“I was eighteen then, and whichever way I turned some woman was having a hard time, and some brute was making it for her. I knew it was partly their own fault for not teaching their boys how to be unselfish and decent, but custom and tradition, the law and the prophets, were all against them. I watched it all I could, but I was deep in trying to get ahead and I did. Somehow, in spite of my dreams and my fancies, there was a money-making streak in me. It’s a lost vein. You may search as you will and find no trace, but it was there once and gave good returns. I left the village at twenty-one and went to Philadelphia, and the small savings I took with me from my clerking soon began to roll up. I had the chance to go into a soap-factory; a queer change, but the old Quaker who owned it knew my father and wanted to do me a good turn, and by the time I had got the hang of it all I was junior partner and settled for life if I liked.
“Well, here it was again. This man was honest and clean. He meant to do fairly by all mankind, and he tried to. He had some secrets in his methods that made his soap the best in the market. The chief secret was honest ingredients, but it was famous. If you’ve ever been in a soap-factory you know what it is like. Every pound of it was wrapped in paper as fast as it cooled, and the cooling and cutting room was filled with girls who did the work. They were not the best order of girls. The wages a week were from three to five dollars, and they were at it from seven A. M. to six P. M. There was a good woman in the office,—a woman with a head as well as a heart,—and she did the directing and disciplining. It was no joke to keep peace if the cooling delayed and the creatures began squabbling together, but she managed it, and by night they were always meek enough. You’re likely to be meek when you’ve carried soap ten pounds at a time ten hours a day, from the cutting table to the cooling table, across floors as slippery as glass or glare ice. They picked it up as it cooled, wrapped it in paper, and had it in boxes, five pounds to the minute, three hundred pounds an hour. The caustic soda in it first turned their nails orange-color and then it ate off their finger tips till they bled. They could not wear gloves, for that would have interfered with the packing.
“Now and then one cried, but only seldom. They were big, hearty girls. They had to be to do that work, but my heart ached for them as they filed out at night, so worn that there was no life left for anything but to get home and into bed. Very few stayed on. The smart ones graduated into something better. The stupid ones fell back and tried something easier. But as I watched them and it came over me how untrained and helpless they were, and how every chance of learning was cut off by the long labor and the dead weariness, I said to myself that we owed them something: shorter hours; better wages; some sort of share in the money we were making. Friend Peter shook his head when I began to hint these things. ‘They fare well enough,’ he said. ‘Thee must not get socialistic notions in thy head.’ ‘I know nothing about socialism,’ I said. ‘All I want is justice, and thee wants it too. Thee has cried out for it for the black brother and sister; why not for the white?’
“‘Thee is talking folly,’ he said and would make no other answer.
“It all weighed on me. Here was the money rolling in, or so it seemed to me. We did make it in a sure, comfortable fashion. I was well off at twenty-five, and better off every month; and I said to myself, the money would have a curse on it if those who helped to earn it had no share. I talked to the men in the boiling department. It takes brains to be a good soap-maker. We kept to the old ways, simply because what they call improvement in soap-making, like many another improvement, has been the cheapening the product by the addition of various articles that lower the quality. Experience has to teach. Theoretical knowledge isn’t much use save as foundation. A man must use eyes and tongue, and watch for the critical moment in the finishing like a lynx.
“Well, I beat my head against that wall of obstinacy till head and heart were sore. It was enough to the old Quaker that he paid promptly and did honest work; and when I told him at last that his gains were as fraudulent as if he cheated deliberately, he said, ‘Then thee need share them no longer. Go thy way for a hot-headed fool.’
“I went. There was an opening in New York, and I had every detail at my fingers’ ends. I went in with a man a little older, who seemed to think as I did, and who did, till I made practical application of my theories. I had studied everything to be had on the subject. I had mastered a language or two in my evenings, for I lived like a hermit; but now I began to talk with every business man, and try to understand why competition was inevitable. I was in no haste. I admitted that men must be trained to co-operate, but I said, ‘We shall never learn by waiting. We must learn by trying.’ I tried to bring in other soap-makers, and one or two listened; but most of them were using the cheap methods,—increasing the quantity and lowering the quality. Some of the men had come on to me from Philadelphia, and were bound to stay, but it was hard on them. They had to go into tenement-houses, for there were no homes for them such as building associations in Philadelphia make possible for every workman. But I took a house and divided it up and made it comfortable, and I lived on the lower floor myself, so that kept them contented. I fitted up a room for a reading-room, and twice a week had talks; not lectures, but talks where every man had a chance to speak five minutes if he would, and to ask questions. I coaxed the women to come. I wanted them to understand, and two or three took hold. I made a decent place for them to eat their dinners, and put these women in charge. I put in an oil-stove and a table and seats, and gave them coffee and tea at two cents a cup, and tried to have them care for the place. That has been done over and over by many an employer who pities his workers; and nine times out of ten the same result follows. The animal crops out. They were rough girls at any time, yet, taken one by one, behaved well enough. But I’ve seen boys and girls at a donation party throw cheese and what not on the carpet and rub it in deliberately, and I don’t know that one need wonder that lunch-rooms in store or factory turn into pig-pens, and the few decent ones can make no headway.
“I spoke out to them all, but it was no more than the wind blowing, and at last even I gave it up. There was no conscience in them to touch. They wanted shorter hours and more money, when they had got to the point of seeing that I was trying to help, but they had no notion of helping back. With my men it worked, and they talked down the women sometimes. But when a bad year came,—for soap has its ups and downs like everything else,—most of them struck, and the wise ones could make no headway. ‘It’s a losing game,’ my partner said; ‘if you want to go on you must go on alone.’
“I did go on alone. He left and took his capital with him. The best men stayed with me and swore to take their chances. The soap was good, and I made a hit in one or two fancy kinds, but I could not compete with men who used mean material and turned out something that looked as well at half the price. My money melted away, and a fire—set, they told me, by a man I had discharged for long-continued dishonesty—finished me. I had the name of stirring up strife for the manufacturers, because I tried to teach my workers the principle of co-operation, and begged for it where I could. It hurt my business standing. Men felt that I must be a fool. I had worked for it with such absorption that I had had little time for any joy of life. I had neither wife nor child, though I longed for both. I would not have ease and happiness alone. I wanted it for my fellows. To-day it might be. Ten years ago it only the thought of a dreamer, and I made no headway.
“The fire left me stranded. I went in as superintendent of some new works, but went out in a month, for I could not consent to cheat, and fraud was in every pound sent out. I tried one place and another with the same result. Competition makes honesty impossible. A man would admit it to me without hesitation, but would end: ‘There’s no other way. Don’t be a fool. You can’t stand out against a system.’