Your pay envelope

by John Richard Meader

Even in this country the conditions of the laborer were far from enviable a century ago. As McMaster tells us in his “History of the People of the United States”:

“His house was meaner, his food coarser, his clothing was of commoner stuff, his wages lower, and his hours of daily labor far longer than those of the men who in our time perform like service. Down to the opening of the nineteenth century, a farm hand was paid $3 a month. A strong boy could be had for $1 a month. Women who went out to service received $10 a year; type-setters were given $1 per day. The hours of work were from sunrise to sunset, and, as the sun rose later and set earlier in the Winter than in the Summer, wages in December were one-third less than in July. On such pittances it was only by the strictest economy that a mechanic could keep his children from starvation and himself from jail,” for these were the days when a man could be arrested upon the complaint of a creditor and, being lodged in jail, could be kept there until the indebtedness was paid—a system which actually permitted life imprisonment for debt.

If I were to tell you of the indescribably vile conditions under which the workers of those days toiled and lived, you would find it difficult to believe that human beings could bear such burdens and survive. If you are interested in investigating this subject, there are books in the libraries that will tell you the story in all its damning details. And this is the perspective from which you should view life. It is, to say the least, “unscientific” to exaggerate the weak spots in present-day civilization to such an extent as to convey the impression that the evils criticized are the worst that have ever been known, when a few hours’ study of history would be sufficient to disclose the fact that circumstances are now infinitely less oppressive than they have been in the past. At the same time the knowledge that things are incalculably better than they were even half a century ago, and that they are steadily improving, must not blind us to the fact that there is still much to be done—more perhaps than has yet been accomplished—and that it is our duty as good citizens to do our part in remedying all our social defects.

But what are we to do?

Let history answer.

Do you imagine that it was the individual capitalist—the “heartless and greedy sweater”—who was responsible for all the improvements that have occurred in our industrial conditions? No, it was the worker himself who secured all these reforms. The worker, chiefly through his own effort, has brought about the reformation that we witness to-day, and it is the worker who must carry on the campaign until all the abuses of which we complain have been eliminated.

It is from the pages of history that we learn the story of the past; it is to the pages of history that we must turn for advice as to what we must do in the future. Let us see what history tells us.

In the first place we learn that, despite all the legal prohibitions then existing, the workers organized new associations. In the beginning these organizations were merely “friendly societies,” ostensibly formed to provide aid for the men in time of sickness or other misfortune; but behind this purpose was the inception of the peaceful revolution that was to rescue labor from the mire of degradation into which it had been so pitilessly thrust.

Here then we have our first lesson: the duty of the worker to organize. As Portenar says in his “Problems of Organized Labor” (p. 4), “the trade union came into being because it was needed; because the helpless individual found in concerted action with other individuals his best, if not his only, means of resistance to the arbitrary exercise of power, to injustice, to cruelty. It was a hard fight. Wealth, and the merciless power of wealth; the state law, forbidding workmen to co-operate for the purpose of increasing wages and fixing maxima, with its interpreters zealous for its rigorous enforcement; legislative bodies deaf to the cries of those who were denied the privilege of a voice in the selection of their members; and the broken-spirited timidity of those in whose behalf the union was created; these were the forces to be contended with and overcome.”

But the trade union was born, and the trade union has won many a victory. But for this weapon of defense—and sometimes of offense—the condition of the worker would not have been what it is to-day. Through its efforts legislation has been secured. Through its efforts public opinion has been shaped, and it is to its efforts that we must look primarily for future betterment of labor’s condition.