THE MAN IN THE YARDS
This great country of ours has become within the last century a huge "melting pot" for all the nations of the world. Foreign and English speaking tongues from the four corners of the earth have sought our shores as a haven of relief and opportunity. No other nation has experienced a like growth and none other has ever gained the changing cosmopolitan characteristics which have come to us from such widely differing component parts. Those of us who call ourselves Americans owe our life, liberty and happiness to the conditions which brought about this great growth and upon us devolves the great burden of relieving many of the unfortunate conditions which naturally result from the continued and increasing wave of humanity still seeking better things in our so-called land of freedom and equality.
During the past ninety years nearly thirty millions of people have entered our immigration gates, adding to our numbers more inhabitants than the total population of the United States three score years ago, and almost one-third of our present total figure. At the close of the year of 1912 the total and combined population of five states of the Union did not equal the number of immigrants admitted during the preceding twelve months. Eighty per cent of these thirty millions arrived during the last fifty years. Eighty-seven per cent of them were more than fourteen years of age, while only thirteen per cent were under fourteen. These figures easily demonstrate that the problem is a growing one and that the large proportion of new arrivals are destined to become citizens and parents of future citizens in a short time. Our past policy of devoting our greatest efforts to the thirteen per cent while largely neglecting the eighty-seven per cent seems very similar to the losing method of mending a leaking boat by removing the water with a sponge rather than by repairing the hole.
Economists tell us that the "rise and fall of the immigration waves are very closely connected with the phenomenon of prosperity in this country," and that the general causes of westward expansion lie in the presence of foreign political and religious persecutions, low wages, bad economic conditions, ease of transportation, inflated rumors of great opportunities in America, and the appeal of separated friends and relatives.
The early immigrants, being largely of Teutonic and Keltic origin, were thrifty and self-reliant by nature and entered our American life as skilled workmen in agriculture and in the trades. In the last quarter of a century the source of the tide has changed from the northern to the southern countries, resulting in a far different type of foreigner who is generally unskilled, lacking independence and initiative, and blindly submissive to authority. Many come from nations with a per cent. of illiteracy rising as high as seventy, and notwithstanding the fifty per cent decrease in the total percentage of illiteracy in this country during the past thirty years we must face the fact that some twenty-eight out of every one hundred of the new arrivals over fourteen years of age are annually classed as illiterates. In the future we may expect to receive an increasing flood of immigration from China, Japan and India, with problems and conditions even more perplexing.
Some say that the incoming foreigner directly affects the entire laboring class native to America in that he adds materially to the supply of wage earners, lowers the scale of wages due to lower standards of living, changes working conditions through the subdivision of labor, modifies labor organizations, influences local and national politics and increases social difficulties. It has been said that "low standards of living on the part of unskilled workers menace the higher standards of the skilled workers. The man of skill is recognizing this fact and he is frequently found joining hands with the unskilled to right the grievances of the latter. In the cotton mills, in the meat packing industry, in the coal mines, in the clothing industry and elsewhere, one nationality has been displaced by another satisfied with a lower standard of living. In turn the second has been displaced by a third, and so on. Wave after wave of immigrants may be traced in the history of one of these industries. As rapidly as a race rises in the scale of living, and through organization begins to demand higher wages and to resist the pressure of long hours and over-exertion, the employers substitute another race and the process is repeated. Each race comes from a country lower in the scale than that of the preceding until finally the ends of the earth have been ransacked in the search for low standards of living combined with patient industriousness." (Carlton).
Our civilization cannot remain unaffected by these changing characteristics and the threatening, industrial conditions confronting us. With the army of the unemployed rapidly growing larger and larger, it behooves the American nation to encourage immediate consideration of ways and means to prevent unfortunate results in our industrial, political and social life.
The national government, being concerned chiefly with the admission or rejection of the immigrant, quickly places him under the care of state and local governments, who are duty-bound to assume the entire responsibility of developing him into an efficient worker and a good citizen. The regulation of private employment agencies, protection of the foreigner in transit, adoption of standard employment laws, creation of municipal unemployment commissions, etc., indicate that state and city governments are beginning to respond to this duty of offering more sympathetic understanding, more adequate care and better protection to the newly arrived, confused, unemployed and homeless immigrant. These governments are slowly realizing that their obligations have been sorely neglected in the past when such problems were wholly consigned to the well meaning but quite inadequate field of private philanthropy. Public libraries, as departments of city governments, concerned with the dissemination of knowledge of the masses, must soon realize their large responsibility in the naturalization, education and socialization of our foreign born population. It is very gratifying to announce that the state of Massachusetts has very recently taken the lead in this particular field of service by the passage of an act authorizing the appointment by the Board of library commissioners of a field worker to direct the educational work of libraries among the aliens of the state.
Libraries, like human beings, can reach a high point of efficiency and service in a particular line only when that line is encouraged and promoted. The development of libraries favoring certain classes of citizens has been quite general and extremely successful. Much has been said but comparatively little has been done for the foreigner among our laboring men. The "man in the yards," the unskilled foreign wage-earner, being taxed, while needing more and receiving less from society than others, "has done much of the rough and hard work of recent decades. He has built the roadbeds of our railways, mined our coal and iron, unloaded our vessels, and cleaned our streets. The recent immigrant has performed the crude manual labor necessary for the upbuilding of big industrial plants and huge transportation systems. His services in developing the resources of the nation have been extremely important. Many industries would be almost depleted if divested of all wage-earners of foreign birth and those born on American soil but of foreign born parents. If the foreign born and the native born of foreign parents were removed from our large cities, the latter would shrink to approximately one-third of their recent size." (Carlton.)
This "man in the yards" with whom "intimate contact removes prejudice, inspires appreciation and kindles self-respect," displays an astounding amount of seriousness and earnestness in his desire to learn and to improve himself when once informed of the possibilities in our libraries. Very often he finds his chief delight in the best of books, like a child calling for good instead of new books, and many times he is not as dull and as ignorant as generally supposed, being more appreciative of better things than our average native laboring man. The opportunity is a great one to be of practical and inspirational help to an eager reader seeking to increase his earning power and joy in life, and to learn of the higher ideals of citizenship and the coming brotherhood of all.
In order to devise worth-while methods of approaching him and securing his interest, place yourself in imagination in similar surroundings and conditions on a foreign shore. Only through direct appeals touching your personal needs, pleasure and occupation would you be attracted in like circumstances by strangers. The same is true with our new Americans.
Foreigners who speak the same language largely settle in the same locality and move from place to place in groups. A thorough educational survey of these groups in the community tributary to the library or branch is of first importance to determine the characteristics, conditions and needs of each group. Whenever it is possible an experienced library and social worker should be employed. The advice and assistance of factory managers, labor leaders and social workers cannot be valued too highly. Following these steps branch and deposit stations administered by local assistants may well be located in favorable shops, yards, factories, settlements, centers, and labor headquarters, without arousing undue suspicion among the men, even more extensively than in many of our progressive library systems today.
The formation of the recently named "Creative" or "Extension" departments and the appointment of one or more trained assistants to create interest and regularly visit and supervise the library work in each district, group and institution will soon become a customary feature in the large cities. I firmly believe that it will not be many years until our large manufacturing institutions employing much labor will construct recreational centers in their plants equipped with social, reading and gymnastic departments sufficient to meet the needs of their employees. Furthermore, I see little to discourage the establishment of traveling library collections on wheels, visiting certain districts on scheduled time, after the manner of the now famous Maryland wagon and automobile. In libraries near foreign centers special departments are needed to supply practical and simple information in different languages on requirements for naturalization, instruction, employment, investments, American customs, travel and history, demands of law and order, American money and banks, and friendly advice on many things of fifty-seven or more varieties.
The development of our present line of tactics, including the presentation of lectures emphasizing the possibility of increased wages through practical reading, the formation of classes in the study of English, the promotion of special foreign entertainment programs and exhibitions, the extension of the library habit to adults through publicity directed to their children, the publication of daily news for workers by means of special library papers and the general press, the creation of more effectively printed library advertising done in many languages, the co-operation with individuals and societies promoting educational, social and recreation centers, etc., will open a new era in library service for foreign laboring men.
A great number of specialized and technical industrial books may not often be found necessary in library collections, since the great need among this class of readers is a large supply of trade journals and more elementary mechanical books for the unskilled workman, the student mechanic and the future tradesman.
On the other hand life as well as livelihood must be considered and met. All men must live while they are earning a living and in these days they must be trained for vacation as well as vocation. The tendency today is to place too much emphasis on the daily struggle for livelihood and to neglect the hours of life during leisure time. In defense of the "man in the yards" the crying answer returns, "but what of the man whose soul-deadening toil leaves little or no time for leisure or whose daily labor kills all mental and physical desire for leisure, rest and improvement." This cry will return again and again until all labor shall be so equalized that all men will have more of what life offers and less of what it demands. Those who work on specialized labor done under intense strain and through long hours are destined to become weakened, brutalized and almost incapable of showing intelligent interest in social-betterment. Even "family life," the first school of morals, is a closed book against the man who comes home dead-tired late at night.
Consider some of the perils through which the working boy must pass from year to year, such as economic waste in un-educational trades, stinted physical development, early maturity, suppression of the spirit of boyhood, indifference towards knowledge and efficiency, personal weakness, and delinquency. The dire results due to these perils are well illustrated by the following replies made by a number of Chicago factory children when asked why they quit school:
"Because it's easier to work in a factory than it is to learn at school."
"You never understand what they tell you in school and you can learn right off to do things in a factory."
"They don't call you a Dago."
"You can buy shoes for the baby."
"Our boss he never went to school."
"School ain't no good. The Holy Father he can send ye to hell, and the boss he can take yer job away er raise yer pay. But the teacher, she can't do nothing."
Is it not true that greed, selfishness, privilege, injustice and neglect are five of the great sins of civilization? These obstructions to progress are largely due to ignorance and indifference, two causes which are in themselves as great evils as their results. In order to attain the best of social conditions, positive cures must be found for these devastating evils—cures that will replace greed by liberality, selfishness by the brotherhood of man, privilege by equality, injustice by justice and neglect by service—cures that will transform ignorance and indifference into clear-eyed knowledge and active responsibility. Laws and revolutions have failed more miserably than we enjoy admitting and only through the far reaching, beneficent influences of education and religion may we expect to touch the roots of these great evils.
Is it possible that many of our public libraries, who reach the individual and his family long before and for many years following the efforts of our public schools, can consider themselves excused from a large part of their responsibility in the educational movements now striving to improve the physical, mental and moral conditions of these men who suffer for want of better things? How can it be that some librarians stand by indifferently and heed not the cry of need from these weaker members of society, who, with their distinctive and curable social difficulties, have been left alone to carve their own destinies, unappreciated and unaided? The time is near at hand when everyone shall recognize that it is the "common right of all men to share in the culture, prosperity and progress" of society, and that the conservation of life by raising it to its highest value is to be the cry of our new era of heightened individuality.
In his inaugural address President Wilson uttered these accusing heart searching words: "We have been proud of our industrial achievements, but we have not hitherto stopped thoughtfully enough to count the human cost, the cost of lives snuffed out, of energies overtaxed and broken, the fearful physical and spiritual cost to the men and women and children upon whom the dead weight and burden of it all has fallen without mercy the years through. The groans and agony of it all, the solemn moving undertone of our life, coming up out of the mines and factories and out of every home where the struggle has had its intimate and familiar seat, have not yet reached our ears."
The "vision of the open gates of opportunity for all" must first be seen by those who lead before they who follow can dream dreams and go forth to realize them.
The FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT: The next speaker, who is now the librarian of the Rochester public library, was for many years librarian of one of the most important libraries south of what Mr. O. Henry was accustomed to call "Mason & Hamlin's Line." I have the pleasure of introducing Mr. WILLIAM F. YUST, who will speak to us on