It cannot be doubted that the American labourer is a different sort of creature from the Continental labourer; his material surroundings are different, and his way of life, his dwelling, clothes and food, his intellectual nourishment and his pleasures, would seem to the European workmen like luxuries. The number of industrial labourers in the year 1880 was 2.7 million, and they earned $947,000,000; in 1890 it was 4.2 million earning $1,891,000,000; and in 1900 there were 5.3 million labourers earning $2,320,000,000; therefore, at the time of the last census, the average annual wage was $437. This average figure, however, includes men, women, and children. The average pay of grown men alone amounts to $500. This figure gives to the German no clear idea of the relative prosperity of the working-man without some idea of the relation between German and American prices.
One reads often that everything is twice as expensive in America as in Germany, while some say that the American dollar is worth only as much as the German mark—that is, that the American prices are four times the German; and still others say that American prices are not a bit higher than German. The large German-American steamships buy all their provisions of meat in New York rather than in Hamburg or Bremen, because the American prices are less. If one consults, on the other hand, a doctor or lawyer in New York, or employs a barber or any one else for his personal services, he will find it a fact that the American price is four times as high as the German. The same may be said of articles of luxury; for bouquets and theatre tickets the dollar is equal to the mark. It is the same with household service in a large town; an ordinary cook receives five dollars per week, and the pay of better ones increases as the square of their abilities. Thus we see at once that an actual comparison of prices between the United States and Europe cannot be made. A dollar buys five marks’ worth of roast beef and one mark’s worth of roses.
In general, it can be said that the American is better off as regards all articles which can be made in large quantities, and worse off in articles of luxury and matters of personal service. The ready-made suit of clothes is no dearer in America than in Germany and probably better for the price, while the custom-made suit of a first-class tailor costs about four times what it would cost in Germany. All in all, we might say that an American who lives in great style and spends $50,000 a year can get no greater material comforts than the man in Germany who spends a third as much—that is, 70,000 marks. On the other hand, the man who keeps house with servants, but without luxuries, spending, say, $5,000 a year, lives about like a man in Germany who spends 10,000 marks—that is, about half as much. But any one who, like the average labourer, spends $500 in America, unquestionably gets quite as much as he would get with the equal amount of 2,100 marks in Germany.
But the more skilled artisan gets $900 on the average—that is, about three times as much as the German skilled workman; so that, compared with the wages of higher-paid classes, the working-men are paid relatively much more than in Europe. The average labourer lives on the same plane as the German master artisan; and if he is dissatisfied with the furnishings of his home it is not because he needs more chairs and tables, but because he has a fancy for a new carpet or a new bath-tub. In this connection we are speaking always of course of the real American, not the recent immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, who are herded together in the worst parts of large cities, and who sell their labour at the lowest rate. The native American labourer and the better class of German and Irish immigrants are well clothed and fed and read the newspapers, and only a small part of their wages goes for liquor.
More important than the economic prosperity of the American working-man, though not wholly independent of it, is the social self-respect which he enjoys. The American working-man feels himself to be quite the equal of any other citizen, and this not merely in the legal sense. This results chiefly from the intense political life of the country and the democratic form of government, which knows no social prerogatives. It results also from the absence of social caste. There is a considerable class feeling, but no artificial lines which hinder any man from working up into any position. The most modest labourer knows that he may, if he is able, work up to a distinguished position in the social structure of the nation.
And the most important thing of all is probably the high value put on industry as such. We have spoken of this in depicting the spirit of self-initiative. In fact, the background of national conceptions as to the worth of labour must be the chief factor in determining the social condition of the working-man. When a nation comes to that way of thinking which makes intellectual activities the whole of its culture, while economic life merely serves the function of securing the—outward comforts of the nation as it stretches on toward its goal of culture, then the industrial classes must content themselves with an inferior position, and those who do bodily labour, with the least possible amount of personal consideration. But when a nation, on the other hand, believes in the intrinsic worth of industrial culture, then the labour by which a man lives becomes a measure of his moral worth, and even intellectual effort finds its immediate ethical justification only in ministering to the complex social life; that is, only so far as it is industry.
Such now is the conception of the American. Whether a person makes laws, or poetry, or railway ties, or shoes, or darning-needles, the thing which gives moral value to his life’s work is merely its general usefulness. In spite of all intellectual and æsthetic differences, this most important element of activity is common to all, and the manual labourer, so far as he is industrious, is equal to those who work with their brains. On the other hand, the social parasite, who perhaps has inherited money and uses it only for enjoyment, is generally felt to be on a lower plane than the factory hand who does his duty. For the American this is not an artificial principle, but an instinctive feeling, which may not do away with all the thousand different shadings of social position, but nevertheless consigns them to a secondary place. One may disapprove of such an industrial conception of society, and like better, for example, the æsthetic conception of the Japanese, who teach their youth to despise mercantile business and tastefully to arrange flowers. But it is clear that where such an industrial conception prevails in a nation the working-man will feel a greater self-respect and greater independence of his surroundings, since the millionaire is also then only a fellow-workman.
Undoubtedly just this self-respect of the American labourer makes him the great industrial force which he is. The American manufacturer pays higher wages than any of his competitors in the markets of the world and is not disconcerted at this load, because he knows that the self-respecting working-man equalizes the difference of price by more intense and intelligent labour. It is true that the perfection of labour-saving machinery is a tremendous advantage here, but after all it is the personal quality of the working-man which has brought about that in so many industries ten American workmen do more than fifteen or, as experts often say, twenty Italian workmen. The American manufacturer prefers to hire a hundred heads rather than a thousand hands, even if the wages are equal, and even the greedy capitalist prefers the labourer who is worth thirty dollars a week to one who is worth only twenty. The more the working-man feels himself to be a free co-operator, the more intelligently does he address himself to the work. We hear constantly of improvements which artisans have thought out, and this independent initiative of theirs does not in the least impair the discipline of industry. American discipline does not mean inferiority and the giving up of one’s own judgment, but is a free willingness to co-operate and, for the common end, to intrust the leadership to some one else. This other person is exalted to the trustworthy position of leader by the desire of those concerned, so that each man is carrying out his own will in obeying the foreman.
Therefore, everything which in any wise savours of compassion is entirely out of the question for him. In fact, the friendly benevolence, however graciously expressed, intended to remind the workman that he is after all a human creature, perhaps the friendly provision of a house to live in or of some sort of state help for his family, must always be unwelcome to him, since it implies that he is not able, like other fathers of a family, to be forethoughtful and provident. He prefers to do everything which is necessary himself. He insures himself in a life-insurance company and, like anybody else, he looks out for his own interests—tries to improve his conditions by securing good contracts with his employer, by arranging organizations of his fellow-workmen, and by means of his political rights. But whatever he accomplishes, he enjoys it because he has worked in free competition against opposing interests. Any material benefits which he might purchase by enduring the patronizing attitude of capitalists or legislators would be felt to be an actual derogation.
And thus it happens that social democracy, in the technical sense, makes no advance among American workmen. The American labourer does not feel that his position is inferior; he knows that he has an equal opportunity with everybody else, and the idea of entire equality does not attract him, and would even deprive him of what he holds most valuable—namely, his self-initiative, which aims for the highest social reward as a recognition of the highest individual achievement. American society knows no unwritten law whereby the working-man of to-day must be the same to-morrow, and this gives to the whole labour question in America its distinction from the labour question in European aristocratic countries. In most cases the superiors have themselves once been labourers. Millionaires who to-day preside over the destinies of thousands of working-men have often themselves begun with the shovel or hod. The workman knows that he may set his ambition as high as he likes, and to exchange his equal opportunity for an equality of reward would mean for him to sink back into that social condition in which industry is thought to be only a means to something else, and not in itself a valuable activity. Although Bellamy may already dream of the common umbrella, his native country is probably further from social democracy than any country in Europe, because the spirit of self-initiative is here stronger than anywhere else, and because the general public is aware that no class distinctions cut it off from the highest positions in the country. It knows that everything depends on industry, energy, and intelligence.