White Slaves; or, the Oppression of the Worthy Poor

by Louis Albert Banks

With the manager I went through the culinary department. They make ice-cream now every day, and sell large plates to the girls for three cents. A careful account is kept of the cost, and the manager said he thought he should be able to reduce the cream to two cents a plate. I looked through the reading-room and over the carefully selected lists of papers. The manager said that among the girls were some excellent musicians, and others with good literary abilities, and told me, I thought with a pardonable degree of pride, that a few months since, when some desirable positions in the Newark Public Library were open to competition, the two young ladies from the Ferris Brothers' factory who were successful, scored ninety-five points out of a possible hundred in their literary examination. No employee works more than nine and one-quarter hours a day, and Saturday afternoon is free. The average wages, including beginners and help girls, is seven dollars a week, and a good worker makes twelve dollars.

You may say that many of these things that I have mentioned are insignificant and only trifles, but, after all, it is such things as these that in a large degree make or unmake our human lives; and a human life is no trifle. But lest some hard-headed business man shall shake his head and say, "The fools will bankrupt themselves," I must add, that aside from the beauty and grace of this thoughtful business philanthropy, the enterprise has been entirely satisfactory from a commercial stand-point, the firm agreeing that not only have their employees done more, but better, work than ever before. One of the firm assured me that, while there were, of course, many discouraging things and occasionally an employee who showed little appreciation, on the whole there had been a steady improvement during their three years' experience in this factory, and under no circumstances would they be willing to go back to the old factory regime.

To contrast a factory like this with some of the sweat-shops I have visited, is like contrasting heaven with hell. There may be, and I doubt not are, many other factories where the same Christian thoughtfulness is exercised in the treatment of employees, as here. Upon all such may the benediction of Heaven rest! May their numbers be multiplied!

The Church, too—I mean the great Catholic Church, formed of all the branches of our Christianity "who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity"—must open its arms with a heartier tone of welcome and brotherhood to the tried and disheartened working-people. Nothing in recent art has stirred me so deeply as a dim copy of Hacker's "Christ and the Magdalene," reproduced by Mr. Stead in the Review of Reviews. The Christ is standing with coarse clothing and toil-worn hands by the work-bench in the carpenter-shop at Nazareth. The shavings are heaped in piles around, him on the otherwise bare floor, while kneeling at his feet in penitence and trust is the Magdalene. Brothers, it is this carpenter Christ, as Frances Willard aptly puts it, "the Monday Christ," for whom the toil-worn world hungers, and will welcome when it sees Him manifested in us, in the shop, the factory, and the counting-room, as well as in the church.

Zoe Dana Underhill sings, in Harper's Magazine, a song the modern Church needs to learn, until its great heart shall throb with its spirit.

"The Master called to His reapers,
'Make scythe and sickle keen,
And bring me the grain from the uplands,
And the grass from the meadows green,
And from off the mist-clad marshes,
Where the salt waves fret and foam,
Ye shall gather the rustling sedges,
To furnish the harvest-home.

Then the laborers cried, 'O Master,
We will bring Thee the yellow grain
That waves on the windy hillside,
And the tender grass from the plain;
But that which springs on the marshes
Is dry and harsh and thin,
Unlike the sweet field-grasses,
So we will not gather it in.'

But the Master said, 'O foolish!
For many a weary day,
Through storm and drought, ye have labored
For the grain and the fragrant hay.
The generous earth is fruitful,
And breezes of summer blow
Where these, in the sun and the dews of heaven,
Have ripened soft and slow.

'But out on the wide, bleak marshland
Hath never a plough been set,
And with rapine and rage of hungry waves
The shivering soil is wet.
There flower the pale green sedges,
And the tides that ebb and flow,
And the biting breath of the sea-wind
Are the only care they know.

'They have drunken of bitter waters,
Their food hath been sharp sea-sand;
And yet they have yielded a harvest
Unto the Master's hand.
So shall ye all, O reapers,
Honor them now the more,
And garner in gladness, with songs of praise,
The grass from the desolate shore.'"