Contract labor of this kind is quite different from the peonage and contract labor of the non-industrial races. It is similar to the indentured service of colonial times, in that the term of each contract is limited to a few years, and the contract is made by way of compensation for advanced expenses of immigration. The object is not, as in the case of slavery and peonage, to compel a shiftless race to work, but it is to develop the country by the introduction of an industrious race. The Chinese, after the expiration of their contracts, often become skilled laborers and merchants, and in the latter position their frugality and wiliness make them dangerous neighbors for the native Malay and Filipino races.[85] For this reason Professor Jenks recommends that employers be placed under bonds to return each contract Chinese coolie to China at the expiration of the period of contract, not to exceed three years, unless the government gives special permission for renewal of the contract. Governor Taft, in his report for the year 1902, while advocating a limited employment of Chinese contract coolies, said, “the truth is that, from a political standpoint, the unlimited introduction of the Chinese into these islands would be a great mistake. I believe the objection on the part of the Filipinos to such a course to be entirely logical and justified. The development of the islands by Chinamen would be at the expense of the Filipino people, and they may very well resent such a suggestion.”[86]
Governor Taft’s opinion is strongly supported by the special commissioner of the American Federation of Labor, who, after inquiries in the district surrounding Manila, reports as follows:—
“Their reluctance to work, continually harped upon by many employers, is simply the natural reluctance of a progressive people to work for low wages under bad treatment. When wages rise above the level of the barest and poorest necessaries of life, and where treatment is fair, there Filipinos are at work in any numbers required.”[87]
The situation here is similar to that of the negroes. In order to get two hundred steady workers at high wages it is necessary to try out a thousand or more. But the reports of the Philippine Commission show that with the process of selection which their engineers can pursue by means of the high wages on government work the results are satisfactory.[88]
“Of course,” continues Mr. Rosenberg in his report, “the Filipino worker cannot successfully compete—cheap as he can live—with the Chinese standard of living, hence the unceasing vilification of the Filipino workers by those employers and their following, who, seeing near by the unlimited supply of cheap Chinese labor, wish these islands to be thrown open to such labor, not only for the purpose of reducing the small wages of the Filipinos, but also to reduce that of the Chinese laborers now here. As one employer stated to me, ‘We want more Chinese, to keep them here for one or two years, then ship them back and get another lot, for the Chinese I have here now are becoming too independent and want more pay.’”
Free Labor.—The free laborer is not compelled by law to work. Then why should he work? Why does he work? The answer is found within himself. He wants something that he cannot get without working. Though this may seem a trifling question and a self-evident answer, the question and answer are the foundation of all questions of free institutions. For the non-working races and classes or the spasmodic and unreliable workers are the savages, paupers, criminals, idiots, lunatics, drunkards, and the great tribe of exploiters, “grafters,” despots, and “leisure classes,” who live on the work of others. Nearly every question of social pathology may be resolved to this, Why does he not work? And nearly every social ill would be cured if the non-workers could be brought voluntarily to work.
There are just two grand motives which induce the freeman to work—necessity and ambition. Necessity is the desire for quantity, quality, and variety of things to be used. The term is elastic. It is psychological, not material. It includes, of course, the wants of mere animal existence—food, clothing, shelter. But this is a small part. The cost of the mere quantity needed to support life is less than the added cost needed to secure the quality and variety that satisfy the taste and habits. A pig enjoys raw corn, but a man requires corn cake at five times the cost. Tastes and habits depend on one’s childhood, one’s training, one’s associations, and kind of work. The necessities of a Chinese coolie, Italian immigrant, or negro plantation hand are less, and cost less, than those of a skilled mechanic or a college graduate, because his associations have been different, and his present work is different. But necessity goes farther. It includes the wants of the family considered as a unit, and not merely the wants of the single man or woman, else the race would not continue to increase. Furthermore, social obligations impose added necessity. Compulsory education of children compels parents to support their children instead of living on their wages. Laws regulating sanitation and tenements compel the tenant to pay more rent. The necessities of a farm-hand on the estates of Italy are less than those of the same hand in the cities of America.
Ambition is the desire for an improved position for one’s self and family—for better quality and greater variety of material things. It demands a style of clothing and living suitable to the improved position aspired to. It demands an education for one’s children superior to the minimum set by compulsory schooling. It demands thrift and economy for the sake of independence or the ability to hold on until one’s demands are conceded. Ambition looks to the future—necessity is based on the past. The negro or the Malay works three days and loafs three because three days’ wages procure his necessities. The Chinaman, or Italian, or Jewish immigrant works six days and saves the wages of three because the future is vivid to his imagination. With similar necessities one is ambitious, the other is content.
The scope and possibility of evoking ambition depend upon the institution of private property. Property in human beings suppresses it, unless occasionally a slave is permitted to purchase his freedom. The wage system evokes ambition if the way is open for promotion or for escape by becoming an owner. Tenancy is on a still higher level, but most of all, for the masses of men, the ownership of his own small property is the keenest spur to ambition, for it rewards the worker with all of his product. This motive is the surest test of an individual’s or a race’s future. Compare the negro and the Italian cotton grower as tenants in the new vocation opening up to the latter. “It is always difficult,” says the observant planter, Mr. Stone,[89] “to get a negro to plant and properly cultivate the outer edges of his field—the extreme ends of his rows, his ditch banks, etc. The Italian is so jealous of the use of every foot for which he pays rent that he will cultivate with a hoe places too small to be worked with a plough, and derive a revenue from spots to which a negro would not give a moment’s thought. I have seen them cultivate right down to the water’s edge the banks of bayous that had never been touched by the plough. I have seen them walk through their fields and search out every skipped place in every row and carefully put in seed to secure a perfect stand. I have seen them make more cotton per acre than the negro on the adjoining cut, gather it from two to four weeks earlier, and then put in the extra time earning money by picking in the negro’s field.”
But ambition has its penalty. It is equivalent to an increase in the supply of labor. As an ambitious proprietor the increase goes into his permanent property, but the ambitious wage-earner accepts a lower rate of pay. His fellows see the reduction and go still lower. The see-saw continues until wages reach the level of necessities, and there is nothing left for ambition. The Jewish sweat-shop is the tragic penalty paid by that ambitious race. In the Illinois coal mines the wages were reduced one-third during twelve years of Italian and Slav immigration. The ambitious races are the industrial races. But their ambition and their industry bring the momentous problem of destructive competition. It might seem that this evil would correct itself—that an increase in the products of one industry would be offset by an increase in other industries; that therefore the increased supply in one would not be forced upon the market at lower prices, but would be exchanged on the same terms as before for the increased supply in others. This is indeed the case in prosperous times. All industries advance together, and the increasing supply of one is merely an increasing demand for others. But for some reason, industries do not always harmoniously advance together. And when the disproportion appears, the workers who are blindly but ambitiously pushing ahead endeavor to overcome, by increasing the quantity of output, what they lose by reducing the price. There is but one immediate and practical remedy—the organization of labor to regulate competition. The method of organization is to do in concert through self-sacrifice what the non-industrial races do individually for self-indulgence; namely, refuse to work. Where the one loafs the other strikes. While the necessities of the workers set the minimum below which wages cannot fall, and their physical endurance sets the maximum hours beyond which they cannot work, the labor-union, by means of the strike or the threat to strike, sets a higher minimum of wages and a lower maximum of hours, which leaves room for ambition. Eventually the higher wage and the shorter hours become habitual and become a higher level of necessities. Gifted individuals may, indeed, rise above the wage-earning class by their own efforts, but labor organization alone can raise the class as a whole.