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CONSUMERS
AND SOCIAL REFORM

JOHN ELLIOT ROSS, C.S.P., A.M.

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF
PHILOSOPHY OF THE CATHOLIC
UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA IN
PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE
OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY.

NEW YORK

THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY

1912

/^•'5''

(n^^.,

a^-

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
The Point at Issue 3

CHAPTER n
Obligations of the Consuming Class . 8

CHAPTER III
What is a Just Employer? 38

CHAPTER IV
Theory of Industrial Organization . 47

CHAPTER V
Industrial Conditions: Wages , , , 66

CHAPTER VI
Industrial Conditions: Health , , . jj

CHAPTER VII
Industrial Conditions: Morals '•"95

CHAPTER VIII

What Should the Individual Consumer

Do? 107

Appendix 133

Bibliography 135

255646

CONSUMERS AND
WAGE-EARNERS

CHAPTER ONE

THE POINT AT ISSUE

HAVE you ever stood in a country store
and from the superior heights of mature
wisdom watched a chubby-faced, bright-eyed
boy invest a penny in a prize-bag? To you it
is simply a paper enclosing a few nuts, a piece
of candy, and a variable quantity in the shape
of a tin flag, an imitation ring, etc. But to the
child there is an excitement in getting one
knows not what. All the gambling instincts
of the race that squanders thousands upon the
turf, all the love of adventure that peopled our
continent, are summed up in that one act. The
child has, perhaps, contentedly endured the
routine of the farm for weeks in the anticipa-
tion of this one moment of blissful joy when
his anxious fingers nervously reveal the delight
or the disappointment.

Years have brought wisdom (or is it disillu-
sionment?) and imitation rings no longer have
the same importance in our eyes. No matter
1:33

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

how wistfully we may look back, those days
will never return. Yet prize-bags may once
again loom large in our intellectual horizon,
though with a difference. This time we look
beyond the rosy-cheeked, healthy country lad,
bred amid the beauties of God's fields and nour-
ished with unadulterated home products, to the
pale, nervous, over-worked girls who spend
their days filling these bags. In an ill-lighted,
ill-ventilated room, in a great dusty, dirty city
they work feverishly for ten hours at the rate
of four cents a hundred bags. "They stand at
a table with boxes before them, from which
they take peanuts, candy and prizes with quick
automatic motion. They turn down the cor-
ners of each bag, and string the bags when full
in long bulky curls of seventy-two."^

Speeding to the utmost they cannot make
enough to live on. A room in a cheap board-
ing-house, morally and physically dirty, insuffi-
cient food, and no chance for legitimate pleas-
ures—this is the prize-bag life holds for them.
What wonder if the temptation to supplement
these wages in the way always possible for
women prove too strong? Who is to blame?

1 "Women and the Trades," The Pittsburgh Survey, by Eliza-
beth Beardsley Butler: N. Y., 1909: p. 47.

THE POINT AT ISSUE

Is the little chap hundreds of miles away in the
country, happily unconscious of their existence,
in any way responsible? This is the question
with which we are going to busy ourselves.

Our little boy and over-worked girl are not,
probably, typical Consumers and Producers.
Still they represent large numbers of the eco-
nomic world, and the solidarity of industry is
such that one could not exist without the other.
In a way, the country lad is a shadow of Presi-
dent Taft pressing a button to start the ma-
chinery of a world's fair. The child, with won-
derful effect on others, furnishes a portion of
the nation's industrial mechanism. In the sat-
isfaction of his own desires, he is all unconscious
of this, and unconscious, too of the responsi-
biUties of power that modern social workers
would thrust upon him.

It was once, indeed, the object of reformers
to excite a sense of wrong in the oppressed.
The fashion found expression in Thomas
Paine's "Rights of Man." Now their purpose
is also to arouse a sense of obligation in the
powerful, and the change of front is indicated
by Mazzini's "Duties of Man." One duty after
another has been forced upon the race's con-
science, and to-day the attempt is made to com-

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

pel the final, and some say the most powerful,
element of the industrial world,— the Con-
sumer,—to shoulder his share of responsibility.

Briefly, the line of argument is this : Labor-
ers have a right to "a fair wage for a fair day's
work." If employers fail in their duty of meet-
ing this right, then the obligation neglected by
the employers must be assumed by those who
also benefit by the laborers' work, — by the Con-
suming Class. At first, the obligation is made
abstract and hypothetical in this way because
of difficulties in establishing the concrete con-
tent of the workman's right to a fair wage, and
just what line of conduct is incumbent upon
the individual Consumer confronted by this sit-
uation. Persons who readily agree that the la-
borer has a right to a fair wage, and that if this
right is violated the Consumer ought to do
something, will wrangle unendingly as to just
what is a fair wage and just what a Consumer
ought to do.

After fixing this general obligation upon the
Consuming Class, however, the other question
as to whether the employers are actually neg-
lecting their duties towards their employees,
and what the individual Consumer can and
should do, will be considered.

[6]

THE POINT AT ISSUE

The fixing of an abstract, hypothetical obli-
gation for a whole class, rather than a concrete
duty for a particular individual, is not useless.
If it is proved, that, provided employers neg-
lect their duties and the Consuming Class can
do anything to fulfill them, there is an obliga-
tion upon the Consuming Class to carry out
these duties— if this is established, it is only
necessary when a particular case presents itself
to ask : Have the men through whose labor this
Consimier is benefiting been unjustly treated
by their employers, and can this Consimier,
without a disproportionately grave inconven-
ience, do anything to help them?

Unless both questions are answered in the
affirmative, this particular individual Con-
sumer can have no duty of fulfilling the ab-
stract obligation. This is much easier than
working out the principle anew for each case.
It is the difference between blowing bottles and
molding them.

171

CHAPTER TWO

OBLIGATIONS OF THE CONSUMING CLASS

PRACTICALLY all are agreed on the
fundamental point that laborers have a
right to a fair wage for a fair day's work. Leo
XIII has said, that though contracts between
laborers and employers are free, "nevertheless,
there is a dictate of natural justice underlying
them more imperious than any bargain between
man and man, that remuneration ought to be
sufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved
wage-earner." ^ Later in the same encyclical,
he indicates that this wage should be large
enough to enable a workman to "maintain him-
self, his wife and his children in reasonable
comfort" (p. 237), and allow a margin for
saving against a rainy day.

The present Pope, Pius X, has quoted these
words of his predecessor and agreed that work-
men have a strict right in justice to a fair wage,
time to fulfill their religious duties, and free-

1 Great Encyclicals of Leo XIII, "On the Condition of Labor,"
p. 236 : N. Y., 1903.

[8]

OBLIGATIONS OF THE CONSUMING CLASS

dom from work unsuited to their age, strength,
or sex.^ The Rev. J. Kelleher, one of the most
recent and respected writers on the question,
goes even further. ''The right to work,'' he
says, "or some other right that will secure an
opportunity of providing for reasonable living
to the less fortunate members of the social body
who do not happen to be possessed of property,
is an essential condition of any equitable eco-
nomic system." ^

Cardinal Capecelatro has said that each one
has "a right to raise himself towards the infi-
nite, a right to the intellectual nourishment
of religion, and, therefore, a right to the time
necessary for the worship of God, a right to
repose, a right to honest enjoyment, a right to
love in marriage, and the life of the home. In
woman Christianity recognizes with her func-
tion of child-bearing in Christian marriage, a
right to the time for the nurture of her children.
In children it recognizes a right to the supreme
benefit of health, given them by God, but en-
dangered by overmuch work. In young girls
it recognizes a right to such moderation in their

2 "Pope Pius X 01. Social Reform," London, 1910: p. 8.

3 Kelleher, "Private Ownership," Dublin, 1911: p. 174; cf.
also p. 179. Italics added.

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

duties as may assure them health and strength.
In all, finally, it acknowledges the immortal
soul, with its rights to education, to salvation,
to the time that these things need." ^

Now when Pope Leo and the other authori-
ties quoted used the words "right," "just,"
"duty," what did they mean? These words are
often employed vaguely and carelessly, but we
may be sure that here they were taken in a strict
and well-defined sense, such as usually found
among Catholic ethicists.

A right, as it is thus ordinarily defined, is "a
legitimate power of doing or acquiring some-
thing for one's own good." ^

The word power is not taken here in the
sense of physical ability. It means that moral
potency or capacity without which nothing can
be acquired or recovered: for a person may
have a right to do what he has not the physi-
cal power to perform. "Legitimate" means
granted by or conformable to law: hence we
have not a right to do everything for which we
have the physical power.

Once we get this idea of "right" &rmly fixed

* "Christ, the Church, and Man," p. 74: St. Louis, 1909.
sGury: "Compendium theologise moralis," n. 579: De just, et
jure: Ratisbon, 1874.

DO]

OBLIGATIONS OF THE CONSUMING CLASS

in our minds, the concepts of "justice," "injus-
tice," and "duty" easily follow. For "justice,"
in a definition of Ulpian that has been accepted
all down the ages since, is simply the constant
and perpetual will of giving to each one his
right.^ And injustice, naturally, is merely a
voluntary violation of another's right.

A "duty" is simply the obverse of a right, it
is the obligation corresponding to a right. Or
as Bouquillon put it, it is "something reason-
ably due from one person to another because of
a necessary connection between the end to be
attained and the means used."^ As the end
varies between justice and charity, so does the
duty. In the one case, our object is to fulfill
the precept, "love thy neighbor as thyself"; in
the other, to give to each man what he has a
right to have.

The fundamental concept of a "right" may
be looked at from four points of view: (a) the
subject, or who has the right; (b) the matter,
or content of the right; (c) the title or reason
for the right; (d) and finally, the term, or who
has to respect the right.

Asking these questions about the right at
present under consideration, we find that the

« See Appendix, 1. f See Appendix, Q.

nil]

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

subject of the right is each individual who con-
tributes to the production or distribution of the
articles purchased by the Consumer. The con-
tent of this right we have already given in the
words of Leo XIII and others. Briefly, it
may be summarized as the right to a decent
living.

On what grounds have employees these
rights? By the very fact that they are men;
that is, intelligent beings destined for a su-
pernatural end. Therefore these rights are
connatural^ as belonging to them by their na-
ture; inalienable^ because they cannot be re-
nounced; perfect, because so strict that the
duties corresponding to them are matters of
commutative justice.

And who has the duties corresponding to the
workman's right to a decent living? Primar-
ily, the direct employer. He has a strict duty
of justice in the matter. If he fulfill it, then
no one else is bound. But in the case before us,
we assume that the direct employer has failed
to do his strict duty of commutative justice to
his employees. It makes no difference whether
the direct employer be formally guilty or not.
He may be unable to perform his duty, or he
may wilfully neglect it. That does not matter.

D2]

OBLIGATIONS OF THE CONSUMING CLASS

De facto, he does neglect it. What then is the
duty of the Consuming Class?

We think that the Consuming Class is bound
to assimie the obligations that the direct em-
ployers have neglected. And we are going to
support this contention by four arguments.
These arguments are :

I. The devolution of duty argument: the di-
rect employer has failed to fulfill his duty, and
this duty thereupon devolves upon the indirect
employer, the Consuming Class.

II. The value argument: ideally, the buyer
of an article is bound to pay its value, and, as
a general rule, if proper economy has been ex-
ercised in its production, this must be sufficient
to pay a living wage to the men engaged in
producing and distributing that article.

III. The co-operation argument: the direct
employer is guilty of an injustice in which the
Consuming Class is bound not to co-operate.

IV. The social argument: it is for the com-
mon good that the average employee should be
paid a hving wage. And since the Consuming
Class is merely the body pohtic, from one point
of view, it is bound to sacrifice the advantage
of cheap buying for the sake of the rounded
advantage of the whole.

CIS]

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

I. We have explained briefly to what every
employee has a right— that is to say, what every
employer must give his workmen, or commit
injustice. We have assumed, further, that the
employee often does not get what he has a right
to have.

Now, this is not always the employer's fault.
Often an employer would be glad to raise
wages, to improve sanitary conditions, to
shorten hours, but the stress of competition
prevents him.

But the employer being unable or unwilling
to pay a proper wage, etc., what becomes of the
employee's right? Does it cease? Has he no
claim upon anyone else?

Those who would fix an obhgation on the
Consuming Class say that the employee's right
does not cease. He has a claim, they contend,
upon all who in any way benefit by his labor,
the strength of the claim depending upon the
closeness of the relationship, the importance of
the benefit derived, and the injustice suifered.

First of all, they point out, there is the rent-
taker. But for the labor of these men (as-
sumed to be underpaid, etc.), there would be
no return out of which to pay rent. For the
mere fact of ownership, which in itself may not

D43

OBLIGATIONS OF THE CONSUMING CLASS

stand for any addition to the ground's produc-
tive capacity, these men are allowed to take a
part at least of what would be necessary to
raise the condition of the men producing the
wealth to a just standard. Therefore, because
the rent-taker seems to receive the most gratui-
tous benefit from the employee, the duty of the
employer devolves first upon him. If the em-
ployer fail, wilfully or not, to fulfill his duties
to his men, then they become binding upon the
rent-taker.

Should he, too, fail, the laborer still has a
claim. There is another very important sharer
in distribution— the interest-taker. It is true
that the product is the joint result of labor and
capital. But when there is the case of anony-
mous, impersonal capital receiving interest,
and Kving, breathing, human machines being
under-fed and unprotected, then humanity's
claims supersede those of capital.^ The inalien-
able rights of the laborer, which Cardinal Ca-
pecelatro has so excellently summarized, replace
the alienable rights of the individual capitalists
based upon the mere possession of property.
The interest-taker is bound to give even the

8Cf. John A. Ryan, "The Church and Interest-Taking," p.
31: St. Louis, 1910.

C153

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

whole of his share to maintain a just standard
of wages, etc. And this principle is admitted
in civil law by making wages a first lien upon
the product and exempting wages from legal
action.^

But if the interest-taker, also, be unwilling
to fulfill his duties, there is still an economic ele-
ment upon which the laborer has a claim— the
Consuming Class. Production on a huge scale,
the interposition of wholesalers and middlemen
of all sorts, shopping by mail or telephone,
should not disguise the fact that the Consum-
ing Class are really employers. It is only in
an indirect way, it is true, but still a real way
for all that. If the direct" employer, the rent-
and interest-taker refuse or are unable to per-
form their duties, then (leaving aside the legis-
lature for the present) these devolve upon the
Consuming Class in so far as they benefit by
the laborer's work.

This argument for the obligation of the Con-
suming Class is based upon the devolution of
duties. Here it may appear new and strange,
because applied to a new field, but it is admitted
elsewhere as beyond contradiction. If, for in-
stance, parents will not or cannot support their

9Cf. Bull. U. S. Bur. Lab., Jan. 1, 1911, pp. 876, 878, 881.
D63

OBLIGATIONS OF THE CONSUMING CLASS

children, then the grandparents have just as
real a duty towards them as if they were their
own immediate children. And if they, too, neg-
lect this duty, then it devolves upon collateral
relatives until finally it falls on mere neighbors.

Likewise, the Consuming Class, it is claimed,
if those whose duty is prior to theirs refuse to
perform it, must fulfill the duty that has de-
volved upon them. The rent- and interest-
taker may be unjust to the employee and to
them, but that is not a valid excuse.

The same principle, though arrived at by a
different process of reasoning, underlies the
dictum, coming to be more and more recog-
nized by legislators and economists, that the
costs of production should be borne by the Con-
sumers. That is to say, that the risks of profes-
sional hazard and accidents due to the careless-
ness of fellow-servants have been transferred
from the employee to the employer. Naturally
then, the employer compensates himself out of
the price.

II. This question of the duty of the Con-
suming Class towards the men who make or sell
the goods they buy, may be viewed from an-
other angle than that of the devolution of du-
ties or the obligation of indirect employers.

D7]

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

Leaving out of consideration the idea of indi-
rect employer, it is further contended that the
Consuming Class, simply as purchasers, may
be guilty of injustice in another sense.

For what are the duties of the buyer? To
pay the true "value" of an article.^^ And what
determines the true value of an article? Not
necessarily the price.

This may be fixed by law, as is the case with
bread in many large cities. A loaf of a certain
weight must be sold for five cents. Or we may
have the natural or market price, which is de-
termined by common consent. This is nothing
more than the price resulting from the interac-
tion of supply and demand.

But although ordinarily, justice is fulfilled
if a person pay either the legal or market price,
neither is really based on justice. The price
fixed by law will come closer to being a just
price. In a self-governing community, it prob-
ably will not do a great injustice to either party
for any length of time. In this country its field
is so limited, that it may be disregarded in the
present discussion.

The market price, however, makes no pre-

10 Cf. St. Thomas, Summa, 2a 2ae, Q.77, A. 1-2; St. Alphonsus,
Lib. IV, Tr. V, n. 793.

OBLIGATIONS OF THE CONSUMING CLASS

tense of being determined by justice. It is the
shrewdness of one man pitted against the
shrewdness of another, or even the greed of one
against the other's need. One wants to sell for
as high a price while the other wants to buy for
as low a price as he can. When there are nu-
merous buyers and nvmierous sellers, all know-
ing their business pretty well, the result will be
a close approximation to what would be a just
price, if the cost to the entrepreneur producing
the commodities or the person managing the
distributing agency were all that should be
taken into consideration. In a society where
the actual producer sells directly to the Con-
sumer, where there is no production on an enor-
mous scale employing hundreds and thousands
of hands who have no voice in fixing the price
of the product, then the price reached by the
higgling of the market is likely to be just.

Under the medieval system of craftsmen and
one or two journeymen or apprentices who
formed part of the household it was possible
(by lack of competition) to maintain the rate
of reward by limiting the supply. "No serious
attempt was made to push trade or develop
business, but only to carry on each trade ac-
cording to the habitual rate of reward. Accord-

D93

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

ing to this policy, the conditions of the pro-
ducer were allowed to be the first consideration,
and the consumer had to pay a price at which
these conditions could be maintained." ^^

But conditions of business have changed im-
mensely since the Middle Ages. The Indus-
trial Revolution has brought big scale produc-
tion, driving out of existence the small pro-
ducer ministering directly and immediately to
the wants of the community. Department
stores have supplied the same principle in the
distributing end of industry, and very largely
replaced the small retailer. The employees of
the big producer and distributor, the ones most
concerned, have no voice in fixing the price of
the article made or distributed by their labor.
As a consequence competition will often de-
press the price below the point where it will
yield a living wage to them. Not their rights
determine this point, but what crude irresistible
hunger will force them to accept. Many times
it is only a difference between starving rapidly
or slowly. But competition is inexorable.

It is true, that sometimes the actual produc-
ers or distributors may not be getting living

11 W. Cunningham, "Christianity and Social Questions," p. 114:
London, 1910.

OBLIGATIONS OF THE CONSUMING CLASS

wages because the entrepreneurs or the rent-
er the interest-takers are absorbing too much.
But ordinarily it is probable that stress of com-
petition between capitalists and between man-
agers will keep their shares within fairly mod-
erate bounds. Capital competes with capital
for a share in production just as one firm com-
petes with another to secure a market for its
product. Hence it may be reasonably pre-
simied in any given case, when nothing is
known to the contrary, that where the laborers
are insufficiently remunerated, it is because the
price obtained for their product will not cover
just wages. Nor are appearances always a safe
guide. A man who owns and manages a fac-
tory (thus drawing by himself alone wages of
management, rent, and interest) may seem
able easily to afford higher wages. Yet to di-
vide his whole income among all his employees
might give only an inappreciable increase to
each.

Therefore, it would seem that the principle
of the market price being just, cannot be ap-
plied strictly to-day. On the contrary, many
persons are claiming that the market price
fixed by competition is usually unjust. A bet-
ter principle, a more fundamental principle,
1:21]

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

one that really strikes its roots down into jus-
tice itself, would be to say that a just price is
one that will yield a just return to all concerned
—the actual laborers who produce the commod-
ities, the clerks in the stores that distribute
them, wages of management to the entrepre-
neurs concerned, and interest on the capital in-
vested.

Certainly if this be not done, the equality
between the "value" of the article and the price
is not preserved. And as Ballerini says, "when
the equality is not preserved, so that the seller
sells for more than the highest price or the
buyer buys for less than the lowest ... in-
justice is conmiitted." ^^

But even though the price asked were suffi-
cient to pay the employees just wages and the
entrepreneur simply refused to do it, would the
Consuming Class be justified in buying the
article? It is contended that they would not.
For one of the duties of the seller is to give a
just title. And it would seem clear that one
who hires a person to make a certain article,
playing upon his necessity to avoid paying
what his labor is worth, has not acquired a just
title to the object produced. There is some-

12 See Appendix, 3,

1:223

OBLIGATIONS OF THE CONSUMING CLASS

thing in that article for which he has not paid.
Human flesh and blood that has not been com-
pensated for have gone into its making. The
seller not having a good title himself, cannot
transfer such to another. Persons who buy
from him do not, therefore, secure a just title,
and hence, it is argued, commit a grave injus-
tice by buying such an article. ^^

III. The third argument adduced in favor
of an obligation on the part of the Consuming
Class is, that the purchase of articles made un-
der unjust conditions is co-operation in the in-
justice. It makes no difference whether or not
the employers are formally guilty of injustice.
They may be forced by the competitive system,
as many contend, to underpay their workmen.
Nevertheless, material injustice at least is com-
mitted, and the Consuming Class have no right
to co-operate formally in what may be merely
material injustice for another. Yet the Con-
suming Class by buying goods made under un-
just conditions does co-operate, it is alleged, in
three ways: (A) as the recipient of the result
of the injustice; (B) by furnishing the means
for the act; (C) and by counselling the action.
"For a co-operator is one who at the same

18 Cf . Liguori, 1. c.

CSS]

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

time with another is the cause of the injury,
whether secondary or equally principal, whether
positive or negative. For there is not the same
manner of co-operation in all cases, but this is
common to all, that one person should concur
with another to commit an injury." ^*

(A) One of the ways of positively co-operat-
ing with an injustice, is by receiving the results
of the injustice. Thus a thief will not steal a
bulky piece of silver imless he has a fence to
receive it, and the fence becomes guilty of the
theft by receiving the article. So a business
man will not manufacture an article and thus
commit an injustice against the laborers whom
he underpays, unless he is reasonably sure some
one will receive this article after it is made. The
persons who receive it, then, or the purchasers,
it is argued, are in the position of the thief's
fence: They are receiving an article that was
obtained by injustice; and it matters not
whether the article was stolen outright or the
injustice committed in a more gentlemanly
way. Nor does the fact of the manufacturer
committing the injustice to increase his profits,
rather than (as has been shown elsewhere) to
meet a demand for cheapness on the part of the

14 See Appendix, 4.
1:243

OBLIGATIONS OF THE CONSUMING CLASS

Consuming Class, alter the situation. For a
thief steals for his own enrichment, not for the
advantage of the recipient of the stolen goods. ^^
(B) One can co-operate in an injustice not
only by receiving the results, but by furnishing
the means for committing the injustice, and it
is contended that the Consuming Class co-op-
erate also in this way. Nor is this simply a dif-
ferent name for the co-operation just consid-
ered. For in the previous case, the Consuming
Class co-operated with an act already per-
formed in anticipation of this co-operation.
Whereas in the phase now under discussion they
co-operate with an act to be done in the future.
A concrete example will make this clear. Mr.

invests $50,000 in the shoe business. After

paying for his plant, raw material, and the
wages of his men until he has produced mar-
ketable articles, he has practically nothing left.
His continuance in business depends upon his
selling these articles to gain money for current
expenses. The purchasers of these goods co-
operate (by receiving the articles) in the injus-
tice under which they are assumed to have been
manufactured, and also, by furnishing the nec-
essary means, in the injustice he will commit by

15 Cf. De Lugo, XIX, II, 4-5.

1:253

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

manufacturing more under the same condi-
tions.

(C) Nor is the Consuming Class's co-opera-
tion yet exhausted. For they may be looked
upon as truly counselling, voting for this injus-
tice on the part of the manufacturer. The Con-
sumers do not go personally to the manufac-
turer and urge him to produce a certain article
at a certain price, nor do they vote as specifi-
cally as an alderman for a contract with a fac-
tory, but their action amounts to practically
the same thing. They go from one store to an-
other seeking the cheapest price, and the manu-
facturer knows this. To meet this demand (a
very real, though to some extent impersonal)
demand for cheapness, the manufacturer com-
mits the injustice of underpaying his em-
ployees. It makes no difference whether you
call this "demand," or "counsel," or "voting,"
it is the real cause of the injustice, and hence
the Consuming Class are guilty of co-opera-
tion.'^

It makes no difference if the Consumer
knows that the injustice will continue whether
he purchase or not.'^ In purchasing he is guilty

16 Cf. De Lugo, L. c, XVII, II, n. 37.

17 L. c, n. 16, n. 19.

OBLIGATIONS OF THE CONSUMING CLASS

of a moral wrong. For as a man who buys a
ticket for an obscene show, co-operates in this
obscenity even though his money be not neces-
sary for its production, so do they participate
in the manufacturer's injustice. ^^ Or, to give
Ballerini's illustration, if ten men suffice to
launch a ship and an eleventh helps, certainly
he is truly said to be helpful. ^^ In the same
way. Consumers who buy an article that was
made imder unjust conditions co-operate in this
injustice even though it would have taken place
without the money received from their pur-
chase.

For these reasons, it is contended, the Con-
suming Class, in buying goods made under un-
just terms, co-operate in this injustice by re-
ceiving the goods, by furnishing the means for
committing the injustice, and by urging such
production by practical financial support.

IV. We now come to the social argument j
that is especially popular to-day, though it is
by no means new. It was familiar to the Scho-
lastics, and it was pithily formulated by Suarez
as, "Public is to be preferred to private good." ^^

18 Liguori, Lib. IV, Tr. IV, n. 42T.

19 Ballerini, op. cit.. Vol. II, pp. 696-7.

20 See Appendix, 5.

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

Aquinas expresses it more at length : "For any
individual in respect to what he is and has is
related to the multitude, just as a part is re-
lated to the whole: whence nature sometimes
injures a part to save the whole." ^^ Elsewhere,
Suarez confers upon the civil law the power of
binding in conscience because "this power is

necessary for the good government of the re-
public." ^^

Various extremely important and far-reach-
ing rights and obligations are fixed by this ar-
gument. It is lawful, for instance, for the state
to kill criminals "if they are dangerous and in-
jurious to the community." ^^ Ballerini says it
is lawful to kill a criminal in so far as it is or-
dained for the safety of the whole society.^^
But only the properly appointed persons have
this right, because greater evils would befall
the state if each one were the judge in his own
case. (L. c.) And not only may the state di-
rectly kill a guilty person, it may also, when
necessary for the common good indirectly kill
an innocent person.^^ Wholesale organized

21 See Appendix, 6.

22 See Appendix, 7.

23 Aquinas, 1. c, Q.64, A. 2.

24 L. c, Pt. I, Tr. VI, Sec. V, n. 49.

25 Liguori, 1. c, Lib. IV, Tr. IV, n. 393 ; Ballerini, 1. c, n. 62.

[283

OBLIGATIONS OF THE CONSUMING CLASS

slaughter, called war, is right and proper when
the good of the state requires it.^^ Whereas
sedition is wrong, because it violates the good
of "public quiet and civil concord." ^^

Again, while suicide is unlawful, because, for
one reason, a man is part of the community and
whoever kills himself does an injury to the com-
munity, a man may yet lawfully expose himself
to certain death for the good of the community.
Similarly, though it is ilhcit to cut off a mem-
ber of the body, because it is a part of the whole
and cannot be removed without injuring the
whole (Aquinas, 1. c, Q. 65, A. 1) , Liguori ap-
proves of at least one form of serious mutila-
tion for the good of the community.^ ^

Private property is justified because it tends
to the peace of the state.^^ Lehmkuhl deter-
mines the gravity of an injustice not only from
the injury done to the individual, but also,
"from the injury and danger which the public
good and security would suffer, if it were al-
lowed with impunity." ^^

2« Liguori, 1. c, n. 402.

27 Ballerini, 1. c, n. 126.

28 Liguori, 1. c, n. 374.

29 Aquinas, 1. c, Q^M, A.2; Noldin, I. c, De Sept. Praec,
n. 368, ed. 8a.

30 See Appendix, 8.

[29]

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

Social necessity, then, is widely recognized
as a valid proof for a right or duty. The bind-
ing force of civil law, the wickedness of suicide
and self -mutilation, the morality of executing
guilty and innocent, the righteousness of pri-
vate property, are all settled by this norm.
Therefore, since the social necessity of the aver-
age workman getting a living wage is beyond
contradiction, the Consuming Class, who bene-
fit especially by the labor of these workmen,
are especially bound to see that these rights are
obtained.

We have now considered the arguments ad-
vanced to prove that justice binds the Consum-
ing Class to see to it that goods are made under
fair terms. These arguments may be summar-
ized as follows:

I. Because as indirect employers the Con-
suming Class are bound to maintain just con-
ditions for those whom they indirectly employ.

II. Because as buyers the Consuming Class
are first bound to pay the full value of the arti-
cle, which must include sufficient to give the
persons employed in its manufacture and dis-
tribution a living wage, etc.; and secondly, be-
cause the Consimiing Class are bound not to

OBLIGATIONS OF THE CONSUMtNG CLASS

buy an article to which the seller has not a just
title, the seller of an article made under unjust
conditions not having a just title since there is
work in the object for which he has not paid.

III. Because the Consuming Class would
co-operate in an injustice in three ways: (A)
by receiving the goods made under unjust con-
ditions; (B) by furnishing the means for com-
mitting the injustice; (C) by urging such pro-
duction by this practical financial support.

IV. Because the Consuming Class are bound
to seek the social good, and that demands the
payment of fair wages.

So far we have considered only the argu-
ments for an obligation of justice on the part
of the Consuming Class. But may there not
also be a duty of charity?

Certain general considerations relating to
this second of the two greatest commandments,
"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," must
be referred to before answering that question.

The precept of charity requires us to love our
neighbor as ourselves. And by the term neigh-
bor we mean everyone. No religion, "race.

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

color, or previous condition of servitude" re-
moves a man from the category of our neigh-
bor. A Christian's love must be all embracing.
T. H. Green has well said that progress in civ-
ilization has been an enlargement of the mean-
ing of neighbor and neighborliness. The mean-
ing of these terms, once confined to one's rela-
tives, then extended to one's city, tribe, nation,
has now widened out until it embraces the
world.

But while we must look upon everyone as
our neighbor, and love him as ourselves, this
does not mean that we must love each one in the
same degree. We must love him as ourselves,
but not necessarily as much as ourselves. We
must have a universal internal love by which we
wish our neighbor well in his spiritual, cor-
poral, and material goods and succor him in
necessity.

Yet the amount of good we wish him, and
the strength of the obligation to effect it, vary
both with the special relationship existing be-
tween us and our mutual conditions. By mu-
tual conditions, is meant his state of indigency
and ours of prosperity. Almost innumerable
grades of necessity may be distinguished, but
for present purposes four will be sufficient:

OBLIGATIONS OF THE CONSUMING CLASS

(1) extreme necessity, in which a person is in
danger of death, or will be very shortly; (2)
quasi-extreme necessity, in which one is in dan-
ger of f aUing into extreme necessity or a grave
evil, either perpetual or lasting for a long time ;
(3) grave necessity, where one suffers a serious
evil, but not for so long a period, or not so
great; (4) common necessity, when one experi-
ences some inconvenience, but not grievous in-
convenience.

The obligation varies, too, with the condi-
tions existing on our part. For if the duty of
succoring our neighbor from our own goods is
to bind, we must be in possession of superfluous
goods. Otherwise our own need would have a
prior claim. Material possessions may be
superfluous to life, that is, just more than
enough to keep body and soul together; super-
fluous to our state in life, or goods without
which we should have to sink to a lower social
plane; or superfluous to the decency of our
state, those over and above what are required
even for the proper support of our family in
accordance with the usual custom of those in
the same position, the education and starting
of our children in life, the giving of charity,
gifts, entertainment of guests, etc. This last

C333

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

class of goods may be called absolutely super-
fluous.

Now, it would not seem rigoristic (especially
in these days when the right to any private
property is seriously questioned) to say, that
a person in extreme or quasi-extreme necessity
is to be succored from goods that are necessary
to the decent support of our station in life. One
merely in grave or common necessity need be
helped only out of absolutely superfluous
goods. This would certainly be the minimimi
that any Christian would require.

But this obligation also varies directly ac-
cording to the closeness of our relationship with
the person in want. A connection of blood,
whether direct as between father and son, or
collateral as between uncle and nephew, evi-
dently produces stronger reciprocal obligations
of charity than simple kinship through Adam.
So, too, there is a stronger bond between those
who have assumed artificial relationships, such
as a pastor to his people, or those of the same
religious faith, or those in the same social class,
or those who have acquired, whether voluntar-
ily or not, associational or economic ties. A
captain, for example, has greater obligations of
charity towards a man in his own company than

OBLIGATIONS OF THE CONSUMING CLASS

towards one in another company, towards one
in his regiment than towards one in another
regiment, and so on.

Certainly not least strong among these arti-
ficial relationships of society is that of employer
and employee. There was a time in social or-
ganization, when the permanent subjection of
Gurth to Cedric brought out more clearly the
mutual obligations. The ties of the relation-
ship seemed stronger because more lasting.
Fortunately or unfortunately, the right of free
contract has abolished this permanency. Men
wander from one employer to another, from
one city to another, from one country to an-
other. But no transitoriness of employment,
no mobility of labor, should obscure the fact
that while the relationship of employer and em-
ployee lasts, there also exist special and
stronger obligations of charity between the two.

Not as strong, probably, as between master
and serf, yet nevertheless too strong to be en-
tirely fulfilled by the simple payment of the
current wage. As Carlyle says, "Never on this
Earth was the relation of man to man long
carried on by Cash-payment alone. . . . Cash-
payment never was, or could except for a few
years be, the union-bond of man to man. Cash

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

never yet paid one man fully his deserts to an-
other : nor could it nor can it, now or henceforth
to the end of the world. ... In brief, we shall
have to dismiss the Cash- Gospel rigorously into
its own place: we shall have to know, on the
threshold, that either there is some infinitely
deeper Gospel, subsidiary, explanatory, and
daily and hourly corrective to the Cash one : or
else that the Cash one itself and all others are
fast travelling." ^^

That infinitely deeper Gospel is the teaching
of Christian charity. This tells us that there is
another bond between employer and employee
than a mere "cash-nexus." The needy em-
ployee has a claim upon his employer in prefer-
ence to others, and the employer must dis-
charge it before dispensing charity to those in
no greater necessity who stand in no such rela-
tion to him. Charity begins at home, and the
employee is closer home than one related sim-
ply by the tie of a common nature.

Of course, the relation between the direct
employer and his workmen is more obvious than
that between the Consuming Class (which we
have called the indirect employer) and these
same men. But the relation of the latter is none
the less real and important for being obscure.

81 "Past and Present," Bk. IH, Ch. X.

OBLIGATIONS OF THE CONSUMING CLASS

Ordinarily it will probably be less close than
that of the direct employer, but circumstances
are conceivable in which the situation would be
reversed.

And certainly it would seem that the benefit
which the laboring class confers upon the Con-
suming Class is such that there is some special
claim arising upon their charity. Not labor in
itself but consumption is the object of work, and
this terminus of all activity, the Consuming
Class, would seem to be bound both in justice
and charity to see that their own satisfaction is
not attained at the cost of the comfort and hap-
piness of those who minister to it.

We may conclude, then, that if the direct em-
ployers fail to fulfill their duties towards their
employees, that the Consuming Class, as being
a beneficiary of the work done, are bound to as-
sume these duties. As yet, however, the obli-
gation is abstract as being fixed upon a class
and not some particular individual about to
purchase an article; and it is hypothetical as
simply assuming that employers neglect their
duties.

The further question now presents itself : Do
employers actually neglect their duties, and
what can and should the Consumer do?

CHAPTER THREE

WHAT IS A JUST EMPLOYER?

THE terms *'fair wages," "reasonable com-
fort," "living wage" have often been used
in the previous discussion. No attempt was
made to make them more definite because it was
not necessary at the time. Employers were
simply assumed to violate the standard repre-
sented by these expressions. But if we are go-
ing to decide de facto that employers are actu-
ally neglecting their duties, we must manifestly
have some norm by which to judge them.

What is this standard?

At first sight, this may seem easy to define.
But its apparent ease is an illusion. Even the
simplest and least questionable standard, that
of bare subsistence ( and to simplify it still fur-
ther, restrict the consideration entirely to the
question of food), is extremely elusive. Of
course a man needs some clothing, a certain
amount of fresh air, and a shelter from the wea-
ther. But we shall have a sufficiently compli-

WHAT IS A JUST EMPLOYER?

cated problem without introducing these fac-
tors.

How much food, then, does a man need to
repair the daily waste and keep him in good
physical condition? This depends to some ex-
tent upon the character of the work he does.
A stevedore needs more food than a clerk. It
will depend, too, upon the climate. Those in
northern latitudes require more food, and
usually of a more expensive kind, than those
living in the tropics, and they ought to have
more in winter than in summer. Again, racial
characteristics must be taken into account. A
Chinese coolie may get fat on fish and rice, or
an Italian may do well on cheese and macaroni,
while an Anglo-Saxon would starve on such a
diet.

In addition to all these points, there is an
individuality about the digestive organs that
must be weighed. With our exact chemical
science it looks simple enough to calculate how
much muscle and blood and nervous force are
lost in doing a certain amount of work, and
just how much food would be required in a
given time to make good that loss. This would
be easy if we could buy muscle and nervous
force done up in neat packages and simply ap-

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

ply them where needed just as we apply a coat
of paint to a weather-beaten house. But, un-
fortunately, we cannot do this. The brawn
and nerve must be bought in entirely different
forms, broken up by certain interior organs,
and gradually sent by a long and complicated
assimilating process to the point requiring
them. And what becomes of the subsistence
standard if the organs of some people refuse
to assimilate what those of others heartily rel-
ish? or if at different periods, and for no appar-
ent reason, the same man can get no strength
or satisfaction from what he formerly craved?

But if we cannot tell what mere subsistence
requires are we not getting even vaguer when
we add an indefinite "more" to it? When peo-
ple talk of "frugal comfort," "decent liveli-
hood," "living wage," etc., what do they mean?
Do these terms mean to-day just what they did
fifty years ago or will mean half a century
hence ?

A little reflection will show us that they do
not. They are largely relative. When the gen-
try scorned to read and write, farm hands could
hardly consider it an injustice not to have in-
struction in the three Rs; and when everybody
went barefoot, it would have been foolish to riot

WHAT IS A JUST EMPLOYER?

for shoes. As means of production are per-
fected, as we get away from the danger of
starvation, always threatening primitive no-
madic peoples, the standard of living of the
more fortunate rises, as does that standard
which they are willing to allow the lower classes,
and which the lower classes demand.

As a consequence, what is looked upon in one
age as just and generous, may in another be
considered thoroughly unfair. Concrete stan-
dards of justice vary with the time and are soon
superseded by others. This is an important
fact, and it must be mastered before one can
use the current standard with honesty or intel-
ligence. The principle of justice upon which
the changing concrete standard is based, the
moral right of each individual as a human be-
ing to the fullest development of all his facul-
ties consistent with such rights in others, is
doubtless unchanging. But it is conditioned
by the stage of production that society has
reached, upon how much there is to go round ;
and the wage necessary to secure this standard
is conditioned by governmental supplement
such as free education, insurance, etc. It would
seem impossible, therefore, to determine the ex-
act wage that a particular individual is entitled

1:413

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

to until we can determine the total net product
and this individual's contribution to it as com-
pared with other individuals. We are not aware
that this has been done.

The attempt has been made, however, to
establish both the absolute minimum standard
and this relative standard. In the sixteenth
volume of the report of the United States Bu-
reau of Labor on "Woman and Child Wage-
Earners in the United States," the former is
fixed at $400.00. But have we an absolute
minimum below which wages could not fall
without endangering existence when a girl of
ten and a boy of six are allowed more money
for clothing than their mother?

Upon the relative living wage, whole vol-
umes have been written. But they would seem
either to deal with the concrete expression of
the standard of a particular class, or, if they do
attempt to establish the right of individuals
here and now to a particular remuneration in
money, they do not quite prove their conten-
tion.

But there are people who believe that the
right of the laborer to a specific wage (and
hence the employer's obligation of paying it)
can be demonstrated. Dr. John A. Ryan,

1:423

WHAT IS A JUST EMPLOYER?

whose treatise on "The Living Wage" has at-
tracted marked attention, has made such a claim
for an estimate of $600.00 as a family living
wage in cities of five hundred thousand or over
in the United States/

This was in 1906 and the cost of living has
advanced considerably since then. Dr. Ryan
would probably, therefore, not consider too
high the estimate of the Bureau of Labor (1. c.)
of $600.00 for cotton mill operatives in the
South. Under this standard, the father sup-
ports the family, the mother stays at home look-
ing after the house, and the children go to
school. It includes insurance.

Now for the sake of argument let us assume
that laborers have a strict right in justice to a
standard represented by $600.00 a year in a
Southern mill town. I must reluctantly admit
that $600.00 cannot be proved conclusively to
be the sum to which all laborers have a right.

1 others have approximated this estimate, though possibly
without giving it exactly the same ethical implications as Dr.
Ryan. Thus Chapin, "Standard of Living in New York City,"
N. Y., p. 245, claims $800.00 as the minimum for New York
City. Miss Butler, "Women and the Trades," N. Y., p. 346,
says $7.00 a week for a single woman in Pittsburgh. The
United States Bureau of Labor in the third volume of its re-
port on "Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United
States," p. 560, declares for $2.00 a week per capita.

n483

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

But for the time being we shall take it for
granted, and from the standpoint of this as-
sumption judge the justice or injustice of in-
dustrial conditions.

I have said that I do not think that this obli-
gation can be proved conclusively, that is, as
conclusively as a proposition in geometry. But
I do think that it is capable of the same proof
that we have for many other moral truths
that pass unquestioned. We must beware of
applying to new propositions that corrosive
logic which, if impartially exercised on old and
new alike, would destroy the very basis of mo-
rality.

This principle, that moral truths cannot be
absolutely demonstrated, is generally admitted
and many concrete examples could be given
from prominent ethicists: thus De Lugo in
speaking of so fundamental a question as the
unlawfulness of suicide, does not hesitate to
say: "The whole difficulty consists in assigning
a reason for this truth: for though its [sui-
cide's] turpitude is immediately apparent, it is
not easy to find the foundation of this judg-
ment: whence {a thing that happens in many
other questions) the conclusion is more certain

1:443

WHAT IS A JUST EMPLOYER?

than the reason adduced by various authors for
its proof." ^

Again, Ballerini, in treating of the unlaw-
fuhiess of one of the sins mentioned by St. Paul
in the sixth chapter of his first Epistle to the
Corinthians, remarks that "it is most difficult
to assign a reason for this." Then, after re-
jecting all the reasons usually brought for-
ward, he adds: "It must be admitted that there
are some practical truths necessary for the
right association of men with each other, which
men feel and perceive by a sort of rational in-
stinct, whose reason, nevertheless (at least a
demonstrative one), when these same men seek
it analytically, they find it hard to discover. It
would seem that nature, or the Author of our
nature, wished to supply the defect of the ex-
ercise of reason by an instinct or rational sense
of this kind: . . . Among the truths of this
nature, the one of which we treat happens to be
found." ^

If unquestioned authorities like Ballerini
and De Lugo admit their inability to prove
such fundamental and important obligations
(it will be noted that De Lugo says there are

2 See Appendix, 9. 3 See Appendix, 10.

1:45]

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

many such) as those of refraining from the
above mentioned sins, it need not sm-prise us to
find that the obhgations of Consumers cannot
be proved apodictically. It would be foolish,
therefore, to claim absolutely to demonstrate
this obhgation. All that can be done is to ad-
duce the same proofs that Aquinas, Suarez, and
other master minds have used to fix other du-
ties, and show that they have equal force in the
present discussion. It is simply the familiar
argument a pari^ and the claim would seem rea-
sonable, that any objectors meeting these argu-
ments on purely rational grounds, must show
that they do not equally apply to this obliga-
tion, or else deny their force as proof for the
other duties.

[463

CHAPTER FOUR

THEOEY OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION

MODERN industrial conditions may be
considered either a priori or a posteriori,
either theoretically or de facto. We may ex-
amine the principles of economic organization,
and conclude that they will or will not lead to
low wages ; or we can go to the facts themselves,
and decide from an examination of actual con-
ditions whether or not wages are low, etc., al-
ways remembering the standard we have
adopted.

Beginning with the first method, we may,
speaking roughly and with sufficient allowance
for monopolies, say that we live under a com-
petitive system. Men compete with others for
their share in the product of industry. Goods
are not put in one general fund and distributed
according to each one's needs. Nor are they
awarded to suit the whim of some ruler. Un-
doubtedly our present industrial organization
is individualistic rather than socialistic, and its
chief characteristic is probably a rivalry be-

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

tween its various members. Some assume that
competition is universal and unrestrained.
Then they draw conclusions as to the present
system from what would happen if such com-
petition prevailed. Others forget that compe-
tition is as universal as it really is, and that it
exists not only between laborer and laborer to
get the job, but between capitalist and capital-
ist to secure the laborer.

To subscribe to either of these errors will viti-
ate any conclusions as to social policy. For if
unrestrained competition have certain evil ten-
dencies, we cannot therefore assume that the
present restricted form will have such results.
And the fact that competition exists between
capitalists as well as between laborers has very
wide-reaching implications. It means no less
than that competition may raise wages as well
as lower them.

The average person is apt to look upon an
object as drawn only to the earth by gravita-
tion. He forgets that the same force is also
pulling at it in an opposite direction. And in
the same way the average person is hkely to
forget that competition is continually pulling
wages both up and down. If we imagine some
object suspended between the earth and the

[48]

THEORY OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION

moon, and being constantly drawn towards
each according to some power inherent in them
which varies from time to time so that the ob-
ject now approaches one and now the other,
we shall have a rough illustration of how com-
petition affects wages.

We can look upon the amount of wages as
the object of attraction between competition on
the part of laborers and competition on the
part of capitalists. According as competition
among capitalists is keen as compared with that
among laborers, wages will rise, and vice versa ;
just as when, in our illustration, gravity was
strong in the moon, the object rose towards it,
and when it was stronger in the earth the ob-
ject feU towards that body. But in both cases
the result is due to the same force, though act-
ing from different points. It would be an error,
therefore, to attribute all the evils of our pres-
ent system to competition, and all the good to
some other agency. Competition has good re-
sults as well as bad, and this two-fold influence
must always be remembered.

Doubtless absolutely unrestrained competi-
tion between laborers with no corresponding
rivalry between capitalists would depress
wages. But such competition does not exist.
1:493

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

Competition is not absolutely unrestricted. It
is limited by organization among the workmen,
by legislation, by natural ability, and in vari-
ous other ways. As a result, the effects are lim-
ited in various ways. If a bricklayers' union
is strong enough practically to eliminate com-
petition between this class of laborers while
capitaHsts compete with each other to obtain
their services, then the working out of compe-
tition has been modified in such a way as to
have an upward effect upon wages.

Competition, then, is not necessarily bad. In
many cases, competition is not only the life of
trade, but the builder of character as well. As
a whole, those who have to earn their living
amid keen business rivalry are more energetic,
quickwitted and resourceful than those govern-
ment employees who live in a somewhat listless,
non-competitive atmosphere. And the superi-
ority of Western to Eastern civilization and
character may be due to the fact that there com-
petition has been too much limited by caste sys-
tems, repressive legislation, and unchanging
custom.

Under the restricted form of competition ex-
isting to-day, many employers pay living

THEORY OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION

wages and treat their employees fairly in every
way. Indeed, the entrepreneur sometimes finds
it to his advantage to give his employees even
more than strict justice would demand. When
competition for workmen is keen between em-
ployers, certain inducements may be necessary
to prevent experienced men leaving and to
avoid the consequent loss of breaking in new
laborers.

At any rate we find that many employers do
all that can reasonably be expected. Forinstance,
in contrast with the conditions of the garment
trade prevailing in many places, the Pittsburgh
Survey found two factories in that city to
be run on excellent lines. They were well-
lighted by large windows, the ventilation was
good, the walls newly whitewashed, and the
floors swept and scrubbed. In one, indeed, the
upper windows were opened at intervals, and
the work-rooms had windows on three sides.
(Butler, 1. c, p. 109.) Nine others were good
because they were swept daily and exhibited a
manifest standard as to a work-room (1. c,
p. 107) . One firm, too, was found to allow its
employees to share in its progress. Thus when
new buttonhole machines were introduced a few

1:513

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

years ago the girls could turn out a third more
work than formerly, but they were paid at the
same piece-rate (L c, pp. 119-120).

The variation between individual stores as
regards wages will be shown from the follow-
ing table, adapted from page 121 of the first
volume of the Pittsburgh Survey:

Article

No. of
operators

Weekly

wages

Average

manufactured

Min.

Max.

Shirts

$ 6

$12

$ 7

Shirts

Shirts and

Overalls

10.5

Shirts

6.5

Pants

114

Pants

284

Pants

Such differences are reproduced in all the needle
trades/

Similar distinctions are also found in laun-

1 L. c, pp. 121, 122, 134, 152; U. S. Bur. Lab., "Men's Ready-
Made Clothing," p. 303.

THEORY OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION

dries. A very few have properly constructed
plants, with wash-rooms on the upper floors
and some arrangement for carrying off the in-
evitable steam (Butler, 1. c, p. 170), In one,
however, there are "exhaust pipes over the
mangles, and fans in the walls, and there are
windows along the side. The feeders are seated
while handling small work, and the folders have
comfortable benches" (p. 174). Wages, too,
are considerably higher here than in other laun-
dries. Four laundries in Pittsburgh have
adopted an improved cuff-ironing machine
which saves the operator from the extreme phy-
sical exertion of the old style (p. 182). A
North Side laundry has set aside a bright sunny
section of the building "for a lunch-room; there
are attractive dishes, tables covered with white
cloths, comfortable chairs. The noon interval
is an hour and a half" (p. 312) .

Turning to mercantile houses we also find a
great contrast. Some provide only half a dozen
chairs for five hundred girls, while others do
not allow chairs to be used at all.^ Many
stores have a working week at Christmas
of from seventy-two to eighty-four hours with-

2 Butler, p. 301; U. S. Bur. Lab., "Women Wage-Earners in
Stores and Factories," pp. 109, 178.

CSS]

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

out extra pay (Butler, 1. c, p. 303). "Some
employers are generally reputed among sales-
girls to assume that their women employees se-
cure financial backing from outside relation-
ships, and knowingly pay wages that are sup-
plementary rather than wages large enough to
cover the cost of a girl's support." (L. c, p.
306.) Indeed, some employers frankly admit
this and advertise for sales- women, "preferably
those living at home."^

Compare with these stores the one that "ex-
emplifies a higher standard at each point under
discussion ; in the comprehensiveness of its ven-
tilating system; in its observance of the spirit
of the law in providing an average of four seats
to a counter for its employees ; in the fact that
it has no Christmas overtime ; . . . and finally
in its wage standard. . . . Seven hundred girls
are paid $7.00 ; . . . one hundred girls are paid
$8.00 to $10.00, and sometimes $15.00 in the
case of a head of stock." (Butler, 1. c, p. 304.)

Some glass factories furnish shutters over the
leer-mouths to protect employees from heat;*
prevent radiation from the melting tanks by

3U. S. Bur. Lab., 1. c, p. 22; Report Minneapolis Vice Com"
mission, 1911, p. 127.
*U. S. Bur. Lab., "Glass Industry," p. 54.

THEORY OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION

various devices (1. c, p. 79) ; provide blue glass
screens at the glory holes (ib.) ; artificially cool
the shops in summer (1. c, p. 80) ; work shorter
hours (p. 98) ; eliminate night-work (p. 104) ;
provide hoods and exhausts for the etching
baths (p. 322) and the sand blasts (p. 317).
In one woolen factory the milligrams of dust in
a cubic centimeter of air were reduced from
twenty to seven by the installation of an ex-
hauster.^

The fact, too, that organizations such as
trade unions and consumers' leagues can allow
the use of their labels to certify that an article
has been made under fair conditions, is a strik-
ing confirmation of the fact that some manu-
facturers do maintain proper factories and
treat their employees justly.

Nevertheless, competition has a black as well
as a silver lining. It is self-evident that for
any length of time laborers cannot get more
than the total product of their work coupled
with the necessary capital. Nor wiU it be de-
nied that capitalists will always be in a position
to appropriate a part of this joint product, how
much depending very largely upon the relative
supply of capital and labor and the keenness of

5U. S. Bur. Lab., ** Industrial Hygiene," 1908, p. 79.
1:553

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

competition between them. The share that is
left and which goes to the laborers is not di-
vided equally. It is distributed competitively.
Those who are economically strongest seize
what they can, and the weaklings must be con-
tent with the remainder. Frequently this is not
sufficient to afford them the standard we are
considering, but they are helpless to remedy
matters.

And there are some things that tend to keep
this share at a minimum. Industrial organiza-
tion is not simply a case of competition between
capital and labor, but capitahsts are competing
with capitalists as well as with laborers, and
laborers with each other as well as with capital-
ists. The result is that the weakest parties to
this fray get hit hardest, and their only hope
would seem to be the addition of some other
check to competition that will prevent the pres-
ent distressful consequences. This is not to
say, as Socialists argue, that competition is to
be abolished entirely, for we have seen that it
may really have excellent effects for the work-
man. Rather it is to be harnessed and guided
into beneficent channels, as a miller directs a
stream to turn a wheel. He does not destroy
the stream but makes it do his will.

1562

THEORY OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION

An analysis of industrial society will show,
I think, that despite the good work the stream
of competition is doing, there is a little eddy
undermining the bank and working havoc in
some places. The description of one phase of
competition, even though it be isolated from
the rest, will probably give a correct enough
idea of how this force while working out to the
advantage of some, is resulting in harm to oth-
ers. The considerations that must be omitted
in a short sketch do not change the matter
essentially. They limit the hardship wrought,
but they do not prevent a considerable number
of workmen from being mercilessly ground
down.

Modern industry, then, is organized for sale,
not use. Business men care nothing about what
they manufacture so long as they can find a
profitable sale for the article. The typical em-
ployer makes shoes not because he hkes to, as
an artist may paint a picture. He does it be-
cause he thinks a sufficient number of purchas-
ers will want this commodity at a price paying
him for his trouble.

But to get these purchasers he must (unless he
have some sort of monopoly) offer his product
at a price no higher than other manufacturers

1571

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

are willing to take for the same article. If he
deviate only a few cents, the expert buyers of
retail stores will know it and go elsewhere.
There is a constant demand for cheapness, a
universal eagerness to "get your money's
worth"; and factories and retail firms must
meet it, or see their trade taken away by com-
petitors. The intense desire of individual buy-
ers for minute savings of a cent here or a frac-
tion of a cent there, becomes, in the aggregate,
an irresistible Demand with a capital D, "a
blood-power stronger than steam," compelling
the retailer (who in his turn reacts upon the
manufacturer) to sell cheap. "The phenomena
of sweating are a standing warning against the
dangers that are inherent in unregulated com-
petition. . . . The underlying cause of the
evil," affirms a noted English economist, "is
certainly to be found in the indiscriminate pref-
erence of the public for that which is low-
priced."^

The seller, then, must meet the Consumer's
demands ; and since these are for cheapness, he
must sell cheap. But how can cheapness be ob-
tained ? Only by cutting down the expenses of

^W. Cunningham, "Christianity and Social Questions," pp.
122-123: London, 1910.

1582

THEORY OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION

production. Other manufacturers possess the
same machinery, about the same advantages of
location, and approximately the same talent.
Given a system of unrestrained competition,
each firm will have to count costs to within a
fraction of a cent and reduce expenses to the
lowest possible amount. To this end wages are
often cut, workmen speeded, and the health of
employees endangered.

"No one of us," says the manager of a big
department store in St. Louis, "has any partic-
ular consideration in the purchase price of
goods ; the ease of communication and the large
amount of advertising make it impossible for
us to have any serious advantage over others
in point of selling price. The women can go
from one store to another, effectually prevent-
ing one store from being materially higher
priced on the same goods than another.

*'The great struggle is over the expense ac-
count. This brings up the whole question of
salaries, the amount that can be paid to em-
ployees directly, the amount that is spent by us
in caring for them, compensation for length of
service. . . . All these have to be handled
from the expense account, and it is on this point
that some of the most delicate questions of mor-

1591

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

als arise, and they involve both the employer
and the customer in the treatment of the em-
ployee.'*^

It is true that some economists have main-
tained that the price of an article must cover
its cost of production.^ But as Professor
Carver says, such an opinion "is probably the
source of more error and confusion in economic
discussions than any other mistake." (Loc.
cit. ) It may be granted, indeed, that the price
will never be much below the eccpenses of pro-
duction, understanding by "expenses of pro-
duction" what the entrepreneur must pay out
in wages, interest, etc. Yet even this is not
because the expenses of production directly
govern prices. They affect the price only in-
directly by limiting the supply. For no entre-
preneur will long continue in business if he be
not able to sell his product at a profit, and his
going out of business will decrease the supply
and so raise the price by the well-known law of
supply and demand.

But "costs of production," being the sum of

■^ "The Socialized Church," p. 120, address on "The Relation of
the Church to Employees in Department Stores," by Hanford
Crawford, B.S.: St. Louis, N. Y., 1909.

8Cf. T. N. Carver, "Distribution of Wealth," p. 31: N. Y.,
1908.

ceo]

THEORY OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION

the efforts and sacrifices of all concerned in
making an article, are very different from "ex-
penses of production." ^ It is by no means true,
as Professor Sidgwick pointed out twenty-five
years ago, that the amoimt necessary to enable
a laborer to keep himself in good physical con-
dition and reproduce himself forms a minimum
below which the self-interest of an employer
will not allow wages to f all/^

For in the first place, there is no assurance
that a laborer is going to spend his wages for
this purpose. How, then, can it be to his em-
ployer's advantage to pay him more than he is
willing to take, when the surplus may be squan-
dered in drink? And even assuming that the
generality of laborers must receive such an
amount in order to meet the demand for work-
men, still they need not all receive it from their
employers. An industry, such as the depart-
ment stores, may try to get girls who obtain
part of their support from fathers or brothers
employed in other businesses. ^^ Or wages of

^Cf. H. R. Seager, "Introduction to Political Economy,*' pp.
53-54: N. Y., 1908.

^^H. Sidgwick, "Principles of Political Economy," p. 297:
London, 1887.

i^Cf. "Wage-Earning Women in Stores and Factories," p. 22:
U. S. Bureau of Labor, 1911.

[61]

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

large classes may be supplemented by public
or private alms. This was long the case imder
the English Poor Law. As the land-occupiers
paid the greater portion of the rates, it was to
the Manufacturers' advantage to have wages
really come partly from the parish.

And the numbers of laborers can be kept sta-
tionary without each workman, or even every
class, receiving enough to perpetuate himself.
For their ranks can easily be recruited from an
over-supply of some higher class. There is a
constant pressure upon the upper strata, forc-
ing down the unfit, and it is readily conceivable
that these failures should take the places of still
greater failures below.

There is, then, no physical or economic neces-
sity forcing employers to pay fair wages to
each individual worker, in the sense in which we
are using the word "fair" for the sake of argu-
ment. "The effort to organize business with a
view to cheap production, may be carried on
in such fashion as to press unduly on those who
work for wages ; employers are in a position in
which they may be able to drive hard bargains
as to hours of work and rates of pay, and to
pass on the risk of loss, which arises from fluc-
tuations of business, to be borne by those who

THEORY OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION

are thrown out of employment." ^^ And not
only may this, but there is every inducement and
almost necessity urging that it should, be done
except where the workmen are organized. No
employer can afford to pay a workman more
than his surplus over and above what would be
produced without him, and it will be. to his ad-
vantage to pay less. He is a purchaser of labor,
and like every other purchaser wants to get
that commodity at the lowest figure. And
there are several differences between him and
the purchaser of any other commodity that give
him a distinct advantage in the bargain.

In the first place, not merely increased prof-
its, what would be represented by a housewife's
saving in shopping, urge him to buy cheap la-
bor, but his own industrial existence, which will
be lost if he does not get his workmen as cheap
as his competitors. Having a greater prize at
stake, he develops a greater skill. He has a
wider view of economic conditions, a better
knowledge of the state of trade elsewhere, and
so he can outbargain the unorganized laborer.

Again, the laborer is in a worse position than
the seller of almost any other commodity. For

^2W. Cunningham, "Christianity and Social Questions," p. 118:
London, 1910.

CSS]

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

what he does not sell to-day disappears abso-
lutely. If he does not dispose of it now he can-
not to-morrow. A fruiterer can keep his or-
anges until the next day, if he is not satisfied
with the current price. But to-day's labor can
be sold only to-day. And if it be not sold, it is
probable that the workman will be physically
less fit to-morrow. Yet even if he does accept
the wage offered, and it is less than enough to
repair the daily waste of force, the same result
will be brought about gradually. He is, there-
fore, confronted by the dilemma of taking what
the idle are willing to accept, or becoming idle
himself.

It needs only the imagining of one's self in
the position of the unemployed to see that there
is hardly any limit below which the wages of
the weakest may not fall. A man without spe-
cial skill and without savings, with not only
himself but others to look out for, will be glad
to get even what he knows will not completely
support him.

"Without organization and by means of in-
dividual bargaining, wages are drawn down-
ward toward the level set by what idle men will
accept, which may be less than they will pro-
duce after they receive employment and will

[643

THEORY OF INDUSTRIAL ORGANIZATION

surely be less than they will produce after they
have developed their full efficiency. When la-
bor makes its bargains with employers without
organization on its side, the parties in the trans-
action are not on equal terms and wages are
unduly depressed. The individual laborer of-
fers what he is forced to sell, and the employer
is not forced to buy. Delay may mean priva-
tion for the one party and no great inconve-
nience or loss for the other. If there are within
reach a body of necessitous men out of employ-
ment and available for filling the positions for
which individual laborers are applying, the ap-
plicants are at a fatal disadvantage."^^ Such
is the opinion of a conservative economist with
an especially kindly feeling towards the com-
petitive system.

It would seem, therefore, that the competi-
tive organization of industry has a tendency to
crush out the weaklings. How numerous are
these weaklings, we shall now discuss.

13 J. B. Clark, **Essentials of Economic Theory," pp. 453 and
456: N. Y., 1907.

[65]

CHAPTER FIVE

INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: WAGES

WHAT has been said regarding indus-
trial conditions is not mere theorizing.
Private, state and federal investigations into
actual conditions confirm the contention that
there is a large margin of unemployed, and
that a considerable portion of those who do find
employment are overworked and underpaid re-
gardless of life and limb. Anyone who studies
the various ofiicial reports on this subject, must
conclude that Dr. De vine's summary of the
Pittsburgh Survey was well within the truth
and is applicable to practically the whole coun-
try:

"Low wages for the great majority of the la-
borers employed by the mills, not lower than in
other large cities, but low compared with the
prices — so low as to be inadequate to the main-
tenance of a normal American standard of liv-
ing; wages adjusted to the single man in the
1:66]

INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: WAGES

lodging house, not the responsible head of a
family.

"Still lower wages for women, who receive,
for example, in one of the metal trades, in
which the proportion of women is great enough
to be menacing, one-half as much as unorgan-
ized men in the same shops and one-third as
much as men in the union.

"The destruction of family life; not in any
imaginary or mystical sense, but by the de-
mands of the day's work, and by the very de-
monstrable and material method of typhoid
fever and industrial accidents; both preventa-
ble, but both costing in single years in Pitts-
burgh considerably more than a thousand lives,
and irretrievably shattering nearly as many
homes." ^

Assuming, throughout this discussion, that
$6.00 a week ($1.00 a week less than Miss But-
ler's estimate), or $312.00 a year is the lowest
fair individual wage; and $11.00 a week, or
$572.00 a year is the lowest fair family living
wage:^ it is easy to show from reliable reports

1 Report of annual convention of the American Sociological So-
ciety, 1908, or Charities and the Commons, now the Survey,
March 6, 1909.

2 Cf. p. 36 f for discussion of fair wage.

[673

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

that scores of thousands of individuals and
heads of families fall below this standard. But
in considering any figures quoted here, or to
be found elsewhere, it should always be remem-
bered that the actual wage may be much below
the rate of wage. One employed at the rate of
$6.00 a week may not make anything like that
because of loss of time.

How much is lost through unemployment, it
is hard to say. The United States Industrial
Commission was of the opinion, that "it is im-
possible to collect statistics of any value what-
ever relative to the unemployment of unorgan-
ized labor, among whom lack of employment is
a much more serious thing than it is with skilled
or organized labor." ^ It would seem, how-
ever, that in the clothing trades, the employees
lose at least one day in every six.^ According
to a Federal report issued in 1911, in Baltimore
one-fifth of the force worked between five days
and full time ; one-tenth between four and five
days; one-seventh between two and three, and
five per cent, two days or less.^ A report of
the New York State Bureau of Labor for

3 Vol. XIX, p. 754. i Loc. dt., p. T55.

5 U. S. Bureau of Labor, "Men's Ready-Made Clothing,"
p. 113.

INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: WAGES

1906^ contains the following suggestive table
regarding the unemployment of certain classes
of organized labor. It may rightly be assumed
that among unorganized workmen conditions
are worse.

TABLE I.

NO. AND PROPORTION OF UNEMPLOYED WAGE-EARNERS

No. of

No. idle

Per

Per cent idle

report'g

month

idle

1905

1904

1903

1902

1902-5

Jan.

191

84,539

12,682

15.

22.6

25.8

20.5

20.9

22.4

Feb.

190

85,155

13,031

15.3

19.4

21.6

17.8

18.7

19.4

Mch.

192

25,956

2,952

11.6

19.2

27.1

17.6

17.3

20.3

Apr.

192

90,352

6,583

7,3

11.8

17.0

17.3

15.3

15.4

May

192

91,163

6,364

7.0

8.3

15.9

20.2

14.0

14.6

June

192

92,100

5,801

6.3

9.1

13.7

23.1

14.6

15.1

July

195

94,571

7,229

7.6

8.0

14.8

17.8

15.6

14.1

Aug.

195

94,220

5,462

5.8

7.2

13.7

15.4

7.1

10.9

Sept.

195

94,290

5,252

6.3

5.9

12.0

9.4

6.3

8.4

Oct.

195

92,052

6,383

6 9

10.8

11.7

4.2

9.8

Nov.

195

93,042

7,052

7.6

6.1

11.1

16.4

14.3

12.0

Dec.

195

93,318

14,352

15.4

11.1

19.6

23.1

22.2

19.0

Mean for year

9.3

11.2

16.9

17.5

14.8

15.1

Other deductions that must be made from
the apparent wage are the withholding of pay
for long periods, exorbitant prices and rents
obtained through company stores and houses,
fines, and increases in the cost of living.

Therefore, it is not unreasonable to conclude
that the per diem or weekly wage rate as given
by the Bureau of Labor and other reports, af-
fords, by itself, an accurate statement only of
« p. XI.

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

the maximum yearly wage. This should al-
ways be remembered in judging any facts here-
after adduced.

In the fifteenth volume of the bulletins of the
Bureau of Labor will be found many interest-
ing tables bearing on this question of wages.
But as it is impracticable to quote them at any
length here, a few of the more salient facts
must suffice. Laborers in the flour mills of the
South were working twelve hours a day for
lie. an hour.^ Women in the carpet factories
of the North were getting no more.^ In the
factory product of the clothing trade great
numbers received less than lOc, lie, and 12c.
an hour (p. 35), and the compensation in
sweatshops was much less. Male boarders in
the knit-goods factories of the North- Central
section were averaging less than $387.00 per
annum. Women in the same factories were
getting much less, some even as low as 7c.
and 8c. an hour (p. 43). Silk-spinners in
the North- Atlantic section were making only
$5.00 a week, or less than $260.00 a year, for a
nine and one-half hour day (p. 58). Male
cigar-stemmers in the same section were mak-
ing $6.00 a week (p. 59). In Michigan, in

7 Loc. cit., p. 37. 8 p. 31.

[70]

INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: WAGES

1905, there were 3414 boys between fourteen
and sixteen earning on an average 77c. a day,
and 1725 girls making 64c. a day. In 1904,
the average yearly earnings in the food prepa-
rations industry was $441.00; in salt produc-
tion, $451.00; on tobacco and cigars, $393.00
(p. 334).

In New Jersey, in 1904-5, the average earn-
ings in the cigar industry were $316.70; silk-
weaving, $480.11; woolen and worsted goods,
$373.43. In the same State in 1903-4, there
were 1985 adult males receiving less than $3.00
a week; 3234 between $3.00 and $4.00; 5595
between $4.00 and $5.00; 6037 between $5.00
and $6.00; 12,406 between $7.00 and $8.00;
14,300 between $8.00 and $9.00, though $9.00,
working full time every week, would be only
$468.00 a year.

The very latest reports available confirm
these figures. In the cotton textile industry
alone, 29,974 employees, or 53.77% of the total
number investigated (11,484 men and 18,490
women) were being paid at a rate less than
$6.00 a week.^ If we take the $11.00 rate, or
family living wage, we find that 19,382 men

9 U. S. Bureau of Labor, "Cotton Textile Industry," p. 305,
1910.

[71]

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

(89% of the total) fall below it (L c). And
as only 55% of the men employed in this
industry were single (I.e., p. 132), at least
7285 of these men must have been married, and
hence receiving less than the normal family liv-
ing wage. It must be remembered, too, that
these figures are based upon the assumption
that full time is made. Could we get the actual
wages, these groups would be much larger.
This is shown by the table on page 329 of this
report, where actual wages average $1.32 less
than computed full time earnings.

If we turn to the clothing industry, we find
conditions even worse. In the five cities inves-
tigated (New York, Chicago, Baltimore,
Rochester, and Philadelphia), 6788 employees,
or 37% of the total (1217 men and 5571 wo-
men) were being paid at a rate less than the in-
dividual living wage of $6.00. Taking the fam-
ily living wage of $11.00 as our standard, 3499
men, or 62% of the total, fail to reach it.^^

Again it must be repeated, that the actual
wages are from 7^/4 to 20l^% lower than these
figures (1. c, p. 161). In one New York spe-

1^ U. S. Bureau of Labor, "Men's Ready-Made Clothing," p.
129.

1:723

INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: WAGES

cial order shop, the earnings for December fall
to 55% of the average (1. c., p. 178) .

These figures, however, are for shop-workers
only. The average wages for home-workers
are: Chicago, $4.35; Rochester, $4.14; New
York, $3.61; Philadelphia, $2.88; and Balti-
more, $2.24. "Here again the caution must be
borne in mind that home-workers' wages, low
as they are, often stand for the earnings of
more than one worker. Sometimes, as reported
on the books of the firm, it represents the earn-
ings of more than one week" (1. c, p. 139).
Ninety-eight per cent, of the married shop-fin-
ishers, and practically all of the home-finishers,
too, earned less than $350.00 a year (1. c, p.
226). The average yearly earnings of home-
workers are given as varying from $120.00 in
New York to $196.00 in Rochester. From
page 235 to 239 inclusive, the details of the
earnings, size of families, and number of those
working is gone into at great length. It must
suffice here to say that families of five are re-
corded whose total yearly earnings are less than
$100.00. One family of eleven is chronicled
whose yearly income was $445.00, sixty-five
dollars of which was earned by home-work.

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

Working six days a week for ten hours a day,
the home-worker cannot hope to make more
than $156.00 a year.^^

Seventy-six per cent, of the women em-
ployed in the glass industry earned less than
six dollars a week.^^ Their average annual
earnings, in fact, are stated as ranging from
$163.00 for those sixteen years old to $292.00
for those from twenty-five to twenty-nine
(1. c, p. 544). Nearly one-third of the fe-
male department-store employees receive less
than $6.00 a week.^^ Yet many of them had
other persons depending upon them (1. c, p.
55). One family, consisting of a mother, sev-
enteen-year-old daughter, and three younger
children, was supported by the daughter's $5.00
a week. They managed it by living in two
rooms and eating practically nothing besides
bread and tea or coffee (1. c, p. 56) .

In New York State in 1906,^^ it was found
that even among organized laborers reporting

11 L. c, p. 301; cf. also 20th Annual Report Bureau of Labor
Statistics of N. Y., pp. 66-67, here quoted.

12 U. S. Bureau of Labor, "Glass Industry," p. 405, 1911.

1^ U. S. Bureau Lab., "Wage-Earning Women in Stores and
Factories," p. 46, 1911.

" Report of Bureau of Labor Statistics of New York for 1906,
p. XXXL

1:743

INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: WAGES

to the Bureau of Labor, 6078 men and 2011
women were earning less than the lowest indi-
vidual living wage ($300.00), and 59,226 men
and 8881 women (17.6% and 63.8% respec-
tively) were earning less than the lowest fam-
ily living wage ($600.00) . If conditions were
so bad among union men, they were probably
much worse among unorganized workers.

In Pittsburgh, in the canneries, 59% of the
girls make only $6.00 a week, or less (Butler,
1. c, p. 38) . Of those employed in the confec-
tionery trades, only twenty-one earn as much
as seven dollars (1. c, p. 50). And these two
trades have inevitable dull seasons that cut
wages much below these figures. Seven hun-
dred out of nine hundred girls in the cracker
business receive less than $6.00 a week (1. c, p.
70) . Laundries are amongst the worst paying
establishments, and there is practically no
chance of advancement. The shakers-out never
earn more than $4.00 a week, and usually only
$3.00 or $3.50 (1. c, p. 170) . No mangle girl
makes more than $6.00 and most between $3.00
and $5.00 (p. 173). Broom-making often
gives only $2.50 a week, and the highest is $5.00
(p. 252) . Many box-makers earn only 60c. or
80c. a day, and 80% of the girls are being paid
1:753

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

less than $6.00 a week (p. 261 ) . Packing soap-
powder in stifling rooms pay $4.50 (p. 270).
Nearly 50% of the girls in the printing trades
are below the $6.00 standard.

These, then, are the facts concerning wages.
But no social fact can be entirely isolated. It
is always intimately connected with many oth-
ers, and no treatment of wages can be at all
satisfactory without going to some extent into
the ramifications of this subject along other
lines. A chapter, therefore, will be devoted to
the question of health and of morals as affected
by industrial conditions and low wages.

176-2

CHAPTER SIX

INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: HEALTH

THE inevitable result of low wages is poor
health. Bad housing conditions and in-
sufficient food must follow upon the heels of
scanty pay, unless the wages are supplemented
in some other way; and that means anemia,
tuberculosis, tjnphoid, and general physical de-
bihty. "In the New York block" bounded by
E. Houston, Mott, Prince, and Elizabeth Sts.,
"one of every nine children born dies before it
attains the age of five years. The death and
disease rates are abnormal. The death rates
for all ages in the City of New York in 1905-6
was 18.35 per thousand, and for those under
five years it was 51.5; but in this block it was
24.0 for all ages and for those under five years
it was 92.2."^ ^'Nothing could be added to or
taken away from these homes to add to their
squalor." (P. 296.)

1 U. S. Bureau of Labor, "Men's Ready-Made Clothing," p. 297.

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

The conditionis of many workers' homes can
be learned in detail from pages 254-259 of the
Federal report just quoted. Here only a few
of the leading facts can be mentioned. Thus in
Pittsburgh 51.1% of the families investigated
had as many as three persons per sleeping
room.^ Eleven per cent, of female factory and
miscellaneous employees and nine per cent, of
store girls are rated as having "bad" housing
conditions and bad f ood.^ Very few girls doing
"light housekeeping" get proper breakfasts
(1. c, p. 18) , or, indeed, any other meals. It is
not because they can't cook, but because they
have to keep food expenses to a minimum in
order to buy clothes, pay room-rent, doctors,
etc.

" 'You see I 'm dieting,' said a frail slip of a
department-store girl as she held out her tray
upon which the cafeteria cashier, in the pres-
ence of the Bureau's agent, put a two-cent
check, covering the cost of the girl's lunch— a
small dish of tapioca. She may have been diet-
ing, but the evidences were pathetically against
the need thereof, and there were some things

2U. S. Bureau of Labor, **Glass Industry," p. 607.
^U. S. Bureau of Labor, * 'Wage-Earning Women in Stores and
Factories," p. 134.

11783

INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: HEALTH

telling other tales to a thoughtful observer.
The girl's shoes and waist and skirt were
plainly getting weary of well-doing, and to
hold her position as sales-woman they must
soon be replaced" (1. c., p. 17) .

The tables on pages 80 and 81, to one who
practises the "great transmigratory art" (as
Charles Reade calls it) of putting yourself in
another's place, tell pitiful stories of making
ends meet (1. c, pp. 54i-55) .

But bad food and bad housing are not the
only enemies of the workman's health. The
nature of his daily toil and the conditions under
which it is performed are often against him.
Even ventilation becomes important when one
has to spend ten, eleven, or twelve hours a day
in one room, and yet this is almost entirely neg-
lected.

In 1908 a special officer was appointed in
New York State to make tests of the atmo-
spheric conditions in places of business. One
hundred and thirty-six factories were exam-
ined, and in some printing establishments as
many as forty parts of carbonic-acid gas ( CO2)
in ten thousand volumes of air were found,
though a legal limit of twelve is recommended.
One cigar factory, with windows partly open,

1:793

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

4->

i
i

C0TH«0Tt<t>0ie0t-0St*O0J«0NMl0O»0"*THC0(Nl0rHN05

$6.50
and
over

! I ! ! .' I ! ! ! ! .' rH ; th : : th : N : T-t ; I : I iH

$6.00

to
$6.49

I I ! I ! ! ! ! ! : T-i ; ! th ; : : r-i : : ■ : iH I I ;

$5.50
to

$5.99

; ." '. '. '.r-i ;thth(m I : :ojr-i :^ : :th tin '.r-t '

$5.00

to
$5.49

'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'. '.y^ '.'.: ',y^ ][; ;

$4.50

to
$4.99

'. I I '. '. ;c^(NiH :<M : ;(Mih(Mth :t-i ;n : i :

$4.00

to
$4.49

T-i : : : : : : :T-icorH<N :io(mth(Mt-( : : : : : : : :

$3.50

to
$3.99

th : : : : co th co « ih (n th (m co lo th :t-i : : : : i^h :th

: ItH l-r-i :02iOC0(MC0 :rJ<(MiOTH<N :(M ! irHrH I : I

$2.50

to
$2.99

:(NtH<MtHtH :<N(MCOrHTj<r-ICOr-l ItH 1 1 I r-i [

$2.00
to

$2.49

:r-iTHCQ(NC<ic<i«oc^c^«oc^T-ico^ ! ! I ; ! ! ! ; : I

$1.50

to
$1.99

th : rH : <M th (M Tt< CO (N (N '. ^ Vi CO '. '. .* th ; ; : :

$1.00

to
$1.49

: : th th : : <n lo : <n « : ih : ih : th : : ; : : : : : :

Un-
der
$1.00

::::: r-i <N th <N ;::: th ::::::::::: :

^§^§^i^g^S^§^g^§^^^g^gg§§|

THTH<Ndc0(WTj<TjHlOlO<©«Db^t^cdc»O5OsddTHr-i(NC0rf O
m- r-l iH tH tH rH T-l tH >j

0»OOiOOiOOiOOiOOiOO»OOiOOiOOU30»00000

■rHTHG<lNCOCOrt<TjHU3lO«OCOI>l>OOOOOi0500THiH(NCO'^lO

[803

INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: HEALTH

yUMBER OF WOMEN WAGE-EARNERS REEFING HOUSE WHO HAVE BFKCl-
FIED NUMBER OF PERSONS WHOLLY OR PARTLALLY DEPENDENT

ON THEM FOR

SUPPORT,

BY WAGE GROUPS

No. of women having

No.

of women having

Average
Weekly
Earnings

wholly dependent
on them

rtially dependent
on them

1
per- p

er-

per-

Tot.

per-

4
per-

Tot.

son sc

sons

son

sons

$ 1.00

$ 1.49

. .

1.50

1.99

2.00

2.49

2.50

2.99

, .

3.00

3.49

3.50

3.99

4.00

4.49

4.50

4.99

5.00

5.49

. .

. ,

6.50

5.99

6.00

6.49

. ,

6.50

6.99

7.00

7.49

7.50

7.99

8.00

8.49

8.50

8.99

9.00

9.49

9.50

9.99

10.00

10.49

10.50

10.99

11.00

11.49

11.50

: 11.99

12.00

: 12.99

13.00

: 13.99

14.00

: 14.99

15.00

: over

Total

101

C81]

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

had eighty such parts. The following table will
exhibit the results of this investigation.^

Parts of CO2 in
10,000 vols, air

5-12

13-20

21-25

26-30

31-40

42-60

65-70

75-80

Factories in
each class

166

Sometimes the exigencies of the trade require
that there should be no draft, as in the handling
of carbon filaments for incandescent lamps, and
then the conditions of the atmosphere become
acutely unhealthy. In addition, in some of the
rooms numerous bunsen burners are always
lighted and all currents of air carefully ex-
cluded to prevent their flickering.^

Elsewhere, the process of manufacture often
vitiates the air, as the "blow-over" in bottle
shops. "In some factories, at times the air is
so full of this floating glass that the hair is
whitened by merely passing through the room.
It sticks to the perspiration on the face and
arms of the boys and men and becomes a source
of considerable irritation. Getting into the
eyes it is especially troublesome" (1. c, p. 66) .
Something similar occurs in etching glass by a

* Cf. Report of Commissioner of Labor of New York for 1908
Vol. I, pp. 76-93.
5U. S. Bureau of Labor, "Glass Industry," p. 500.

[82]

INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: HEALTH

sand-blast. Unless a hood and exhaust are pro-
vided, a pressure of from fifty to ninety pounds
scatters fine sand and glass dust through the
air and is breathed in by the operator (1. e., p.
440) . Even worse, however, is the acid etching,
as the fumes of hydrochloric acid cause severe
irritation to the throat and lungs (1. c, p. 442) .
Even when there is no such irritant in the
air as just mentioned, extreme differences in
temperature between the work-room and the
outside, or between various parts of the shop,
may be a source of serious danger to health. In
the glass industry, many persons have to work
in temperatures ranging from ninety to one
hundred and forty degrees, and as high as fifty
degrees above the outside air (1. c, p. 75) . In-
dustries where an artificial humidity is re-
quired, such as silk, cotton and flax spinning,
are likely to induce rheumatism, pleurisy, etc.
After working ten hours in a room filled with
hve steam to prevent breaking of threads, to
pass into a New England blizzard is apt to pro-
duce serious results. The boys in bottle-mak-
ing shops are obliged to pass continually from
a temperature of 140 degrees at the "glory-
hole" to one of 90 degrees or less in other parts
(Le.,pp. 49ff.).

CSS]

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

And even if conditions of atmosphere and
ventilation are good, the mere fact of continu-
ing work for thirteen hours seven days a week
tells seriously upon the physical endurance of
the strongest.^ When night work is required in
addition to the day's labor, as in the glass in-
dustry, the consequences are likely to be worse,
especially where children are concerned/ Night
work frequently means a presence in the fac-
tory of at least twenty hours out of the twenty-
four. "During the course of the investigation
there were found two cases of recent death,
both children, which could be directly attrib-
uted to exhaustion due to double-shift work in
the furnace room" (1. c, p. 122) .

In the clothing trade, "some piece and task-
workers reported that they conmionly worked
seventy-two and even seventy-eight hours a
week during busy periods" (1. c, p. 115).
"There were instances where women said they
worked from 6 or 7 o'clock in the morning to
9, 10, or 11 o'clock at night" (1. c, p. 241).
For store girls, "thirteen and one-half hours on
Saturday is not only excessive but works con-

*U. S. Commissioner of Labor, "Strike at Bethlehem Steel
Works," p. 10, 1910.
■^U. S. Bur. Lab., "Glass Industry," p. 118.

[84]

INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: HEALTH

siderable hardship."^ "One girl worked 24%
hours at one stretch with but two half -hour in-
termissions for meals. . . . Four girls working
in one establishment on the *night force' one
day for each week reported their longest day's'
labor as 163^4, 20%, 221/2, 24I4 hours" (1. c,
p. 205) . On the elevated railways in Chicago,
at the time of the investigation, 1907-08, wo-
men worked for 80% hours a week (1. c, p.
208).

When the business requires the maintaining
of practically one position all day, whether
standing or sitting, such long hours are bound
to have a bad physical effect. This is the case,
for example, in department stores (1. c, p.
178) ; in the glass industry where many grow-
ing boys are cramped before the furnace holes
all day long;^ in many processes in the manu-
facture of incandescent lamps (1. c, p. 482-
483) ; and numerous other occupations.

But there is frequently added to mere length
of hours a feverish haste in working induced by
starvation piece-rates or by the necessity of
keeping up with a machine. When a woman

*U. S. Bur. Lab., "Women Wage-Earners in Stores and Fac-
tories," p. 127.
»U. S.,Bur. Lab., "Glass Industry," p. 48.

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

perforates 3100 bulbs a day and welds tubes to
them, there must be a constant nervous tension
to attain such rapidity (1. c, p. 469). The
even more complex operation of stem-making
for these bulbs proceeds at a rate varying from
2600 to 3500 a day (1. c, p. 467) . Three thou-
sand stems and bulbs are assembled each day
(p. 470), while in one day, an expert will test
the candle-power of 5000 lamps ( p. 472 ) . The
operation of mounting Tungsten filaments in
small copper wire is very much like threading
an exceedingly small needle. If one imagines
this repeated 3000 times a day, with thread that
has to be handled with the greatest care to pre-
vent breaking, he will have some idea of the
strain on eyes and nerves (p. 478). Twenty
thousand completed lamps are tested daily at a
piece rate of 6c. per thousand lamps (pp. 486-
487).

Very frequently, too, these long hours at an
intense strain must be spent at work positively
dangerous on account of the process, such as
matchmaking^^ or painting lamps. ^^ Chem-
ical poisoning is frequent in hatters' and fur-

I'^U. S. Bur. Lab., Bulletin No. 68, Jan., 1910: "Phosphorus
Poisoning in the Match Industry."
11 U. S. Bur. Lab., "Glass Industry,*' pp. 485-486.

CSS]

INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: HEALTH

riers' work, and plumbism, which is very similar
to phosphorous poisoning, besets any trade in
which lead is used. This is the case, in the
production of white, red, or yellow lead, indus-
tries in which goods dyed with them undergo
the process of building, winding, weaving, etc.,
and such an apparently innocuous occupation
as the manufacture of earthenware and pot-
tery. ''One of the first symptoms of plumbism
is a blue gum, followed by loosening and drop-
ping out of the teeth. Blindness, paralysis, and
death in convulsions frequently follow. Besides
plumbism there are serious indirect results from
lead-poisoning in a number of industries." ^^
Readers of George Bernard Shaw will remem-
ber that Mrs. Warren adopted her profession
through fear of contracting this disease. Her
sister had fallen a victim to it and the fright-
ful ravages made among her friends drove
her to this course. In other industries such
as wool sorting, blanket stoving and tenter-
ing, and warp dressing, lock-jaw is an in-
cident.

Closely allied to a question already discussed,
that of ventilations, is the insidious injury
wrought by dust in the air. Some trades in

12 U. S. Indus. Comm., Vol. XIX, p. 901f.

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

which this condition is pronounced, seem ma-
terially to shorten life, as shown by a bulletin
of the United States Bureau of Labor for May,
1909, on ''Mortality from Consumption in Cer-
tain Occupations." The proportion of those
reaching the age of 65 and over among tobacco
and cigar factory operatives was 1.8% ; glove-
makers, 2.3%; bakers, 2.4%; leather curriers
and tanners, 2.9%; and confectioners, 3.1%:
as against 4.7%, the average expected normal
on the basis of all occupied males in the United
States (1. c, p. 623).

Eighty-nine per cent, of the clergymen who
died in 1900 were over 44, and 55% over 65
years of age; 76% of the lawyers dying in this
year were over 44, and 41% over 65; 73% and
41 % of the physicians had passed these respec-
tive ages; 80% and 37% of the bankers, offi-
cials of companies, etc., were over 44 and 65:
yet more than half of the compositors dying in
the United States for the year were under 49
years of age. About one-half of these died of
pulmonary tuberculosis. Only 18% were over
60.^2 Between 1892 and 1898, 32% of the
deaths of glass bottle-blowers were due to
tuberculosis, largely induced, probably, by the

"Rep. N. Y. State Bur. Lab., 1906, pp. CVII-CXXXV.
CSS]

INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: HEALTH

strain on the lungs, the "blow-over," and con-
ditions of temperature/^

Industrial mortality insurance statistics show
that 23% of the deaths of those employed in
trades exposed to organic dust are from con-
sumption and 14% from other respiratory dis-
eases, as against 14.8% and 11.7%, the ex-
pected respective averages for the United
States.^^ The following table taken from the
bulletin just quoted will probably exhibit the
results more strikingly (p. 626) :

Age at death

Per cent, of deaths due to consumption
among:

Occupations exposed
to organic dust

Males in registration
area, 1900-1906

15-24 years
25-34 years
35-44 years
45-54 years
55-64 years
65 and over

40.1
49.0
35.3
21.6
11.0
4.5

•27.8

31.3

23.6

15.0

8.1

2.7

It will be seen from this table, that deaths
from consumption in these trades exposed to
organic dust were more than half again as
much as might reasonably have been expected.
And it must be remembered that statistics indi-
cate, " that general organic dust is less serious
in its fatal effects than mineral or metallic dust,

i*U. S. Bur. Lab., "Glass Industry," p. 240.
15 Bull. U. S. Bur. Lab., May, 1909, p. 626.

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

and as a result the proportionate mortality
from consmnption and other respiratory dis-
eases in this group is more favorable than in the
groups of occupations with exposure to min-
eral and metallic dusts" (1. c, p. 627) .

More evident dangers of occupation, because
more directly traceable to their causes, are in-
dustrial accidents. Manufacturers and em-
ployers sometimes wantonly, sometimes
through Ignorance, neglect the precautions and
appliances necessary properly to safeguard
their workmen. The introduction of compli-
cated machinery, the use of high-power explo-
sives, the strenuous conduct of production,
without corresponding efforts to offset the nat-
ural tendencies of these conditions and tools, has
made peace more horrible and dangerous than
war.

Of all such sources of accident, mines are
probably the most prolific. "The percentage
of miners killed in this country is greater than
in any other, being from two to four times as
large as in any European country." ^^ "Every
year of the past decade," 1890-1900, "has seen
from 500 to 700 Pennsylvania miners killed

16 "Monthly Catalogue U. S. Public Documents," Nov., 1909,
p. 184.

INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: HEALTH

and from 1200 to 1650 injured. By comparing
these figures with the total number employed,
it will be found that on the average about one
man in every 400 employed in the mines is
killed yearly and about one out of every 150
injured." ^"^

In 37 New England cotton mills in 1907,
1428 employees were injured.^^ The Beth-
lehem Steel Works alone had a record of 927
accidents in 1909.^^ In New York State, dur-
ing a year of industrial depression, 1907, there
were 14,545 accidents recorded,^^ and we know
that they are more numerous in prosperous
years.

Time and again we find in the succinct offi-
cial reports such terse statements as: "While
working on top of boiler was overcome by gas :
dead when found," "struck by pieces thrown
from bursting emery wheel, died from injuries
ten days later," '*heavy piece of machinery was
being moved by crane which broke, allowing
machinery to fall against tank, which in turn
fell against deceased, crushing his legs and in-

I'^U. S. Indus. Com., Vol. XIX, p. 906.
18 U. S. Bur. Lab., "Cotton Textile Industry," p. 383.
^^U. S. Commissioner of Labor, "Report on Strike at Bethle-
hem Steel Works," p. 121.

20 Report of Commissioner of Labor of N. Y., 1908, pt. I, p. 62.

ceo

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

juring him internally: death occurred one hour
later," "caught in belt and whirled around
shafting; death occurred before machinery
could be stopped," "struck in face by broken
belt; eyeball broken: death ensued two days
later at hospital from effects of anaesthetic,"
"broken elevator shaft caused elevator to fall
with operator; skull fractured and ear lacer-
ated: death ensued later at hospital" (1. c, pt.
I, pp. 109-113).

Such are the official reports. They give no
idea of the suffering of the families, the strug-
gles of widows and orphans when the head of
the family has been struck down; they do not
show the carelessness or greed that subjects
men to the danger of working with worn-out
cranes, or defective emery wheels, or weak belt-
ing; but they do show, in connection with the
other data quoted, in a cold official way, that
hundreds of thousands of men and women in
this country are working for excessive hours,
amid unsanitary surroundings, and without
proper protection from the dangers of their
work: judging by the standard which for the
time being has been accepted as just.

Such conditions are hard enough for grown
men and women to face, they are harder still

EPS]

INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: HEALTH

for children. And by taking children away
from school and putting them at work, fre-
quently beyond their capacity, they are handi-
capped mentally and physically for making
enough later on to support a family. The percen-
tage of children so injured cannot be definitely
arrived at, but they are employed in considera-
ble numbers in a large variety of occupations.
Sweatshops, glass factories, the making of
neckties, cigars, paper and wooden boxes, pic-
ture frames, furniture, and shoes are a few of
the widely different trades that take their
quota. In the Southern cotton mills, twelve
appears to be the age at which children are ordi-
narily expected to begin work ; but some of the
mills employ children under that age, now and
then, in fact, as young as nine, eight, and even
six years.^^

"Probably the most serious and far-reaching
effect of child-labor is the prevention of normal
development, physical and mental. Besides
being deprived of the schooling they would
otherwise get, children are injured by confine-
ment and sometimes worn out by work. In other
cases the work is demoralizing because it does

21 L. c, pp. 45, 65, 83, 85, 86: U. S. Bur. Lab., *' Cotton Textile
Industry."

cssn

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

not call out the best faculties of the children, or
leaves them altogether idle for a part of the
year.

"It has been found that children are much
more liable to accidents in factories than adults.
Thus a recent report of the Minnesota Bureau
of Labor shows that boys under sixteen have
twice as great probability of accident as adults,
while girls under sixteen have thirty-three [5/c]
times as great a probability of being hurt as
women over sixteen. ... It has also been
found that overstrain of the muscular or ner-
vous system is much more serious in children
than in adults, and that children are also more
susceptible to the poisons and injurious dusts
arising in certain processes than grown per-
sons." 22

22 U. S. Industrial Commission, Vol. XIX, p. 917f ; cf. also U.S.
Bur. Lab., "Cotton Textile Industry,'* p.385f.

194^1

CHAPTER SEVEN

INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: MORALS

INDUSTRIAL conditions, as at present
constituted, not only injure the health of
the body; they also endanger the soul. The
Chicago Vice Commission has thus summar-
ized these influences: "Among the economic
conditions contributory to the social evil are
low wages, unsanitary conditions, demoralizing
relationships in stores, shops, domestic service,
restaurants and hotels: the street vending of
children in selling papers and gums, collecting
coupons and refuse; the messenger service of
boys, especially in the vicinity of disorderly
houses, vicious saloons, dance halls and other de-
moralizing resorts ; employment agencies which
send servants to immoral places ; the rest rooms
or waiting places where applicants for work re-
sort; too long hours and the high pressure of
work; the overcrowding of houses upon lots,
and of persons in single rooms" (Report, 1911 :
p. 230).

When inability to secure decent lodging
forces men and women to occupy the same

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

sleeping rooms, there must be an inevitable
lowering of moral standards. One case is re-
corded in "Packingtown," where eight persons
—men and women— were sleeping in a room
approximately ten by fifteen feet/ When a
woman pays less than $1.50 a week for board
and lodging, as many are forced to do (see
page 71f ) she can have no privacy. "If there
are men lodgers in the house, the entrance
to their room is sometimes through the girl's
room, or vice versa. In one house visited, the
women received the agent about nine p.m. in
the room of a man lodger who had already gone
to bed. This seemed to be the only available
sitting room and disconcerted no one save the
agent" (I.e., p. 62).

The girl who lives away from home in a
cheap boarding house is no myth. In Pitts-
burgh, "in the garment trades she numbers
38% of the total force; in the wholesale milli-
nery trade 10% ; in the mercantile houses 20%.
On the lowest estimate, there are 2300 of her
kind in Pittsburgh.'"

It is not only low wages, as leading to a lack

lU. S. Bur. Lab., "Women Wage-Earners in Stores and
Factories," p. 119.
2E. B. Butler, "Women and the Trades," pp. 320-1.

INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: MORALS

of decent housing, that has a bad moral effect.
All are born with a natural craving for happi-
ness, and long hours of work under a nervous
strain intensify this desire. Economic condi-
tions have kept most of those in the grip of such
a situation from developing the higher side of
their nature until they can find pleasure and
recreation in a symphony concert or an epic
poem. The jaded nerves need a stronger stim-
ulus to cause pleasure. "The desire for ec-
stasy," says Algar Thorold, a keen psychologi-
cal observer, "is at the very root and heart of
our nature. This craving, when bound down
by the animal instincts, meets us on every side
in those hateful contortions of the social organ-
ism called the dram-shop and the brothel."^
As a consequence of this insatiable longing
for pleasure and the inability to pay for it,
thousands of young women in our big cities
patronize public dance halls and other ques-
tionable places of amusement. The code of
their social set has come to sanction accepting
tickets for such places, refreshments, etc., from
men met haphazard at these resorts.*

3 Preface to "Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena,** p. 13: Lon-
don, Kegan Paul, 1896.

* U. S. But. Labor, "Women Wage-Earners in Stores and Fac-
tories,'* p. 75.

1:973

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

Dance halls are such a serious menace to pub-
lic morals that legislation has become neces-
sary. Elizabeth, Paterson, Newark and Ho-
boken, New Jersey, Boston, Philadelphia, St.
Louis, Indianapolis, Louisville, Minneapolis,
Seattle, San Francisco, Kansas City, and Cleve-
land are all agitating the question of their reg-
ulation (Survey, June 3, 1911, p. 345) . A. B.
Williams, general secretary of the Humane
Society of this last city, is quoted as declaring
that *'one out of every ten children in Cleve-
land is born out of wedlock. In nine out of
every ten cases that we handle, the mothers tell
us, 'I met him at a public dance' " (1. c, p. 346) .

In Chicago alone there are about 306 li-
censed dance halls and nearly 100 unlicensed.
Among these, "one condition is general: most
of the dance halls exist for the sale of liquor,
not for the purpose of dancing, which is only
of secondary importance. A saloon opened
into each of 190 halls, and liquor was sold in
240 out of 328. In the others— except in rare
instances— return checks were given to facili-
tate the use of neighboring saloons. At the halls
where liquor was sold practically all the boys
showed signs of intoxication by one o'clock"
(1. c, p. 385 : Louise de Koven Bowen) .
1:98]

INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: MORALS

And just as women who have toiled hard all
day long, crave some strong excitement such
as can only be afforded by the dance hall or a
similar place, so men in the same circumstances
naturally turn to the saloon. It is in the cheer-
fully lighted, comfortably heated gin-shop, in
the temporary stimulus of liquor, that insuffi-
cient food, unhealthful surroundings at home
and at work, a cold, uninviting house are for-
gotten. It is often said that workmen would
have enough to live on comfortably if they did
not squander their wages in drink, and that to
raise their pay would only be to increase the
profits of saloon-keepers. In some cases this
may be true. But in the vast majority, it is
probable that to increase their power of getting
the comforts at home that they find in the sa-
loon would be to lessen the drink evil, rather
than increase it. The marvel is not that labor-
ers who come home day after day from hard,
long toil to poor food, cold rooms, a generally
comfortless home should seek out the gin-pal-
ace, but that they drink as little as they do.

These are some of the indirect, though im-
portant, moral results of economic conditions.
Oftentimes the direct influences of a person's
occupation also make for evil. The messenger

1:993

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

boy, for instance, on the streets at all hours and
in all sections, can hardly fail to see and hear
much that no parent would want a child of
fourteen, sixteen, or eighteen to know. Indeed,
a great part of his employment at night comes
from those indulging in debauchery, and it is
his most profitable source of tips.^

From the nature of the case, women are
probably more exposed in their work than men.
Such occupations as will occur to every one,
are manicure parlors where girls are peculiarly
exposed to danger and insults. But most im-
portant, because employing the largest num-
bers, are the department stores. It has been
charged over and over again, that many em-
ployers knowingly pay wages that are insuffi-
cient to support a girl in the expectation that
she will be subsidized by some "gentleman
friend."

How far this is true is hard to say ; and it is
just as difficult to determine how many depart-
ment-store employees are really immoral. The
report of the United States Bureau of Labor
on " Wage-Earning Women and Children"

5 Cf Report of Chicago Vice Commission, p. 242f, and unpub-
lished reports of the National Child Labor Committee, Washing-
ton, D. C.

INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: MQB'ALS

combats the idea that immorality among them
is widespread. Nevertheless, there is a strong
opinion that store girls are not all they should
be, and many careful observers have enumer-
ated quite a startling array of individual in-
stances where a girl's fall can be largely traced
to her employment as a sales- woman.

An investigator for the Chicago Vice Com-
mission, for instance, gives in the report of that
body quite a number of cases which are said to
be typical. "Violet works in a department
store, salary $5.00 per week. Was seduced and
left home. Baby died and she soHcits on the
side to support herself. . . . Mag 18 years old.
Works in department store. Salary $5.50 per
week. Tells parents she receives more. Helps
support parents and 'solicits' at dances for
spending money. Father is sickly. . . . Mar-
cella (X913) , alias Tantine (X904) . Came to
(X905) about three years ago, and started to
work in the (X916) department store. One
of the managers insisted on taking her out,
which she finally had to do *to hold her job,' as
she asserts" (pp. 187, 195).

Miss Elizabeth Butler, investigating for the
Pittsburgh Survey, reports the same thing in

that city. **Vera " she says, "is twenty

Doi]

.CGNSUMi;R^ AND WAGE-EARNERS

years old. Four years ago she was employed
as a salesgirl at $3.50 a week. After a year she
left for another store where she was employed
as a cashier at a salary of $10.00 a week, for
making concessions to her employer. After
two years she left the store for a house of pros-
titution. . . . Jennie came to Pittsburgh

from Akron, Ohio. She had no friends in the
city and was obliged to be self-supporting. She
obtained a position at $6.00 a week as a sales-
woman. After five months in the store she con-
sented to be kept in an apartment in the East
End. She still keeps her position in the store.
... A girl whose father was killed by an elec-
tric crane was the only one of the family old
enough to work. Forced by financial needs to
accept a wage fixed by custom at a point below
her own cost of subsistence, much more below
the cost of helping to maintain a family of de-
pendents, she drifted into occasional prostitu-
tion."^

These are only particular instances, it is true,
and one must not generalize too widely. But
there is undoubtedly considerable foundation
for the charge so often made and so firmly
fixed in the public mind. And if many of the

6 "Women and the Trades," pp. 305-306, 348.
[102]

INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: MORALS

girls exposed to such dangers have hitherto re-
mained pure, we must thank the sterling char-
acters inherited from those raised under differ-
ent conditions, not conclude that the system
needs no improvement.

All these and certain less tangible economic
influences making for evil have been well sum-
marized by the Minneapolis Vice Commission.
It points out that the advent of great nimibers
of young girls into industry has produced con-
ditions that lead to the blasting of thousands
of lives yearly. "The chance for the making
of promiscuous male acquaintances, the close
association of the sexes in employment, the nec-
essary contact with the general public, the new
and distorted view of life which such an envi-
ronment compels, taken with the low wage
scale prevailing in so many callings and affect-
ing so many individuals, combine to create a
situation that must inevitably weaken the
moral stamina and lead to the undoing of
many. The fault is plainly not so much in the
individual ; it is rather the results of the indus-
trial system. The remedy lies in large part in
the reforming of the system" (Repoii:, 1911,
p. 126).

Some of the remedies suggested by this com-

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

mission are higher wages, better sanitary con-
ditions, and "the education of public opinion in
this field to the point where it will demand a
living wage and proper working conditions and
social conditions for those who serve them in
industry/^ "^

Nor is this commission alone in attributing
a great moral influence to economic conditions
and in looking to the public for a large part of
the remedy. In fact, it was simply following
in the steps of the New York and Chicago Vice
Commissions.^ And all merely voiced a wide-
spread conviction among social workers and
the public generally.

"Are flesh and blood so cheap," asks the Chi-
cago Commission, "mental qualifications so
common, and honesty of so little value, that the
manager of one of our big department stores
feels justified in paying a high school girl, who
has served nearly one year as an inspector of
sales, the beggarly wage of $4.00 per week?
What is the natural result of such an industrial
condition? Dishonesty and immorality, not
from choice, but necessity— in order to live.

■^Italics added. Cf. pp. 114, 115, 126.

sSurvey, Apr. 15, 1911, p. 99; May 6, 1911, p. 215.

D04 3

INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS: MORALS

We can forgive the human frailty that yields
to temptation under such conditions— but we
cannot forgive the soulless corporation, which
arrests and prosecutes this girl— a first offend-
er—when she takes some little articles for per-
sonal adornment. . . . Prostitution demands
youth for its perpetration. On the public rests
the mighty responsibility of seeing to it that
the demand is not supplied through the break-
ing down of the early education of the yoimg
girl or her exploitation in the business world"
(Report, pp. 43-44).

This insistence upon the public as being
really responsible for these economic and moral
conditions is significant. For the Consumers
are the public. Each individual of which the
public is composed is, in one aspect, a Con-
sumer, and it is important to notice how wide-
spread is an insistence upon his responsibility
in the matter.

From this discussion it may be reasonably
concluded: (1) that many persons in many in-
dustries are receiving less than a living wage,
in the present acceptation of that term; (2)
that many persons are being injured in health
and limb by long hours, unsanitary workshops,
tios]

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

and improperly guarded machinery; (3) that
the conditions of work often tend to produce
vice.

The treatment has been largely statistical.
No matter how thorough, therefore, it is sub-
ject to the limitations of this method. Sissy
Jupe long ago called statistics "stutterings,"
and newer editions of Gradgrind have not per-
fected their articulation. Statistics are neces-
sarily quantitative. They do well enough for
computing rainfall, or something of the sort,
but human life with its pleasures and pains, its
joys and tragedies, refuses to be labeled and
ticketed. It is intangible to such gross systems
of classification.

"All the world's coarse thumb
And finger fail to plumb"

the depths of happiness and suffering in the
least of human creatures.

D06]

CHAPTER EIGHT

WHAT SHOULD THE INDIVIDUAL CONSUMER DO?

THE question now arises, even supposing
the conditions are bad and that a duty of
improving them rests upon the Consuming
Class; what is the individual Consumer bound
to do? Making all due allowances for the fact
that we have assumed what is a just or unjust
wage, and without any intention of forcing this
standard upon the conscience of individuals,
there will be times when a particular Consumer
is convinced, e.g. that those employed at stores
he patronizes are not being paid anything like
what they have a right to receive. What should
he do ? Does any obligation devolve upon him ?
In answering this question, the general prin-
ciple must be kept in mind, that a Consumer
is not bound to act under a disproportionately
grave inconvenience. He is not bound to sac-
rifice considerable personal good to do a very
little good to the laborers making the articles
he buys ; nor is he obliged to put himself to any
DOT]

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

inconvenience if no good whatever is going to
follow.

But if he can conveniently buy goods made
under just conditions rather than under bad,
and the price is no higher, then he is bound to
do so. And if he is well off and can easily af-
ford to pay a little more for the justly made
goods, he ought to buy them, provided he can
be reasonably sure that the increase in price will
go to maintain good working conditions and
not simply to swell the manufacturer's profits.

As Father Cuthbert, a Capuchin, says, not
the employers only are responsible for the op-
pression of workingmen, "but all who patron-
ize such labor contribute to the sin. The insa-
tiable yearning to buy cheap without any
thought as to how cheapness is obtained, this is
the incentive which tempts men to buy cheap
labor and to imderpay workmen. Were people
in general not willing accomplices, there would
be no sweating system, no unfair competition.
The sin falls not on the few [manufacturers]
but on the many [patrons] who too readily
condone the sin of the few for the sake of the
resultant advantage to themselves. They pay
half a penny less for a pound of sugar or a
shilling or two less on a ton of coal : what does

D08]

THE INDIVIDUAL CONSUMER

the public care that the shop assistant or the
miner is unable to get a human wage?" ^

The purely individual action of Consumers,
however, can have but little effect for good.
For only comparatively few have sufficiently
developed social consciences to realize the de-
sirability of such action ; and even if more had,
their means of discovering which goods are
justly made are so limited as seriously to ham-
per their activity.

The remedy for this difficulty would seem to
be organization among Consumers. There can
be little doubt that if they united in sufficient
numbers in patronizing only those shops that
maintained good working conditions their ac-
tion would exert considerable pressure. The
labor unions have shown that the boycott is a
powerful weapon. How efficient it can be, may
be guessed from the sums spent by employers
in opposing it. Astute business men do not
tilt at windmills, and if they have fought the
legality of the boycott in every tribunal in the
land, including the Supreme Court, it was only
because they realized the compelling power it
placed in labor's hands.

1 Father Cuthbert, O.S.F.C, "Catholic Ideals in Social Life,"
p. 211 : N. Y., 1904.

D093

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

But some greater animus than pure philan-
thropy seems necessary to make Consumers
band together in this way on a large enough
scale. They need the class spirit, the enthusi-
asm of industrial warfare afforded by the trade
unions. For though an organization of Con-
sumers has been in existence now for more than
twenty years, it is forced sorrowfully to admit
that the good accomplished simply through the
economic pressure of its members has been but
slight.

But if it had been possible so to unite Con-
sumers in a powerful society for the collection
of information and the distribution of patron-
age, it has been asked: Would it not have be-
come wofuUy corrupt? Can we safely trust an
irresponsible club with such power? And,
therefore, is it wise for conscientious individu-
als now to join this league? For either it will
remain practically powerless, or else it will be-
come so strong as to be a menace.

The answer must be that if the Consumers'
League ever does become strong enough to ex-
ercise a great influence in the industrial world,
it will probably abuse and sell its power. Rich
unfair firms may be able to bribe those in con-
trol to give them a recommendation they do not

THE INDIVIDUAL CONSUMER

deserve, and various other kinds of corruption
will most likely creep in. But such an argu-
ment proves too much. If we are to give no
authority where it will not be misused, we shall
come to anarchy at once. For have not politi-
cal parties, and states and employers and trade
unions— all, at one time or another, abused
power. Seldom have men enjoyed power for
long without using it for selfish ends.

But we must not, therefore, destroy all au-
thority and power. Rather we should embrace
the dictimi of de Maistre, that power must be
balanced against power, one organization set
to watch another. And if it should happen that
a league of Consumers became too strong and
abused its strength, it would be time enough
then to set about checking it by building up
power somewhere else.

So far, however, there has been no danger of
such a contingency. The Consumers' League
has been active, earnest, and honest— and suffi-
cient for the day is the evil thereof. The
League has embraced all work that came to
hand whether strictly within the economic field
first marked out for it, or extending to other
preserves. Its activity in the Legislative do-
main has not been inconsiderable, and it is prob-

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

able that the influence of Consumers will be
most marked here in the future.

There is much talk now of minimum wage
legislation to guarantee laborers a certain stan-
dard. If we look upon compulsory arbitration
as practically the same thing, we can say that
it has already been extensively tried. Canada,
England, Australia, and New Zealand have
shown that it is possible in some fields but the
controversy always aroused by a new project
has not yet subsided sufficiently to enable one
to speak definitely concerning its success. The
elaborate system of state insurance against
sickness, accident, old age, and unemployment,
now in operation in England and Germany is
another governmental attempt to secure a cer-
tain standard of living for all. And the public-
schools, in which rich and poor are put on a
plane of equality regarding elementary educa-
tion, are so familiar that we are apt to lose sight
of the fact that they are really only one link in
this chain of state intervention to provide the
means for everybody enjoying certain advan-
tages that have come to be looked upon as ne-
cessities in our civilization.

In our own country during 1911, there was
much discussion, some action, and every pros-

[112]

THE INDIVIDUAL CONSUMER

pect for still further activity along these lines.
A conspicuous feature was the movement to in-
troduce a more equitable system of compensa-
tion or insurance for industrial accidents.^
There was a non-compulsory minimum wage
law passed recently in Massachusetts, and
several States prescribed the rate of pay for
public work done by contract. An amendment
to the Charter of San Francisco fixes the mini-
mum of employees on street railways at $3.00
per day, with one and one-half pay for over-
time. Vermont, Wisconsin and South Dakota
have given wages a preference over other debts
(1. c, pp. 876, 878, 881).

It would seem then that the legislative field
is the one in which most success is to be ex-
pected. And since the Consumers are the bene-
ficiaries of labor's exertion, they are especially
bound to effort in this direction. Those who
have influence and leisure are more bound than
those who have but little power or opportunity,
but all are obliged to do something.

The results of our examination of this ques-
tion may be summed up in the following con-
clusion :

I. Assuming that employers are violating

2 Bulletin of U. S. Bur. of Lab., Jan. 1, 1911, p. 869.

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

the rights of their laborers then there is a duty
incumbent upon the Consuming Class to do
what they can to secure these rights.

II. Employers are violating the rights of
their employees to such an extent as to create
a serious social problem.

III. The individual Consumer is bound to
do what he can without serious inconvenience to
remedy these conditions. He can act individu-
ally, by joining an organization, and through
legislation.

Should it be asked which is the most effective
way, the answer would certainly incline towards
legislation. If we survey the industrial history
of the last quarter century, we can see gain after
gain by this method;^ while the Consumers'
League, in its strict capacity of an organization
of purchasers has done but little. What it has
accomplished has been largely through the ad-
vocacy of legislation, rather than by merely
economic pressure. And so, while Consumers
could doubtless effect tremendous changes if
they wished, it seems impossible to get them to
co-operate in sufficient numbers.

^Cf. Mrs. Florence Kelly, *'Some Ethical Gains through Legis-
lation," N. Y., Macmillan, 1905 ; Bulletins of U. S. Bur. Lab.
giving resum^ of labor legislation.

1:1143

THE INDIVIDUAL CONSUMER

Nevertheless, the Consumers' League is
founded on a great and noble principle, and for
the moment I want to put aside the judicial at-
titude and enthusiastically chronicle what it has
done, and what could be done along the same
lines. The Consumers' League is unique in the
field of philanthropy as affording an oppor-
tunity to everyone no matter how big or how
little. For by its original principle of buying
only goods made under fair conditions, it gives
a chance to the unimportant individual to share
in a great philanthropic movement, somewhat
as a private does in an imperial army; and by
its activity in the legislative field, it opens up
an opportunity for those who have the time,
and talent, and position necessary for effec-
tiveness there.

And whether or not we look upon the dic-
tates of charity and justice as clearly indicating
a duty, whether or not one's "moral resonance"
responds to what has been said, surely we can-
not deny that here is a splendid opportunity.
Here is a practical way for each and everyone
to play the Good Samaritan. Not all of us
can meet men along a road who have been set
upon by thieves, bundle them into an automo-
bile, and carry them to a hospital. We cannot

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

all give thousands in charity. We cannot all
engage in publicly urging reforms by legisla-
tion, nor give generously of time in philan-
thropic ministration to the poor. But we can
see to it in the way already outlined that some
at least of our expenditures go to ward off mis-
ery rather than foster it. We can see to it that
we prevent misery from spreading at least in
one little sphere.

^ This is no mere theory. Reforms have actu-
ally been accomplished in some places by the
Consumers' League. Realizing that to be effec-
tive they must be organized, it is the object of
members of this League to act as a sort of in-
verted megaphone gathering up the weak whis-
perings of each individual purchaser and blend-
ing them with thousands of others until they all
become one mighty concerted shout that must
be heard.

Laborers have known the strength of com-
bination in fighting industrial conditions for
more than a generation; the aggregations of
capital have been growing larger and larger;
why should not the most powerful of all the

* The next few pages appeared substantially as here given in
The Month, March, 1911, under the title *'The Consumer's Oppor-
tunity." The author thanks the editor of this magazine for kind
permission to reproduce this matter.

THE INDIVIDUAL CONSUMER

elements of industrial society, the Consumer
himself, learn by their experience ?

Organized in 1891 in New York City, the
Consumers' League now has almost a hundred
branches in eighteen of the United States, in
France, Switzerland, Germany, and Belgium.
To Mrs. Josephine Shaw Lowell is due the
credit of its inception. An investigation dur-
ing 1889-90 into the conditions of work among
sales-women and cash-children, which she di-
rected for the Working Women's Society,
forced upon her the futility of starting reform
from the producing end. The competitive sys-
tem of industry ties the hands of the employer,
while it seems impossible successfully to organ-
ize a union among women. There was but one
element of the economic world left to work with
—the Consumer.

Therefore, in May, 1890, a public meeting
was called in Chickering Hall, New York, to
discuss the organization of this all-powerful
factor of industry. It was decided to found the
Consumers' League upon the following plat-
form:

"I. That the interest of the community de-
mands that all workers should receive, not "the
lowest, but fair living wages.
CUT]

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

"II. That the responsibiUty for some of the
worst evils from which wage-earners suffer,
rests with the Consumers, who persist in buy-
ing in the cheapest markets, regardless of how
cheapness is brought about.

"III. That it is therefore, the duty of Con-
sumers to find out under what conditions the
articles they purchased are produced, and to
insist that these conditions shall be, at least,
decent and consistent with a respectable exist-
ence on the part of the workers.

"IV. That this duty is especially incumbent
upon Consumers in relation to the product of
women's work since there is no limit beyond
which the wages of women may be pressed
down, unless artificially maintained at a living
rate by combinations, either of the workers
themselves or of the Consumers.^

The first step taken to carry out these ob-
jects was to prepare a "white list" of stores
coming up to a certain standard. Since it is
illegal to boycott, or to urge persons not to deal
with stores placed on a "Black List," the Con-
sumers' League accomplishes the same results

5 "Historical Sketch of the Pioneer Consumers' League," p.
ii. Consumers' League of New York City, 1908. For further in-
formation address Mr. V. P. Kellogg, 105 E. 22nd St., New York
City.

THE INDIVIDUAL CONSUMER

by persuading persons to buy from firms on a
white list. Once published, merchants feel the
effects of such a list, and, to get the patronage
of the League, volunteer all the good points
about themselves, not to mention the bad ones
about their competitors. The list itself thus
becomes an invaluable means of getting infor-
mation not otherwise obtainable.

Necessarily this list had to be somewhat elas-
tic and considerably below the ideal. The peo-
ple at the head of the Consumers' League were
practical persons of wide experience and they
went on the principle that half a loaf is better
than none at all— that every little bit helps.
After consultations with the employers and the
Working Women's Society, a standard was
adopted from which no retreat has been made.
Whatever changes have been made, have been
on the side of greater strictness. To-day it
stands as follows :

Wages

A Fair House is one in which equal pay is
given for work of equal value, irrespective of
sex, and in which no sales-woman who is eigh-
teen years or over— and who has had one year's
C1193

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

experience as sales-woman receives less than
six dollars a week.

In which wages are paid by the week.

In which the minimum wages for cash-chil-
dren are three dollars and a half per week, with
the same conditions regarding weekly pay-
ments.

Hours

A Fair House is one in which the number of
working hours constituting a normal working
day does not exceed nine. At least three-quar-
ters of an hour is given for luncheon. A gen-
eral half -holiday is given on one day of each
week during at least two summer months.

A Vacation of not less than one week is given
with pay during the summer season.

All overtime is compensated for.

Wages are paid, and the premises closed for
the seven principal legal holidays, viz.. Thanks-
giving Day, Christmas and New Year's Day,
Washington's Birthday, the Fourth of July,
Decoration Day, and Labor Day.

Physical Conditions

A Fair House is one in which work, lunch
and retiring rooms are apart from each other,

THE INDIVIDUAL CONSUMER

and conform in all respects to the present Sani-
tary Laws.

In which the present law regarding the pro-
viding of seats for sales-women is observed, and
the use of seats permitted.

Other Conditions

A Fair House is one in which humane and
considerate behavior towards the employees is
the rule.

In which fidelity and length of service meet
with the consideration which is their due.

In which no children under fourteen years of
age are employed.

In which no child under the age of sixteen
years works for more than nine hours a day.

In which no child works, unless an employ-
ment certificate issued by the Board of Health
has been first filed with the employer, and the
name, etc., of the child has been entered on a
register kept by the employer.

In which the ordinances of the city and the
laws of the State are obeyed in all particulars.

When it is remembered that in 1891 only eight
store sin New York were eligible for the standard
(then less strict), while to-day there are more
1:1213

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

than fifty; that then overtime was never paid
for, and fines often reduced the pay to almost
half, while to-day fines go to a benefit fund,
and overtime is paid for, or a corresponding
time off is given; that then the child-labor law
was openly violated, and many grown women
received less than four doUars-and-a-half,
sometimes less than two dollars, a week, while
the standard now is six ; that the chair law, pro-
viding one seat for every three girls, was dis-
regarded, or the girls never allowed to use
them, while to-day inspectors of the State La-
bor Bureau strictly enforce its regulations ; that
the year after the influence of the Consumers'
League passed the Mercantile Employers' Bill
providing for the essentials of the above stan-
dard, there were twelve hundred infractions re-
ported, and nine hundred under-age children
released from drudgery as shipping clerks, etc. :
when this advance towards a decent standard
of living, and the considerable part of the Con-
sumers' League in bringing it about, is kept in
mind, the power of the purchaser is seen to be
no day-dream of an idealist, no mere pretty the-
ory of an arm chair economist.

As one reform after another was accom-
plished, the League turned itself to new labors.
1:1223

THE INDIVIDUAL CONSUMER

To-day it is agitating strongly against the
cruelties of such seasons as Christmas, that
should mean peace and joy to all. "Glad tid-
ings of great joy" sounds like a hollow mock-
ery to the sales-women and children who work
from eight in the morning until midnight.
Therefore the League sends out thousands of
post-cards, and advertises in newspapers, mag-
azines, and street-cars, urging persons to shop
early out of consideration for the employees of
stores. The first large success from this move-
ment came in 1910 when the leading depart-
ment stores of Philadelphia, employing 35,000
persons, decided to close at six o'clock during
the entire Christmas season. Late on the even-
ing of December 1, the head of one of the larg-
est retail firms in the city called up the Con-
sumers' League to say that he had good news.
"I thought that you should certainly be the first
to hear that we are going to close early," he
said. "I congratulate you and the women you
represent on what you have enabled us to do." ^
All this activity, however, is concerned with
the retailer ; in the meantime manufacture was
not neglected. The League early saw the evils
prevailing in many factories, and therefore de-

«Cf. The Survey, Dec. 17, 1910.

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

cided to carry the white-list idea under a
slightly different form into this field. After a
thorough investigation by its own representa-
tives and consultation with the State factory
inspectors, the League, where the situation is
satisfactory, allows the use of its label guaran-
teeing that the goods are made under clean and
healthful surroundings. The conditions under
which the label is issued are :

1. The State factory law is obeyed.

2. No children under the age of sixteen are
employed.

3. Work at night is not required, and the
working day does not exceed ten hours.

4. No goods are given out to be made away
from the factory.

Similar to the Consumers' League label are
the labels of various trade unions. These lat-
ter, indeed, were in the field many years before
the Consumers' League was even organized.
They are based upon exactly the same princi-
ple. When a factory maintains the conditions
demanded by the union, it is allowed to use the
label on its goods. Anyone, therefore, who
buys union-made goods at a store where the
employees are protected by the retail-clerks
union can be sure that those engaged in both
D24]

THE INDIVIDUAL CONSUMER

the production and distribution of these arti-
cles have obtained their just rights so far as
this is possible.

By having firms on the white list handle la-
beled goods and, recently, by establishing a
store of its own in New York, a market is cre-
ated for them among the members of the
League. The practicalness underlying the
whole management of the League is very
clearly shown here both in the dove-tailing of
its activities in manufacture and distribution
and in the appeal made to the self-interest of
purchasers to buy white goods, wrappers, etc.,
made in clean factories rather than germ-carry-
ing sweatshops goods. It has been the aim of
the League all along to make it to the Consum-
er's personal advantage to buy labeled goods
at white-list stores. The idea is to give him a
better article and better service for the same
money, the increased cost to the manufacturer
and retailer to come out of the increased sales.

In 1898 the various local Leagues that had
sprung up in different sections were united into
one national organization and the activities be-
came even more important. The sweatshop,
child-labor, excessive hours for women, were
attacked with considerable effect. In many

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

States the public conscience was sufficiently
aroused by reform agencies with which the
League zealously co-operated to pass stringent
laws, and the League's representatives, either
as private individuals or as honorary inspectors
of the State tried to see that they were carried
out. If New York to-day has the strictest child-
labor law in the United States, a good share
of the honor is due to the untiring labors of an
enlightened Consumers' League.

Here one concrete instance of these activities
must suffice. England had as early as 1844
enacted laws protecting women, but, owing to
the Constitution of the United States various
State Supreme Courts had held that any re-
striction of the right of free contract of adult
women was unconstitutional. Therefore when
the. State of Oregon proceeded against a laun-
dryman for violation of a State Law by work-
ing women longer than allowed by that Law,
the laundryman promptly appealed from the
State Court to the United States Supreme
Court. The local Consumers' League there-
upon notified the National League, with head-
quarters in New York City, that information
concerning the effect of work upon women was
necessary to win the case before the highest
D26]

THE INDIVIDUAL CONSUMER

tribunal of the United States. Expert counsel
was obtained, and Miss Josephine Goldmark,
of the League, was detailed to collect the infor-
mation. She employed ten readers, some of
them medical students, and special privileges
were granted her at Columbia University Li-
brary, the Astor Library of New York City,
and the Library of Congress in Washington.
The result was a sweeping verdict sustaining
the State.

There are two great classes of the poor— those
who for some reason or other do not work, and
those who, while working, do not receive enough
to support themselves and their families. To
the former the Church has been a staunch
friend. It is one of her glories that her enemies
accuse her of fostering pauperism by too lav-
ish charity. Her hospitals and orphanages, her
homes for the fallen and aged, her refuges for
the sick of soul and body are dotted over the
whole land, and are administered with a devo-
tion and self-sacrificing heroism compelling the
admiration of all. As John Boyle O'Reilly
said, hers is not

"Organized charity scrimped and iced
In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ."
[127 3

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

But what are we doing for that other great
class of poor, those who work but do not re-
ceive a just compensation? What are we doing
in the way of preventive philanthropy, to keep
these men from becoming utterly destitute ? It
is for the sublime struggle of the underpaid
workman that our sympathies need now to be
aroused. No Crusader ever fought for the Sep-
ulcher with more heroism than many a poverty-
stricken l?iborer to support himself and family.
Day after day he takes up the hopeless task,
while nearer and nearer yawns the slough of
pauperism where four million human beings
who were once self-respecting workmen like
himself, now crawl in lethargic content."^ No
waving pennons and blare of trumpets, but a
factory whistle at 6 a.m. and a chimney puffing
black smoke summon him to battle with powers
stronger than Saladin in his might. What
Robert Southwell wrote of himself during im-
prisonment might to-day be applied to millions
of wage-slaves :

"I live, but such a life as ever dies,

I die, but such a death as never ends;
My death to end my dying life denies.

And life my living death no whit amends."

■^Cf. Hunter, "Poverty," New York, 1906.

THE INDIVIDUAL CONSUMER

Yet notwithstanding the workman's ahnost
superhuman efforts to avoid pauperism, once
he reaches that abyss he loses all desire to rise
from it. You cannot drive him back into that
industrial war which is daily crushing better
and stronger natures.

Such being the situation, is it not an inspira-
tion to the Consimier who longs to do some-
thing for humanity to feel that he is contribu-
ting his mite to keep some workmen from be-
coming paupers ? There are persons, I know, to
whom their utter helplessness in the face of all
the social evils oppressing us to-day, has been
the keenest suffering. To them this doctrine
of the responsibility of Consumers and the
plans of fulfilling it have come as a gospel of
good news. They have felt that they could
now find rest from their tortures of conscience :
they have felt that they could now have a pur-
pose in life worth living for.

And what if in our sober moments we must
admit, that the good we individually accom-
plish as regards the workman be small? What
if we are tempted to look upon it as useless?
Let us take courage from the fact that we are
members of an organization, that everything
that the group accomplishes is in some way at-
tributable to us. One hundred men associated
D293

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

together can accomplish much more than those
same men working separately for the same
ends. This fact is evident in the case of a re-
ligious community. If the members of these
communities were scattered as individuals over
the earth, how paltry would be the results of
all their self-sacrifice and devotion compared
with what it is to-day. And so each individual
Consumer, banded with others in an organiza-
tion, can feel that all the work of the whole
body is to some extent his. His powers of do-
ing good are multiplied, and the mere fact of
his association with others multiplies their ca-
pacities too.

But even if this were not so, the mere fact
of realizing this principle and co-operating
with other noble-minded persons in its fulfill-
ment will be an immense gain to ourselves and
will finally result in unexpected good to soci-
ety. Simply to know that we are accomplish-
ing some little mite in the field of preventive
philanthropy will be an inspiration in our lives.

To ask ourselves, not whether a hat be ex-
actly the latest style, not whether it be abso-
lutely the cheapest we can get, but how it was
made, what effect is our buying it going to
have upon the workers and society in general,
Ciso]

THE INDIVIDUAL CONSUMER

will beget an invaluable spirit of self-efface-
ment. A social conscience will be generated
and grow until it becomes a dominant note in
our lives. And from us this gospel of charity
and justice, this good news to men of good will,
will spread until it becomes a mighty force for
social amelioration.

We have passed through ages of autocratic
tyranny; the individualistic democracy of the
last century is waning ; there is approaching an
era of social effort, social morality, a recogni-
tion of social interdependence. "The quick and
sensitive ear," to quote Miss Scudder, "hears
the beat of a new music, to which men begin to
rally.^ It is a concerted harmony, no mere soli-
tary bugle call ; and those who march to it are
more or less consciously swayed by a new
rhythm. For it is notable that the rhythms of
life are coming more and more to connote har-
mony rather than melody, or rather to weave
many melodic phrasings into one complex
whole. Association— or to use the fairer word,
fellowship— becomes a term of increasing mod-
ern cogency."

What matter, that to any but the superficial
observer, the situation looks dark. It may be

8 Hibbert Journal, Apr., 1909.

CONSUMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

that the more we study it, the blacker it grows.
As we look back upon the history of man's
strivings for some better social organization,
the conflict may seem hopeless. We may be
tempted to reflect with William Morris, ''How
men fight and lose the battle, and the thing
they fought for comes about in spite of their
defeat, and when it comes it turns out not to be
what they meant, and other men have to fight
for what they meant under another name."
But it is nobler to say with Mrs. Browning :

"We will trust God. The blank interstices
Men take for ruins. He will build into

With pillared marbles rare, or knit across
With generous arches, till the fane's complete.

This world has no perdition if some loss."

D32 3

APPENDIX

1 Constans et perpetua roluntas jus sumn unicuique
tribuendi; voluntaria laesio et violatio juris alieni:
De Lugo, De just, et jure, Disp. VIII, Sec. I, n. 1.

2 Debitum rationale ex necessaria connectione medi-
orum cum fine necessario resultans: Theologia mo-
ralis fundamentalis, ed. 2a, Bruges, 1890, p. 188.

3 "Quoties aequalitas non servatur ut venditor ultra su-
premum pretium, vel emptor emat infra infimum . . .
injustitia commititur.'* L. c, Tr. VII, n. 380.

4 In hac re cooperator est, qui simul cum alio est causa
damni, sive immediata sive positiva sive negativa.
Non enim in omnibus eadem est ratio cooperationis,
sed hoc est omnibus commune, quod cum alio concur-
rant ad damnum sen injuriam damnosam.
Ballerini L. c, Tr. VII, n. 128: cf. De Lugo, L. c.
XVII, II, 37.

5 Praeferendum est enim commune bonum privato.
Pt. I, Tr. Ill, Tom. IX, Sec. IV, p. 1171.

6 Cum enim unus homo sit pars multitudinis, quilibet
homo hoc ipsum quod est, et quod habet, est sicut et
quaelibet pars id quod est, est totius ; unde et natura
aliquod detrimentum infert parti, ut sal vet totum : 2a
2ae, Q.96, A.4.

11332

APPENDIX

7 Haec potestas est necessaria ad bonam rei publicae
humanae gubernationem.

Op. cit., Pt. I, Tom. V, Lib. Ill, Cap. 21.

8 Ex damno et periculo, quod bono publico publicaeque
securitati inferretur si impune id agere liceret.
Theol. Mor., Pt. I, Lib. I, Div. II, Par. 4, n. 761.

9 Tota difficultas consistit in assignanda ratione hujus
veritatis: nam licet turpitudo haec statim appareat,
non tamen facile est ejus fundamentum invenire:
unde (quod in aliis multis quaestionibus contingit)
magis certa est conclusio, quam rationes, quae variae
a diversis afferuntur ad ejus probationem. De Just,
et Jure, Disp. X, Sec. I, Num. 2.

10 Fatendum est esse aliquas practicas vertitates humano
convictui necessarias, quas homines instinctu quodam
rationali percipiunt et sentiunt, quarum tamen ra-
tionem prorsus demonstrativam, cum cam iidem ana-
lytice quaerunt, difficulter inveniunt. Videtur voluisse
natura sive auctor naturae hujusmodi instinctu aut
sensu rationali supplere defectum rationis seexercentis:
. . . Inter hujusmodi veritates haec quoque forte,
qua de agimus, invenitur. Theologia Moralis, Tr.
VI, Sec. VI, Num. 119, Vol. II, pp. 727-728.

[134]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J. Kelleher, Private Ownership, Dublin, IQll.
Capecelatro, Cardinal, Christ, the Church, and Man.

St. Louis, 1909.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, secunda secundae.
De Lugo, Cardinal John, De Justitia et Jure.
Bouquillon, Theologia Moralis Fundamentalis, ed. 2a,

Bruges, 1890.
Liguori, Alphonsus, Theologia moralis.
Noldin, H., Theologia Moralis, 3 vols., 8th ed., N. Y.,

1911.
Ballerini, Antonio, Theologia Moralis.
Cuthbert, O. F. M. Cap., Catholic Ideals in Social Life,

N. Y., 1904.
Cunningham, W., Christianity & Social Questions : Lon-
don, 1910.
Clark, J. B., Essentials of Economic Theory, 1907.
United States Bureau of Labor : Report on the Condition

of Woman & Child Wage-Earners in the United States,

19 vols., 1910-1912.
Charities Publication Committee, The Pittsburgh Survey.
Minneapolis Vice Commission, Report, 19II.
Chicago Vice Commission, Report, I9II.
Seligman, E. R. A., The Social Evil, N. Y., 1912.
United States Bureau of Labor, Industrial Hygiene,

19O8.

ClSS]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kelly, Florence, Some Ethical Gains through Legislation,
N. Y., 1905.

Hunter, Robert, Poverty, N. Y, 1905.

Le Play, F., La Reforme Sociale, Tours, 1 878, S vols.

Missiaen, Berthold, O. M. Cap., L'Appauvrissement des
Masses, Louvain, 1911.

Clark, J. B., The Distribution of Wealth, N. Y., 1889.

Woods, Robert A., ed., Americans in Process, Boston, 1903.

Bliss, Wm. D. P., ed.. New Encyclopedia of Social Re-
form, N, Y., 1908.

Clark, Sue Ainslie, & Edith Wyatt, Making Both Ends
Meet, N. Y, 1911.

Streightoff, Frank Hatch, The Standard of Living among
the Industrial People of America, Boston, 1911.

Butler, Eliz. Beardsley, Saleswomen in Mercantile
Stores, N. Y, 1912.

Ryan, John A., A Living Wage, N. Y., 1906.

Devine, Edw. T., Principles of Relief, N. Y., 1904.

Bousanquet, Helen, The Standard of Life, London, 1908.

Chapin, Coit, The Standard of Living among Working-
men's Families in New York City, N. Y., 1909.

Journal of Political Economy.

Economic Journal.

Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Journal of the American Sociological Society.

Annals of the American Academy of Political & Social
Science.

The Survey.

International Journal of Ethics.

[136]

INDEX

Accidents: 90ff.
Alphonsus^ Saint: See

Liguori
Aquinas: 11,18,28,29,46

Ballerini, Antonio: 22, 27,

28, 29, 45
Bouquillon, Thomas: 11
Bo wen, Louise de Koven:

98
Browning, Eliz. B.: 132
Butler, Eliz. B. : 4, 43,

51ff, 67, 96, 101, 102

Capecelatro, Card.: 9

Capital punishment: 28

Carlyle, Thomas: 35 f.

Carver, T. N.: 60

Chapin, Coit: 43

Charity: Consumers* obli-
gations of, 31 ff; duties
of, 11

Cheapness: demand for,
58ff.

Chicago Vice Commission:
95, 100, 101, 104

Child-Labor: 93f.

Child-Labor Committee,
National: 100

Clark, J. B.: 65

Common good: Scholastic
conception of, 28ff.

Competition: 19ff, 47ff, 55f.

Compulsory Arbitration :
112

Conscience, Social: 131

Consumers: Duties of, 13ff,
l6f, 129ff; individual ac-
tion, 107, 109, 114; or-
ganization among, 109,

110, 130; responsibility
of, 5ff.

Consumers* League: 110,

111, 114ff.
Consumption (disease) :

88ff.
Co-operation in evil : 1 3, 23
Costs of production : 60ff .
Crawford, Hanford: 60
Cunningham, W.: 20, 58,

63
Cuthbert, Father: 108

Dance Halls: 97f.

Dangerous occupations:
86ff.
; De Lugo, Card. John,
S. J.: 25, 26,44

Department Stores: 100,
103

Devine, Edward T.: 66f.

Dust: 87f.

Duty : definition of, 11; de-
volution of, 13ff.

137]

INDEX

Employers: duties of di-
rect, 12; liability of, 17
English Poor Law: 62
Expenses of production:

Food, Insufficient: 78ff.

Goldmark, Josephine: 127
Green, T. H.: 32
Gury, J. P.: 10

Hibbert Journal: 131
Hours of work: 4, 84f.
Housing conditions: 77ff,

95f.
Hunter, Robert: 128

Industrial Commission,

U. S.:68, 87, 94
Injustice, definition of : 11
Innocent: indirect killing

of, lawful, 28
Interest: 15
Interest-takers, duties of:

Justice: Consumers' obliga-
tions of, 13ff; definition
of, 11; duties of, 1 1

Kelleher, Rev. J. : 9
Kelley, Florence: 114

Label: See White List
Labor, N. Y. S. Bureau of:

68f, 74ff, 88
Labor, N. Y. S. Commis-
sioner of: 82, 91

Labor, U. S. Bureau of: 16,

42, 43, 52ff, 61, 68, 70ff,

77ff, 89ff, 96, 97, 113
Labor, U. S. Commission

of: 84
Law : binding force of civil :

28
Lehmkuhl, Aug. : 29
Leo XIII: 8
Liguori, Saint Alphonsus:

18,23,27,28,29
Living, Standard of: 9,

38ff, 66
Lowell, Josephine Shaw:

117

Maistre, de: 111

Mazzini, Giuseppe: 5

Mercantile Employers*
Bill: 122

Middle Ages, Medieval
system: 19f.

Minneapolis Vice Commis-
sion: 54, 103

Morris, William: 132

Mouth, The: 116

Necessity: definition of, 33
Neighbor: meaning of, 31
Night work: 84 f.
Noldin, H.: 29

O'Reilly, John Boyle: 127

Packingtown: 96
Paine, Thomas: 5
Pittsburgh Survey: 51, 52,
66

D38 3

INDEX

Pius X: 8
Poisoning: 86f.
Poverty: 127ff.
Price: ISff, 57f, 60
Property: justification of
private, 29 ; superfluous,

Prostitution: 95, lOlff.

Rent-takers: duties of, 14
Right: definition of, lOff.
Ryan, John A.: 15, 42f.

Saloon, The: 99
Scudder, Vida: 131
Seager, H. R.: 6l
Sidgwick, H.: 61
Social argument: 13, 27 ff.
Southwell, Robert: 105, 128
Speeding-up, 85 f.
State: authority of, 28
State-Insurance: 112
Suarez, Francisco, S. J.:

27, 28, 46
Subsistence standard: 39
Suicide: 29f.
Survey: 67, 98, 101, 104,

123

Thomas, Saint: See Aquinas
Thorold, Algar: 97
Title, just: 22f.
Tuberculosis: 88ff.

Ulpian: 11
Unemployed: 66
Unemployment: 68 f.

Value: 13, 17ff.
Ventilation: 79ff.

Wage, Minimum: 42, 46,

112, 113
Wages: 4, 48ff, 62ff, 66S,

70ff; right to living, 9;

standard of living, 8, 9
War: 29
White List: 55, 118, 124,

125
Williams, A. B. : 98
Women : conditions of work,

4; hours of work, 4;

wages, 4, 67
Work: conditions of, 4,

51ff; right to, 9
Working Women's Society:

117, 119

D393

VITA

J. Elliot Ross was born in Baltimore in 1884. In
1902 he graduated from Loyola College of that city
after the ordirary classico-mathematieal course. He
received the degree of M.A. from George Washing-
ton University, Washington, D. C, in 19O8, his
major being English Literature and his minors Soci-
ology and Economics. The subject of his disserta-
tion was: "The Element of Social Reform in Some
Nineteenth Century English Literature." Upon en-
tering the Paulist Novitiate at the Catholic Univer-
sity in 1909^ he also took up further sociological
studies. He was ordained priest of the Congregation
of St. Paul the Apostle May 24, 1912. At the com-
mencement of the Catholic University in that year,
he received the degrees S.T.B. and Ph.D.

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