FOOTNOTES:
[13] Maspero, Dawn of Civilization, p. 53.
[14] Hobhouse, Evolution of Morals, I, p. 189.
[15] Sayce, Babylonians and Assyrians.
[16] Fisher, The Beginnings of Christianity, p. 199.
[17] Mommsen, History of Rome, II, p. 484.
[18] Mommsen, History of Rome, I, p. 91.
“The grown up son might establish a separate household or, as the Romans expressed it, maintain his own cattle (perculium) assigned to him by his father; but in law all that the son acquired, whether by his own labour or by gift from a stranger, whether in his father’s household or in his own, remained the father’s property.”
[19] Mommsen, History of Rome, I, p. 93.
[20] Mommsen, History of Rome, II, p. 484-5.
[21] Mommsen, History of Rome, I, p. 89.
[22] Durny, History of Rome, I. Sec. 1, pp. 54-55.
[23] Guizot, History of Civilization, I, pp. 92-93.
[24] Guizot, History of Civilization, VI, p. 91.
[25] Green, Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, p. 264-5.
[26] Ostrogorski, The Right of Women, p. 2.
[27] Green, Town Life in the Fifteenth Century, II, p. 88.
[28] Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century, pp. 219-220.
[29] Toynbee, The Industrial Revolution, p. 15.
[30] Toynbee, The Industrial Revolution, p. 181.
[31] Cheyney, Industrial and Social History of England, p. 206.
[32] Toynbee, The Industrial Revolution, p. 88.
[33] Toynbee, The Industrial Revolution, p. 186.
[34] Hart, National Ideals Historically Traced, pp. 188-189.
CHAPTER III
The Effects of Industrial Changes Upon the Homes of the Working Poor
Under the domestic system of industry the lord or the master assumed a moral responsibility for the welfare of his working people. It was his recognized duty to care for them when in distress. Although this system of industry centered great power in the hands of a few, and admitted of great abuse, it relieved the workman of a sense of responsibility for the future. With the introduction of machinery, this protection afforded by the master ceased along with the servitude of the worker. A prop was removed from the working people as well as a weight. The immediate result was almost disastrous.
Under the old domestic system there was little encouragement of individual initiative, and the routine of life was subject to few, if any, disturbances that thrust great responsibilities upon the individual. Initiative was a characteristic of the master but the poor worker was taught obedience from the cradle. He was never stimulated nor encouraged to start out on a new line for himself. In other words, he and his family were protected from the uncertainties and responsibilities imposed upon the modern workman. His standard of living was necessarily low. Hunger was not unknown, but it was apt to be a hunger common to all in his class, and so seemingly inevitable, rather than a hunger endured by his family because of his failure in the every day industrial struggle.
The cheapened cost of production of machine industry played havoc with the small domestic manufacturer. His employees were forced into the cities to compete for work at the machine a new experience which was markedly reflected in the homes of the workers. The industrial conditions of the domestic workers in England when forced to compete with machine industry, were similar to those pictured by Dawson when he says of Germany, “the condition of the house workers in most country districts is lamentable, and in towns it is not much better. It would, indeed, be difficult to exaggerate the misery which has for years been the lot of this class of workers. There, as in Silesia, a hand-weaver is glad to earn 5s. or 6s. for work which occupies nine days of from sixteen to eighteen hours (less than a halfpenny per hour), while his wife toils six hours a day for three weeks to complete a web which will bring her an equal sum, the problem how to make ends meet suggests to the social economist many reflections.”[35]
The bringing together of laborers into industrial centers deprived them of the use of land for agricultural purposes. This increased the laborer’s dependence upon industrial conditions, and upon his employer. His employer was now an individual tending to be indifferent to his employe’s well-being and considering him only as so much labor power to be utilized for his advantage.
The laborer found his relations to his new master purely economic, and he himself responsible for his personal welfare and the welfare of his family. His sickness and misfortune, though of social importance, was no longer of economic importance to his employer since the supply of labor equalled or exceeded the demand for it.
A few individuals profited by the breaking down of class barriers, and asserted an individuality in harmony with economic conditions. But the bulk of the people, either from sheer inefficiency or lack of opportunity failed to get a foot-hold and constituted a class easily exploited by the more successful.
The literature of the period of transition pictures vividly the sufferings endured by the families of the workers. The poverty and misery of thousands resulting from the adjustment to machine industry appealed to all classes of society, and while the essayists and novelists made a pathetic appeal to the general public, the economists attempted in vain to suggest some alleviation for the existing distress.
The poorest class of workers was composed largely of persons who were highly skilled in the handicraft stage, but were now forced into occupations requiring little training, and open to labor formerly considered inefficient. Not only was the number of persons needed to turn out the finished product much smaller than formerly, but the work formerly done by men could be done by women and children.
The labor of women was in greater demand than that of men. “In 1839, of 31,632 employees in the worsted mills, 18,416, or considerably more than half, were under eighteen years of age, and of the 13,216 adults, 10,192 were women, leaving only 3,024 adult men among more than 30,000 laborers.”[36]
Although cheap labor lowered the cost of production, it did not benefit the laborer who helped to bring it about, for his standard of consumption was below that which his production represented. His work supplied a higher demand than that of his class, and what was his loss was another’s gain. The greatest benefit of cheapened production fell to those classes not depending for their living upon their manual work, or, who received good wages by virtue of the demand for their skill.
Nowhere are the degenerating possibilities that lurk in industrial changes more plainly seen than in the homes of the unskilled workers in England early in the nineteenth century. With the introduction of the factory system the home in many cases became merely a place to sleep and eat. Miss Orne pictures the home life of poor families where man and wife are employed.
In the chain, nail and bolt making industries man and wife stood over the same forge, doing practically the same work for they often exchanged work to break the monotony of their toil. But the wife “took care of the home in addition to factory work.”
The married women appear to be as numerous as the unmarried. There is a general custom in the district for boys and girls of 17 or so to marry, and for each to continue at work, living in the homes of their respective parents. Older married women are generally found in the small workshop of the husband or some near relation.[37]
With few exceptions the “homes belonging to women who work either in factories or home work shops are very nearly desolate. The meals consist of bread and butter and tea, with a little cold bacon for dinner. The tea is made from a kettle heated at the forge, and thus the cares of the housekeeping are reduced to a minimum. There is no knowledge of cooking, and therefore no variety of diet. The children troup into the workshop as they come from school, and in fact, there is no home life at all.”[38]
Such homes are typical of workers where the husband and wife are compelled to enter the factory in order to feed and clothe themselves and their children. Many of them are ignorant—possess little authority and are indifferent to the exercises of the authority they do possess. Their work does not allow them sufficient energy nor do the financial returns afford them the needed nourishment for a healthy body and mind.
What is true of England is true of all countries where modern methods of industry are practiced, and where the state has not taken steps to check the evils arising out of the system.
Gohre, who has made a careful study of a large manufacturing establishment in industrial Saxony says, “Think for a moment of the incomes and the homes of the working men as I have described them; under such conditions it becomes almost impossible for the average man to realize the beautiful old Christian ideal of the family, about which we hear so much from the pulpit, let him try as he may * * * Think how the daily struggle for existence often compels the daily absence of both parents from the home, as well as the presence of strangers in the household, sometimes coarse and lawless people, and how this must interfere with any sort of regular training of the children.”[39]
Keeping boarders and lodgers—especially lodgers—is a common method of increasing the income of the family. High rent imposes upon them the necessity of resorting to some measure to increase the income of the family above that which represents the remuneration of the father for his daily toil. The burden of keeping boarders and lodgers falls upon the wife, but this source of income is seldom added when estimating the amount contributed by the wife to the family income.
Many of the evil effects of mothers being employed in factories is apparent to all, but the crowding of the home with strangers is no less disastrous to family life. The economic goal is the only possible one and the family loses its ethical purpose. The Pittsburgh Survey emphasized the effect of overcrowding the home. “As half of the family use the kitchen for sleeping, there is a close mingling of the lodgers with the family which endangers the children’s morals. In only four instances were there girls over fourteen found in the families taking lodgers, but even the younger children learn evil quickly from the free spoken men. One man in a position to know the situation intimately, spoke of the appalling familiarity with vice among children in these families.”[40]
In the city of York, England, the wages paid for unskilled work are often insufficient to provide food, shelter, and clothing for a family of moderate size, “in a state of bare physical efficiency.” Of the income of those families receiving less than 18s weekly the women contribute 50 per cent and the men 8 per cent. The small proportion contributed by the men of the household is due to a large number of families in which the father is either dead or sick. Where the income is 18s and under 21s per week and the family of a moderate size the male heads of the family contribute 76 per cent and the female head of the household 13.3 per cent. With the increase of the weekly earnings of the men, women contribute less and less.[41]
The investigation of Mr. Rowntree shows conclusively that married women of the poorest classes do not engage in industry outside the home for the sake of pin money. They work because circumstances compel them to do so, and just as soon as the economic pressure is somewhat relieved married women remain in their homes.
The statement is made in Women’s Work and Wages, that “Nearly all the home makers who answered the question as to why they worked gave one of three reasons. The most frequent was that the husband’s wages were either too small or too irregular to keep the home. Fifty-two per cent gave their answer in many varying forms, of which a frequent one was, ‘It is all very well at first, but what are you to do when you have three or four children like little steps around you?’”
“Others had worked all their lives; if the husband is a labourer earning at best 18s. per week and liable to many weeks without work, no other course seems possible.”[42]
Miss Collet says, “I have never yet come across a married woman in the working classes with such eagerness for pocket-money that she would work for it at the rate of 1/2d or 1d an hour. Whenever I found women who said they worked at very low rates they have been working for their living and for that of their children; their husbands have always been men disabled or out of work.”[43]
Frequently the wife of the unskilled worker does not go to the factory; her work is brought to her in her home. This is a great convenience to her for it enables her to remain with her children who are often too small to be left alone and it is impossible to take them to the factory. “The women who take work home from ware-houses, factories, or sub-contracting agents are, with comparatively few exceptions, married or widowed, if we exclude from consideration that large class described as dressmakers or seamstresses. The home workers are to be found in every grade of society among the wage-earning class; in the home of the middle-class clerk and in the room of the dock laborer; rarely, I think, in the tradesmen class, where wives can add to the family income more effectually by assisting in the management of the shop.”[44]
The taking of work into the home is to the advantage of the employer as well as to the immediate advantage of the employee. It saves the employer rent and tools and procures him cheaper labor. Women can afford to work for less under their own roof when it is a question of working for less or not at all. These women do not often compete with men, for their work is the poorest paid and the least skilled. Few men compete with women in the lower grades of work unless they are physically unable to compete with men for the better kinds of employments. On the other hand women usually perform some branch of work which is wholly abandoned to them by the men and they refrain, whether willingly or not, from engaging in the branches monopolized by their male rivals.[45]
The advantages of cheap production do not often fall to this class of laboring women. Says Mrs. Campbell, “The emancipation of women is well under way, when all underwear can be bought more cheaply than it is possible to make it up at home, and simple suits of very good material make it hardly more difficult for women to clothe herself without thought or worry, than it has long been for men. This is the word heard at a woman’s club not long ago, and reinforced within a week by two well-known journals edited in the interests of women at large.”
The emancipation on the one side has meant no corresponding emancipation for the other; and as one woman selects, well pleased, garment after garment, daintily tucked and trimmed and finished beyond any capacity of home sewing, marveling a little that a few dollars can give such lavish return, there arises, from narrow attic and dark, foul basement, and crowded factory, the cry of the women whose life blood is on these garments. Through burning scorching days of summer; through marrow-piercing cold of winter, in hunger and rags with white faced children at their knees, crying for more bread, or, silent from long weakness, looking with blank eyes at the flying needle, these women toil on, twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours even, before the fixed task is done.[46]
After a careful study of one of the thickly populated working districts in New York, Mrs. More says, “As the children grow older and require less of her care at home, the mother takes in sewing or goes out washing, secures a janitor’s place, cleans offices, and does whatever she can to increase the weekly income. She feels this to be her duty, and often it is necessary, but frequently it has a disastrous effect on the ambition of the husband. As soon as he sees that the wife can help support the family, his interest and sense of responsibility are likely to lessen, and he works irregularly or spends more on himself. There are, of course, many families in which this united income is needed, when the man’s illness or incapacity makes it imperative for the wife to help. Sometimes it is due to thrift and ambition to save money for the future, or for some definite purpose. Charitable societies generally deplore the prevalence of this custom because of its economic and moral results on the head of the family.”[47]
The British Board of Trade, in its report on French towns, says: “With regard to the wives’ earnings it may be observed that their importance is not limited to the towns in which textile industries predominate. In 51 per cent of all the families from which budgets were obtained the wives were contributors; the proportion was highest at Rome (a town largely dependent on the cotton trade,) where it was no less than 82 per cent.” Of Germany the report says, “A large proportion of the home workers are married women, who in this way seek to supplement the earnings of the chief bread-winner, and are only able to devote odd hours to the work. How largely the custom of home working is a result of poverty may be concluded from a statement made in a memorial lately addressed to the Berlin Tramway Company by its employees. The tramway employee is unfortunately unable to dispense with the earnings of his wife, even in normal domestic conditions, if he would maintain his family properly. The wife has really no choice in the matter. So, too, of 2,051 municipal employees interrogated on the subject in 1905. 416 or 20.2 per cent replied that their wives worked for money, 170 at charring, 161 as home workers, and 17 in factories, and 68 in other ways.”[48]
In spite of their economic independence the status of the women among the working poor is lower than the status of the women of any other social class. They suffer more from oppression, and their position is little higher than that of the women of the Australia aborigines among whom man has the power of life and death over his wife and children. It is true, the state restricts the power of the husband over the wife and secures for her certain personal rights the Australian savages are ignorant of, but she has a new master in modern industry which virtually exercises over her a power of life and death untempered by sympathy and mutual interest. Degeneracy and elimination such as was never known in primitive society would result if the more fortunately situated economic classes did not interfere.