committee a National Bureau of Labor has been established, and has already presented its first re- port, a most valuable document. BETTER DISTRIBUTION. 6$ By so much as some of you enjoy more others must have less. What have each of you done, what are you doing now, to entitle you to more than what a half dollar a day will pay for in food and fuel and shelter and cloth- tng ? Are you rendering service equivalent to your greater gain ? A question this which plainly is primarily a moral appeal. As such it is to be answered by a more enlightened conscience. The church's business as also the business of all public teachers, the press, professors of political economy, etc. is to urge this appeal and to illumine the consciences to which it is made ; that so, gradually, clearer answers may be given. We must look first of all to the creation of a public sentiment which will hold large wealth strictly accountable to society for its extra share, and which will frown upon the accumulation of very large fortunes, as what they really are fungoid growths, denoting an unhealthy circulation of blood in the body politic. Can legislation do any thing to help a better distribution ? In attempting this it must make sure not to check production, as many remedies proposed would certainly do. I should doubt the possibility of avoiding such a check upon production in any limitation of the right of acquisition. The right of trans- ference is less open to this danger, as sound economists have recognized. It would be a wholly safe venture to try the effect upon the problem of excessive wealth of limiting the right of bequest. Such a measure would secure the recognition of the vital principle of the subordination of private property to the com- monwealth, and if it worked well would open the way to larger measures. (3) Land also works against labor. Land is the first resource of man, and the last. It is nature's provision for his wants. Civilization begins by man's settling down to cultivate the soil. 66 LAND VS. LABOR. It grows by man's constant development of the resources of the land. It has died again and again through the mass of men being shut off from access to its bountiful treasures, under unwise and unjust social systems which have made land the monoply of a few instead of the heritage of the many. There is no doubt about agriculture being the basic industry, the germinal industry. All otricr forms of industry rest upon h, grow out of it. They are //, transformed. It equals all the rest of the social productivity. Every manufacture and trade rep- resents a productiveness which is only possible as man is fed, and thus supplied Avith labor power. We all feel instinctively the absolute dependence of civilization upon the culture of the land, in our anxiety about "the crops," in our forecast of a year's business by the state of the harvest. Every industry, in a sound society, should be developed pro- portionately to the culture of the land. That such a propor- tion is necessary needs no argument, unless there is no law of stability in the relative proportions of the base of a pyramid to its height and mass. What this proportion should be is capa- ble of being stated statistically, from a study of different nations. Now this means simply that there is a close and ex- act relation between the whole mass of any society and its land-culture ; that every atom composing society mu"st have its due representation in the tilling of land. Food must be growing to supply the whole people and to drive their varied activities. And this, again, means that each individual of society stands in a real and necessary relationship to some particular bit of earth, which is being cultivated for him. Whatever a man does preach or write, handle tools or carry bricks, or keep store some one is growing his food for him. In a simple state of society we see this readily, because no one is far removed from the original work of all. Every time the MAN STANDS ON LAND. 6? farmer drives into the village and pays for the goods that he buys at the store, in the wheat, or oats, or vegetables, or fruit that he has raised, this fundamental fact is seen. But it is just as truly a fact in a great city where there is no barter, and where we are so far removed from this simple state of society that we forget, often, our real relations to the soil. They are hidden in the complex web of society, but they are there none the less. Now, if each man in a society stands on his own rood of ground, it is his own fault alone if he cannot live. If, not be- ing on it, but doing some other necessary work in the social mechanism, he can at any time get back easily upon his rood his, and open to him then it is equally his own fault if he starve. In a simple state of society, the worst problems of poverty easily adjust themselves by the turning of men to the soil, in which they have their own place reserved for them, and to which they find their way readily. When the school- teacher or carpenter is hard up and can get no pupils or jobs, he shuts the school-house or the shop and -goes back to farm- ing sure, at least, of a living. Thus no grave problems of poverty grow up while every man either stands on his own acre or by it. But, as soon as this condition of things changes, the whole state of a society changes with it ; changes seriously and omi- nously. If a man who has left farming and gone to some other branch of social labor find himself with no work offering, and find that he has no longer left him his old farm, and that no other farm opens anywhere, then he is in a new and sad plight face to face for the first time with absolute want. If no work open and no friendly help tide him along, he is likely to starve to death. Take an island where the area of land is definitely limited, and the problem states itself at once to the mind clearly and conclusively. When all the island is held by 68 HELPLESS WITHOUT IT. others, who will not part with any of it, the man out of work is utterly helpless. He, though a free man theretofore, will then be very ready to get a bit of earth on which to raise potatoes upon any terms. Necessity knows no choice. He will pay any share of the prod- ucts of a bit of ground to the owner, so that he can squeeze out a bare living. He will even sell himself to the lord of land and become a part of his estate, if thus he can have food and live. If he be the only man thus situated, his case is forlorn enough ; but if he be one of many in the same situation, his condition is made worse by each additional hungry man who is seeking a chance to live. Precisely what would thus come to pass on an imaginary island has actually come to pass upon our very real globe. In early and simple stages of society every man either held in re- serve his own share of mother earth or knew that he w^mld have no trouble in finding a bit of ground that he could till. The poorest man, busied with the other tasks of society, felt himself independent in the consciousness that he could get back on the land and take care of himself. In ways which we need not now follow, this early state of society has practically disappeared from every country of Europe, and is rapidly disappearing from our own country. Land no longer so abounds in Europe that any one can go out and take possession of a bit. It is all held for use in some way, if capable of any use. It is no longer held by society at large, as was once the case, securing every individual's share in the fields of the commune. It is held by private parties. There is not an available rood of ground in England to which a starving workman may turn and say, " I have a right to that; it will support me." As this state of things came into exist- LABOR'S LOSS OF LAND. 69 ence, men who were unable to find work in other labors were rendered helpless, glad to be dependent, content to occupy a wee bit of ground on crushing terms, thankful at last in the worst extremities to enslave themselves to the lord of land and become his personal property, like the land they worked for him, in return for food. These are well-known facts of history in Europe. So to-day the worst feature of the position of labor in Eu- rope is that, with the private ownership of all available land, labor is practically helpless when the periodic stagnations of industry and trade leave it idle. Of course, I say " helpless " with well-understood modifications. Colonization opens an escape for Europe ; and colonization is being used now, as perhaps never before in the history of man, to relieve the prob- lem. It does so simply by enabling men to get at land in other countries, where the process gradually repeats itself. The problem is made vastly worse than it need be in the Old World by the growth in most countries of land monopolies the concentration of huge estates in single hands. About seven thousand persons hold four fifths of the soil of Great Britain. Ten or twelve persons own half the land of Scotland. Now, so long as the supply of land in some countries was practically unlimited, it was possible to blind one's eyes to the bearings of the customs of land tenure upon the problem of poverty. But we are rapidly nearing the limits of available land in the countries which have hitherto opened outlets for surplus labor. As though nature meant to hurry up the land issue upon our civilization, a hot-house forcing of these tend- encies of land monopoly is going on in the new countries. In Australia, that magnificent empire of the South Seas, there is already the shadow of the Old-World curse. An Australian paper thus sums the results of a commis- 70 MONOPOLIES OF LAND. sion appointed to inquire into the working of the land laws, under which gigantic speculations in land have been going on : Nothing more damnatory of the existing system of land alienation by free selection, as well as by auction, can be conceived, and the details given of the war of classes it has engendered are perfectly hideous in their deformity. Vast tracts of country rendered useless by a carefully planned strategy of preemption, dummying, or purchase at auction ; vast estates built up out of the wrecks of once thriving homesteads, or by the unauthorized yet successful amalgamation of adjacent squattages ; whole districts, once the populous seats of rural industry, now desolate and silent. These are only a few of the tokens by which the advance of the fell destroyer, land mo- nopoly, is traced. What the process going on in our country is, no one who keeps his eyes open needs to be told. The proper enough policy of encouraging the development of railroads in our newer sections has been pushed to such an excess, through the influence of powerful corporations, that the national govern- ment has already deeded away to these companies 208,344,263 acres an empire over six times as large as the State of New York. Foreign capital is rapidly joining in the land speculation that is mounting higher with each new decade. Every few days we read in the papers of vast blocks of land in the South and West being bought up by European capitalists and companies. Of course, both in the case of the railroads and of foreign capital, these huge land holdings are to be broken up into small sections and resold to settlers or to lesser speculators. But, through this speculative rush for land on the part of capi- tal, it has come to pass that by the end of our first centennial of independence this nation, which thought it held an exhaust- less reserve of land open freely to all comers, finds itself already practically at the end of its free lands. While engaged OUR WASTED DOWRY. jl in experimenting in co-operative colonization a few years since, I found out, to my exceeding surprise, that the United States Government held very little land open to occupation under the old homestead law, 'that was worth occupying. Of course there is any quantity of good land to be had still of these capitalistic companies cheaply enough, but it is some thing of a shock to realize that we have already run through with the splendid dower of public lands which was our pride and our security against the Old-World social disorders. Carlyle used to say, in his savage way, that it was to our abundance of free land we owed our exemption from European pauperism, and he was right. This is what is making the outlook of labor so much darker of late in our country. Nature's provision for the relief of want is being rapidly closed against the poorest and most needy laborers, who, to get good land, must now go a long way and/tfy for it at the end of a costly journey. It is the beginning of the end of our day-dream of room for all and plenty for every one. And, to add to this evil, the modern tendency to vast capi- talistic industry is making itself felt in agriculture in our country as nowhere else in the world, and with alarming results and more alarming prospects. We are in the midst of nothing less than an agricultural revolution. As by magic, bonanza farms have sprung up in the West. Farms of thou- sands of acres are getting to be quite common. We hear of farms of 5,000, 10,000, and even, as in the case of the Grandin farm, of 40,000 acres. There is one estate of 350,000 acres, covering an area of 547 square miles. Of course these huge farms are worked under new methods, by the application of modern machinery. They are simply big food factories, with the temporary good of the factory system, the cheapening of its products, whether shoes or grain, but with the permanent 72 BONANZA FARM. evils of the factory system reproducing themselves in agri culture. These food factories are worked exhaustively, being mere speculations from which capital hopes soon to retire ; and in which, therefore, it has no regard fof the future fertility of the land. They are worked by machinery ; that is, by few men. On the 35o,ooo-acre estate one hundred men are em- ployed. These men are hired according to the needs of the different seasons ; so that, while during the three summer months there may be a large body of laborers employed, the winter finds only a handful on the ground. These men have no hold of the land they work, nor does the land hold them. Instead of a settled, free, farmer-population, building up homes, developing villages and towns, laying the foundation for a 'sound society, we have gangs of hired laborers, drawn from a distance, herded on the ground during the busy season and then turned loose to shift for themselves ; men trained in alternate hard toil and loafing, making no homes, furnishing the recruits for those bodies of tramps which of late years, in dull times, the West has found roaming around with constant danger to society. If this system continues and develops, it will turn out a class of agricultural laborers wholly new to our country, incipient paupers and criminals where we looked to see a hardy yeo- manry. It may not continue. Theorists are sure that it will not continue ; that it will speedily give way to other and safer forms of agriculture. Perhaps it will. But as it is simply the action in agriculture of the tendencies making themselves felt, and increasingly felt, in every form of industry the tenden- cies developed by the monster forces of our age the prospect is of an indefinite continuance of this state of things and of a vast increase of it. Back of all this, we can trace the working of yet graver evil TENANT FARMERS. 73 tendencies in our system of land tenure. A study of the United States Census Reports, such as that given to them by Mr. George and by Mr. Moody, whose deductions I have not seen refuted, reveals the alarming fact that our farming popu- lation is steadily losing the character of free owners of the land, and becoming in reality a body of tenant-farmers. The number of farms held free of mortgages is rapidly decreasing, while the extent of the liens held upon them is as rapidly in- creasing. A steady rise in rent is going on over the world ; with, of course, local and temporary exceptions. Everywhere in the Old World we hear of " rent " as the burden that bears most heavily upon labor. When news of some fresh agrarian movement comes, we have grown to expect to find complaints against rent, as in France and Spain and Germany and, notably, in Ireland. In the cities, rent is literally eating up wages and small salaries. There is no difficulty in accounting for this fact. Every work of society must be done upon land. Those who control the land, control every thing. All that is done to develop society makes for their gain. The more people that crowd a city or a country, the more demand is there for land, the higher the rent it will bring. The greater the skill and enter- prise developed and the richer the accumulation of society in all that makes a civilization, the more is the value of the land on which it all rests enhanced. Numbers and wealth alike run up rent. It grows without effort of land-owners, by the efforts of every one else. Now, this tendency we see being forced forward also en our soil. How preposterous have rents become in this city ! They are revolutionizing the character of the city, and making it one in which only the rich and poor will stay a city of ex- 74 RENT RISING, tremes. And, while rents are higher here than elsewhere, they are steadily becoming higher in all our cities and towns, as far as I can see. Farming land is experiencing the same tendency. The selling price of good land in parts of the country where agri- culture has any chance of profit in it, advances decade by de- cade ; which is saying that rent advances steadily. Thus the very progress of civilization makes for land as against labor ; shutting men off from the free access to mother earth, whose bounteous breasts are stored with the food of man ; making the landless increasingly dependent, and laying ever heavier burdens of rent upon them, deepening thus their poverty. Christendom is wakening up at last to this truth. The problem of " land " is everywhere in Europe forcing itself to the fore front of the social agitation. The " nationalization of the land " is the cry which is evidently going to crystallize the forces of labor. The astonishing sale of Henry George's book, " Progress and Poverty," is a sign of the times which ought to open the eyes of the most optimistic believers in the gospel of "whatever is is right." In England, men like Mr. Wallace, the eminent scientist, and William Morris, the poet and decorator, are heading the movement for the nationalizing of the land of England. A shrewd observer of affairs said to me several years ago that the Irish were evidently to be the instruments, in the hand of Providence, of working out the problem of our land tenure to its bitter conclusion, and of thus bringing on the issue of the true tenure of land. So it seems certainly. Our own country will not for a good while find this problem the urgent one that it already is in the Old World ; but it is only a question of time. The same tendencies are working, as we have seen, and are working toward the same results. THE COMING QUESTION. 75 Already an organization, bearing the taking name of " The American Free Soil Society," is in the field to open aforetime the agitation of this fundamental question. Sooner or later, our civilization must face the task of a radical reorganization of its system of land tenure, and of the outworking of a system which shall in some way guard against land monopoly, and turn private property in land into personal occupation of a public property, the common soil of the commonwealth. This is no brand-new revolutionary notion. Great thinkers and cautious, like John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer, have seen the oncoming of this question. They have discovered the principle that the soil of a nation belongs to the nation the body of the people ; that property in it has a peculiar character of its own, quite distinguishable from the character of property in any thing else ; that it is nature's pro- vision for the common necessities of man, and as such must be regulated in the interests of the commonwealth ; that it is perfectly open to a people at any time to refashion its tenure of land as may seem best to its wisest heads. Indeed this new theory is simply a return upon an immemorially old system ; upon the feudal tenure which vested the title to the whole land of a nation in its king ; upon the land communism which ruled for ages among nearly all peoples, and of which traces still linger in " the commons " of England, the "All-mend" of Switzerland, and other archaic rights. Life moves in a cycle, and society, like the individual, often takes up in manhood some custom or belief which it had in youth hastily thrown away. As a practical aid to the re-establishing of better relations between labor and land, I would suggest the organization by the national government of colonization. Colonization has always been the natural relief of overcrowded centres. In this 76 STEPS TOWAXD SOLUTION. way surplus labor has gone back to the soil. Our country has been built up by colonization. Now the abler classes of labor will undoubtedly take care of themselves in this respect, as in others. The mass of men, however, who most need this salvation, need to have a helping and guiding hand in gaining it. They don't know where to go, nor how to go, nor what to do should they go. They must have the initiative taken for them by superior intelligence and power. Where colonies are planned and organized and directed by capable men, the feeble and the dull can be led back to the land and made self- supporting on it. This has been amply shown on our own shores. What a wise work for the state ! It can be done as business, and not as charity in the form of advances by the government. Thus the state would be relieving the East while building up the West and the South. Plainly, any refashioning of the tenure of land must come, after due education of the public mind, through legislation. And such legislation, like the education that precedes it of which indeed it is but the continuation, an educative function of the state should proceed slowly and progressively, in the application of the principle of the common ownership of the soil by the people. The principle must first be recognized by law in clear and simple cases, and then it can be led along towards further applications, as we ripen for them. As such an initial measure of legislation, I would respect- fully suggest an enactment by Congress making all mineral re- sources hereafter to be opened the property of the people ; to be held in trust for the commonwealth by the state. Thus, between the upper and the nether mill-stone between capital and land labor is ground as we see it to-day. And, therefore, the true cure of our present social disorder SUMMAR Y. 77 will be found only in such social alteratives as will work an organic change in our civilization. The diagnosis of the dis- ease is about as much as we can hope to achieve in our day. Then, through patient study and much experimenting, we may hope to grope slowly toward the true remedies. Meanwhile, it is all-important that we should recognize the gravity of our disorder, and its general nature, and thus encourage the con- sultations that the case demands. The ameliorating treatment suggested in the earlier part of my talk is of value chiefly in getting the body politic ready for the more heroic measures, whether of medicine or surgery, which must, sooner or later, be ordered by our social doctors ; one or two tentative experiments towards which I have ventured to suggest. IV. SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS AS TO THE CAUSES OF LABOR'S POVERTY. To recapitulate the suggestions which I have to offer : Labor is at fault, and needs to develop greater ability and in- terest in its work ; more thrift ; larger powers of combination and better methods in combination ; the substitution of arbitra- tion and co-operation for strikes ; the building up in its trades unions of centres of political action. Capital is at fault, and needs to develop greater personal in- terest in its employees ; to create for them in their surroundings the interest that their work so largely lacks ; to bind its men to itself through a system of industrial partnership ; to prevent strikes by arbitration ; to make out of its brains and means and position of control a real captaincy of industry. The general world of business is at fault in its anarchic 78 RECOMMENDA TIONS. system of industry and trade, alternating between fevers of speculative production and congestive chills in which labor is left idle in the market ; in its vast monopolies of common necessities and common services ; in its wellnigh total disre- gard of humanitarian considerations in seeking investments. Philanthropy is at fault in its unwise and obsolete methods. Society at large is at fault in its thoughtlessness and selfish- ness, its luxury and extravagance, and its manifold wastes. Municipal governments are at fault, in not taking civil ad- ministration out of national politics and making it wholly a matter of wise corporate management ; in their dishonest and wasteful administration ; in the burdens of debt thus imposed on the people ; in parting lightly with valuable franchises ; in encouraging intemperance, by their multiplication of grog- shops ; in allowing the poor to be housed as they are.* State governments are at fault in not providing a system of industrial education in connection with the common schools ; in legislating freely for the interests of capital while neglecting the needs of labor ; in establishing no control of the great cor- porations which they charter and endow with munificent privi- leges ; in allowing the present license of gambling in the neces- sities of life, and of monopolizing the most important resources of the people ; in "not establishing labor bureaus. The national government is at fault in various respects, concerning which I sum my suggestions into propositions which I respectfully suggest to this committee as possibly worthy of being submitted to the Senate of the United States : (1) Tariff reform. (2) A national bureau pf labor. * The lines of responsibility of civic and state authorities overlap and are not readily separable at times. FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE. 79 (3) Legislation concerning the great transcontinental rail- roads, and the appointment of a national railroad commission. (4) The establishment of postal savings banks. (5) The further fostering of industrial education. (6) A better system of patent privileges. (7) The limitation of the right of bequest. (8) The organization of colonization from our crowded centres to our newer regions. (9) The reclaiming of public lands whose grants have be- come forfeited, and the return to the old policy of preserving all public lands for actual settlers. (10) The reservation of future mineral resources as public property. Back of all these responsibilities lie those of our capitalistic system of industry and of our tenure of land, concerning which the time seems to me unripe for other action than that already suggested. The propositions concerning the action of the national gov- ernment are, of course, open to one serious objection apart from all other criticism that they may deserve. They look to a considerable increase of the functions of the state, already burdened with heavy responsibilities and developing now a dangerous bureaucracy. Our prevailing theories favor the minimizing of state action, and regard any further assumption of offices by government as a reaction and not a progress ; a return towards the obsolete ideal of a paternal government. I recognize the danger in every increase of functions by the state, but I see the danger that lies in the avoidance of such increase of function ; an even greater danger, as it seems to me. Apart from any theorizing, the whole trend of our social life is forcing on our age such increased action by the state, in the very teeth of what has been accepted as the gospel of political 8O FUNCTIONS OF THE STA TE. economy. Doctrinaires prove powerless before facts. Eng- land, the home of the non-interference dogma, has been driven on from one step to another in the direction of larger state action, out of the felt necessities of the situation. Thus, within a few years, we have seen the development of the postal savings bank, the purchase of the telegraph lines, and the organization of the parcels-post. Within a decade the state has added to its functions the offices of banker and tele- grapher and expressman, and the country lives and thrives. Necessity has dictated a slow feeling of the way in this direc- tion, which is all that I suggest. The state should avoid assuming any new office until that office is fairly forced upon it, by the demands of the people or the exigencies of society ; but, then, it should not hesitate to take up the work thus plainly indicated for it. The work of the Department in one of whose buildings we are now meeting the post-office is the best vin- dication of the possibility of a capable and honest administra- tion of a huge business with which no private company could be trusted. The introduction of a real civil-service reform is the indis- pensable preparation for such higher functions on the part of government. If there is any truth in analogy, we must expect society, as it grows more highly organized, to develop largely increased powers in government. Society is an organism, as Mr. Spencer has taught us. It is, as Hobbes quaintly taught in " The Levi- athan," a great man. The human organism, as the highest type in nature, certainly suggests the necessity of a head pro- portionate to the quantity and quality of the functions to be carried on in the body. T,he power ot co-ordinating the func- tions of the body the power of the brain measures the place of an organism in the scale of nature. An acephalous body is THE SOCIAL BRAIN. 8 1 not supposed to be an ideal sort of organization anywhere out- side of political economy. With the steady and rapid increase in the complexity of the functions of the body social, it is becoming more and more a vital necessity to evolve a great head, capable of co-ordinating all these varied activities a head which shall call to it the best blood of the body, and build up a large and powerful brain.* * See Appendix for report of the conversation, in committee session, fol- lowing the above testimony, with its elaboration of certain points touched on above. II. THE STORY OF CO-OPERATIVE PRODUCTION AND CO-OPERATIVE CREDIT IN THE UNITED STATES. OUTLINE. Co-operation has more of a story than supposed. Table of chief entries in the story. 1. Co-operative Production (i) Fisheries (2) Agriculture Fourierism Anaheim Silkville Co-operative Colony Aid Association Associate Diaries (3) Manufactures Early Essays Experiments between 1870 and 1880 Patrons of Husbandry Sovereigns of Industry Somerset Co-opera- tive Foundry Various New Efforts in the Present Decade South Norvvalk Hatters Minneapolis Barrel Makers (4) Profit-Sharing Experiments Peacedale Manufacturing Company Mr. Ara Cushman The Staats Zeit- ung Brewster & Co. Pillsbury Flour Mills. 2. Co-operative Credit (i) Banking (2) Loan and Building Associa- tions Earlier Experiments Revival after the Civil War Present Devel- ment in Pennsylvania Story of in Ohio New Jersey Estimate of Extent of Societies in the United States. 84 THE STORY OF CO-OPERATIVE PRODUCTION AND CO-OPERATIVE CREDIT IN THE UNITED STATES * The history of co-operation in the United States is popu- .larly supposed to stand in need rather of being made than of being written. Co-operation in reality antedates the Revolu- tion, and forms an important chapter in the industrial history of the country, though not in the " contents " of Bolles. The Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor declares (Report of 1877) that "there has been for the past twenty-five years in this State an annual investment of from $100,000 to $250,000 in co-operative experiments." Pennyslvania and other States have invested far more in this idea. It is sadly true of many of these States, as of Massachusetts, that the average duration of these experiments, in production and distribution at least, has been " from about three to five years." Other chapters of co-operation, however, tell a very different story. Through failures, as through successes, co- operation has moved on until it has developed a volume of business, which, if it could be accurately measured, would as- tonish us all. Every line of European co-operation is found among us. We can make little showing, indeed, alongside of the brilliant essays in co-operative industry which France has * The Princeton Review, September, 1881. 85 86 SCHEDULE OF CO-OPERATION. outwrought. The splendid success of England in co-operative distribution has not been approached, though our record in this department is both larger and better than the latest Amer- ican book on co-operation pronounces it. We have, however, carried co-operative credit to an extent that fairly rivals Ger- many, and we have evolved an original form of co-operation in an agricultural industry which has already assumed large proportions. A sketch of this history is all that can as yet be written. The data for any fuller story are to be gathered in a search which will prove no holiday task. Only fifteen States as yet have charged themselves, through labor bureaus or otherwise, with studying the interests of the wage-workers ; and most of these bureaus are the growth of the last half-dozen years. Where the States seek to fulfil this duty, they are often foiled by the indifference of the co-operative societies, their reluc- tance to disclose their actual condition, their fear of rousing the opposition of the trade, and their suspicion of governmental scrutiny. The records of most of the early experiments live only in the memory of their survivors. Co-operation awaits its Old Mortality, piously bent on rescuing from oblivion the fading characters of these living epitaphs. The chief entries now to be recorded in the annals of Amer- ican co-operation may be tabulated as follows : 1730 (about). Share System introduced into New England Fisheries. 1752. Fire Assurance introduced in Philadelphia. " The Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire." Benj. Franklin first Director. Corporation still prospering. 1767. Life Insurance introduced in Philadelphia. " The Corporation for the Relief of Widows and Children of Clergy- men in the Communion of the Church of England in America." Composed of clergymen. Still nourishing. SCHEDULE OF CO-OPERATION. 8? 1819. Mutual Assurance bodied in a National Order The Odd-Fellows. 1820-30. Owen's Movement ; Socialistic. 1830-40. Loan and Building Societies formed in Philadelphia. New England Association of Farmers and Mechanics agitate the^ formation of stores. Labor Organizations in New England open some stores. 184050. Brook Farm, Hopedale, etc. Fourierite Phalanxes. New England Protective Union builds up a system of stores ; which at their height did a business of about $2,000,000 per annum ; some of which still survive. The earliest essay in Co-operative Production : Tailors' Association in Boston (1849). 185060. Loan Associations arise in Massachusetts. Associate Dairies started in New York. Anaheim. 1860-70. Stores. started in several States. Productive Societies also. Revival of Building and Loan Associations in Pennsylvania. Mutual Assurance assumes business forms. Renewed attempts at Co-operative Production. Ship-yard in Baltimore (1865), in Boston (1866) ; Machine Shop in Philadelphia (1866) ; Foundries in various cities ; Shoe 'Manu- factory in Lynn and in North Adams (about 1868) ; Cigar Manu- factory in Westfield, Mass. (1869). 1870-80. Knights of St. Crispin agitate Co-operation. Founding and growth and decline of the Patrons of Husbandry ; which Order claimed to save in one year (1874) $12,000,000 to its members, through its co-operative agencies. Founding and growth of the Knights of Honor a great Mutual Assurance Association still flourishing. Founding, growth and dissolution of the Sovereigns of Industry ; which Order did a co-operative business in one year (1877) of $3,000,000 ; representing a saving to its members of $420,000 ; all of its stores being on the Rochdale plan ; some of which are still prosperous. Scattered stores in many States ; Massachusetts reporting 15 in- dependent stores organized since 1870. Philadelphia Industrial Co-operative Society organized (1875). 88 FISHERIES. Independent Productive Societies in many States. Rapid growth of Associate Dairies, of which there are now 5,000 in the United States. Rapid growth of Mutual Assurance Companies ; the Patrons of Husbandry having at one time in one State alone 38 Fire Insur- ance Companies ; three Companies in one county carrying over $1,000,000 of risks ; New York State claiming 300,000 members of various Mutual Assurance Societies at end of decade. Rapid growth of Building and Loan Societies in Pennsylvania which now number over 600 in Philadelphia, with a membership of 75,000 and a capital of $80,000,000 ; which number in Penn- sylvania from 1,500 to i, 800 ; which have led to investment of $100,000,000 in real-estate in Philadelphia alone. Revival of Loan Associations in Massachusetts ; where are now over 22 Societies incorporated, having a total membership of over 6,000. Institution of Loan Associations in New Jersey, Ohio, California, etc. ; New Jersey reporting 106 Associations in 1880 ; Ohio re- porting the incorporation of 307 Associations during the seven years preceding the report (1880) ; total estimated Societies (1880), 3,000 in United States, with membership of 450,000 ; and aggregate capital of $75,000,000. Experiments in Colonization. 1880, et seq. Formation of the New England Co-operative Association. Revival of the Patrons of Husbandry. Greatly quickened growth of Co-operation in all lines. Development of the Knights of Labor. Organization of the Central Labor Union. Formation of the American Co-operative Union. Reports from all directions of new enterprises. It is proposed now to fill out somewhat this bare outline of the story of co-operative production and co-operative credit. I. CO-OPERATIVE PRODUCTION. (i) Co-operative Fisheries, etc. The Puritan settlements had given a practical training in the spirit of co-operation, and in " the first industry that demanded congregation of labor and aggregation of wealth " the form of co-operation followed. The AGRICULTURE. 89 share system was introduced into the cod and mackerel fish- eries, and into whaling, somewhere about 1730. There was a necessity for this, as, if wages alone were paid, the men would have lost the stimulus needful to make the voy- age successful. When a ship was built the builders would take shares in it the painter, sail-maker, rigger, captain and all who were to man it. In trading, the whole ship was divided into sixty-four shares. The builder would take a large part, the captain and mate each one share or one half share, and so on down through the entire crew. The chief owner was known as "the Ship's Husband." He determined the plans of the voyage. In fisheries, a ship would be held in five shares. The owner held two fifths and the crew (captain, mates and men) held three fifths. Profits were divided among these conjoint owners according to the shares held. The owner kept the ship in repairs and the whole company paid expenses. The following item from the records of the island of Nan- tucket illustrates this primitive co-operation. Under date of June 5, 1672, a draught of a proposed agreement between James Loper and the proprietors of the island of Nantuckket runs thus : "5th, 4th mo. 1672, Jas. Loper doth Ingage to carry on a design of whale Citching on the Island of Nantuckket, that is the said James Ingages to be a third in all respeckes, and som of the Town Ingage also to carry on the other two thirds with him in like manner." This good old custom has continued more or less in use down to our own day. Maine fishing-smacks are still manned after a genuine co-operative fashion. The merchants in the China trade also identified the inter- ests of their men with their own, by a percentage on the profits of each voyage. (2) Co-operative Agriculture. The first wave of enthusiasm 90 FOURIERISM. ANAHEIM. over co-operation rose and fell in the decade 1820-30, under the inspiration of Robert Owen and his famous experiment in New Harmony. Eleven societies are known to have been founded during this epoch. Of these Indiana had four, New York three, Ohio two, Pennsylvania one and Tennessee one. Their membership ranged from 15 to 900, and the land brought under cultivation from 120 acres to 30,000 acres. They lasted from three months to three years. These societies were for the most part communistic rather than co-operative. In the decade 1840-50 came a remarkable movement, the result of the social stir of transcendentalism, quickened by the Fourierite propaganda which had been carried on through the New York Tribune. Brook Farm (1841-47), the child of Uni- tarianism, Hopedale (1841-57), the child of Universalism, and the Fourierite Phalanxes (1843-47), were true co-operative societies, and were based on agriculture. A few attempted additional industries. Most of them, however, tried nothing but farming, over which " they went mad." For a while, a new era seemed opening upon the country, and the good time com- ing appeared to be looming round the corner. But, from a variety of causes beyond their disproportionate devotion to farming from unwise choice of location, insufficient capital, lax admission of members, etc., all these societies ultimately failed, and most of them without any long agony of hope de- ferred. But even the memory of some is an inspiration. There were about thirty of the Fourierite Phalanxes, of which Ohio had eight, New York six, Pennsylvania six, Massachusetts three, Illinois three, New Jersey two, Michigan two, Wisconsin one, Indiana one and Iowa one. They represented from 20 to 450 members, and from 200 to 2,394 acres. They continued in existence from five months to twelve years, all but one last- ing less than five years and most of them less than half that time. SILKVILLE. 91 The next decade witnessed a striking example of successful colonization. Anaheim (1857, etc.), in Los Angelos County, California, was founded by a company of fifty poor Germans of San Francisco, among whom there was not one farmer. They bought a tract of over 1,000 acres, and wisely placed its care in the hands of the judicious originator of the enterprise. He laid it out in 50 twenty-acre lots and 50 small village lots, reserving a number of acres for public purposes ; stocked the farms with vines, and cultivated them by hired hands, while the members of the company pursued their city trades. At the end of three years the colony settled upon the estate, dis- tributing the allotments equitably ; when the settlement passed into the usual village form, in which it continues to prosper. In the following decades (1860-80) there were scattered at- tempts to introduce co-operation into farming, accurate ac- counts of most of which are not at hand. One of the most interesting of these experiments was the Kansas Co-operative Farm, or Silkville, as it was called, from its chief industry. It was founded by a Frenchman, the Marquis de Boissiere. He purchased 3,000 acres, near Williamsburgh, in Franklin County, in 1869, on which were a large peach orchard, 400 apple-trees, a vineyard of 1,200 young grape-vines, and 10,000 mulberry trees. In 1873 the estate was sufficiently well in hand and the plans matured enough to invite co-operation, in a circular which outlined an attractive and varied industrial community, embodying, among many of the ideas of Fourier, " a combined household." In 1875 the building for this household, accom- modating from 80 to 100 persons, was completed, having among its attractions a library of 1,200 volumes in English, besides a large number of French and other continental works. The population has ranged from about 30 to 40 persons, chil- dren included, and the work has covered farming, stock- 92 COLONIES. ASSOCIATE DAIRIES. raising, fruit-growing, dairying and silk culture. It had achieved a "substantial success" in 1878. The distance of the settlement from any large market has hindered its growth. It is still in existence under the original ownership, but how far the co-operative features have been continued, its manager does not write. The rapid development of huge farms has drawn attention of late to the need of combination on the part of small farmers, and co-operative farming has been much discussed in the West. Some colonies of immigrants have been planted, in which co-operation was partially developed. During the latter part of the " hard times " of 1870-80, various attempts were made to organize the transfer of labor from the overcrowded centres of the East to the lands of the South and West, in co- operative colonies. The Co-operative Colony Aid Association of New York planted one colony in Kansas, which was broken up by the universal drouth of 1880. The return of prosperity, in rendering this form of philanthropy unnecessary, made it impracticable as a combination of capital and labor. This experiment has, however, vindicated the business scheme on which it was based, and has shown that it is a perfectly safe investment to loan funds to would-be colonists, secured by the improvements made on the land. The Patrons of Husbandry, a national organization for the spread of co-operation among farmers, made some experiments in co-operative colonies. The Sovereigns of Industry, a national order for the spread of co-operation among all classes (lawyers excepted), also had this subject under consideration, but no action seems to have been taken. The successful set- tlements of the Shakers, etc., are communistic, and hence are not further noticed here. Co-operation has, however, had an immense success on a MANUFACTURES. 93 purely business basis, in the cheese factories and creameries of the Associate Dairies. In 1851 a young dairy farmer of western New York, on setting up for himself, proposed to his father, a skilled cheese-maker, to deliver milk daily to him for manufacture into cheeses. The plan worked so well that the neighbors joined and built a factory. The great economy of the system, and the excellence of the cheeses produced under this division of labor, led to other factories. Their growth was slow at first and for some time confined to New York. By 1866, however, there were 500 in that State alone, aver- aging 400 cows, aggregating 200,000 cows, worth $8,000,000, and employing 1,000,000 acres, worth $40,000,000. In 1870 there were 1,313 cheese factories in the whole country, using 116,- 466,405 gallons of milk, and producing $16,760,569 in cheeses. The same methods were introduced into butter-making in 1 86 1, in Orange County, New York, and, under the name of "Creameries," butter factories have multiplied rapidly. It is estimated that there are to-day 5,000 of these co-operative factories in the United States. To this system is chiefly due the immense impetus given to our dairy production. Mulhall's Balance Sheet of the World (1881) presents the United States as having the largest number of cows of any country, a little over one third of all Europe, viz., 33,500,000 cows. Of these, 5,600,000 are for slaughter, leaving 27,900,000 for dairy products. We exported in 1881 nearly $23,000,000 of dairy products, two thirds of the value of our total product forty years ago. (3) Co-operative Manufactures. This most difficult form of co-operation has received comparatively little development among us. A considerable number of scattered experiments have been made within the last thirty years, but few have won lasting success. Among the earlier essays may be mentioned 94 MANUFACTURES. a tailors' association in Boston (1849); shipyards in Baltimore (1865), and in Boston (1866) ; a machine-shop in Philadelphia (1866) ; foundries in various cities Troy, Albany, Cleveland, Cincinnati, St. Louis (1865-68) ; shoe manufactories in Lynn and North Adams, Mass. (dr. 1868) ; a cigar manufactory in Westfield, Mass. (1869) ; a machine-shop in Greenfield, Mass. (1870). The most promising of these early experiments was the stove foundry of the Iron Moulders' International Union. This was started in 1867, in Allegheny County, Pa., the 10,000 members of the Union having been expected to become stock- holders. The paid-up capital, however, proved insufficient in a critical moment the oft-repeated experience and the enter- prise failed. The decade 1870-80 experienced a marked increase in the number of productive societies. In the mid-year of this decade, Massachusetts had sixteen productive societies reporting to the State, and nine not reporting, though duly chartered. All but one of these had been organized since 1870. The sixteen so- cieties reporting gave an aggregate paid-in capital of $114,210. The nine not reporting were incorporated for $47,110. Other societies were known to exist. These societies were located in Lowell, Truro, Weymouth, Westborough, Chelmsford, East Templeton, Holyoke, Somerset, North Adams, Newburyport, Orange, Marlborough (2), Boston (2), Stoneham (3), Fall River (4), Lynn (4), Westfield (8). Their work may be classified as follows: furniture-making (i), chair-making (i), foundry- work (i), manufacture of gas (i), dairy-work (i), cotton- manufacturing (i), printing (2), the building of houses (4), ci- gar-making (5), boot and s*hoe manufacture (9). An illustra- tion of their work may be taken at random in the Co-operative Furniture Company of Orange, which in 1879 sold chamber sets to the value of $15,743.52. A very promising association MANUFACTURES. 95 was the Rochdale Cotton Manufacturing Association, of Fall River, organized in 1874, with a share subscription of $125,000. This was the work of a philanthropic mill-owner, whose family took the largest amount of the stock. It had a short career. Ohio had a number of associations for manufacturing, but the co-operative feature did not long survive in the few societies that were successful. One of these associations had a capital, in 1877, of $100,000, but lapsed into a joint-stock concern, votes counting not by persons, but by shares. It is timely now to recall the fact that a number of these societies were the results of strikes. The strike at North Adams, e. g. } on the introduction of Chinese labor, led to the establishment of a co-operative shoe-factory. A report says : " The men speak with pride of their new feelings of self-re- liance and freedom, as well as of the quality of their work." Would that our present labor revolts might revive this " more excellent way " of striking ! The Patrons of Husbandry were reported in the Economist of November 8, 1876, as having " thirty (30) manufacturing asociations, whose capital ranges from $200,000 to $500,000 ; . . . sixteen (16) grist mills, one of which produces one hundred barrels of flour per day ; . . . three (3) tanneries, and six (6) smitheries." The Sovereigns of Industry contemplated entering upon this field, and made some essays in it, e. g., the Kingston Co-opera- tive Foundry Company, in Kingston, Mass. Its members con- sisted chiefly of picked men from other foundries. It organ- ized with a capital of $8,000. Details of the experience of this and other societies have vanished with the Order. It is a pity that our reformers are so intent to " live the epic " that they wholly neglect " to write it." The latest labor organization, the Knights of Labor, has among its aims " the establishment of co-operative institutions, productive and distributive." It g6 SOMERSET FOUNDRY. is encouraging to note that this Order seeks " the substitution of arbitration for strikes." In New York City, a number of attempts have been made in different branches of industry. A printers' co-operative association started in 1867 with a capi- tal of $5,000. In May, 1870, its business had grown so greatly that it leased a large building in Beekman Street and increased its capital. The presses, types and other material in the office were then worth $30,000, and the establishment employed fifty workmen. Perhaps the most notable success has been achieved by one of the earliest of our productive societies. The Somerset Co- operative Foundry was organized in 1867, for the manufacture of stoves and hollow-ware. Works belonging to a company that had been out of business for two or three years were pur- chased for $6,500. Shares were placed at $100 and the stock at $15,000. In the outset 109 shares were taken in numbers varying from one to five. At first only half a dozen men could be supplied with work. In a few months a change of manage- ment became necessary, and the year closed with a small loss. At the end of the second year a dividend of 13 \ per cent, was declared. The third year made about the same dividend. In 1871, 229 shares were reported as held by forty-two persons, in numbers varying from one to ten, the latter being the maximum allowed. Twenty-five stockholders were at work, and six others had been employed at different times. Of the remaining eleven, some were in business for themselves, some were in good positions under other employers, and a few were not practical workmen. All but a half dozen of the members were married, and all but two were Americans. Wages ranged from $50 to $125 a month. They were better than in other establishments. The agent was paid $100 a month. He had experience as a practical workman and in general business. NEW EXPERIMENTS. 97 The money gain to some of the men had in 1871 amounted to from $300 to $500 more than they would have received in the ordinary way of working. All dividends were allowed to accrue to the working capital, at least up to 1871. The busi- ness done in that year amounted to $60,000. By 1876 the association had added $30,000 to the surplus fund, and had paid out $14,600 in dividends. At that date its stockholders numbered fifty-three, of whom twenty-nine worked for the company. This society is still in prosperous existence. It reported for 1881 a paid-up capital of $30,000, with reserves of $16,524. The secret of this fine success is probably given in a report to the State Bureau of Labor : " In the earlier stages of the enterprise a great deal of self-denial had to be practised, but a willingness was shown to submit to any personal annoy- ance rather than allow the concern to suffer embarrassment." New experiments are being reported continually.. Chicago has lately started a harness-makers' association, and a furni- ture-makers' society. The co-operative furniture manufactory of St. Louis employs no workmen, and claims to do one of the largest businesses of this kind in the city. The following items give an indication of what is now going on in this direction. Some thirty shoemakers of Burlington, New Jersey, who were members of a union, and whose em- ployers refused to retain them on this account, were reported lately as preparing to start a co-operative shoe-factory. The Co-operative Granite Company of West Quincy, Mass., was recently said to be making considerable improvements in order to meet its increasing business. A co-operative tannery has been lately started in Chicago. The Co-operative Tool Com- pany, of Paris, Illinois, is said to be receiving more orders than it can fill. A co-operative stove company has been organized in Buffalo. A co-operative company for the manu- 98 CONCORD PRINTERS. NOR WALK HA TTERS. facture of all kinds of soap was in formation in Richmond, not long since. The Frankford Co-operative Manufacturing Com- pany was, in July of 1885, running eight looms for the manu- facture of table-cloths. The true Rochdale principle of giving each shareholder but one vote, however many shares he might hold, was adopted in this organization, as in several other recent enterprises. In the Lynn Knights of Labor co-operative shoe factory the eight-hour rule has been put in force. A line of machinery has been provided at a cost of $4,000. About sixty male and female hands are employed. This is the first factory in Lynn to adopt the eight-hour plan, and every person employed re- ceives a percentage of the receipts from the works, making it strictly co-operative. The company's intentions are to sell directly to the retailers, and already it has received a number of applications from retailers in various sections of the country asking for the sole agency of the goods in their respective localities. There have been several really important ventures made of late in co-operative production. In the spring of 1884, thirty- four members of Typographical Union No. 6 formed the Con- cord Co-operative Printing Company. A small plant was located in a little room on Ann Street, but a short time suf- ficed to outgrow these humble quarters and the establishment moved to Centre Street. Here one floor was soon so crowded with men and material that another story was hired, and now the establishment is doing an excellent business. It employs seventeen members, regularly, at salaries averaging (for the men) about $18 a week. , It owns about $3,500 worth of material. Instead of paying dividends, the stock of the as- sociation is being steadily increased. Its members work seven hours a week less than the usual time. MINNEAPOLIS COOPERS. 99 In November, 1884, over a thousand hatters in South Nor- walk went out on a strike, because of a large reduction in wages, after having vainly tried to secure arbitration. They soon resolved to turn defeat into victory by organizing a co- operative lat factory. They formed a Co-operative Associa- tion, put in $5,000 in $100 shares, from their own savings, hired a vscant factory and set to work. In a few weeks their factory wa:. burned to the ground. Undismayed, they bor- rowed $5,5 and ran up a wooden factory and were soon at work again. \ second association was soon formed, and then a third, and ye a fourth was lately reported as being in course of organization. These Associations employ each, on an aver- age, about 75 hjnds. It is significant to note that, as one of the associates remarked, the women were ' ' the best men in the lot." A letter fron the president of the original society, under date of Nov. 24,1885, says: "We do not divide the profits, except to those wb own shares, which are $100 each ; each man having one voe, no matter how many shares he may own." This latter feature iarks the society as a genuine co-operative association the d^tinctive character of which, as distin- guished from a join-stock company is, that men vote instead of shares voting. A 'oint-stock company gives a shareholder as many votes as the -.hares which he holds, whereas the co- operative association gies each man only one vote thus pre- serving the democraticcharacter of the organization. The president continues : " 1 ere are about 60 shareholders. The capital, paid up, is $7,4 0t We have built a very nice factory and it is fully equipped. Ve have a mortgage on the building of $5,000, at 6 per cent. 'h e first year we did not expect to make any profit, nor have v e ; the general dulness of trade and the time required to buil a reputation for our goods being against our making money. Ve have succeeded in building a 100 MINNEAPOLIS COOPERS. reputation for our products, and that is some thing, when you are aware of the competition in our line of manufactures. We employ about 100 men and women in the busy season." Altogether the most striking later effort in productive co- operation is that of the barrel-makers of Minneapolis. The Christian Union gives the following account of the eiperiment : The first Co-operative Barrel Association, of Minneapolis, va organized in the fall of 1874, with a capital stock of $15,000, each member paying in $15, and a weekly assessment of $5. The success of this organization was such that it was followed in 1877 by a second, and in i88> by a third, and in 1881 by a fourth and fifth, and subsequently by two pore all of which are doing well. Every stockholder has but one vote, hcwever many shares of stock he may possess ; a condition which tends to pevent consolidation of the stock in a few hands. These co-operative organizations possess a good property, are very thrifty and successful, with a apital stock ranging in each case from $15,000 to $70,000. They are all oing a good business. What is more important, the coopers, who before tls co-operative move- ment had a poor reputation for sobriety and law andorder, now stand high in the estimation of the community as good citizfls. The effect of co- operation in decreasing intemperance is especial/ marked. The first association, the old " Co-operative," has its own i&nufactory of stock, in Chippewa County, Wisconsin, employing there Capital of $30,000, with prudence and success. The seven co-operative c/npanies are doing busi- ness to the amount of one million dollars yearly, The Minneapolis Mirror states thz the second company, "The North Star," increased its capit> stock to $100,000, and does a business of $250,000 per ann m - A letter from Min- neapolis to the Christian Union addfthese particulars : These societies supply all of our mills, /cept three, and are doing fully four fifths of all the coopering work of /is flour city. They claim "six sevenths " of all the work done. The "f&" shops have disappeared, one by one, until there is but one left, and ty owner of that has tried several times to sell out to his workmen. He ^its that he cannot compete with the co-operative shops, and therefore de fln ds low wages. The great mills INDUSTRIAL PARTNERSHIP. IOI favor the co-operative shops, because they are sure of the best work and they are never disappointed by them. . . . They consult dispassion- ately, vote fairly, submit without hesitation, work faithfully, choose their best men always, obey implicitly, and have unlimited faith in the co-opera- tive effort. During their existence the eight shops have had not less than a score of officers entitled to handle their money. Out of this number not one has given any security, not one has proved careless or dishonest, and not one dollar of deficit or defalcation has been charged against them. After their eight years' experience it is now admitted they are unassailable and unconquerable while united, and this fall will probably see every " boss' " cooper extinct. . . . We are now taking stock to buy a town- ship of land of the State ; I hope to be one of a company that will form a co-operative village on it this fall. This, in my opinion, will be the very table-land of co-operative effort and of society. Within a few weeks, the papers have given hints of the formation of a great association that is being formed among the iron- workers of Pittsburg, under the leadership of Mr. John Jarret and with the backing of Mr. Andrew Carnegie, which, if one half that is said of it proves true, will be the most im- portant experiment yet made in our country in co-operative production. There have been a number of experiments in industrial partnership ; notably the Pacific Mills of Lawrence, Massa- chusetts, and the Millville glass-works, New Jersey. One of the later attempts is that of the Peacedale Manufacturing Company, Rhode Island. At the beginning of 1878, the Messrs. Hazard laid before their employees a scheme whereby, in addition to the regular wages, the hands should receive a pro-rata share in the profits accruing after interest and profit on capital had been provided. The firm were to fix this per- centage. The plan has been working with partial success. The first year there were no dividends to the hands. The second year a dividend of 5 per cent, on the gross wages was declared, amounting to $5,842.40. The third year a dividend 102 INDUSTRIAL PARTNERSHIP. of 5 per cent, was made, aggregating $5,999.65. The fourth year (1881) the high price of wool cut down profits, and a dividend of 3 per cent., or $3,760.14 was ordered. The co- operative plan continues in use, since the firm can report : " We believe we can see an increase of care and diligence. As yet this increase is not as great as it should be ; but the object to be attained in preventing waste and in encouraging conscientious work is so important to the moral as well as to the material good of the community, that we decide to perse- vere." In a letter, Mr. Rowland Hazard writes : " Results are not brilliant, but I think its good effects are somewhat analogous to those of a lightning-rod. . . . If by careful observations we can see that it reduces the tendency to violent explosions, we should be satisfied." The Boston Advertiser states that Mr. Asa Cushman, a promi- nent shoe manufacturer of Auburn, Me., lately delivered an address to his employees, in which he presented a plan of profit-sharing with his workmen. Mr. Cushman's plan for profit-sharing proposes no change in the rate or method of paying wages, and the conduct of the business is to be entirely in the hands of the firm. At the end of the business year, however, after a fair amount is allowed for interest on the capital invested, for superintend- ence, risks, depreciation, insurance, and other contingencies, the firm propose to divide any profit that shall remain in proportion to the amount earned by each employe during the year. Three of the employes are to be selected, who are to be given a thorough knowledge of its affairs, with the understanding that they are not to disclose the secrets of the business. The stipulation is also made that these representatives of the employes shall be citizens of Auburn, and two, at least, real estate owners there. The em- ployes are not asked to invest any money, to take any risks, or to make any guaranties whatever. Mr. Cughman further proposes that if, after one year's trial, this system shall prove unsatisfactory to all concerned, the or- ganization of the firm will then be changed into a corporation represented by shares, which the employes may buy up if they so desire. He does not INDUSTRIAL PARTNERSHIP. 103 claim that the proposed system of co-operation is a philanthropic or be- nevolent project, but simply a business proposition, made up on what he considers business principles, for the benefit of all concerned. Few New Yorkers, probably, have known of the quietly satisfactory trial that has been made of this system in one of the leading newspaper offices of their own city. For six years past the employees of the Staats Zeitung, numbering 175 per- sons, have received a share in the profits of the paper. Every one engaged in the establishment, from the chief officer to the office-boy, participates in this profit-sharing. The last dividend paid each employee ten per cent, on his year's salary or wages. A valuable paper, in a late Massachusetts Bureau of Labor, gives an interesting account of a few of the most striking of these experiments, from which a couple of quotations are here given : An industrial partnership which gave to employees an important share in framing the regulations and controlling the conditions under which they worked, as well as participation in profits, was formed at the close of the year 1869 by Brewster & Co., carriage builders, at New York, and dis- solved in June, 1872, by the workingmen joining the eight-hour strike. The dividend to labor was 10 per cent, of the firm's gross profits, there be- ing no deduction first of any salary or interest on capital for any member of the firm. It was divided in proportion to wages, every employee receiving a share, unless he voluntarily left the establishment before the close of the year. . . . That this plan of participation might have the full benefit of the judgment and skill of every person interested in its success, and that all might share in the responsibilities of management, the employees were organized under an industrial asssociation. When the men struck they for- feited a dividend of n,coo, which would have been due a month later, be- sides losing $8,000 in wages, and at the end of two weeks went back to work on the old plan of simple wages without a single concession on the part of Brewster & Co The most extensive example of profit-sharing in the United States is tha^ of the Pillsbury Flour Mills, at Minneapolis. With a daily capacity of 9,500 barrels of flour in their three mills, with an output of flour of $10,- IO4 INDUSTRIAL PARTNERSHIP. 000,000 a year, and with an elevator business of $8,000,000 more, it is the largest industry of the kind in the world. . . . After paying the run- ning expenses of all kinds and a moderate interest on the capital invested, which is $2,500,000, together with large sums occasionally borrowed, a cer- tain per cent, of the net surplus, the sxact per cent, not being revealed, is divided among two classes of employees : first, those who have been em- ployed five years, without regard to position ; and second, those occupying positions of especial importance, without regard to time employed. The wages of the first-class were thereby advanced the past year about fifty per cent., and of the second class about sixty-five per cent. The plan went into operation three years ago. Two years ago $25,000, one year ago $20,- ooo, and during the year ending September 24, 1885, $35,000 were thus di- vided among one hundred of the eleven hundred men at work in the mills. . . . The company consider that their plan of profit-sharing has greatly increased their own profits by the voluntary services of their men in times of need, by their interest in the business, and in other ways. The evident good-will of the employees is regarded as the most agreeable result. A leading member of the firm expresses himself very emphatically relative to the financial and moral benefits of the arrangement, and regards it as one that will not be willingly relinquished.* There has been a very marked and gratifying development of efforts in the direction of industrial partnerships within the past year, as the daily papers indicate in their frequent notices of new experiments. II. CO-OPERATIVE CREDIT. (i) Co-operative Banking. Of banks proper there appear to have been few. The Grangers, in their palmy days, estab- lished a number of co-operative banks in different States, some of which were, from time to time, reported to be doing a large business. Five (5) banks were reported by the Econo- mist (Nov. 8, 1876), one of which had a capital of $500,000. The Bank Commissioner ( of California (1882) reported the Grangers' Bank of California, in San Francisco (incorporated * Seventeenth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor : " Profit-Sharing." CO-OPERATIVE CREDIT. 1 05 April 24, 1874), as having a capital stock subscribed of $1,000,- ooo, of which $531,200 are paid in, in 10,000 shares, with total resources of $1,917,577.06, covering all its liabilities. This showing places it seventh in the list of California banks, as to capital, etc. The Farmers' Co-operative Trust Company of Cochranton, Crawford County, Pennsylvania, is perhaps the latest experi- ment in this line. It divides its profits into three equal shares, one third going to the stockholders, one third to the depositors of money, and one third to the borrowers, pro rata to the stock held, the deposits made, or the loans drawn. (2) Loan and Building Associations. Co-operative banking with us has taken the form of associations for the mutual loan- ing and borrowing of savings, and this chiefly with reference to the building of homes. These associations seem to have originated in Philadelphia. The earliest traced was the Ox- ford Provident Building Association (Jan. 3, 1831). The earlier societies appear to have gone out of existence, or to have merged in newer organizations. All the associations re- porting to the State in 1880 date since 1866. The earliest experiments in this line of which we have accurate data were in Massachusetts. In 1852, The Suffolk Mutual Loan and Ac- cumulating Fund Association of Boston was organized. It was followed by nine similar societies in 1853, and by sixteen in 1854, when an act of the Legislature was obtained to facili- tate the incorporation of such associations. In 1857 these societies had become of sufficient promise to call for special reports from the State Insurance Commissioners. The report for 1859 showed thirty-six associations in existence, which had made an aggregate of loans, since their commencement, of $3,113,808.16 ; of which interest was charged on $1,344,407.22. These societies were run at an average expense of $524.39 per 106 LOAN AND BUILDING ASSOCIATIONS. annum. Their term of prosperity was brief. The report of 1864 gave twenty-two as then working ; that of '65 recorded eight ; and that of '66 could only show three. The trouble seems to have lain in certain serious defects of their organization, developed by the strain of the civil war. To this latter cause, indeed, is probably due the obliteration of a large portion of the societies of different kinds which were in existence at its opening. The experiments, however, were not thrown away, since, in the language of the commissioners, " they have demonstrated beyond doubt that, with equal pru- dence and intelligence on the part of the lender, loans to the industrious and economical poor are as safe as those made to any class whatever of the rich." After the civil war, a re- markable revival of these societies began in Philadelphia, and extended through Pennsylvania. The earliest organizations re- corded in the State archives were The Milestown, No. 5 (March, 1866), and The Bristol, of Bucks Co. (Dec., 1866). These were followed in 1867 by The Falls of Schuylkill, of Philadel- phia, in January ; The German, of Lycoming Co., in April ; The Tremont Saving Fund Association, of Schuylkill Co., in June. Five societies followed in 1868, and four in 1869. These associations are still in operation. The growth of these societies through the decade 1870-80 was astonishing. They now number about 600 in Philadelphia alone, with a member- ship of 75,000, and a capital of $80,000,000. In the State of Pennsylvania there are registered (1880) 1,017 associations. The total number in the State is variously estimated from 1,500 to 1,800. From the data gathered, it can be said that they represent capital ranging firom $10,000 to $300,000, and net earnings (1880) reaching from $20 (The Third Ward of Alle- ghany Co., organized Sept., 1880) to $106,885.60 (The En- terprise Saving Fund and Loan Association, of Phila.). Ten LOAN AND BUILDING ASSOCIATIONS. IO/ report earnings (1880) under $1,000 ; twenty-seven from $1,000 to $5,000 ; eleven from $5,000 to $10,000 ; forty-three from $10,000 to $25,000 ; twenty-three from $25,000 to $50,000 ; five from $50,000 to $75,000 ; one over $75,000 ; and one over $100,000. It can be justly claimed, officially, that they have " become an important factor in the financial and industrial progress of the commonwealth." For the same official source adds : From their inception up to the present it is estimated that under their operations 60,000 comfortable houses have been erected in Philadelphia alone, and that they have enabled 25,000 householders to pay off mortgages that probably would otherwise have been foreclosed. Through the eco- nomical habits they were instrumental in forming, it is estimated that $100,000,000 have been invested within the city limits, which, were it not for them, might possibly have been squandered in dissipation and by im- providence. They have been the means of making 80,000 owners of real estate and 80,000 tax-payers, thus giving Philadelphia the pre-eminent title of being the " city of homes." f A very gratifying feature of these associations has been the fidelity with which they have been managed. " Hundreds of associations have been conducted from their inception to their termination without the loss of a dollar " * The movement has now its organ in Philadelphia The Building Association Journal. Ohio followed Pennsylvania closely in this development. In Clark County, several such associations were formed soon after the war. The Clark County Mutual Benefit Association (1868) ran six years, with fair success. The Springfield Loan and Savings Association (1869) continued until 1875, with moderate success. Other societies followed, all of which were * Report of Secretary of Internal Affairs, Pa., 1879-80; pp. 266, 269. f Ib. p. 268. 108 LOAN AND BUILDING ASSOCIATIONS. patterned upon the Philadelphia plan. A considerable de- velopment of these societies has taken place latterly in Ohio, especially in Cincinnati. It is claimed that there are 174 as- sociations in Cincinnati, with a membership of 28,000. The Golden Rule Aid Company of Clark Co. (org. 1880) claims that, within three years, societies of this pattern have been or- ganized in fifteen counties of the State, which have paid in full for homes for their patrons to the amount of $91,700, and have placed loan shareholders in possession of homes, paid for in full and on which they are now making monthly payments, to the amount of $168,750, and have a subscription for loan shares amounting to over $607,000. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (iSSo) records the incorporation of 307 associations during the seven years preceding this report, with a capital of $154,658,716. " Numbers of these however never commenced business." Thirteen societies returned receipts and disbursements for the preceding year amounting to $316,775,65, and assets, in n societies, aggregating $624,755.54. A gain of over 38 per cent on each share was reported. Under the guidance of Hon. Josiah Quincy, Massachu- setts has revived her early efforts in this direction, following now the Philadelphia plan. Four building associations were reported to the State in 1875. An act of the Legis- lature to further the formation of such societies was ob- tained, and in July, 1877, The Pioneer Co-operative Saving Fund and Loan Association was incorporated, with 177 members, representing 795 shares. Its fifth annual state- ment (April 3, 1882) shows 819 members, 4,178 shares of stock, a cash business of $90,000, assets of $112,528.98, with profits of $12,763.98. Other associations arose. There are now twenty-two societies incorporated, having a total member- ship of over 6,000, representing 40,000 shares, with an ultimate LOAN AND BUILDING ASSOCIATIONS. 1 09 value of $8,000,000. " The assets of the associations have risen during the year from $372,461.31 to $653,142.80, which indicates a marked degree of prosperity." * New Jersey reported 129 associations in 1884. Of these, 122 returned statistics. These societies have been in existence from one to fourteen years. They report an aggregate of 133,- 300 shares, held among 25,000 persons. Net assets were given at $6,956,351. Mr. Bishop estimates "that at least 4,000 workmen in New Jersey are, at present, engaged in pay- ing off mortgages on their homes," as borrowers in these as- sociations. California returns 16 societies, of which n report- ing show 29,947 shares, a paid-in capital of $1,808,304.98, earnings of $787,183.62, and assets of $2,595,488.48. Similar associations are known to be in operation in Maine (one re- ported by the Bank Examiner), New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Delaware, District of Columbia, Virginia, West Vir- ginia, Kentucky, Illinois (ten or twelve in Chicago), and Michigan. The Bureau of Statistics of Labor and Industries of New Jersey (1880) makes the following conjectural esti- mate of the development of these societies : We have said that there are probably 2,000 building and loan associations in the State of Pennsylvania. If there are 1,000 in all the other States, which is less than others have estimated it, the total would be about 3,000 in the country. It is safe to say that the average membership would be 150, and the total, 450,000. Applying the average of five persons inter- ested in each, as in the case of the savings-banks, and we have a total of 2,250,000. A private authority on the subject writes that it is a safe estimate to figure the average capital of these associations at $25,000. This would aggregate a capital of $75,000,000. Building and loan associations, in the language of the Penn- * Bank Commissioner's Report, Jan., 1882. 110 LOAN AND BUILDING ASSOCIATIONS. sylvania Report quoted above, " supply a want that no other savings institution or banking company can meet." Their de- velopment, one of the most marked successes of co-operation, is an encouraging sign of the education of Labor, in that co- work for a commonwealth which is the ideal towards which society is moving Till each man finds his own in all men's good, And all men work in noble brotherhood. III. THE STORY OF CO-OPERATIVE DISTRIBUTION IN THE UNITED STATES. OUTLINE. 1. Earliest ^xperiment Workingmen's Protective Union. 2. Renewed interest in 1860-70 Most stores failures A few permanent successes First Worcester Co-operative Grocery and Provision Store Fall River Workingmen's Co-operative Association. 3. Developments from 1870 to 1 880 Patrons of Husbandry developed co-operation largely Sovereigns of Industry also Developed co-operation Stores disconnected with either order New York experiments New Jersey experiments Pennsylvania experiments Philadelphia Industrial Co-operative Society. 4. Special phases of co-operative distribution Dividing stores Women's store. 5. Renewed activity in present decade Pittsburg scheme Revival of Patrons of Husbandry Knights of Labor American Co-operative Union Outlook of the movement. THE STORY OF CO-OPERATIVE DISTRIBUTION IN THE UNITED STATES.* THE story of Co-operative Distribution in the United States opens in the decade 1830-40. The New England Association of Farmers and Mechanics, which held its first convention in February, 1831, was apparently the earliest organization to introduce and discuss resolutions upon this subject. The topic was agitated in different labor organizations in that decade, and some stores were started. These early experiments soon disappeared, leaving no accessible records behind them. In October, 1845, a dozen persons opened a store in an upper chamber over the Boylston Market, Boston. Its first purchase was a box of soap and a half chest of tea. Out of this little germ grew an enterprise that, in its best days, carried on a trade of from $r, 000,000 to $2,000,000 per annum. The store was started by members of The Workingmen's Protective Union. . The local divisions formed branches of a central supply agency. The trade of the association was reported as follows: 1848, $112,507.79 ; 1849, $220,801.60 ; 1850, $535,338.56. In 1849 its name was changed to The New England Protective Union. An analysis of the returns to the central division for the year ending December 31, 1850, shows the number of divisions to have been 106 ; 83 of which returned a member- ship of 5,109, while 84 returned a capital of $71,890.36. The * The North American Review, October, 1882. "3 114 AMERICAN PROTECTIVE UNION. highest amount held by any one division was $2,765.51, and the lowest was $150 ; the average thus being $855.63. For the succeeding quarter, 67 divisions reported having purchased through the central agency to the extent of $102,341.04 ; an average of $1,527.47. The largest trade made at this time by one division was by No. 55, of New Bedford, which in 1849 made a total sale of $31,278.64. The amount purchased through the agency in nine months of 1851 was $619,633.16. By October, 1851, the number of divisions had grown to 403 ; of which 167 reported an aggregate capital of $241,712.66, while 165 divisions gave an aggregate of sales for the year of $1,696,825.46. Discord finally split the organization. The new branch took the name of The American Protective Union. The old organi- zation showed, in 1855, 72 divisions reporting, with 4,527 mem- bers, an aggregate business of $1,130,719.29. The decline set in during the next year. The new branch did a business, be- tween 1853 and 1858, ranging from $1,000,000 to $1,536,000 per annum. In 1859, the board of government believed that there were 600 stores in operation. By this time the decline had begun in this branch also. The aggregate business for 1859 was only $930,376.36. Both branches were soon practi- cally defunct. The great majority of the local stores were gradually wound up, or passed into ordinary joint-stock con- cerns, or into private hands. The civil war put an end to most of the few that lingered on that far. A handful endured even that strain, and some live still, under new names generally, e.g., the stores in Worcester, New Bedford, Natick, etc. The Natick store presents a fine, example of fidelity to true co- operative principles and of continued prosperity. It has now been in existence for twenty-two years. Its semi-annual divi- dends have always been ready promptly. The capital stock, EARLY CO-OPERATIVE STORES. 115 originally fixed at $2,000, has been raised to $6,000. It is held now by 564 members, in $10 shares. Its report for 1882 showed sales for the year of $129,265, from which there were net profits of $2,298 ; a return of $3.60 on each share of $10. Of the experiments outside of Massachusetts, during the period before the civil war, no reliable data are at hand. Fincher's Trade Review recorded the renewed interest that showed itself in many quarters, in the opening of the de- cade 1860-70. It gave accounts of meetings held to agitate the subject, of calls for information, for lectures, etc. It noted, between November, 1863, and May, 1866, the establishment of thirty-six stores in ten States. A number of other stores were mentioned as projected. The extent of this movement we may better judge from the fact that the " Review" noticed a con- ference of co-operative stores in Boston, wherein a plan for a wholesale store was recommended, and also a contemplated conference of the stores in New York State. Some of these stores started off with great encouragement. The Providence store made sales of $1,200 in the first week, and $1,500 in the second week, and the sales rose within six months to as high as $600 a day. The Troy store sold to the extent of $5,000 in the first two weeks. The Roxbury and Charlestown stores even reported sales of $6,000 each in the first week. Cheering tidings of progress were noted, from time to time, in the Trade Review. The South Reading store reported, for the ninth quarter, sales of $i 1,801.25. The Troy store made sales, in its first six months, of $36,825.43. The Chelsea store claimed sales, in its first year, of $90,000. Alongside of these signs of success appear brief records of stores that had failed. The Review's chronicle closes in May, 1866 the paper then going out of existence and we lose our only general guide for this period. Il6 WORCESTER AND FALL RIVER STORES. We find, however, scattered local data, indicating a continu- ance of the movement. Massachusetts reported, officially, in 1868, the existence of twelve distributive associations in eleven towns. Their united capital amounted to $47,000, and the aggregate membership to 1,859. Other stores followed in the same State. Sporadic developments of stores appear to have taken place through the country. Some of them have con- tinued in operation to the present time, and have won notable successes. The First Worcester Co-operative Grocery and Provision Store was organized in 1867. In 1875 it reported 590 members, and an annual sale of $75,000. In 1881 it re- ported a paid-up capital of $5,000, with reserves of $1,113. Its members for 1884 numbered 500, and it had a trade that year of $55,000. It is in a prosperous condition. The Acush- net Co-operative Association was organized for the sale of groceries in 1867. It reported, in 1875, a membership of 100, a share-capital of $6,900, in shares of $25, assets amounting to $13,622, an annual trade of $71,000, and a dividend of about thirty-two per cent, on the members' capital. Dur- ing the three years ending with 1874, the association paid dividends amounting to 240 per cent, on its share- capital. The Fall River Workingmen's Co-operative Association was organized in 1866, as a joint-stock company. After about three years' experience, it re-organized on the Rochdale plan. At the close of its first year it had sixty-five members and a share-capital of $3,600. By the close of 1874 its membership had increased* to 260, and the share-capital to $19,734, while its assets were about $50,000. During 1874 its sales were $79,615, and its net profits for the year were $9,155. In the eight years of its existence up to 1875, the store had sold goods to the value of $425,277 ; had paid to members, as inter- PATRONS OF HUSBANDRY, 117 est and dividends, $38,179; and had divided among purchas- ers, not members, $4,757. In 1881 the association reported a paid-up capital of $17,381. Under the pressure of the hard times, in the next decade (i87o-'8o), the Order of the Patrons of Husbandry (founded in 1867) took on large proportions. In six months of 1873, more than 10,000 granges were formed. The membership doubled in 1874. At the meeting of the National Grange, in November, 1875, the secretary reported 24,290 granges, with a membership of 763,263. The minutes of the National Grange show, from the start, a discussion of various schemes of co- operation, with references to experiments actually made. The favorite method was an imperfect form of co-operation, in which each local grange resolved itself into a purchasing club, and the various granges of a State united to support a general agent, who, combining the orders of the scattered clubs, bought in large quantities at a considerable discount, and shipped by car-load to the several granges at reduced rates. The business of these agencies became immense. Pennsyl- vania had an agency store in Philadelphia which was filled from top to bottom with samples. The Ohio agency, in one year (1875), ran a business of a few thousand dollars up to " not far from one million," with a saving to the granges of $240,725 40. The Economist of November 8, 1876, declared that "their records show twenty State purchasing agencies, three of which do each an annual business of $200,000, and one of which does an annual business of $1,000,000. Patrons have five steamboat or packet lines, fifty societies for shipping goods, thirty-two grain elevators, twenty-two warehouses for storing goods." Some of the grange organs made huge claims as to the savings thus effected. One of their papers wrote : '* The P. of H. saved 1 1 8 PA TRONS OF HUSBANDR Y. $5,000,000 in 1872 and $12,000,000 in 1874." This system of State agencies appears to have assumed proportions beyond the business talent and experience which the Order could furnish, and great losses ensued. The attention of the Order was drawn to purer forms of co-operation. The subject of local stores was discussed at great length. The ninth session of the National Grange (1875) presented a careful plan for organizing such stores, conforming in essential particulars to the Rochdale model. This was widely scattered through the Order, and, it is believed, was generally followed in the experiments made. Unfortunately there are in print no accurate accounts of the spread of these stores, and of their experiences. The Economist, in 1876, declared : " It is quite impossible to enumerate the grange stores, but one hundred and sixty are recorded." The official records of the National Grange use only general language : ' Local stores are in successful operation all over the country " (1879). " There are large numbers of co-operative associations in various sections of the country. . . . Some have suc- ceeded beyond the most sanguine expectations of those inter- ested in them ; others have failed " (1881). Educational influences were contemplated and secured in these co-operative associations. The local granges met statedly, often in their own halls, to discuss economic and other questions. They established circulating libraries and schools of agriculture. The reaction usual to all rapidly developing movements befell this Order in the latter part of the decade, aggravated by the relaxing effects of returning national prosperity. Of late, how- ever, there appears to be a revival in the Order. A second great organization furthering co-operation arose in 1874 the Sovereigns of Industry. This was a secret Order, SO VE REIGNS OF IND US TRY. II 9 with ritual, etc., and was open to all classes except lawyers.* The preamble to the constitution of the National Council stated its object thus : It will try to establish a better system of econorrtfcal exchanges, and to promote, on a basis of equity and liberty, mutual fellowship and co-opera- tive action among the producers and consumers of wealth. The growth of the Order was rapid. Within forty days from the organization, councils were formed in eighteen States. At the first annual meeting of the Massachusetts Council (December, 1874) one hundred councils were repre- sented, with ten thousand members. The second annual council reported one hundred and sixty-six councils, with twenty thousand members. In 1877, the National Council had reports from councils in seventeen States and territories. At first, the members of a local council used to club together in buying at a certain store, saving thus from ten to twenty per cent. They would buy flour by the car-load, saving from two to three dollars a barrel. A general distributing agency was established in Chicago, through which all local councils could procure goods direct, at cost. The General Council urged upon the Order the establishment of co-operative stores on the Rochdale system, and clearly and accurately enunciated the principles and methods of that system in a plan which was printed for free distribution. The advice seems to have been widely followed. The report of the Committee on Methods of Trade reported fifty stores in Massachusetts in 1875. The Sovereigns' bulletin of May, 1875, mentions that "within the past few months a large number of co-operative stores have been started by members of the Order in many different States." * It is a notable fact that both of these orders were open to women, and that the S. of I. made women eligible to every position in their ranks, some of the councils electing women as presidents. 120 SOVEREIGNS OF INDUSTRY. By 1877 the number of stores reporting to the Massachusetts Council had fallen to twenty-nine ; fifteen of which were joint- stock companies and fourteen of which were carried on upon the Rochdale plaq^; with total sales per month of $49,806. There were eight stores not reporting to the council. The address of President W. H. Earle to the National Council in Syracuse, March 20, 1877, said : Ninety-four (94) councils, selected from the whole, report a member- ship of 7,273, and with an average capital of only $884 did a business last year of $1,089,372.55. This was equal to a saving of $21 to every man and woman belonging to these councils. It is safe to assume that the unreported sales will swell the amount to at least $3,000,000. which, at the same ratio of profit as above reported, would make a saving of $420,000. The president's address to the fourth annual council (1878) presented returns from seventy-five stores. Forty-five councils reported an aggregate trade for the year of $750,000 ; while thirty-five councils reported capital, in the stores they repre- sented, of $58,000. It was proposed at this time to create a co-operative exchange, under the title of The New England Sovereigns of Industry Board of Trade, to promote direct co-operative trade or exchange. Ten of the leading stores, reporting to the Order, showed an average capital of $2,630, with an average trade of $34,000. " It is worthy of note," says the address, " that all these stores have conducted their business upon the Rochdale plan." The address further stated that " nearly the entire trade reported has been conducted on the Rochdale plan." Some of these stores have continued prospering to the present time. The Silver Lake Co-operative Association commenced business in July, 1875, with a capital of only $460. In 1877 it had a cap- ital of $1,200, and did a business per annum of about $15,000. Its expenses, all told, were about $912 a year. This society, LOCAL STORES. 121 now in its eleventh year, reports for the year ending October i, 1885, sales of $12,708.33 ; representing a gain of $3,218.84 over the trade of five years before. On the sales of the past year there was a net profit of 9 per cent. This association has a membership of forty, scattered through ten towns. The Old Colony Co-operative Association, Kingston village, opened its store in 1875, and in 1877 was doing business at the rate of about $30,000 per annum. It reported for 1881 a. paid-up capital of $4,680, with a balance of profits of $419. The Sax- onville store was, in 1877, doing business to the amount of $48,000 per annum, on a capital of $1,700. In 1878 the Order was considering larger plans, e. g. y a wholesale store, a warehouse, etc. But, soon after this, serious troubles were experienced in the Order, whose nature is only partially divulged in the reports of its councils and the columns of its organs. All other sources of trouble were aggravated by the relaxing of the pressure of hard times that had forced men into combination. The founder and chief leader of the Order seems to have labored heroically, in a thoroughly religious spirit but in vain. In April, 1880, the Sovereigns' Bulletin noticed a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Na- tional Council, which would " probably take some final and definite action as to the Order." There is no record of the funeral. In addition to these organized movements to build up co-op- erative distribution, there have been, from 1870 onward, numerous stores springing into being, from purely local inter- est. Massachusetts reported, from the best information to be procured, in 1875, fifteen independent stores as having been organized since 1870, with an aggregate capital of $29,260 ; and twenty such stores as then in operation, with a capital of $67,351. This shows that five stores had lived on from the 122 MASSACHUSETTS AND NEW YORK STORES. preceding decade, averaging a capital of over $7,500. There were also several societies mentioned as not reporting to the State. Eight societies, reporting officially to the Labor Bu- reau, gave aggregate sales of $500,000 per annum. The Plymouth Rock Co-operative Company reports, for the year ending December 30, 1885, sales amounting to between $45,000 and $50,000. The usual profits per annum are about $2,000. The trade of the store has increased steadily, having been about $17,000 in $1877-78 ; and thenceforward in suc- cessive years, $17,000, $25,000, $33,000, $39,000, and $41,000. The Seventh Annual Report of the Riverside Co-operative Association of Maynard, Mass. (Dec. 31, 1885), showed sales amounting to $16,200.03 5 on which a dividend of three per cent, was declared. In New York State we find both failures and successes dur- ing this period. Two of the latter may be noted. The Farmers' and Mechanics' Trading Company, Seneca Falls, was founded in 1872, and reorganized in 1878. Its 'Thirteenth Annual Report (Dec. 31, 1885) shows sales for the year of $13,662.05 ; returning in dividends to members $467.94. It is in a very sound condition, having assets of $5,214.35 against liabilities amounting to $1,631.15. Its sales during the thir- teen years of its existence have aggregated $192,515.85, yield- ing net profits of $8,259.87. It has already paid in dividends more than the amount of capital invested in 1872, and the un- divided profits are now equal to the sum of eighty per centum in excess of the capital still remaining invested in the business. The Port Jervis Co-operative Association, founded in 1878, in its thirty-fourth quarterly report (May, 1886), shows sales during the quarter of $10,336, with net profits of $632.96. This was divided as follows : One and a half per cent, on members' capital $[17.96, and five per cent, on purchases NEW JERSEY, OHIO, AND PENNSYLVANIA. 123 $575.00. The total profits of the store since it was opened have been $16,802.87. The association was at this time con- sidering propositions to buy a. central lot and build a store thereon, and to connect the present store with various points in the suburbs by telephone. New Jersey had a number of stores started in this period, details of which the Labor Bureau finds it hard to get at. The Raritan Woollen Mills Co-operative Association, one of the most successful ventures in the State, it is believed, was organized with a capital of $2,810, and has now a capital of $9,670. The sales for the year ending October 8, 1880, were $95,821.39, and for the six months ending April 8, 1881, were $54,590.45, or over $9,000 per month. Ten per cent, has been paid on the capital stock andrfrom five to six per cent, on the purchases. Ohio gave birth to a number of experiments in this decade. Accounts are had of eight stores in 1877. Their sales ranged from $2,500 to $66,000 per annum, and their net profi'ts from $170 to $6,300 per annum. In Pennsylvania two examples of successful stores may be taken from the extreme sections of the State. The Neshannock Co-operative Society, Neshannock Falls, Lawrence County, was founded early in 1873. Its fifty-second quarterly report (May i, 1886) shows sales for the quarter amounting to $3,765.32, with profits of $350.16. This society is composed of miners. It has led to several similar societies in other mining districts. The most brilliant success achieved in the country has been won by the Philadelphia Industrial Co-operative Society (limited). It was incorporated in 1875. Starting with one store, it has now six stores : a main store, a store for boots and shoes, one for meats and provisions, one for dry goods, and two branch stores. Its first quarter's sales were about 124 DIVIDING STORES WOMEN'S STORE. $2,600. Its sales for the quarter ending February 18, 1882, were $51,413.63, being an increase upon the preceding quarter of over $n,ooo. The gross profits for the quarter were $4,516.62, which, after paying the usual claims of share-capital, fixed stock, and legal reserve, and four per cent, on non- members' purchases, enabled the society to pay a dividend on members' purchases of nine per cent., and still left a small balance. There are now upward of a thousand members. There have been some curious phases of co-operative dis- tribution. The dividing stores of Fall River bade fair at one time to create a clearly marked species. The earliest opened was in 1865, in a wooden shed owned by a mill corporation. By 1874 there were 34 such stores. The number of families represented at this time -w^as 1,200. These stores did not cherish any of the nobler sentiments which animated the Rochdale weavers, nor did they embody the practical wisdom of those sagacious Yorkshiremen. They seem to have sold as near cost as possible, and to have had no educational fund, or any other provision looking to the improvement of the mem- bers. The saving effected was not made plain to all the mem- bers, as is done where the usual prices are followed and the profits are set aside as dividends. So when, in 1874, a strong firm of grocers from Boston opened a branch in Fall River, the low rates of the new establishment cut out most of the dividing stores. There are now seven of them in existence, represent- ing a membership of about 1,200 persons. There is in Philadelphia a store started, built up, and chiefly managed by women. A small number of women, five winters ago, bought their groceries together at wholesale barrels of flour, chests of tea, bags of coffee, etc. and distributed them among themselves. They were so well pleased with the ex- periment that they formed a Working People's Co-operative PRESENT MOVEMENTS. 12$ Association, with shares at $2 each. They have opened a store on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays, from 7 to 10 P.M., when one of the women is in charge. Shares have been reduced to $i apiece. A small profit is charged for rent and other expenses. There was a store in Springfield, Ohio, early in the decade 1870-80, whose membership was confined to colored people. A renewed activity in co-operative distribution marks the current decade. Stores are reported as starting up in many sections of the country : four in New Jersey, four in Pennsyl- vania, seven in Michigan, etc. Even distant Montana is stirring itself. Some of these new societies start off vigorously. The Dorchester store (organized 1880) reported sales for 1881 of $30,000. The Lansing (Mich ) store began in a small way with a paid-up capital of only $300, and is now doing a busi- ness of upward of $32,000 per annum. The Fifth Quarterly Statement of the Arlington Co-operative Association, Lawrence, Mass., reports sales for the quarter amounting to $10,543.00. Troy (N. Y.) has lately opened a store with a fine spirit of de- termination on the part of one or two members young men who have been several times disappointed already, but are re- solved to make a success of this venture, by shouldering the chief labor of it. Another instance of the same determined spirit to which co-operation has always owed its successes is found in Springfield, Ohio, where, after repeated failures, a new store is about to be started through the agency of a few sturdy souls. The Trenton Co-operative Society reports for the last quarter of its first year (March 31, 1886), sales of $8,219, yielding a dividend on salaries and purchases of twelve per cent. The Pittsburg Dispatch gives an account of a remarkable scheme now being shaped in that city : 126 GRANGE REVIVAL. The project is co-operation on an unusually large scale. It is proposed to establish distributive, productive, and credit systems exclusively in the interest of members of organized labor. When the plans are completed, which will be in the fall, a large general store and a workingman's savings- bank will be established in this city. . . . No one but workingmen or members of labor organizations will be permitted to take stock, and no man can hold more than $200 worth. . . . When a sufficient fund has been secured to start the bank and store, they will be established in this city. A central and convenient location will be secured. Every thing that is used by a workingman and his family will be kept in the store. Prices will be lower than at other stores, but there will be a profit for the stock- holders, and dividends will be paid every six months or deposited to the credit of the stockholders in the bank. A number of delivery wagons will be sent all over the cities daily for the purpose of receiving and delivering orders. These stores will be established in all the leading cities of the country as soon as possible. After this scheme has been tested, building and loan associations will be organized, the main object being to erect homes for the members. In time there will spring out of this movement co-operative rolling mills, steel mills, foundries, factories, and machine shops. Workingmen will soon become interested in the movement, and, instead of spending money in saloons or for pleasure, will deposit all they can spare in their bank. With men like Andrew Carnegie and John Jar- rett behind the scheme, there is hardly any possibility of a failure. As already indicated, the Patrons of Husbandry seem to be reviving, and in the new impetus of this Order co-operation is sharing. The late secretary of the National Grange writes : " Hundreds of co-operative stores upon the Rochdale plan are in successful operation all over the country, while a number of large wholesale or supply houses are running at various cen- tres." That this is no empty boast is evidenced by the official reports from one State, and that a frontier State. The Texas Co-operative Association, Patrons of Husbandry, in its third annual report (July, 1881), gives seventy-five co-operative granges as connected with it. The general manager reports (May, 1882) one hundred and three distributive associations. NEW ORGANIZATIONS. I2/ He writes : " Our growth has astonished all alike. We have not had a single failure where the true Rochdale principles have been adhered to." The secretary writes (April, 1882): " The business is a wonderful success thus far." Two new labor organizations have come to the front with the present decade, each of which emphasizes co-operation. The Central Labor Union, a federative body of the trade associa- tions of New York City, in its first semi-annual report (July, 1882), presents co-operation as one of its chief aims. The Knights of Labor, the newest national Order, seeks, according to the fourth plank in its declaration of principles, the " estab- lishment of co-operative institutions, productive and distribu- tive." The claim which this Order makes as to membership warrants the hope that if it seriously essays to embody this principle, something substantial may result to the cause of co- operation.* This spring, committees representing the Michigan Grange and the Michigan Assembly of the Knights of Labor met in Detroit, and, as a result of their conference, recommended to their associations an elaborate plan of distributive co-operation. They proposed to establish distributing agencies at various central points in the State, where produce and merchandise of all kinds should be gathered through purchasing agents, and then distributed to the members of both organizations. An association has lately been formed under the title of The American Co-operative Union, with head-quarters in Zanesville, Ohio, which aims " to unite in one grand union all societies, companies, or associations, of whatever nature, whose government is of a representative nature, that are already or- ganized or which may hereafter be organized by this Union, or * Already reports come in from widely different sections, of stores that are being started under the auspices of the Knights of Labor. 128 REVIEW OF STORY. otherwise, in order to bring about complete co-operation through the interwoven interest of all." This association aspires "to solve the great problem of the nineteeth century, by organizing the business and industry of the country upon co-operative principles, which will effectually put an end to strikes and the ruinous disputes between employer and employed." This bird's-eye view of the story of co-operative distribution in the United States shows a very much larger development than is usually supposed. Owing to the obscurity incident to these humble enterprises, their shrinking from public notice, and the ephemeral character of many of them, data are pecul- iarly hard to gather ; so that the probability is that the real extent of this movement is very imperfectly indicated in this essay. Most of the experiments have undoubtedly been fail- ures. The causes of this non-success appear to have been largely those experienced in the Old World. Incompetent and dishonest management, selfish and impatient members, vicious methods of doing business recur with saddening itera- tion in the history of these stores. Larger social forces have made our country, thus far, a hard field for co-operation. The general prosperity of the nation has indisposed men to small savings, and active competition has cut prices in most neces- saries to a figure that has left little margin for such stores. Mr. Quincy's conclusion confirms the general experience in this country, as in England, that " stores on the Rochdale plan are not adapted to large cities." Philadelphia's development of thrift in her wage-earners, and the education in association won by them in the wonderfully successful building and loan associations of that city, probably explain her exceptional ex- perience. It is, however, an exaggeration of the ill-success of this movement to say, with Mr. Barnard, in " Co-operation as a Business," that " in this country distributive co-operation FUTURE OF CO-OPERATION. 1 29 has been marked by almost utter failure." Enough has been indicated of real success to make it seem probable that before long, with the rapid oncoming of new and harder conditions for the workingmen of this country, Mr. Colly er's jesting as- surance to George Jacob Holyoake, at the reception tendered him on his latest visit to our country, may turn out literally true : " We have been altogether too comfortable hitherto to do much in co-operation, but by and by we will show you the biggest thing out in this line." IV. IS THE STATE JUST TO THE WORKINGMAN? OUTLINE. 1. Labor's right to the land and the State's attitude thereto. 2. Labor's right to a fair chance in the struggle for existence, and the State's failure to secure this right (i) Oppressive taxation National debts State and municipal debts (2) Partial legislation (3) Artificial mon- opolies. 3. Labor's right to a just share in the wealth that it produces, and the State's failure to interfere impartially in the natural adjustment of profits and wages (i) Conspiracy laws (2) Importation of cheap foreign labor under contract (3) Machinery in the hands of Capital Mechanism revo- lutionizing industry and trade Factory system The State has failed to guard the interests of labor thus jeopardized Patents The non-interference of the State an injustice. 4. Summary Labor must appeal to the tribunal of Justice The Church must carry this appeal. IS THE STATE JUST TO THE WORKINGMAN ? Labor's complaint is its poverty. The chief creator of wealth, according to the masters of political economy, it finds itself poor while making others rich ; in its own pocket only copper pence, while with the touch of alchemy it is turn- ing every thing to gold. If this poverty can be shown to be labor's own fault, the punishment of its inefficiency and thrift- lessness, together with the fault of nature, the hardship im- posed by the stern order amid whose laws, "mighty and brazen," man finds himself on earth, then our question is dis- charged. Admitting the full force of both of these factors in the problem of labor's poverty, but believing that there is another factor in this problem the wrongful action of society I propose to point out some of the many particulars in which I believe our civilization is at fault concerning labor ; in which the State, consciously or unconsciously, legislates so as to in- terfere with certain great natural rights of man, and thus com- mits an injustice to the workingman. I. There is first the right of all men to an equal access to the bounteous provisions of nature for human support, and our civilization is unjust if it shuts any man off therefrom. * Address at the Church Congress, Detroit, October, 1884. 133 134 RIGHT TO LAND TO A FAIR FIGHT. The mineral resources of the earth and the productive pow- ers of the surface of the earth are the provisions of Providence for the common needs of man, over which a private monopoly is a crime against man and a sin against God. Out of this fundamental wrong springs some of the deepest sources of labor's poverty in our modern civilization. As Seneca long ago said : "While nature lay in common, and all her benefits were promiscuously enjoyed, what could be happier than the state of mankind, when people lived without avarice or envy ? What could be richer than when there was not a poor man to be found in the world ? So soon as this impartial bounty of Providence came to be restrained by covetousness, so soon as individuals appropriated that to themselves which was intended for all, then did poverty creep into the world. "* II. Labor has a right to a fair chance in the general struggle for existence, a right not to be handicapped by arbitrary burdens ; and, if our civilization fails to secure this right to the working- man, it is unjust to him. (i) Our civilization does thus handicap labor by its oppres- sive taxation. The national debts of the great states of Europe aggregate a billion dollars [$1,000,000,000]. These debts represent mainly the entail of war. Wars have been carried on, in nine cases out of ten, in the interests of kings and courts and aristocra- cies and capital, from the days of Alexander to the attack of * This point was merely indicated in my address, because Mr. Henry George was upon the programme and the subject was sure to receive ample treatment from him. It is not elaborated here for the reason that it is discussed at some length elsewhere in this volume. See my testimony before the Senate Committee on Education and Labor. HANDICAPPED BY TAXATION, 135 France upon China. The maintenance of war establishments drains the resources of Europe by $800,000,000 per annum. Their withdrawal of labor from productive industry costs Europe about three billions of dollars per annum [$3,000,000- ooo]. Thorold Rogers has shown that a deep depression in the condition of labor in England began in the eighteenth century, in consequence of the cost of the European wars on which Great Britain entered a depression which continued down to the second quarter of the present century. We can quite well understand this, when, as the cost of war, we find Europe to-day taxing each man, woman, and child $15 per annum. With each laborer's family paying out of the $200 which its head earns, on an average, its share of such heavy charges for the aristocratic luxury of war, how can the work- ingman be other than poor ? The State, territorial, county, and municipal debts of our land aggregate $1,201,803,177. The debt of New York city [$132,096,992] imposes a taxation of $31,105,533 /. e., $3i/^r capita. These debts are indeed partly the charges for needful public improvements, but in a much greater measure they represent the cost of civic corruption, of the jobbery and thievery which fasten like leeches upon the body politic. The nation's taxes take about one dollar out of every ten that the average citizen spends and neither of our great po- litical parties seems able to propose any relief from this cruel burden. This wrong is intensified by the systematic evasion of their proportionate burdens of taxation by the very rich. I speak from the best authority possible, when I say that, in the leading city of the land, many of the wealthiest citizens habitu- ally evade their legal taxes, throwing back thus their share of the burden upon their poorer fellow-citizens while law winks at this iniquity. 136 PARTIAL LEGISLATION. (2) Our civilization handicaps labor by partial legislation. In a true State, Justice should be absolutely impartial. She should be blind to all distinctions of class. She should have no eyes to see favorites. As a matter of fact, it is notorious that legislation, in the representative assemblies of modern civilization, while ostensibly in the interests of the whole people of the land, is actually, for the most part, in the interests of classes rather than of the public ; builds up private fortunes rather than a commonwealth. The Massachusetts Bureau of Labor recorded this judgment over a decade ago : " Legislation at present is almost devoted to the purposes of aggregated wealth, whether in the form of railroads, of manu- factures, or of numerous other great monetary interests. The time of legislatures, national and State, is occupied almost exclusively with the consideration of questions how to increase the facilities by which capital may be accumulated, while very little time or thought is given to the question how the laborer can, by lessened work-time and increased means, achieve that education which shall elevate him to a truer manhood." * We thought last December that the Millennium had come in this country, when seven or eight measures for the improve- ment of the condition of its wage-workers were introduced in Congress. It looked a little less like the Millennium when one bill barely squeezed through at the end of the session all the rest choked off by the inability of the people's representa- tives to see any merits in claims that were not urged through seductive lobbies. Every conceivable interest of capital is sedulously guarded, while parallel interests of labor are left to shift for themselves. * Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 1873, p. 501. MONOPOLIES IN TRANSPORTATION. 137 What abundant safeguards are thrown around the rich bor- rower of money ! Yet, in the State of New York, there is not a single law securing the poor man's family treasures, which have been placed in the hands of the pawnbroker, in order to raise a few dollars to keep his children from being turned out into the street, or his wife from being buried in a pauper's grave. All sorts of schemes for the investment of capital are habitu- ally fostered by legislation, while only within the last two or three years has there been more than one State in our Union having a bureau of labor statistics. Over 200,000,000 of acres have been deeded away to great railroad corporations, to float those enterprises an empire six times the size of New York State ; but when, amid the hardest of hard times which our country has known, workingmen asked for a national appropriation to organize the colonization of surplus labor, they were told, with the utmost solemnity, that the eternal order of nature would be disturbed, and the everlasting laws of society overturned, if any class legislation should be allowed ! Of all the cant of a canting age, there is none more nauseous than the solemn chant of the gospel of laissez-faire, which, whenever a labor-bill is under discussion, is raised by the very men whose fortunes have been builded up by special legislation. (3) Our civilization handicaps labor by artificial monop- olies in exchange and transportation. Common services of society, which ought to be carried on with a view to the commonwealth, have been, one after an- other, remanded to corporations seeking private profits ; cor- porations called into being by the State, endowed by it with vast privileges, protected by it in all their interests, released by it from nearly all responsibility to the public, and freed 138 WASTED FRANCHISES. from any restraining surveillance of government. Into the hands of these corporations, the common carriers of a land, have been placed powers of taxation which, as a United States Senate Committee said, Congress would hesitate to assume, but which the tyranny of private greed has not scrupled to use re- morselessly. Coal costs in New York, on an average, a dollar and a half a ton more than all expenses and a most handsome profit would warrant. That is, an extra tax of thirty-three per cent, is placed on a prime necessity. And, when the ample supply of nature's provision for warmth lowers its price, it is in the power of private corporations to shut off the supply and force the price up. Again and again, we have seen this mon- strous wrong committed, and every poor man fleeced to fill the pockets of a few mining magnates and railroad kings. When the profits of these huge corporations grow too great to be made public, the ingenious device of stock-watering makes it all right before the people, and the State winks again while the people are bled. The injustice of such privileging legislation is made even more monstrous when franchises of vast value, instead of being sold to the hightest bidder, are given away to private corporations, like the Gospel, "without money and without price." In New York alone, franchises from which a large revenue might have been drawn by the city, sufficient to have materially reduced our burdens of taxation, have been thus bestowed upon the favorites of our Metropolitan Court, the Board of Alderman. Our governments thus deprive themselves of the power of reducing the taxation of the. many, in order to aggrandize the few ; and then, on the principle that " one good turn deserves another," they empower these privileged classes to impose further burdens of taxation upon the public, through the liberty INTERFERENCE IN DISTRIBUTION. 139 secured them of making extortionate charges for the common services of which they have a practical monopoly. III. Labor is entitled to a just share in the wealth that it pro- duces ; and it is bounden on our civilization, if it interfere at all in the natural adjustment of profits and wages, to interfere impartially. Its failure so to do incurs the guilt of injustice. The returns of industry are divided, as between capital and labor, in the form of profits and wages. Were an absolutely just division possible, each of these factors in the problem of production would receive a return exactly proportioned to the value of its contribution to the sum of the wealth created. Plainly, no such ideal justice prevails. The disproportion be- tween the rewards of capital and labor is often patent to every one. No jugglery of figures can conceal this obvious inequali- ty, which frequently confronts us. This glaring inequality in the distribution of the rewards of industry becomes a glaring wrong, if it is furthered by the neglect of any legislation that is fairly open to the State whereby a better distribution could be aided, or by the passage of any legislation positively aiding capital as against labor. Society has thus interfered sys- tematically in the natural adjustment of wages. (i) The State hinders combination among workingmen, by the positive or negative action of its legislation, and thus keeps wages down. The high authority of Prof. Thorold Rogers is my warrant for the assertion that through three centuries the English Parliament has legislated to keep wages down. Every effort at combination among workingmen their only hope of contending with the superior power of capital has been, in the same manner, systematically barred by legislation, 140 IMPORTATION OF CHEAP LABOR. in most lands. Co-operative societies, friendly societies, trades unions, and all other forms of association have thus been nearly strangled in their infancy by the hostile hand of legisla- tion. There are still upon the statute books of this land " conspiracy laws " which, as Hon. Abrani S. Hewitt said on the floor of Congress, " are a disgrace to the country." While this positive wrong of legislation against labor is gradually be- coming a thing of the past, there remains the negative injustice of the State's failure to act in legislation, where such legisla- tion is imperatively called for, to facilitate labor's association. While every possible form of association on the part of capital has been fostered by legislation, labor has, even now in many parts of our country, to extemporize some adaptation of laws that were designed for capital, when it would combine in self- defence or mutual enrichment ; and, in the most advanced States of the Union, still lacks the facilities necessary for some of its most imperative actions in association. (2) The State legalizes the importation of cheap foreign labor under contract with capitalists, and thus lowers wages. The wages of labor are naturally adjusted, in our present system, under the law of supply and demand. If the demand for laborers is in excess of the supply in any country, wages will rise. If the supply is in excess of the demand, wages will fall. Again and again in the history of Europe, the paucity of labor in one country has tempted to its shores superabundant labor from other countries ; swamping the prosperity of the native workmen under a deluge of foreign operatives, hungry for work, and willing to work at lower wages. This is a hard- ship against which labor pftentimes has occasion to remon- strate with its own brotherhood. But, when in a country like our own, where labor is not over abundant, and where wages thus stand comparatively high, capital is free under law to en- CHEAP FOREIGN LABOR. 141 ter the labor market of the world, to contract for gangs 'of the low-waged laborers of over-crowded countries, and to de- liver these cargoes upon the labor market of our land, then it seems to me that a real wrong is done to our workingmen. I am aware of what can be said on the other side of the ques- tion. We need larger supplies of labor in this country, for the development of its resources. Any legislation closing our ports against the spontaneous natural influx of foreign labor would be an arrest of the development of our national wealth. As the Germans and Irish and Scandinavians whom now we count as American laborers came freely to our shores, with a warm welcome, so let their suffering brethren come from all parts of Europe, so long as they come under the natural law of supply and demand. Under that natural action they will come, on the whole, no faster than we need them. As the land at large ceases to need more labor, it will offer less attractions to the labor of other lands, in the shape of exceptionally high wages, and thus the influx will be naturally checked. It is wholly another matter when capital is allowed, under the pro- tection of law, to force down wages by a wholesale importation of cheaper foreign labor. That is a privilege given to one side in the contest of capital and labor, which interferes with the natural equation of the problem, and thus creates an injustice. Little as one may sympathize with the wild outcry against Chinese, cheap labor, he must have failed to study the deeper aspects of this question who does not perceive in the little cloud over the Pacific Coast the omens of a storm which may ulti- mately change the industrial climate of our country. How can the unskilled labor of New York maintain even its present wages against the gangs of Italian lazzaroni that are being im- ported wholesale, under contract ? How could the skilled labor of our country maintain its wages against the millions 142 STATE'S INACTION AS TO MACHINERY. whom China could swarm over upon our shores, capable, by the singular imitativeness of the race, of soon mastering most of the departments of mechanical industry, content with a diet of rice, and content also with homes patterned upon a Five Points' lodging Tiouse. The Hocking Valley troubles are an ominous sign of the times. Now, when the American laborer is being tickled with the fair-sounding promises of protection to native industry, he might well ask himself : Why are cheap goods to be heavily taxed, and cheap labor to walk over the gangway into the office of its importers without a cent of duty ? (3) The State has failed to secure any legislation sufficiently guarding the interests of labor from the dangers that are in- volved in the introduction of machinery into industry, while it has allowed the control of the giant forces of nature, secured by mechanism, to pass into the hands of capital, thus lowering wages. Mechanism is revolutionizing the world of industry and trade. Man's productive power has increased enormously ; the aggregate wealth of civilization has multiplied many times; private fortunes of a colossal magnitude have been created ; and the whole conditions of life have been favorably changed for a considerable portion of society. It is questionable, however, whether labor at large has really shared commen- surately in this increased wealth of civilization. John Stuart Mill sadly confessed that it was doubtful whether all this marvellous development had, as yet, perceptibly lightened the toil of labor. Political economists generally have been forced to face the fact that, somehow or other, the condition of labor shows no such improvement as ought to have resulted from our industrial revolution. On the contrary, it is patent to all, that, from some cause or other, the introduction of ma- chinery has actually wrought a positive injury to labor, in MACHINERY'S EFFECT ON LABOR. 143 many respects ~ and has made its outlook seem wellnigh hope- less to those who are not prepared to admit the guidance of the principle of justice in the mazes of economics. The introduction of machinery has developed the factory system, with its division* of labor, which has broken the old- time workmen up into bits of men, each knowing only its own little fragment of an industrial process, and as such made in- capable of becoming free master workmen. It has collected laborers into vast industrial establishments, where health and even life has become endangered. It has brought about the employment of women and children in the factory, and thus has lowered wages. It has thrown all human labor out from one field after another, and thus has massed in all lands an ever-growing body of unemployed or partially employed labor, which has crowded the labor market, still further lower- ing wages. It has turned the old-time healthy, steady industry into alternating fits of fever and chill, now largely over-pro- ducing goods, and then bringing on a paralysis of trade which closes mills and throws hosts of laborers out of work. It has taken the interest, largely, out of human labor, transferring the intelligent processes of industry to monster mechanisms, and reducing men to automatic feeders of these steely giants. It is making the necessary plant for production so costly as to put it increasingly out of the power of operatives to rise into the rank of employers of labor. It is more and more making mechanism and not man the true producer, the creator of all wealth ; and is thus taking the claim which workingmen have heretofore made for a larger share of reward out of their mouths, while giving capital, the owner of these costly me- chanical workers, a new justification for larger profits. What has the State done to guard the interests of labor, thus jeopardized by this industrial revolution ? 144 STATE'S ACTION AS TO MACHINERY. It has never, to my knowledge, tried to restrain the employ- ment of woman and child labor. It has only of late, and in some rare instances, essayed to guard the conditions of factory labor. Only within a couple of decades have some of the New England States led off in legislation limiting the hours of em- ployment of women and children. Still, to-day, in many of our States, the eight hours which constituted a day's toil for men in England, three centuries ago, may be wellnigh doubled for tender women and weak children ; and no hand of law is outreached to stay the greed of capital. Only within the last half of our decade has the factory legislation of Eng- land attained its present noble form, while there is not one State in our Union which has on its statute-books any such code, securing health and life to the inmates of our great bar- racks of industry. This inaction of the State, where action is imperatively needed, is made yet worse by its action where none is re- quired. Why have these giant forces of nature, called in by man to his service, made labor's condition harder and its prospects darker ? Plainly because, as a high authority in eccnomics has con- fessed, and as every one may see, the control of the machinery has fallen into the hands of the other partner in industry. Capital would naturally have possessed itself of a large share in the control of these forces, had it not been aided by legisla- tion. In that case there would have been a social hardship. As it is, legislation has intervened against labor, and thus there is a social wrong. Could the State have stepped in to the con- trol of these monster forces of nature, when first they trooped to the feet of man, at the call of the arch-magician Science, as now Socialists would have it do, and as, hereafter, it may be CAPITAL CONTROLLING MACHINERY. 145 driven to do out of sheer necessity, the age of mechanism might have fulfilled the dream of Aristotle concerning human progress. If, short of this heroic action, the State had legis- lated with a view to making these monster forces serve the people at large rather than a privileged few since indeed they are no man's creation but the creatures of the All Father, the common property of the children of the Most High the worst evils which they have brought about would not have come to pass, and much of the good that they would seem to have been sent to accomplish would have been realized. Whereas, what- ever the motives prompting such action, the State has so legis- lated as to hand over these giants of nature to the exclusive bidding of capital. The system of patenting inventions has created a monopoly of mechanism. It is manifestly just that discovery should be encouraged by a liberal reward. It is as manifestly unjust that those rewards should be legally consti- tuted a perpetual or long-continued and excessive tax upon all the labor which most needs to avail itself of these improve- ments. It is manifestly still more unjust when the right of reward which the discoverer has fairly earned is legally allowed to be wrested from him, under the pressure of poverty, or to be stolen from him by the wiles of cunning, and is thus estab- lished as the privilege of capitalists whereby they may levy toll upon the necessary toil of a whole people. Yet, by just such a system of legal favoritism have the benefits of machinery been turned aside to the building up of huge private fortunes for a few at the cost of the many. Sewing-machines, which in this country sell for seventy-five dollars, are taken to England and sold there for fifteen dollars. In other words, law, in this free country, privileges capital to control one of the most in- dispensable of machines, and to exact, over and above the profit at which it is willing to sell in another land, a tax of 146 LABOR MUST CONTROL MACHINERY. sixty dollars on every instrument bought by the wretched creatures who sing in our great cities " The Song of the Shirt." Even the non-interference of the State, in the struggle for the control of mechanism, is a real injustice. So omnipotent are these giant forces which have been harnessed to machinery, so necessary to labor's freedom is the mastery of them, so hopeless is its struggle for this mastery, if unaided in the con- test with capital, so certain is its complete enslavement be- neath these costly monsters if it fail to master them, that nothing less than the positive action of the State in legislation, aiding in such control, will prevent injustice. The portentous fact that the average wages of labor in this country have fallen in ten years from $425 per annum to $325, as a comparison of the census returns of 1870 and 1880 shows a loss of 25 per cent, in a decade is the conclusive proof that forces are at work tending to lower dangerously labor's present share in the rewards of industry, and calling therefore upon the State for prompt and effective action in order to pre- vent greater injustice.* * Prof. Hadley, Chief of the Connecticut Bureau of Labor, considers the United States census figures the most reliable authority accessible on the question of wages. Without doubt the chief factor in this alarming fall of wages is the enormous immigration of unskilled labor during this decade. The figures do not represent any positive decrease in skilled labor, but rather a larger increase of cheap labor, lowering the average wages. Hosts of Italians, Bohemians, etc., have come into our country who are willing to work for less wages than those generally paid here, and who find their own condition bettered by these wages to them a decided increase. But such a large increase of cheap labor tends certainly to drag down the wages of those who were hitherto receiving higher pay among us, and thus the fact of such a large increase of cheap labor is ominous for our unskilled laborers. THE CASE AGAINST SOCIETY. 147 IV. Before the great jury gathered here to-night, I plead labor's case against society. I charge our civilization with injustice against the working- man ; not in that he is poor, for that poverty may be his own fault, or it may be the hardship enforced by nature, in the stern struggle for existence which she imposes upon all crea- tures ; but in that he is made more poor than his own faults or the hardships of nature would have made him, by the failure of society to legislate impartially concerning him, by its hostile legislation against him, and by its allowance thus under law of many monstrous injustices. I have laid before you, as counts in this indictment, the fact that the systems of land tenure in our modern civilization bar the right of each man to free access to the provision of nature for human support ; the fact that the State fails to secure for each man his right to a fair fight in the struggle for existence, and places labor under heavy odds, by its oppressive taxation, by its privileging legis- lation, and by its creation of monopolies ; and the fact that the State interferes partially between capital and labor, in the natural adjustment of the relation of profits and wages, by its laws forbidding or hindering free combinations of labor, by its allowance of the importation of cheap foreign labor under contract with capital, and by its practically deeding over the control of machinery, which is revolutionizing industry, to capital. Because of this inequitable discharge of its solemn duties as legislator and ruler, I ask for a verdict of " guilty " against our civilization. To what tribunal, then, is the workingman to carry his ap- peal ? To the tribunal of force ? Never, except as a last resort. Dynamite may be a gospel in Russia, where no other 148 THE CHURCH'S APPEAL TO JUSTICE. form of protest can be made. It is the unpardonable crime in a land where every form of protest is open to labor, and where it is its own fault if it do not avail itself of these all-sufficient means of redressing its wrongs. The supreme tribunal among a free people is the high and holy court of Justice daughter of the Eternal who loveth righteousness. She sits throned above the powers of nature ; the imperial ruler to whom all the most masterful forces that sway men do homage ; holding in her left hand the balances of equity, in which, so fine their perfect poise, a hair will turn the scale ; holding in her right hand, to enforce her exigent decrees, the sceptre of omnipo- tence ; her awful eye penetrating all sophisms ; her touch dis- enchanting all illusions ; her voice thundering through the depths of man's conscience the summons which rouses his highest energies, and inflames his most ardent enthusiasms ! Let Justice speak and it shall be done, let her command and it shall stand fast ! Who shall lead the workingman into this high and holy court, and plead his case before this august Judge if not the Church of the Carpenter's Son, whose mission, like that of her master v is to " help them to right that suffer wrong " ? In the righting of these wrongs she will do more to revive her own life than councils and conventions can ever accomplish. Senator Blair told me that it was the almost unanimous testi- mony of representatives of labor before his Senate Committee, that Christianity was steadily losing its hold upon the working- men of the land. This alarming fact, which every one with his eyes open can see, may be partly due to the intellectual doubt which is everywhere at-work to-day, and nowhere more powerfully than among the hard-headed sons of toil ; a doubt for which the churches are responsible, in so far as they are re- fusing to accept new truth and by it re-interpret the old faiths. SECRET OF LABOR'S IRRELIGION. 149 This alienation is, however, much more the result of a moral doubt. The sense of injustice quickened in those who suffer these social wrongs presents an awful alternative. If these injustices be the result of nature's order, as orthodox econo- mists declare, then is nature unjust, and the sweet and sacred vision of a Father God is a mocking dream, which only makes more bitter the awakening of man to-day. This is the secret of the atheism of nihilistic Russia and of socialistic Germany and France. If these injustices be the fault of society, and the Christian Church defends them or accepts them in silence, then is that Ckurch a false Church of the living, righteous God, and labor may well turn away, saying, It cannot cast these devils out. Let that Church truly fast and pray until its vision be clarified, its tongue loosed, and its right arm nerved ; and then, when the world sends to it, saying, " Who art thou ? " it may answer, as of old its master answered : " Go tell what things ye see : the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, and to the poor the Gospel the glad tidings of Justice, divine and human is preached ; " and the world will believe and love, and loyally follow it once more. V. OLD-TIME GUILDS AND MODERN COMMER- CIAL ASSOCIATIONS. OUTLINE. Historic forefathers of the Chambei of Commerce. Classic prototypes Mediaeval guilds Original character of. 1. Economic merits of the guilds. Strikes and arbitration Industrial partnership. 2. Guilds had higher than economic aims. Sought to establish brother- hood Cherished craft-pride and honor Punished offences Lessons here for our modern guilds. 3. Need of pondering these aspects of the old guilds. Unsatisfactory conditions of the present world Unprecedented revolution going on Forecast of probabilities Need of more regulation Regulating power found in business associations. 4. A vision of the future. OLD-TIME GUILDS AND MODERN COMMERCIAL ASSOCIATIONS.* MR. CHAIRMAN : It is a solemn matter for a plain parson to confront such a body as the Chamber of Commerce of New York, and reflect, as he rises to his feet, that he is expected to offer its members something worthy of their venerable and illustrious association. Bountiful as has been the hospitality of the Committee of Arrangements, one who sits up here is forced to sigh because of its strange oversight in not pro- viding beforehand a mental menu, a bill of topics, courses of ideas, cordials of suggestion for the invited guests, out of which they might help themselves freely to speeches without taxing their intellectual digestion. What in the world, I said to my- self, am I to talk about, with any hope of freshness, after one hundred and sixteen years of post-prandial eloquence ? One thing, I felt, that I must not offer such a body A dis- tinguished German clergyman, who has just left our shores, was warned by his host, before he went to address a conference of one of the most intellectual of American denominations, that he must not give them any "taffy." Unfamiliar with our rich and copious vocabulary of slang, he pondered his friend's * Address at the annual banquet of the Chamber of Commerce, New York, November 18, 1884. 15.3 154 ANCESTRY OF THE CHAMBER. advice with increasing perplexity. With straight and solemn face he commenced his address : " My friends, I must not give you any taffy ! " The laughter that followed his opening sen- tence was utterly unintelligible to him, until he reached his friend's house, and learned the meaning of this strange new word, which he doubtless entered in his diary, for the benefit of his friends in the Fatherland. A whole class of subjects is plainly ruled out of my possibil- ities. Parsons in politics are at a heavy discount just now. One particular little busy B. has " improved his shining hour " only too well. All scepticisms as to the efficiency of Samson's weapon have forever disappeared. My friend, who saw me safely stowed away behind this table, warned me on no account to speak of free trade. Of course, therefore, that was the very subject of which I wanted to speak. I seriously thought of emulating the logical agility and economic comprehensiveness of a certain friend of mine, who, in his young and callow days, attending his first political meeting, was overheard shouting lustily : " Hurrah for free trade and a protective tariff ! " However, as such a toast might have seemed to hold allusion to one of our great political parties, it seemed best to pass that by also. Then I fell to thinking how much more venerable this Asso- ciation really is than it realizes. Its own individual history may be comprised within one hundred and sixteen years, but its ancestry is almost as remote as the period of the dear de- parted Adam, over whom Mark Twain wept so sensitively. Classic civilization knew the forefathers of our Chamber of Commerce, the Collegia of Rome and the Eranoi of Greece ; mutual benefit associations among the small traders of the ancient world, whose central observance was a common meal, a banquet at once religious and social. MEDIEVAL GUILDS. I 55 Mediaeval Europe knew the nearer ancestors of such associ- ations as this, the guilds of which we have always known vaguely but which we are only beginning to know accurately of late. You may open such standard histories as Guizot's " History of Civilization " and Hallam's " Middle Ages," and find in them no reference at all to these great trade guilds, which, as we now see, were among the most powerful factors in moulding the mediaeval world into the noble seriousness which charac- terized its industry and commerce, and which, through the world of business, charged the whole society of the period. Even Lecky has a scant paragraph of praise for these guilds. Yet there is perhaps no field in the history of industry and trade and commerce that promises a richer yield of hints for the perfecting of our wonderful world of business. These guilds were industrial and trade and commercial associations. In the earlier periods they were societies of merchants, and later on of craftsmen, banded together at first for " mutual help, mutual enjoyment, and mutual encourage- ment in good endeavors." They grew in later times into corporations, possessing an almost absolute control over their respective spheres of industry and commerce ; each constituting a little self-governing republic, regulating the internal affairs of the trade or craft with sovereign sway ; all alike, in the palmy days of these brotherhoods, animated by lofty aims and a noble spirit ; many of them winning a power and wealth which might make our biggest corporations envious. May we not be able to learn something from these Chambers of Commerce and Boards of Trade of the past, which might prove helpful to us of the present ? Of course we all know that we are infinitely wiser than our fathers ; 156 GUILD PROVISIONS. " And John P. Robinson he Sez they did n't know everythin' down in Judee." Still, our fathers were not utter fools. There are some minor features of the old-time guilds which their successors of the present have quite faithfully imitated. According to one of the best-received explanations of the name guild, it is drawn from the Danish gilde, a feast or banquet ; thus pointing to the central rite of the society a custom of eating and drinking together ; a fact which goes far to estab- lish the undoubted scientific doctrine that man belongs to the order known to naturalists as the gastrozoa or living stomachs. Accordingly, we find in the statutes of an early English guild directions for a monthly meeting, " at which there is to be bytt- fylling and a refection." * Now, this may be a bite, of which we have been partaking, but it is certainly a very filling bytt. One of the early by-laws concerning this bytt-filling is, indeed, duly honored in part by us, but truth compels me to say that it is in part grossly disregarded : '' During dinner they shall abstain from scandalous talk, drunkenness and unseemly disputes." So far we have been faithful to the old rule. But what has become of the rest of the enactment : " Four dishes, and no more, are to be served, and towards evening everybody is to go home." f This particular descendant of the ancient guilds has been scru- pulous in observing the statute, repeated as a favorite ordinance of the patrician guilds of Denmark, Germany and Belgium, * " Encyclopedia Britannica," vol. xi., p. 260. f " History and Development of Gilds" : Lujo Brentano, p. 27. ECONOMIC FEA TURES. I 57 that no one " with dirty hands," or " with blue nails," or " who hawked his wares in the streets," should become a member.* We pass, however, from these serious matters to other fea- tures of the old-time guilds, perhaps no less important. I. Certain economic features of the guilds merit our careful consideration. The world of business was a much smaller and simpler organization of old than that in which it is your lot to live to-day, gentlemen of this Chamber. Its perplexities were fewer, and its complexities less involved than those which snarl us up until we are tempted to cry out, with the poor collier in Hard Times, " It 's a' a muddle." Still, our ances- tors met the lower forms of our own troubles. Disputes arose then, as now, between rival firms, but those worthy masters found abetter way of adjusting their difficulties than "cutting rates." It was everywhere the rule that guild brothers should bring their cases of contention before the guild, in order to secure some amicable adjustment of those difficulties. Among the provisions of the Gild of the Tailors of Lincoln (founded in 1328) was one to this effect : If any quarrel or strife arises between any bretheren or sisteren of the gild (which God forbid) the bretheren and sisteren shall, with the advice of the Gracemen and Wardens, do their best to make peace between the parties, provided that the case is such as can be thus settled without a breach of the law. And whoever will not obey the judgment of the breth- eren shall lose his gildship, unless he thinks better of it within three days, and then he shall pay a stone of wax, unless he have grace, f * " History and Development of Gilds " : Lujo Brentano, p. 43. f " English Gilds : The Original Ordinances of more than One Hund- red Early English Gilds." Toulmin Smith. Early English Text Society p. 183. 158 STRIKES AND ARBITRATION. Fancy what a millennium it would be were we to behold the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading, the New Yoik Central and the Erie, bringing their disagreements before a great national railroad brotherhood ! Disputes there were, also, in those good old times, between master and men. That modern improvement, " the strike," appears, after all, to have had a venerable antiquity ; for we hear of " strikes " on the part of the workmen in the building trades in the middle ages, very much like those that worry the life out of contractors to-day. To do away with these abomi- nations, the guilds hit upon two measures. One was arbitration. A London guild, in the middle of the fourteenth century, " or- dained that from henceforth, if there be any dispute moved between any master and his man, such dispute shall be settled by the warden of the trade." * In the middle of the nineteenth century we are beginning to learn that a better way of settling such disputes than the " lock- out " or the " strike " is the simple, common-sense, human way of mutually referring the dispute to some competent and impar- tial arbitration. Already, in England and in France, boards of arbitration are established, with most happy results. Individ- ual firms, with far-seeing sagacity, have acted on the principle. But what a mighty change would be wrought in our troubled world of industry, if our great industrial associations would take the lead in re-introducing this beneficent principle ! That most constant of all disputes between employer and employee the rate of wages arose in the olden times, as it arises now, in wearisome re-iteration. The wisdom of the guilds a wisdom born of large-heartedness as well as of large-mind- edness devised the best method of preventing such disputes which the world has yet found. Instead of rolling off the so- * " History and Development of Gilds " : Lujo Brentano, p. 80. INDUSTRIAL PARTNERSHIP. 159 lution of the problem of the relation of profits and wages upon so-called natural law ; instead of teaching their workmen that it was all a matter of supply and demand ; instead of separating the head and the hands in antagonistic interests ; instead of creating thus a chronic strife between capital and labor the guilds sought to make real that unity between capital and labor of which we hear so much in the theories of books and so little in the actual facts of life, by that other simple, common-sense, human principle of industrial partnership. In the cloth manu- factures of the Belgian towns, which date from the first century of our era their products having been even then greatly in de- mand in Rome and which were carried on upon a larger scale and for a more extended market than those of any other peo- ple in Europe, the workmen " took part, as delegates of their class, even in the supervision of labor ; gave their consent to the ordinances for regulating the trade, and received their pay in a definite proportion to that of their masters. In some places, as at Bruges, the men received a real share in their masters' profits." * So that our very modern discovery that the solution of the problem of capital and labor lies in profit-sharing, is in reality the re-exhuming of one of the institutions of the old-time guilds. Leclaire and Godin are but repeating the examples of men whose names are now forgotten. And Leclaire and Godin are the heralds of a new order, in which peace shall be upon earth between men of good will. I may not forget, as I stand amid the members of the Cham- ber of Commerce, that it was in the sail which whitened the blue waters of the ^Egean, a century ago, that John Stuart Mill found the first beginnings known to him in modern history of the principle of profit-sharing ; a principle which the Greek * " History and Development of Gilds," p. 72. l6o MORAL AIM OF GUILDS. merchant-captains had even then introduced among their sea- men. Nor can I forget, in the presence of these representa- tives of American commerce, that it was the staunch old whalers which sailed from our own soft-climed Nantucket long ago that this same wise, just and brotherly principle was first established in our western business life ; those shrewd old Yankees having found out thus early that the best bond of peace between master and men is a common interest in their conjoint work ; that the best spur to faithful work is a prospect of sharing in the gains of that work. How auspicious an omen for the peaceful relationships of master and men in the future, if, beneath the fostering hand of such a modern guild as this, the commerce of the metropolis of the New World should re- introduce this old-time institution ! II. In truth, as we study those old-time guilds, even in their more purely economic aspects, we find a higher than economic aim before the worthies who shaped their plans and policies. They were seeking to attain, as far as might be, justice, and thus to create a real brotherhood among men. Their ordi- nances were framed, as one of the old guild laws declared, for the " better relief and comodytie of the porer sorte." * Masters, who withheld from the workmen the wages to which they were entitled, were compelled by the guild authorities to make due payment. So, then, they could turn round and enact, that " If any serving man shall conduct himself in any other manner than properly towards his master, and act rebelliously towards him, no one of the trade shall set him to work until he shall * " History and Development of Gilds," p. 67. TRADE HONOR CHERISHED. l6l have made amends before the mayor and aldermen, and be- fore them such misprision shall be redressed. " * Verily, as certain of the guild statutes ran, " not eating and drinking, but mutual assistance and justice" were the principal objects of the guild. It was everywhere the first principle of the guild, a principle to which every member had to bind him- self by oath, " to assist him only who had justice on his side." f " These guilds appear as an enlarged great family, whose object is to afford such assistance to their members, in all cir- cumstances of life, as one brother might expect from another, and consequently, above all things, protection against the un- bridled arbitrariness of the mighty, whether exercised by vio- lence or attempted by law." J Even for the pecuniary success of industry and trade and commerce, the worthies of the past perceived that it was need- ful to foster and maintain such immaterial qualities as justice and truth, honesty and honor. To procure permanent pros- perity in their towns and to keep the golden tide of trade flowing steadily through their marts, they set themselves to the task of securing sound work, good measures, square accounts, faithfully executed contracts ; the observance, in every branch of business, of the eighth commandment. To accomplish this, every guild first sought to breathe a lofty spirit of honor through its membership. Each guild made of its trade or craft a high and noble vocation, an occupation in which it was an honor to engage. It clothed the merchant and the craftsman with a proud sense of dignity, that must have been very irritating to the haughty princelets who looked down with scorn upon these stout burghers men who could so easily buy them out in the * " History and Development of Gilds," p. 77. f " History and Development of Gilds," pp. 23, 38. \ " History and Development of Gilds," p. 38. 1 62 HONOR GUARDED BY LAW, market and clear them out from the tented field. An outward sign of this consciousness of dignity we may find in the gorgeous livery of the great merchant companies. They cultivated a strong esprit de corps among the members of each guild, which braced them against any action that was likely to bring discredit on their body. They cherished a manly satisfaction in work, of whatever sort, that was well and thoroughly done. They held up before the brotherhood, throughout their statutes, the high ideals of honor. No one was admitted to any trade, or tolerated in it, even though it were the lowest, " whose moral conduct and honor were not stainless." * When one who lived in the country wished to join a guild, some member had to pledge himself for his honor. Nor did the guilds rest their endeavor to secure honor in trade upon such fine tests. Like thorough men of business, they tried to write the law of honor in their craft codes. The guild statutes kept a watchful eye upon every temptation to dishonor in the trade or craft, and provided clear and precise directions concerning every possible point of weakness. No member of a craft guild was allowed to possess tools, " unless the same were testified to be good and honest." f Special enactments forbade mixing inferior materials with a better sort, or selling patched up articles as new. Guild halls held the standard of weights and measures, and in the persons of experts passed judgment upon all products. How well such pains told, is seen from the fact that the merchants of Novgorod, after having several times received defective pieces of cloth from other places, determined that no cloth but that from the hall at Bruges should be allowed entrance into the Baltic ports and the Eastern markets. * " History and Development of Gilds," p. 65. j- " History and Development of Gilds," p. 66. PUNISHMENTS FOR FRAUD. 163 Nor did the old-time guilds fail to enforce their rigid laws with stern, swift penalties. The punishments for minor offen- ces consisted in the payment of money fines or, in earlier times, not having the fear of our modern St. John before their eyes, of the payment of certain quantities of beer or wine, to be drunk at the guild feasts. For more serious offences more serious pains were inflicted, culminating in exclusion from the guild, which carried with it a loss of the right to carry on the trade or craft. Very curious and suggestive was the craft guild's usage of punishment by Schelten, that is, reviling a re- fractory member, or declaring him infamous. It was a secular excommunication ; a sort of moral boycotting. It was the last punishment meted out to an obdurate offender. In all this there is very much, as it seems to me, that is worthy of the serious study of the merchant princes and mag- nates of industry of to-day. Trade frauds are no new inven- tion of the devil. We find them as far back in history as we can trace our way. We have not sufficient data to determine the question whether we are more or less honest than our fathers our fathers not being present to testify on their own behalf ; but we may well question whether we are as much in earnest and as business-like in seeking to minimize fraud and dishonor as were the men of the olden time. We have been apt pupils of the very comfortable gospel of laissez-faire, and have solaced ourselves too easily for existing wrongs, by saying that they can't be helped. Not so did the worthies of the past regard such wrongs. They seriously set themselves to the task of making commerce and trade and industry honest and hon- orable, and succeeded wonderfully well. The secret of their success lay in the real mastership that was exercised by their guilds, a mastership which I have sought to indicate. Why should not our great Chambers of Commerce 164 WHAT OUR EXCHANGES CAN DO, and Boards of Trade emulate this action of the old-time guilds? Who that has followed the story of the atrocious rascality pur- sued so perseveringly by Mr. Plimsoll, the systematic murder of seamen in unseaworthy ships.for the sake of the insurance, can doubt that commerce, as carried on by our English cousins, greatly needs the stern hand of the ancient guilds ? Is it not a burning shame upon the honorable merchants of the mother land that such things can be, and the slow-footed law be left to pursue and punish the fiends who fulfil the seer's dream of Babylon and deal in the " lives of men " ? This case of wrong-doing is far enough away not to disturb our digestion to-night. An illustration of the way in which our great trade associations are beginning to gather up again the reins of government may be safely found much nearer home. Our Stock Exchange holds up the highest possible code of honor in contract-keeping, and enforces violation of its code by quick and sharp punishments. As a result, it can proudly point to the fact that, within its realm, a word is liter- ally " as good as a bond." All the solemn and cumbersome ceremonials which, as Mr. Maine has shown us, antiquity felt obliged to use, in order to secure a bargain, are done away by the high sense of honor thus educated among brokers. A leading broker of our city told me that, in his long experience, he had never known a case where an agreement had been broken, though it had been made on the spur of the moment, at the corner of the street, without a scrap of paper to evidence it, and though its fulfilment might ruin the man who made it. Could such a proud record have been possible but for the real government exercised byj>ur Exchange ? Only a few days ago, our papers recorded the unanimous resolution of the Board of Managers of the Produce Exchange, expelling a member of the Exchange for dishonorable business action. It EXAMPLES FOR OUR ASSOCIATIONS. 165 is this readiness to punish, and thus make real their laws of honor, which has made our Exchanges so successful in educat- ing the consciences of their members in contract-keeping. Might not this good example be carried much further ? Might not other forms of integrity come under the culturing care of our Exchanges, and the ethical responsibilities of brokerage, now but slightly enforced upon the conscience, be educated higher ? Might not other business associations ponder well this good example, and seriously set themselves to foster a sounder industry and a purer trade ? Could not our manufacturing as- sociations establish standards of quality in materials and work- manship, as in the old-time Cloth Halls, and thus make a law which should be a terror to the evil-doer ; placing honesty and honor at a premium, instead of at a discount ? I am quite content to/atf these conundrums, without waiting for answers. III. Alike, in their economic and moral features, there were, then, as I read the story of the past, many features of the old- time guilds which might profitably be studied by their de- scendants, the great commercial, trade and industrial associa- tions of our age. Every thoughtful man must feel how much there is in our present state of business which is extremely unsatisfactory. How sorely we need some alleviation of the evils of the fierce competition that is putting such a fearful tension upon the physical, mental and moral powers of manhood ! How urgently we need some practical easing of the strained relations of capital and labor ; some restoration of the old- time cordial feeling and harmonious interest between master and men ! 1 66 SOMETHING THE MATTER. How imperatively we need some tonic that will brace up the enfeebled sense of honor, whose dulling and relaxing is the most alarming sign of the times, in our land as in every land of our western civilization ! I am not a pessimist, but a thorough-going optimist. I believe in human nature. I am utterly heretical as to the doctrine of total depravity, even when confronted by those awful monsters who so scare our country cousins our mighty bulls and bears. I believe emphatically in American manhood. It is even now a clearly cut type, of which we may well be proud ; and it is only getting out of kilts now. When the " man-child glorious," of whom Emerson sang, is born on this land, he will be some- thing worth crossing the ocean to see. I have not lived fifteen years in New York without learning a respect for the splendid honor to be found in our Exchanges and streets that is equalled alone by my admiration for the magnificent ability found therein. Behind any blackness which I have drawn, I see a great light rising, as of a coming day. I don't believe we are going hopelessly to the bad ; but I do believe in the advice which Renan gave his countrymen at the close of the Franco-Prussian War " Let us face the facts." The facts in our situation are serious enough to make even an optimist sober. There is a position midway between saying to a patient, " You are going to die," and " There is nothing the matter with you." Something is the matter with us, economically and morally, as everybody knows. In the presence of our periodically re- curring panics, our ever-renewing " over-production," as we call it, our chronic constipation of commerce, with banks fail- ing, mills closing, trade languishing, industry stagnating surely something is the matter. In the presence of a prospect of the worst of civil wars, whose ominous warnings we may OUR INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. 167 hear in the mutterings of Nihilism and Socialism surely some- thing is the matter. In the presence of the epidemic of fraud which Herbert Spencer diagnoses in England,, and which threatens to establish itself as endemic in our land surely there is something the matter. What the hick-lying constitutional disorder is, which is thus seriously disturbing the economic and moral functions of the businessworld, I may not even attempt here and now to indi- cate, if, indeed, I am rash enough to fancy that I know. My own belief is that the disease is one which will call for heroic measures, unless and here is my private hope we can be fortified so as to outgrow it slowly. The most troubling feature about our situation is that an unprecedented change is going on ; a change which indicates a crisis, out of which may come a new and better state of health, but which is, none the less, alarmingly complicating and intensifying all the evils, economic and moral, of our old disorder. The change that is being wrought in all our methods of in- dustry and trade and commerce, by the discoveries and inven- tions of our century, is wholly without parallel in history, and staggers the imagination of the boldest believer in progress. Steam, electricity and all the other astonishing factors that are now for the first time introduced into the service of man, are revolutionizing the world of business. The change is going on so fast as to almost take one's breath away. Busi- ness is becoming vast in its sweep and subtle and complex in its relationship, beyond the power of our old ideas and maxims to grasp. Now, while here is eminently a case where, as Mark Twain observed, " hindsight is easier than foresight," yet we can see something ahead. We can see that the strain of competition 1 68 REGULATION NEEDFUL. is destined to become yet severer ; that the powers of produc- tion are to be increased enormously ; that the facilities of exchange are to make the world practically one market, twenty- four thousand miles long ; and all this points to the necessity of our finding out some practical plan of regulating produc- tion and exchange, so as to secure something like an uniform and a healthful flow of trade. No body, physical or social, can live that does not develop a power capable ofco-ordi- nating the local activities of the various parts of the body, and of regulating the flow of the blood, which is the life thereof. We can see that wealth is to increasingly aggregate in few hands, as the inevitable result of the natural tendencies towards a great industry and a great trade ; while, on the other hand, the mass of labor is increasingly to be drawn together in com- pacter organization, creating a power of resistance equal to the force of its numbers and its cohesion ; and this points to the necessity of our finding some means of restraining, on the one hand, the aggressions of organized capital, and, on the other hand, the aggressions of organized labor, and of binding the two equally indispensable factors in a real commonwealth. We can see that business is increasingly to find, of necessity, for some time ahead, the element of uncertainty entering into every combination, with the result of having a gambling spirit fed in every line of legitimate industry and trade and com- merce ; and that this will call for the development of some social function capable of controlling and regulating this necessary but most dangerous tendency, which, unchecked, will utterly demoralize business. Now, I am not going to get myself into a box, and call down your laughter by exhibiting my unfamiliarity with " puts " and " calls " ; neither am I going to corner myself by explaining how to do away with " corners." I were a fool, indeed, to COMPETITION VS. REGULATION. 169 rush in lightly where the angels who fill our chairs of political economy fear to tread. All I aspire to do is to point out that these three classes of symptoms seem to indicate one kind of treatment. They all grow out of the almost total absence of any regulative or co-ordinating function in the economic body. They did not exist in the days when the old-time guilds really governed industry and trade and commerce. Doubtless, those guilds overdid the matter of governance, and perished from the restraint which they put upon free competi- tion. Doubtless, this same free competition is the most serviceable economic force in our civilization, to be by no means lightly checked, lest worse evils befall us. But, surely, if there is one thing settled in this world, it is the principle that the very best, pushed to excess, becomes a bad, the worst ; that we must guard and limit every rightful power, and balance it by its antipodal power ; that liberty itself must thus be sphered in law, if it is to be kept from degenerating into license. Surely, we have had enough of that sort of free trade which means that every man is free to do just as he pleases, without regard to the interests or rights of others, without concern for the commonwealth, without being bothered by the fine notions of other men concerning honesty and honor. Such free trade is the freedom which the body sets up Avhen every local organ and individual member goes to work by itself and for itself, in an independent action of its own the freedom of inflamma- tion and decay, which rots the body soon into the grave. The crying need of our time, it seems to me, is the balancing of liberty by law. Who is to make such law ? Not the State, ex- cept as the last resort. The modern and American instinct is right on this point. The State's hand is too clumsy, its sense too dull to guide the fine mechanisms of industry and trade and commerce. I/O A VISION OF THE FUTURE. What power, then, can essay this task ? Plainly, these great industrial and trade and commercial associations which, obedi- ent to a sure instinct of the body social, have been developing in our century, one after another ; which are, under the same instinct, already assuming one function after another of a real government. Why should not such Boards and Chambers seriously set themselves to the study of these economic and ethical problems, a..d at least try to take some steps towards a sounder state of society ? . But it is my purpose merely to suggest. One of the curious features of civilization is the return of society upon itself the taking up anew of customs and institutions which had been discarded. Excess has led to a too sweeping abolition, and then the loss of a real good has made itself felt, and the chil- dren have gone back to the experience of their fathers, to pick up its golden treasures. We move upwards in a cycle. Even our wonderful nineteenth century might, perhaps, thus go back to the old-time guilds, and seek a restoration, not of their ad- mitted defects and evils, but of their proven merits. As I look down the vista of a century, I see upon our shores a nation of 200,000,000 people, and, as its throbbing heart, a city of 5,000,000, where once stood the little town in which we are met to-night. I see, in this city of the future, the centre of the nation's manufactures, the mart of a continent's trade, the seat of the world's commerce, the clearing-house of all nations ; a city of merchant princes and kings of industry, glorious beyond our dreams in all the treasures of architecture and art ; the mighty brain of a civilization ordered into " A parliament of man, a federation of the world " ; wherein "The war-drum throbs no longer, and the battle-flags are furled." And, looking upon this proud vision, I see, as the nerve- THE COMING CITY. I /I centres of this wonderful social organism, vast commercial, trade and industrial associations, which have developed a mar- vellous mechanism of exchange, such as the world had never dreamed of, and at the same time have developed powers of self-government such as were typed, as in the germ, in the guilds of yore. And thus, upon the men of the new and greater Venice, I see such high and noble faces as those which Art has preserved from the days of the merchant rulers of the beautiful City of the Adriatic ; faces as of the kings who have brought order out of the chaos of business, perennial, prosper- ous peace out of its chronic strife, a real commonwealth out of its persistent pursuit of private property ; kings who have throned, over all mere natural laws of the market, the ever- lasting laws of justice and right, of truth and honesty and honor, that were proclaimed of old upon the Mount. And now, Mr. Chairman, I am satisfied that my speech has accomplished at least one result. If any gentlemen here cherished the notion that a parson could be made to speak, even to a toast, without preaching, they have probably had that illusion pretty well dispelled by this time. Their judgment will probably be about the same as that which was passed lately upon a certain sermon. A., passing a church, met B. coming down the steps, and greeted him with a " Well, old fellow ! what sort of a sermon have you had ? " To which B. replied : " The sermon was well enough, if it had n't been for the awful rot of duties tagged on to it ! " VI. THE PREVENTION OF INTEMPERANCE. 173 OUTLINE. 1. Our early temperance movement empiric (i) Inadequate physiologi- cal grounds for teetotalism -(2) Illogical moral arguments for teetotalism (3) Mistaken appeals to legislation Prohibition a failure in Maine Do. in Massachusetts Do. in Rhode Island (4) The temperance movement of the future should conserve whatever was valuable in the early movement True moral grounds for total abstinence True services of legislation. 2. Correct methods for preventing drunkenness to be found in a knowl- edge of the conditions gendering excess in drink (i) Massachusetts laid the foundation for this knowledge The cosmic law of temperance Influ- ences of climate Nature's provision for this need in light wines England's experiment non-conclusive Sensible stimulation Influences of heredity Nature's provision for counteracting them Practical measures in these directions (2) Climate and race laws exaggerated by social conditions Good-fellowship Social customs Public sentiment as to drunkenness (3) Instinct of stimulation as a physical craving exaggerated by many con- ditions of our life The intensity of our national character Bad cuisine Overcrowding o"f tenements and factories Preventive medicine holds the key to this aspect of the problem Remedial measures (4) Instinct of stimulation as a craving of the intellectual and emotional nature exagger- ated by the average morale of our people Dull life seeks joy Drunk with wine versus rilled with the spirit This mental poverty the peculiar mis- fortune of the poor Practical measures. 3. The true cure as slow as education Progress none the less discerni- ble What the temperance movement has wrought Wherein it has stood in its own way The wiser temperance movement of the future. 174 THE PREVENTION OF INTEMPERANCE.* There is a special appropriateness in the consideration of the great social problem before us at this time, when on every hand there are tokens of a revival of interest in the temperance movement, and in this city, the capital of the commonwealth which has done more by experiment and research towards its so- lution than any State in the Union. Any appearance of dogma- tism in my language must be judged in the light of the necessity of a condensation which precludes illustration or verification. I. As in every similar study, our approach to the true solution of the problem of intemperance lies through the debris of mis- taken theories and experiments. The early essays of preven- tive philanthropy are generally crude begotten of enthusiasm rather than of scientific inquiry. Zeal is naturally empiric ; its therapeutics "Morrison's pills." Poor humanity's every ailment has to be well plied with drastic treatment before rational measures have a chance. As a preventive philanthropy, the temperance movement, thus far, has acted empirically. Its aim has been to stop * Address at the Church Congress, Boston, November, 1876. 175 FALSE PHYSIOLOGY. drunkenness by stopping drinking ; its philosophy of preven- tion persuading or compelling men to total abstinence. Cer- tainly, if this could be accomplished, it would dry up the source of drunkenness. But what a herculean labor ! A usage growing out of an instinct to stimulation, world-old, world-wide, is to be served with an immediate " dispossess " ! On what grounds could temperance reformers warrant this summons of ejection ? (i) They essayed to authorize this demand on physiological grounds that are familiar to us all. Alcohol was declared to stimulate only as the whip spurred to action, entailing corre- sponding reaction ; to be no food supplying no element of nutrition, being never assimilated, but rejected " totally and naturally," retarding digestion ; and so on through a round of charges, which concluded with the assertion that it was, in all degrees and forms, an essential poison. While the physiological action of alcohol remains still in much obscurity, it is, I believe, not debatable that the careful investigations of Dr. Anstie and others have disproven the chief statements of teetotalism on this subject ; that they have shown that alcohol is not ejected unassimilated from the body to any appreciable extent ; that it does come under the category of food as a force-supplier ; that it acts very differently in different doses, as do other substances, so that it may really be a food in moderation, and yet a poison in excess ; that in disease it is often positively useful, and for dietetic purposes, when used properly, /'. e. y in the form of light wines, to the extent of a moderation which is scientifically definable, is not proven to act otherwise than as the consensus of experience has claimed. Teetotalism has thus far failed to make out its case. Nor would it seem to be likely ever to persuade men of the abso- lute harmfulness of alcohol while mother nature is at pains to DEFECTIVE MORAL BUTTRESSES. I// smuggle this ingredient into the system in the commonest food every loaf of bread liberating in the body a certain amount of alcohol, produced in the fermentation of the flour, thus rendering total abstinence an impossibility. (2) Teetotalism has not been more successful in its moral buttressing. Tracing intemperance back no farther than the habit giving rise to the excess, it charged the responsibility of drunkenness upon moderate drinkers, and pronounced all use of alcoholic liquors, socially or dietetically, sinful per se. This charge, resting on the assumed physiological noxiousness of alcohol, in the absence of the fact, became a charge of powder, fulminating resonantly but wholly imponderable. If alcohol fulfils any function in the economy, its proper employment is a use, and as such in no way responsible for its abuse. Com- mon sense discerned in the hyper-spirituality of this asceticism an impugning of the purity of nature, the justice of Providence, the authority of Scripture, and the example of Christ ; and con- servative religion drew back from the movement. It was, ere- long, felt to be practically impossible to commit society to a total disuse of alcoholic stimulants. (3) Temperance reformers then began to call in the aid of the law. License laws were resorted to, with a view of gradu- ally restricting the traffic in alcoholic drinks. They failed to realize the expectations of enthusiasts. Zeal's inconsequent logic reasoned that, since the law could not sufficiently check the traffic, it should suppress it. The State should prohibit it. The fact of this new departure showed a strange ignorance of history ; the grounds on which it was based betrayed an entire misconception of the function of legislation in the sphere of morals, of the powers and responsibilities of the State in refer- ence to social evils, of the nature of morality itself the essen- tial worth of virtue. A dispassionate and careful study of the i;8 MAINE LAW A FAILURE. experiment convinces me that it has vindicated the anticipa- tions of its opponents ; that it has realized the expectations of its friends only as they have attributed to it the merit really due to other forces ; that its success has been in an inverse ratio to its need small and temperate communities finding it helpful, large cities and intemperate towns finding it next to use- less ; that, therefore, as a preventive method, it has been a practical failure. Maine, which for twenty-five years has had a prohibitory law upon its statute-book, is appealed to in evidence of its effi- ciency. If all that is claimed were proven, it would not follow that the Maine law held the secret of this social evil. Maine has always been relatively a sober State, having a homogeneous population, in small communities, occupied in out-door pur- suits. The conditions of the problem are radically different there from the conditions of the problem in the States where this evil presses most heavily. But the exact value of the Maine law is not clear. Of official testimony there is next to nothing. Police statistics are notoriously unreliable on this subject. Revenue statistics, quoted to show a decreased con- sumption of liquor, overlook the fact that illicit distil- lation, always increasing proportionately to the stringency of the restraint on legal manufacture, does not usually make re- turns to government. Of voluntary testimony there is abun- dance, but it is general the value of which lawyers appreciate ; and it is open to a suspicion of the " coercion of public opin- ion," known to be strong in that State. When all the evi- dence proffered is sifted, it appears that through a consider- able part of the State the open traffic has been closed, though in a large part of the State even this has not been accomplished ; while, where this sale has been suppressed, a secret traffic has run along below the surface, at no inconvenient depth for divers. MASSACHUSETTS EXPERIMENT. 179 The actual extent of drunkenness remaining is not easily ascer- tainable. It may be admitted that it has decreased, but official documents show the credit of this diminution to be due, not to the law, but to the backlying public sentiment. The law has been operative intermittently and locally, just as it has ex- pressed the sense of a community. Massachusetts presents us with an immense mass of testi- mony as to the workings of the repeated essays in prohibition the testimony of leading citizens, officially drawn forth, and thoroughly sifted by cross-examination. Any one carefully reading and analyzing that testimony, as laid before the Legis- lative Commission of 1867, and not agreeing with the report of the committee that prohibition has been a practical failure, ought to have his head examined by a phrenologist. Such an analysis shows that in the great cities the law was still-born ; that in the large towns, with a few exceptions, it never gained more than a spasmodic vitality ; that where it did succeed for any time in closing the outward traffic, there sprang up a secret trade under various forms ; that this illicit traffic dealt in worse liquors, and, by the circumstances of its carrying on, stimu- lated excessive drinking the very poor even setting up pri- vate stills in tenements, if only in the primitive form of a tea- kettle and a jug of molasses ; with a net result of undiminished drunkenness, if not of a positive addition to the aggregate of intemperance intemperence notably increasing among the women and children of the poor ; that, where the law had an apparent success, in almost every instance there had previously been such a strong local sentiment as had made the license laws practically prohibitive ; that prohibition drew after it the usual result of all attempts to coerce virtue social demorali- zation ; that it reacted upon the temperance cause most injuri- ously, discharging moral effort, dividing friends, cohering the ISO PROHIBITION DOES NOT PROHIBIT. liquor interests, alienating the cultured classes, relaxing social sentiment and usage/ setting the whole movement back to the point where it stands to-day ; in brief, that the law, when voicing the communal conscience, had the power to bless which that force always exerts, but when failing to express any such communal conscience, had power only to curse ; that the real power was shown to be public opinion, and not legislation. Rhode Island, through an official inquiry instituted by Gov- ernor Howard, corroborates the experience of Maine and Mas- sachusetts. No other States offer official material for investi- gation. Making, then, every fair allowance asked by the friends of prohibition, it must be said that the attempt to enforce a compulsory teetotalism, and thus stop drunkenness by stop- ping drinking, has been the failure with us which it has been else- where. Prohibition does not prohibit. If the second great wave of temperance agitation follows the line of the first wave it will land us little nearer to national sobriety. The moral forces which our renewed movement rouses will tell upon the land, as the forces of the early movement told, mightily ; but they will be largely frittered away in impos- sible schemes, as they were thus frittered away by our fathers. (4) In the wiser work of the future, whatever there was of value in these early essays will be conserved. Total abstinence may continue to be preached, as the gospel of salvation for hosts of men, who, whether from physical pre- dispositions or from weakness of will, find the poise of moder- ation impossible. The wisest of temperance societies, the Roman Catholic Church, holds up moderation as the norm, but counsels, for those who show- themselves incapable of it, total abstinence. Entire abstention may perhaps be laid upon the consciences of those who do not need it, for the sake of those who are weak, if that can be shown needful and wise. WHAT LAW CAN DO. l8l Legislation must still be looked to for valuable aid. Though men are not to be made sober by act of Parliament, they may be helped by laws in making themselves sober. The law can- not lead public sentiment, but it can closely follow it. Legis- lation will never be the driving-wheel of reform, but it should be the ratchet-wheel, holding every advance. It can pronounce drunkenness a crime, can punish it by imprison- ment, and on repetition, perhaps, by forfeiture of civil rights. It can recognize inebriety, the mania for drink, as a disease, and insist upon its being placed under curative treatment. It can consider the effect of tariffs on light wines upon the habits of the people. It can refuse to admit drunkenness as a plea in defence of crime. It can restrain the traffic in liquor and guard its purity ; and, as public sentiment backs it, gradually constrict the trade till local prohibition is reached if that be the legitimate goal of reform. The local option of prohibiting the trade of grog-shops and tippling-places should be made the privilege of every community, upon such a decided expression of opinion as Sir Wilfrid Lawson requires in his Permissive Bill a two-thirds vote. Temperance reformers, instead of seeking ideal laws, should concern themselves with vitalizing whatever laws exist, and thus lead on to greater stringency of legislation. When the minds of temperance reformers are turned from the illusive hopes still alluring them astray, some such combi- nation of philanthropy and legislation as that which has been effected in Gothenburg, Sweden, might be put into operation in many localities, with equally good results. Gothenburg of which a clergyman in the Church Congress at Bath said, " I never in my life saw such scenes of drunkenness " has been transformed into a sober community, by a most simple system. The number of public houses in a given district, the days and 1 82 COSMIC LA IV OF TEMPERANCE. hours on which they may be open, the conditions under which they are to sell liquors, are all fixed by state law ; and the privilege of carrying them on is disposed of at a public auc- tion. An association of the friends of temperance buy in the privilege, and keep these houses in their own hands. Pure liquors alone are sold, with tea and coffee. The rooms are made attractive ; games, papers, etc., are furnished the guests, and every effort is made to render the places social family resorts. The counters are not covered with pretzels and other provocatives of thirst ; and the man who shows signs of having had enough is not allowed to get more at that time. The net profits are expended in works of charity. By merely changing the conditions under which drink is taken, a social transfor- mation has been wrought. This is a hint of the practical methods of utilizing law open to our temperance societies, when they cease to construct Utopias and set at work to better the actual world. II. The true methods of preventing drunkenness are to be sought in a knowledge of the conditions gendering excess in the use of alcoholic stimulants. (i) To Massachusetts we are indebted, through her admi- rable State Board of Health, for the scientific foundation of the etiology of drunkenness. A wide correspondence, conducted under exceptionally favorable circumstances, yielded an elab- orate collection of facts as to the relative intemperance of different nations, which led-to the brilliant generalization of Dr. Bowditch, named by him the Cosmic Law of Temperance. It was shown that the tendency to drunkenness increases as we go from the equator, the intemperate countries of Europe CLIMATE SUGGESTS TREATMENT. 183 being the northern nations. The explanation of this was found in the effect of climate, which intensifies in cold regions the instinct to stimulation. The apparent exceptions to this cli- matic classification indicate the working of another physical law heredity ; some races being predisposed to excess in drinking. Climatic conditions and race idiosyncrasies were shown to largely determine the habits of a people with respect to sobriety. A short and easy cure for this social disorder must, there fore, be quackery. It is a case for slow alteratives. (a) We cannot change our climate, but we can accept its necessities, and look to nature to modify the evils which nature works. The craving for stimulation must be acknowledged as a real physical instinct, not to be banned, and thus driven to license of revolt, but to be guided into safe satisfaction. This same inquiry of the Massachusetts Board of Health indicated nature's provision for supplying this want, consistently with sobriety. Through the region chiefly occupied by civilization the temperate zones the vine is a native growth. Where this pro- vision is utilized, in the habitual use of light native wines, it was shown that drunkenness is scarcely known as a social evil. When intoxication is found to any serious extent in these coun- tries, it is discovered to be from the use of ardent spirits ; and that use may nearly always be traced up to exceptional physi- cal or social causes. It is undeniable that, upon the whole, temperance does characterize the light- wine drinking countries, and for patent reasons. These wines do not inflame thirst, are but slightly intoxicating, and produce, generally, satiety before narcotism is reached. Of course, it is difficult to reason safely from the habits of one people to those of another. Because temperate races, ac- 1 84 LIGHT WINES fS. LIQUORS. customed to light wines, use them freely with moderation, it does not follow that races prone to excess, accustomed to dis- tilled liquors, would be restored to temperance by the introduc- tion to common use of native wines. But, at least, it is demon- strable that some peoples who have become grossly intemperate, through the use of ardent liquors, have been successfully con- verted to sobriety by the wise efforts of temperance societies in making good light wines cheap. It is said that such an experiment failed in England The Beer Bill, which was passed as a temperance measure, while it rendered good beer cheap, certainly did fail of promoting sobriety, and was repealed shortly. But the experiment was seriously defective. The English peasantry are notoriously de- graded, are hard worked, poorly paid, badly fed and housed. The English beer is the heaviest beer known. The ale- houses stimulated drinking. Almost every condition was un- favorable. The workingmen's clubs in the same country have, in numerous instances of late, introduced beer to the club- rooms, and with most happy effect, not only not making drunk- ards but actually reclaiming the intemperate. Had our forefathers cultivated the vine, and started the nation in the use of native light wines, there is no rational doubt that, despite of all our unfavorable conditions, we should have been a vastly more temperate people than we are to-day. The first effects of their introduction, now, may be adverse to sobriety, as seems to be the case in certain sections ; but slowly a purer taste may form, and a generation grow up accustomed to their free use, and trained in the moderation which they foster. The experiment is certainly before us, and we may re- gard it hopefully. To the extent that good tea and coffee can be made the popular beverages, we may wean our people from stronger HEREDITY WORKS BOTH WAYS. 185 stimulants. New England's abstinence from wines is undoubt- edly due largely to her almost intemperate use of tea and cof- fee to say nothing of cider. Holly-tree inns and temperance coffee-houses are following nature's line acknowledging the craving for stimulation, and supplying it safely. () In so far as our national drunkenness results primarily from the law of heredity race-instincts to excessive indul- gence coming down to us with the increments of successive generations the problem again assumes a most tremendous character. Our English and Irish and Scotch blood bequeath us a heritage whose income is the American drunkenness. But nature's forces are working this same law of heredity to our relief. The aggravated type of drunkenness, inebriety the disease, the mania as a report of the Massachusetts State Board of Charities tells us, wipes out a family in about four generations. Nature's process of the " survival of the fittest " works toward a better race-stock. The treatment which is pursued in our inebriate asylums, if persevered in, may in a few generations eliminate this taint from a family. This natural alterative of inebriety is only being put into use in this generation. What may it not work in time ? Dr. Beard, who presents this view, says that if it be sound, " the problem of inebriety is being slowly solved for us by forces in comparison with which all our organizations are but as the foam on the surface of the ocean-tide." In its milder form, drunkenness, as a vice rather than a mania, still betrays its hereditariness. The original capital of fleshly appetite in Adam "the primal bio-plasmic germ cell," as we now translate the Hebrew nomenclature comes down to us with the accumulated interest of untold generations. The 1 86 EDUCATION THE SPECIFIC. orgies of our ancestry, savage and semi-civilized, stir still in our blood. What a stupendous force of habit moves behind this lust of drink ! We are only beginning to stem this stream of tendency. Only within our generation has temperance become a virtue enjoined by society. Our hope* must lie in the slow formation, through successive generations, of a better stock, educated into temperance. Here also nature may work for us good as well as evil growing at compound interest, only with no limitations to its develop- ments. Much of the best work of the temperance reform has fallen into line with nature herein, and this the Church must re-inforce heartily. Every individual rescued to sobriety adds one of the social cells through whose organic action there is builded up a better human stock ; checks the tides flowing through his veins toward drunkenness, and makes it easier for his children to resist them. We must go back to childhood, before the inherited instinct develops into habits of indulgence, and start the generations aright. Home-training must become neither the asceticism which surrounds wine with the attractions of the forbidden, nor the licence which allows early indulgence, but the wisdom which accustoms to the true use, while warning of the dangers of abuse, and makes wine, as the great Grecian called it, "the test of youth's self control " ; and thus it must rear the young in that manly temperance set before them as the zone of all the virtues. The Church must supplement this home-training, or provide for its lack, through her Sunday-schools, through her parish schools, and perhaps through children's societies ; inculcating and inspiring the duty of keeping the body in temperance, soberness and chastity. The State must do likewise, unless SOCIAL CUSTOMS FOSTER EXCESS. l8/ she thinks to rear manhood fit for citizenship by information without culture, by knowledge without character. Thus seeking to counteract race-tendencies toward drunkenness by the law of heredity, it will soon be perceived that this reform is but a segment of the whole social reformation ; that the basic reform lies back of all society programmes, in the primal institute of humanity ; that what Sweden- borg called " the seminary of the race " is the beginning of the better order ; that the regeneration of society is to come through the development of a nobler human stock ; that what science now calls stirpiculture is but the Church's consciousness of her mission in the world the organic evolution of a regener- ated humanity. (2) The unfavorable action of climate and race laws upon drinking habits is intensified by other conditions of our life. The convivial use of alcoholic liquors is fostered into excess by our social customs and sentiments. A large share of the drinking indulged in, by the young especially, is prompted more by good fellowship than by actual appetite. It rests, therefore, with society not to tempt men to excess by its usages, nor encourage them in such excess by its spirit. Instead of which, our customs stimulate intemperate- ness, and our code of honor fails sufficiently to shame it. Our formal dinner-tables are covered with various kinds of wines always more dangerous than the same quantity of one variety. Our receptions set private bars in side rooms. The final scene of our balls presents the corners and by-places filled with young men and champagne-bottles. Humanity, without asking the prohibition of wine from social festivities, may demand that temperance shall not blush over our tables and be shamed in our dining-rooms. Society should frown, as women can cause it to do, on hilarious indulgence. Physicians and clergy- 1 88 SOCIAL SENTIMENT UTILIZED. men, the custodians of health and morals, should decline to grace occasions where fellowship degenerates into license. In- temperance should be made an offence worse in the social code than a wrong a vulgarity. Custom should not ordain that hospitality must proffer the glass to the guest, unless of known sobriety, nor that the guest should feel constrained to accept the invitation. A great advance has been made in these respects, which needs to be pushed still further. Women ought in every way to discourage the social usages which tempt men to excess. The pernicious American customs of " tippling " and of "treating" are responsible for' very much of our drunken- ness. Liquor taken on an empty stomach is peculiarly danger- ous. Few men indulge to excess over meals. But occasional dram-taking through the day leads men into excess uncon- sciously ; while the fiery potion inflames the empty stomach and genders the diseased craving which leads on to inebriety. Friendship is thus prostitued to the demon of drunkenness. Out of these habits has grown the national institution which did not need the Centennial to introduce it to Europe Fancy Drinks. To name in full the precious fruitage of Yankee inventiveness grafted upon the Old World bibulousness sherry-cobblers, mint-juleps, eye-openers, cock-tails, etc., etc. might be to imperil my reputation, and lead the younger clergy into dangerous knowledge ! Let our temperance societies gather the forces of social sentiment against these &zr-barous customs ; let them make it unfashionable to treat and disreputable to tipple, and let them prohibit bar-drinking" by the law which needs no State constabulary to enforce it. The whole tone of feeling as to drunkenness needs re- enforcing. Even though it be a disease, it should be treated as UNFAVORABLE PHYSICAL CONDITIONS. 189 a shameful disease. The will consents or ignobly yields, and, despite all stress of circumstances, that surrender must be a failure which is disgrace. Pity must not degenerate into the sentimentality which emasculates society. Drunkenness must be felt to be a gross and ignoble sin, the dethronement of man- hood, the riot of the brute nature, and, as such, social senti- ment must shame it. (3) The instinct of stimulation, as a physical craving, is exaggerated by many of the conditions of our life. The national type of character is noted for its intcnseness. We do every thing almost fiercely. Our work and play are alike hard. There is no restfulness in our temperament. Our nervous energy, itself a climatic effect, pushes life at high pressure. Our business is carried on under a ruinous strain of competition and amidst a feverish speculativeness. This life is telling upon our physique. Young men grow old fast. Middle age snaps suddenly. The tension drains our nervous force. That force must be replenished in order to carry on life. We drive this high-pressure life upon the worst system of fuelling. With an unsurpassed cuisine in nature, we fare badly ; selecting our foods ignorantly and preparing them unskilfully. The country menu is pork, pies and pickles ; its science of cooking the frying-pan. The city is haunted by the gastro- nomical ghoul Bridget. Many people supply their stom- achs systematically with doughy bread, dried meats, and greasy fluids, euphemistically called " soups." Away from our centres of civilization we still find those who pile their tables with this marvellous spread, and bolt the mess as though under time contract for the job. Our first centenniad has produced the American disease dyspepsia, with its direful disorders. Out of these and other subtle causes has come about the 190 POVERTY BREEDS DRUNKENNESS. fact, recognized by physicians, that the vitality of our genera- tion is low. We are tonicked along. The stimulant that men naturally seek of themselves is alcohol, disguised in the bitters and other quack tonics which are used so largely through the land, or pure and simple in wines and liquors. The real needs of our physical life prompt the habits which result in drunkenness. This is probably the interpretation of much of the intemperance found among us. The poor feel all this with intensified severity. A generous diet supplies the -force which a scant and uniform table fails to provide. The peasantry of Germany and France turn for that which their food lacks to wine or beer. Our poor go to whiskey. The overcrowding of our tenements and factories deprives men of sufficient air, exhausts its oxygen and fouls its purity ; depressing vitality, generating disease, developing morbid vices and lowering the whole morale. The homes and work-places of the poor in most of our great cities are alone enough to ac- count for the prevalence of drunkenness therein. The Board of Charities of Massachusetts distinctly assigns overcrowding as one of the causes of Boston's drunkenness. As said an officer of the police in this city : " There are tenements where it is impossible to live without drunkenness." Canon Girdle- stone attributed the intemperance of the peasantry in his shire to their beastly quarters and the life thus gendered. If we expect the virtues of manhood, we must secure the conditions of manhood. While a Christian civilization houses and feeds its horses more carefully than its men and women, we must expect brute lives from the brutish conditions of our city poor. In this light, the problem of the prevention of drunkenness is a study in pathology. Preventive medicine holds the key LOW MENTAL LIFE A FACTOR. 19! which a larger philanthropy must use. The true temperance society must become a " Physical Welfare Society." Its aim must be to disseminate the knowledge which sanitary science evolves, and to turn the forces of philanthropy into the order- ing of men's lives in physical righteousness. Temperance reformers must concern themselves with the food and the homes of men ; must ally themselves with every movement towards a more rational life in trade and society. They must encourage that union of business and charity which promises so much for the poor. In this line of action will fall holly- tree inns for occasional meals ; kitchens for the issue of nutri- tious and savory soups, such as would make a poor house- hold's dinner, at cost prices ; co-operative homes such as Philadelphia and Boston are building up around their suburbs, and model tenements like those which have taken the place in this city of some of the worst nests of disease and vice. We may dig thus a James River canal which will cause the evacuation of our social Richmond. (4) The instinct of stimulation, as a craving of the intellect- ual and emotional natures, is intensified by the average morale of our people. There may be a sense of poor, low life in mind and heart, a thirst for larger, fuller being. The tides may run sluggishly over the sands. Life will then suck greedily, from the springs above or the springs below, the waters that will send deep, strong currents, in swirls of joyous fulness, through the wastes of earth's commonness. If the upper sources be known, men will seek, in ampler culture and the life of love, the tiding of the mind and heart with joyousness. If they be unopened, men will sink the shaft through the lower nature, to draw up thus the life of appetite and passion, that pleasure in some form may flow along the days. IQ2 DRINKING VS. THINKING. The philosophy of the wine-god worship Emerson has sung to us in '* Bacchus." It is the cry of life for deeper draughts of being. As men actually pray, and as the powers below answer, it is drunkenness the physical excitation of mental and affectional life. As they should pray, upward, their prayer would be answered in the spiritual stimulation of brain and heart, the rush of thought, the sweep of feeling. The prevention of drunkenness is, in the final word, the inspiration of the life of thought and love, the culture of character. " Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the spirit." The imperfect culture of large classes of our people leaves them only the lower resources. Notwithstanding the general spread of intelligence among us, there are still too many men and women who are so slightly cultured as to have opened few lines of aesthetic, literary, or scientific life far enough to reach their satisfying pleasures. Even religion is often too much upon the surface to keep life green. From necessity our civilization has been busied with the material basis for the future society. Our native culture has still the dew of its birth upon its brow. The culturing in- fluence of other social standards than money-worth is weaker among us than in aristocratic countries. Wealth that has been won more rapidly than culture, having few tastes, seeks gratifi- cation in the luxuriousness that satisfies the animal nature. Many men have few stimuli out of business save indulgence. Women escape ennui if not, as the Saturday Review lately suggested of their English sisters, in wine-drinking in opium, and in other forms of stimulation. The passion for novel reading, so rife among young women, is the confession of a hunger which finds satisfaction in the excitement of the high- wrought stories, and in the unconscious sensuousness which stirs the lower nature under decent disguise. POVERTY AND MENTAL ANAEMIA. 193 This mental poverty is still more true of the poor. Their resources are fewer and lower. The bar is the laborer's club ; the tavern's scraping fiddle is his opera. A " good drunk " idealizes the pleasure of the dregs of our population ; a "jolly spree " describes the holiday of the average laborer. In this as- pect of the problem, the prevention of drunkenness lies in the slow work of opening higher realms of life. The advance of the nation in culture will be an advance in temperance. The progress of a sounder education, with the pleasure thus won in literature, science and the arts, will stimulate and recreate suf- ficiently. The poor are to be weaned from the grog-shops by teaching them better pleasures and giving them higher tastes. Philanthropy must become the master of the people's play. The Church must fearlessly consecrate amusement to the ser- vice of the Lord of humanity, instead of leaving it ascetically in the hands of the devil. If some rich man would build and endow a good, cheap music hall, a People's Central Park Garden, he might call the National Temperance Society to christen it. Fellowship, the gratification of the social instincts, must be provided in such wise as to culture self-respect and ambition. The educational influences of popular lectures, readings, etc., must be utilized. Workingmen's clubs and in- stitutes, which so happily combine sociability, amusement and instruction, must become features of our town parishes. When they shall be multiplied, as they now are in England, similar good results may follow for the cause of temperance. Every instrumentality that makes men more virtuous gener- ally furthers some special virtue of temperance. Intemper-. ance is but one form of low moral life, taking this shape when, by some slight change of circumstance, it might have taken some other shape of vice. As Dr. Anstie said : " No man be- comes drunken who was not first, in a larger sense, intemper- 194 ADVANCE OF WHOLE LINE. ate." The drunkenness of the lowest poor might, as the Board of Charities of this State remarks, equally well be classi- fied as vagrancy. The drunkenness of the criminal classes is but the expression of their general viciousness. Their other vices feed the habit of drinking. They steep themselves in liquor in order to nerve the heart and hush the conscience and spur the outraged body. After all, we come round to the Church's first work making bad men good, regenerating society by regenerating individ- uals. III. If this bird's-eye view of the problem be correct, it will be seen that the prevention of drunkenness is to be reached by a general advance along the whole line of progress, physical, social, mental and moral, in accordance with the laws of nature. Therefore it is that the churches which are based on the principle of nature have not been in sympathy with the older temperance movement. It has seemed to them superficial and empiric. They distrust any other path to the millennium than that of a symmetric education. They do not value straight- jacket virtue, nor rely for social salvation upon the omnipo- tence of the police. Education is, of course, a slow cure. But what good work is wrought otherwise than slowly ? God is the most deliberate of reformers. The last of the fruits of the spirit is temper- ance. Yet, when viewed reasonably, how decided is the advance that has been made upon the days of our Anglo-Saxon fore- fathers, when manhood was tested by its powers of bibulous- ness ; upon the last century, with its sign upon the London tav- THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT. 195 erns " A good drunk and a bed for a sixpence " ; and even on the last generation, with its fine gentlemen rolling under the dinner-table, and carried home as a matter of course. In this general advance there is place for the special work of temperance organizations along the various lines of action that have been indicated. But for thorough work, these organiza- tions must be broad enough to associate all who would labor for social sobriety. The temperance movement has hitherto stood in its own way. Its aims have been noble and its efforts enthusiastic and heroic. Despite all its serious mistakes, it has wrought, by its incessant agitation, a change in public opinion concerning drinking usages for which we cannot be too grateful. None the less, it must be said that it has manifested a narrowness which has identified temperance with teetotalism, an intoler- ance which has made " prohibition " the shibboleth of the cause, and a superficial dogmatism which has gone on repeating disproven facts, proffering arguments long emptied of all weight, and issuing a literature which is the sport of science and the grief of charity. Need we wonder that such a spirit has repelled hosts who would have fought under the banner of temperance ; that it has alienated the cultured classes and silenced whole churches ? So long as our National Temper- ance Society has neither sought nor allowed the alliance of those who differed from its theories or disapproved of its methods, it has left neutral on the field large reserves which might have reinforced its brave attacks upon one of the worst of our social evils. Might we not have, as the issue of this discussion, a Church Temperance Society, patterned after that of our Mother Church of England ; seeking to arouse a rational interest in this great reform, to guide it by candid study, to cut for it 196 A CHURCH SOCIETY. channels accordant with natural laws ; a society making room on its broad platform for those who seek the common end, while allowing in different sections the employment of special methods like the Church itself, letting opinion work itself out freely under the unity of the spirit of love and of a sound mind ? * * The Church Temperance Society is already realizing the hope expressed in this paragraph thanks to the zealous labors of its founders. VII. MORAL EDUCATION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. OUTLINE. The supreme need of education So recognized by educational authorities Socrates Locke Milton Pestalozzi Froebel Herbert Spencer Lack of provision for ethical education in our public schools No other institution to supply the need How can our common schools culture character ? 1. Instruction Opening exercises made readings in character Indirect instruction through special studies History Physical science Direct in- struction concerning ethics. 2. Training Much done already through the discipline of our public schools Counteracting influences in our present system Directions in which we should develop the system Higher motivities Self-government Public spirit School libraries School work-shops. 3. Atmosphere Importance of Opening exercises may create such atmosphere Personal influence the most vital power. 198 MORAL EDUCATION IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.* The supreme need of ethical education in our public schools ought surely to need no assertion. In any rational theory of education, every thing should lead up to character and conduct. The individual's own development finds its completion in a noble character. The interests of society are not secured in a system which turns out a brain minus a conscience. Educational authorities have always recognized character as the end of education. When Socrates had been shown a beautiful youth, he wanted to know if his soul was equally beautiful. f Plato said : " I mean by education that training which is given by suitable habits to the first instincts of virtue in children. "J Locke declared: "It is virtue then, direct virtue, which is the head and invaluable part to be aimed at in education." Milton, in characteristically beautiful language, writes : " The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents, by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue." || With Pestalozzi and Froebel, character was the aim su- premely and passionately sought. Herbert Spencer's work on * North American Review, 1883. \ " Laws," Book II., 653 [Jowett]. f "Charmides," 154 [Jowett]. " Thoughts on Education." || "Tractate on Education." 199 200 LACK OF CHARACTER CULTURE. education recognizes moral training as the crowning result to be achieved. The lack of proper provision for ethical education in our public schools is painfully plain.* This defect our public schools share with our private schools. The task of ethical education is so delicate and fine that the wisest may well hesitate over it. Job work here is worse than no work. Prigs and pharisees are the products turned out from poor character-factories, and no fashion for uglinesses is likely to bring them into favor. It is so easy to spoil a soul in handling it ! Still, something needs to be done, as carefully as may be. That something must be done in the people's schools. There is no other institution to which the State may safely trust this most important task. The Sunday-school, manned by good- hearted amateurs, cannot achieve a thorough ethical culture. * General provision for moral education is found in the legislation of some of the States, and in the schedules of studies and directions for teach- ers issued by many local Boards of Education. The Legislature of Massa- chusetts, in 1789, directed teachers "to impress on the minds of children and youth committed to their care and instruction the principles of piety, justice, and a sacred regard to truth, love to their country, humanity and universal benevolence, sobriety, industry and frugality, chastity, moderation and temperance, and those other virtues which are the ornament of human society and the bases upon which a republican institution is founded." Philadelphia enumerates "morals and manners," among the studies to be pursued in its schools. In the " directions to teachers," its Board of Educa- tion observes : " Remarks upon morals and manners should follow the read- ing of the Bible by the principal. These remarks should be made in the presence of the whole school, and as frequently as the incidents of the school may suggest." These occasional instructions are urged as a means of school discipline : " Respectfulness to superiors, obedience to parents and teach- ers, honesty and truthfulness thus enforced and impressed upon the mind of the pupils will be found a powerful auxiliary to the discipline of the school." SUNDAY-SCHOOL VS. PUBLIC SCHOOL. 2OI An hour and a half, once a week, can impart but little instruc- tion, and can secure no training. With the present pre-occu- pation of orthodox Sunday-schools in dogmatic and institutional religion, even their limited possibilities, as ethical educators, are largely wasted. Were the Sunday-school devoted to morals, instead of dogmas, it would still labor under the fatal defect of divorcing ethical from intellectual culture. Division of labor cannot be carried so far as to exempt our day-schools from the care of character. A child cannot be cut up into bits and jobbed-out to different specialists, and then be made up under the hands of a Master of Morals. Morality must be learned in school, as in actual life, amid secular activities. The State must assume her rightful function in the culture of character. How, then, can our present sys- tem be led on into this highest office of education ? The Board of Education of New York (1867) places " manners and morals " among the studies of the primary schools, and directs as follows for the several grades : sixth grade " Instruction is to be given in manners and morals, and illustrated by means of the incidents of school and home " ; fifth grade ditto ; fourth grade " Instruction for cultivating love to pa- rents, kindness, obedience, neatness, truthfulness, and politeness, to be illustrated by examples, incidents, and anecdotes " ; third grade ditto ; second grade " Improve opportunities in the daily exercises of the schools by conversations upon the subjects of the reading lesson and all appropriate incidents to inculcate respectfulness, obedience to parents, honesty, and truthfulness" ; first grade " Instruction by means of school incidents and anecdotes, so conducted as to aid in the discipline of the school." In the schedules for the grammar schools no reference is made to the subject. The Chicago Board of Education has some admirable instructions to its teachers, worthy of a place in the directions of all school boards. See Barnard's Journal of Education, vol. xix., p. 552. Few of our school boards offer any detailed directions ; the work is one that cannot show for itself as does other teaching ; so that practically this whole subject comes to be left very much to each individual principal and teacher. 2O2 INSTRUCTION OPENING EXERCISES. Ethical education may be carried on in three ways : through direct instruction, through training, and through the influence of the spiritual atmosphere created in the school. I. Instruction. This should be, at first, not talking about virtue, but talking up virtue ; not the giving of scientific knowl- edge concerning goodness, but the presentation of goodness in forms that will cause children to fall in love with it. Nature's order is first the concrete and then the abstract ; first examples of the law and then the principle of it. The grammar of ethics should come after ethical exercises. Natural, unconscious action of the moral sense, responsive to the forms of beautiful goodness presented to it, makes healthier children than any elaborate studies in ethics, though in the best of scientific manuals. Casuistry forms good conscience-calisthenics for tougher years. The opening exercises of the schools might include choice ethical readings, brief accounts of noble men and women, tales of brave and fine actions, golden sayings, parables and allegories of great teachers, illustrating character and conduct. There is no lack of material for such readings in righteousness. Plutarch's sketches of the grand old Greeks and Romans are full of nutriment for a noble high-mindedness. Froissart's " Chronicles " and Fuller's " Worthies of England " would yield choice material for the early periods of the modern world. More modern history abounds in tales of noble man- hood and womanhood. What a text-book of patriotism is the story of Garibaldi ! Our own history is rich in great charac- ters, only less conspicuous than Washington and Lincoln. Every form of personal goodness, every phase of social righteousness finds ample illustration in the recorded anec- dotes of actual men and women The daily incidents of the newspapers furnish affecting models of heroism and tragic BIBLE QUESTION OTHER BIBLES. 203 examples of the consequences of vice. The sagas of the ancients abound in ethical parables, nature-myths woven into heroic legends. Kingsley's " Heroes " and Hawthorne's " Won- der-Book " are charming specimens of the ethical power of these old stories. Scenes and sketches from our great novelists, and passages from the great poets, might well form part of such readings. Between the equally irrational clamorings of the advocates and the opponents of the use of the Bible in our common schools, there is no chance probably, as yet, for the still, small voice of reason. Experience may be trusted to convince men of open minds that, in the world of letters, there are no writings so effective in the culture of character as portions of the sacred books of the Hebrews the people whose specialty was ethical passion and of the Christians. Matthew Arnold has divined this, with characteristic sagacity, and, in the " Great Prophecy of Israel's Restoration," has prepared the noble poetry of the second section of Isaiah for use as a primer in schools. One of the prime benefits to follow from a rational conception of the Bible is the ability of men of different religious opinions to consider practically this question of the ethical use of the Bible- writings. The golden words of the other great Bibles of Humanity should be utilized in the same way. These righteousness- readings might pursue a systematic order, covering in the course of a school year, several times, all the great personal and social virtues, without necessarily laying bare to the chil- dren the framework of the classification. For such readings there should, of course, be prepared a rich Anthology, as a basis on which each principal could build his own selection. Instruction could also be given, and perhaps with most effectiveness, in an indirect manner, through some of the 204 READERS HISTORY SCIENCES. special departments. Indirect ethical instruction insinuates itself most readily into the mind. An oblique line is the line of greatest power in communicating this knowledge. As Emerson says : " It is the things of which we do not think that educate us." The Readers of the younger children might be still more entirely captured for the purposes of character- building, and be made to consist chiefly, as they do now in part, of choice passages of ethical value. History, as now studied, has little or nothing of an ethical character. Without displacing its really important instruction as to past affairs, it might be made to throw character into the foreground. American and English history afford just as fine a field for character-studies as Hebrew history, if we had the dominant desire of the ancient Jews to study character. The ethical aspects of great men and the moral bearings of great events should be kept ever in mind by a wise teacher, and would afford constant opportunities of exercising the child- conscience in a natural and interesting way. The physical sciences are, without any conscious aim In this direction on the part of the teacher, a constant instruction in some valuable moral qualities humility, openness of mind, love of truth and reality, patience, judgment, etc. They can be made to further the culture of character directly. The universal reign of law can be pointed out, and its double action in benefi- cence or maleficence, according as we intelligently understand and loyally obey it or as we ignorantly neglect and wilfully defy it. Moral laws can be shown to be grounded in nature ; to be . no mere arbitrary impositions of society, no illusions of the imagination, but part of " trie order and constitution of things." The great ethical principles can be traced in terms of physics, in the life of the bird and beast. The bee-hive and the ant-hill can be made text-books in social ethics, parables of a true com- PHYSIOLOGICAL TALKS TRAINING. 2O$ monwealth and a real republic. That most difficult and deli- cate of didactic tasks, the attempt to lead the child-mind into pure and reverent thought concerning the sexual relations, may, perhaps, best be achieved through a poetic reading of the loves of the flowers. Thus it was, as we know from his own pen, that Frcebel caught sight of the great law which runs through all life, and which lifts the reproductive function into sacredness. These side-lights may reveal to the child the infinite mystery of order in which we live and move and have our being ; and may place him in the rightful attitude of reverence toward law and of glad consent to it, which is the secret of virtue. Instruction might also be effectively given through talks and lectures, by competent specialists, upon the physiological ef- fects of common vices, such as drunkenness, gluttony, etc. These could be at times illustrated, with telling effect ; as in the colored diagrams which temperance lecturers often use. The elder boys and girls could be thus taught separately, by one of their own sex, the laws of purity and their bearings on life. In these and other ways, a quite sufficient amount of ethical instruction might be secured, without any radical change in the present system of our public schools. To this might possibly be added, for the advanced pupils, some systematic instruction in the nature and authority of ethical principles, and their relation to conventional morality, by some specially qualified teacher, if such instruction could be given without raising dogmatic issues. II. Training. Miss Peabody once said, in happy paradox, that we "learn goodness by being good." To make children good, even for a while ; to establish, during a portion of each day, a rule under which they shall conform to the laws of right conduct this is the best way of causing them to learn good- ness. In ethics, training is more important than instruction. 206 PUBLIC SCHOOL DISCIPLINE. Habit is the mould into which the plastic spirit is to be run, shaping it into noble character. Much is even now being done through the discipline of our public schools. The children come under a system of law which they cannot ignore, change nor defy ; which rewards their obedience and punishes their disobedience. This alone, to the children of lawless homes, is an immense boon. Obedi- ence, which Kant held to be the fundamental virtue, is rigidly enforced. Punctuality, cleanliness and other simple virtues, are drilled into the nature. Good manners are enjoined. The effort needful to master the daily lessons is a training of the will the central force of character. The spur of the " mark- ing" rouses ambition, energy, " go-aheadativeness " ; which are at least antiseptics to the lower forms of vice. These, with the other factors of character-training, count for much. But with these good elements, there are commingled influ- ences which are by no means wholesome. Self-love is a pow- erful motor, but a dangerous one. Nature uses it to begin her work of development, but hastens to outrank it by a nobler motor. It is doubtless needful to goad children with this spur, but a sparing use should be made of it, or we shall have men and women sensitive to no finer impulses. There is a grave danger in the reckless appeal to the selfish instincts which is made by the prevalent system of ranking and rewarding pupils. Good work comes to be done not for the work's sake, nor for the sake of others, nor even for the sake of one's own improve- ment, but, solely, for the name and fame, the position and profit that it brings. We thus train the oncoming generations for the same unhappy struggle after self-advancement that is now eating into public spirit in the State, into purity in society, and into honor in the business world. In our impatience for intellectual results, we are thus sacrificing character upon the DEFECTS OF THA T DISCIPLINE. 2O? altar of knowledge. The punishments of our present system, like its rewards, are seriously faulty. They need to be made less physical and more moral, less arbitrary and more natural, less tyrannous and more just. Suspicion, espionage and fear, are demoralizing influences. " To be found out," comes to be the definition of " wrong." Scholars establish a code of school- morals as is well known to be the case in some schools and count it no wrong to cheat the master, or even to lie directly to him. Children need to be thrown, as far as possible, upon their honor ; and to be always treated respectfully, until they have forfeited this right. Truthfulness and self-respect are seminal virtues ; at all costs to be cherished in the young. The experience of prison reformers might give some valuable hints in the right use of punishment. The great specialists in penology have made of it a new and divine instrument in the training of character. Perhaps, the most important change to be made in the dis- cipline of our public schools is in the introduction of higher motivities. Merit must be rewarded and faults must be pun- ished, but rewards and punishments alike need to be lifted to a higher plane. What these higher motivities are can be better seen by a morning spent in a true kindergarten than from pages of writing. The little ones are trained there in true morality ; in fellow-feeling, brotherliness, justice, kindliness, love. Froebel has embodied in the beautiful culture of the kindergarten the essential spirit of ethics. When the kinder- garten comes to be made the basis for our public-school system, the most important years will be rescued for a wise moral training a training which will fashion the being aright from the start, and which, we may hope, will gradually shape the school that shall rest upon it after its own nobler type of character-culture. 208 EXPERIMENTS IN SELF-GOVERNMENT. Self-government ought certainly to be the aim to which all moral education should -look, and ought to be developed, as far as possible, in school years. As a means to this end, it might be worth while to feel along in the direction which has been taken by certain notable experiments in education.* The great English schools have long made the Sixth Form respon- sible for the order of the rest of the school. The school estab- lished by the Messrs. Hill (Rowland Hill was one of the broth- ers) entrusted the entire charge of maintaining order to the boys themselves. The superintendent of one of our own Houses of Refuge achieved marvels among his boys, formerly " amen- able only to the harshest discipline," by throwing the com- munity gradually upon its own self-government ; so that at last he did away with watchmen, and left all cases of dis- cipline to be decided by a jury of the boys. The schools of a republic might with special propriety experiment carefully in this direction. The principles of ethics might be interestingly and effectually studied by the elder scholars in " courts," be- fore which actual or supposititious cases of alleged wrong-do- ing could be brought up for trial ; the scholars acting as jury and as lawyers. Thus the child-conscience could be exercised and instructed in the rights of person and property ; upon the ethics of law-abidingness, of truthfulness, of intemperance, of strikes, etc. Mr. MacMullen, who in his own school tried this ex- periment, tells how he found one fifth of his boys at one time defending " prompting," " two of them very shrewdly and in- geniously " ; and, at another time, a large number defending the rightfulness of robbing orchards. One of our private schools in New England tried successfully the experiment of a stated assembly, like the Senate or the House of Representa- * Cf. The pamphlet prepared and issued by Mr. MacMullen, 1262 Broad- way, on "Self-government in Schools." PUBLIC DA YS SOCIETIES LIBRARIES. 2OQ tives of the United States. In this assumed character, the school-debates were carried on upon questions of social and political importance ; thus familiarizing the boys' minds with the forms of our government, and interesting them in public affairs, while training them in the self-control of courteous discussion. Public spirit might be nurtured by interesting observances upon the great national holidays ; Washington's Birthday, Decoration Day, Fourth of July, etc. Societies might be formed among the children, looking to the cultivation of tem- perance and thrift. The Protestant Episcopal Church has founded an Order of Knighthood among the boys of its Sunday-Schools, which seeks to promote personal purity and sobriety. In some of the French schools, savings societies have been introduced with marked benefit. Certain industrial schools girls' sewing schools in New York have established savings-banks, and have received an encouraging patronage. If an afternoon were devoted once a week to such court and congress and society sessions, the results upon the character of the children might be very valuable. A library of well-selected literature in each school could be made a powerful adjunct in the culture of character. Books and papers are, after all, the chief educators. And here the children pursue an elective course. To teach them to choose wisely those silent masters who are to mould their lives, is one of the best services to be rendered them. For lack of such training, they patronize the host of demoralizing teachers who await them on the news-stands, and who teach them from sen- sational tales and tainted novels. In nothing is a guiding hand more needed than in forming the friendship of books. The great body of the scholars would not follow such guid- ance, and none might follow it wholly ; but many could be in- 210 SCHOOL WORKSHOP ATMOSPHERE. fluenced by it ; and, if the co-operation of parents was secured, the present ravenous consumption of low literature might be checked, and a better taste formed. There is no safeguard against a bad taste equal to the creation of a good taste. A workshop in each school would be another valuable an- nex. Our present divorce between intellectual and manual education is fruitful of moral ills. It robs the handworker of that interest in his labor which it could and should yield him, and of the safeguards which it might throw around him in the human hunger for " more life and fuller." It unfits the mass of those who are graduated from our common schools for the common works of the common people, in all lands and ages, while it fails to fit them for the " genteel " pursuits to which they aspire, and in which only the superior minds can hope to succeed ; and so it crowds our cities with men and women for whom life is one prolonged and precarious struggle, with tem- tation ever yawning below them. " To dress it and to keep it " thus ran the charge of the Divine Educator to the first pupil, in the child-garden of the Eden legend. There is that in character which handicrafts alone seem to develop. Alike, then, for their indirect and for their direct bearings on character and conduct, the introduction of manual training is of prime importance in the development of our public school system. III. Atmosphere. In the growth of the plant, atmospheric conditions are of at least co-equal importance with the nature of the seed sown and the quality of the culture bestowed upon it. That subtle omnipotence, the ethical atmosphere of a school, must be looked after by the guardians of our youth. There are schools which are'charged with the potent influences of goodness, in which the children breathe in virtue. Of all that goes to form such atmospheric conditions, three factors may be mentioned. MUSIC PERSONAL INFLUENCE, 211 The opening exercises may charge the air with ethical ozone, and create the spiritual temperature in which conscience buds and blooms. Music is of especial value to this end. The authorities upon education, from Plato to Froebel and Goethe, emphasize the function of music in moral education.* It rouses and guides the feelings in any desired direction, and, when well used, charges the soul with pure passion and moulds the dispositions ; and, by daily repetitions, its vibrations write the laws of noble life in the very tissues of the body. There is no other instrumentality so potent in spiritual influences. The wise master holds in it the wand with which he can touch the natures of his children, wakening responsive echoes, and key- ing the school to the right pitch. We are but beginning to realize its educational possibilities. At present, it is used partly as a recreation, and partly as one more accomplishment to be acquired. We must learn how to use it in the fashioning of plastic character. Personal influence remains always the last and most vital formative power in the atmospheric quality of a school. The schools that have been most noted for the culture of character * Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the secret places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul grace- ful of him who is rightly educated. . . . And also because he who has received this true education of the inner being, with a true taste, while he praises and rejoices over, and receives into his soul the good, and becomes noble and good, will justly blame and hate the bad, now, in the days of his youth, even before he is able to know the reason why ; and when reason comes, he will recognize and salute her as a friend. Plato : " The Re- public," book iii., 402. (Jowett.) Song is the first step in education ; all the rest are connected with it, and attained by means of it. . . . What religious and moral principles we lay before our children are communicated in the way of song. Goethe : " Wilhelm Meister's Travels," chapter 10. 212 HOW TO GET TRUE TEACHERS. have always had a noble man or woman at the core of their wise systems. Arnold made Rugby. Some vital personality makes every school which makes men. We cannot hope to se- cure geniuses or saints for all our peoples' schools. They are not needful. We can, however, secure in hosts of our schools, as we have secured in many of them, men and women of high character, and of gracious personal influence, whose presence will be the prime factor in their culture of child character. To get them, we must make the position more dignified and hon- orable, and, as such, more remunerative. The most important of society's functions must have a social status and a pecuniary reward corresponding to the high worth of the teacher's service. For all this work of moral education, the first step forward is the securing of a proper preparation for the specialty of character-culture in our normal schools. We must educate our educators. VIII. THE FREE KINDERGARTEN IN CHURCH WORK. OUTLINE. Church work a work of education. 1. Defects of the people's scho.ols. 2. Inadequacy of Sunday-schools and parish schools. 3. These defects largely remediable by utilizing the period of infancy Value of, for education. 4. Such instruction must consist of play Educative function of play Purifying influences of happy play. 5. Physical training of the Kindergarten, and its bearing on character. 6. Industrial training of the Kindergarten, and its bearing on character. 7. Moral culture through the social laws of the Kindergarten. 8. Moral culture through the social manners of the Kindergarten. 9. Moral culture in the nurture of unselfishness. 10. Moral culture through a life corporate and individual. 11. Moral culture through an atmosphere of love. 12. Religious culture in the Kindergarten. 13. This complete child garden the foundation of Church work. 14. Providential preparation of the churches for the welcoming of this work. 214 THE FREE KINDERGARTEN IN CHURCH WORK* Church work is slowly coming to be read in the light of those great words of the Church's Head which illumine his personal mission. And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up : and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath-day and stood up for to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book he found the place where it was written The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor ; He hath sent me to heal the broken- hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.f Now when John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples and said unto him Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another ? Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see : the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached unto them. \ The Master's mission was to heal the sickness and sorrow, the suffering and sin of earth, in the power of that Holy Spirit which was to continue his work, slowly developing " the regen- eration " of all things, in a new heavens and a new earth. His * Barnard's American Journal of Education, June, 1881. f Luke : iv., 16-19. \ Matt. : xi., 2-5. 215 2l6 CHURCH WORK EDUCATION. credentials were the signs of his power to effect this herculean labor. The Church's work must, then, be the carrying on of his task of social regeneration ; a labor of practical philanthropy led up into the heights of a spiritual re-formation ; and the " notes " of a true church will lie in its possession of the Master's power to further the slow evolution of the better order. If only to make earth the nursery for the heavens, it must be put into order, the frightful ills of civilization be healed, the dreadful disorders of society be righted, and man be breathed out into the son of God. The magnificent aspiration of St. Paul is the ideal unto which all Church work yearns. Till we all come (beggarly, diseased, vicious, malformed runts of human- ity), in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the son of God, unto a perfect man (manhood) ; to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.* Such a Church work must plainly be a task of education. And unto this form of philanthropy every labor of love for suffering humanity is coming round. The experience of all who grapple with the legion forms of social ill results in one conclusion. Prevention is better than cure ; and prevention is education. Sanitarians, prison reformers, temperance ad- vocates, charity administrators, pastors, all alike are joining in one cry educate. We grow hopeless of making over again the wrongly made up, misshapen monstrosities that are chari- tably called men and women, and feel that the one hopeful work is in seeing that the unspoiled raw material, ever coming on, is better made up in the_ start. Given a true education and we may hope for a true manhood and womanhood, a true society growing steadily towards St. Paul's far off ideal. The Church's work would then seem to be that which the Master * Ephesians : iv., 13. DEFECTS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS, .21? outlined in his parting word " Go ye, disciple all nations " ; teach men in the life of the perfect man, and train them tow- ards the ideal manhood. The subject of the last charge of the great Bishop of souls was education. I. Education of one sort and another we have no lack of, but thoughtful people are coming to see, that which the wisest educators have known for no little time, that it is mostly very crude and raw. Along with the conviction that education is the solvent of the social problems, there is spreading fast and far the conviction that we have not yet educated the true education ; that our present systems are viciously unsound, and so are building up the old diseased body social instead of the new and healthy organism of the coming man. With all that is good in our people's schools they seem lacking in certain vital elements. They not only fail to provide for a true physi- cal culture, but by their high-pressure system of study they positively oppose that culture ; which, since health is the capi- tal of life, is the prime endowment for every human being. They fail also to provide for any industrial training. Nearly all men and a large minority of women must earn their daily bread, and the majority of women must care for the bread that their husbands earn. The great mass of men and women must be chiefly busied with manual work in the field, the factory or the house. To prepare this mass of men and women to do this necessary work successfully and happily, finding their bread in it honorably, and that bread of thought and sentiment on which the finer part of their beings live in the interest which it calls forth this would seem to be an essential part of a rational education for the common necessities of the common 2 1 8 LACK OF MORAL ED UCA TION. people ; all the more imperative since the old time apprentice- ships have disappeared. In the absence of this practical train- ing, all ranks of labor are crowded with incompetent "hands," and domestic economy is caricatured in most homes ; a rest- less discontent with manual employments is pushing a super- ficially educated mass of men and women into the over-full vocations that are supposed to be genteel, and is storing up slumberous forces of anarchy among our workingmen ; thus sapping health and wealth in the homes of the poor who most need both. Then, to pass by other grave defects best behooving profes- sional educators to emphasize, there is a still more serious lack in our common-school system which the churches are naturally quick to feel. The greatest minds have always united in the view so tersely expressed in Matthew Arnold's familiar phrase, " Conduct is three fourths of life." The end of all culture must be character, and its outcome in conduct. The State's concern in education is to rear virtuous, law-abiding, self-governing citizens. The Church's concern is not something different from the State's it is the same, plus something more. She too seeks to grow good subjects, only running their relation to law up and on ; men whose citizenship is in heaven. State and Church alike would nurture good men, for this world or the next. To this the Church believes with the State that moral culture is needful, but she believes also that religious culture is none the less needful. The churches feel the need of supplementing the education of the common schools with some ampler provision for moral and religious training. If the homes of the land were what they ought to be they would sup- ply this lack. But, because of the utter imperfection of educa- tion in the past, they are unfortunately far from being semi- naries of character. Some other provision must be made. DEFECTS OF SUN DA Y SCHOOLS, ETC. 219 II. The churches have utilized a simple mechanism for moral and religious education, in the Sunday-school. No word from one who owes so much to this institution can ever detract from its just honor. It has been and still is an indispensable pro- vision for our present stage of development. It is doing a noble work which else were left largely undone. But its best friends are not blind to its limitations. The clergy generally are painfully aware of its utter inadequacy to the great task which it has assumed. Superintendents and teachers feel that they are asked to make brick without being supplied with straw. For an hour or two on one day of the week, a crowd of children, often reaching into the hundreds, is gathered into one room, put in the hands of a changing corps of volun- teer teachers, mostly very young, animated generally with laudable motives, but too often painfully unconscious of the momentousncss of the task which they have lightly undertaken, and all untrained for the delicate work of soul fashioning. As a system of education in Christian character, such an institu- tion is grotesquely inadequate. For that education must be chiefly a nurture ; a tenderly cherished growth under the right conditions, duly supplied ; a training rather than an instruction, a daily not a weekly work. The ideal of such an education, of course, will be the story of the Sinless Man ; a growth, gently nurtured, in a pious home, at the knee of a holy mother, through patient years ; hastened to the flower, under the soft springtide of the soul, within the warmer atmosphere of the temple, in the opening consciousness "Wist ye not that I must be in my Father's ? " But, again I say, we are concerned with the unideal state of earth to-day, whereon homes are not like the Nazarite cottage and mothers are far below the stature of the great-souled Mary. 22O PARISH SCHOOLS VALUE OF INFANCY. What is to be done now ? Something, plainly, the churches feel, and are sore perplexed as to what that something is to be. A portion of the churches seems inclined to try in some way to make the common schools attend more carefully to moral and religious education. But how to do it does not yet appear. The religious phase of this problem is beset with baffling per- plexities. Others of the churches are tending in the direction of parish schools. But these cannot hope to compete with the State schools in mental culture, and so must offer to the parents of the land the choice between a good general educa- tion with a defective moral and religious training, and a good moral and religious training (possibly) with a narrower and feebler general education. The average American will not long hesitate in that alternative, when he can relieve his con- science by falling back upon the Sunday-school. Our people are thoroughly committed to the system of State schools, and will not favorably view any apparent sectarian opposition to them. We need, not a system substituted for the State schools and benefiting only a small portion of the people, but one sup- plementing the State schools and benefiting the whole people. Is such a system discoverable ? And can such a system for moral and religious nurture be made to supplement the com- mon schools also in the other defects alluded to, the lack of physical training and industrial education ? III. The most valuable period of childhood for formative pur- poses is now unclaimed by" the State. The richest soil lies virgin, un-preempted, free for the Church to settle upon and work for the highest culture. It is no new secret that the most plastic period lies below childhood, in infancy proper. EDUCATION WROUGHT IN INFANCY. 221 Thoughtful people have long ago perceived that the chief part of all human learning is wrought in those seven years ; the greatest progress made, the largest acquisitions won, the tough- est difficulties overcome. No pretentious culture won in later years is really half so wonderful as the almost unconscious education which is carried on in the period of infancy. Dame Nature is busy with her babes and has them at incessant schooling. From the first dawn of intelligence they are under an unceasing series of lessons, in form and color, in weight and resistance, in numbers and relations, in sound and speech. Every sense is being called into exercise, cultivated and re- fined. The perceptions are ever at work observing, comparing, contrasting. Mastery is being won over every physical power ; the eye, the ear, the hand, the feet, are being trained into sup- ple, subtle skill. The bewildering fingering of Rubenstein or Von Bulow does not tell of a finer discipline than that which is being carried on in the games of the active boy. The sentiments, the imagination, the reason, the conscience are undergoing a corresponding development in this period which we think of as entire idleness. Here and there we get hints of the reach of the infant mind in its beautiful thoughts, its fine feelings, its ethical distinctions, its religious musings. The veil lifts from the greatest of wonder lands, in which we all lived once, and out from which we have passed through the waters of the river Lethe. We think lightly of the inner life of infancy because we know so little of it. We fancy that we are to teach our little ones religion. At the best, we can only formulate the mystery which lies all round them, vague and nebulous but profoundly real. Below the best, we suc- ceed in botching and marring the divine growth which is going on within their souls, unseen by our dim eyes ; in im- posing our adult conceptions injuriously on souls unprepared 222 THAT EDUCATION THROUGH PLAY. for them ; and so we turn the windows through which our sin- seared souls see light into the shutters closing the light off from those holy innocents whose inner being, angel-wise, should always behold the face of their Father in heaven. Words- worth's ode is the very truth of the spirit world. The garden of the Lord, where God himself walks amid the trees in the cool of the day, is behind us all ; and our best hope is to climb round to it in the " lang last," as the seer visions in the far future of the race and of the individual ; when having been converted and become as little children we enter once more the kingdom of heaven. For, as these words remind us, it is no less an authority than that of the Lord Christ that teaches us to view in childhood the spiritual ideal. Infancy then, the first seven years, is the most vital period for the formative work of a true education ; whether we have regard to physical and mental, or moral and spiritual develop- ment. Plato saw this long centuries ago, and wrote : " The most important part of education is right training in the nur- sery." * As late as our greatest American theologian the noblest of English theologians himself being the judge this view reiter- ates itself with especial reference to the task of moral and re- ligious culture which the churches have in hand. Dr. Bushnell's " Christian Nurture " insists upon the prime importance of in- fancy. IV. If then the only period of childhood not foreclosed by the State be precisely that which is most hopeful for the true education the education which aims for something like an integral culture, a fashioning of the whole manhood into health, * Laws I., 643. POSSIBILITIES IN PLAY. 22$ intelligence and virtue buoyant with the love of God the question becomes one of technique. How are we to utilize this most plastic but most delicate of periods ? How teach and train the tender lives which seem unready for any thing but play ? All high and serious labor upon this period appears to be ruled out by the fractible nature of the material upon which we are to work. These fragile bodies can bear little fatigue, these tender minds can bear little strain, these delicate souls can bear little public handling without spoiling. "O slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have written ! " must we not hear the Spirit of Truth sadly whispering ? Cen- turies since, did not the teacher sent from God to the Greeks, the wisest mind of the wisest people of antiquity, tell the world if, having ears to hear, they would hear the riddle of this Sphinx ? Our youth should be educated in a stricter rule from the first, for if education becomes lawless and the youths themselves become lawless, they can never grow up into well-conducted and meritorious citizens. And t 'he education mttst begin with their plays. The spirit of law must be imparted to them in music, and the spirit of order attending them in all their actions will make them grow ; and if there be any part of the state which has fallen down will raise it up again.* According to my view, he who would be good at any thing must prac- tise that thing from his youth upwards, both in sport and earnest, in the particular manner which the work requires ; for example, he who is to be a good builder, should play at building children's houses ; and he who is to be a good husbandman, at tilling the ground ; those who have the care of their education should provide them when young with mimic tools. And they should learn beforehand the knowledge which they will afterwards re- quire for their art. For example, the future carpenter should learn to measure or apply the line in play ; and the future warrior should learn riding, or some other exercise for amusement, and the teacher should endeavor to direct the children's inclinations and pleasures, by the help of amusements, * Republic, iv. : 425. 224 TRUE EDUCATION PLAYFUL. to their final aim in life. . . . The soul of the child in his play should be trained to that sort of excellence in which when he grows up to manhood he will have to be perfected.* Plainly the natural activity of infancy is play, and as plainly the only possible education in this period must be through play. This is precisely the method of Mother Nature. She teaches her little ones all the marvellous knowledge which they master in infancy through pure play of body and of mind. So far from play being at all inconsistent with learning, the best work in education does in fact take on the character of play. A critic as unsentimental as Mr. Herbert Spencer lays down the law that all education, in so far as it is true, tends to become play. He tests every method by this criterion is it task work or is it to the child as good as play ? It is our igno- rance of child nature, our poverty of invention and our me- chanicalness of method which leave learning mere work. All learning ought to be spontaneous, joyous. Calisthenics is turning into a semi-dancing, to the music of the piano ; natural sciences are coming to be taught through excursions in the field and wood, and by experiments in the laboratory ; the dry drill of languages is brightening into the cheery conversa- tion class ; the catechism in the Sunday-school is yielding room for the music of hymns and carols. There is nothing incompatible between the merry play of the nursery and the school into which we would turn it, if only we can be cunning enough to devise a subtle illusion wherein, as the children think that they are merely playing, we shall see that they are also learning. Leaving them their free, spontaneous, nat- ural impulses of playfulness, we may then lead these impulses up into a system which shall, with benign subtility, unwittingly * Laws, i. : 643. FRCEBEL FOUND NATURE'S SECRET. 22$ to the children, school them in the most important of knowl- edges, train them in the most valuable of powers, fashion them into the most precious of habits, open within them the deepest springs of eternal life. Only, for this finest and divinest of pedagogies we must, as the greatest of teachers has taught us, get low down to the plane of the little ones, and ourselves be- come as children, that we may enter the kingdom of heaven. For as Sir William Hamilton, and longbeforehim Lord Bacon, pointed out, childlike docility of soul is the condition of enter- ing into that province of the kingdom of heaven which is truth, as well as into that province which is goodness the secret of philosophies and sciences as of theologies and life. To construct the true system of child-schooling, we must be humble enough and wise enough to go to Mother Nature's dame schools, and learn her science and art of infantile pedagogy. If some genius, child-hearted, should seriously set himself to study sly old Mother Nature in her most trivial actions, patiently watching her most cunningly concealed pro- cesses, he might steal upon her thus and catch the secret of the Sphynx's nurturing by play, and might open for us the ideal education for the early years of childhood. And this is just what Frcebel did. With unwearied patience, and in the very spirit of this childlike teachableness, he studied the plays and songs of mothers and nurses and children, when left to their own sweet will, till, divining at last the principles underlying these natural methods, he slowly perfected the kindergarten ; verifying it by faithful personal experiment, and bequeathing, to the generations that should come after, the child-garden, the sunny shelter wherein, in happy play, the bodies, minds and souls of the little ones should beautifully grow out into health, intelligence and goodness. Visitors in a kindergarten watch its occupations, and leave 226 THE PLA Y OF THE POOR. it with the somewhat contemptuous criticism Oh ! it 's all very nice and pleasant, a very pretty play. Were this all, the kindergarten might enter a strong plea on its own behalf. In the foul tenements and the dirty streets and alleys of our great cities, the tainted air is sapping the vitality of the children, poisoning their blood, sowing their bodies with the seeds of disease, and educating helpless hosts to crowd every market-place of labor, unfit physically to contend in the struggle for existence. In these dull and de- pressing surroundings, a gradual stupefaction is stealing over their minds, preparing that unintelligent action wherein those whom Carlyle called " The Drudges " are taking their place in society as the human tenders of our superhuman machines. In the sad and sombre atmosphere of these homes, whose joy- lessness the children feel unconsciously, as the cellar-plant misses the light and shrivels and pales, the inner spring of energy and its strength of character, the virtus or virtue of the human being, relaxes, and their souls become flabby and feeble. Lacking the sunny warmth of happiness in childhood, they lack through life the stored-up latencies of spiritual heat which feed the noblest forces of the being. " We live by ad- miration, joy and love " Wordsworth says ; which implies that we may die by joylessness. True, the child nature will not wholly be crushed out, and in the most squalid of so-called "homes," in the saddest streets, it will play in some-wise, though it is literally true that not a few have their playfulness smothered within them. But what play ! How dull and dreary, how coarse and low ; an imitation, as the great Greek said of many of the stage plays of children of a larger growth, " of the evil rather than of the good that is in them " ; a veritable mis-education in play, as all who are familiar with the street-games of our poor quarters PURIFICATION THROUGH PLAY. too sadly know ; copying the vile words and brutal manners which are the fashion of these sections, feeding the prurient fancies which Mr. Ruskin says are the mental putrescence gendered of physical filth in the overcrowding together of human beings ; the play, not as of the children of the Father in Heaven, in the Father's House, but as of the abducted little ones of the Heavenly Father, reared in the purlieus of their false father the Devil. So that there is much food for thought in the remark contained in a report of a certain children's asylum in London, to the effect that the first thing which the matron found it necessary to do with many of the waifs brought into the home was to teach them to play. If only the little ones, in their most susceptive years, are gathered in from harmful surroundings, are shielded from scorching heats and chilling winds, are warded from the wild beasts that lurk around the valleys where the tender lambs lie, though in pastures dry and by turbid waters ; if only fenced in thus from the hearing of harsh, foul words, and from the seeing of brutalizing and polluting actions, they are left for the best hours of each day to disport themselves in innocent and uncontaminating happiness amid these " pretty plays," it must be an inestimable gain for humanity. For thus, in its native surroundings, the better nature of each child has a chance to grow, and the angel is beforehand with the beast, when, not for an hour on Sundays, but always, " their angels do behold the face of their Father in Heaven." The Lord God made a garden, and there he placed the man so the sacred story runs, deep-weighted with its parable of life. A garden for the soul, bright and warm in soft, rich happiness, sunning the young life with " the vital feelings of delight " this is the ideal state, or, as we now phrase it, the normal environment for child-growth. As much of the condi- 228 PHYSICAL CULTURE THROUGH PLA Y. tions of such a child-garden as can be secured in " this naughty world," is the first desideratum for that education which looks on towards the second Adam, the perfect manhood, the meas- ure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. To open such child-gardens, and to place therein loving, sympathetic women, to mother their plays and keep them sweet and clean and gentle, this were to do for the growth of the Christ Child a work worthy of the Christian churches. But this is far from all the good of the child-garden. It is indeed only its outer and superficial aspect, in which, even be- fore its most carping critics, who know not what they say and so are forgiven, Wisdom is justified of her children. Under- neath these " pretty plays " there is a masterly guidance of the play-instinct, in the direction of the wisest and noblest culture. They are faithful reproductions of Mother Nature's schooling in play, and every part of the carefully elaborated system has a direct educative value in one of the three lines in which, as already indicated, our State system seems most defective ; all three of which, in differing degrees, bear upon that culture of character with which the Church has need to busy herself, in disciplining men into the perfect manhood of Christ. V. The kindergarten-plays form a beautiful system of calisthen- ics, adapted for tender years and filled out with the buoyancy of pure sportiveness. The marching, the light gymnastic ex- ercises, the imitative games, with the vocal music accompany- ing them, occupy a considerable portion of the daily session in an admirable physical culture. If ordinary attention is paid to ventilation, and the room be, as it ought to be, a sunny room, guarded against sewer gas and other " modern conven- HEALTH AND CHARACTER. 22Q iences," this physical culture ought to have a most positive and beneficent influence on the health of the children. If a good substantial dinner is provided for them, one " square meal " a day added to the pure air and judicious exercise ought to lay well the foundation, not alone of material, but of moral success in life. Health is the basis of character as of fortune. There is a physiology of morality. Some of the grossest vices are largely fed from an impure, diseased and enfeebled physique. Drunkenness, especially among the poor, is to a large extent the craving for stimulation that grows out of their ill-fed, ill- housed, ill-clothed, over-worked, unsunned, sewer-poisoned condition. Lust is intensified and inflamed by the tainted blood and the over-taxed nervous system. Purity of mind grows naturally out of purity of body. Physiologists under- stand these facts far better than ethicists. Then, too, lesser vices are, in their measure, equally grounded in abnormal physical conditions. Faults of temper, irritability, sullenness and anger are intimately connected with low health, the under vitalized state which characterizes the city poor. Perfection of character implies a happy physical organiza- tion, or that masterfulness of soul which is the rarest of gifts. Moderate appetites, a serene disposition, generous feelings, with their fellow excellences, may be the victory of the excep- tional saints ; but they may also be the natural endowment of the healthy common people. A harmonious body will subli- mate the finer qualities of the soul. In man, as in the animals, when we see such physical organizations we look to find such moral natures. Axiomatic as this is, it none the less needs to be reiterated in the ears of moral and religious teachers. To claim this is to raise no question concerning the relative pri- ority, in genesis or in importance, of body or of mind. Even if the body be, as I certainly hold, the material envelope 230 INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION BEGUN. drawn around the spirit, moulded and fashioned by the quality of the soul, and the prime concern be therefore with the vital energy and purity of the spirit, still, according to the mate- rials supplied in food and air will the body thus organized be determined, and its reflex influence tell imperiously on the inner being. In striving to grow healthful souls, we must, to this very end, grow healthful bodies. While feeding assidu- ously the forces of conscience and affection and will, we must largely feed them indirectly, by filling the physical reservoirs on which these virtues must draw with sweet, clean, pure, full tides of life. The Church must learn a lesson from its Master, and be at once Good Physician and Merciful Savior ; restoring health as well as remitting sin. And the beginning of this dual work seems to me to lie in some such system of infantile physical nurture, carried on under the name and in the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. Our churches are all more or less busied with feeding the hungry, and otherwise caring for the bodies of the poor. Will it not tell more on the work of saving men out of sin to put the money spent in alms to adults largely misapplied and nearly always harmful to the moral fibre into a culture of health for the children ? VI. The kindergarten-plays form a most wise system for cultur- ing the powers and dispositions which lay the foundation for successful industrial skill ; and this also bears directly upon the supreme end of the Church's work the turning out of good men and women. The fundamental position of the kindergarten in a system of industrial education is recognized in Germany, and must soon be perceived here. The natural instinct of childhood to busy BEARING ON LABOR PROBLEM. 231 itself with doing something, its spontaneous impulse to be making something, is in the kindergarten discerned as the striving of that creative power which is mediately in man as the child of God. It is utilized for the purposes of education. Pricking forms of geometrical figures and of familiar objects on paper, weaving wooden strips into varied designs, folding paper into pretty toys and ornaments, plaiting variegated strips of paper into ingenious and attractive shapes, modelling in clay these, with other kindred exercises, " pretty plays " as they all seem, constitute a most real education by and for work. By means of these occupations the eye is trained to quickness of perception and accuracy of observation, the hand to deft- ness of touch and skill of workmanship, such as a child may win, the sense of the beautiful is roused and cultivated, the fancy is fed and the imagination is inspired, the judgment is exercised and strengthened, originality is stimulated, by frequently leav- ing the children to fashion their own designs, while habits of industry are inwrought upon the most plastic period of life, and the child is accustomed to find his interest and delight in work, and to feel its dignity and nobleness. How directly all this bears upon the labor problem, the vexed question of phil- anthropy, is patent to all thoughtful persons. Every market- place is crowded with hungry hosts, bitterly crying " no man hath hired us," utterly unconscious that no man can hire them save as a charity. For skilled workmen and work-women there is always room in every line. Employers are importing trained workers in most industries, while all around lies this vast mass of people who never were taught to find the pride and pleasure of life in doing thoroughly their bit of daily work. Simply as a question of the prevention of suffering, the im- mediate step to be taken by those who would wisely help their poorer brothers is the provision of schools for technical train- 232 BEARING ON VICE AND CRIME. ing in the handicrafts, such as exist, notably, in Paris and in parts of Germany. And, as the place to begin is at the begin- ning, any attempt to construct such a system of industrial edu- cation should start with the training of early childhood, in the powers, the habits and the love of work, as in the kindergar- ten. Miss Peabody's open letter to Mrs. Elizabeth Thompson, arguing for the kindergarten as a potent factor in the solution of the labor problem, was thoroughly wise. In so far as edu- cation solves the problem, the kindergarten is the first word of the answer yet spelled out. But the labor problem is not only the dark puzzle of want, it is, in large measure also, the darker puzzle of wickedness. Want leads to very much of the wickedness with which our courts deal. The prevention of suffering will be found to be the prevention of a great deal of sinning. How much of the vice of our great cities grows directly out of poverty, and the lot that poverty finds for itself ! Drunkenness among the poor is fed, not only from the physical conditions above referred to, but from the craving for social cheer that is left unsupplied in the round of joyless work by day, and dull, depressing recrea- tion in the evening. Who, that knows any thing of the most pitiable class which our communities show, does not know whence and how their ranks are largely recruited ? To eke out the insufficient wages of unskilled work, there is one re- source for working girls. To realize the daydream of the fine lady there is the whispered temptation of the spirit of evil. If the Church would preserve the virtue so earnestly inculcated upon its Sunday-school children, it must not rest with inspiring the right spirit it must imp'art the power to fashion the right conditions for virtuous life. It must not only.teach the chil- dren to pray " Lead us not into temptation " it must train them so as to lead them out of temptation. POSITIVE INFLUENCES ON CHARACTER. 233 Nor is it only a negative good thus won for character in lay- ing the foundations of industrial education. The more manly a boy is made, the stronger he becomes for all good aims, the larger is the store of reserved forces on which he can draw, if he really seeks to win a noble character. The more of " faculty," as our New England mothers called efficiency, that a girl is en- dowed with, the robuster is her strengthfulness of soul ; every added power garrisoning her spirit with a larger force for the resistance of evil. The mastery of the body and the culture of mental and moral qualities won in the process of developing a skilled worker, finding delight and pride in doing the daily work well, help mightily towards the supreme end of life. Pa- tience, perseverance, strength of will, sound judgment, the habit of going through with a thing these all tell on the great job which the soul takes in hand. A number of years since, Cardinal Wiseman's lecture on The Artist and the Artisan called the attention of the public to the necessity, not only on economic but on ethical grounds, of investing labor with dig- nity and of clothing it with delight ; of filling out the common tasks of the artisan with the spirit of the artist, and thus trans- figuring manual labor into a spiritual education. Mr. Ruskin has been for years preaching sternly this new gospel. He finds in it a clue to the discontent and consequent demoralization of the mass of our unintelligent and thus uninterested labor, which turns from its ordained springs of daily joy, finding them empty, to drink of the turbid streams which flow too near by every man. Again the ancient parable speaks unto us. In the garden the Lord God placed the man, to dress it and to keep it. The divine education of man is through some true work given him to do. While he does that heartily, finding his delight in it, all goes well. Sin enters when, discontented with the fruit that 234 MORAL CULTURE OF KINDERGARTEN. springs up beneath his toil, he covets that which grows without his effort. The use of the world as abusing it, in drunkenness and lust and every prostitution of natural appetite, is found chiefly in the classes whose joy is not in their work ; either as having no work to do, or as despising that which is slavishly done. One of the finest and healthiest creations of George Eliot was Adam Bede, the carpenter whose work-bench was his les- son-book, whose daily tasks formed his culture of character, and whose common labor of the saw and chisel fashioned thus a noble manhood. Is not this the inner meaning of the fact that the world's Saviour came not as the princely heir of the throne of the Sakya-Munis, in the splendid palace of the royal city of Kapilavastu, but as the carpenter's son in the cottage of Nazareth ? So that, again, we see the need that the churches should make a child-garden, and place the infant Adams therein, to dress it and to keep it. VII. And thus we come at last to the crux of the case. The kindergarten is a system of child occupation, a curriculum of play, looking straight on to the supreme end of all culture character ; a child-garden whose fruitage is in the spirit-flow- ering induced therein, beautiful with the warm, rich colors of morality, fragrant with the aromatic incense of religion. It is essentially a soul-school, reproducing on a smaller scale God's plans of education as drawn large in human society. The little ones just out of" their mother's arms are gathered into a miniature society, with the proper occupations for such tenders years, but with the same drawing out of affection, the same awakening of kindly feeling, the same exercise of con- LEARNING LAWS OF LIFE. 235 science in ethical discriminations, the same development of will, the same formation of good habits, the same calling away from self into others, into the large life of the community, which, in so far as civilization presents a true society, consti- tutes the education of morality in " Man writ large." Morality is essentially, as Maurice called it in his Cambridge lectures, "Social Morality." An order is established round about the little ones, environing them with its ubiquitous presence, constraining their daily habits, impressing itself upon their nature and moulding them while plastic into orderliness. Certain laws are at once recognized. They are expected to be punctual to the hour of opening and regular in coming day by day, to come with washed hands and faces and brushed hair, and to be obedient generally to the kin- dergartner. A sense of law thus arises within their minds. It steals upon them through the apparent desultoriness of the occupations, and envelops their imaginations in that mystery of order wherein, either in nature or in man, is the world-wide, world-old beginning of religion ; while moulding their emo- tions and impulses into the habitudes of law wherein is the universal beginning of morality. All of the special habitu-des thus induced tell directly and weightily upon the formation of character ; so much so that it is unnecessary to emphasize the fact, except perhaps in the case of the habit of cleanliness and the care of the person in general. "Cleanliness is next to godliness," ran the old saw, with a wisdom beyond the thought of most of those who glibly quote it in their missions of charity to the homes (?) of poverty ; wherein to bring any true cleanliness needs nothing less than a new education. Cleanliness is essential to health, the lack of which, as already hinted, has so much to do with the tempta- tions of the poor. It is equally essential to that self-respect 236 SCHOOL OF MANNERS. wherein ambition and enterprise root, and out of which is fed that sense of honor which so mightily supports conscience in the cultured classes. It is also, under the all-pervading law of correspondences which Swedenborg has done most to open, inseparably inter-linked with purity, the cleanliness of the soul. Physiology and psychology run into each other indistinguish- ably, in a being at once body and spirit ; so that the state of the soul is expressed in the condition of the body, and is in turn largely determined by it. To care for the purity and decency of the temple used to be priestly service. To care for the temple of the Holy Ghost should still be viewed not only as the task of the sanitarian sexton but as the charge of the spiritual priesthood ; not a policing of the building but a re- ligious service in the building, an instruction in purity, a worship of the Lord and Giver of Life. VIII. In this miniature society there is a school of manners. One smiles in reading the account of the back-woo4s log school- house where the gawky lad Abraham Lincoln was taught man- ners. But indeed is not this instruction bound up with any training of character ? The noblest schools of manhood have always laid great stress upon manners ; whether it has been the Spartan discipline of youth in respect for their elders, as the expression of that reverence which they felt to be the bond of society ; or the training of noble lads in the days of chivalry to all high-bred courtesy and gentle-manliness, as the soul of the true knight whose motto" should be noblesse oblige. Goethe, in his dream of the ideal education, in " Wilhelm Meister," made the training of youth in symbolic manners a conspicuous feature. So great a legislator as Moses was not above giving IMPORTANCE OF MANNERS. orders concerning the manners of the people, in his all-em- bracing scheme of state education : " Ye shall not walk in the manners of the nations whom I cast out from before you." So scientific a critic as Herbert Spencer finds in manners the out- come of a people's social state, /. wn in all men's good, And all men work in noble brotherhood. Much that is supposed to be essential to Socialism is really accidental, the coloring of circumstance. Socialism is ordinarily identified with State organization and direction of the co-operative industry and trade ; but this is only the idio- syncrasy of the French and German mind, educated under a bureaucrasy, accustomed to look to it for the initiative in all matters, and naturally, therefore, modelling a socialistic State. English Trades-Unionism only asks the State to keep its hands SOCIALISM. 325 off, and relies wholly on the self-helpfulness of individual action for the reorganization of industry. Russian Socialism makes the local autonomic Commune, the Mir, the centre and spring of society. Its ideal is " the federation of free unions of workingmen." * If American Socialism looks for State intervention, it is only because it is, as a theorem, an exotic among us. German and French authors form its Bible, Ger- man and French lecturers and pamphleteers carry on its evangel, German and French quarters furnish its disciples. Socialism is frequently identified with Communism, as popu- larly understood the Communism which, as in our American local societies, holds all real property in common, divides the yield of labor equally among its members, irrespective of rela- tive skill and service, and leaves scarcely any place for personal possessions. A few Socialists, out of Russia, are perhaps such thorough-going Communists. There are, however, no stronger opponents of literal Communism than the leading Socialists. They are wise enough to discern that this obliteration of indi- vidualism would be fatal to progress ; and their systems would leave large play for this force, and would secure its action by the retention of private property, real and personal. The ex- treme measure seriously proposed by Socialism, the national- izing of land, would allow life-leases to individuals, covering such acreage as could be used, and would secure the value of improvements made thereon. It would only aim to insure the common interests of the people at large from the danger of monopoly. The socialist dream of huge industrial and trade organizations, which shall regulate all production and exchange, under the supervision perhaps of the State, is simply an exten- sion of the principle of co-operation, in no wise interfering with the present system of property. * Contemporary Review, August, 1881. 326 RUSSIAN SOCIALISM. Nevertheless, of the leaders of this " ism," as of how many others, the sage's word holds true : " They builded wiser than they knew." Meaning only co-operation, the Socialists swell the current that sets towards Communism, in the large sense in which I use the term. No one can attentively study these various systems without perceiving that, call them by what name we will, they are in reality communistic ; that their tendency is to narrow the area of private property and enlarge the en- sphering body of common property ; that their ideal is a real commonwealth, from which rises the inspiration kindling the enthusiasm of their followers. Back of all European Socialism, pressing it on, looms up Russian Socialism. This believes itself destined to inspire and guide the whole European movement. " There are only two real questions," said Herzen, " the social question and the Russian question ; and these two are one. . . . Socialism will unite the two factions, the European revolutionary with the Panslavonian." * In the same article, Herzen says : The deserts of the Wolga and the Oural have been, from all time, the bivouac of peoples in migration ; their waiting-rooms and places of meet- ing ; the laboratory of nations, where in silence destiny has prepared those swarms of savages, to let them loose upon the dying peoples, upon civiliza- tion in consumption, in order to make an end of them. . . . The Russian question is the new apparition of the barbarians, scenting the death agony, screaming their memento mori in the ears of the Old World, and ready to put it out of the way if it will not die of its own accord. For this regenerating task, Slavic philosophy thinks the Slavic force has been held back so long in the history of Europe. * " Russia and the Old World." Herzen. Quoted in " A Russian Social Panslavist Programme, "-C. Tondini de Quarenghi, Contemporary Review, August, 1881. THE ISSUE OF SOCIALISM. These peoples are to inundate Europe with their ideas, to build on the decadent social system of the old world their own new world. The fundamental Russian institution is the Mir the collective proprietorship of the soil and its equal and periodic apportionment among the members of the community.* On this basis, the Russian Genius is seeking to rear the superstruc- ture of her society. The people are expecting now an ukase to divide among them the whole Russian soil, still largely held by the aristocracy. " Land and Liberty " is the significant watchword of the revolution. Workingmen in distant cities keep their membership in the native commune, model their industrial organizations upon the Mir, and aspire to " a con- federation of autonomous communes." f Russian influence, according to a remarkable article in the Contemporary Review for August, 1881, is gradually dominating European Socialism. This is what might be expected of the youngest, freshest, largest race of Europe. And Russia is Communism. " Is there," asked Herzen, " in the nineteenth century any other serious question besides that of Communism and the partition of the land ? " \ No wonder that Cavour said, as reported of him, that the Russian Commune will create more dangers to Western Europe than any army. If out of the political revolution, precipitated by the attack of the forces of discontent in the eighteenth century upon the divine right of kings to govern wrong, there issued the govern- ment of the people, by the people and for the people, they may not be far wrong who predict that out of the social revo- lution, to be precipitated by the attack of the forces of discon- * " Russia," D. Mackenzie Wallace, ch. viii. \ " Russia," D. Mackenzie Wallace, chs. viii. and ix. \ Contemporary Review, August, 1881. 328 THIS MOVEMENT IS PROGRESS. tent in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries on the natural right of the market to regulate wrong, there will issue the pro- prietorship of the people, by the people and for the people the social commonwealth after the political republic. XL Such a set of this reactionary current in society will convince most men that, whatsoever its. volume and force, it is not a returning sweep in the cycling ascent of humanity, but a direct backward movement along the straight line of progress, an ebb-tide of the waters of civilization. The fact that the pat- tern of this '* ism " is framed in the childhood of the world, and that the child races are its fashioners, will confirm their belief that it is a return to childishness ; forgetful of that vision of the good time coming for the weary peoples of the earth whereinto, as the prophet saw, " a little child shall lead them." The leading economists of the most orthodox English school give abundant testimony to the coincidence of this socialistic movement with the lines of true progress. Herbert Spencer devotes a chapter in the " Data of Ethics " to unfolding the place of this movement in the evolution of society. John Stuart Mill furnishes all the premises socialism needs from which to draw its conclusions, and even pressed on himself to most of these conclusions. His death left a fragmentary essay, since published, which ranks him clearly with the Socialists of the Chair.* The historic method which we have followed gives us, how- ever, that bird's-eye view which best indicates the relations of this new " ism." As we have already seen, the retrospect of " Chapters on Socialism." THE FAMILY A COMMUNISM. 329 history leads us to expect a natural return toward Communism when the individualistic system has run in extremis. The signs of the present indicate this position, and identify the social movement with such a recoil. This of itself should assure us that we are witnessing nature's corrective action. ' It may dispose us to the wise attitude of Gamaliel toward a new and prejudiced movement if, from this backward look along the natural evolution of society, we turn our eyes for- ward, and, following the tendencies legitimately working in society, can see them developing in this direction from within, by purely natural processes. XII. In each of the three great institutes of society there lies bedded a core of Communism, whose development, under quickening conditions, we are now experiencing. The family is at its core a Communism. This original and natural association of mankind gives free play to the individu- ality, and Evolves in its tender culture the spiritual personality ; but to the earliest point whither we can trace it, and through all its changing forms, it has been, as it still remains, a realized Communism. It has one common store, draws from one com- mon purse, partakes of one common table, dwells in one com- mon home. Personal possessions there may be for each member of the household and special purses for some, but all private property is ensphered within a common property How could there be the life in common which makes the family so divine an institution, unless this soul of the home, this spiritual communion, had its enclothing body, this material Communism ? The social crystallization which forms upon the family must be in some form a Communism. 330 THE CHURCH A COMMUNISM. XIII. The Church is, at its core, a Communism. As we are rightly never allowed to forget, in its zeal for the salvation of souls, the Church is primarily the organization for the devel- opment of the divine individuality, wherein lies at once the seed of personal life in the heavens and the regenerative force of social life upon the earth.* It certainly opens abundant scope for the energies and supplies abundant motive power to the interests of the individual. Indeed, its failures seem to me to grow chiefly out of its disproportionate cultivation of the individuality. For the Church is also, as we are perhaps not sufficiently reminded, the organization for the evolution of the sacred social order, the kingdom of heaven slowly coming forth upon the earth, the sphere for the true inter-relation of the true individualities. The Church holds at once the ideals of individuality and of association. It is a republic which has of necessity its res publics ; and these public things constitute it a commonwealth, a communion of spirit which, without interfering with private possessions, tends to sublimate them into a free Communism. The historic foundations of the Christian Church were laid * Josiah Quincy says, in one of the reports of the Boston Co-operative Store, that " co-operation requires good men." Noyes, in his " History of American Socialisms," quotes the " Old Mortality" of American Socialism, A. J. Macdonald, who gave up years to visiting the sites of our various social experiments and to gathering up their records, in curious confirmation of Mr. Quincy 's dictum. "Looking back now over the entire course of this history, we discover a remarkable similarity in the symptoms that man- ifested themselves in the transitory Communities, and almost entire unan- imity in the witnesses who testify as to the causes of their failure. General Depravity, all say, is the villain of the whole story." He confesses pathet- ically that, in his previous hopes of Socialism, he " had imagined mankind better than they are." " Review and Results," ch. xlvii. HEBREW SOCIALISM. 331 in the Hebrew polity, which, whether in an original plan by Moses or in subsequent designs overlaying his rough draft, whether actually operative at any period or only a paper con- stitution, was a genuine Communism.* This constitution nationalized the land of Canaan ; vested the title in the head of the State, Jehovah ; apportioned it among the families of the tribes ; limited the term of all transfers between the people ; vacated all real-estate bargains at the end of every fifty years, restoring then to each family its inalienable right to its share of the soil ; and thus prevented the accumulation of great estates and any possible monopoly of the first resources of life, f It passed all debtors through an act of bankruptcy every seven years, and guarded thus against the enslaving action of debt, which has repeated itself so commonly in history. J It even pronounced all interest usury, and thus radically estopped the manifold oppressions of unscrupulous capital that every society has experienced. This polity thus sub- soiled Israel with a real Communism. It is certainly curious that the portion of the Church which professes to regard the Old Testament as divinely dictated and oracularly authorita- tive should so successfully dodge this disagreeable fact. The children of this world find it hard sometimes to prove wiser than the children of light. The plan of Jesus, in so far as seeing clearly we may speak positively, followed this historic groundwork. If we accept Luke's Gospel as a trustworthy guide, we cannot miss the broadly drawn idiosyncrasy of the Nazarene ; and if we dis- * Leviticus xxv., 23. ) Leviticus xxv., 13-17; xxvii., 23-28. \ Deuteronomy xv. , 1-5. Exodus xxii., 25 ; Leviticus xxv., 36, 37 ; Deuteronomy xxiii., 19, 20 ; Nehemiah v., 7, 10, 12 ; Psalm xv., 5 ; Proverbs xxviii., 8 ; Jeremiah xv., 10 ; Ezekiel xviii., 13 ; xxii., 12. 33 2 SOCIALISM OF JESUS. credit Luke, and see in this delineation the tracings of Essenic tradition and the colorings of socialistic tendency-writing, yet the features of the Christ therein sketched appear in the por- traiture of the other gospelers, though in milder light, and we need not hesitate to trust the picture outlined. Jesus was a pronounced Communist not indeed such as we conjure up when the irreverent ban mot of Camille Des- moulins echoes in our ears,* but rather such as rises before us in the lofty confession of that crotchety, grand soul, John Ruskin : For indeed I am myself a Communist of the old school, reddest also of the red. . . . We Communists of the old school think that our property belongs to everybody and everybody's property to us.f Jesus appears to have always lived in a Communism. For thirty years, he was a member of the Family Commune in the Nazarite carpenter's home. During the three years of his pub- lic life, he was the centre of the little brotherhood of thirteen which he himself formed, and which seems to have had one purse in common, from which they drew for the common needs. \ The members of that Communism literally gave up all their possessions to follow the Master. The constant attitude of Jesus toward the society of his day buttressed this example. He evidently was at one with the Hebrew prophets in their radical judgment on the competitive civilization of Israel. || It was repulsive to him, as fostering the prudential virtues which we so highly esteem and he so lightly * " Le bon Sans-culotte, Jesus." \ " Fors Clavigera," John Ruskin, Part ii., ch. vii. |Johnxii., 6 ; per contra Matthew xvii., 27. Matthew iv., 19, 20 ; ix., 9. | Matthew xi., 1-6 ; xix., 24 ;_Tcxii., 1-14; Luke vi., 20 et seq.; xvi., 19 -25 ; John xv., 19 ; xvii., 14-16. SOCIALISM OF JESUS. 333 valued, and as cultivating the material, worldly, selfish instincts in which he found the secret of human ill.* His language to the rich was radical. " How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God." f The counsel of perfection he offered the rich young ruler was, " Go, sell that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come follow me." \ He warned men against the love of money, the motor of our civilization, and saw in Mammon, the gain-god, the social Satan whose service is irreconcilable with the service of God. He opened his ministry, according to Luke, by reading in the synagogue of his native village this passage from Isaiah : " The spirit of the Lord is upon me, be cause he hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor, ... to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord " | ; accord- ing to Mark, "preaching the glad tidings of the kingdom of God," 1" the social regeneration. As plainly as words and deeds could speak, Jesus regarded our competitive civilization not merely as falling short of the divine ideals of social life, but as running counter to them ; and he sharply turned the faces of those who sought the kingdom of the Good One and his right- eousness away from the kingdom of the Evil One and his un- righteousness. He was so understood by his hearers, and was derided for his Quixotic teaching.** The ethics of Jesus found no nidus in our social system ; his religion asphyxiated in its atmosphere. Amid the evils growing out of a society based on private property and subordinating- public things to personal * Matthew vi., 19, 20, 24-32 ; xii., 22 ; Mark iv., 19 ; Luke viii., 14 ; xii., 13-34 ; xvi., 13-15. f Mark x., 23. \ Matthew xix., 21 ; Mark x., 21 et seq., 29, 30 ; Luke xviii., 22, 23, 28. j Matthew vi., 24. | Luke iv. , 18. , 14. ** Luke xvi., 14. 334 PENTECOSTAL COMMUNISM. things, common interests to individual interests, he held out, as the hope of man, a true Communism. But this Communism of Jesus was no coarse, hard, literal system, laid down as the order of society before the world was ready for it, decreed arbitrarily by statute and to be enforced rigidly by ecclesiastical authority. It was left for the enact- ment of " the law-making power within," when inspired from himself. It was, as Renan finely says, " the delicate commun- ism of a flock of God's children." * The elder brother lived it, and thus breathed its spirit within the other children. When his spirit breathed forth again from their souls, his ideal shaped itself in their aspirations, the natural response to that inspiration. The full-flooding sense of a life in common, awakened in these happy children of the heavenly Father, sub- merged the highest, driest levels of selfishness, overflowed the coast-lines of private property, obliterated all boundaries of meum and tuum, and spreading over the nascent Church re- solved the communion of the disciples into the Communism whose record on the shores of time still marks the high-water reach of the Christian spirit. " And all that believed were to- gether, and had all things common ; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all, according as any man had need."f Beautiful, spontaneous, momentary crystallization of the forces of Christian Socialism into the figure of the ideal order. Too delicate to endure, like all premature fruit, it would have decayed, as it soon showed signs of doing, into social putrescence, if it had not been swept away in the over- throw of Jerusalem and its little Christian community. Too ethereal to bear the coming down from " the thin air of life's supremest heights," that vision has lived on in the memory of * " Life of Jesus," Ernest Renan, ch. xi. j-Actsii., 44, 45- PRIMITIVE CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM. 335 the Church, as the transfiguration of society unto which in every age of renewed inspiration the s'ocial aspiration should rise. From that time on, each new movement of spiritual life has revived this dream of the Mount, and stirred some effort at its realization. When we rightly restore the early Church, we shall probably find a great number of communistic socie- ties, Christian Essenism in one form and another. Through the later periods of church history, each wave of impulse tow- ard personal holiness was followed by a Avave of impulse tow- ard social justice, in the brotherhoods and sisterhoods, the mendicant orders and communistic sects, of the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages.* The Reformation, with its mighty spiritual quickening, spawned on Europe a swarm of inchoate socialisms, fanatical, grotesque, impossible ; witnessing never- theless to the yearnings of the new life, f German pietism, probably the simplest, sweetest type of spiritual life produced by modern Christianity, has tended toward Socialism ; and our American communistic societies have been chiefly the work of these literal disciples of the Nazarene. J Our own country has curiously suggested the relation between individual inspiration and social aspiration in religion. There has been a rhythmical alternation between these two movements. Each wave of re- vivalism has been followed by a wave of Socialism. After Net- tleton, in 1817, came Robert Owen, in 1824 ; after Finney, in 1831-33, came the Fourierite enthusiasm, in 1842-43 ; after the great awakening of 1857, the social movement which might have followed was withheld by the civil war ; after the practi- cal Moody has come the practical co-operative efforts now be- * The Regular Orders and the irregular associations of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, Fratricelli, Pauvres de Lyons, etc. f Anabaptists, Gospel Poor, etc. % " Communistic Societies of the United States," Charles Nordhoff, p. 387. 336 SPIRITUAL INSPIRA TION AND SOCIAL ASPIRA TION. ing widely made.* First the regeneration of the soul, then the regeneration of society. No dislike we may feel for the methods of either of these movements should blind us to their inter-relation and their combined trend. Wherever the local churches are alive to-day, they are feel- ing the urgency of the social problem, and are, even though unconsciously, seeking its solution in that unwritten Com- munism which holds every gift and power as a trust for the common service, and all wealth a stewardship for the common needs of the brotherhood. In the house of the Christian family stands the table of the All-Father, where the children gather for the common meal of the community. Abiding sign of society's salvation from slavery and strife and every sin of selfishness, in the holy communion which must ulti- mately build round itself a righteous Communism ! The deepening life of the Church and its growing pressure against the unsympathetic environment of our competitive civilization must produce tenser yearnings of the Christian conscience to realize its ideals of the common life in some " ism " of common property. Following upon other revivals, such as we all believe in the upflowings within the soul of the Eternal Spirit ensphering us all, in whom we live and move and have our being there will come other efforts after a Christian brotherhood ; local churches perhaps essaying some form of voluntary Communism ; which will fail only to be tried again, till gradually that spring blossom of the Pentecost opens into the full-blown fruit of summer, and, the spirit filling all men, it shall come to pass that the multitude of them that believe shall be of one heart and soul, and not one of them shall say that aught of the things which he possesses is his own, but they will have all things common. * " History of American Socialisms," Noyes, p. 25. THE STATE A COMMONWEALTH. 337 Thus will that notable judgment of a well-known economist fulfil itself, as the Christian ideal slowly possesses humanity : " If Christianity were taught and understood conformably to the spirit of its Founder, the existing social organization could not last a day." * Thus, too, will verify itself the great word of Mazzini to the misguided men of Paris, seeking a human brotherhood without any uplook to a divine fatherhood, and so finding only the fury of 1792 and the fires of 1871 : " Every political ques- tion in this age is rapidly becoming a social question, and every social question a religious question." f XIV. The State, the social organism crowning itself with a govern- ing head, as the body drawn around the soul of society, might be expected to show a structure corresponding to the form unconsciously stamped in the Family, to the ideal cher- ished in the Church. And, if we lay bare the anatomy of society, we shall find that its nervous system is a fine-fibred Communism, which, as the body increasingly becomes the ex- pression of the soul, is spiritualizing the more material vascular system and working a 'slow transfiguration. An organism im- plies separate members and functions co-ordinated into a com- mon life. It cannot be an organism without having individual organs ; but it is an organism, inasmuch as these are bound together in a corporate oneness which has all things common. The true growth of any organism, of the social organism, is to be found in the ascendency of this organic life in common over the functional life in separateness ; in the equalizing of * " Primitive Property," Laveleye, Intro., p. xxxi. f " Letters to the Paris Commune," Joseph Mazzini, 1871. 33$ ECONOMIC LAWS WORKING FOR A COMMONWEALTH. the circulation through every member of the body, in the carrying on of that secretion from the blood which each organ makes for its own upbuilding so as that its private enrichment shall but subserve the commonwealth, and all the parts shall say, 4< We are members one of another." The natural movement of society then should show to-day a twofold action the repression of excessive individualism and the stimulation of defective association, with a consequent narrowing of the area of common property ; which is the double tendency we see working under purely economic laws. Economists are the authority for declaring that prices, profits and interest are slowly sinking towards a minimum.* The shrinkage of prices and profits means that the natural limits of individual fortunes are gradually narrowing. Co- lossal fortunes, it is true, are still to be accumulated, and show no signs of speedily disappearing from the earth. f But colos- sal fortunes are always of doubtful legitimacy, if not of open illegitimacy, and are therefore unnatural. They are the run- ning to seed of the system of private property, a premonition of decay, a call for the scythe. They have perhaps never been so vast as now since the Roman Empire, and therein is their interpretation. They introduced the decline and fall of Rome. They drained off the blood of the Empire, and exhausted its * "Principles of Political Economy," J. S. Mill, book iv., ch. ii., iii., and iv. " Manual of Political Economy," H. Fawcett, ch. xiii. Mr. Carey (" Manual of Social Science," ch. xxxv.)adds rent also, rela- tively though not absolutely. f In 1830, it is supposed that there was but one man in New York worth $1,000,000. Now there are estimated to be five hundred. (New York Times.} Five (5) per cent, of the city owns ninety-five (95) per cent, of its total wealth. PRIVATE PROPERTY NARROWING. 339 corporate life in feeding their cancerous growth.* We might fear that modern society would succumb to this impoverishing wealth, if we did not feel that its very dangerousness was pro- ducing a reaction which holds out the hope of ridding the sys- tem of these fungoid growths. One monster millionnaire does more to dispose the average man to regard favorably that most radical of measures for the limitation of private fortunes, a graduated income-tax, than the most fiery arguments of So- cialists. We are to-day in the meeting of the waters. The ebb-tide is still running strongly out, while the flood-tide is setting in beneath the surface. The millionnaire will some day be an economic fossil, a social plesiosaur ; though that day will not be to-morrow. The shrinkage of interest a world-wide phenomenon means that nature's forces are preparing for the abolition of the non-productive classes who now live in luxury. When there is no increase of money except as it is married to work, then most literally will the law be obeyed " If any man will not work, neither shall he eat." And when all work, there will be more bread eaten and less cake. As the needs of society make burdensome a class living apart from legitimate labor, * Prof. Seeley says that "the Empire perished for want of men." " Roman Imperialism, and Other Lectures and Essays," p. 54. He does not, however, emphasize one of the chief causes of this diminution of population. " Latifundia perdidere Italiam," wrote Pliny. Quoted in " Primitive Property," p. 30. How the growth of great estates led to the paucity of population, La- veleye hints, in saying : " A disinherited prole taire replaces the class of small citizen proprietors who were the very marrow of the republic." " Primi- tive Property, " p. 30. So that there was meaning in the ancient Roman saying, " that he was not to be counted a good citizen, but rather a danger- ous man to the State, who could not content himself with six acres of land." 34 PUBLIC PROPERTY WIDENING. above the comparatively modest affluence which such toil alone can win, the conditious of society are making it impossible.* But, of course, by work I mean not material manufacture merely. He is a true workman and a mighty producer whose ^ apology is : One harvest from thy field Homeward brought the oxen strong : A second crop thine acres yield, Which I gather in a song. At the same time that the maximum limits of private prop- erty are narrowing, the area of participants in private property is widening, and the ratio of general participation increasing. Laborers were formerly incapable of holding property, being properties themselves. They are now coming to be small pro- prietors. The American artisan can own his home, the French peasant his cottage and wee bit of a farm. Even the negro has his mule and ten acres. With advancing intelligence, labor demands advancing remuneration. This is denied as yet in many lands by the false conditions of society, which other forces are moving steadily to right. Wages tend upon the whole upward, toward the possible maximum. Labor absorbs thus an increasing proportion of profits, as it wins freedom and learns association, and spreads it over an ever-widening area, in a general levelling up. f As Mr. Carey formulated the two tendencies, profits decrease relatively while increasing absolutely, and wages increase both relatively and absolutely. J Equality is the goal toward which economic forces are * Cf. Mill, vol. ii., p. 341. f " Social Science and National Economy," R. E. Thompson, p. 138, et seq. \ " Manual of Political Economy," H. C. Carey, ch. xxxiv. GROWTH OF ASSOCIATION. 341 working, as liberty was the goal toward which political forces have been working, and fraternity is the crown and conciliation of both.* Economic laws are at the same time working naturally toward a widening of the area and an intensifying of the action of association in every sphere of the business world. Alike in trade, in manufactures and in agriculture this current is perceptible. Its volume and momentum increase yearly. Capital is rapidly passing out of the stage of individual action into a period of associative action. It is everywhere combin- ing and thus multiplying its power. We are in the age of the joint-stock company. Private property, for its own preserva- tion and increase, is developing into associative property. Com- modities can be produced and exchanged most cheaply on a large scale, and thus private capital is being forced into cor- porate capital. A new personality appears in law the corpor- ation. Corporations may be soulless, but they certainly are not bodiless. They have already assumed gigantic proportions. Their immensity is the measure of the wealth that is being created and held in common. Labor is slowly learning the lesson that capital has first mastered. In union there is wealth as well as strength. The small savings of individuals, which separately were powerless to make the average workman more than a mere hired hand, are being thrown together into a common fund, and thus they create credit and capital for the association, on which the members lift themselves to comfort and independence. Co- operation is preached everywhere with the enthusiasm of a new gospel. Co-operative stores, co-operative manufactories, co-operative building societies, co-operative credit banks are * Cf. " Principles of Political Economy," J. S. Mill, book iv., ch. vii., on the probable future of the laboring classes. 34 2 GROWTH OF ASSOCIATION. springing up marvellously in Europe, and are beginning to make their influence felt in this country. Co-operation already has a history, and a noble one.* Its power to-day is wholly unrealized by those who have not studied its growth, f Agriculture, the slowest industry in change, is feeling the new current. While France has successfully applied co-opera- tion to industrial production, England to distribution, Ger- many to the creation of capital, the United States seem likely to develop first its application to agriculture. Creameries, cheeseries, etc., late and rapid growths, show that farmers are finding that they can combine with great economy of time and labor, and thus secure larger profits. The expensive machin- ery of modern agriculture suggests conjoint ownership. The sudden growth in the far West of bonanza farms is one of the most striking signs of that abnormal development of individualism which threatens danger to the corporate life, and so begins to rally the organic forces toward a crisis and a new epoch. J Farms half the size of a State will crush the compe- tition of small farmers, or drive them to combine in order to compete. The long conflict between capital and labor draws to a peace. Capital proposes its protocol industrial partnership. Em- ployer and employees are to be co-partners in a common enter- * Cf. "History of Co-operation," George Jacob Holyoake. f "Co-operation as a Business," C. Barnard. There are 1,500 co-oper- ative stores in Great Britain. Of these, 1,170 report 500,000 members, $25,000,000 paid-up share capital, and $4,500,000 borrowed capital, mostly loaned by members ; annual purchases of over $80,500,000 ; stock of goods on hand, $10,000,000 ; net annual profits, $7,100,000. \ Cf. " Land and Labor," by D. Godwin Moody. Mr. Moody reported, from personal observation, farms of 10,000, 50,000, 100,000, and 250,000 acres. One California estate covers 350,000 acres, or 547 square miles. Rhode Island has i,O46'square miles. SOCIAL PROPERTIES. 343 prise ; and each workman is to receive a share of the profits over a fixed percentage, pro rata to his wages, /. e., to his skill and service. The reproductive power of the plant is thus to be increased by putting behind the hands that good old Eng- lish quality, "heart," and by making it the interest of all to heighten the yield of the common property.* Competition is thus begetting co-operation. Above these purely economic developments, in the varied spheres of social life, this same principle is working to build up an increasing body of common properties. The multiplicity of interests shared among men leads to a steady growth of societies, clubs and organizations of all sorts, having social, literary, musical, artistic, scientific, philosophic aims in com- mon, and holding thereunto more or less of common property from the minute-book of the youth's debating society up to the Union League palace. The wants and needs of the poor are calling into existence an increasing number of insti- tutions for their relief, enjoyment and culture, supplied by the growing public spirit of the wealthier classes, who are learning to recognize in their private property a trust for the common- wealth baths, hospitals, asylums, orphans' homes, gymnasia, industrial schools, reading-rooms, museums, art galleries and colleges. The social crystallization is dissolving and recombining in forms of higher association. This process, traceable everywhere through the economic and social world, is working slowly upward toward the devel- opment of a State which shall be the organic expression of a * Cf. " The Association of Capital with Labor" ; being the laws and regulations of mutual assurance regulating the social palace at Guise, France Jean Baptiste Andre Godin, the founder. Published by the Woman's Social Science Association, New York. 344 ECONOMIC FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE. real commonwealth, in a vast body of common property. Even now, government, local and general, discharges a multiplicity of functions, for which it necessarily holds and manages a very large public property. It opens roads and streets, paves, lights and sweeps them ; constructs and works sewerage systems ; owns, as the ward of the people, all unappropriated lands, all lines of natural transportation, rivers, lakes, sea-coasts, and surveys, lights, guards them ; distributes letters through huge postal organizations ; observes the weather from its scattered signal stations ; secures property and person by costly fire and police departments ; administers justice through its courts and prisons ; educates the children of the people in its hosts of school-houses ; watches over the public's bodily well-being through its boards of health ; cares for the poor, the sick, the maimed, the insane ; washes the public in free baths, recreates it in free parks, instructs it in free zoological gardens and mu- seums of natural history and art, and does all sorts of similar things in a way which should fill the soul of the laissez-faire theorist with horror and disgust, but which none the less adds vastly to the general "health and wealth." In this huge body of State properties, each citizen is co-proprietor, and thus a member of an actual Communism. The tendency is steadily in the direction of multiplying these common services on the part of the State, and thus of adding to these common properties. Many confluent streams swell this current. As the social organism develops an ever-height- ening complexity its inevitable progress, according to Mr. Spencer's well-known dictum the presence of a co-ordinating brain becomes more essential in the head.* To preserve har- * " The necessity for a co-ordinating power appears therefore to exist in the direct ratio .of development." "Manual of Social Science," H. C. Carey, p. 507. CONSOLIDATION IN BUSINESSES. 345 monious interaction among these complex functions, the super- vision and superintendence of the State are more constantly de- manded. The increasingly scientific character of agriculture and industry calls for that large direction of investigation and experiment which the State alone can supply. The growth of international relations binds countries together in interests L which governments alone can watch and foster. Departments and bureaus thus multiply and enlarge, and the store of public properties grows continually. The rapid concentration of capital which is everywhere seen many small dealers disappearing in one large dealer, rival firms gravitating into a few all-swallowing firms, competing companies consolidating into enormous corporations cannot be prevented. Too many forces are working together to bring about this movement. Neither is it to be wholly deplored. Since doing business on a large scale cheapens productions and lessens the cost of exchange, it thus makes for the general good, so long as work is open for those who are thus displaced.* But the dangerous power which these monopolies are de- veloping, f the burdensome taxation which they lay upon * Simple as this last clause seems, it means a great deal. The failure to add to the praises of cheap goods leaves that laud of cheapness a most dan- gerous illusion. Of what avail is it to have a loaf of brea'd sold for a penny, if for every chance to earn a penny there are a dozen hungry men elbowing their way to the chance of earning that penny ; thrown out of work by the processes which have thus cheapened bread, and left them with no point of ground on the earth from which they can gain their own living. f " In the matter of taxation, there are to-day four men, representing the four great trunk lines between Chicago and New York, who possess, and who not unfrequently exercise, powers which the Congress of the United States would not venture to exert. They may at any time, and for any rea- son satisfactory to themselves, by a single stroke of the pen, reduce the value of property in this country by hundreds of millions of dollars. An additional charge of five cents per bushel on the transportation of cereals would have 34^ DANGERS FROM CORPORATIONS. trade,* the demoralizing influence which they are exerting upon legislation, f the utter indifference which they display to the been equivalent to a tax of $45,00x3,000 on the crop of 1873. No Congress would dare to exercise so vast a power except upon a necessity of the most imperative nature ; and yet these gentlemen exercise it whenever it suits their supreme will and pleasure, without explanation or apology. With the rapid and inevitable progress of consolidation and combination, these colos- sal organizations are daily becoming stronger and more imperious. The time is not distant, if it has not already arrived, when it will be the duty of the statesman to inquire whether there is less danger in leaving the property and industrial interests of the people thus wholly at the mercy of a few men who recognize no responsibility but to their stockholders, and no principle of action but personal and corporate aggrandizement, than in adding some- what to the power and patronage of a government directly responsible to the people and entirely under their control." Report of United States Senate Committee on Transportation Routes (1874). * " The railroads of the State of New York annually collect for transpor- tation nearly one hundred millions of dollars, or a sum more than twelve times as large as the entire revenues of the State derived from taxation. Those who have given the subject much attention estimate that fifty millions would defray the expenses of operating these modern highways on an honest basis, and yield ten per cent, upon the amount of capital actually paid in by stock and bondholders. This leaves an actual tax of from forty to fifty millions of dollars upon the industries of the State, a taxation so enormous that in any other form it would be considered absurd and impossible. " " The Causes of Communism." \ " I do not know how much I paid toward helping friendly men. We had four States to look after, and we had to suit our politics to circum- stances. In a Democratic district, I was a Democrat ; in a Republican dis- trict, I was a Republican ; and in a doubtful district, I was doubtful, but in every district and at all times I have always been an Erie man." Jay Gould, before Committee of New York Legislature (1872). " The sudden revolution in the direction of this company (Erie) has laid bare a chapter in the secret history of railroad management, such as has not been permitted before. It exposes the reckless and prodigal use of money wrung from the people to~purchase the election of the people's repre- sentatives, and to bribe them when in office." Report of above Committee. STA TE CONTROL OF RAILROADS. 347 public interests, * the unscrupulous tyranny which they use in pushing their selfish schemes at the cost of the people, f are creating a sentiment which will erelong compel governmental supervision. Governmental control passes easily into governmental own- ership. For its own dignity and independence, its own security and perpetuity, as well as for the good of the people, the State is thus being drawn into the discharge of one function after another of the corporate life. The State has already assumed the supervision of the railroad system in England, through a commission with judicial powers ; and has taken the first steps in this direction in our country, in the appointment of the Massachusetts Commission, and in the agitation for a National Commission. It directs the general management of the rail- roads, and actually owns them in part or in whole in Germany, France, Italy and Russia. Belgium owns her whole system of railways, and ensures a cheap, safe and generally satisfactory management. The State has now under advisement the question of buying and operating the telegraph system in this country, and has made this advance in England, with a great cheapening of rates. It is developing the role of the people's banker, not only in its traditional issue of currency, but in its guaranteeing * " The city of New York sees that if it could have the business done at a rate which would allow Mr. Vanderbilt eight per cent, on the actual cap- ital invested in the railroad, on the actual cost of the property, it could have its business done at one half the present rate of transportation ; and it would have twice the amount of business, and there would be no empty houses and no unemployed laborers in the city." Hon. Abram S. Hewitt, Investigation by a Select Committee of the House of Representatives Rel- ative to the Causes of the General Depression in Labor and Business (1879); p. 214, Mis. Doc. No. 29, 45th Congress, 3d Session. f Cf. "The Story of a Great Monopoly," Atlantic Monthly, March, 1881. GROWTH OF A COMMONWEALTH. of local currency, as in our National Bank Act, in its institu- tion of postal money orders, in its opening of governmental savings-banks connected with the postal system, as in England, in its putting forth among ourselves bonds of ten dollars for the investment of the poor, and in its supervision of savings- banks by the States. These are signs of a widespread move- ment. If, as Mr. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., says, we can expect the railroads and other corporations subserving com- mon needs to be run in the interests of the public only by making the State own them, then to this ownership the State must sooner or later come.* The steady growth of the organic life is asserting itself in the spreading conviction that private interest cannot be allowed to stand in the way of the public interest, and that all rights must be held in trust for the com- mon wealth. Society is increasingly asserting the interests of the many against the interests of the few, of the people against classes, of the public against individuals, and thus is unavoid- ably building up a common property, as the material housing of such a community. This process is going on all around us, in the face of the minimizing of government inculcated by the scribes of political economy, and without any violent artificial intervention by the apostles of Socialism, solely by the action of natural forces too strong to be resisted. Thus, " Wisdom is justified of all her children " ; and the ridiculed prophets of the ethical order * "I maintain that the thing that makes the New York Central carry freight at half a mill a ton per mile is the fact that whatever the company gets in the development of its business belongs to its stockholders. If you are going to upset all this and do business not for gain, but out of public spirit, depend upon it, you must go a great way further, and make the State the owner of the railroad." CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, JR., before the Hewitt Congressional Committee on Labor, p. 213. ECONOMISTS ON THE SOCIAL EVOLUTION, 349 behold economic and social laws working out their vision of the co-operative State.* It is in this way, and this alone, that a sane Socialism expects to realize slowly its long-cherished dream. The co-operative State is to be the flower of the process of integration now going on in society ; the government's necessitated co-ordina- tion of the associative action developed voluntarily among the people on an increasingly large scale ; the ultimate generaliza- tion from co-operative trade and industrial organizations, the body of public property built around the spirit of " The Com- mons," the Republic of the Commonwealth. XV. Orthodox economy is at one with heterodoxy as to the fact of this on-going social evolution, and as to the general form of society in the future. Sober students look forward to the time when co-operation shall have completely revolutionized our industrial system and reconstructed society. Mr. Thorn- ton writes : Regarding the subject as soberly as I can, it seems to me impossible that the day should not arrive when almost all productive industry, and most of all other industry, will be, in one sense or other, co-operative ; when the bulk of the employed will be their own employers, and when, of the portion who have other employers, most will be the participators in those employers' profits, f Mr. Mill writes : In the co-operative movement, the permanency of which may now be considered as insured, we see exemplified the process of bringing about a * Mr. Mill characterizes the Socialists as having " moral conceptions in many respects far ahead of the existing arrangements of society." "Prin- ciples of Political Economy," book iv., ch. vii., sec. 7. f " On Labor," W. T. Thornton, book iv. , ch. iii. 35 THE CO-OPERATIVE STATE. change in society which would combine the freedom and independence of the individual with the moral, intellectual, and economical advantages of aggregate production ; and which, without violence or spoliation, or even any sudden disturbance of existing habits and expectations, would realize, at least in the industrial department, the best aspirations of the democratic spirit, by putting an end to the division of society into the industrious and the idle, and effacing all social distinctions but those fairly earned by per- sonal services and exertions. ... As associations multiplied, they would tend more and more to absorb all work-people, except those who have too little understanding or too little virtue to be capable of learning to act on any other system than that of narrow selfishness. As this change proceeded, owners of capital would gradually find it to their advantage, instead of maintaining the struggle of the old system with work-people of only the worst description, to lend their capital to the associations ; to do this at a diminishing rate of interest, and at last, perhaps, even to ex- change their capital for terminable annuities. In this, or some such mode, the existing accumulations of capital might honestly, and by a kind of spontaneous process, become in the end the joint property of all who par- ticipate in their productive employment, a transformation which, thus effected (and assuming, of course, that both sexes participate equally in the rights and in the government of the association) would be the nearest approach to social justice, and the most beneficial ordering of industrial affairs for the universal good, which it is possible at present to foresee. * Orthodox economy remains, however, incredulous of the dream of " The Co-operative State." Nevertheless, that dream was, in the brain of the wisest of philosophers, the pro- foundest of social and political students, " the Bible of the learned for twenty-two hundred years." f Plato saw this vision centuries ago, and we have its mirrorings in " The Republic " that sublime ideal of a real government of a free people. The Republic needs must be a Communism, inasmuch as its synonyme, in the true titling of Plato, is " concerning justice." This same dream has cheered the souls of earth's * " Principles of Political-Economy," book iv., ch. vii., g 6. f Emerson's Essay on Plato. HOW THE NEW ORDER COMETH. 351 noblest thinkers through all the dark days since the great Greek ; whenever, turning away from the shadows lying heavily upon the world, they have caught sight of the City of God coming down from heaven Utopia, Nowhere yet on earth in outward form, but in spirit so long seen and striven for that a re-arrange- ment of the old elements may some time make it Now-here. This dream may indeed prove a nightmare to disordered societies, and may shape itself in convulsions. Anarchic action there will be in this natural evolution of the social world, as there has been in the natural evolution of the physical world the violent effort of repressed forces to burst the hard crust of the old order, even as we see to-day in Europe. Karl Marx says : " Force is the accoucheur of every old society which is pregnant with a new one." That is true only in so far as civilization has made parturition an unnatural process, difficult, painful and dangerous, necessitating often surgical obstetrics, and sometimes even the Caesarian operation of Le Terreur and Nihilism. Freedom renders even the travail throes natural, and therefore easy and safe, and there is only " joy that a man is born into the world." And freedom is the political health into which mankind is being led for this social birth from above of the man gotten from the Lord. Revolu- tions will prove to be but cataclysms in the action of an evo- lution. Breakers, heavy and thunderous, there will be where the incoming tide meets the wash of the ebbing current, and the cresting wave will gather high and threatening against the backward suction of the undertow ; but over the bar the seeth- ing sea will spread itself, calm and smiling, as, drawn by influences from above, which no hold of earth can check, the deep ocean swells up bays and rivers, creeks and tiny streams, sweeping the slimy places of corruption with the cleansing waters of a larger life, and spreading over every dry and bar- 35 2 FORM OF THE NEW ORDER. ren waste the freshness and fertility of the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. The old order changeth, yielding place to new, And God fulfils himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. XVI. What the form of the new order shall be, who dare min- utely predict ? This, however, we may assuredly know : " that body which shall be " will prove no resurrection of the material housing which has been once and forever laid aside. Nature does not go back to the grave to pick up worn-out bodies. Continuing the soul which in its infancy shaped the body of the past, it fashions round it, matured and developed, the body of the future ; a loftier likeness of the old in the new, a transfigured organization. Every organism is a Communism, but man is not a reproduction of the oyster. Civilization turned once, in the far-back past, away from the Communism which found no place for private property, and gave no play to Individualism. To revert to that Communism would be re- trogression not progression, the return to childhood in senility in poverty if in purity, in ignorance if in innocence. Not thus is man to become a little child that he may enter the kingdom of heaven. Ruskin finely says : There is a singular sense in which the child may peculiarly be said to be father of the man. In many arts and attainments, the first and last stages of progress the infancy and the consummation have many feat- tures in common ; while the intermediate stages are wholly unlike either and are furthest from the right. . . . Childhood often holds a truth with its feeble fingers which the grasp of manhood cannot retain, which it is the pride of utmost age to recover.* * " Modern Painters," John Ruskin, Intro. CYCLIC MOVEMENT OF SOCIETY. 353 This is the progress of the race : the action of that law of circularity which, urging civilization round yet also up, brings society again into the same longitude where once it anchored ages since, but now in a far higher latitude ; its symbol, the spiral. The world is sweeping round into the meridian of Communism, but it will prove the parallel ofg* nobler " ism " of common property than that of the past. The Communism of the future will not do away with private property, but will restrain it to healthful proportions, will subordinate its aggre- gate to the mass of wealth held in common, and will guard against its renewed dangerous development by subsoiling it with a deep, wide, firm basis of common property, held for the people by co-operative associations, economic, social and re- ligious, and by the State. In that commonage will probably be included all properties which shall prove themselves, in the experience of mankind, essential to the commonwealth, even, if need be, up to the collective ownership of the land, the in- struments of production, and the means of exchange.* Between the opposite poles of individualism and association, in oscillating cycles, civilization gravitates toward the poise of the pendulum, the golden mean of an institution of property in which all needful severalties of personal possession shall form freely within the ensphering body of a vast and noble Communism. The distant goal of this troublous age is once more a stationary period, f ' In the far-back past, the calm of the mountain lake, placid and pure as the snow-fields around * " There must be for human affairs an order which is the best. This order is by no means always the existing one ; else why should we all de- sire change in the latter ? But it is the order which ought to exist for the greatest happiness of the human race. God knows it, and desires its adop- tion. It is for man to discover and establish it." " Primitive Property," E. de Laveleye (concluding paragraph). f " Principles of Political Economy, J. S. Mill, book iv., ch. vi. 354 A PARABLE OF PROGRESS. it ; then the wild whirl of the mountain stream, delightedly escaping from stagnation, hurrying away from the old and tranquil haunts, reckless of where and how, so only that, obe- dient to the resistless yearning which stirs within its bosom, there is motion on ; plunging wildly in tumultuous freedom, here in the ga^ sunlight, there in the gloomy gorges, hurling over huge precipices in untried ventures, shaking into thin mist, splintering on craggy rocks, grinding into white foam in the seething whirlpool, but ever hasting on ; freshening the air for the dwellers in the valleys down which it scampers, greening the grass and goldening the grain and kissing the flowers with its dewy breath till they blush into iris hued rip- plings of delight ; anon bursting its embankments, pouring over the fields of patient industry, deluging, devastating, destroying ; spreading at length into the smooth-flowing river, which moves onward still, through mighty continents of being ; bearing the burdens of the peoples of the earth, exchanging their produc- tions, building up fair cities and crowding them with wealth, causing the desert to blossom as the rose ; yet clogging here and there into slimy shallows and turbid marshes, where the poison gathered from the heedless life along its shores washes upon the ground and exhales into the air, and makes the great river, on which weary men must toil and from which thirsting men must drink, a deadly curse, blighting the regions round into a land of the shadow of death ; at last flowing into the broad sea, where all streams mingle and are one, where all evil elements are purified and precipitated, and clean and whole- some the great deep hushes into the calm of the Pacific, whose waters stir only with the long, low ground-swell and the gentle, steady trade-winds, while they flash beneath the bright beams of an eternal summer, and. pulse with the movements of all varied and beautiful life round the happy islands where man A VISION OF VICTORY. 355 is once more a child in the garden of the Lord, the garden wherein stands the tree of life, yielding its fruit every month ; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations ; and there shall be no more curse. From the mountain-tops, we may see the light of the dawn- ing day on that far-off sea of peace, and cry, with Saint-Simon in his parting breath, " The future is ours." NOTES. NOTE I. CONVERSATION FOLLOWING THE TESTIMONY BEFORE THE SENATE COM- MITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR. By Mr. CALL : Q. I should like to ask you a question or two for my own information. You say that you think the mineral lands should be reserved for the use of the government for the use of the public, that they should not be sold in fee simple nor absolutely parted with, but might be leased or otherwise worked. In what respect would you distinguish the difference to the gov- ernment or people between giving a lease interest in mineral lands, and selling them entirely ? A. If you will compare the present manner of opening our mineral resources and of using them with what might be our action, the answer will be easily indicated. At present private parties, individuals, or corporations prospect for new mines ; and when locating them proceed to open them, and use the treasures of nature's storing primarily for private emolument. Of course the people at large get a measure of good out of these resources no thanks to our monopolizing friends, who find that they cannot make their Dives' feast without letting fall the crumbs for Lazarus. But the people have to pay vastly more for what they get than they should. Pri- vate owners put all the price on these supplies that they think they will bear. They thus, in getting control of mines, get control of a power of taxing the people. We allow nature's treasures, which no man creates, to become the feeder, not of the general comfort, but of the wealth and luxury of the few. Now, think of what might be. Suppose that it was declared by law that all mineral resources hereafter to be discovered were to be held by the national government, or by the State governments, as the property of the people, and administered for the benefit of the whole body of citizens. The mode of administering determined on might be direct governmental manage- ment, in which all the profits, if the business was honestly carried on, would go to the public. It might also be the letting out of the privileges for a given number of years, subject to such conditions as should be imposed in the contract. Those conditions could secure for the people at large that the profits to be made out of the mining by the lessees should not be above a certain per centum of the capital engaged. The public would be secured against extortionate prices, and these prices would drag down the prices of 359 360 THE STATE AND THE MINES. private mining companies to a fair level. Thus, the people would be re- lieved of the present incubus of taxation imposed by the private ownership of mineral resources, and every man's income would go very much farther in purchasing coal, etc. At the same time the government, State or National, would be drawing a large revenue for public purposes form the rental of these mines. So that there would be a gain to the people at both ends of the line. Then, when the leases ran out, a new appraisal would be made, inuring (where there was an increase of value in the property) to the people in the person of the State. Thus the running on of any arrangement by which the people suffered would be prevented. With the increasing development of the mineral resources of the land, the commonwealth would be steadily en- riching, and a vast possession be accumulating in the hands of the people, to be used for no speculative purposes injurious to the community, and for no oppressive taxation of the people, but for the varied constructive tasks of the State, public works, education, etc. There is a deeper ground of interest to me in the plan of the State's owning and leasing the future mines. It would be the recognition of a principle 'which has far wider application the introduction of the thin edge of a very big wedge, the driving in of which would, later on, break up the present uncontrolled individualism in the ownership of land, and open the way to the State's control of it for the people. ********* By the CHAIRMAN : Q. I want to ask a question or two in another direction, not with the idea of controverting any of the positions you have taken, but to draw out your views somewhat in another direction. I gather from what you say that you consider the real difficulty one of distribution of the joint product of labor, capital, and land than otherwise? A. I do. Q. That, in other words, the stronger force gets a larger proportion than justly belongs to it, or than does the weaker force ? A. Yes. Q. You think that labor does not get its fair share. I suppose, then, the more wealth there is created the better, because there would be more to divide ? Undoubtedly. Q. Do you believe the proposition, somewhat generally received, I sup- pose, that production ordinarily can be more stimulated under private than under public management ? A. Speaking generally, I do. I believe that has been the function of individualism in the development of civilization. Perhaps another force than individualism is necessary for rightful distri- bution. Q. Then, if the proper distribution could be effected, you think it would be better that this combination of the factors of production should remain under private management rather than be consigned to public management? A. Yes, if that could be secured, except in so far as there are works which from their nature the State is better fitted to do. BAD DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 361 Q. In other words, you believe that the individual in society is more capable of successful administration or working of these great factors of production than the mass, the government at large ? A. On the whole, yes. Q. So it would follow from these premises that if the abuses, whatever they are, that have caused it, now existing in society, could be remedied, you would be satisfied with the existing order of things so far as titles and the general administration of social and business life are concerned 1 A. Yes, with that very big " If." Q. Then, all that conceded, I want to ask you to specify such particular direction or particular ways in which there is waste or improper appropria- tion of the result of production. Certain parties get too much ; others do not get enough. Specify a few of the directions in which you think the greatest waste or misappropriation against justice occurs. A. Capital, as a rule, gets a disproportionate share of production. Fig- ures, I know, are so handled by skilful statisticians as to becloud this fact ; but fact I believe it is. The whole mass of labor in a factory, say five huh- dred hands, is balanced against the one capitalist, and then it is said that "labor gets the lion's share." It is enough to look at the wealth so fre- quently accumulated in manufacturing, and to look then at the general con- dition of factory labor, to see through all sophisms on this point. Here is a great waste or misappropriation, speaking from the standpoint of society. It would be juster and better to have our capitalists less wealthy, and their laborers more comfortable, better educated, and better housed. Plainly, society's need is of the many getting more and the few less out of produc- tion. It is this fact which lends force to the Socialist doctrine, that if, say, four hours' work represents the productivity for which a man is paid in the wages he receives, the other six hours represent his labor appropriated to its own benefit by capital. Then there is misdirection of the results of labor in the huge accumula- tions of middlemen, traders, merchants, carriers, etc. They serve an equally important function with those who toil for production proper, but they get a share of reward wholly disproportionate. Thus it is that great for- tunes are built up most readily by the men who simply exchange what others have produced. And in securing these great rewards, prices are run up high, so that while the producer gets but a small part of the value of his labor, when he needs to buy back that work, or some other branch of labor's work, he has to pay several times the value it had as a piece of pro- duction. Where are the colossal fortunes made ? Not in producing, but in exchanging, including in this term, of course, carriage. So in other di- rections, through which it would take time to track the absorption into other than labor's hands of the value of labor's own production. Q. You have mentioned the accumulation of very large fortunes in the hands of individual men. A. As drawn to do so by direct questioning ; otherwise I have not emphasized, I believe, that phase of the subject, for> more than one reason. These gigantic fortunes arrest attention, and so start questions and rouse antagonism. They serve to objectify a social tendency and to throw it into a strong and bad light. That tendency is 362 GREAT FORTUNES VS. GENERAL COMFORT. unwholesome, unsound, dangerous, especially in a republic ; so we are likely to hear quite enough about " the coming billionnaire. " But there is danger of overdoing the personal opposition and of concentrating upon a few men, perhaps personally by no means monsters, the indignation which ought to spread itself upon the wrongful social tendency. While the roots are in the ground it is of little use to mow down one crop of weeds. Q. But, generally, take the fortunes of $200,000,000 that we read about in particular individuals. Do you think that these fortunes, as a whole, are better administered than they would be if they were vested in the govern- ment at large ; or, in other words, does it not follow, from the premises we have assumed, that Astor, Gould, Sage, Vanderbilt, Huntington, and others, administer their large fortunes better than they would be administered in other hands ? A. Solely as a matter of production, possibly probably, yes. Most of these men are admitted to have talents of an uncommon older. Commodore Vanderbilt was certainly a rare genius in organization, and Mr. Gould is often called a Napoleon of speculation. Less gifted men could not, perhaps, develop such enterprises as these men have done. But even then there are qualifications to come in. Perhaps no one man could as well manage Commodore Vanderbilt's lines as he did. But a large and well-organized system of officering can possibly do it as well. The Penn- sylvania Railroad to-day is a splendid specimen of corporate capacity, with no one such man at its head. We are increasingly being driven into the peculiar power of administration that lies in well-organized companies. This is the new tendency already making itself felt over the older force of pure individualism. Then, moreover, it is open to ask how well for public good most of these gigantic private fortunes are administered ? They seek investments solely with reference to dividends, and with an almost sublime indifference to every consideration of what the people most need. A host of urgent im- provements may be waiting to be carried out right at their doors ; are so waiting, with every promise of fair returns to the capital invested. But huge fortunes rarely care to engage in such enterprises. They are filled with schemes of vast aggrandizement, with dreams of immense combina- tions, giving unheard-of power. They tend to go out into speculative enter- prises ; and these stimulate the country unhealthfully and help on the in- evitable reaction. They go out "wild-catting" in all countries of the globe, and lend kings the power to wage war. English capital has sunk enough, probably, in Egyptian improvements, after Ismail's heart, in float- ing Turkey, and in all sorts of out-of-the-way and generally harmful schemes, to have reconstructed the worst defects of London, while drawing a fair return. But the question of administration covers that of distribution as well as that of production. And there can be, as it seems to me, but one judgment as to the influence of the sort of expenditure which huge fortunes encour- age. It is bad. It gives work" as the same thousands would, however spent ; but it gives the work which creates little or nothing, and which en- THE PROBLEM OF DISTRIBUTION. 363 feebles and degrades the workers. It builds up the classes which minister to luxury, and they are economically unprofitable classes to the community, and socially are undesirable classes. It is not a question between A's having $20x5,000,000 and the State's having it. It is a question between A's having it and all the rest of the alphabet having it. If the State ran all Mr. Gould's roads it would be the people who pocketed the dividends in one way or another, if the adminis- tration was honest. Men say A. has to put out all his $200,000,000 in invest- ments, except the few thousands he can spend a year. True ; but there is a great difference between the way he puts out $200,000,000 and the way 2,000 people would each put out $100,000 ; as between the way he spends what he can of his vast income, and the way they would spend their $6,000 or $5,ooo apiece. Here is the root of the matter. Which is the best for the country, the investments and personal expenditure of one man with $200,000,000, or the investments and personal expenditures of 2,000 men each having $100,000, or of 20,000 men each having $10,000 ? . Q. We have come to the conclusion that what wealth there is. may be better administered in private than in public hands, as a rule. But, on the other hand, there is a fault in distribution, and labor suffers. We mutually believe that. The real thing to ascertain is just what portion of wealth is misappropriated and might be otherwise used. A. That is rather a difficult question to answer. Q. But there is a difficulty, and it results from the premises that we have assumed. A. Yes, it does. Q. Is it not like this ? The laborer, as you have pointed out, wastes a great deal in his personal habits ; a portion of his wages is put to very poor use. Then, of this immense mass of money handled by the capitalist, whether invested in labor or otherwise, a great deal of that might be better distributed. Now, do some of these ways occur to you ? To put the idea a little more distinctly, are we not drifting toward some fundamental proposi- tion like this, that before there be any reinvestment for the benefit of capi- tal in any form, and before there be any appropriation of the product of labor and capital for the unnecessary uses of any individual whatever whether the laborer or the capitalist, there must be first deducted from production all that is necessary to give to the producer the necessaries of life ? A. Certainly. Q. If that is true, is it not necessary to take a position which, as far as I know, has not yet been taken or insisted upon before us this primary position, that there should be deducted from the price realized from produc- tion a greater sum than is now taken and appropriated to the wage laborer ? A. I believe that, thoroughly. Q. Now, how can that thing be done ? There is no law for it. The law of supply and demand does not provide for it ; the co-operative system does not provide for it, though perhaps it does so better than any thing else but under the existing laws of the land there is no provision for giving labor any thing more of price than what it can demand under the laws of supply and demand in the market. Is it necessary, then, that there 364 LEGISLATION VS. EDUCATION. should be introduced into the laws of the country a proposition by virtue of the legal establishment of which labor should have a larger pro- portion in some way out of the price realized from production from time to time ? A. I do not see how it is possible for legislation to effect such an end at /east not in the beginning of an effort for it. Legislation that was not backed by public sentiment would be inoperative. And if we have the public sentiment we can secure the end, perhaps, without any legislation. At all events we should try for the creation of such a public sentiment be- fore we try legislation. If legislation is needful it will soon be had then. We have given up the endeavor to regulate prices and wages by law, for good reasons. Law is too clumsy and unelastic a mechanism to adjust itself to the rapid fluctuations of the market. It seems to me that on such a point the teachings of our political economists are thoroughly sound. Here is the very case in which their theory of non-interference is right. Almost every other feature of the world of trade can be better inter- fered with than prices and wages. There is a simpler way. The conscience of the community is uneducated on this point. Few suspect that there is any unwisdom or wrong in our present system of providing first for the luxury of the few and only after that for the needs of the many. What is, is right to the mass of men. The natural law of demand and supply does not necessarily exclude the action of moral forces. Immoral forces greed and selfishness weight these laws in one direction now. The sense of justice, the spirit of brotherliness, can weight these laws in the other direction, without external action. Put back of our manufacturers a larger development of conscience, of conscience educated to discern the real ethics of the case, and the problem would soon be solved. Q. Can you do that ? A. I believe it can be done. There are vast resources of moral energy among our people to be drawn upon for such action. The sense of justice is one of the strongest powers in man. I have had a chance of seeing a good deal of manufacturers. Those that I know well I know to be men of kind hearts and real conscientiousness ; who sincerely desire to do what is right, and who often are anxious, deeply anxious, to add to justice, as they see it, kindness. It is folly to cry down capitalists as a class, because there are so many grasping, hard-hearted men among them. But conscience needs to be educated. It takes its tone from public sentiment, and looks to custom for its standards. And society calls the present division right, while political economists check any rising of dissatisfaction with it by hosts of reasons why it always was and ever will be as it is, world without end ; calling all such feelings " sentimentality." And there is next to no attempt made by the churches, the educators of conscience, to enlighten men on the ethics of this problem, or to stir their wills to larger justice. Churches preach charity, not justice. One genera- tion in which the churches seriously grappled with this task would LEGISLATION VS. EDUCATION. 365 answer the question you have proposed in the only way I think it can be really answered. I believe it could be shown that such increase of wages would not be wholly the loss to profits that men suppose it would be. Better pay draws out better work. Productivity is increased, and there is more to divide ; so that while the capitalist would get relatively less, he might get absolutely nearly as much as before. Henry Carey, who brings out this law, rightly calls it " the most beautiful in the book of science." Q. With that increasing productivity, is there not an increasing want or multiplication of wants, so that with advancing civilization the wants of the common laborer may in time become what the wants of the refined and delicate are to-day ? A. Yes. Q. And we have to deal with the things of to-day what is luxury to-day may become a necessity to-morrow. So would you find any remedy in that direction ? A. If we are satisfied that the tendency is in the right direction, let us act for our own generation. The next generation will be better able to deal with its own problems. We are surely moving in the right direction when we move towards creating noble wants wants such as grow out of deeper and richer and more varied life. The ideal of man is that towards which nature is moving, and as we place in men's reach the means of enlarging and enriching their beings, we are moving with nature. Doubtless she is secretly a good deal more interested in the development of a town full of happy, healthy, intelligent, and virtuous people, than in the development of a half-dozen splendid specimens of the gentleman and lady. We must probably diminish the supply of prize specimens of man in order to improve the general stock. Let us take one step at a time. Q. Then, if I understand you, the remedy is, after all, an educational one, partially, as applied to the capitalist, and still more largely as applied to the laboring classes themselves ? A. I believe the solution of the labor problem is to be chiefly found in education ; education of both factors in the problem capital and labor though I should not count the education of one less important than that of the other. Q. Then, if there is no legislation that can be of any use, does not the remedy lie primarily and substantially in improving the schools of the country the public schools, the industrial schools, the normal schools, and higher schools, in their order rather than in other directions ? A. I did not say that I thought there could be no helpful legislation ; there are many ways in which, as it seems to me, legislation can greatly help ; some of which I pointed out in the body of my talk. I said that I did not think that legislation could do any thing now to adjust the problem of wages. Education of the people is, however, certainly the primary question; an education which will fit men to win higher wages by doing higher work ; an education of the whole man which will give labor the powers in which it can win its dues. Industrial education is the phase of education which has been of late most neglected and which needs most bringing up. Q. But, whatever phase is developed, it requires more mpney? A. Yes. MORAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF WEALTH. Q. And that must be got by legislation ? A. Yes, and by the increase of numbers and wealth. Q. But do you think that there are large masses of capital that are now badly appropriated, and yet, as we ordinarily say, innocently appropriated, diverted to other uses, such as the extravagant expenditures in which many individuals indulge, as in dress, in buildings, and the like ? A. I do, sir. Q. I suppose that in this city probably an expenditure of $2,500 on each of the tenement houses, whether in the form of improvements or otherwise, would give to each family occupying the house very much better accommo- dations than they now have ? A. Yes. Q. Suppose, in illustration of the idea, that some one of these capitalists should erect a private residence at the cost of $2,000,000. He pays that $2,000,000 for labor in some form or other, does he not ? A. Certainly. Q. If, however, that same amount of money were put out in the way of improving tenements at $2,500 apiece for a family, there would be the same amount of money spent ? A. Yes ; while the results would be very different. Q. How would the results compare ? A. Between the luxury of one man and the health and comfort and decency and virtue of large classes. Q. In other words, do you think that there is any moral right on the part of the administrator of large amounts of wealth to so invest his money beyond his real necessities and comforts those that seem to be essential to himself and his family as to involve these extraordinary sums, or sums be- yond that limit ? A. I do not, most decidedly. A few years ago the ques- tion of tenement-house reform was agitated here. The papers took it up with great enthusiasm, and gave accounts day by day of what was being done in that direction. Some of the best men of business in this city were interested not men themselves of enormous fortunes, and for a time it looked as though a great chauge was going to be introduced. What was the result of that ? No man of great fortune in this city came forward to give a lift to that movement ; no man of those whose names would come naturally to your mind arose to help the effort. Although they had to invest their money, none of them saw fit to supply that crying need, even though it was demonstrated by the experience of the English, and of Mr. White, in Brooklyn, that it would make a good investment. Such is the tendency to invest money in purely speculative schemes, that the enterprise fell far short of its possibilities. One block of modern buildings has been put up, but what is one block in this city ? There was an opportunity for men of these enormous fortunes, not to give their money away (I do not believe in char- ity as the true mode of permanently improving the condition of poverty), but to invest their money in decent homes for our wage-workers ; homes which should return to capital its due reward, while transforming the whole life of the poor. So feeble was the sense of social responsibility on the part of our men of great fortunes, that not one of them came forward to this opportunity. _- Q. Do you believe that the wealthy man has any moral right to thus mis- appropriate his money, any more than to burn it up ? A. No, sir. THE SOCIAL FACTOR IN WEALTH. 367 Q. You do not believe that he has any more moral right to do that than to destroy his jewels by dissolving them in acid ? A. No, sir ; and not only do I believe that he has no moral right to do so, I believe that he has no economic right to do so. There is no such thing as pure private property. No man makes his money by himself alone. Each man makes his money through the co-operating labor and skill of others. The manufacturer has his hands working with him and for him, who really produce the goods out of which he makes his fortune. The trader or the carrier has the whole country working with and for him. We see this most clearly in the case of real-estate speculation. Did the first Mr. Astor make his huge fortune by himself ? He doubtless had the foresight which others lacked ; but what was his foresight ? The vision of the hosts who would come here to build up a great city. They came and have kept coming, and they the hosts of men who get a bare living as well as those who get comfortable fortunes ; labor- ers, mechanics, manufacturers, traders, merchants, etc. have builded up New York, and given to its land the enormous value in which Mr. Astor's lots have shared. The city has built up Mr. Astor's huge wealth. The city has not only a moral claim, it has an economic claim, hard and solid as his own land. It holds a first mortgage on every house of the Astor estate, which it is not charity but simple justice to recognize. And so with every other form of private wealth, though we cannot always as clearly trace the connection. Private wealth is literally a social trust. It is a function called into action by society for the good of the body. This matter can even be re- duced to an arithmetical statement, which ought to satisfy the hardest- headed millionnaire. And, lest I should be put down at once as a " senti- mentalist," let me again shelter myself behind so unsentimental an authority as Mr. Edward Atkinson. I have already quoted his remark, but its substance will bear repetition here. He showed his hearers that the sum total of the divisible amount per annum is a definite and knowable amount, yielding a definite and cal- culable income, when divided by the population of the land. He showed that the average annual productivity of the country represented an amount which, if distributed equally to every man, woman, and child, would give to each person 50 cents a day. And then he told them, in the words which I have already quoted, that by as much as any of them had more than this 50 cents per diem, some one or some ones had less, there being no alterna- tive to such an arithmetical problem. Q. Then this matter of what you call absolute individual ownership is, from necessity, subject to some such limitations as that which may be drawn by the law ? A. So it seems to me. Society has the right to limit the growth of the private fortunes which it really creates. If it finds them becoming exces- sive and so harmful, it can take measures to limit them. In such action it should, of course, proceed gradually and carefully, and in the light of the various experiments made by other peoples. It could limit the entail, devoting all over a certain amount to the State for public uses ; or it could introduce an income tax. Either of these resorts would be better than set- 368 PALACE VS. TENEMENT. ting a limit to accumulation. That would be a dangerous experiment. We don't want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Indeed, I should deprecate the resort to legislation at all, until a fair experiment has been made of what can be done through the moral forces of public sentiment ; an experiment on which we have scarcely entered as yet. Still, I think we might hold this rod of legislation over our great fortunes as an extra incen- tive to good behavior. Of one thing I am sure. Society must either teach great wealth its duties, or prevent the handing down of these great fortunes, or even, as a last re- sort, their accumulation. Q. Which does the most harm in society and * ask it with reference to its effect upon the example of the classes below who are disposed to imitate what they see above them, as wealth, fashion, etc. which does the most harm in society, one of those pestiferous tenement houses at one end of the city or the private palace at the other ? A. What do you mean by harm physical or moral ? Q. Which does, on the whole, the most harm ? A. The tenement house breeds the most disease. Q. Very well, which does the most harm in society ? A. I fancy that if the sum total of evil influences issuing from a luxurious palace could be ad- measured the impulse it gives to extravagance and luxury ; the wasteful and costly fashions it sets ; the strain it adds to the high tension of life ; the temptation it thus 'opens to businessmen, goaded to speculation and pecu- lation to keep up with the " style " ; the stimulus it gives to the idle and frivolous and sensuous life of women (and sensuous is not far from sensual); the inspiration it imparts to our worship of wealth ; the alienation of classes it engenders by its wanton display of riches ; I say if all these and other far-reaching, subtle influences could be rightly admeasured, we might well say that a palace is more harmful to the city than a tenement house. Take a fact which illustrates one point made above. A workingman was in the midst of a crowd that was looking at a great house lately built in this city. A person passing by observed this man, and saw his brow knit and his fists clenched. It was at the time that some beautiful bronze work was being put up. And then he heard the man mutter, " That '11 have to go to the melting-pot one day." When poverty-stricken workingmen see such houses built, and near by stables for the rich man's horses, finer far and wealthier than any home they can ever get for themselves and their children, is it any wonder that mutterings are heard ; the groanings of the blind sense of wrong, out of which come revolutions and anarchy ? Q. This extravagant expenditure in private architecture is everywhere. A. It is certainly growing rapidly. Q. I suppose you do not lose sight of the aesthetic effects of that ? A. Doubtless great wealth has always been a patron of art. There is a good side to this palace-building, I am well aware. Certainly, with the rapid increase of large wealth amoog us, taste in domestic art has wonder- fully improved. And this is altogether good, in so far as the law of restraint is observed and art is prized for its beauty and not for its rarity or ART AND WEALTH. 369 costliness. But here comes in the inevitable danger.of the art which is fed from great wealth. That art is drawn aside from its simplicity, its high ideals, its just restraint, its purity and seriousness. Great wealth tempts art to work for high pay ; to minister to the whims and follies of Croesus ; to pamper pride and ostentation ; to stoop to frivolous aims, and to rest content with brilliant tricks ; to whet the sensual appetite of its idle and pleasure-loving patrons. I am not drawing on my fancy. This is the story that all history reads. Art has always been seduced and corrupted by wealth ; and then, art itself has turned procuress to the lords of hell ! Athens and Venice and every other city of art tell the same tale. We have been rarely fortunate in having had in the man who, more than any other, has guided the domestic decoration of our city, a noble nature animating great artistic powers. His ideals have been the highest, and his canons of art the soundest ; and he has done a vast service in starting our aesthetic progress along right lines. But how long will the early restraint be allowed by men eager to outshine their rivals ? We are only in the first dawn of the art which wealth feeds, and it is too early to feel much of its corrupting touch. But this gifted genius to whom I have referred, who knew well what art was really desired by our very wealthy people, was any thing but sanguine of the tendencies at work. No more severe judg- ment on this question have I ever heard or read than that of the man to whom our city owes so much. He knew too well with what ignorance, conceit, pride, ostentation, and folly art has to struggle when it accepts Croesus as its patron. What do you think of an estimable family proposing to decorate a dining-room ceiling with a copy of the paintings to which the demi-monde looks up in a celebrated cafe of Paris ? A fine patronship of art is American shoddy ! The one hope is, that it may be conscious of its own ignorance, and leave to a man who understands his vocation full liberty to do his best. By Mr. CALL ; Q. Where do these ideas carry you t Would not that be true if one man lived in a plain house, and another in a house a little plainer, and the one that lived in the plainer house should say that he would like to live in a house like the other man's ? A. It is easy to push any principle, by mere excess, to a reductio ad absurdum. In every principle we must observe the golden mean. This principle is open to such a logical conclusion as you draw. But fortunately we don't live by logic. There is such a thing as common sense, and that saves us from the folly of allowing no difference between men because we have to restrain too great differences. History does not warrant us in expecting any such direful results from the principle that great wealth is harmful. More(5ver, if great wealth only seeks to use its powers with decent regard to the rest of mankind, there is no envy felt of its luxury ; while if it really seeks the good of the community, the whole people will be proud of it. Who ever would have grudged dear old Peter Cooper the finest house he could have builded ? 37 LUXURY AND EMPLOYMENT OF LABOR. Q. That is another line of argument. But I want to know what harm there is in the building of that house by the gentleman you name without reference to the question of whether he uses his wealth properly or improperly. What harm does building a fine house do ? There is not any expenditure in the world that does not benefit some meritorious person, and go into the channels of employment in a proper and legitimate way, and even a beneficent way. A. Doubtless. But if you will kindly recall what has already passed, you will find that we have discussed this point, and I have stated my views on the question. All expenditure employs labor. That is the law of the natural communism by which Dives has to feed Lazarus with the crumbs that fall from his table. But expenditures differ as widely as heaven and hell. I may, in spending money, employ labor at tasks that enfeeble its health, debase its mind, corrupt its character ; or at tasks that build up body, mind, and soul. The man who patronizes a grog-shop, a gambling-hell, or a brothel employs people, and so does the man who goes to church. But there is some difference on the people employed and on society at large. It seems to me that only one half the truth is told in the common sophism about luxury's employing labor. The other half is, at what and how does it employ labor ? We have to consider the nature of the demand wealth makes, as well as the fact of the demand ; its quality as well as its quantity. And then we have to consider the question, already discussed, of the moral bearings on society of extrava- gance and luxury, of which the palace is the type. In itself, it may have employed labor well ; but what is the sum total of the influence of this new departure in our American manners ? That is the question. Q. You might spend your money in a liquor-shop and not do much good ; but the finer the house you build, the better for all classes of people. A. Possibly. Certainly, if the house is truly fine and cultures the taste of the people. In so far as wealth stimulates true art, it is doing a public service. Q. Do you think that the aesthetic influence is good in human life ? A. Most assuredly. But it must be genuine cestheticism, and not the " Oscar Wilde " sort. And, as I have observed, I am suspicious of the sort of art that great wealth tends to call out, in the long run. Q. That is not because of any rule or logic, that art cannot be developed out of luxury. A. Perhaps not. But I incline to believe that the nature and constitution of things does ordain that no highest art shall spring out of mere luxury. Luxury always implies want over against it. It is, therefore, an unsound social life. And out of an unsound society how shall a sound art arise ? How shall pure, high, noble visions be seen through the atmosphere of luxury, since luxury means thoughtlessness or indifference to the human suffering at its door, frivolity, or selfishness ? We have pretty high authority for such a view of the relation of luxury fco art in Ruskin. Q. But Ruskin is not "gospel." A. Perhaps not ; though, as I think, whenever his ethical sense speaks h'e is about as near " gospel " as we often hear. But he does not stand alone. WORKINGMEN AND THE CHURCHES, 3/1 Take William Morris, certainly a high authority in household art. His late book, " Hopes and Fears for Art," is far more radical than my talk. He contends that art is made by common people ; that it grows amid simple surroundings ; that its defects and vices to-day are due mainly to its dependence on wealth ; that if ever it is to be revived it must be in a true democracy. He distinctly says; "Indeed, I fear that at present the decoration of rich men's houses is mostly wrought out at the bidding of grandeur and luxury, and that art has been mostly cowed or shamed out of them ; nor, when I come to think of it, will I lament it overmuch. Art was not born in the palace ; rather she fell sick there, and it will take more bracing air than that of rich men's houses to heal her again." His love of pure art has largely driven Mr. Morris into Socialism. The CHAIRMAN. Men popularly known as leaders in the labor move- ment and organizations have been before the committee, and many of them have given testimony to the effect that evangelical Christianity is very rapidly losing its hold upon the masses of wage-workers in this country. I suppose you have studied that matter from a somewhat different stand- point. I would like to know what your views are as to that, and whether you think that is the fact. The WITNESS. I fear that there is too much truth in this view. Q. How do you explain that fact ? A. I explain it to my own mind partly by the intellectual movement of our age and partly by the social movement of our age, from both of which movements the evangelical churches have held back. There is a general break-up of the old order of thought now going on a sort of climatic change in the human mind, in which the growth of former periods is disappearing rapidly from the world. The forms of belief of the Middle Ages find the conditions unfavorable for them, and are drying up of themselves ; they are becoming unthinkable and unbelievable. About this fact, as a fact, there can be no manner of doubt ; it is unques- tionably true, and I shall not spend time in proving it. By this change I do not at all mean a dying out of religion or of Chris- tianity. Religion I hold to be the natural and necessary expression of man's spiritual nature before the mystery of the Power in which we live and move and have our being. The faiths of religion I hold to be the spontaneous and natural instincts and intuitions of the human soul ; the affirmations it makes in the presence of the realities it fronts ; the forms of its consciousness. As such I hold these faiths to be as valid as any other affirmations of human nature as the cognitions of the intellect or the per- ceptions of the senses. Therefore, as it seems to me, there is no need of our worrying ourselves about the possible dying out of religion. It never has died out, except to find a resurrection in a higher form. While man's nature remains it is likely to remain with it. But it may and does need new forms new growths of thought higher bodies of belief in which the old spirit may live on after the death and burial of its worn-out " bodies of divinity." And it is the business of the Church to see that there is free play given to this natural development. If 37 2 INTELLECTUAL AND SOCIAL FACTORS. it does see to it, if it changes its thought with the changing knowledge of man, if it grows with his growth, it will never be outgrown. Now, Christianity is evidently passing through one of these critical stages of death and resurrection. The mass of open-minded, intelligent men have already made up their minds about the old theology. They find it simply obsolete. It does n't translate itself into our speech or represent the real thought and true knowledge of our age. If the fact were per- ceived and owned by the Church, and if its doctors busied themselves in thinking the old thoughts over into the new forms made necessary by our age, all would be well. Religion would find forms in which it could live and act, and Christianity would take a new lease of life. Instead of which the Church doctors, for the most part, only repeat the old words more loudly, insist on the old thought more positively, and denounce the new knowledge as hostile to religion. They are simply driv- ing off the intelligence of our age from the evangelical churches. And in this alienation the workingman shares. So much for that half of my ex- planation. Now, as to the other half, there is a parallel story of obstructiveness on the part of the Church, with similar effect. Our age is pre-eminently, perhaps, the age of sociology. Social science the latest born of the sciences is felt to come as the natural head of them all. Every other study leads up to the construction of a true social order. And while it is the business of the science of political economy, sanitary science, the science of education, etc., to gather the materials of knowledge out of which to build this social structure, and to elaborate the plans by which it is to be reared, it is the business, as I see it, of religion to inspire the spirit which is to energize this herculean task. It is religion's function to waken the enthusiasm of humanity, as the love of God, and to set this omnipotent force at work on the building of the City of God. When true to itself it always has so done, and, so doing, has kept its grip of man firm and fast. Christianity ought to be by heredity a religious Socialism. It is the child of Hebrew prophetism. And the most striking feature of the religion of the great prophets was that it was a social aspiration. The state of Jewish society then was a close counterpart to the state of things now existing. The old land Communism of the early Hebrews had given way, and great barons were monopolizing land, and great traders were amassing big fortunes, while labor was being thrust by land and capital down into poverty and pauperism. Then the prophets began to preach such a gospel as " Woe to them that join house to house till there be no room left in the land." " Woe to them that eat up my people as if they were bread." A new sense of justice and brotherliness was aroused ; and when, long afterwards, the reformed religion of the prophets came into power and be- came the established religion of Israel, it produced the most remarkable social legislation that the world has seen the Levitical legislation on THE CHURCH'S FALL. 373 economics. This legislation nationalized the land of Israel, and vested the title in Jehovah ; forbade interest, and freed all debtors once in fifty years, when the land was re-allotted. All this was to the end " that there be no poverty in the land." Original Christianity, as we are now learning to read the secret history of its origins, was also a religious Socialism. In that age Roman maladministration had broken up the peasant pro- prietorship of free Italy and developed vast landed estates, substituting slave for free labor. Rome itself was crowded with a degraded proletariat. The provinces were drained to support the luxury of the capital. Among the oppressed and discontented classes secret, underground societies were springing up, as if by magic ; brotherhoods having a common meal as a sign of fellowship. When the original gospel was preached among the poor of the great cities it acted on this mass of discontent and rising aspiration as the yeast in flour. It was told about from man to man that God had come down to earth again in the form of a carpenter's son. He had taught men to look up to an All-Father and to live as brothers. He had promised to come back from the skies at the head of legions of angels and overthrow the tyranny of man and set up the kingdom of God. Then the good time coming would come at last. This I believe was really the secret of the quick working of early Chris- tianity. Whatever the Christianity of philosophers and rabbins may have been, the popular Christianity appears to have been a religious Socialism, such as I have suggested. The Christian Communism of the early Church at Jerusalem was a type of the social aspiration of the whole Church. Now, I believe that this was the real genius of Christianity, inherited from the Hebrew prophets. It was a religion that was expected to make the world over. And in great revivals of Christianity, such as the early dawn of the Reformation, about which men are thinking now, this feature has renewed itself. If this strong social instinct had been kept alive and the Christian Church had continued to lead the aspiration of man for a better civilization, would it ever have lost its hold on men ? A sense of wrong is a mighty strong eye-wash. It will clear out a lot of sophisms which blind men's eyes. The well-to-do classes are not quick to see how completely the Christian Church has forgotten its Master's gospel, and become the church of respect- ability and wealth and " society " ; how it has become the upholder of civ- ilization as it is ; how it has accepted the anti-Christian dogmas of the older political economists, and in so doing really turned traitor to the ethics of Jesus Christ. But the workingman sees all this quickly enough, his eyesight, as I said, being sharpened by the sense of wrong. Is it any wonder that he turns away from a Church that has no better gospel than laissez faire, no better brotherhood than the selfish strife of competition, no kingdom of God for human society here upon the earth, but only one up in the skies ; a Church 3/4 THE NEW CHRISTIANITY, which baptizes the kingdom of the Devil with fine Christian names, and asks the suffering mass of men to accept it as the will of the good Father in heaven ? The only wonder is that in such an apostasy from its Lord's life and spirit the Church has kept any hold upon the workingman. But I believe that there is a mighty change going on in the Christian Church. One sees the signs of it everywhere. Let me mention one fact. Four years ago I was asked to make a speech at the Church Congress of the Protestant Episcopal Church upon "Communism and Republicanism." What I had to say you can probably guess from my talk to-day. I expected to stand nearly alone in the position I took, counting only on Dr. Rylance, of this city, as being on that side of the question. To my surprise, every one of the seven writers and speakers took very much the same ground, and the congress went in spirit with them. Only a few days ago I came across a little paper, published in London, called The Christian Socialist. It bears the name of the movement started a generation ago by Maurice and Kingsley and their friends, and is a sign of the times. The new movement in religious thought runs into the channel of a new social righteousness. The Christian Union, which represents this movement in Congregational- ism, is thoroughly outspoken on questions of monopoly, strikes, etc. In- deed, the new Christianity, which is coming on fast, is going quite surely to find the old social enthusiasm. It will preach justice, and not charity, and will inspire men to seek not so much to save their souls as to save society. And then I have no fears about the attitude of the workingmen to the Church of the Carpenter's Son. Q. You believe, then, that one of the things essential is for the Church to reform herself ? A. I do, most assuredly. NOTE II. WORKS BEARING ON SOCIALISM. /. Political Economy in General. Among others : 1. Guide to Political Economy. (Gives information concerning writers.) 2. History of Political Economy in Europe. A. Blanqui. 3. Wealth of Nations. Adam Smith. McCulloch's or Thorold Rogers' edition. 4. Some Leading Principles of Political Economy Newly Expounded. J. E. Cairnes. 5. Manual of Political Economy. H. Fawcett. 6. Lectures on Political Economy. Nassau W. Senior. 7. Manual of Social Science. (Principles of Social Science abridged.) H. C. Carey. 8. The Unity of Law. H.C.Carey. BOOKS ON SOCIALISM. 375 9. Social Science and National Economy. R.E.Thompson. 10. Elements of Political Economy. Emile de Laveleye. 11. Studies in Political Economy. Thomas Chalmers. 12. Principles of Political Economy. W. Roscher. //. Semi- Socialism ; Socialists of the Chair, etc. 1. Der Kapitalismus und Socialismus. Schaffle. Edition 1870. (His- tory of Socialism ; account of the principal writers, with a critique of the doctrines.) 2. Politische Oekonomie. Adolf Wagner. 3. Principles of Political Economy. John Stuart Mill. 4. Unsettled Questions in Political Economy. John Stuart Mill. 5. Chapters on Socialism. John Stuart Mill. 6. On Labor. W. T. Thornton. 7. Mtinera Pulveris. Essays on the Elements of Political Economy. John Ruskin. 8. Fors Clavigera. Letters to Workingmen. John Ruskin. 9. Time and Tide. John Ruskin. 10. Unto this Last. John Ruskin. 11. Art of Political Economy. John Ruskin. 12. Politics for the People. F. D. Maurice. 13. Lectures on Social Questions . J. H. Rylance, D.D. 14. The Position of Socialism in the Historical Development of Political Economy. Henry C. Adams, Ph. D. Penn Monthly, April, 1879. 15. Usury. John Ruskin. Contemporary Review, February, 1880. ///. Socialism. 1. Histoire de F Internationale. Villetart. 2. History of the Commune. Vesinier. 3. Die deutsche Socialdemokratie. Mehring. (A History of German Socialism.) 4. Das Kapital. Karl Marx. 5. Arbeiter-Lesebuch. Ferdinand Lasalle. 6. Arbeiter-Frage. Lange. 7. Lois du Travail au XIX. Siecle. Max Wirth. 8. Organization du Travail. Louis Blanc. 9. Histoire du Communisme. A. Sudre. 10. Etudes sur les Reformateurs ou Socialistes Modernes. L. Reybaud. 11. Ferdinand Lasalle. Georg Brandes. 12. The Works of P. J. Proudhon : Vol. I. , What is Property ? Trans- lated and published by B. R. Tucker, Princeton, Mass. 13. St. Simon and St. Simonism. A. J. Booth. 14. A Russian Panslavist Programme. C. Tondini de Quarenghi. Contemporary Review, August, 1881. BOOKS ON SOCIALISM. 15. Socialism of To-day. Laveleye. 16. Contemporary Socialism. John Rae, 17. History of French and German Socialism. R. T. Ely. IV. American Socialism, 1. A Labor Catechism. Osborne Ward, 610 Bergen Street, Brooklyn. 2. Socialism and the Worker. F. A. Sorge, Box 101, Hoboken, N. J. 3. True Civilization. Josiah Warren. B. R. Tucker, Princeton, Mass. 4. Work and Wealth. J. K. Ingalls. Published by the author, 5 Worth Street, New York. 5. Better Times. A. Douai. Published by the Executive Committee of the Workingmen's Party, Chicago. 6. Peacemaker Grange. Samuel Leavitt. Published by the author, 5 Worth Street, New York. 7. Land and Laborer. J. K. Ingalls, 5 Worth Street, New York. 8. The Co-operative Commonwealth. Laurence Gronlund. (An embod- iment of Karl Marx's views.) 9. Recent American Socialism. Ely. 10. Papers. John Swinton's Paper, New York. The Irish World, New York. Liberty. (Ultra-individualistic and Anarchic in the sense of Proudhon.) Volks-Zeitung, V. Anti-Socialism. 1. Der Socialismus iind seine Conner. H. von Freitschke. 2. Communism in America. Henry Ammon James. 3. Communism and Socialism, in their History and Theoties. T. D. Woolsey. 4. Socialism. Roswell D. Hitchcock, D.D. 5. Socialism. Joseph Cook. 6. What Social Classes Owe to Each Other. W. G. Sumner. 7. Property and Progress. W. H. Mallock. 8. The Distribution of Products. Edward Atkinson. 9. The Progress of the Working Classes in the Last Half Century. Rob- ert Giffen. VI. Descriptions of Communism, Past and Present. 1. The Early History of Institutions. Sir Henry Maine. 2. Village Communities in the East and West. Sir Henry Maine. 3. Ancient Law. Sir Henry Maine. Ch. viii. 4. Primitive Property. Laveleye. (A Comprehensive Presentation of Researches into the Prehistoric Communisms.) 5. Russia. D. Mackenzie Wallace. Chs. viii. and ix. (Account of the Mir.) 6. History of American Socialisms . John Humphrey Noyes. 7. The Communistic Societies in the United States, Charles Nordhoff. BOOKS ON SOCIALISM. 377 8. Socialism and Communism in their Practical Applications. Kauf- mann. 9. Ideal Commonwealths. Morley's Universal Library. (Plutarch's Life of Lycurgus, More's Utopia, Bacon's New Atalantis, etc.) VII. Concerning Co-operation. 1. Cours (f Economic Politique a /" Usage des Ouvriers et des Artisans, par Schultze-Delitzsch. B. Rampal. 2. History of Co-operation in England. George J. Holyoake. 3. Co-operative Manual. (An abridgment of above.) 4. Co-operation as a Business. Charles Barnard. 5. The Association of Capital with Labor. Being the Laws and Regu- lations of Mutual Assurance Regulating the Social Palace at Guise, France. Jean Baptiste Andre Godin, the Founder. Published by the Woman's Social Science Association of New York, Room 24, Cooper Institute. (A sketch of the most remarkable of later French experiments in industrial reorganization.) 6. Pro fit- Sharing, Sedley Taylor. 7. The Irish Land and Labor Question ; illustrated in the History of Ralahine and Co-operative Farming. E. T. Craig. 8. The Co-operative News (weekly), Manchester, England. 9. The Building Association Journal (monthly), Philadelphia. VIII. Concerning Trades- Unions, Etc. 1. The History and Development of Gilds and the Origin of Trades- Unions. Lujo Brentano. 2. English Gilds : the Original Ordinances of More than One Hundred Early English Gilds. (Early English Text Society.) 3. The Conflict of Labor and Capital : History and Review of the Trades-Unions of Great Britain. George Howell. IX. The Land Question. 1. Progress and Poverty. Henry George. 2. The Irish Land Question. Henry George. 3. Protection or Free Trade. Henry George. 4. Land Nationalization. A. R. Wallace. 5. Land and Labor. D. Godwin Moody. 6. Primitive Property. Laveleye. 7. The Land Systems of Great Britain and Ireland. J. E. Cliff Leslie. 8. Our Common Lands, Octavia Hill. X. Other Special Aspects of the Social Problem. 1. Railroads: Their Origin and Problems. Charles Francis Adams, Jr. 2. Report of Committee of New York legislature on Railroads. 1872. 37 8 BOOKS ON SOCIALISM. 3 Report of Committee of New York Legislature on Railroads. 1879. (Hepburn Committee.) 4. Report of United States Senate Committee on Transportation Routes. 1874. 5. Railroad Transportation : Its History and its Laws. Arthur T. Hadley. 6. Sex in Industry. Azel Ames, Jr., M.D. 7. Essays, Moral, Political, and Aesthetic. Herbert Spencer. III. The Morals of Trade. 8. Social Condition of England and the Continent of Europe. Kay. 9. The English Peasantry. Francis George Heath. 10. Pauperism : Its Causes and Remedies. I. Y. Fawcett. 11. Economics for the People. R. R. Bowker. 12. Labor Differences and their Settlement : A Plea for Arbitration. Joseph D. Weeks. 13. Manual Training.: The Solution of Social and Industrial Problems. Charles H. Ham. 14. Effect of Machinery on Wages. J. S. Nicholson. 15. Report of United States Bureau of Education on Industrial Education. 16. Second Report of the Royal Commissioners on Technical Education. (4 vols.) 17. First Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor (U. S.) : Indus- trial Depressions. 1 8. Wages and Earnings of the Working Classes. Leone Levi. 19. Work and Wages. Thomas Brassey. XI. Reports and Statistics, Etc. 1. Investigation by a Select Committee of the House of Representatives , Relative to the Causes of the General Depression in Labor and Business. 1879. 45th Congress, 3d Session. Mis Doc. No. 29. 2. Labor and Capital. Investigation of Senate Committee on Educa- tion and Labor. (Blair Com.) 1885. 3. The State of Labor in Europe. Reports from the United States Con- suls in the several countries of Europe on the Rate of Wages,' Cost of Living to the Laborer, etc. 45th Congress, 1st Session. Exec. Doc. No. 5. 4. Report on Labor in Europe and America. E. Young. 5. Reports of Bureau of Labor and Statistics of Massachusetts. 6. Do. New Jersey. 7. Do. New York. 8. Do. Pennsylvania. (Bureau of Industrial Statistics.) 9. Do. Connecticut. 10. Do. Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, California, Michigan, Wis- consin, Iowa, Maryland, and Kansas. 1 1 . Industrial History of the United States. Bolles. 12. The Conditions of Nations, Social and Political. G. W. Kolb. 13. Balance Sheet of the World. (1870-80.) M. G. Mulhall. SOCIALISTIC RELIGIONS. 379 NOTE III. GROUNDS FOR THE POSITION TAKEN IN ESSAY IX. ON THE SOCIALISTIC CHARACTER OF RELIGIOUS REFORMATIONS. Authorities for the position taken in this essay are not very plentiful, though the position itself seems to me in the main unquestionable. His- torians have until very lately taken slight notice of the social aspects of the past. Such studies as those of Green and McM asters are novelties. Ecclesiastical historians manifest the same lack of interest in the politico- economic phases of Church life, and scarcely deign to notice the facts which now we want so much to know about. An examination of Ewald, for ex- ample, with reference to the remarkable socialistic legislation of the Thorah, will be amply suggestive on this point. Even were our modern ecclesiasti- cal historians really interested in this phase of their subject, they themselves would find as yet comparatively little material left by early historians for such a study. One has but to turn to any of the earlier ecclesiastical his- torians to realize how completely the social aspect of religion has been ignored. We come in all our studies of primitive Christianity, for example, upon hints of the wealth of data which might have been preserved for us " only this and nothing more." We must at present theorize from hints, though the hints are often strong enough to satisfy even where they do not prove. It seems unnecessary to point out the hints of such a social aspect of primitive Buddhism. They lie on the surface of the story everywhere, whether in the life of Gautama himself who went about preaching his " Blessed are ye poor," or in the history of the great monastic order which created a genuine religious Communism among its members. The poverty of the masses of India has for ages been notorious, and must have appealed powerfully to the tender heart of Sakya-Muni, while the injustice of society must have pointed the sharp, stern, ethical appeals of that marvellous teacher. The immediate upspringing of a Communistic brotherhood in primitive Buddhism, as in primitive Christianity, seems to me to tell one and the same tale. In each case, as it seems to me, this fact meant more than a. foti stou whence to gain individual peace and holiness it must have meant a social aspiration. But in India, society has never become devel- oped to the stage of social self-consciousness, and does not even to-day know what is the matter with it, economically, although it is suffering so keenly from a chronic disease. It were useless, therefore, to look for any clear traces of a socialistic tendency in the records of early Buddhism. We must be content with interpreting the unconscious Socialism of the Hindoo Friend of the People. A study of the social teachings of Mencius will show that in as unprogressive an eastern land as China, between three and four hundred years before Christ, there was need to combat Socialism. Mih Teh (450 B. c.) taught a genuine Socialism, which his followers pushed on into extreme Communism ; and it was their growing power that Mencius sought to stem in his sturdy, practical common-sense wisdom. (See Intro- SOCIALISTIC RELIGIONS. duction to " The Mind of Mencius.") So that there could be no anachron- ism in assigning at least an unconscious Socialism to India, in the same period. (See " Buddha : His Life, Doctrine, and Order," Oldenburg, p. 354, etc.) Concerning the socialistic character of Hebrew prophetism, the familiar pages of the great religio-social and political reformers of Israel are the most authoritative and convincing testimony. See Isaiah, i. ; iii., 13, 14 ; x., 1-4 ; xi., 1-9 ; xxxii. ; xxxiii. , 14-17 ; Micah, ii. ; vi. ; Leviticus, xxv. For such hints as are to be found in the modern historians of Israel, see : " The Religion of Israel," Kuenen, i., 62, 372 ; and ii., 36 (The Prophets as Social Reformers) ; i., 316 (Nazarites) ; i., 358 (Rechabites) ; ii., 36 (Sabbatical Year Found in Early " Judgments," and reissued in Deuteron- omy) ; ii., 278 (Priestly Legislation) ; ii., 191 (Ownership of Land) ; iii., 120 (Democracy and Religion in the Later History). " History of the Hebrew Monarchy," F. W. Newman, p. 15, etc. (So- cial Changes Going on among the People) ; p. 227 (Solomon's Trade and Effects of). " Prophets of Israel," W. Robertson Smith, pp. 84, 88, 95, 204, 239, 289, 292, 429. " Early Hebrew Life," John Fenton ; Trubner & Co., London. A very small but most suggestive book. Should be carefully examined in this connection. Concerning the socialistic character of primitive Christianity, see last essay in this volume, " Communism," xiii., for outline of the teaching of Jesus, and Biblical references therefor. Cf. also "Jesus of Nazara," Keim, i., 365 (Essenism) ; "The Religion of Israel," Kuenen, iii., 127 (Essenism) ; " The Essenes," Ginsburg ; " The Life of Jesus," Renan, chapters vii., xi., and xvii. ; "St. Paul," Renan, chapters iv., v., and ix. ; " The Apostles," Renan, chapters v., viii., xi., p. 184, etc. ; xviii., p. 281 ; " The Unseen World and Other Essays," John Fiske, p. 88, etc. ; " Jesus, His Opinions and Character," p. 103, etc. Readers of " Arius the Libyan" will recall its interesting endeavor of sketch the original Christian communities as genuine Communisms. The author of that book has in preparation a work aiming to show that primitive Christianity was in reality such a religious Communism ; that for wellnigh three centuries the recognized property-law of the Christian societies es- tablished a genuine commonwealth in those simple brotherhoods ; that the persecutions of the Roman state, so difficult to account for, were, in reality, drawn forth by this character of those secret associations ; and that the estab- lishment of Christianity as the State religion was in reality the victory of the Pagan Individualism over this Christian Socialism. His working up of this thesis is very interesting and full of suggestiveness, but, to my mind, inconclusive. His own interpretation of the lack of data for such a theory is drawn from the well-known historic fact of the systematic tampering of later ecclesiastics with the original documents of primitive Christianity. To my own mind, there are abundaat hints of such a social aspiration as I have found in early Christianity, but no evidence of a systematic adoption of Communism. THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW.