Men and Things

by Henry A. Atkinson

A World Apart. The workers live in a world apart. Unconsciously they drift together. They talk each other’s language; they understand each other’s point of view. In every town and city we find groups of the workers living to themselves. The work which men do inevitably groups them together; and social life centers so completely about their work that it is really the factory and mill that mark out the lines and define the limits within which the classes must live. Consequently, in our American cities we find such designations as these: “Shanty Town,” “Down by the Gas Works,” “Across the Tracks,” “Murphy’s Hollow,” “Tin-Can Alley,” “Darktown,” “On the Hill,” “Out by the Slaughter-Pen,” “Over on the West Side,” and “Down in the Bottoms.” Just think of your own town, and you probably can add some new phrase that tells where your laboring group lives. In one Western town the community was divided by the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks. The boys in the school on the north side of the tracks were all known as “Sewer Rats.” On the opposite side of the town they were known as “Depot Buzzards.” Whenever one group met the other there was always a war. A friend tells of a similar condition in a Canadian village where the Scotch boys were banded against the Irish and the Irish against the Scotch. Whenever the Macks met the Micks, or the Sandys met the Paddys, there was a row. A large part of this classification is temporary and need not be considered very seriously. Underlying it, however, is the deeper fact that we have come to recognize that there is a world of the workers, and that it is a world apart. In this world of the workers the rewards and the profits of toil are barely adequate to take care of the needs of the families of the workers.

It is assumed that in pre-war times it required from $800 to $900 a year to support a family in the average American community. Since 1914 the cost of living has increased approximately 60 per cent. It is estimated that even to-day with the advances that have been made in the wages by nearly all industries, 61 per cent. of the workers of America are receiving an average wage of less than $800 a year. “Shanty Town” and that section “Down by the Gas Works” have been built of poor material and allowed to become dilapidated not because the people living there like that sort of thing, but because the returns for the labor of these people are totally inadequate for their needs. The housing and living conditions of the people who live in the world of the workers is determined by the wages which they receive.

McGraw-Hill Company.

The work which men do inevitably groups them together.

The Interdependence of All. Now, if we do recognize that the world of work is a world apart, we must not fail to recognize also that behind this disintegration that has been going on, there is an integration of society more comprehensive than we have ever known before in the history of the world. While the people may be allowed to live by themselves in a part of the town that is less desirable as a dwelling-place than other parts, yet we are all dependent one upon the other. There is an old story which illustrates this point. A boy complained to his father about being poor and said that he wished that he had been born in a rich man’s home. The father told him that he was mistaken, for he really had wealth which he had never considered. That night the boy had a dream. It seemed to him that there came and stood at his bed a little fellow dressed like a farmer. The boy asked him who he was. He replied that he was the soul of all the farmers that were working to produce the flour that went into bread. Another little figure appeared beside the first, a black man with a turban on his head; he was the spirit of the workers in the tea and spice gardens of India. Another black man dressed in the rough clothes of a day-laborer joined the others; he was the spirit of the workers on a Southern plantation who make the cotton and produce the sugar. Other workers appeared so fast that the boy could hardly keep up with their approach—the coal-miner, the iron-miner, the woodsman, the carpenter, and the girl workers in the flax-mills of Dublin, who produce the linen in the rough, red-checked tablecloths. When they had all gathered together there was a multitude, and all were in reality the servants of this one boy.

Our dependence upon each other was clearly illustrated in the shut-down of non-essential industries on certain days in the winter of 1917–18. In order to keep people from starving and freezing, the government of the United States ordered the suspension of certain industries so that the conservation of fuel might protect the lives of the people.

The Good Neighbor. We are “members one of another.” The basic industries provide the necessities of our lives—feeding, housing, clothing, warmth, means of traveling, and the things which are part and parcel of our very being. The workers who are engaged in producing these things are true servants of humanity, and we are all under deep and abiding obligations to them. Just in the proportion that we produce something that adds to the wealth and happiness of the world, we are discharging the obligation which others by their labors have placed upon us. The division into classes, and the setting off of groups by themselves, the creating of the world of labor as a world apart, makes the practise of neighborliness a difficult thing. Now neighborliness is the very essence of Christianity. To be a friend of man ought to be the supreme desire of every individual. In the parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus defined the meaning of Christianity in terms of neighborliness. The church must answer this question: How can Christian people be good neighbors in modern industrial society?

Neighbor to the Group. We recognize the call to neighborliness in individual cases. If a man is knocked down by an automobile when he is crossing a street, people will run to help him to his feet, will call a cab or an ambulance, and he will be cared for just as carefully by the stranger as if he were a near relative. The individual idea of neighborliness is thoroughly appreciated. We have learned how to practise it. When it comes to a group, however, we find it difficult. The same men that would rush into the street to help an individual that is hurt, will live in a community and not appreciate the needs of the people living in the same block. The industrial class may be knocked down by adverse social conditions, and no one will recognize just what the situation means; or, recognizing it, will know how to apply the remedy, or even how to offer intelligent assistance.

In a small city in Ohio there lived an old man and his wife. Their children had married and moved away, leaving the old people to shift for themselves. The man was nearly blind and his wife was paralyzed and unable to take care of herself. The neighbors used to go to see them once in a while but no one felt any special responsibility for them and the community knew very little about the conditions under which they lived. One of the neighbors remarked one day that he had not seen anybody around the house and no smoke coming from the chimney. An investigation was made and it was found that the old man had been dead three days and was lying in bed with his paralyzed wife who could not help herself, nor could call for assistance. For three days she had been suffering unspeakable agony beside the form of her dead husband. The whole community was shocked. No one could believe that such a lack of neighborliness could exist. No one was particularly to blame; it was merely one of those things that occur because the man and his wife had dropped out of the main-traveled path of the city’s life.