"My country, 'tis of thee!" / Or, the United States of America; past, present and future. A philosophic view of American history and of our present status, to be seen in the Columbian exhibition.

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

It should not need any argument to prove all this. There seldom is a great strike at any manufacturing centre during which a large number of the operatives do not disappear. Some of them find work elsewhere in their own specialty, but the oldest inhabitant, or the village gossip, or some one else who has time to pay close attention to other people’s business, can tell you that some of these men have struck out for themselves in some other direction, and they very seldom are able to tell you that any such change of business has brought unfortunate results. It has already been said in this book that some of the great industries of the country to-day are managed by men who once were common laborers.

However ignorant the workingman may be of the fact, or however willing he may be to ignore it, the truth is that the workingman half a century ago was a great deal worse off than his successors to-day. He worked longer hours, he got smaller pay—I mean smaller pay in proportion to the purchasing power of money, and his social position was very bad. Even the Revolutionary war, the Declaration of Independence, the rights of man, and all that sort of thing, didn’t break down at once the laws of caste that had come to us from the old country. It was not so very long ago that even the students of Harvard University were classified according to their ancestry, the list being led by gentlemen, which was followed by the profession and then brought up by the general assortment of what the late Mr. Venus called “humans various.”

The apprentice was not only household servant as well as work-boy to his employer, but he was kept in order by a strap or a club, and the law not only could give him no redress for personal abuse, but it recognized the right of the employer to treat his boys in that manner. Boys brought up in that way had not much independence when they became men, and the independent spirit of the present generation was a thing almost unknown in the more thickly settled communities at that time. The workingman in that day was more religious than his successors in the present generation, but when he went to church he sat in the poorest seats; generally he sat in the gallery. When he was out of work he went to the poor-house. The poor-house was built especially for people of his kind. Perhaps in some of the large cities workingmen and their families go to the poor-house to-day, but most of them will take pains to go to another community than that in which they are known before they allow themselves to be supported in such manner.

The people of the United States cannot afford at any price to support a class which proposes to stay in one spot, making no endeavor to go further or go higher. No grade of society can afford to support such a class. The class itself cannot afford to remain in any such position. Allusion has already been made to the willingness of men of the present generation to enslave their fellow-men when they get special opportunity. The methods are not the same as of old, but the fact is the same and the practice is steadily fostered by the inability of a great number of men and women to impress upon the public any ability to be anything better than slaves.

The workingman may take such consolation as there may be in the fact that this rule does not apply to him or to his own class alone. It exists everywhere. There are plenty of business houses who keep their men under their power, body and soul, by a custom, apparently founded on good nature, of lending them money in excess of their earnings. It is a modification of the South American consistado plan, to which allusion has already been made, and it works just as well in New York or Chicago, or any other manufacturing centre, as it does in South America. A man who will not spend his earnings in advance if he can get them is pretty hard to find. If this were not so there would be very little of running to banks, by business men, for discounts and loans, and “shaves.” The impulse to discount the future is almost as old as the world itself. It dates all the way back to the Garden of Eden, when our first parents began to devour some fruit which they were not yet entitled to.

It may be that slavery sometimes is pleasant. Indeed, it often is. In spite of all the bad stories that were told about the treatment of the southern blacks during old slavery days, there were a great many plantations from which the slaves did not run away, even after they heard of the Emancipation Proclamation, and knew, from what they heard in the dining-room and parlor, that the South was on its last legs, and that the good old times could not possibly come back again. There were many plantations found by the Union army, during its tramps through certain States, which the masters and the mistresses had abandoned, but to which the colored people clung closely, from old association alone, and were found there when the owners came back again. Slavery exists still in many portions of the world, principally eastern countries, and Europeans of high character and close observation have declared that the condition does not inflict cruel or unfair burdens upon the enslaved.

But this is a free country. All our institutions are based upon the theory that one man is just as good as another, and not only so, but that he ought to be expected to be as good as his neighbors, and that as soon as he ceases to be an independent being, the master of his own time and of his own family, including all their interests, he is not equal to his duties and responsibilities as a citizen. We hear a great deal about votes purchased for money and whiskey and offers of office; but does any one realize how entirely the political status of certain States and counties and towns depends upon the opinions of even the temporary whims of certain large employers? There are thousands of men in each of at least three New England States who would not dare vote any way than they are requested to do by their employers. Fac-similes of cards and written notices have been printed to show that in certain mills the proprietors announced that their operatives were expected to vote for certain candidates which were named. If an American, an inhabitant of the freest country of the world, cannot vote as he pleases, what does his personal liberty amount to? Even a tramp has a right to his own vote, or to sell it to the highest bidder, if he has been long enough a resident of the locality in which he attempts to deposit his ballot. There are slaves in banks and mercantile houses as well as in manufacturing establishments, so the laboring man need not feel hurt at the intimation that he is in danger of being subjected to an involuntary servitude which not only will control his time, but also his mind, to such an extent that he is not a free agent in anything regarding moral opinion or his duties as a citizen.

The principal outlet for the energies of the workingman at the present time is undoubtedly in the newer parts of the country. There is where he is almost sure to be found if he is a man of proper spirit and has not handicapped himself so it is impossible for him to reach there. This outlet will be practicable for at least a generation to come. We hear a great deal about the new countries being filled up and there being no chance for a man any longer, but some thousands of men who have footed it half-way across the continent can tell us differently, and show substantial proofs that they are right.

The man who resolves not to take any heavy responsibilities upon his time or pocket until he considers himself fairly settled in life, can always make his way to the new country, and there in no part of this land, although it is not a land flowing with milk and honey, in which he cannot find something to do. I once was made curious, by the conversation of a number of workingmen in a large pork-packing establishment in a small town in the West, to know where they had come from, and what their previous occupation had been, and among twenty-seven men I found twenty-one businesses and professions represented, not one of which was pork-packing. Nevertheless each of these men was earning two dollars and a half a day, and keeping an eye open for something better, which I am happy to say I saw some of them realize within a few months. At that very time at least one-half of the trades which these men had originally learned, and in which they were all supposed to be experts, were languishing in the East, and a great number of those engaged in them were in that desperate condition of mind that in other countries has often precipitated riots and brought about bloodshed and prolonged disorder.

But—let workingmen note the distinction—only two of these twenty-seven men were already married. What they had earned already was their own. They were able to move about from place to place until they found a satisfactory opening in life. Some of them afterward went to the dogs. It is impossible to find any lot of men together by chance in which there will not be some incompetents and some who, through one failing or other, would be their own enemies if they were in the best of hands. There were only twelve men in the first company of assistants organized by Jesus Christ, and one of them turned out to be a scoundrel in spite of the excellent company in which he found himself.