Similar difficulties exist in estimating the amount and value of female labor in the household. And as to the mechanic also—the carpenter, the mason, the blacksmith, the tool-maker of any kind—there are a thousand circumstances, which we call accidental, that mingle their influence in giving quality and durability to their work, and prevent us from making a precise estimate of the relative value of any two men's handicraft. Individual differences, too, in regard to a single article or a single days' work, may be too minute to be noticed or appreciated, while the aggregate of these differences at the end of a few years may make all the difference between a poor man and a rich one. No observing man can have failed to notice the difference between two workmen, one of whom, to use a proverbial expression, always "hits the nail on the head," while the other loses half his strength and destroys half his nails by the awkwardness of his blows; but perhaps few men have thought of the difference in the results of two such men's labor at the end of twenty years.
But when hundreds of men or women work side by side in the same factory, at the same machinery, in making the same fabrics, and, by a fixed rule of the establishment, labor the same number of hours each day; and when, also, the products of each operative can be counted in number, weighed by the pound, or measured by the yard or cubic foot, then it is perfectly practicable to determine, with arithmetical exactness, the productions of one individual and class as compared with those of another individual and class.
So, where there are different kinds of labor, some simple, others complicated, and of course requiring different degrees of intelligence and skill, it is easy to observe what class of persons rise from a lower to a higher grade of employment.
This, too, is not to be forgotten, that in a manufacturing or mechanical establishment, or among a set of hands engaged in filling up a valley or cutting down a hill, where scores of people are working together, the absurd and adventitious distinctions of society do not intrude. The capitalist and his agents are looking for the greatest amount of labor or the largest income in money from their investments, and they do not promote a dunce to a station where he will destroy raw material or slacken industry because of his name, or birth, or family connections. The obscurest and humblest person has a fair field for competition. That he proves himself capable of earning more money for his employers is a testimonial better than a diploma from all the colleges.
Now many of the most intelligent and valuable men in the community, in compliance with Mr. Mann's request, examined their books for a series of years, and ascertained both the quality and the amount of work performed by persons in their employment, and the result of the investigation is a most astonishing superiority in productive power on the part of the educated over the uneducated laborer. The hand is found to be another hand when guided by an intelligent mind. Processes are performed not only more rapidly, but better, when faculties which have been exercised in early life furnish their assistance. Individuals who, without the aid of knowledge, would have been condemned to perpetual inferiority of condition, and subjected to all the evils of want and poverty, rise to competence and independence by the uplifting power of education. In great establishments, and among large bodies of laboring men, where all services are rated according to their pecuniary value; where there are no extrinsic circumstances to bind a man down to a fixed position after he has shown a capacity to rise above it; where, indeed, men pass by each other, ascending or descending in their grades of labor just as easily and certainly as particles of water of different degrees of temperature glide by each other—under such circumstances it is found, as an almost invariable fact, other things being equal, that those who have been blessed with a good common school education rise to a higher and a higher point in the kinds of labor performed, and also in the rate of wages received, while the ignorant sink like dregs, and are always found at the bottom.
James K. Mills, Esq., of Boston, who has been connected with a house that has had for the last ten years the principal direction of cotton-mills, machine shops, and calico-printing works, in which are constantly employed about three thousand persons, and whose opinions of the effects of a common school education upon a manufacturing population are the result of personal observation and inquiries, and are confined to the testimony of the overseers and agents who are brought into immediate contact with the operatives, expresses the conviction that the rudiments of a common school education are essential to the attainment of skill and expertness as laborers, or to consideration and respect in the civil and social relations of life; that very few who have not enjoyed the advantages of a common school education ever rise above the lowest class of operatives, and that the labor of this class, when it is employed in manufacturing operations which require even a very moderate degree of manual or mental dexterity, is unproductive; that a large majority of the overseers and others employed in situations which require a high degree of skill in particular branches—which oftentimes require a good general knowledge of business, and always an unexceptionable moral character—have made their way up from the condition of common laborers, with no other advantage over a large proportion of those they have left behind than that derived from a better education.
A statement made from the books of one of the manufacturing companies will show the relative number of the two classes, and the earnings of each; and this mill, we are assured, may be taken as a fair index of all the others. The average number of operatives employed for the last three years is twelve hundred. Of this number there are forty-five unable to write their names, or about three and three fourths per cent. The average of women's wages, in the departments requiring the most skill, is two dollars and fifty cents per week, exclusive of board. The average wages of the lowest departments is one dollar and twenty-five cents per week.
Of the forty-five who are unable to write, twenty-nine, or about two thirds, are employed in the lowest department. The difference between the wages earned by the forty-five and the average wages of an equal number of the better-educated class is about twenty-seven per cent. in favor of the latter. The difference between the wages earned by twenty-nine of the lowest class and the same number in the higher is sixty-six per cent. Of seventeen persons filling the most responsible stations in the mills, ten have grown up in the establishment from common laborers or apprentices.
This statement does not include an importation of sixty-three persons from Manchester, in England, in 1839. Among these persons there was scarcely one who could read or write; and although a part of them had been accustomed to work in cotton-mills, yet, either from incapacity or idleness, they were unable to earn sufficient to pay for their subsistence, and at the expiration of a few weeks not more than half a dozen remained in the employment of the company.
In some of the print-works a large proportion of the operatives are foreigners. Those who are employed in the branches which require a considerable degree of skill are as well educated as our people in similar situations. But the common laborers, as a class, are without any education, and their average earnings are about two thirds only of those of our lowest classes, although the prices paid to each are the same for the same amount of work.