The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. The East

by Walter A. Wyckoff

I have been writing from the position of an unskilled workman, with no apparent allowance for my newness to the life. The physical stress and strain, for example, how different my experience of these as compared with that of the other men inured to them by long habit! A year or two of such labor, and how great the physical change! My hands would be hard, and the friction of this work, so far from wounding them, would render them the more impervious to harm. My muscles would be like iron, and would lend themselves with far greater ease to the stress of manual labor. Ten years would find me a seasoned workman.

But under conditions of labor such as these, what changes other than physical would there be? My body might be hardened in fibre to the point of high efficiency in manual labor, but the hardening of mind and character—is it likely that this would be of the nature of the strength of more abundant life, or of the hardness of petrifaction?

I have received the strangest kindness from the men, the most tactful treatment of me as a novice. They laughed at my strenuous efforts to do what was so much easier to them, and they laughed when the boss singled me out for abuse, but never ill-naturedly, I thought. And those who made up to me, and with whom I picked up acquaintance, showed the kindest consideration. They never pressed me with embarrassing questions, but fell gracefully into the easy assumption that I was a factory hand or a "tradesman" out of a job. It was natural to adopt the general strain and speak of plans which involved my going West.

In spite of their roughness and hardness of manner and speech, one never felt the smallest fear of these men, and you had a growing feeling that their better natures were never far to seek. And yet in reality here they were, a cursing, blaspheming crew; men upon whose lives hopelessness seems to have settled; whose idea of work is a slavish drudgery done from the instinct of self-preservation and to be shirked whenever possible; whose idea of pleasure is abandonment to their unmastered passions.

I had a purpose in quitting work in the middle of Saturday afternoon. I went to my lodgings and asked Mrs. Flaherty for an early supper of anything that she could give me without trouble. Then I brushed my clothes and washed myself, and made myself as presentable as my slender pack permitted. My beard was now of nearly two weeks' growth, and my face was well burned by the sun, and my clothes, in spite of the protection of overalls, were much labor-stained.

I felt some security in my disguise, and after an early supper I walked over to see the sunset parade. On the road I met the men returning from the works, and had to run a gauntlet of questions as to whether I had left the job for good, and what I meant to do.

There was bustle in the camp; a running to and fro of cadets, who appeared to be subject to many calls; a nervous appearing and vanishing at the tent-doors of figures which were in process of achieving parade-dress; a hasty personal inspection of arms and uniform; and then suddenly, out of apparently inextricable confusion, there emerged, without a trace of disorder, the two companies, in double lines of perfect symmetry, before the inspecting officer.

Then followed the sunset parade. Seated on the benches under the trees, and grouped on the turf behind, was an eager crowd watching intently, in perfect stillness, every evolution of the cadets. The fascination was in the sense it gave you of abounding life, of youth and strength and vigor, brought to perfect unity in willing subordination to authority. Here was the type of highest organization, the voluntary submission of those who are "fit to follow to those who are fittest to lead." So much has civilization achieved for the purpose of self-defence. The mission of many of these young officers will be to take such men as those with whom I have been working, and teach them the manly lesson of obedience, and awaken in them the feelings of courage and loyalty and esprit de corps. Civilization is yet a long way from such organization for industrial ends, if ever such corporate action will be possible or good; but certainly it will not belong before civilization gives birth in increasing numbers to "captains of industry," who will feel with their men other ties than the "nexus of cash payment," and who will attack the problems of production with other aims than selfish accumulation. Under the direction of such leaders, workingmen will be led to far greater conquests over the resources of nature than any in the past, and, sharing consciously in these victories as the fruits of their own labors, there will open to them a new life of liberty and hope in willing allegiance to true control.

The intense satisfaction I felt in the rest of yesterday (Sunday) was heightened by a feeling of hopefulness as I thought of the future of workingmen in a country like ours. Here are almost boundless natural resources, capable of supporting many times our present population. Under the stimulus of private acclamation, what marvellous genius and skill and enterprise have directed labor to the development of our national wealth! When, with the growth of better knowledge, there is added to this stimulus among the great leaders of industry a sincere desire for the common good and a purpose to make the conditions of employment the means of achieving this good, how far greater must be the industrial results, and how far better the lives of the workers!