NOTES AND NOTIONS.

Evening Star, Issue 7254, 4 July 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

NOTES AND NOTIONS.

[By a New Zealander Abroad.!

America’s Wealth and Poverty—How the Poor Live—New York Seamstresses The American Working Man His Wages His Prospects Outlook on the Future of American Government. I said in my last that I would try to indicate some of the social conditions that make Anarchism, Socialism, and other isms a power in America. America is the richest country in the world. Her wealth is almost fabulous. For the ten years ending in 1880 she added to her wealth at the rale of L 55,000 an hour day and night. She could buy up the half of Europe at this moment, with all its mines and manufactories, and have as much pocket money left as would pay the National Debt of her- mother—Great Britain. And now let us look at the other side of this picture. One-eleventh of her population &as in receipt of charitable aid last year. In this—the wealthiest country the world has yet seen—one man in every eleven is a pauper. The population of London averages 15,000 te the square mile. Will it be believed that New York is nearly seven times that? It will be no surprise, therefore, to hear that nearly a quarter of a million of the population of New York are paupers. Such books as the ‘Bitter Cry of Outcast London,’ and ‘ How the Poor Live ’ give us some notion of the state of existence in the Mother Country. ‘The Children of Gibeon ’ lifts the veil from the London needlewomen, and show us how 250,000 of this class manage to eke out an existence. One should suppose that there is nothing to equal this in this new world of untold wealth and limitless land. But look at this : The Commissioner of the Bureau of Statistics thus describes a visit inadvertently paid to a New York tenement house. I condense a little. Room, ten feet square ; low ceiling; only light small begrimed window in the gable. Ten women and four sewing machines here. Sewing cloaks in this room in a temperature well up in the “nineties.” Scantily clad, unkempt hair; pale abject countenances, “ they formed a picture I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. They were working as if driven by some unseen power. Style and quality of the cloaks, the very best. Lined with quilted satin, trimmed with sealskin or other expensive materials, finding ready sale in the shops at from 35<10l to 75d0l each. Two of these women could manage, by long hours and the most diligent application, to turn out one cloak aday, and the price they received from the contractor, or rather the ‘ sweater,’ was Idol, i.e., fifty cents, each.” The report closes by saying that hundreds of similar sights are to be found in the city. “No words of mine could convey to the public any adequate conception of the truly awful condition of thousands of these suffering people.” This is the official report of a Government inspector. It helps us to believe Mr George, when he tells us “ that there is a large class—l was about to say a majority—of the population of New York and Brooklyn who just manage to live, and to whom the rearing of two or more children means inevitably a boy for the penitentiary and a girl for the brothel.” And now, how about the American workman ? One a good deal about his position and his wealth, etc. Well, let us hear what an official document has to say about him. It is one of the wise provisions of the American Government that it has organised bureaus of statistics throughout the States for the purpose of gathering reliable information regarding the social condition of the people. One of the most complete of these is that in Massachusetts. It is startling to learn, therefore, from the statistics collected by this bureau, “ that, while the average expenses of a working man’s family is, in round numbers, 754d0l (L 160), the average receipts of the heads of families is only 558d0l (L 123).” In other words, the expenditure exceeds thereceipts by 196d01(L4113s fid). And this in one of the most favored States in the Union. How, then, does the family live ? Clearly it can only live by forcing the wife and, children to run in competition against the husband and father. “Thirty-two. per cent, of the support of the family comes from them.” The workman hears on all sides of the wholly unparalleled wealth of his country. He looks at himself; he finds that he is steadily growing poorer—that it is only by the hard struggling of himself and his wife and children that he can make both ends meet. He studies the state of matters; he asks himself Is there any prospect of improvement ? He is led to conclude that the present system of things absolutely forbids the hope. In the first place, the invention of machinery is continually throwing him out of employment, and this invention is going on at a rajud rate. These inventions

do not, as a rule, put money in the pockets of the workman. The surplus goes to increase the capitalist’s gains. Take an illustration. Sir Lyon Playfair told the British Association in 1885 that science had succeeded in perfecting a process by which in the single industry of the manufacture of lucifer matches L 26,000,000 were saved to the nation. Very good; but into whose pockets did this money go ? Certainly not into the pockets of the workpeople, for the poor girls who make these matches are amongst the most wretchedly paid in the United Kingdom. With their wages of 2s 6d a-week, they certainly do not appear to have reaped much of this splendid harvest of L 26,000,000 which science has been able to save to the consumers. What is true of this industry is true of most others, I believe. Rodbertus undertakes to show “that the increased production of machine power has benefited wholly and entirely landlords and capitalists.” Then, again, it is to be remembered that multiplication of machinery leads to specialisation of work, and specialisation of work very often produces a stunted manhood. Fancy, e.g,, a man pointing pins all his life, or ramming a small bar of iron into the jaws of an ever-ravenous machine, and making that movement for a lifetime ! But a still worse result is produced. Long ago the workman came into personal contact with his employer, but now the employer is lost in a company, and a company is a thing without a conscience. Thus the relation between employer and employed is being rapidly transformed into the nature of a machine, without any human influence to smooth and keep sweet the relations between them. All over America private enterprise is disappearing. Huge companies are taking its place. These form combinations—“ pools ” as they call them—to crush out small traders. The railroad companies are the kings of America to-day. They pool their interests with oil companies, coal companies, grain companies, etc., to “rig” the markets. Thus, the president of one of these railways, defending his company before a Committee of the Legislature for having taken part in a combination of coal companies to cure the evil of too much coal in the market, stated that there were fifty other trades that did the same thing. He had a list of them to show the Committee, and in presenting it this is what he said: “Every pound of rope we buy for our vessels or our mines is fixed by the Committee of Rope Manufacturers of the United States; every keg of nails, all our screws, wrenches, and hinges—iron beams for your houses—fire-bricks, gas-pipes, terra cotta stoves, galvanised sheet-iron, bolting files, etc.—can only be bought at the price fixed by the mills that manufacture them.”

Now add to all this such other considerations as these. (1) In obedience to what is called the “iron law of wages,” men are compelled to work ten or twelve hours a-day, and frequently their wives and children work also ; yet it is computed that if everybody did his duty with the laborsaving power which machinery has introduced, three hours a-day of work would enable everybody to live respectably, and six hours would produce three times the amount of wealth that is required for comfort. (2) It is contended that the present social and political condition of things is so much in the interest of capital that “ a dollar at compound interest for seventy years will produce as much as a workman slaving for the same period.” (3) The American State school system, of which she is so justly proud, is turning out the children of the working classes with new tastes, new aspirations, new capacities of every kind. To increase capacity must be to increase wants, and this younger generation growing up can tind no satisfaction with a society in which these wants find no fuliilment. They are taught in schools literature, science, art, music, ,and ’ologies of all kinds; but the children of workpeople learn, on leaving school, that the society which takes such care to develop their capacities while young is so arranged as to starve them when they are older. It is a life and death struggle for bread, leaving no time to cultivate those tastes which their early education fostered. To feed these wants, thus early created, requires some leisure from a life of drudgery. But no such leisure is possible. Carefully nurtured for a while, it is only afterwards to be mocked, and finally to produce disgust and despair. (4) A new school of political economy is rising, which teaches the workman that labor is something more than a commodity, to be bought and sold like corn or hogs. It teaches, further, that the produce of labor constitutes the natural wages or recompense of labor; that in the original state of things which precedes both the appropriation of land and the accumulation of stock the whole produce of labor belongs to the laborer. Had this state of things continued wages would have augmented with improvements. But from a variety of causes the laborer lost possession of the instruments of wealth; he was, in fact, robbed of them by stronger powers, and he has gone on sinking in the social scale since. Thus the workman is taught to believe that he is the source of wealth, but that while he is adding to the country’s riches, at a rate wholly unprecedented in the history of nations, he himself, who is the producer of this wealth, is steadily growing poorer. And the conditions of society are such as to prevent him from sharing in the wealth which he is creating. Now rehearse things like these with all the resources of oratorical art to crowds of workmen ill-fed, ill-housed, ill-clothed, and often unemployed; point them to their own poverty; show them by passionate logic that they have been emploited of that which rightfully belongs to them; show them the palaces of the capitalists and the sumptuous life of their millionaires, and you will soon find yourself standing on the brink of a volcano, no longer latent and slumbering. That is where America seems to me to be to-day. The capitalist takes his stand coldly on the law of political economy, which teaches that labor is nothing more than a commodity, to be manipulated like iron or coal, and has behind him the force and power of government and soldiers. On the other side stands the wageworker, embittered by the sense of real or fancied wrongs, having translated to him, in fiery rhetoric, the principles of Proudhon and Blano and Karl Marx, and demanding now neither mercy nor charity, but only fair play and justice. It needs no great prevision to foresee that collisions must take place. Isolated and scattered they will be at first, and the will certainly be worsted for the time being; but the organisation of the laboring classes in America is proceeding with marvellous rapidity. The present state of things is intolerable. It cannot last. The only question is, What form is the solution to take? Is it to be peace or war ? Is it to be an evolution or a revolution ? Many years ago Ferdinand Lassalle, the eloquent interpreter of Karl Marx to the workers of the world, wrote: “lam persuaded that a revolution will take place. It will take place legally, and with all the blessings of if before it be too late our rulers become wise, determined, and courageous enough to lead it. Otherwise, after the lapse of certain time, the Goddess of Revolution will force an entrance into our social structure amid all the convulsions of violence with wild ing locks and brazen sandals on her feet. In one way or the other she will come; and when, forgetting the tumult of the day, I sink myself in history, I am able to hear from afar her heavy tread.” The labor organisations of America number to-day millions of men. They are being educated and drilled. All over America I found preparations going on for the struggle that everybody feels is approaching, because ft is in America that this struggle will first take place. The ballot quieted for a time the English democracy, and the abolition of the Lords and then of Royalty will perhaps keep it in temper a little longer; and a Republic would possibly act as a sop to the German workman. But in America there are no more concessions of this kind to be made. These stages are passed. They havebeentried and have not worked the regeneration hoped for. Representative government nas broken down. Commerce Is ruled by “pools,” municipal government by “rings,” and Congress itself is little less than a “ boss ring ” on a bigger scale. A Committee of the Legislature recently reported that no Bill could pass the House without Vanderbilt approved of it. America has thus no. more political rights, to giye to her people.

They have the ballot. They have manhood suffrage. They have their Republic. What is there beyond these? Nothing but Socialism or Anarchy. The next evolution of government will be along lines in one or other of these directions