Full text of "Our benevolent feudalism"

See other formats

ill

OUR BENEVOLENT
FEUDALISM

GHENT

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

OUR BENEVOLENT
FEUDALISM

BY
W. J. GHENT

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1902

AU rights reserved

Set up and electrotyped October, 1902.

Norfooofc $wgJJ

J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

PREFACE

THE germ of this book was contained in an article
published in the Independent, April 3, 1902. The
wide interest which that article awakened prompted
the elaboration and arrangement of its briefly con-
sidered and somewhat disjointed parts into the present
form.

The chapters on " Our Makers of Law " and " Our
Interpreters of Law" have been carefully read by a
member of the New York Bar who has made a spe-
cial study of the matters treated therein. Some of
the decisions cited in the latter chapter are admitted
to be those of subordinate courts in comparatively
unimportant States. The intention, however, was to
give a general view of judicial interpretation; and
for that reason it became necessary to cite decisions
of inferior as well as superior courts, and those from
semi-industrial as well as industrial States.

As the book goes to press, the news is published
that the anthracite magnates have yielded and made
concessions to public sentiment. It is an act in
harmony with the wiser forethought of most of the
magnates of to-day, and it strengthens the general
seigniorial position immeasurably.

CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE .... v

CHAPTER

I. UTOPIAS AND OTHER FORECASTS i

II. COMBINATION AND COALESCENCE . .11

III. OUR MAGNATES 27

IV. OUR FARMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS ... 47
V. OUR MAKERS OF LAW 83

VI. OUR INTERPRETERS OF LAW .... 102

VII. OUR MOULDERS OF OPINION . . . .122

VIII. GENERAL SOCIAL CHANGES 154

IX. TRANSITION AND FULFILMENT . . . .180

INDEX 199

vii

CHAPTER I
UTOPIAS AND OTHER FORECASTS

" THE old order changeth, yielding place to new."
But what the new order shall be is a matter of some
diversity of opinion. Whoever, blessed with hope,
speculates upon the future of society, tends to imag-
ine it in the form of his social ideals. It matters
little what the current probabilities may be — the
strong influence of the ideal warps the judgment.
To Thomas More, though most tendencies of his
time made for absolutism, the future was republican
and communistic ; and to Francis Bacon the present
held the promise of a new Atlantis, despite the
growing arrogance of the Crown and the submissive-
ness of the people.

The great diversity of social ideals produces a
like diversity of social forecasts. All the soothsayers
give different readings of the signs. Even those of
the same school, who build the future in the light
of the same dogmas, differ in regard to particulars
of form and structure. How many forecasts of one
sort or another have been given us, it is impossible
to say. Mr. H. G. Wells, in a footnote to his " An-
ticipations," complains of their scarcity. " Of quite
serious forecasts and inductions of things to come,"
he says, " the number is very small indeed ; a sug-
B i

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

gestion or so of Mr. Herbert Spencer's, Mr. Kidd's
' Social Evolution/ some hints from Mr. Archdall
Reid, some political forecasts, German for the most
part (Hartmann's ' Earth in the Twentieth Century/
e.g.), some incidental forecasts by Professor Langley
(Century Magazine, December, 1884, e-g-\ and such
isolated computations as Professor Crookes's wheat
warning and the various estimates of our coal supply,
make almost a complete bibliography." But surely
the Utopians, from Plato to Edward Bellamy, have
given us " quite serious forecasts " ; there is some-
thing of serious prophecy in both Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels, much more in Tolstoi and Peter
Kropotkin ; and the " Fabian Essays " are charged
with it. Mr. Henry D. Lloyd's "Wealth against
Commonwealth " closes with a brilliant and eloquent
picture of a regenerated society, and Mr. Edmond
Kelly's " Individualism and Collectivism " is in large
part prophetic. All the social reformers who write
books or articles give us engaging pictures of things
as they are to be; and though the Philosophical
Anarchists deal rather more largely with polemics
than with prophecy, the Socialists are conspicuously
definite and serious in their forecasts. Even the
popular scientists — the astronomers, biologists, and
anthropologists — often run into prediction ; and in
the pages of Richard A. Proctor, E. D. Cope, and
Grant Allen, and of such living men as M. Camille
Flammarion, Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace, and Pro-
fessor W. J. McGee, we have frequent depictions of
certain phases of the future.

Doubtless, any reader can add to this list. Of a

UTOPIAS AND OTHER FORECASTS

surety, we have had no lack of forecasts of one sort
or another; and now we have some new contribu-
tions,— Mr. Wells's "Anticipations," Mr. Benjamin
Kidd's " Principles of Western Civilization," two
brief but sententious papers by Professor John B.
Clark, on "The Society of the Future" and "A
Modified Individualism" (published in the Indepen-
dent), a definite Socialist prediction by Mr. Henry
D. Lloyd, and a semi-Socialist one by Mr. Sidney
Webb.

Mr. Wells, in his lecture before the Royal Institu-
tion last January, put forth the thesis that, just as we
can picture the general aspects of the earth in meso-
zoic times by a study of geology and paleontology, so
by a study of the present sociological drift can we
picture the society of a hundred years hence. He
thereupon gives us " Anticipations " as a result of
the more or less rigorous working out of this method.
There is much to be said for the method, and its
right employment might probably give us something
of great value. Unfortunately, Mr. Wells forgets his
thesis, and plunges into pure vaticination. He writes
with a spirited aggressiveness, and his pictures are
often vivid and impressive. But the greater part of
his revelation is of a state of things which seems
far removed from what would be produced by any
current tendencies, actual or latent.

Mr. Kidd's predictions lack somewhat in definite-
ness of outline, and need not here concern us. Tol-

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

stoi, on the other hand, is specific. He dreams of a
return to a more primitive manner of production, and
a social change toward a status of Anarchist-Commu-
nism. He scoffs at the enormous diversity of wants
made necessary by the growing intelligence and
refinement of the race, and urges mankind to live
more simply. "The town must be abandoned, the
people must be sent away from the factories and
into the country to work with their hands ; the aim
of every man should be to satisfy all his wants him-
self." But the counsel falls upon heedless ears.
Urged to live more simply, the race, impelled by
natural and irresistible laws, yearly increases the sum
of its wants. Science, art, and industry constantly
pile up new commodities. Mankind finds that
through them it secures longer and healthier, if not
happier lives. It recognizes that by this increase of
wants more human beings are employed, and that
by a slight diminution thereof tens of thousands are
thrown into idleness. And finally it recognizes that
by a division of labor, in which natural aptitude in
particular directions is sought to be secured, the
greatest and most economical production follows.
Under Anarchist-Communism and the performance
of labor in the direction of each individual attempt-
ing to create the things needful for himself, there
would be entailed upon us a productive waste vastly
greater than that heretofore compelled by capitalism,
diffusing a degree of want and consequent wretched-
ness at present unknown. There is no present indi-
cation that mankind will take this step.

Something better is to be said for Peter Kropot-

UTOPIAS AND OTHER FORECASTS

kin's ideal of a communistic union of shop industry
and agriculture. In remote places, outside the cur-
rent of factory industrialism, there are still survivals
of this union, though the communistic feature is gen-
erally wanting. Doubtless, under any form of society,
even a well-regulated State Socialism, this union
would to some extent persist. But if there are any
present tendencies toward its growth, they are but
feeble and isolated. Kropotkin's recent book, " Fields,
Factories and Workshops," which was intended to
sound the glad timbrel of rejoicing over the expan-
sion of this movement, turns out to be a rather pitiful
threnody on the decline and death of petty industries
throughout Europe. Moreover, it is one thing to
argue the persistence of this manner of production in
scattered places, and quite another to argue it the
dominant manner of production in a transformed
society of the future. Of the coming of such a
society the evidences are painfully scant,

We have also the Single-Taxers, the followers of
the late Henry George, who are quite as fertile in
prophecy as in polemics. They dream of a millen-
nium through the imposition of a tax on the economic
value of land, and the abolition of all other taxes
and duties of whatsoever kind. Free competition is
their shibboleth ; and it is no less the shibboleth of
the Neo-Jeffersonians, the followers of Mr. Bryan.
Except for the fact that these two schools are some-
what Jacobinical, their general notions of the com-
ing society do not differ greatly from the notions
of the orthodox economists. All of these desire, or
think they desire, free competition. Arising out of

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

an era of competition, Professor Clark sees a coming
order wherein the rich " will continually grow richer,
and the multi-millionnaires will approach the billion-
dollar standard ; but the poor will be far from grow-
ing poorer. ... It may be that the wages of a day
will take him [the worker] to the mountains, and
those of a hundred days will carry him through a
European tour."

The dreadful spectre of monopoly, however, arises
to threaten these visions. Most of the orthodox
economists acknowledge a possible danger from it,
but the Single-Taxers and Jeffersonians are sure it is
a real and growing menace. Says Professor Clark,
" Between us and the regime of monopoly there
ranges itself a whole series of possible measures
stopping short of Socialism, and yet efficient enough
to preserve our free economic system." It is a "free
economic system" which all these are bent on
having, — the economists determined on preserving
it, the others on establishing it ; for the Single-Taxers,
with their bete noir of private ownership of land,
and the Jeffersonians, with their bites noirs of rail-
roads and trusts, deny that our economic system is at
present " free." Doubtless they are both right ; but
if there be one fact in the realm of political economy
fairly established, it is that the era of competi-
tion, whether free or unfree, is dead, and the means
of its resurrection are unknown to political science.
With old men the dream of its revival is warrantable,
for it springs from that retrospective mood of age
which gilds past times, and that attendant mood which
recreates and projects them into some imagined

UTOPIAS AND OTHER FORECASTS

future; but with the younger generation visions of
free competition are but as children's dreams of wild
forests and shaggy animals — the atavistic reminders
of experiences unknown to the individual, though
knit into the fibre of the race. The subject is one
far better suited to the domain of a psychologist
like Dr. Stanley Hall than to the scope of this
book.

Finally, we have the Socialists, with their prophecy
of the early establishment of a cooperative common-
wealth. It is a noble picture, in its best expression
based upon the extreme of faith in the coming gen-
erations of mankind, however its draughtsmen may
criticise the wisdom and justice of the present. There
is no doubt that now a ground-swell of Socialist con-
viction moves like a tide " of waters unwithstood " ;
everywhere one notes its influences. Even so conserv-
ative a scholar as Professor Henry Davies, lecturer
on the history of philosophy in Yale University, can
write, "There is no doubt that the next form of po-
litical activity to claim attention is the socialistic, as
it is the most popular and serious of any now before
the educated minds of this country." Its propaganda
is carried on untiringly, and that its results are feared
is evident from the equal aggressiveness of a counter-
propaganda maintained by the ingenious defenders
v of the present regime against the whole form and
spirit of Socialism. But though socialist conviction
spreads, the substance sought for seems as far away
as ever. It would seem, for the most part, to be but
a lukewarm conviction, much like that for which the
Laodiceans were so widely famed. Present tendencies

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

make for other forms of production, for a vastly dif-
ferent social regime.

The dominant tendencies will be clearly seen only
by those who for the time detach themselves from
their social ideals. What, , then, in this republic of
the United States, may Socialist, Individualist, and
Conservative alike see, if only they will look with
unclouded vision ? In brief, an irresistible movement -

— now almost at its culmination — toward great com-
binations in specific trades ; next toward coalescence
of kindred industries, and thus toward the complete
integration of capital. Consequent upon these
changes, the group of captains and lieutenants of
industry attains a daily increasing power, social, in-
dustrial, and political, and becomes the ranking order
in a vast series of gradations. The State becomes
stronger in its relation to the propertyless citizen,
weaker in its relation to the man of capital. A grow-
ing subordination of classes, and a tremendous in-
crease in the numbers of the lower orders, follow.
Factory industry increases, and the petty industries,
while still supporting a great number of workers, are
in all respects relatively weaker than ever before;
they suffer a progressive limitation of scope and func-
tion and a decrease of revenues. Defenceless labor

— the labor of women and children — increases both
absolutely and relatively. Men's wages decline or
remain stationary, while the value of the product and
the cost of living advance by steady steps. Though

UTOPIAS AND OTHER FORECASTS

land is generally held in somewhat smaller allotments,
tenantry on the small holdings, and salaried manage-
ment on the large, gradually replace the old system
of independent farming ; and the control of agricul-
x - ture oscillates between the combinations that deter-
mine the prices of its products and the railroads that
determine the rate for transportation to the markets.

In a word, they who desire to live — whether farm-
ers, workmen, middlemen, teachers, or ministers —
must make their peace with those who have the dispo-
sition of the livings. The result is a renascent Feu-
dalism, which, though it differs in many forms from
that of the time of Edward I, is yet based upon the
same status of lord, agent, and underling. It is a
Feudalism somewhat graced by a sense of ethics and
somewhat restrained by a fear of democracy. The
new barons seek a public sanction through conspicu-
ous giving, and they avoid a too obvious exercise of
their power upon political institutions. Their benefi-
cence, however, though large, is but rarely prodigal.
It betokens, as in the case of the careful spouse of
John Gilpin, a frugal mind. They demand the full
terms nominated in the bond; they exact from the
traffic all it will bear. Out of the tremendous reve-
nues that flow to them some of them return a part in
benefactions to the public; and these benefactions,
whether or not primarily devoted to the easement of
conscience, are always shrewdly disposed with an eye
to the allayment of pain and the quieting of discon-
tent. They are given to hospitals ; to colleges and
churches which teach reverence for the existing
regime, and to libraries, wherein the enforced lei-

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

sure of the unemployed may be whiled away in rela-
tive contentment. They are never given, even by
accident, to any of the movements making for the
correction of what reformers term injustice. But
not to look too curiously into motives, our new Feu-
dalism is at least considerate. It is a paternal, a
Benevolent Feudalism.

CHAPTER II
COMBINATION AND COALESCENCE

WE have, first, the enormous growth of industrial,
commercial, and financial combinations. A crude
idea of the extent to which concentration in
manufactures had grown up to May 31, 1900, may
be gained from Census Bulletin No. 122. In this
report only those aggregations are considered which
consisted of "a number of formerly independent
mills which have been brought together into one
company under a charter obtained for that purpose."
Several of the new security-holding stock companies
are included, but "many large establishments com-
prising a number of mills which have grown up, not
by combination with other mills, but by erection of
new plants or the purchase of old ones," are not con-
sidered, nor are gas and electric lighting plants, or
pools, and "gentlemen's agreements."

The list contains records of 183 corporations, with
2029 active and 174 idle plants, an average of n
active plants each. The actual capital invested in
these corporations, exclusive of that for 56 of the
idle plants, was $1,458,522,573, and the authorized
capitalization was $3,607,539,200. These combina-
tions employed 24,585 salaried officers and clerks,

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

and an average of 399,192 wage-earners. The 1047
officers received an average of $6,825.28 yearly and
the wage-earners, $487.32. There were 40 combina-
tions in iron and steel, with 447 plants ; 28 in liquor
and beverages, with 219 plants; 21 in food and allied
products, with 273 plants ; 1 5 in clay, glass, and stone
products, with 180 plants, and 14 in chemicals, with
248 plants. The gross value of the manufactured
product of these combinations, as given by the census,
was $1,661,295,364. Excluding hand trades, govern-
ment establishments, educational, eleemosynary, and
penal workshops, and shops with a product of less
than $500, this total represented 14 per cent of the
value of the manufactured product for the whole
country.

The spring of 1900 was, however, but the mid-
morning of the combination movement. Only 63 of
these companies had been formed previous to 1897,
while more than 50 per cent of them were formed
during the eighteen months from January i, 1899,
to June 30, 1900. Since then the movement has
swept forward like a great tide. The consolidations
of manufacturing companies for the first five months
of 1901 alone probably exceeded $2,000,000,000 in
capitalization. The great steel " trust" (to use the
popular term), an $88,000,000 tin-can trust, still other
trusts in tobacco machinery, carpets, coal and coke,
witch-hazel, glass lamps and electric glass fittings,
ship-building, cotton duck, agricultural implements,
and watches, had their birth during this period.
More recently came the steel-castings trust, subordi-
nate to the steel corporation, a recombination in

COMBINATION AND COALESCENCE

tobacco, and very lately a new ship-building combina-
tion, a $120,000,000 harvester trust, and a cotton
compress trust. The capital invested in manufactur-
ing combinations is now probably two and one-half
times what it was in May, 1900; and it is a reason-
able guess that nearly one-third of the manufactured
product of the country, outside of the petty trades,
comes from the combinations.

Of the magnitude of some of these concerns the
average mind can form but an inadequate idea. The
figures expressing it are comparable with those of
star distances, which must be transmuted into light-
years to make them conceivable. A New York news-
paper has recently made some computations on the
great steel trust, which help to bring home to us a
realization of its size and power. Its yearly net
profits are now double the amount of the total reve-
nues of the United States Government in the year
Lincoln was elected. Its wage-roll carries on an
average of the round year over 158,000 names — an
army of employees larger by 45,000 than serves the
National Government in every branch of its civil
service, classified and unclassified, except only fourth-
class postmasters. Its wage-payments for last year
aggregated nearly $113,000,000, more by $13,000,000
than the huge annual city budget of Greater New
York. Its annual production of steel is 10,000,000
tons, 67 per cent of the total production of the country ;
and its freight payments for the year 1901 amounted*
to more than $54,000,000.

During the same period financial, commercial, min-
ing, and transportation trusts have also had their splen-

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

did inning. We read of an accident-insurance trust
with a capitalization of $50,000,000, the great shipping
trust, the $120,000,000 jobbing hardware trust, the
Interurban Street Railway stock-holding combination,
the beef trust, a $50,000,000 lead merger, a recom-
bination in copper, and a universal oil trust. Moody s
Manual of Corporation Securities for 1902 gives a
list of 82 industrial and mercantile consolidations
effected between January i, 1899, and September i,
1902, each of which is capitalized at $10,000,000
or more, the whole aggregating a capitalization of
$4,318,005,646. Thirty-nine of these, with $1,232,-
947,790 authorized capital, were formed during 1899;
7 with $186,110,400 capital, in 1900; 20 with $2,141,-
197,456 capital in 1901, and 16 with $757,750,000
capital during the first eight months of 1902. The
list is admittedly incomplete. " It embraces only the
so-called gigantic combinations which have been form-
ing in the past three and one-half years. A complete
list, without regard to date of formation, and including
both large and small," says this authority, "would
probably aggregate 850 different-going combinations,
and would easily foot up over $9,000,000,000 of
capitalization. Including railroad consolidations, such
a list would make a total of over $15,000,000,000 out-
standing capitalization." As for the railroads, the
formation of the Northern Securities Company, the
recent assimilation of the Louisville and Nashville,
and the " reorganization " of the Rock Island show the
same drift. Five men, according to a recent statement
of Interstate Commerce Commissioner J. A. Prouty,
control all the railroads of the country; and Mr. John

COMBINATION AND COALESCENCE

W. Gates, a financier who may be supposed to know
something on that head, has more recently declared,
according to a newspaper interview, that two men are
really in control. " I believe that the time is not far
distant," declared Professor Francis L. Patton, former
head of Princeton University, in a recent address
before the Presbyterian Social Union of Chicago,
" when there will not be a thing that we eat, drink,
or wear that will not be made by a trust." He might
have gone farther and fared as well ; for the theat-
rical trust determines what dramas we shall witness ;
the pulp trust, the typefounders' trust, the news trust,
and the school-book trust exert a most direct bearing
on what we read and what our reading costs us ; and
finally the undertakers' trust determines the style
and cost of our burial.

The tendencies make not only for combination in
specific trades, but for unification — for complete
integration of all capital which is susceptible of
organization. Capitalistic atoms of low valency —
to use a term from chemistry, — such as those in-
vested in some of the hand trades, custom and
repairing and the like — may continue their course,
but those of a high valency are sooner or later
brought into association. From this fundamental
grouping comes integration, the concentration of the
material units which go to make up an aggregate.
The lesser gravitates to the larger. It needs no
modern Newton to proclaim that in finance, com-

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

merce, and industry, as in the physical world, all
bodies attract one another in direct proportion to their
mass. Distance provides a limitation, it is true, to
the action of this law in the physical world; but
less so in the economic world, for such is the per-
fection of our means of communication that they
provide a more transmissible medium to capital than
is the pervading ether to light and gravitation.

The separate trade trusts are not sufficient unto
themselves, but move steadily toward unification.
A glance at the directorates of the leading combina-
tions shows many names repeated through a long
list of varied industries. The combinations them-
selves reach out and acquire new interests, often dis-
tinct from their primary interests. In Pennsylvania
coal is mined and railroads are operated by practically
the same companies, and in Colorado and West Vir-
ginia nearly as complete an identity is discovered.
The steel corporation owns coal lands, limestone
quarries, railroads, and docks ; it is allied with the
great Atlantic shipping trust; it is related, not dis-
tantly, to the Standard Oil Company ; and the begin-
nings of a public opinion trust are indicated, for
already its chief magnate has acquired several news-
papers and a prominent magazine. Bishop Potter's
prediction, it would seem, is in fair way of fulfilment.
" We must fully realize," he said to the Yale students
last April, " the danger that mind as well as matter
will be at some time in the future capitalized, and
that the real thinking and planning for the many will'
be done by a mere handful." Beet and cane sugar
are soon to be joined, we read ; paper and lumber, if

COMBINATION AND COALESCENCE

not already wedded, are at least on excellent terms.
Oil and gas on the one hand, coal and iron on the
other, have a " common understanding," and each of
them holds morganatic relations with one or more of
the railroads. All the great combinations recognize
a growing community of interest; they tend more
and more to a potential, if not an actual, coalescence ;
and in the face of popular agitation, legislative aggres-
siveness, or the formal demands of labor, they develop
a unity of purpose and method. Their support is
thrown, in general, to the same candidates for gov-
ernors, senators, judges, and tax assessors. In brief,
they tend to the formation of a state within a state,
and their individual members to the creation of an
industrial and political hierarchy.

Ill

The counter-tendency toward the persistence of
small-unit farming and of small-shop production and
distribution must not be lost sight of, nor must the
great combinations be looked upon as necessarily a
proof of individual concentration of wealth. That
they generally so result is hardly to be disputed ; but
primarily, they mean the massing together of sepa-
rately owned capitals, often small, for a particular
use. There is every reason to suppose that the
shareholders grow in numbers, and that they increase
their holdings. So that while the magnates tend to
become Midases, there is a concurrent tendency mak-
ing for diffused ownership. The small investor is to
be found in every stratum of society, and the num-

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

her of shareholders in some of the great combinations
reaches an astonishing figure. The "one touch of
nature " which in Shakespeare's eyes made the whole
world kin was the love of novelty ; in our day it is
the passion for investing in shares.

Petty industries and small-unit farming persist, de-
spite the movement toward combination. The recent
census gives the number of manufacturing establish-
ments in the United States as 512,726, an increase of
44.3 per cent. This is a larger percentage of increase
than is shown for any other of the fifteen items in the
census summary of manufactures, except capital,
children's wages, and miscellaneous expenses. Doubt-
less many of these establishments belong to the
trusts ; but with all allowances the numerical growth
is remarkable. The undeveloped sections show the
greatest increase, but even industrially settled States,
su-ch as Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island,
reveal marked gains. Professor Ely has pointed out
several branches of industry in which small-shop pro-
duction is increasing. Some investigations which the
present writer made two years ago in two branches
confirm this tendency. It is pronounced in the notion
trades and in the manufacture of women's ready-
made wear. In the latter the industry has been
revolutionized, the large houses being menaced with
disaster and some of them with extinction. In dry-
goods distribution the tendencies are confused and
puzzling. While the number of general jobbing
houses in New York City has decreased from thirty-
five to five in twenty-five years, the remaining ones
growing to enormous proportions, the number of

COMBINATION AND COALESCENCE

smaller houses distributing special lines has either
maintained its own or has grown. In Baltimore and
St. Louis small jobbing houses persist in the face of
the larger houses. In the retail trades, even in New
York, despite the creation of a number of mammoth ,
general stores, the dullest observer will note the con-
tinuance of thousands of small grocery, dry-goods,
and furniture stores, confectionery and butcher shops ;
while custom and repairing work is still done in the
little tailoring and shoemaking shops that speak a
sort of defiance to the great emporiums. Through
convenience of location to the community of cus-
tomers about them — often, too, by the giving of
credit — many of these little shops and stores furnish
a social service that cannot be performed by the
larger stores, which are mostly to be found massed in
the central shopping district.

Something of the same naoire is to be found in
agriculture. Though the great estates are increasing
in size, so also is the number of small holdings increas-
ing. Nearly every State and Territory shows an in-
crease in the number of farms, while the majority
show a decrease in average acreage. The great
stock-grazing farms of the West and the unproductive
" gentlemen's estates " of the East help to make the
census figures misleading. It is probable that in
every State real farming is done on a smaller average
acreage than ever before.

Even independent capital in trading and manu-
factures shows an unexpected persistence. An inter-
esting article in a recent issue of the New York
Journal of Commerce puts the capitalization of the

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

great trusts for the twelve years ending with 1901 at
$6,474,000,000, of which it marks off $2,000,000,000
as " spurious common stock," that is,' stock not repre-
senting real capital in any form. Not more than
$300,000,000 of new capital, it maintains, had been
thrown into the consolidations. This would leave
$4,474,000,000 as the sum of values already estab-
lished by previous investment. On the other hand, it
maintains that actual records show that in seventeen
months from the beginning of 1901, in the four States
of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maine,
the aggregate capitalization of newly organized com-
panies with a capital of $1,000,000 and upwards is
$1,969,650,000; and it calculates that for the whole
country, including the large and small corporations,
"the national industrial capital (exclusive of that for
transportation appliances) must have increased ap-
proximately $5,000,000,000 since the end of 1900."
Several rather obvious demurrers might be made
to the conclusions reached, but they need not now
concern us. With all possible discounting, strong
proof is given of the aggressive persistence of inde-
pendent capital.

Such facts, however, do not carry on the surface
their real import. Independent capital persists as a
force, but the units that compose it melt like bubbles
in a stream. These companies are but the raw or
" partly manufactured " material out of which the
great combinations are made. Formation, growth,
and absorption into a trust are generally the three

COMBINATION AND COALESCENCE

terms in their life-history ; or if, through ill environ-
ment or spirited warfare waged against them, they
fail to get secure footing, they soon slip back into the
slough of disaster. The fate of independent tobacco
factories, sugar and oil refineries, railroads, indepen-
dent companies of one kind or another, is constantly
before us. If they are worth having, they are more
or less benevolently assimilated ; and if they are not
worth having, they are permitted to struggle onward
to the almost inevitable collapse.

Neither do small holdings in agriculture mean
economic independence. As the late census reveals,
they mean tenantry. The number of farms operated
by owners is decreasing ; tenantry is becoming more
and more common, and so is salaried management of
great estates. Of the 5,739,657 farms of the nation,
tenants now operate 2,026,286. Owners operated
74.5 per cent of all farms in 1880, 71.6 per cent in
1890, 64.7 per cent in 1900. The tendency is gen-
eral, and applies to all sections. Since 1880 tenantry
has relatively increased in every State and Territory
(no comparative data are given for the Indian Terri-
tory) except Arizona, Florida, and New Hampshire.
Since 1890 it has increased in Arizona. In twenty
years it has increased 49.4 per cent in Florida,
though the unloading of " orange groves " and other
tropical paradises on the too susceptible Northerner
has increased ownership by a slightly greater ratio ;
while in New Hampshire, where 2857 farms have
been given up in the last twenty years, tenantry has
decreased by but five-tenths of i per cent since
1890, and but six-tenths of i per cent since 1880.

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

So, too, with petty industries and the small retail-
ers. M. Emile Vandervelde, in his sterling work,
" Collectivism and Industrial Evolution," has well
shown how " small trade is the special refuge of the
cripples of capitalism." It is the particular refuge
" of all who prefer, in place of the hard labor of pro-
duction, the scanty gleaning of the middleman, or
who, no longer finding a sufficient revenue in indus-
try or farming, desire to add a string to their bow by
opening a little shop." But it would be a mistake,
he continues, to suppose that these miniature estab-
lishments, which the census officials characterize as
distinct enterprises, can be generally regarded as the
personal property of those who carry them on. " A
great number of them, and a number constantly in-
creasing, as capitalism develops, have only a phantom
of independence, and are really in the hands of a few
great money lenders, manufacturers, or merchants."

Though M. Vandervelde argues on the basis of
these phenomena as observed in Belgium, France,
Germany, and England, the same conclusions are
applicable in the United States. Our national census
figures are practically useless as illuminators on the
subject, and one must get his data from the obser-
vation or investigation of himself or others. It is
generally known that small industries the product
of which is more or less ingenious or artistic manage
to survive ; that those the product of which is com-
mon or usual are sooner or later extinguished ; and
that the petty retailers represent so many heterogene-
ous elements that it is impossible to predicate any-
thing of them as a class. Of these latter there is

COMBINATION AND COALESCENCE

a moderate number who, by furnishing a needful
social service, make profits; there is a large and
constantly changing number who, through ease of
credit, manage to obtain stock without capital, and
who almost invariably succumb ; there is then a
larger number whose little shops are run by women
and children, the husbands and fathers working at
some trade or office job, and hopefully expending
their weekly earnings in the vain attempt to " build
up a business " ; finally, there is a class, the numbers
and relative importance of which it is impossible to
estimate, whose businesses are owned, directly or
indirectly, by other men or by companies.

Many of these so-called independent concerns
find it possible, and some of them find it fairly prof-
itable, to continue. But the more the large combi-
nations wax in power, the greater is the subordination
of the small concerns. An increasing constraint
characterizes all their efforts. They are more closely
confined to particular activities and to local ter-
ritories, their bounds being dictated and enforced
by the pressure of the combinations. The petty
tradesmen and producers are thus an economically
dependent class. Equally subordinate — and for the
most part subservient — are the owners of small and
moderate holdings in the trusts. The larger holdings
— often the single largest holding — determine what
shall be done. Generally, too, the petty investors
are acquiescent to the will of the Big Men. But

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

occasionally, as in the case of the transfer of the
Metropolitan Street Railway stock, they rebel, and it
becomes necessary to suppress them. At the meet-
ing which determined this action, the protesting
minority were emphatically ordered to " shut up " ;
when they still objected, the presiding officer
declared, "We will vote first; you can discuss the
matter afterward," and the vote was promptly
taken. The head of an American corporation
moreover, is often an absolute ruler, who determines
not only the policy of the enterprise, but the person-
nel of the board of directors. It was a nafve letter
which a well-known New York financier recently
wrote to his " board of directors " on the occasion
of his retirement from the presidency of a great
trust company in favor of a retiring Cabinet minister.
He had been looking about, he explained, for some
time for a competent successor. Now he had found
him and had chosen him. Of course the formal
action of the board would be a welcome detail ; and,
equally a matter of course, it was promptly given.
One of the copper kings recently testified in a legal
action that he "didn't want to call the board of
directors together to obtain authority to buy adjacent
properties." He went ahead, did what he pleased,
and let the board discuss the matter afterward. If
there was ever so much as a question about it, it
was but a profitless interference.

The tendencies thus make, on the one hand, toward
the centralization of vast power in the hands of a few

COMBINATION AND COALESCENCE

men — the morganization of industry, as it were —
and, on the other, toward a vast increase in the num-
ber of those who compose the economically dependent
classes. The latter number is already stupendous.
The laborers and mechanics were long ago brought
under the yoke through their divorcement from the
land and the application of steam to factory operation.
They are economically unf ree except in so far as their
organizations make possible a collective bargaining for
wages and hours. The growth of commerce raised up
an enormous class of clerks and helpers, perhaps the
most dependent class in the community. The growth
and partial diffusion of wealth has in fifty years largely
altered the character of our domestic service and in-
creased the number of servants many fold. The pro-
fessions, too, have felt the change. Behind many of
our important newspapers are private commercial
interests which dictate their general policy, if not, as
is frequently the case, their particular attitude upon
every public question ; while the race for endowments
made by the greater number of the churches and by
all colleges except a few State-supported ones, com-
pels a cautious regard on the part of synod and fac-
ulty for the wishes, the views, and the prejudices of
men of wealth. To this growing deference of preacher,
teacher, and editor is added that of two yet more
important classes, — the makers and the interpreters of
law. The record of legislation and judicial interpre-
tation regarding slavery previous to the Civil War
has been paralleled, if not surpassed, in recent years
by the record of legislatures and courts in matters
relating to the lives and health of manual workers,

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

especially in such matters as employers' liability and
factory inspection. Thus, with a great addition to
the number of subordinate classes, with a tremendous
increase of their individual components, and with a
corresponding growth of power in the hands of a few
score magnates, there is needed little further to make
up a socio-economic status that contains all the essen-
tials of a renascent Feudalism.

CHAPTER III

OUR MAGNATES

WITH the rise of the magnates to power comes
a growing self-consciousness of their authority and
responsibility. " I am a citizen of no mean state,"
is the reflection of each of them as he looks upon
the emergent order of which he is so large a part ;
and thereupon it becomes his mission to live up to
his rank and function. Frequently his benefactions
increase, and always he takes on a more Jovian air,
and views with a more providential outlook the phe-
nomena passing before and about him. He is a part
not only, as Tennyson makes Ulysses say, of all
that he has met, but of the primary causes of things.
He is at once the loaf-giver to the needy, the regu-
lator of temporal affairs, the lord protector of church
and society ; and he holds his title directly from the
Creator. "The rights and interests of the laboring
man," wrote the chief of the anthracite coal mag-
nates last August, " will be protected and cared for,
not by the labor agitators, but by the Christian
men to whom God in His infinite wisdom has given
the control of the property interests of the country."
Gradually there comes the renascent development of
the seigniorial mind.

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

" Business " is the main thought, and the apothe-
osis of " business " the main cult of the new magnates.
"Of gods, friends, learnings, of the-lmcomprehended
civilization which they overrun," indignantly writes
Mr. Henry D. Lloyd, "they ask but one ques-
tion : How much ? What is a good time to sell ?
What is a good time to buy ? . . . Their heathen
eyes see in the law and its consecrated officers
nothing but an intelligence office, and hired men to
help them burglarize the treasures accumulated for
a thousand years at the altars of liberty and justice,
that they may burn their marble for the lime of
commerce."

Though a forcible, it is an extreme view, for it
leaves out of consideration the high professions of
morality, the frequent appeal to Christian ideals, the
tender solicitude for honesty, integrity, law and
order, with which our new magnates gild their wor-
ship of " business." Such of them as have recently
invaded literature give edifying glimpses of the new
seigniorial attitude. The artistic career, writes Mr.
Andrew Carnegie in his entertaining volume, "The
Empire of Business," is most narrowing, and pro-
duces "petty jealousies, unbounded vanities, and
spitefulness " ; the learned professions also produce
narrowness, albeit often a high specialization of
faculty and knowledge. But "business," properly
pursued, broadens and develops the whole man. It is
a view echoed to greater or less extent by the other
literary magnates, particularly Mr. James J. Hill,

OUR MAGNATES

Mr. Russell Sage, Mr. S. C. T. Dodd, Mr. John D.
Rockefeller, Jr., the Hon. Marcus A. Hanna, and
Mr. Charles R. Flint.

A flattering unction that all lay to their souls is
the dictum that success in business is a matter of
honesty, intelligence, and energy. " There is no line
of business," writes Mr. Carnegie, "in which success
is not attainable. It is a simple matter of honest
work, ability, and concentration." "To rail against
the accumulation of wealth," writes Mr. Sage, in the
Independent, "is to rail against the decrees of justice.
Intelligence, industry, honesty, and thrift produce
wealth. ... So long as some men have more sense '
and molfe self-control than others, just so long will
such men be wealthy, while others will be poor."
Mr. Dodd, in his address to the students of Syracuse
University, adds this contribution : " Why is there
still so much poverty ? One reason is because
nature or the devil has made some men weak and
imbecile and others lazy and worthless, and neither
man nor God can do much for one who will do nothing
for himself." Mr. Rockefeller appeals both to evolu-'
tion and to divine sanction. " The growth of a large
business," he is reported as declaring in one of his
Sunday-school addresses, "is merely a survival of
the fittest. . . . The American Beauty rose can be
produced in the splendor and fragrance which bring
cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing the early
buds which grow up around it. This is not an evil
tendency in business. It is merely the working out
of a law of nature and a law of God."

It matters not that many millions of men, tirelessly
29

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

energetic and reasonably intelligent, can be shown to
have toiled all their lives without winning even a
competence. Nor does it matter that some of these,
in addition to being energetic and intelligent, have
been reasonably honest. To be honest, as this world
goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand ;
and the fact that most of the greater affairs of the
business world sooner or later find their way into the
courts, for the testing of the amount and quality of
honesty involved therein, might well cause some
hesitation in positing this virtue as a necessary quali-
fication for "business." But the notion is not to be
argued with ; it is a characteristic outcropping of the
seigniorial mind.

The praise of labor is the antiphony to the praise
of " business," and the lyres of all the magnates are
strung tensely when chanting tributes to toil.

"Round swings the hammer of industry, quickly the sharp chisel

rings,

And the heart of the toiler has throbbings that stir not the
bosom of kings,"

warbles Mr. Flint in his article on " Combinations
and Critics," in "The Trust: Its Book." Toil is the
foundation of wealth, they all aver, though the rhap-
sodical nature of the tributes prevents a clear and
definite utterance on the question, Of whose wealth
is it the foundation ? But there is no lack of definite-
ness regarding their attitude toward those defensive
societies, the trade-unions, which the toilers organize
to secure a larger part of their product to themselves.
Mr. Flint, indeed, somewhat cautiously acknowl-

OUR MAGNATES

edges an element for good in the unions, but the
general attitude of the seigniorial mind is distinctly
inimical. The recent interesting correspondence be-
tween the coal magnates and President Mitchell is an
instance in point ; so are the frequent utterances on
the subject by the president of the steel trust, and
any number of examples could be given of a like
character. A crowning example of a distinctly feudal
attitude is furnished by a letter from a prominent
New York merchant, printed in the issue of June
9, 1902, of a newspaper which makes a considerable
to-do about the printing of such of the news as it
sees fit to print. The prominent merchant objects
very strongly to labor leaders and walking delegates,
describing them in almost as temperate and judicial
language as that of United States District Judge
Jackson. The flower of his contribution is his
seigniorial remedy for strikes : —

" The only remedy, in my opinion, for strikes is to
get as many men as there are officers in the different
[labor] associations admitted to their meetings, where
they would have a chance to talk to the men in a
businesslike way, explaining matters to them in such a
manner as to bring the effects of a strike very plainly
before them."

Moral suasion, however, is not the only method
suggested for bringing sense to the workers. A
hint of more forcible means is occasionally broached.
A New York newspaper, which makes a boast of
printing unimpeachable interviews, reports, in its
issue of July 3ist last, a significant warning from the
president of the New York, Ontario and Western Rail-

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

road. This is one of the coal-carrying railroads, and
the reference is to the anthracite strike. " After the
men return to work," he said, " I believe that legal
steps will be taken in the United States courts
against those who are responsible for the loss occa-
sioned by the strike." The Hon. Abram S. Hewitt
echoed this interesting suggestion in an interview of
August 25th. " The consequences of such strikes,"
he says, " are so disastrous, not merely to the parties
directly concerned, but to the whole community, that
every effort should be made as soon as the existing
strike has been called off and the excitement is
abated to prevent by appropriate legislation the re-
currence of such calamitous conflicts where everybody
is injured and no one is benefited." Criminal codes,
it may be said generally, depend largely on the eco-
nomic conditions of the time and place where they
obtain : horse-stealing, in a community girdled by
trolley lines, degenerates to petty larceny, while in
Wyoming or Arabia it is a capital offence. In the
new order, which requires peace and stability for its
proper operation, it may readily enough come about
that voluntary leaving of work will be severely
penalized.

The new seigniorial attitude toward government
and public policy is also significant. Often it is
paternalistic in a princely degree. The offer of a
retired magnate to settle a great national problem by
paying to the Government the $20,000,000 demanded

OUR MAGNATES

of Spain, on condition that the Filipinos be "set
free," had in it something of the " grand style "
which Matthew Arnold so extols. The rallying to
the defence of the Government's gold reserve by cer-
tain financiers, several years ago, need not be in-
stanced, since in certain quarters it is gravely
suspected that their interest was not entirely platonic.
^ut certainly the recent offer of a wealthy magnate
to pay one-third of the cost of repairing all the roads
in the vicinity of Lakewood, N.J., showed the true
seigniorial spirit. Not different in kind, though some-
what in degree, was the recent action of a Pittsburg
magnate, on the rude refusal of the Department of
Public Works to pave his street otherwise than with
blocks at a cost of 65 cents the square yard, in
doing the thing himself at a cost of $4.50 the square
yard.

Usually, however, the seigniorial attitude toward
government is somewhat more in the direction of
intervention. The seasonal migration to Washington
of representatives of all the great commercial interests
has become a salient datum in political zoology.
Curiosity regarding a proposed parcels post or
government telegraph alone draws hundreds of these
birds of passage there. The rights of private initi-
ative must be maintained at any cost. In the great
West one of the prime necessities for a living is the
access to water for irrigation purposes. One may
have land ; but, if he has not water to irrigate it, the
soil is worthless. The prevailing sentiment is for
public ownership of waterways, since, in many places,
monopoly controls the supply. At the electrical con-

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

vention held at San Francisco recently, the presiding
officer, who is also the president of a public-service
corporation, after denouncing organized labor and
municipal ownership, added : " For us a far more
dangerous agitation is that which now proposes State
appropriation of all water rights. The scheme advo-
cated makes the appropriation little less than sheer
confiscation." Luckily the seventy-one mile enve-
lope of air that encases the globe yet eludes monopo-
lization.

" Hands off ! " is the warning to government; and
though occasionally government puts hands on, they
are not very closely or tenaciously applied. The
report of the Interstate Commerce Commission (1901),
for instance, employs a rather pessimistic tone regard-
ing government control of traffic rates. " We simply
call attention to the fact," it recites, " that the deci-
sion of the United States Supreme Court in the
Trans-Missouri case and the Joint Traffic Association
case has produced no practical effect upon the rail-
way operations of the country. Such associations, in
fact, exist now, as they did before those decisions, and
with the same general effect." " Should the Supreme
Court declare the Northern railways consolidation
unconstitutional," one of the interested magnates is
reported as saying, " we shall simply do the thing in
another way. It is something that must be done."
Cynically frank is Mr. Dodd, in his Syracuse address,
regarding the Anti-trust law. "A modern Federal
law also exists," he says, "which, literally inter-
preted, forbids business of any magnitude ; but
Federal judges have thus far found it easier to dis-

OUR MAGNATES

miss proceedings under it than to guess at its real
meaning." The president of the Southern Pacific
Railroad takes the bull by the horns, and denounces
all interference. In an interview given to the press
June 2d of the present year, he declares that "the
legislation of the future must be pro-railroad in-
stead of anti-railroad. ... I believe commissions are
things of the past. I do not think transportation
companies should have to submit to dictation or
control by bodies who do not know anything about
transportation."

The Contract-labor law is another measure, to the
seigniorial mind, unnecessary and obstructive, and its
provisions, therefore, are but lightly observed. Known
evasions have been numerous ; and, were the full
truth revealed, it would probably be found that this
law has met with about the same degree of observ-
ance as have the Interstate Commerce and Anti-trust
laws. As recently as July i6th, comes word from
Berlin to the Chicago Daily Neivs that " agents of
American railroads are canvassing the Polish and
Slavic districts of Europe for laborers, to whom they
offer $2.50 a day and board, regardless of the Federal
Contract-labor law."

Not only do the magnates demand immunity from
government interference in their business affairs, but
they demand also a more real, if not a more obvious,
share in the operations of government. The inva-
sion, during the last ten years, of the National Sen-
ate by a number of the magnates or their legates is
a part of the process ; but something more to the
point is their insistence on the right to be consulted

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

in grave affairs by the President and Cabinet. A
New York daily newspaper, edited by the distin-
guished scholar who delivers lectures on journalism
before Yale University, published last February an
account of a remarkable gathering at Washington.
It verges closely upon contumacy to mention the
names of the attending magnates, such is their
eminence, and they will therefore not be given.
Their purpose was to protest to the President against
a repetition of his action in the Northern Securities
case. "The financiers declare,5' says this news-
paper, "that they should have been notified of the
intended Federal action last week, so that they could
be prepared to support the stock market, and that
their unpreparedness came very near bringing on a
panic. Had not the big interests of the street been
in possession of the bulk of securities, instead of
speculators and small holders, there would have been
a panic, the capitalists assert." It is, when con-
sidered, a modest claim — the powers of an extra-
constitutional cabinet, intrusted with the conservation
of the public peace. There is no proof that the
claim has been conceded, though some light is thrown
on the problem by the newspaper's further declara-
tion that the chief magnate, a,fter an interview with
the President, "felt very much better."

Something of the same nature was revealed in the
negotiations last March between the Mayor of New
York City and the directors of the New York Central
Railroad Company. The company requested the
Mayor to secure the withdrawal of the Wainwright
bill in the State Assembly, compelling the railroad

OUR MAGNATES

to abandon steam in the Park Avenue tunnel by a
fixed date, and promised to do the required thing in
its own time and at its own pleasure. The letter of
the Mayor to Assemblyman Bedell records the re-
sult : " This letter [of the directors] seems to me to
lay a good foundation for the waiving a fixed date to
be named in the bill ; " and the date was accordingly
"waived."

Of the seigniorial attitude toward the police law,
the abundant crop of automobile cases alone furnishes
signal testimony. Dickens made a highly dramatic,
though perhaps rather unhistorical, use in his " A
Tale of Two Cities " of the riding down of a child
by a marquis, and the long train of tragic conse-
quences that ensued. We do the thing differently
in our day : we acquit, or at most fine the marquis,
and the matter rests ; we are too deferential to carry
it further. Fast driving in the new " machines " has
become one of the tests of courage, manliness, and
skill, — what jousting in full armor was in the fif-
teenth century, or duelling with pistols in the early
part of the nineteenth, — and if the police law inter-
feres, the exploit is the more hazardous and therefore
the more emulatory. The scion of a great house
who recently, on being arrested for fast driving and
then bailed, subsequently sent his valet to the police
court to pay the fine, showed the true seigniorial
spirit. Possibly, though, had his identity been known
before arrest, he would have escaped the irritating
interference of the law; for it happened, about the
same time, on the arrest for the same offence of a
millionnaire attorney, companioned by a Supreme

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

Court judge, that a too vigilant policeman came to
learn his severest lesson — that to know whom not
to trouble is the better part of valor.

At Newport, the summer home of the seigniorial
class, the automobile enforces a right of way. This
is not sufficient, however, for the automobilists, who
would prefer a sole and exclusive way. In the sum-
mer of 1901 the resident magnates fixed upon a cer-
tain Friday afternoon for their motor races, and
demanded exclusive control of Ocean, Harrison, and
Carroll avenues between the hours of two and four
o'clock. In the "grand style" characterizing the
dealings of this class with the public, the magnates
offered to pay all the fines if the races led to any
prosecutions. This meant, of course, that the ordi-.
nance prohibiting a speed greater than ten miles an
hour was to be overlooked, since the races would
surely have developed speed up to forty, fifty, and
sixty miles an hour. The deferential City Council
acquiesced. For once, however, the ever serviceable
injunction was found to be available against other
persons than striking workmen. A few property
owners sought refuge in the Supreme Court, a tem-
porary injunction was issued by Judge Wilbur, and,
though the magnates hired lawyers to fight it, the
order was made permanent. It is but natural that
keen resentment should follow this high-handed
action of the courts. It is announced that some of
the magnates are tiring of Newport, and one of the
wealthiest of them has recently threatened to for-
sake the place entirely.

Laws are like cobwebs, said Anacharsis the Scyth-

OUR MAGNATES

ian, where the small flies are caught and the great \
break through. Yet that even the great can some-
times bow to the reign of law, and particularly that
the seigniorial mind can on occasion be conciliatory,
is well illustrated by the recent action of the gov-
ernors of the Automobile Club, in suspending two
members and disciplining a third, for fast driving.
The troublesome restrictions of the law on this point
are probably destined, however, to be soon abolished.
Already the Board of Freeholders of Essex County,
N.J., a region much frequented by automobilists,
has advanced the speed limit in the country districts
to twenty miles per hour. Further changes are ex-
pected, and it will probably be but a short time
before a man with a " machine " will enjoy the God-
given right of " doing what he will with his own."

Ill

Most of the magnates show a frugal and a dis-
criminating mind in their benefactions; but it is a
prodigal mind indeed which governs the expenditures
that make for social ostentation. It is probable that
no aristocracy — not even that of profligate Rome
under the later Caesars — ever spent such enormous
sums in display. Our aristocracy, avoiding the Eng-
lish standards relating to persons engaged in trade,
welcomes the industrial magnate, and his vast wealth
and love of ostentation have set the pace for lavish
expenditure. Trade is the dominant phase of Ameri-
can life, — the divine process by which, according
to current opinion, "the whole creation moves," -
and, as it has achieved the conquest of most of our

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

social institutions and of our political powers, that
it should also dominate "society" is but a natural
sequence. Flaunting and garish consumption be-
comes the basic canon in fashionable affairs. As
Mr. Thorstein Veblen, in his keen satire, " The
Theory of the Leisure Class," puts it: —

" Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is
a means of reputability. . . . As wealth accumu-
lates on his [the magnate's] hands, his own unaided
effort will not avail sufficiently to put his opulence
in evidence by this method. The aid of friends and
competitors is therefore brought in by resorting to
the giving of valuable presents and expensive feasts
and entertainments. Presents and feasts had prob-
ably another origin than that of na'fve ostentation,
but they acquired their utility for the purpose very
early, and they have retained that character to the
present."

The conspicuous consumption of other days was,
however, as compared with that of the present, but a
flickering candle flame to a great cluster of electric
lights. Against the few classic examples, such as
those of Cleopatra and Lucullus, our present aristoc-
racy can show hundreds ; and the daily spectacle of
wasteful display might serve to make the earlier
Sybarites stare and gasp. Present-day fashionable
events come to be distinguished and remembered not
so much on the score of their particular features as
of their cost. A certain event is known as Mr. A's
$5,000 breakfast, another as the Smith-Jones's $15,000
dinner, and another as Mrs. C's $30,000 entertain-
ment and ball.

OUR MAGNATES

Conspicuous eating becomes also a feature of
seigniorial life. The " society " and the " yellow "
journals are crowded with accounts of dinners and
luncheons, following one after another with an almost
incredible frequency. And not only is the frequency
remarkable, but the range and quantity of the viands
furnished almost challenge belief. So far, it is
believed, the journals which usually deal in that
sort of news have neglected to give an authoritative
menu for a typical day in the life of a seigniorial
family. We have dinner menus, luncheon menus,
and so on, but nothing in the way of showing what
is consumed by the individual or family during a term
of twenty-four hours. Some light on the subject,
however, is furnished by Mr. George W. E. Russell,
the talented author of " Collections and Recollec-
tions," in his recent volume, "An Onlooker's Note-
book." Objection may be made to the effect that
Mr. Russell is an Englishman, and that he is describ-
ing an English royal couple. But the demurrer is
irrelevant, since it is well known that our seigniorial
class founds its practices and its canons (excepting
only the canon regarding persons engaged in trade)
upon English precedents, and that English precedents
are made by the Royal Family. And not only does
our home nobility imitate English models, but it piles
Pelion upon Ossa, and seeks constantly to outshine and
overdo the actions of its transatlantic cousins. Mrs.
George Cornwallis-West (formerly Lady Randolph
Churchill) recently stated that the vast sums spent
by Americans in England have lifted the standard
of living to a scale of magnificence almost unknown

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

before. So for whatever is shown to be English
custom, something must be added for American
improvement and extension when assuming its trans-
plantation to these shores. Mr. Russell writes : —

" A royal couple arranged to pay a two nights'
visit to a country house of which the owners were
friends of mine. For reasons of expediency, we will
call the visitors the duke and duchess, though that
was not their precise rank. When a thousand prep-
arations too elaborate to be described here had been
made for the due entertainment of them and their
suite and their servants, the private secretary wrote
to the lady of the house, enclosing a written memo-
randum of his royal master's and mistress's require-
ments in the way of meals. I reproduce the substance
of the memorandum — and in these matters my mem-
ory never plays tricks. The day began with cups of
tea brought to the royal bedroom. While the duke
was dressing, an egg beaten up in sherry was served
to him, not once, but twice. The duke and duchess
breakfasted together in their private sitting room,
where the usual English breakfast was served to
them. They had their luncheon with their hosts
and the house party, and ate and drank like other
people. Particular instructions were given that at 5
o'clock tea there must be something substantial in
the way of eggs, sandwiches, or potted meat, and
this meal the royal couple consumed with special
gusto. Dinner was at 8.30, on the limited and abbre-
viated scale which the Prince of Wales introduced —
two soups, two kinds of fish, two entrees, a joint, two
sorts of game, a hot and cold sweet, and a savory,

OUR MAGNATES

with the usual accessories in the way of oysters,
cheese, ice, and dessert. This is pretty well for an
abbreviated dinner. But let no one suppose that the
royal couple went hungry to bed. When they retired,
supper was served to them in their private sitting
room, and a cold chicken and a bottle of claret were
left in their bedroom, as a provision against emer-
gencies."

All the men of great wealth are not men of leisure.
Some of them work as hard as do common laborers.
For such as these the tremendous gastronomy re-
counted by Mr. Russell would be impossible as a
daily exercise. When, therefore, it is assumed of any
of our seigniorial class, it must be limited to mag-
nates on vacation, to their leisurely sons, nephews,
hangers-on, and women, and to those who have retired
from active pursuits. But there are other canons of
social reputability besides personal leisure and per-
sonal wasteful consumption. These are, to quote
again from Mr. Veblen, vicarious leisure and vicarious
consumption — the leisure and lavishness of wives,
sons, and daughters. It is these who, in large part, at
New York, Lenox, and Newport, support the social
reputation of their seigniorial husbands and fathers.
The "dog parties," wherein the host "puts on a dog
collar and barks for the delectation of his guests," the
" vegetable parties," wherein host and guests, perhaps
from some latent sense of inner likeness, make them-
selves up to represent cabbage heads and other garden
products, the " monkey parties," the various " cir-
cuses " and like events, are given and participated in
more generally by the vicarious upholders of the

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

magnate's social reputation than by the seignior him-
self.

But in ways more immediate — by means which
do not conflict with his daily vocation — the working
magnate gives signal example of that virtue of capi-
talistic " abstinence " which is the foundation of ortho-
dox political economy. The splendors of his town
house, his country estate, and his steam yacht, to say
nothing of his club, are repeatedly described to us in
the columns of popular periodicals. His paintings,
decorations, and bric-a-brac, his orchids and roses, his
blooded animals and his $10,000 Panhard, are depicted
in terms which make one wonder how paltry and mean
must have been the possessions of Midas and how
bare the " wealth of Ormus and of Ind." And when,
for a time, he lays down the reins of power, and betakes
himself to Saratoga or Newport or Monte Carlo, yet
more wonderful accounts are given of his lavish expen-
diture. The betting at the Saratoga race-tracks last
August is reported to have averaged $2,000,000 a day.
" The money does not come," said that eminent maker
of books, Mr. Joe Ullman, " from any great plunger
or group of plungers, but from the great assemblage of
rich men who are willing to bet from $100 to $1,000
on their choices in a race." On the transatlantic
steamers, in London and in Paris, the same prodigal-
ity is seen. A king's ransom — or what is more to
the point, the ransom of a hundred families from a
year's suffering — is lost or won in an hour's play or
lightly expended for some momentary satisfaction.

OUR MAGNATES

There remain for brief mention the benefactions of
the magnates. Most of these come under the head of
"conspicuous giving." Gifts for educational, religious,
and other public purposes last year reached the total
of $107,360,000. In separate amounts they ran all
the way from the $5,000 gift of a soap or lumber
magnate to the $13,000,000 that had their origin in
steel. It is an interesting list for study in that it
reveals more significantly than some of the instances
given the standards and temper of the seigniorial
mind. An anonymous writer, evidently of Jacobinical
tendencies, some time ago suggested in the columns
of a well-known periodical a list of measures for the
support of which rich men might honorably and wisely
devote a part of their fortunes : —

" He [the rich man] could begin by requiring the
assessors to hand him a true bill of his own obliga-
tions to the public. He could continue the good work
by persuading the collector to accept a check for the
whole amount. This would make but a small draft
upon his total accumulations. A further considerable
sum he could wisely devote to paying the salaries of
honorable lobbyists, who should labor with legislative
bodies to secure the enactment of just laws, which
would relieve hard-working farmers, struggling shop-
keepers, mechanics trying to pay for mortgaged
houses, and widows who have received a few thousand
dollars of life insurance money, from their present
obligation to support the courts, the militia, and other
organs of government that protect the rich man's

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

property and enable him to collect his bills receivable.
Finally, if these two expenditures did not sufficiently
diminish his surplus, he could purchase newspapers
and pay editors to educate the public in sound principles
of social justice, as applied to taxation and to various
other matters."

Perhaps it is not singular that no part of the gifts
of the great magnates is ever devoted to any of these
purposes. Doubtless they see no flaw, or at least no
remediable defect, in the present industrial regime. It
is the regime under which they have risen to fortune
and power, and it is therefore justified by its fruits.
Their benefactions are thus always directed to a
more or less obvious easement of the conditions of
those on whom the social fabric most heavily rests.
Hospitals, asylums, and libraries are the objects,
though recently a bathing, beach for poor children
has .been added to the list. The propriety of secur-
ing learned justification of the existing regime causes
also a considerable giving to schools, colleges, and
churches. But nowhere can there be found a seign-
iorial gift which, directly or indirectly, makes for
modification of the prevailing economic system.

CHAPTER IV
OUR FARMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

THE increasing dependence of middleman and
petty manufacturer has already been considered.
The same pressure which bears upon these bears also
upon farmer and wage-earner. The editorials and
the oratory of election years, it is true, supply us with
recurring paeans over the independence, the self-
reliance and the prosperity of these classes, and such
graphic tropes as "the full dinner pail" and "the
overflowing barn," become the party shibboleths of
political campaigns. Plain facts, however, accord but
ill with this exultant strain.

In most ages the working farmer has been the
dupe and prey of the rest of mankind. Now by
force and now by cajolery, as social customs and po-
litical institutions change, he has been made to pro-
duce the food by which the race lives, and the share
of his product which he has been permitted to keep
for himself has always been pitifully small. Whether
Roman slave, Prankish serf, or English villein;
whether the so-called " independent " farmer of a
free democracy or the ryot of a Hindu prince, the

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

general rule holds good. Occasionally, by one means
or another, he gains some transitory betterment of
condition; the Plague of 1349 and the Peasants'
Rebellion of 1381 won for his class advantages which
were retained during three generations. But in the.
long run he is the race's martyr. Under a military
autocracy his exploitation was inevitable. There is
no reason for it now, for the lives and well-being
of the rest of mankind are in his hands : were the
working farmers organized as the manufacturers and
the skilled artisans are organized, and could they lay
by for themselves a year's necessities, they could
starve the race into submission to their demands.
But the thing is not to be ; nor, indeed, is any marked
change to their advantage likely to happen, for, so far
as current tendencies £oint, the future is to repeat
the past

In our day and in our land both force and cajolery
conspire to keep the peasant farmer securely in hi,s
traces. He cannot break through the cordon which
the trusts and the railroads put about him ; and even
if he could he would not, since the influences showered
upon him are specifically directed to the end of keep-
ing him passive and contented. Our statisticians
assure him of his prosperity ; our politicians and our
moulders of opinion warn him of the pernicious in-
fluence of unions like the Farmers' Alliance, and
further preach to him the comforting doctrine that
by " raising more corn and less politics " he will ulti-
mately work out a blissful salvation. Sometimes he
must burn his corn for fuel ; often he cannot sell his
grain for the cost of production, even though many

OUR FARMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

thousands of persons in the great cities may be hun-
gering for it ; frequently he cannot afford to send his
children to school, and in a steadily increasing num-
ber of cases he is forced to abandon his farm and
become a tenant or a wanderer. He is puzzled, no
doubt, by these things ; but they are all carefully and
neatly explained to him from the writings and preach-
ments of profound scholars, as "natural" and "in-
evitable " phenomena. His ethical sense may be
somewhat disturbed by the explanations, but he
learns that it is useless to protest, and he thereupon
acquiesces.

A sort of symposium on the joys of the farmer is
to be found in the September number of the Ameri-
can Review of Reviews. Mr. Clarence H. Matson
writes of improved conditions due to rural free deliv-
ery of mails and a few other reforms ; Mr. William
R. Draper dilates upon the enormous revenues which
have flowed to the farmers during the current year, and
Professor Henry C. Adams contributes a symphony
on the diffusion of agricultural prosperity. A fourth
article, by 'Mr. Cy Warman, furnishes a rather dis-
cordant note to the general harmony, since it shows
a large and increasing immigration of our prosperous
farmers into Canada. Some 20,000 crossed the bor-
der last year, according to Mr. Warman, while during
the first four months of 1902, 11,480 followed, and
indications pointed to a total of 40,000 emigrants for
the present year. The official figures of the Cana-
dian Government, since published, partly confirm
these estimates. The number of immigrants from
the United States for the year ended June 30, 1902,
E 49

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

was 22,000. The number for the current year will
probably be larger, for according to a Montreal press
despatch of September 1 7th : " The immigration from
the American to the Canadian Northwest has assumed
mucjh greater proportions this year than ever before,
and land sales to Americans are daily reported. The
latest large sale is by the Saskatchewan Valley Land
Company, which has sold 100,000 acres in Saskatche-
wan to an American syndicate for $500,000."

"The American farmer," sententiously and truth-
fully remarks Professor Adams, " does not hoard his
cash." He gives no reason for the fact, and the
determination must be left to the reader. " The
American farmer," he further remarks, " is, as a rule,
his own landlord." This statement reveals a very
serious misapprehension of the facts. Something
more than every third farm in the United States,
according to the recent census, is operated by a ten-
ant. Moreover, the proportion of tenants is con-
stantly rising. For the whole country, tenants
operated 25.5 per cent of all farms in 1880, 28.4 per
cent in 1890, and 35.3 per cent in 1900. Further,
the tendency is not confined to particular sections,
but is common to the whole country. During the
last decade the number of tenant-operated farms in-
creased relatively to the whole number of farms in
every State and Territory except Maine, Vermont, and
New Hampshire. In Maine tenantry decreased
seven-tenths of i per cent, in New Hampshire five-
tenths of i per cent, and in Vermont one-tenth of
i per cent. For the twenty-year period, as was
pointed out in Chapter II, the only exceptions to the

OUR FARMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

general increase are Arizona, Florida, and New
Hampshire.

The recent census, out of its abundant optimism,
does not segregate these facts, and makes no general
comment other than that tenantry has increased and
that salaried management is believed to be " constantly
increasing." The bulletin on " Agriculture : The
United States " does not even furnish a general clas-
sified summary of the data on tenantry. But the
separate reports give the statistics, and out of them
the following table is compiled : —

INCREASE OF FARM TENANTRY

STATES AND TERRITORIES

PER CENT OF FARMS OPERATED
BY TENANTS

I. Alabama

1880
468

l8gO
486

IQOO

57 7

2 Arizona ...

T -3 2

jri

(a. 8.4 *

3. Arkansas

ij.-*

•JO Q

7-9

72 I

| £. 11.9 2

4.5 x

4 California

jV-y
IQ 8

34.1
17 8

2/3 T

<5 Colorado . .

17.0

^.1
22 6

6. Connecticut

j. j.«_>
jO 2

"•3

TIC

12 Q

7 Delaware ... . .

•••5

i^.y

8. District of Columbia . .

38.2
•JQ.Q

4u.y

36.7

27.6

5°o
43-i
26 c

10. Georgia

44..Q

C7.C

CQ Q

II Idaho

4.6

oy-y

8 7

12 Illinois .

21 4.

24. O

"•/

2Q ~J

1 3 Indiana

21 7

2C A

•^y-o

28 6

14 Iowa

*3-l
27.8

*3«^

28 I

74. Q

15 Kansas

16 1

282

•7-J 2

OJ'^

1 Including Indian farms.

8 Excluding Indian farms.

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

STATES AND TERRITORIES

PER CENT

OF FARMS c
BY TENANTS

JPERATED

1 6 Kentucky

1880

26 4

1890

2d. Q

1900
728

•2T 2

3*.o

rfi r,

1 8 Maine

J3-*

A •}

44-4

4. 7

3I.O

•21 O

4'/

•3T 6

20. Massachusetts ....

8.2
IO.O

9-3

14 O

OJ'W

9.6

ICQ

22 Minnesota

Q 2

12 Q

*yy

17"?

23. Mississippi
24 Missouri ....

43-8
27 ?

52.8
268

^/•J
62.4
•JQ C

2? Montana

O^'O
Q 2

26 Nebraska . . .

18 o

24. 7

"?6 Q

27 Nevada

0.7

7 ^

114

28. New Hampshire . . .
20 New Jersey

8.1
246

8.0

27 2

7-5
•?6 Q

30. New Mexico ....
31 New York

8.1
16.5

4-5

2O 2

9-4

2"? Q

32. North Carolina . . .
33. North Dakota ....
34 Ohio *

33-5
3-9 l

10 ^

34-i
6.9

22 Q

41.4

8.5

27 C

7C Oklahoma. * • •

*y-j

O 7

*7*3

21 O

IA I

**••/

I 2 C

178

37. Pennsylvania ....
38. Rhode Island ....
39. South Carolina ....
40. South Dakota ....
41. Tennessee
42 Texas . . . .

21.2
19.9

5°-3
3-9 *

34-5
376

1^.5

23-3

18.7

55-3
13.2
30.8

41 O

l/.O

26.O
20.1

61.0

21.8

40.5

40 7

AJ Utah .

O/***

C.2

8.8

44 Vermont .

1 3 A

14 6

14 t;

20 C

26 o

•^•3

•20. 7

46 \Vashington .

8 c

14 A.

47. West Virginia ....

I9.I
O.I

°o

17.8

1 1. 4

21.8
1-2. e

40 Wyoming ...

4 2

7 6

1 Dakota Territory.
52

OUR FARMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

There were 2,026,286 tenants in 1900, an increase
in twenty years of 97.7 per cent. There were 3,713,-
371 owners, part owners, "owners and tenants," and
managers, an increase in twenty years of 24.4 per
cent. During the twenty-year period owners in
Washington increased less than fivefold, tenants ten-
fold. Utah shows a doubling of the number of
owners, and a quadrupling of the number of tenants.
South Dakota, compared with Dakota Territory in
1880, reveals an increase of owners of two and one-
half times; of tenants, eighteen times. There are
28,669 fewer owners in New York State than in
1880, and 14,331 more tenants. Ownership has de-
clined and tenantry advanced, both absolutely and
relatively, in New Jersey. The great farming State
of Illinois has 15,044 fewer owners and 23,454 more
tenants than in 1880, and even the young Territory
of Oklahoma, wherein one might expect to find
evidences of increased ownership, reveals, for the
ten-year period, a two-hundred-fold increase of ten-
antry and only a sixfold increase of ownership.

From the foregoing table it will be seen that
while during the previous decade relative tenantry
declined slightly in several States, the tide has since
turned. Though the Southern States generally show
the greatest proportion of tenants, the greatest per-
centage of increase is revealed in the Border,
Northern, and Western States. Tenants operate
62.4 per cent of all the farms of Mississippi, 61 per
cent of those of South Carolina. But while the
former is a growth since 1880 from 43.8 per cent,
and the latter from 50.3 per cent, Oklahoma (the

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

comparison in this single instance is with 1890) in-
creased the percentage of its tenant-operated farms
from seven-tenths of i per cent to 21 per cent.
Washington doubled its percentage, Montana and
Utah very nearly so. Nearly one-third of the farms
of New Jersey are tenant farms, and more than one-
third of those of Kansas and Nebraska. Each of
these three States doubled its relative percentage of
tenant farmers for the twenty-year period. Even in
New York the proportion has grown since 1880 from
16.5 to 23.9 per cent. As marked as is the showing,
the whole situation is not revealed by the figures, for
the term " owners " in the reports includes " farms
operated by individuals who own a part of the land
and rent the remainder from others," and "farms
operated under the joint direction and by the united
labor of two or more individuals, one owning the
farm or a part of it, and the other or others owning
no part but receiving for supervision or labor a share
of the products."

This remarkable growth of tenantry would be con-
sidered, in any other than our own complacent days,
as an alarming, even an appalling fact. So blithely
and for so long a time have the changes been rung
upon the alleged fact of independent ownership that
everybody, including professors of political economy,
assumes its truth. But even when its baselessness is
clearly shown we shall hear little of an alarmist
nature from our publicists and teachers. Rather it
may be expected that their pronouncements will
change with the changing times, and that we shall
soon hear reiterated gratulations on the development

OUR FARMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

of tenantry. Is not the humble tenant's security
greater, are not his troubles less ? Need he worry
over taxes, foreclosures, and the like? Not at all;
and besides — not the least of considerations to our
paternalistic moulders of opinion — there is much
reason for satisfaction in the fact that, having no
land to mortgage, he will not be led into wildly
prodigal habits of life by a too ready recourse to the
money-lender.

Considering the growth of tenantry, the increasing
migration to Canada, the flocking of rural residents
into the cities, and the frequent outright abandon-
ment of farms in several sections of the country, the
unsophisticated onlooker may naturally wonder at
the tales of agricultural prosperity which from time
to time appear in public print. Mr. Draper, in the
article previously mentioned, speculates somewhat
ingeniously over the financial returns due the farmer
for his crop for the present year. The figures are
certainly imposing when looked at as totals. The
wheat crop will sum up 700,500,000 bushels, and
each bushel will sell for 60 cents, making the net
value $580,100,000 — a rather curious result, by the
way, not obtainable by any of the ordinary processes
of mathematics. The corn crop is to bring $776,-
985,300, and the remaining crops follow, with large
values attached.

But reduced to individual earnings, values of farm
products (according to the census, products other
than those fed to live stock) reveal a rather meagre
diffusion of prosperity. Of the 5,739,657 farms in
the United States, 1,319,856 are listed in the census

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

as hay and grain farms, for the reason that hay and
grain comprise 40 per cent of their total products.
The average size of these hay and grain farms is
159.3 acres, and the average value of this product
per acre in 1899 was $4.77. The number of miscel-
laneous farms is 1,059,416, with an average acreage
of 106.8, and a product value of $4.12. Live-stock
farms number 1,564,714, with an average acreage of
226.9 and a product value of $3.47. Thus the average
productive yield of 70 per cent of all the farms and
80 per cent of all the farm land in the nation ranges
from $3.47 to $4.77 per acre. Flowers and plants,
it may be noted for comparison, yield the comfortable
return of $431.83 per acre; but their effect on the
general census is but slight, since the average product
value of all farms is but $4.47 per acre. But let no
one suppose that all this munificent sum goes to the
farmer. He pays 43 cents per acre for labor and
nearly 7 cents per acre for fertilizers. The net income
is thus $3.97 per acre.

The size of farms is increasing, though actual agri-
culture is probably confined to smaller holdings. The
average was 136.5 acres in 1890; it is now 146.6 acres.
The tendency varies in different parts of the country.
Nebraska increases her average from 190.1 acres in
1890 to 246.1 acres in 1900. Kansas shows almost
identical figures, while the New England States show
little change, and the Southern States generally show
reduced averages. The relation of size of farm to
kind of tenure is, however, the main point, and here
one discovers matter for reflection. Farms operated
by cash tenants have 102.7 acres apiece, by owners

OUR FARMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

134.1, by managers 1514.3. The growth of manorial
estates is dimly revealed in these figures, and there
is no need to doubt the census bulletin's reserved
admission that farms operated by managers are be-
lieved to be constantly increasing.

The subject of the changing status of the farmer
— a change which involves his ultimate reduction to
a sixteenth-century level — is too large to receive
adequate treatment in these pages. By all con-
siderations it deserves the space of a generous
volume. For present purposes there remains to
be said that even where apparent ownership is re-
tained by the working farmer, effective ownership is
determined in other quarters. He is the joint tenant
of the farm implement trusts, of the new harvester
trust, of the produce trusts which fix the value of his
products, of the railroad trusts which fix the rate of
transportation to the market, and in the arid West
of the water trusts. Thus, even though he boasts
the possession of a title-deed to his land, the holding
is in reality of the nature of a fief, held at the mercy
of several superiors ; and the tithes which he pays,
though less formally levied and exacted than were the
redevances of the mediaeval peasant, are as many and
will-nigh as burdensome. And he must pay or go; for
there is no remission from his superiors, as in olden
days, on account of drouth, floods, locusts, or murrain.

With the decline of the petty trades, the growth
of the combinations, and the concentration in fewer

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

hands of the machinery of production, the subordina-
tion of the wage-earner becomes more certain and
more fixed. If ever he were a free agent, — in the
sense and to the degree that any one in human society
can be free, — the day is passed. Through agencies
constantly augmenting and extending, he is " cabin'd,
cribb'd, confin'd, bound in," to a narrowing circle of
possible efforts. Divorced from the land and from
the tools of production, he can live only by accepting
such wages and conditions as are offered him; and
the terms are always such that the kernel of his
product goes to some other man, while the husks and
the tares remain his own portion. The patronizing
orators of Labor Day and of campaign times some-
times delight to symbolize him as a sturdy Gulliver;
though it needs little reflection to see that it is the
Gulliver of Brobdingnag, and not that of Lilliput, that
more correctly figures his present status. The mass
of current tendencies tends to fix him as a dependent
— a unit of a lower order in a series of gradations
running up to the Big Men. " The corporation,"
writes Mr. Richmond,1 " holds of the State, and its
officers hold of the corporation, and their retainers,

1 Since the publication of the Independent article the author's atten-
tion has been called to an address entitled "The New Feudalism,"
delivered by Mr. Benjamin A. Richmond, of Cumberland, Md.,
before the Maryland Bar Association in July, 1898. The author had
never seen or heard of this address. It is written from a legal stand-
point, and both the matter and the treatment are widely different from
the matter and manner of the Independent article. But whatever the
differences, the same general idea is to be found in both papers, and
it is only just that acknowledgment should be made of Mr. Rich-
mond's priority.

OUR FARMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

managers, and servants all hold the tenure of their
employment from their superiors in office, from the
highest to the lowest." But whether corporation, or
partnership, or individual, employs the laborer's ser-
vices, his status is practically the same. Trade-
unions and other labor societies tend to modify that
dependence ; and occasionally social legislation, when
it runs the fierce gantlet of the courts, exerts a fur-
ther modification. But it is coming to be recognized
that there is a limit, perhaps now nearly attained,
beyond which the labor societies can exert no influ-
ence; and as for social legislation, as will be shown
farther along, it has certainly reached its culmination.
To the natural causes making for the laborer's
subordination have been added in recent years cer-
tain conscious and deliberate forces. There is a
collective pressure brought to bear upon his wages ;
there is a collective antagonism maintained against
his unions ; there is a growing movement in the
direction of holding him for the term of his profitable
service to the company or corporation by which he
is employed, and there is a judicial tendency to
pretend still to regard him, despite his changing
status, as an economically free agent, able to do
what he wills, and to protect himself from all in-
justice.

Ill

The assurance of villein fidelity is a prime need of
a feudal order. The fidelity need not be personal,
as in the old days ; instead, the altered ceremony of
"homage" may take in whole regiments by a single

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

rite. Recent acts of the great employers make
strongly for creating inducements for this fidelity.
In spite of instances of conduct 'like that of the coal
magnates of Pennsylvania, there is a growing ten-
dency to unite for life-long service the careers of the
more faithful workers with the corporations by whom
they are employed. " Model workshops," and even
" model villages," are unquestionably increasing in
numbers. Their character is almost pure paternal-
ism— "enlightened absolutism," Professor Ely calls
it. Rarely have the workers themselves the slight-
est word to say as to their construction or conduct.
What is thought to be good for them, what is thought
will win their devotion, is given them. Whether at
Pullman, 111., at Dayton or Cleveland, Ohio, or at
Pelzer, S.C., the general spirit manifested is the
same. The perfervid chapter on " American Liber-
ality to Workmen," which Mr. Nicholas Paine Oilman
gives us in his volume, " A Dividend to Labor,"
contains dozens of instances wherein employers
have indulged their benevolence by the gift of flower-
pots, wash-basins, and other cultural paraphernalia
to their employees. Mr. Victor H. Olmsted, in the
Bulletin of the Department of Labor for November,
1900, gives another, though somewhat duplicated,
list; and the Rev. Josiah Strong's monthly journal,
Social Service, furnishes a current record of such
benevolences. The providences of the Colorado
Fuel and Iron Company alone make a remark-
able showing. This corporation has even a "socio-
logical department," and it is at present building a
$10,000 mission at Bessemer, near Pueblo. The

OUR FARMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

plan of the mission, we read, is to have a refuge,
with all modern improvements, for " floaters," or the
unemployed. These wayfarers may make a tempo-
rary living by working in an attached woodyard. In
all its camps in Colorado this company has estab-
lished kindergartens, libraries, and, in remote places,
grade schools for the children of its employees. Its
hospital at the Pueblo works is said to be the best
equipped in the West. "It is the announced pur-
pose of this corporation," we read, "to solve the
social problem."

Model workshops and the distribution of relief are
but a small part of the tendency. The giving of old-
age pensions, particularly by railroad companies, has
recently taken on the dimensions of a national move-
ment. The pension system is not a conspicuously
expensive one, for the numbers of workmen who live
long enough to avail themselves of its benefits are
but scant. The sums paid out for pensions by the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Relief Department in
eighteen years average $31,185.85 yearly — about the
salary of a first vice-president — and the employees
themselves have borne a considerable part of the
expense. A total of 697 pensions has been granted
during this time, but 365 of the beneficiaries have
considerately died, and thus reduced the expenses.

The pension system as it obtains among railroads
is more or less an outgrowth of the relief association
begun by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company
on May I, 1880. Prototypes can possibly be found,
but this instance is the first of any consequence.
The State of Maryland revoked the charter of the

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

association in 1888. This was an embarrassing in-
terruption, but by no means a fatal one, for the
society was immediately reorganized as a department
of the company. The plan was to pay accident, sick,
and death benefits and old-age pensions, the com-
pany contributing $33,500 yearly, and the employees
paying monthly dues based on their wages. Section
100 of the regulations for 1889 declares that "the
fund for the payment of pensions will be derived
wholly from the contributions of the company," a
change from the earlier method in the direction of
pure paternalism. The usual age for pensioning is
sixty-five years, and the president and directors de-
termine the roll.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Voluntary Relief De-
partment was begun in 1886. In a number of
respects it followed the details of the earlier associa-
tion. As to pensions, however, it put the matter
forward by arranging for the gradual growth of a
superannuation fund out of the department's surplus.
There were six companies, according to Mr. William
Franklin Willoughby's " Workingmen's Insurance,"
that before 1898 had created regular insurance de-
partments. These were the Baltimore and Ohio, the
Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania west of Pittsburg,
the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy, the Philadel-
phia and Reading, and the Plant System. Though in
two or three instances the plans have been altered, all
these companies founded their pension systems on
employees' contributions.

The Pennsylvania's fund reached the figure set
for it January I, 1900, and the pension system was

OUR FARMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

proclaimed. On the first day of 1901 the Chicago and
Northwestern put in operation a gratuitous pension
system, appropriating $200,000 for the purpose. The
beneficiaries, all of whom must have been thirty years
with the company, were divided into two classes:
first, those seventy years old, who were to be retired
and pensioned at once ; and second, those from sixty-
five to sixty-nine years inclusive, who were to be
retired and pensioned at the discretion of the pen-
sion board. The rate fixed is one per cent per year
of service of the average monthly pay for the pre-
ceding ten years. An employee whose average wages
were $55 per month, and who had been with the
company for thirty years, would thus receive $16.50
a month.

The Illinois Central proclaimed its pension system
July i, 1901. On March I, 1902, the Delaware,
Lackawanna, and Western took the same course,
appropriating $50,000. The terms are somewhat
more liberal, in that only twenty-five years' service
is required, and that some employees may be retired
between the ages of sixty and sixty-five. The Met-
ropolitan Street Railway Company followed on March
6th, and the Philadelphia and Reading Company on
May 21. The details, while varying somewhat, are
in the main alike for all of these companies.

Though the experiment is a comparatively frugal
one, there is no doubt that it brings compensatory
returns ; for it serves to keep quiescent and faithful
large bodies of men, and perhaps to loosen the bonds
of the labor-union. It holds in servicemen above thirty-
five or forty-five years of age, for they know the diffi-

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

culty of securing work elsewhere ; and it feeds them
with a more or less illusory hope of an ultimate pension.
Indeed, the motive of inducing a closer dependence
of the laborer upon the employer is more or less
frankly confessed. " Under it" (the pension system),
reads the Lackawanna's advertisement to the public,
" the road and its employees are to be more closely
knit by substantial ties." The president of the Met-
ropolitan Street Railway Company, however, sounds
a more altruistic and benevolent note. " My object
in establishing this department," he is quoted as say-
ing, " is to preserve the future welfare of aged and
infirm employees and to recognize efficient and loyal

service."

Despite such benevolent professions there are grave
grounds for scepticism regarding the tangible benefit
of the system to the employees. If Hope lingers
with them, it must be because, as Mr. William Wat-
son sings, "airiest cheer suffices for her food." For
both the ascertained results of an eighteen years'
operation of the system, and a moment's glance at
conditions surrounding the new applications of it,
point to a most rigorous limitation of its benefits. In
the first place, there is a growing disinclination to
employ in any industry men past forty-five years of
age. The new regulations of the Philadelphia and
Reading reduce even this limit ten years, prohibiting
the taking on of employees past thirty-five years of age,
except by the approval of the board of directors of
the company, although in special cases where unusual
qualifications are desired the age limit may be waived.
So general is this attitude of employers that the Chi-

OUR FARMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

cago Federation of Labor was recently moved to the
passing of a resolution proposing that " every unem-
ployed man forty-five years of age who cannot show
what the charity authorities call 'visible means of
support ' shall be mercifully shot in a lawful and
orderly manner." Moreover, the chances of a rail-
road employee reaching the age of sixty-five or seventy
years are about equal to the chances of winning a
large sum at policy. Discharges are frequent and
arbitrary, and usually there is no appeal. Aside
from this, the casualties are enormous. Of the
191, 198 railroad workers classed as trainmen employed
throughout the country in 1900, 1396 (or one in every
138) were killed, and 17,571 (or one in every 10.8)
injured. The corrected figures for 1901 (given to the
public in August of the present year) show about the
same percentages. Of the 209,043 trainmen, 1537
(or one in every 136) were killed, and 16,715 (or one
in every 12.5) were injured. Thanks to the new
safety appliances, casualties caused by coupling and
uncoupling cars declined by 84 killed and 2461
injured ; but in other classes of accidents the percent-
ages brought the averages to near the previous figures.
At best, the chances of maiming or death constantly
increase with every one of the twenty-five or thirty
years' service required for the earning of a pension.
In the Metropolitan (now Interurban) Street Railway
service, where accidents are few but discharges many,
the benevolent instincts of the president will prove
difficult of realization. This official admitted that dis-
charges had at one time reached an average of 300 a
month. An employee informed the author that he

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

knew of but two or three men in the entire service
whom the published terms entitled to pensions, while
another employee conceded a possible dozen.

The new Feudalism evidently requires a tempering
— let us say, a conservative adjustment — of the
wage-scale. Those whom the gods dower with plenty
may for the present give freely of their store, while
those who feel the parsimony of Providence must with-
hold. The recent increase of 10 per cent in wages
given by the steel corporation, and the refusal of the
anthracite magnates to increase the average, accord-
ing to the Pennsylvania Bureau of Mines, of 79^ cents
a day which their operatives now receive, are but
examples of the contrasts which may be expected
during the transition period. The collective feudal
policy will avoid both extremes. It will pay some-
thing better than that which breeds discontent, some-
thing less than that which breeds luxury and pride. It
will provide not exactly what the workers desire, but
what is good for them.

Already the more or less collective pressure upon
the wage-scale shows its effects. Hon. Carroll D.
Wright's 250 wage-quotations for 25 selected occu-
pations (Bulletin of the Department of Labor, Sep-
tember, 1898) reveal for the years 1895-98 a steady
decline from the wages paid in the panic years,
1893-94, to about the same wages as were paid in
1882. The figures in the Bulletin for September,
1900, pertain to 148 establishments, representing 26

OUR FARMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

industries and 192 occupations. They show a slight
increase for 1899 and another for 1900. This
slight increase, however, is resolved into a marked
decrease by the rise in the price of commodities nec-
essary for the average life. From July, 1897, to July,
1901, according to the careful index-figures published
in Dun's Review, the price of commodities advanced
27 per cent; and from July i to December i, of the
latter year, an almost steady advance was recorded.
Comparing January I, 1896, with January i, 1902,
the Wall Street Journal finds an increase of 36 per
cent.

The wage-quotations used by Col. Wright in his
table of 1898 are from the larger cities, and pertain
to trades the workmen in which are organized. Here,
if anywhere, one would expect evidences of increased
wages. Generally, however, the figures for 1897-98
show a parity with the figures for 1881-82. Com-
positors, for instance, received $2.8 1£ daily in 1898,
$2.81 in 1882. Carpenters received $2.52! in 1898,
$2.55 in 1882. Often the figures for the latter year
show a considerable decline; but the averages are
maintained through the advances gained by those
affluent mechanics, the plumbers; by the stone-
cutters, and by the better-paid wage-earners of the
railroads, — conductors, engineers, and firemen. With
the increase of railroad traffic the hours of labor
have been extended ; and the increase of wages fol-
lows, at least for the engineers and firemen, as a con-
sequence of longer hours. As for the common *
laborer, he is being left behind in the race. His
wages were less in 1898 than in 1882 in six of the r'

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

ten cites quoted, and in four of them there was no
change.

All wage-statistics are questionable, and particu-
larly the more generalized wage-statements which
proceed from Washington, during the fall months of
election years. A look into the figures themselves
is usually fatal to the optimism voiced in the general-
izations. From other sources the conflict of figures
is puzzling and irritating. It may be shown by selec-
tions from these that wages are rising, that they are
falling, or that they are stationary. There is always
a disparity between the figures of the State bureaus,
the National bureau, and the census, and usually it
is a disparity that cannot be harmonized.

The national census figures ought to be, as most
persons will declare, a sufficiently correct guide.
According to the last census, the number of wage-
earners in manufacturing pursuits has increased in
ten years 25.2 per cent, wages have increased 23.2
per cent. Despite the acknowledged increase in the
country's wealth, wages, if the census is correct, have
declined. It is officially explained, however, that
these figures are not to be taken too literally. The
schedules for 1890 included among wage-earners,
"overseers, foremen, and certain superintendents
(not general superintendents or managers), while the
census of 1900 separates from the wage-earning class
such salaried employees as general superintendents,
clerks, and salesmen." " It is possible and probable,"
says each of the reports on manufactures, "that
this change in the form of the question has resulted
in eliminating from the wage-earners, as reported by

OUR FARMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

the present census, many high-salaried employees
included in that group for the census of 1890."

Possibly and probably. But aside from the fact
that the elimination of the comparatively few over-
seers and foremen, with their somewhat higher sala-
ries, could make but slight influence on averages in
the tremendous total of 5,321,087 wage-earners, with
$2,330,275,021 of wages, there is another point or two
to consider. According to Part I (page 14 et seg.)
of the Report of Manufacturing Industries for the
census of 1890, it appears that wages underwent a
considerable inflation in that record. The questions
asked in 1880, it would appear, resulted in report-
ing more wage-earners than there really were. The
questions for 1890, it is declared, produced the real
number. It is further stated that " the questions for
1890 also tended to obtain a large amount of wages
as compared with 1880." It would seem so, indeed,
even to a neophyte in the ingenious art of figuring ;
for while the wage-increase of the decade 1870-80
could show but 22.2 per cent, that for the following
decade revealed the astonishing figure of a fraction
less than 100 per cent. ' When, therefore, one seeks
to compare the averages of 1890 with those of 1900 he
may not unreasonably infer that the elimination of
overseers and foremen in the later census is no more
than a set-off to the ample generosity given to the
wage-figures in the earlier census. There is no tell-
ing for a certainty, but it is not unlikely that the pres-
ent census figures give a result approximately near
the truth.

It is not an extravagant hope that some day we

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

shall have two successive censuses carried out on
identical schedules, so that comparisons may be ac-
curately made between two decades. As it is, we
must take what the powers give us, and be thankful.
We must take it on trust, moreover, for there is no
going behind the returns ; and any captious question-
ing of the figures can be met only in the spirit with
which Telemachus answered the fair Helen's inquiry
if he were a true son of Ulysses, It is a matter of
faith — there is no proof.

In the faith, then, that there is reasonable accuracy
in the reports, and a reasonable basis of comparison
with previous reports, it is interesting to note what is
revealed. First in point of interest is the relation of
the value of the manufactured product to the amount
of wages paid. A comparison will show whether labor
is receiving an increasing or decreasing share of the
wealth created. The census totals under the former
heading are confessedly crude, since " a constant dupli-
cation of products appears, . . . owing to the fact that
the finished products of many manufacturing establish-
ments become the materials of other establishments,
in which they are further utilized and again included
in the value of products." The new census has there-
fore made a separate classification of materials pur-
chased in a partially manufactured form. Neverthe-
less, the gross total, including products from both raw
materials and partly manufactured products, is reached
by the same means as were employed in previous cen-
suses, and is therefore comparable with the gross
totals of previous decades. Whatever the duplica-
tions, they are similar to those of preceding reports.

OUR FARMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

There are nineteen States wherein the average
number of wage-earners in manufacturing pursuits
constitutes more than 6 per cent of the population.
Rhode Island heads the list with 22.5 per cent. It is
followed by Connecticut with 19.5 ; Massachusetts,
17.7 ; New Hampshire, 17.1 ; New Jersey, 12.8 ; Dela-
ware, 12 ; New York, 11.7; Pennsylvania, 1 1.6 ; Maine,
10.8; Maryland, 9.1; Vermont, 8.6; Ohio, 8.3 ; Illi-
nois, 8.2 ; Florida, 7 ; Wisconsin, 6.9 ; Michigan, 6.7 ;
Washington, 6.6; Indiana, 6.2; California, 6.1.

In each of these States the value of the manufactured
product has increased, Florida leading with a gain of
109.6 per cent; Washington following with 107.8 per
cent ; New Jersey with 72.5 ; Indiana, 66.7; Vermont,
50.4; Wisconsin, 45.2, and so on, Massachusetts show-
ing the slightest increase, 16.6 per cent. The value
of the manufactured product is of course affected by
the two items, cost of material and miscellaneous ex-
penses, though in turn these are almost invariably
reflected to some extent in the increase or decrease of
the value of the product. When his material and his
expenses increase, the manufacturer, if he can, puts
up the price of his product. It would be wholly im-
possible to find a ratio, for the figures show an aston-
ishing variety. In Massachusetts, for instance, —
that classic State for the observation and study of
industrial phenomena, the State wherein statistics
are gathered with some approach to accuracy, — the
increase of miscellaneous expenses is put at 16.1 per
cent ; of cost of material, at 16.8 per cent ; of value of
product, 1 6.6 per cent. But against this reasonable
showing New York confesses to an increase of 81.8

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

per cent in miscellaneous expenses, with an increased
product of but 27. i per cent. Miscellaneous expenses
increased 1 3 1 per cent in New Jersey, while the prod-
uct increased but 72.5 per cent, and Pennsylvania
and Indiana fqllow hard in the tracks of the two
former States. Perhaps a key to the mystery is fur-
nished in the enormous increase of miscellaneous
expenses in certain industries which require favorable
legislation. Gas, for instance, which is generally
considered the rightful prey of certain kinds of alder-
men and legislators, shows a payment of $8,635,399
for " advertising, interest, insurance, repairs, and other
sundry expenses," an increase of 74.8 per cent against
an increase in the value of the product of but 32.9
per cent.

In each of these nineteen factory States the value
of the product increased. In all but one it increased
more than 25 per cent, in two more than 100 per cent.
But in ten of these States total wages have declined,
and in three of the remainder the gain is insig-
nificant. Wages of men workers have declined in
eleven of these States, with a fractional gain in two
States. Florida, which shows the greatest percentage
of increase in the number of wage-earners, shows the
greatest relative loss in wages. Maine, which gives
the smallest percentage of increase in number of
wage-earners, gives the largest relative percentage
of increase in wages. The four States having the
greatest absolute number of wage-earners all show
decreases of wages. New York, with 849,092 workers,
shows a wage-loss of 2.2 per cent ; Pennsylvania, with
733,834 workers, a loss of 2 per cent ; Massachusetts,

OUR FARMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

with 497,448, a fractional loss; and Illinois, with
395,110, 5 per cent.

The specific industries for the whole nation show
similar results. Relative wages have increased in re-
fining petroleum, in manufacturing ice and salt, and
in a few other industries. But they have decreased
in the great majority of the industries so far reported.
There is a wage-loss in the making of bicycles,
leather gloves and mittens, watches, watch-cases,
buttons, gas, oleomargarine, boots and shoes, paper
and pulp, coke, needles and pins, cigars and ciga-
rettes, pocket-books, trunks and valises, leather belting
and hose, -in canning and preserving fruits and vege-
tables, in the tanning and finishing of leather, the
slaughtering and packing of meat, the smelting of
zinc, ship-building, car-building, the weaving of flax,
hemp, and jute, and cotton products, the brewing of
malt liquors, and newspaper publishing. All along
the monotonous rows of figures the same lesson is
generally revealed, — the productivity of the laborer
increases, the value of the product increases, the
wages, except in occasional instances, decline or
remain stationary.

The important point of the purchasing power of
the dollar in 1890 as compared with 1900 needs also
to be considered. According to the exhaustive com-
pilation of wholesale prices published in the Bulletin
of the Department of Labor for March, 1902, the
dollar would purchase in 1890 a greater quantity of
beef, bacon, ham, corn meal, beans, cheese, eggs,
pepper, American salt, Formosa tea, hard and soft
coal, petroleum, earthenware, furniture, and glass-

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

ware than in 1900. In the latter year it would pur-
chase more butter, Rio coffee, dried fruits (except
currants), rice, sugar, onions, potatoes, mutton, and
fish. Wheat flour cheapened, but the price of bread
remained the same. A comparison of the two lists
on the basis of relative quantities consumed in the
average family will show the dollar to have had con-
siderably less purchasing power in 1900 than in 1890,
though the exact percentage is hardly computable.

The new Feudalism involves not only the moderat-
ing of the present rates of pay for men workers, but
an increase in the quantity of defenceless labor — the
labor of women and children. Census Bulletin No.
150 gives the increase in the number of men working
in manufacturing pursuits at 23.9 per cent ; of women,
at 28.4 per cent; of children, at 39.5 per cent. The
wages of women have slightly increased ; that is, the
increase in total wages is 30.8 per cent against an
increase in numbers of wage-earners of 28.4 per cent.
The figures are better for the children ; their wages
are stated to have increased 54.4 per cent. There
are ample reasons why this should be so. Popular
agitation in behalf of the little ones may be guessed
to have had some effect in the betterment of their
pay; and a still greater effect has been wrought by
their vastly increasing productivity. The perfecting
of the instruments of production has been carried to
such a degree that many a machine may be operated
by a nursling; and it is well-nigh inevitable that

OUR FARMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

some part of this increased productivity should be
compensated for by increased pay of the operatives.

The number of women in factory work in the
United States is 1,031,747, nearly one-fifth of the
total. There are 230,199 in New York, 143,109 in
Massachusetts, 126,093 in Pennsylvania, 58,978 in
Illinois, 53,711 in Ohio. Eighteen of the nineteen
factory States show an increase, Maine being the
exception ; and in thirteen of these States the per-
centage of gain is considerably in excess of that
of men workers. Washington leads with a gain of
151.8 per cent; Michigan and Illinois show gains of
79 per cent each; Vermont, of 63.1; Indiana, 56.4;
California, 46.8 ; Pennsylvania, 44.9 ; New Jersey,
39.3. In States outside the factory list still greater
increases are shown. The figures for South Carolina
are 158.3 percent; for North Carolina, 151.2; West
Virginia, 130.2; Alabama, 109.1; Georgia, 82.2.

In specific industries the gains are sometimes
enormous. There are no women reported for coke-
making, and the number employed in making agri-
cultural implements has declined 25.7 per cent.
Car-building, too, shows a decline. But in refining
petroleum the 60 women wage-earners represent a
gain of 3200 per cent, and in bicycle and tricycle
making the 517 women represent a gain of 3346.7
per cent. An increase of 2600 per cent is shown
for distilled liquors, although men workers decreased
23.8 per cent. A decrease of men workers and an
increase of women workers are also shown for clay
products, flouring and grist-mill products, chewing
and smoking tobacco and snuff, starch, cheese, butter,

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

and condensed milk, watches, and watch-cases. The
percentage of increase is in excess of that of men
workers in oleomargarine, pocket-books, trunks and
valises, tanned, curried, and finished leather, and
needles and pins. There are six and one-half times
as many women as men in collar and cuff making,
and more than twice as many in the leather glove
and mitten industry; in the latter, moreover, the
percentage of increase for women is double that for
men. There are 37,762 women making cigars and
cigarettes, a gain of 56 per cent, against a gain of
but 4.6 per cent for men. Malt liquors show an
increase of 1 01.6 per cent of women workers against an
increase of 30.2 per cent of men workers. Women
have also increased in number in the cotton goods,
flax, hemp, and jute, rubber boot and shoe, glass-
making, slaughtering, and meat-packing, and boot and
shoe industries, and in newspaper publishing.

There are 168,624 children employed in manu-
factures throughout the country, a gain of 39.5 per
cent. Child labor has increased in twelve of the
factory States, remained practically stationary in two
(Michigan and New Hampshire), and decreased in
five States. The reasons for a decrease, where it is
observed, are not hard to find ; in certain industries
child labor has been demonstrated to be unprofitable.
But wherever it has been found profitable it seems
to have been increasingly utilized. The increase in
Wisconsin is 193.5 per cent; in Washington, 103.8;

OUR FARMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

in Illinois, 92; in New Jersey, 51.4; in Pennsylvania,
47.8 ; and in Massachusetts, 44.9. In States outside
of the foregoing list the same tendency is shown.
South Carolina increased its child laborers by 270.7
per cent ; Alabama, by 143.8 ; North Carolina, 1 19.2 ;
Georgia, 81.

Children number 17.5 per cent of all the factory
wage-earners of South Carolina, and 14.6 per cent of
all those of North Carolina. In five other Southern
States (including Maryland) the percentages range
from 4.3 to 7.6, while among Northern States Rhode
Island children form 5.2 per cent of the factory
wage-earners, and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin chil-
dren 4.5 and 4 per cent, respectively. If Pennsylvania
is comparatively low in percentage, it is because of
the great mass of its adult workers ; for in absolute
numbers of child workers it heads the list of com-
monwealths. No less than 33,135 children are em-
ployed in its factories, a figure which puts to shame
the puny showing of New York, with 13,199, and of
Massachusetts, with 12,556.

In certain industries children form more than one-
fourth of all the operatives for a particular locality.
In the making of cotton goods in Alabama 29.2 per
cent of the workers are children, and in South Caro-
lina 26.8 per cent. The figures for this industry in
North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, and Maryland are
nearly identical. In Pennsylvania, for the making
of jute goods the figures are 26.2, and for silk and
silk goods, 20.2. Slightly more than one-fourth of
the hosiery and knit-goods workers of Georgia are
children and slightly less than one-fourth of the to-

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

bacco workers (chewing, smoking, and snuff) of
North Carolina. Massachusetts, with its factory
law, can make but the humble showing of 6.4 per
cent of children in its cotton-goods factories, and
Rhode Island but 10.3 per cent Glass-making is
an industry which has made a most literal adap-
tation of Jesus' invitation to little children ; though,
if the words of reputable eye-witnesses are to be ac-
cepted, it is not exactly a heaven into which they
are welcomed. Of the operatives in Pennsylvania
glass works, children number 14 per cent, and of those
in New Jersey glass works, 15.7 per cent.

In the cotton-goods industry there are 39,866 chil-
dren, a gain of 70.1 per cent. It is interesting to
learn that there are 1003 children employed in ship-
building, and that this number is a gain of 476.4 per
cent over 1890. There are 4521 in boot and shoe
making, an increase of 85 per cent. There are 2259
in flax, hemp, and jute weaving, nearly twice as many
as ten years ago. There are 316 in turpentine and
rosin making, a gain of 236.2 per cent. The number
has decreased for some reason in the making of clay
products, as has also the number of men workers,
women having now a growing preference in the pot-
teries. There are also fewer children in petroleum
refining, but in button-making an increase of 321.6
per cent, in leather-glove making of 185.7 Per cent,
and in slaughtering and meat-packing of 138.1 per
cent is shown. Watch-making shows a gain of 30
per cent, bicycle-making of 780 per cent. Children
have been found comparatively unadaptable in the
liquor industry. Only 643 are employed in brewing

OUR FARMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

and 1 8 in distilling. For all that, these figures repre-
sent an increase — in the former case of 24.6 per
cent, in the latter of 200 per cent.

Children, according to the census, are persons be-
low the age of sixteen. Testimony outside of the
census reports shows the extreme youth of many
of these operatives. Investigations among the glass
works of southern New Jersey reveal a number of
cases of child workers of eight, nine, and ten years
of age. Mr. J. W. Sullivan, a careful and accurate
observer, who visited this district in July of the pres-
ent year, confirms these statements. Miss Jane
Addams, of Hull House, found a child of five working
at night in a South Carolina mill. Mrs. Irene Ashby-
Macfadyen, who has carefully studied conditions in
the Southern mills, gives many instances of extremely
young children working incredibly long hours. Pro-
fessor George Clinton Edwards, in the New York
Evening Post for August I3th, gives other instances
relating to the mills of Dallas, Tex. In a later
communication to the same journal he quotes the
statement of a mill superintendent to the effect
that of sixty boys and seventy-six girls employed,
"there are two in their tenth year, nine in their
eleventh year, thirteen in their twelfth year, and
seventeen in their fourteenth year." " This list, from
the pay-roll," writes Professor Edwards, "does not
include the little children, who, with the mills' knowl-
edge, worked at the mills' work, who earned the
mills' pay in the 10 or 20 per cent increase received
by the relatives they assisted at piece work, and who
were, therefore, in fact, the mills' employees." La-

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

bor Commissioner Lacey, of North Carolina, reports
7605 children under fourteen in 261 mills. A corre-
spondent of the Cincinnati Post estimated 400 of
the 1000 children employed in five mills in Colum-
bia, S.C., to be under twelve years of age. Testi-
mony by mill officials before a Southern legislature
acknowledged in one instance 30 per cent of child
workers under twelve years in a spinning room, and
in another 25 per cent

The census reports bear amiable testimony to the
providence of the mill-owners. " Many of the mills,"
says the South Carolina report, " have reading rooms
and libraries for their employees, and nearly all con-
tribute regularly to the support of the local schools."
" In the absence of legislation regulating child labor,"
says the Georgia report, " all the cotton manufactur-
ers in the State have signed an agreement to exclude
from the mills children under ten years of age, and
those under twelve who cannot show a certificate of
four months' attendance at school." In the North
Carolina report we find, " In the absence of legisla-
tion nearly all the mill-owners have agreed to discon-
tinue the employment of children under twelve years
of age." A correspondent of the New York World
found a like benevolence among the glass employers
in southern New Jersey. " I need the boys," said
one, " all I can do is to treat the boys as well as I
can." The mill-owners, one and all, demand that the
State keep its hands off, and trust to their own be-
nevolence for remedies. So far, in the South,
depite a three years' agitation, the matter is still
left entirely in their control.

OUR FARMERS AND WAGE-EARNERS

Criticism of the mill-owners has been made to the
effect that despite their benevolent professions, the
children are poorly paid and that they remain unedu-
cated. Some of them work long hours for 10 cents
a day, others for I2|, 15, and 18 cents. A newspaper
correspondent tells of a certain spinning room in a
Southern mill wherein the average daily pay for all
children is 23^ cents. " I know of babies," writes
Mrs. Macfadyen, " working for 5 and 6 cents a day."
The schooling which a child working seventy-two hours
a week can get may be roughly guessed at. Mrs. Mac-
fadyen found 567 children under twelve years working
in eight mills. Only 122 of these children could read
or write. In a school in a mill-town of between 6000
and 8000 persons, the same investigator found an
enrolment of 90 pupils divided into two classes. A
visit to one of these classes disclosed 22 children, only
12 of whom were mill-workers' children, and 10 had
worked in the mills from one to three years.

Criticisms based on these data are, however, gen-
erally held to be sentimental and irrelevant. Glass-
blowing or textile-weaving, like anthracite mining, is,
in the sententious phrase of President George F. Baer,
of the Philadelphia and Reading Railway Company,
" a business, and not a religious, sentimental, or
academic proposition." It is conducted for the mak-
ing of money, and not for the spiritual or hygienic
welfare of the operatives. It would be well, say the
employers, if things could be better. But for the
present they are making all the contribution to that
end that they feel can conveniently be made. More-
over, they contend — and they are supported generally

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

by the local ministers, who have in charge the spiritual
affairs of the populace ; by the local editors, lawyers,
and solid men of "business " — it is better that chil-
dren should work in the mills and factories than " run
about the streets." As for education, the contributing
employers point to the schools, as though to say,
" Here are the opportunities ; why do you not take
advantage of them ? " It is quite enough to provide a
balky horse with water, without being morally obliged
to make him drink.

CHAPTER V
OUR MAKERS OF LAW

THE dual responsibility which our lawmakers and
judges bear, on the one hand to the people, and on
the other to the Big Men, produces a chaos of con-
flicting laws and decisions. For the chartering of
business corporations we have the " Delaware theory,"
which seems to be to give the applicant whatever he
asks for ; the " New Jersey theory," which is a slight
modification of the former ; and the " Massachusetts
theory," which reserves to the State a certain measure
of supervision and control. For the fixing of em-
ployers' liability for injuries to workmen we have a
wide range of precedents, from States which hold to
the common-law doctrine that practically frees the
employer from blame, to those which fix a liability in
somewhat definite terms. Factory legislation, regula-
tions for the public health, the determination of a
legal workday, the restraining of corporate aggres-
siveness — these and a score of like questions are
variously passed upon or deliberately avoided in the
several States. Judicial decisions, too, present a
spectacle of the widest diversity.

Nevertheless this chaos shows signs of a gradual
reduction to order. The insistent challenge, " Under
which king, Bezonian, speak or die ! " which perpetu-

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

ally assails all of our legislative and judicial function-
aries, sooner or later forces a decision, and naturally
it is the stronger rival that wins. How effective is
this challenge, how strong is the pressure, Mr. John
Jay Chapman has strikingly shown in his " Causes
and Consequences," and the instances that crop out
from time to time, like that of the recent tampering
with the Supreme Court of Missouri, reveal only a
needless confirmation of a known truth. Legislation
in behalf of the general welfare and of the industrially
dependent classes becomes less frequent and more
guarded ; and judicial decisions in matters that involve
class antagonisms are more frequently given to the
dominant class.

A marked tendency of recent legislation is that
toward giving increased powers to municipal officials.
Another is that toward the creation of boards charged
with administrative, executive, semi-judicial, and even
police powers. The institution of these boards means
simply a further removal from the people of the con-
duct of public affairs. Mr. Leonard A. Blue, in the
Annals of the American Academy for November, 1901,
gives an interesting view of the subject. "These
boards," he writes, " are practically irresponsible
bodies. They are beyond the control 'of the people,
or of any one who is responsible to the people for
their actions. Appointed as they are for definite
terms of office, they cannot be removed during that
term except after an investigation which amounts to

OUR MAKERS OF LAW

an impeachment. The Governor who appoints them
in many cases can only appoint a single member, the
terms of the others extending beyond his own, so
that he can neither mould the policy of the board nor
can he be held responsible for it." And he quotes
from one of the messages of the Hon. W. E. Russell,
Governor of Massachusetts (1891-93), these words:
" The people of the State might have a most decided
opinion about the management and work of the de-
partments, and give emphatic expression to that
opinion, and yet be unable to control their action.
The system gives great power without proper respon-
sibility, and tends to remove the people's government
from the people's control." Irresponsible to both the
people and the people's officials as they are, these
boards are yet not wholly unsusceptible to outside
pressure ; they are, as is well known, peculiarly liable
to the influence of the Big Men.

While legislation moves rapidly enough in the di-
rection of detaching political powers from the people,
it shows a growing disinclination to meddle with
affairs between magnate and minion. Twelve or
fifteen years ago, in certain sections, "labor" legis-
lation had a flourishing career. The number of laws
so classified, passed in a single three-year period in
New York State, made a record for all time. Labor
was then rapidly combining, and its lusty organiza-
tions made emphatic demands for protective laws.
A Democratic Governor, not wholly regardless of

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

hopes of the Presidential succession, for the time
allied himself with the movement and secured the
passage of many of these measures. With an alacrity
much greater than that with which the Constitution
follows the flag, judicial decisions in those days tended
to follow the general policy of the party in power,
and thus but slight trouble was experienced in secur-
ing constitutional sanction.

Other States followed, and for several years the
astonishment and indignation of the Big Men were
intermittently roused by the spectacle of Jacobini-
cal legislators meddling in affairs outside their prov-
ince. Mr. F. J. Stimson, in the Atlantic Monthly for
November, 1897, informs us that in the ten preceding
years 1639 ^aws relating to labor had been passed in
the various States and Territories. This is an aver-
age of 3.4 a year for each legislature, though the
courts had modified the average somewhat by declar-
ing 1 14 of these measures unconstitutional. Doubt-
less among those that escaped the "killing decree"
of the courts were a number that benefited the worker,
though it is doubtful if any of them served to modify
his economic status.

However that may be, it is unquestioned that the
tendency toward the enactment of this sort of legis-
lation has suffered a decline. It is hard to fix the
point of culmination, though probably it lies some-
where about the years 1896-97. In isolated instances,
and under peculiar circumstances, it is conceded there
is an occasional revival. The Pennsylvania legisla-
ture of 1897 showed a remarkable zeal, shortening
the workday of women and minors, limiting child

OUR MAKERS OF LAW

labor, establishing a bureau of mines, and making
other regulations. Maryland, in 1898, imposed cer-
tain mining regulations and required seats in stores
for women workers. Virginia and Massachusetts, in
the same year, interfered slightly, the former with
an arbitration act. In the spring of 1899, Kansas,
Illinois, Colorado, Indiana, Michigan, Nebraska,
Washington, and Wisconsin, all addressed themselves
more or less earnestly to the redress of certain griev-
ances; and they were followed by Iowa in 1900, by
Massachusetts again in the same year, and by Ala-
bama in 1901. In the present year New York, after
five years of agitation, reluctantly granted a moder-
ately expressed employers' liability law.

Most of this legislation, however, was enacted in
the newer States, and served only to push them along
toward the standard set in the older States in earlier
years. Advances of any sort are difficult to discover.
As for the year 1901, the record of progressive legis-
lation is almost bare. Congress suppressed the Eight-
hour, Anti-injunction, and Prison-labor bills, and muti-
lated the Chinese bill. A convention of the National
Association of Railway Commissioners, comprising
representatives from twenty-five State boards and
from the Interstate Commerce Commission, petitioned
Congress, in June, 1901, to enact a number of meas-
ures regarding railway traffic ; but our lawmakers
appear to have been too busy with other matters.
Factory legislation has suffered a relapse in all of
the States. " The statutes of 1901," euphemistically
writes Mr. Horace G. Wadlin, in the New York State
Library's "Review of Legislation, 1901," "which

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

may be classed as protective legislation, intended
to safeguard the workman in his employment or to
secure to him his wages, are neither very numerous
nor very radical." Something better, however, as
Mr. Adna F. Weber points out in the same volume,
was done in regard to shorter workdays. California
passed an Eight-hour law for State work ; Minnesota,
with certain liberal exceptions, another; while Utah
penalized infractions of an existing law. Even Penn-
sylvania, generally so sensitive in the matter of inter-
fering with the rights of her workers to employ
themselves in any manner they are constrained to
choose, made the daring innovation of prohibiting a
longer workday than twelve hours for women and
minors in bakeries. Doubtless the lesson to be
learned from this is a growing inclination toward the
gospel of relaxation, which Mr. Herbert Spencer so
emphatically invoked on his visit here twenty years
ago. An industrial Feudalism is not inconsistent
with a moderate workday, and it is not unlikely that
some further experiments in this line may be made.

Ill

An average man, not overlearned in political
science, and not too well acquainted with the ways
and means of politicians, might naturally suppose
that the result of something more than 1639 " labor "
laws would be an almost revolutionary change in the
conditions of industry. He might suppose a general
effect comprising these particulars : the securing of
safe places and safe conditions for toil ; the utmost

OUR MAKERS OF LAW

safeguarding against accidents ; the fixing of liability
for injuries or death suffered in the service of a
master; the guarantee of the right of workmen to
combine, to leave their work for causes sufficient to
themselves, and peaceably to persuade others to do
so ; the guarantee of protection from blacklisting by
employers, and the framing of all such laws in a
spirit so sincere and in diction so definite that judicial
discretion would be reduced to a minimum.

" Labor " legislation, however, takes on too much
a form and pressure due to influences from above to
confirm even this temperate supposition. It is some-
what presumptuous, and in a later time will be grossly
impious, for a layman not of the seigniorial class to
speak querulously on so sacred a subject; yet it
needs must be said that the mass of the measures so
far framed have proceeded but little beyond the con-
fines of the common law. Many of them, indeed, are
mere enactments into statute of that elastic, not to say
elusive, body of precedent. The common law comes
down to us from distant times, when other conditions
prevailed, and throughout all of it which bears on the
relations of master and servant there runs a principle
based on an unsupported theory. "This theory,"
writes Mr. George W. Alger, a member of the New
York Bar, in the American Journal of Sociology for
November, 1900, "resolutely closed its eyes to com-
mon, obvious, social and economic distinctions be-
tween men, either considered as individuals or as
classes, and with a self-imposed blindness imagined
rather than saw the servant and his master acting
upon a plane of absolute and ideal equality in all

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

matters touching their contractual relation; both
were free and equal, and the proper function of gov-
ernment was to let them alone. If the servant was
dissatisfied with the conditions of his employment ;
if the dangers created not merely by the necessities
of the work, but by the master's indifference to the
safety of his men, were in the eyes of the latter too
great to be endured with prudence, then, being under
this theory a * free agent ' to go or to stay, if he chose
to stay he must take the possible consequences of
personal injury or death."

Under the common law, it is true, the employer is
presumed to have certain duties toward his workmen.
As interpreted by Mr. Stephen D. Fessenden, LL.M.,
in the Bulletin of the Department of Labor, for No-
vember, 1900, these obligations are as follows : -

" An employer assumes the duty toward his em-
ployee of exercising reasonable care and diligence to
provide the employee with a reasonably safe place at
which to work ; with reasonably safe machinery, tools,
and implements to work with ; with reasonably safe
materials to work upon, and with suitable and com-
petent fellow-servants to work with him ; and, in case
of a dangerous or complicated business, to make such
reasonable rules for its conduct as may be proper to
protect the servants employed therein."

This common-law doctrine is, however, very seri-
ously qualified by the doctrine of the workman's
assumption of risk, of his contributory negligence,
and of negligence on the part of a fellow-servant.
Each of the terms in this doctrinal trinity is of ex-
pansive elasticity, and even the constituent words of

OUR MAKERS OF LAW

each term may be variously interpreted. So that a
workman forced to earn his bread where he can, in
the face of constant perils, literally takes his life in
his hands. If injured, there may be set up and sus-
tained against his claim for damages the plea of free
and unconstrained assumption, or of contributory
negligence, or of negligence of another workman,
even though the latter may be a superior who orders
the victim to his dangerous task.

" It is a well-settled principle of common law,"
writes Mr. Fessenden, " that where . . . duties [of
employers] are imposed by legislative enactment or
municipal ordinance, it is negligence on the part of
the employer to fail to comply with [these] require-
ments." Now it happens that the United States,
twenty States, the District of Columbia (by act of
Congress), and one Territory have enacted this com-
mon-law principle into statute, affixing it to certain
regulations of industry. Yet in such manner are
the greater number of these statutes drawn that it is
often found possible to evade them on the score of
one or more of the terms in the common-law theory.
The record of decisions on these statutes is at best
conflicting and confusing. But enough can be shown
to illustrate the frequent futility of the laws to secure
either employers' compliance with imposed duties or
employers' liability for injuries due to negligence.
The Ohio Supreme Court, in 1895, held that "one
cannot maintain an action against his employer for
an injury following a violation of the act regulating
coal mines, unless at the time he was injured he was
in the exercise of due care ; that one who voluntarily

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

assumes a risk thereby waives the provisions of a
statute made for his protection." The Wisconsin
Supreme Court decided that the law (1889) requiring
the guarding or blocking of railway frogs " does not
take away the defence of contributory negligence."
The New York Court of Appeals in the case of
Knisley vs. Pratt (148 N. Y. 372) decided that to
hold that the workman could not waive his master's
statutory duty by continuing at work was " a new and
startling doctrine calculated to establish a measure of
liability unknown to the common law."

Statute law is presumed to replace common law
and to redress the inequities resulting from the appli-
cation of old principles to changed conditions. But
the redress of inequities is conspicuously wanting in
much of the so-called " protective " legislation. It is
impossible to guess whether on the one hand in leg-
islative indifference or unwisdom, or on the other
hand in judicial interestedness and overwisdom, lies
the greater cause of these statutory failures. Some
added speculations on the subject will be found further
along. But whatever the attitude of the judges, that
of the lawmakers reveals a chronic and now intensi-
fying fear of disturbing the sacred privileges of
" business."

The contractual waiving, by the employee, of the
employer's negligence, is a subject about which a
number of legislatures have concerned themselves.
Two States (Georgia and Massachusetts), according
to Mr. Fessenden, have forbidden such waivers gen-
erally, one State (Ohio) has declared void such con-
tracts when made by employees, and twelve States

OUR MAKERS OF LAW

and one Territory have forbidden such waivers where
the liability is imposed by statute. The Ohio law,
however, was declared unconstitutional by the United
States Circuit Court for the Northern District of Ohio
in 1896 on the ground that "in denying to the em-
ployees of a railroad corporation the right to make
their own contracts concerning their own labor, [it]
is depriving them of ' liberty ' and of the right to
exercise the privileges of manhood, 'without due
process of law ' ; " and furthermore that it was class
legislation. Each of these laws, moreover, can be
practically nullified, as the courts have repeatedly
held. An employer may organize a relief organiza-
tion for the payment of benefits. He may tax his
employees for a greater or less part of the expenses
of the department. He may then make employment
conditional upon the workman's joining the associa-
tion and signing a pledge agreeing, in consideration
of the payment of the regular benefits, to release the
employer from all claims for injuries. Such contracts
are valid, since, according to the ingenious interpre-
tation of the courts, they do not waive damages, but
choose between two sources of compensation. Only
one State (Iowa) has had the temerity to declare this
practice illegal, and in view of the action of the
courts the law will probably be held to be unconsti-
tutional.

Statutory provisions against accidents to workmen
reveal quite as much timidity as do provisions regard-
ing employers' liability. The yearly number of acci-
dents in our industries is unknown, and can be only
roughly guessed at. The investigation of the New

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

York Commissioner of Labor, in the spring of 1899,
would indicate a yearly average of 14,576 accidents
for factory workers alone in one State. In the Penn-
sylvania anthracite mines more than 400 persons are
killed every year, and in the bituminous mines of the
same State the yearly average for the period 1895-98
was 171 killed and 421 injured. An official re-
port made to the United States Geological Survey
in September gives the record of lives lost in mining
coal for the year 1901 as 1467, and the number of
workmen injured as 3643. In the anthracite mines
of Pennsylvania 513 men were killed and 1243 in-
jured, and in the bituminous fields of the same State
301 were killed and 656 injured. The railroads pro-
vide a yearly Gettysburg, with some 40,000 casualties
to workmen alone ; and many an industry annually
furnishes its humble Bull Run or Fort Donelson.

Regulations, however, proceed cautiously, not to
say haltingly; they are generally tame regulations,
they are frequently disobeyed, and their effect on
the casualty rate is anything but radical. Though
for 1901 the increased use of safety appliances les-
sened the percentage of coupling accidents on rail-
roads, the percentage actually increased for 1898,
1899, and 1900. Since 1898 there has been an
increase in the rate of accidents in coal mining, and
doubtless, also, if the figures were known, an increase
could be shown for factories and workshops.

Although twenty-one States, according to Mr.
William F. Willoughby, in the Bulletin for January,
1901, provide for an inspection service in factories,
only thirteen impose specific provisions making it

OUR MAKERS OF LAW

obligatory upon factory and mill owners to take cer-
tain precautions against accidents. Only one of
these laws, moreover, — that of Ohio, — may fairly
be called an adequate and definitely expressed statute.
There are but five States that have enacted laws " the
purpose of which is to make it obligatory upon
directors of building and construction work to take
certain precautions against accidents," and only
one of these (New York) has given the measure an
adequate comprehensiveness. Twenty-three States
have more or less elaborate mining regulations ; but
as compliance with these laws is usually left to the
honor and benevolence of the mine owner, and as
mining accidents continue at a practically static rate,
it is hard to see the beneficial result. Some of the
States compel railroads to block or guard frogs, and
several have laws independent of the Federal statute
of 1893, requiring the use of automatic couplers and
power brakes. The former may be evaded, however ;
and, in the absence of statute imposing liability, the
evasion counts for nothing in behalf of an injured
workman's claim for damages. The effect on the
accident rates has already been mentioned.

Dr. Sarah S. Whittelsey's paper in the Annals of
the American Academy for July, 1902, summarizes
the report of the Industrial Commission on the
results of factory legislation in the various States.
From this it appears that only about half the States
have passed what may be called factory acts, many
of which are mere fire-escape provisions, and that
there are almost no factory acts in the South, nor in
the more distinctly agricultural States of the West.

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

New Hampshire, Vermont, Nebraska, and California
generously permit the employment in factories of
children ten years old ; seven States put the limit
at twelve years, two at thirteen, ten at fourteen, and
one makes the limit fourteen years for girls and twelve
years for boys. Working hours have been more or
less regulated for women and minors in fifteen States,
and for minors alone in nine States. Courts in three
States, however, have declared acts regulating work-
ing hours of women unconstitutional. In sixteen
States, three Territories, and the District of Columbia
there is absolutely no limitation for persons of any
age or sex. Aside from certain occasional acts re-
lating to the payment of wages, to inspection, and to
employers' liability, this is a complete summary of
protective legislation concerning the industries that
employ 5,321,087 of the Nation's wage-earners.

Mr. Fessenden gives a summary of the laws for the
protection of workmen in their employment, in the
Bulletin for January, 1900. The most timid conserva-
tive may read it with relief, for any fears of an undue
lodgment of power in the working classes will be
effectually banished by its perusal. Only nine States
have gone so far as to enact into statute the supposed
common-law principle that combinations of workmen,
formed for the purpose of seeking increase of wages
and betterment of conditions, are not of themselves
unlawful. Four others specify that the provisions of
their " anti-trust " acts do not apply to combinations
of labor. On the other hand, the anti-conspiracy
laws of eleven States are capable of interpretation
which would penalize many of the peaceable methods

OUR MAKERS OF LAW

of labor societies, and such interpretations have been
frequently made.

Moreover, the wording of Sections 3995 and 5440
of the Federal Revised Statutes, chapters 647 of the
Anti-trust act, and 104 of the Interstate Commerce
act, and the amendment of 1889 to the latter, are
capable of interpretation to the effect that collective
quitting of work on railways is illegal. Decisions to
that effect have several times been made in the
United States courts. " A strike, or a preconcerted
quitting of work," reads the decision in United States
vs. Cassidy (1895) before the District Court of the
United States for the Northern District of California,
"by a combination of railroad employees, is in itself
unlawful, if the concerted action is knowingly and
wilfully directed by the parties to it for the purpose
of obstructing and retarding the passage of the mails,
or in restraint of trade and commerce among the
States." " It will be practically impossible hereafter,"
reads the United States Circuit Court decision in the
case of Waterhouse et al. vs. Cromer (1893), "for a
body of men to combine to hinder and delay the work
of the transportation company without becoming
amenable to the provisions of these statutes." The
indefinite diction of many of the State laws against
" intimidation and coercion " also gives wide scope to
judicial discretion, and permits the occasional naming
of the most innocuous acts as " coercion."

The necessity of peace in an industrial society is
everywhere recognized ; and it is, therefore, not sur-
prising that really earnest efforts have been made in
behalf of arbitration. It obtained, in a measure, dur-
H 97

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

ing the older Feudalism, through the " courts baron,"
which considered tenantry and wage-questions ; and
it is becoming more common day by day. Within
sixteen years twenty-one States and the United States
have passed more or less effective measures looking
to its use in labor disputes. Political coercion is also
a matter that has won a large share of legislative
attention ; twenty-nine States and two Territories
have enacted laws regarding it. There is, however,
an important distinction to be made. In an ordinary
conflict of political issues, when the magnates and
their retainers are to be found in both parties, it is
obvious confusion and the unsettling of political con-
ditions for the employers to dictate how their work-
men shall vote. But when political issues suggest a
class conflict, as in 1896, some of the provisions of
these laws are by common consent waived. The
humble toiler may vote as he likes on the immaterial
questions of ordinary campaigns ; but on questions
having to do with the salvation of society and the
preservation of the hallowed code of " business," in-
struction and even gentle pressure become the solemn
duty of his social betters. There are fewer laws, it
may be observed, regarding another kind of coercion.
Discharges on account of membership in a labor
union are forbidden in but fifteen states ; and in two
of these (Illinois and Missouri) such provisions
have been found, after much painstaking study, to be
unconstitutional. The discovery is considered a most
happy one ; and according to the injunction of the
Federal Constitution, that " full faith and credit shall
be given in each State to the public acts, records, and

OUR MAKERS OF LAW

judicial proceedings of every other State," the ruling
will no doubt be found applicable in a number of the
other commonwealths.

Our lawmakers are not to be blamed for decisions
of unconstitutionality. Rather, they are to be con-
gratulated. For the recent tendency of the judges
to determine for themselves what shall be enacted
into law has developed new refuges for the lawmak-
ers. We have now Solon, the legislator, and Rhada-
manthus, the judge, in new roles — the roles of the
good and bad partner of Dickens's novel. To the
humble voter, when the pressure from below conflicts
with the pressure from above, Solon is now able to
stand as the supporter of popular measures, and to
throw upon the less responsible Rhadamanthus the
onus of declaring them bad law. The fury of the
magnate at Solon's demagogy is mitigated, if not ex-
tinguished, when he considers the difficulties of the
lawmaker's position, and especially by the further
consideration that Rhadamanthus has the final word
to say. Solon has other refuges, it is true ; and some-
times these must be availed of, for it is not always cer-
tain that a projected popular measure can be declared
unconstitutional. For several years it had been con-
sidered possible, for instance, that an employers' lia-
bility act, if passed in New York, would stand the
test of the courts. It became the custom, therefore,
when an adequate measure on this subject was intro-
duced, for the adverse interests to introduce a con-

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

flicting bill. The ingenious lawmaker thereupon
regretfully found a divided public sentiment, and as
a consequence no bill was passed. There are no
reasons at hand for accounting for the fact that at the
last session of the Albany legislature such a measure
was actually enacted.

How far our legislators are enabled to withstand
public sentiment, no matter how strongly based in
reason and how definite in objective, may be instanced
in the attitude of Congress regarding the Safety-
appliance act of 1893. Agitation for this measure
had grown to such an extent that action could no
longer be delayed. But though action on the bill
could not be delayed, the terms of fulfilment of the
bill could be postponed to a comparatively remote
period. The number of railway employees killed in
the year ended June 30, 1893, was 2727, a number
exceeding the Union death roll in every battle of the
Civil War except Gettysburg, and within 243 of that
record. In the same year the number of wounded
(3 1, 729) was more than three times as great as the
number of Union wounded at either Antietam or
Chancellorsville, and more than double that at Gettys-
burg. Yet despite this tremendous carnage, the
legislators, wavering between the public demands
and the demands of the magnates, though they
passed the bill, generously granted five years for its
complete observance, and then gave the Interstate
Commerce Commission the power to grant further

100

OUR MAKERS OF LAW

delays — in effect giving seven years for its fulfil-
ment. In those seven years 13,906 employees were
killed — a loss exceeding the Union death roll at
Gettysburg, Spottsylvania, the Wilderness, Antietam,
Chancellorsville and Chickamauga combined — and
approximately 220,000 were wounded, or more than
three times the number of Union wounded in those
six battles. That a great part of this casualty record
was avoidable is evidenced in the August report of
the Interstate Commerce Commission, which shows
that the number of employees killed in coupling
accidents in the year ended June 30, 1901, declined
from 282 to 198, and the number injured from 5229
to 2768. It was in 1893 that this generous latitude
was granted the magnates. Were the occasion to
arise now, it is probable that the term of grace would
number fourteen years instead of seven. ^

101

CHAPTER VI
OUR INTERPRETERS OF LAW

THE attitude of the judiciary in matters involving
class antagonisms is a subject upon which only the
most restrained language is tolerable. Even general
inferences which suggest such a thing as judicial
bias must be avoided. Faith in the rectitude and
wisdom of our judges is a virtue sedulously preached,
— perhaps most insistently by those who do most
toward their corruption, — and though the virtue as
we know it is rather vocal than immanent, it is
sufficiently deep-seated to be intolerant of spoken
heresy. Were it openly questioned by any consider-
able body of citizens, the foolhardy persons would
soon bring down upon themselves the rallying on-
slaught of those heterogeneous elements which Karl
Marx somewhat extravagantly pictured, " landlords
and capitalists, stock-exchange wolves and shop-
keepers, protectionists and free-traders, government
and opposition, priests and freethinkers, young street-
walkers and old nuns — under the common cry for
the salvation of property, religion, the family, and
society." Such heretics might have all the certainty
of Paul, " that the law is good, if a man use it law-
fully," and yet it would be a parlous thing to be

1 02

OUR INTERPRETERS OF LAW

openly sceptical of the assumption that it is always
lawfully used.

But at least one may, without attainder of anarchy,
assemble and classify certain instances, and point out
their coincidences and their contrarieties. There is,
for example, a notable sameness in kind of the laws
which are declared unconstitutional. There is, to
utter it mildly, a vast preponderance in the number
of injunctions against striking, boycotting, and agi-
tating over the number against locking-out, black-
listing, and the employment of armed mercenaries.
There is a practical, though nor an entire, unanimity
against the awarding of damages to injured employees,
whether the decision be based on common or statute
law; and, finally, there is a considerable diversity
between the decisions usually rendered by judges
elected for short terms, and therefore directly respon-
sible to the people, and those rendered by the less
responsible judges, elected for long terms or appointed.

The legislative aspects of employers' liability have
already been considered. Certain judicial aspects of
the matter need also to be touched upon. The ques-
tion is one of grave social import. The worker no
longer owns his tools, but must use the machinery
provided for him. A certain element of danger in-
heres in the operation of probably all machinery ;
but when old, defective, or with its dangerous parts
unguarded, injuries to its operatives are well-nigh
certain. Yet for such injuries, with their awful con-

103

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

sequences to the operative and his dependent ones,
there is generally no redress, except in a few States
where statutes have fixed the matter of liability in set
terms which leave no room for judicial discretion.

Under the common law the workman is held to
assume the risk attending his employment. He is a
free agent — so the legal fiction runs — and if afraid
of injury need not work. Common law also pre-
supposes the providing of a " reasonably safe " place
and " reasonably safe " machinery by the employer.
It would be difficult to determine, however, from the
mass of decisions under the common law, what is
meant by "reasonably safe." A Colorado lower
court gave damages to the mother of a miner killed
by falling rock while removing de"bris from one of
the mines of the Moon-Anchor Consolidated Gold
Mines, Limited. The case came finally to the United
States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eighth Dis-
trict, and the judgment was reversed, Judges Sanborn
and Adams concurring and Judge Thayer dissenting.
The work was admittedly hazardous ; in the opinion
of Judge Thayer "the place was needlessly made
unsafe by the master's negligence." The concurring
judges, however, decided that the company's negli-
gence was not responsible, and that "the deceased of
his own free will determined to cope with these risks
and hazards. ... In this, his own voluntary con-
duct, is found the intervening, proximate, and respon-
sible cause of his injury." (in Federal Reporter,
298.)

Even when the employer assures the workman of
the safety of a machine, the risk is still, according to

104

OUR INTERPRETERS OF LAW

many decisions, the workman's. The Circuit Court
of Shiawassee County, Michigan, refused to award
damages to a workman for injuries sustained from
a defective machine which he was operating for his
employer. The case went to the Supreme Court on
a writ of error, and on December 15, 1900, that court
affirmed the previous judgment. It had been shown
that the plaintiff warned his employer of the danger
of the machine, and that the employer gave assurances
to the contrary. Nevertheless, in the words of Judge
Moon (Moore ?), " one cannot continue to operate
a machine which he knows is dangerous simply upon
the assurance of his employer that it is not, if he has
just as much knowledge of the danger arising from
the operation of the machine as the principal has
[without assuming the risk]." (82 N. W. Reporter,

I797-)

The decision, read by Judge McLennan, in the
recent case of Rice vs. the Eureka Paper Company
(76 App. Div. 336) before the Fourth Appellate
Division of New York State, would seem to indicate
that the burden of risk is not to be shifted from the
workman even when his employer acknowledges a
defect in machinery and promises to remedy it.
There is some doubt, however, if such a decision,
though valid in many States, will stand in the State
where it was given; for the Court of Appeals has
several times decided that liability follows from an
acknowledgment of defective machinery. On the
other hand, this highest court of New York State
has won the distinction of carrying the doctrine of
assumption of risk to an extreme degree. The case

105

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

of Gabrielson vs. Waydell (135 N. Y. i) involved
the question of the liability of the owners of a mari-
time vessel for injuries suffered by a sailor in their
employ. The captain of the vessel had committed a
confessedly unprovoked and particularly brutal assault
upon the sailor, who had subsequently sued the owner
for damages. The court decided that the sailor had
no redress ; that " the misconduct of the captain was
a risk assumed by the seaman, for the consequences
of which the owners are not responsible."

A fact more curious yet to the unlegal mind is the
judicial contention, instanced in the previous chapter,
that statutory provisions for the safeguarding of ma-
chinery may be waived by the workman. Evidently
his burden of risk, like the Hindu's caste, is born
with him, and cannot be laid aside or escaped. The
case of the E. S. Higgins Carpet Company vs.
O'Keefe (79 Federal Reporter, 900) is an illustration.
Damages for an injury received from an unguarded
machine had been given a fifteen-year-old boy in the
United States Circuit Court for the Southern District
of New York. The United States Circuit Court of
Appeals for the Second Circuit, however, reversed the
judgment. The plaintiff was a minor, but this fact
was held to have no bearing. "We think the cir-
cumstance that he was a minor of no importance,"
read the decision of Judge Wallace. "The rules
which govern actions for negligence in the case of
children of tender years do not apply to minors who
have attained years of discretion." The New York
factory act required guards for this particular kind
of machine. But that, also, was immaterial. " The

1 06

OUR INTERPRETERS OF LAW

provisions of the statute . . . requiring cogs to be
properly guarded, have no application to the case,
except as regards the question of the negligence of
the defendant. As construed by the highest courts
of the State, the statute does not impose any liability
upon an employer for injuries received by a minor in
his service in consequence of the fault of the employee,
or arising from the obvious risks of the service he
has undertaken to perform." To clinch the matter,
Judge Wallace cited the then recent case of Graves
vs. Brewer before the Fourth Appellate Division of
New York State, wherein the court held that " the
liability of the employer was not changed by reason
of the factory act requiring cog-wheels to be covered,
because such protection could be waived and was
waived by a person accepting employment upon the
machine with the cogs in an unguarded condition, as
the danger was apparent, and one of the obvious risks
of the employment." The case of Knisley vs. Pratt
(148 N. Y. 372) before the New York Court of Ap-
peals was decided in the same way, and also the case
of White vs. Witteman Lithographic Company. In
the latter case the plaintiff was a child of fourteen.

Such decisions are common in more States than
one. Another case which may prove of some interest
to the lay mind is that of Gillen vs. the Patten and
Sherman Railroad Company (44 Atlantic Reporter,
361). The plaintiff, while uncoupling cars, had
his foot crushed in an unfilled frog, and had been
awarded damages. A motion for a new trial was
argued before the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine,
and was granted. The decision, delivered by Judge

107

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

Lucilius A. Emery, acknowledged the existence of a
statute (chapter 216 of 1889) requiring the filling or
blocking of guard rails or frogs on all railways before
January I, 1890. It held, however, that such filling
and blocking was not immediately mandatory upon
a railroad constructed after that date. " Such com-
pany is entitled to a reasonable time for compliance
with that statute." It was at a crossing of such a
railway that the trainman lost his foot. He had no
right to assume that the rails were blocked, merely
because a statute said they should be. The brake-
man, therefore, assumed the risk, and he also fur-
nished contributory negligence, since " to move about
over frogs and switches while coupling and uncoup-
ling cars, even in moving trains, without taking any
thought of the frogs and guard rails, or as to where
he may be stepping, is negligence on his part con-
tributing to the catching his foot in them."

When the doctrine of assumption of risk is inappli-
cable, when personal negligence cannot be shown, and
when there has been no waiving of statutory provi-
sions by the workman, there is yet, in judicial eyes,
one last resort for the defendant company — the com-
mon-law plea of negligence on the part of a fellow-
workman. There is some diversity of opinion among
eminent judges as to who are strictly fellow-servants.
"The courts of the majority of the States hold, how-
ever," writes Mr. Stephen D. Fessenden, in the Bul-
letin of the Department of Labor for November,
1900, "that the mere difference in grades of employ-
ment, or in authority, with respect to each other, does
not remove them from the class of fellow-servants as

1 08

OUR INTERPRETERS OF LAW

regards the liability of the employer for injuries to
the one caused by the negligence of the other." Thus
it has happened that a workman acting in the capac-
ity of agent for his employer, and ordering other
workmen to do tasks at which injuries have resulted,
has been held to be a fellow-servant — a judgment
relieving his employer of liability. To the lay mind
it would seem that workmen in different departments
could hardly be classed as fellow-servants ; and the
United States Supreme Court has rendered a decision
which makes possible, under certain circumstances,
such a discrimination. Since then, however, the
Federal courts have suffered a reaction on the ques-
tion, and current decisions tend the other way.

A case before a State tribunal — the Supreme Court
of Georgia (35 Southeastern Reporter, 365) — illus-
trates the possibilities which lie in this doctrine. A
lineman, while repairing a wire for the Brush Electric
Light and Power Company, at Savannah, Ga., was
killed through the act of the engineer in turning
on the current. The city court of Savannah gave
damages to his widow. The case was taken to the
State Supreme Court, and decision rendered March
3, 1900. The counsel for the plaintiff contended
that the fellow-servant doctrine could not apply, on
account of the lineman and engineer working in
different departments, " so that there was no oppor-
tunity for the exertion of a mutual influence upon
each other's carefulness." The court, however, re-
versed the verdict.

The disparity of opinion between inferior judges
and superior judges in cases of this kind is remark-

109

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

able. The monthly Bulletins of the Department of
Labor give a fairly excellent summary of court
decisions on labor questions. He who reads them
will find the expression, "judgment of the lower
court reversed," recurring with a rather painful
iteration ; unless, indeed, the decision of the lower
court has rebuked the plaintiff, when the expression,
"judgment of the lower court affirmed," is usually
found. Mr. George W. Alger, in an article on
"The Courts and Factory Legislation," in the
American Journal of Sociology for November, 1900,
gives the following careful and temperately worded
summary of recent reversals in employers' liability
cases in New York State : —

" The percentage of reversals on appeal in master-
and-servant cases of this kind, when the verdict of
the juries in the courts below had been in plaintiff's
favor, is perhaps larger than in any other branch of
litigation. In New York, for example, an examina-
tion of twenty volumes of the Court of Appeals
reports (126 N. Y. -156 N. Y.) shows written opin-
ions in thirty-seven such cases. Of these: (i) in
three cases the juries in the lower court had found
for defendant, and plaintiff was the appellant; (2)
in four cases the court below had dismissed plaintiff's
case as insufficient, without requiring defendant to
introduce any testimony; (3) in thirty cases the
juries below had found for plaintiff with substantial
damages. The Court of Appeals in class (i) af-
firmed all of the cases where plaintiff was defeated
below. In class (2) it reversed the four cases where
plaintiff had been summarily non-suited and sent

OUR INTERPRETERS OF LAW

the cases back to trial courts to hear defendant's
testimony: a partial victory at most for plaintiff.
In class (3), where plaintiff had actually received a
verdict, of the thirty cases twenty-eight were reversed.
These statistics are interesting as showing how com-
plete is the lack of harmony between the courts, at
least in New York, and the moral sense of the
people by whom the courts were created, in regard
to these cases. Twice in thirty times do the opin-
ions of the learned judges of New York's highest
court coincide with the opinions of juries of citizens
as to the requirements of justice."

The tendency, which is most clearly indicated by
the mass of decisions in cases demanding damages
for injuries or death, is the growing disposition to
make property paramount and life subordinate. It
is a common practice to set aside verdicts of damages
on the score that they are excessive. It is no less a
common practice to instruct the jury to decide for
the defendant in order to rebuke litigation. The
language of the leading work on one phase of this
subject — Shearman and Redfield's "A Treatise on
the Law of Negligence " — sums up the matter in a
few words : —

" It has become quite common for judges to state
as the ground of decisions the necessity of restrict-
ing litigation. Reduced to plain English, this means
the necessity of compelling the great majority of men
and women to submit to injustice in order to relieve
judges from the labor of awarding justice. . . . The
stubborn resistance of business corporations, common
carriers, and mill-owners, to the enforcement of the

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

most moderate laws for the protection of human
beings from injury, and their utter failure to provide
such protection of their own accord, ought to satisfy
any impartial judge that true justice demands a con-
stant expansion of the law in the direction of in-
creased responsibility for negligence."

" Law," wrote Sir Edward Coke, " is the perfection
of reason." This may be true ; but, if so, it tends to
throw mankind over to the position of the Catholics,
that the reason itself needs considerable perfecting.
This is not only the disposition of the lay mind, but,
evidently, also of the supreme judicial mind; for a
large part of the higher judicial activity during recent
years has been expended in declaring null and void
laws passed by two houses of the people's representa-
tives and signed by an elected Governor or President.
Mr. Stimson, in his summary of labor legislation for
the years 1887-97, found that only 114 out of the
1639 laws passed had been declared unconstitutional.
But these 114 comprised examples from 19 out of the
35 classes of legislation passed, and must therefore
have reacted upon a very considerable number of the
remainder. It is a coincidence which has been noted
before, and need not be specially insisted upon here,
that the overwhelming majority of laws which fail to
reach the constitutional standards set by our judges
are those intended to safeguard the interests of the
industrially subordinate and to set some limitation to
the powers of the industrially mighty.

112

OUR INTERPRETERS OF LAW

The judicial mind, however, affects to know no
difference between high and low, between weak and
strong; and thus its decisions, ignoring actual con-
ditions, tend more and more to strengthen the powers
of one class and to weaken the powers of another.
" Liberty " is the shibboleth ; the citizen must be free
to act as he wills. Somewhat curiously, though,
liberty of speech, press, and assemblage is not so
strenuously insisted upon ; and, indeed, by injunctions
and other judicial determinations is at times rather
severely limited : the miners of West Virginia have
been recently enjoined from holding meetings on their
own grounds. But economic liberty — the liberty of
the dependent classes to do acts which, in the nature
of things, they cannot possibly do — is held for a
sacred principle. The doctrine of the extension of
the State's police power, limiting the foregoing doc-
trine, has gained some headway since the Utah deci-
sion confirmed a State's right to limit the hours of
work for men in dangerous trades ; but the determi-
nation of how far it is to be applied rests largely with
the forty-eight State and Territorial courts ; and it is
a safe guess that it will meet with stiff resistance if
incarnated in further "advanced" legislation.

" No discrimination," which in effect means much
discrimination, follows the judicial shibboleth of
" liberty." Especially zealous for the protection of
liberty and keenly watchful of proposed discrimina-
tion is that eminent tribunal, the Supreme Court of
Illinois. Some six years ago it discovered that the
statute regulating the hours of women workers in the
factories contravened the Federal and State constitu-
i 113

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

tional guarantees of " life, liberty, and property." A
woman's labor was her property, and any limitation
of it was a deprivation " without due process of law."
On December 20, 1900, it fell to the lot of this tribu-
nal to pass upon two labor laws, — to the lay mind
entirely different in principle, — and, by a somewhat
difficult struggling along parallel lines of argument,
triumphantly to reach conclusions adverse to both of
them. One was the Chicago ordinance requiring
union labor and an eight-hour day on all public work
contracted for ; the other the State statute prohibiting
discharge of an employee for belonging to a labor
union. Regarding the ordinance, the union require-
ment, in the words of Associate Justice Magruder,
" amounts to a discrimination between different
classes of citizens." It is therefore void, and the
eight-hour provision is also void, because it " infringes
upon the freedom of contract, to which every citizen
is entitled under the law. . . . Any statute provid-
ing that the employer and laborer may not agree with
each other as to what time shall constitute a day's
work is an invalid act." (58 Northeastern Reporter,
985.)

Without venturing to discuss this ruling, one may
at least compare it with the ruling on the State statute.
The latter was a law intended to prevent discrimina-
tion against union men. But, curiously to the unlegal
mind, it is discovered to be discrimination m favor of
the union man. " The act certainly does grant to that
class of laborers who belong to union labor organiza-
tions a special privilege." (58 Northeastern Reporter,
1007.) The act was also found to " contravene those

114

OUR INTERPRETERS OF LAW

provisions of the State and Federal constitutions
which guarantee that no person shall be deprived of
* life, liberty, or property without due process of law.' '
"That strain again," as Orsino, in " Twelfth Night,"
exclaims. It has not, however, a "dying fall," for it
has been taken up and echoed in other quarters since.

The liberty of the employer to pay his employees
in brass checks or store orders was affirmed by the
Kansas Supreme Court on December 9, 1896, and
the act requiring payment in lawful money was de-
clared invalid. " To say that a free citizen can con-
tract for or agree to receive in return for his labor
one kind of property only, and that which represents
the smallest part of the aggregate wealth of the
country, is a clear restriction of the right to bargain
and trade, a suppression of individual effort, a denial
of inalienable rights." Anti- truck acts were also de-
clared unconstitutional by the courts of Pennsylvania,
Ohio, Illinois, and West Virginia. The Kentucky
Supreme Court, however, nine months after the
Kansas decision, found that liberty and the compul-
sory payment of wages in lawful money were compati-
ble, so that the question is at least open. Decisions
like that of the Kansas court, and the somewhat simi-
lar decisions rendered in Pennsylvania, Illinois, and
Tennessee, of course fasten the laborer to the com-
pany store ; but of this the courts usually take no
cognizance. Actual liberty may be restrained, but
theoretical liberty must not be tampered with.

Weekly payment laws are found to conflict with
liberty in Pennsylvania, Illinois, Missouri, West Vir-
ginia, and Indiana. Moreover, the liberty of a legis-

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

lature to determine that prevailing wages shall be
paid to employees of city and State must not be con-
fused by the lay mind with the liberty of the wage-
earner to work under what conditions he must. For
the former is clearly unconstitutional, as decided in
New York by the Court of Appeals in February,
1901. " The effect of this statute [the Prevailing
Rate of Wages act]," reads the decision of Judge
Denis O'Brien, "was to make the city [of New
York] a trustee or instrument for the enforcement
of the law in the interests of the persons for whose
benefit it was enacted, and thus the powers and
functions of the municipality are employed for pur-
poses foreign to those for which they were created
and exist under the Constitution." The eight-hour
laws passed in several of the States have generally
suffered the Illinois fate, although Kansas proved an
exception. Regulation of the working hours of women
was nullified not only in Illinois, but in Nebraska and
California. The police-power doctrine, as voiced in
the Utah decision, may justify a limitation of the
working day in dangerous trades, but otherwise such
a limitation appears to be an infringement of the
right of contract, or a deprivation of " property "
without "due process of law." Even the National
Eight-hour law of 1868, while not strictly unconstitu-
tional, is held to be merely advisory. "We regard
the statute," says the Supreme Court (94 U. S. 404),
" chiefly as in the nature of a direction from the
principal to his agent that eight hours is deemed to
be a proper length of time for a day's labor, and that
his contract shall be based upon that theory."

116

OUR INTERPRETERS OF LAW

Anti-trust laws may be quite as lacking in consti-
tutional decorum as are eight-hour and prevailing-
wages laws ; and the judiciary reserves to itself the
right to determine what are the standards. The
Texas Anti-trust law of 1889, for instance, overleapt
judicial sanction. " It is not every restriction of
competition or trade," reads the decision of District
Judge Charles Swayne (February 22, 1897), "that is
illegal or against public policy, or that will justify
police regulation, but only such as are unwarrantable
or oppressive; and a State statute which prohibits
combinations formed for the purpose of reasonably
restricting competition violates the rights of contracts
guaranteed by the Federal Constitution." (79 Federal
Reporter, 627.) Another legislature, with this lesson
before it, will know better where to set bounds to its
attempt at interference.

One cannot pass this phase of the general subject
without recurring to the pertinent advice of the wise
Sir Francis Bacon. "Judges," he wrote in his essay,
" Of Judicature," " ought to remember that their office
is jus dicere, and not jus dare, to interpret law, and
not to make law. . . . Judges ought to be more
learned than witty, more reverend than plausible,
and more advised than confident. ... A judge
ought to prepare his way to a just sentence, as God
useth to prepare his way, by raising valleys and
taking down hills ; so when there appeareth on either
side a high hand, . . . cunning advantages taken,
combination, power, great counsel, then is the virtue
of a judge seen to make inequality equal; that he
may paint his judgment as upon an even ground."

117

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

Wise counsel ! though it seems to have lacked
something in observance two hundred and seventy-
five years ago, and may be suspected, even yet, of
not always and everywhere reaching entire fulfil-
ment.

Ill

We have the testimony of no less eminent an
authority than United States District Judge John J.
Jackson, of the Northern District of West Virginia,
that in all his experience on the bench he could not
recall a single occasion when any court, either Federal
or State, ever abused the writ of injunction in strike
questions. It is a definite and authoritative pro-
nouncement ; and the restrained and careful language
accompanying it, wherein the officials of labor unions
are described as "a professional set of agitators," and
" vampires that fatten on the honest labor of the coal
miners," certainly proves that it cannot be an ex parte
statement. Yet, for all that, there is a widely dif-
fused sentiment that the writ of injunction has occa-
sionally been abused in strike questions. In the same
locality, at about the same time, an injunction issued
by United States District Judge B. F. Keller, of the
Southern District of West Virginia, declared, among
a multitude of other prohibitions, that the strikers
" are further inhibited, enjoined, and restrained from
assembling in camp or otherwise," even on grounds
leased by them for their meetings.

A pamphlet, prepared by five members of the
New York Bar and issued by the Social Reform
Club, of New York City, in the summer of 1900,

118

OUR INTERPRETERS OF LAW

gives the substance of a number of injunctions that
have been issued against striking workmen. " In the
case of the Sun Printing and Publishing Company
vs. Delaney and others in December (1899)," savs
the pamphlet : —

" The Supreme Court of New York, among other
things, enjoined the defendants from the exercise of
their right to give the public their side of the contro-
versy with the Sun as an argument against advertis-
ing in a paper which they claimed had treated them
unjustly; it also forbade them from attempting to
persuade newsdealers from selling the paper; and
finally wound up with a sweeping restraint ' from in
any other manner or by any other means interfering
with the property, property rights, or business of the
plaintiff.' It should be added that, on appeal, the
Appellate Division struck out these commands ; but
they were so plainly subversive of fundamental rights
that it is difficult to see how they could have been
granted in the first instance.

"In still another case last year — The Wheeling
Railway Company vs. John Smith and others (so
runs the title of the action without naming the
others) — in the United States Circuit Court, West
Virginia, two men not parties to the action, nor found
to be agents of ' John Smith and others,' whoever
they may have been, were punished for contempt of
court, for, among other things, ' reviling ' and * curs-
ing ' the court ? not at all, but for ' reviling ' and
'cursing' employees of the railroad company. If
these men had not actually served out an imprison-
ment in jail for thirty days as a punishment for con-

119

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

tempt of corporation, it might be thought that your
committee had taken this example from opera bouffe.
The legality of this punishment was never passed on
by the Supreme Court, for the reason, as your com-
mittee understand, that the parties were unable to
bear the expense of taking it there, and so served
their term in jail.

" During the final drafting of our report a tempo-
rary injunction has been granted by a Justice of the
Supreme Court in New York City. . . . This in-
junction forbids the defendants [certain members
of the Cigar Makers' International Union] even from
approaching their former employers for the laudable
purpose of reaching an amicable result; it forbids
them from making their case known to the public
if the tendency of that is to vex the plaintiffs or
make them uneasy; it forbids them from trying in
a perfectly peaceable way in any place in the city,
even in the privacy of a man's own home, to persuade
a new employee that justice is on their side, and that
he ought to sympathize with them sufficiently not to
work for unjust employers; and, finally, it forbids
the union from paying money to the strikers to sup-
port their families during the strike."

Such instances, as the pamphlet states, can be
multiplied. Perhaps they do not wholly controvert
Judge Jackson's declaration. But, at least, they
illustrate an unbridgeable disparity between the defi-
nitions of justice held on the one hand by our inter-
preters of law, and on the other by the overwhelming
majority of the citizenship. That disparity has been
great in all recent times; but weekly and daily it

1 20

OUR INTERPRETERS OF LAW

grows greater. The stronger inclination of the ju-
diciary to make property the paramount interest is
everywhere observed; and the magnates, with an
exultant recognition of the fact, make haste to enjoy
the fruits of the new dispensation.

From judgeship to attorney ship of a great corpora-
tion has recently become a common promotion. The
number of ex-judges who have been thus translated
to higher sees is notable : one finds or hears of them
in many places. Republics may be ungrateful, as
the adage runs, but not so the magnates. The grati-
tude of the latter may not be wholly platonic; it
includes, no doubt, a lively sense of favors to come.
But whether prospective or retrospective, it expresses
itself in deeds of recompense, and that is the main
test. It is a discriminating gratitude, moreover.
Keenly enough, it recognizes the comparative value
of service. Other servitors of the magnates may
toil faithfully, and receive but moderate reward.
The moulders of opinion, such, for instance, as the
newspaper men, may ask for preferment, and be
met by the impatient retort of Richard III to Buck-
ingham, " I am not in the giving vein to-day." But
for one who can interpret the law as it should be
interpreted, there are glory and riches to be had for
the asking.

121

CHAPTER VII
OUR MOULDERS OF OPINION

" THERE never was a time," says Justice Brewer,
in the concluding lecture of a series recently delivered
by him at Yale University, " when public opinion was
more potent." Possibly the saying is true ; but what-
ever force it may have lies in the application. Public
opinion may make for a general passivity — an acqui-
escence in things as they are — quite as much as for
a general strenuousness. Nowhere, for instance,
among civilized peoples, is public opinion more power-
ful than in a quiet and isolated community, held fast
to certain habitual modes of speech and action. Only
a brave man, or a desperate woman, so environed,
would dare defy the tribal customs.

Public opinion in these United States may be more
potent than ever before, but the personal attitude
which it supports and encourages becomes more and
more one of acquiescence in the existing regime. A
legislative reaction and a judicial reaction are mani-
fested ; and a growing irritation is expressed, as from
time to time those rude disturbers of the public peace,
the social reformers, come forward with plans for
curing imputed evils. Social and political quietism
becomes our everyday philosophy. An " air of con-
tentment and enthusiastic cheerfulness . . . charac-

122

OUR MOULDERS OF OPINION

terizes our society," writes Professor William G.
Sumner, of Yale, in a recent number of the Inde-
pendent ; and though the judgment might be
somewhat more accurately worded, he is not far
wrong. A keen-eyed observer from Italy, — Profes-
sor Angelo Mosso, of Turin, — who visited us a few
years ago, gives somewhat similar testimony. The
fact astonishes him, as he confesses, since he saw
much of political and industrial evil which he could
not comprehend a democracy enduring; yet for all
that the evidence was convincing.

Among the causes making for this acquiescence in
existing social conditions, there are three which may
be considered here. The first is the one which so
strongly impressed Professor Mosso. It is the rage
for individual exploitation. The imaginations of
most men are fired by the spectacle of the few
achieving great fortunes ; each believes that a like
fortune lies somewhere within his own reach, and
with blind fatuity he tolerates conditions which he
instinctively feels to be inequitable, simply because
he expects himself to master them. " I believe,"
writes Professor Mosso, " that the desire to become
wealthy is so strong and powerful in every American
that, in order to reserve the opportunity of realizing
such desire, Americans willingly submit to the con-
tinuance of laws which allow such accumulations."
It is the petty gambler's faith, the conviction that,
though everything be against him, he will somehow

123

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

" beat the game." And just as the petty gambler's
faith is fostered by the runners and "cappers" for
faro, policy, roulette, and keno, so the faith of the
industrial underling is fostered by a tremendous
trumpeting of the ways and means to worldly " suc-
cess." The preaching of "success" has become, in
these last five years, a distinct profession, honored
and well recompensed.

A second cause of the prevailing acquiescence in
the present regime applies more particularly to social
reformers, and to those who, while not actively en-
listed as " come-outers," do yet sympathize with the
activities of their more aggressive brethren. It is a
feeling, born of years of experience in promoting
some collective good, of the hopelessness of achieve-
ment. Opposed at all points, frustrated at many,
there comes a time, sooner or later, when all but the
most resolute reformers are forced to admit that little
or nothing can be done. Many thereupon fall back
into the ranks of the do-nothings and the care-noth-
ings; while others, in whom the fire of purpose is
not entirely quenched, reluctantly exchange their
radical and comprehensive plans of social changes for
more narrow and immediate purposes, — the giving of
small charities, the doing of near-at-hand services,
and the occasional support of a particular public
measure.

A third, and perhaps the most important, cause is
the continual output from pulpit, sanctum, forum,
and college chair, of our professional moulders of

124

OUR MOULDERS OF OPINION

opinion. Now not all of this output, it is freely con-
ceded, makes for acquiescence; but the overwhelm-
ing mass of it unquestionably does. From these
instructors of the people we learn that conditions,
while not perfect, either are reasonably near to per-
fection, or, if evil, are not to be corrected except by
individual regeneration. We learn of the irrationality
or the moral obliquity of discontent ; the viciousness
or fanaticism of impertinent persons who seek to
change things ; the virtues of obedience ; the obliga-
tion of toil (specifically directed to those who are
doing most of the world's work, for the profit of
others), and of the worth, benevolence, and indis-
pensability of our magnates.

The denunciation of discontent becomes more com-
mon and more emphatic. A plentiful crop of instances
is always forthcoming to any one who cares to look for
them. The generation of Rousseau and the following
generation of Jefferson set high hopes for mankind
on the faculty of discontent. The past generation,
compromising between theology and evolution, found
in discontent a perpetual factor making for the crea-
tion of a better environment. But our present reaction
takes us back to the days of the Stuarts. The mag-
nificent invectives of Dryden, voiced in that —

" full resounding line,
The long majestic march and energy divine,"

against the sedition and discontent frequently mani-
fested during the reign of Charles II, might serve
for a thousand texts for present-day sermons, lectures,
and editorials. The thought, common these last hun-

125

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

dred years, that discontent is usually the result of
privation, wrong, or oppression, is given over ; and
our modern moulders of opinion revert to the notion
that it is fostered by ease and comfort.

" To what would he on quail and pheasant swell
That even on tripe and carrion could rebel ? "

asks " Glorious John " in satirizing his rival Shadwell.
Tripe and carrion did not form the usual nourishment
for rebellion. We find the same idea constantly echoed
in very recent days ; and the demands of organized
workmen for better pay are almost invariably regarded
in certain intellectual circles as evidences, not of need,
but of the pride and rebelliousness engendered by an
already attained competency.

Honors are even between churchmen and lay publi-
cists, when it comes to the denunciation of discontent.
The pulpit, the stump, the college chair, and the
editorial sanctum are alike busied with its condemna-
tion. Perhaps a typical protagonist in the work was
the late E. L. Godkin. The thought recurs again
and again in his writings. " I must frankly say," he
avers in his essay, " Social Classes in the Republic,"
"that I know of no more mischievous person than
the man who, in free America, seeks to spread among
them [the workers] the idea that they are wronged
and kept down by somebody ; that somebody is to
blame because they are not better lodged, better
dressed, better educated, and have not easier access
to balls, concerts, or dinner parties." Whereupon, to
make clear his contention, he tells of the following
pathetic little episode : —

126

OUR MOULDERS OF OPINION

" Two years ago I was in one of the University
Settlements in New York, and was walking through
the rooms of the society with one of the members.
They were plain and neat and suitable, and he ex-
plained to me that the purpose in furnishing and
fitting them up was to show the workingmen the
kind of rooms they ought to have 'if justice were
done.' To tell this to a workingman, without telling
him in what the injustice consisted and who worked
it if he had not such rooms, was, I held, to be most
mischievous."

Even President Roosevelt, doubtless impressed by
the modern reiteration of the notion, felt called upon,
in his Providence speech (August 23d), to rebuke
discontent, and incidentally to identify it with envy.
" Not only do the wicked flourish," he says, " when
the times are such that most men flourish, but what
is worse, the spirit of envy and jealousy and hatred
springs up in the breasts of those who, though they
may be doing fairly well themselves, yet see others,
who are no more deserving, doing far better."

Education, in the modern view, is largely responsi-
ble for discontent, and should be restricted. Judge
Simeon A. Baldwin, of the Connecticut Supreme
Court, and lecturer in the Yale Law School, is quite
certain upon this point. His " signed editorial," in
the April gth issue of a New York newspaper
published by the Yale lecturer on journalism, ex-
presses a view which is coming to be widely held.
Our young men, he notes with great complacency,
are obliged to leave school early, in order to go to
work; and he thereupon urges that young women

127

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

also should clip their education at an early age.
"Girls would make better wives and mothers and
housekeepers," he writes, " if they finished school at
from fourteen to sixteen years of age. As it is, they
obtain a smattering of many studies, which in my
opinion cannot do them much good. They are
possessed by a spirit of unrest to-day, and develop
ambitions not compatible with the happiest homes."

Professor Harry Thurston Peck expresses the
modern view more succinctly. Professor Peck, it
may be stated for the benefit of the unenlightened, is
an instructor of Latin in Columbia University. No
pent-up Utica, however, contracts his powers ; he has
courageously sallied forth from his particular domain
and has taken all knowledge for his province. Over
this province he ranges with unconstrained freedom,
noting what he will, and, with something of the
" large utterance of the early gods," making known
to a waiting world his impressions and beliefs. What
a great lexicographer said of an amiable poet may be
repeated in present praise : He touches nothing that
he does not adorn. Some intellectual limitations it
is possible he may have ; but as a reflector of certain
current views obtaining in high places he is probably
without a peer. In his article, " Some Phases of
American Education," in the Cosmopolitan magazine
a few years ago, he put the matter in this way : —

" Linked closely with many other very serious edu-
cational mistakes, and from many points of view by
far the most profoundly serious of them all, is that
curious fancy, which is almost universal among our
people, that education in itself and for all human

128

OUR MOULDERS OF OPINION

beings is a good and thoroughly desirable possession.
. . . There is probably in our whole system to-day no
principle so fundamentally untrue as this, and there is
certainly none that is fraught with so much social
and political peril for the future. For education
means ambition, and ambition means discontent."

But, as Shakespeare's Fluellen remarks, "the
phrase is a little variations." All discontent is not
the same, and that which stirs in the bosom of Pro-
fessor Peck must be carefully discriminated from the
sort nurtured by plain John Smith. " Nothing so
dainty sweet as lovely melancholy," sang Sir John
Fletcher; but what is meet for an Elizabethan poet
or a present-day philosopher may be most unmeet for
a common plebeian. " Now discontent," continues
this pharos of the unenlightened, " is in itself a divine
thing. When it springs up in a strong, creative in-
tellect, capable of translating it into actual achieve-
ment, it is the mother of all progress ; but when it
germinates in a limited and feeble brain, it is the
mother of unhappiness alone."

Dr. Arthur Twining Hadley, president of Yale
University, also has doubts. His recent book, " The
Education of the American Citizen," might be sup-
posed, from its title, to be a plea for the popular dif-
fusion of knowledge. Such it is, in fact, only the
author draws the line at " sociology and politics and
civics and finance." " When the plea is urged, as it
so often is," he writes, "that they constitute a nec-
essary and valuable training for citizenship, we are
justified in making a distinct protest. Except within
the narrowest limits, they do harm rather than good.
K 129

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

As ordinarily taught, . . . they tend to prepare the
minds of the next generation to look to superficial
remedies for political evils, instead of seeing that the
only true remedy lies in the creation of a sound pub-
lic sentiment."

The term, " superficial remedies for political evils,"
means, in plain words, social legislation; and it
brings up a second matter upon which our moulders
of opinion have made a considerable approach to
unanimity. We hear legislation flouted on all sides,
and appeals made for individual regeneration. The
matter-of-fact persons who hold that sixty years of
factory acts have had more to do with establishing
humane conditions in certain quarters of the planet
than nineteen hundred years of hortatory appeals to
the individual man, are dismissed with a smile of con-
tempt; and the declaration is made that most legislation
is mischievous, and that nothing but character counts.
Mr. Godkin was "far from denying that legislation
and political changes have been the direct means of
great good," though he held that " every good change
in legislation or in government has been preceded
or brought about by an increase of intelligence, of
reasonableness, or of brotherly kindness on the part
of the people at large." A conclusion, to say the
least, not overfreighted with historical learning, since
many and perhaps most reformatory laws have been
passed by an earnest minority against the active oppo-
sition of many, and despite the stolid passivity of
most, and what mankind has heretofore called social
progress has been largely due to the reaction of such
laws and like institutions upon individual character.

130

OUR MOULDERS OF OPINION

President Hadley differs somewhat from Mr. God-
kin. Too much stress, he believes, is laid upon the
mechanism of government and of industry, and too
little upon the force by which this mechanism is kept
at work.

" Not by the axioms of metaphysics on the one
hand, nor by the machinery of legislation on the
other," he writes, "can we deal with the questions
which vex human society. . . . Conscious of its
honesty of purpose, it [democracy] is impatient of
opposition, and contemptuous of difficulties, however
real. It undertakes a vast amount of regulation of
economic and social life in fields where two genera-
tions ago a free government would scarce have dared
to enter. In these new regulations there are many
instances of failure, and relatively few of success.
We have had much infringement of personal lib-
erty, with little or no corresponding benefit to the
community."

In Justice Brewer's recent volume of Yale lectures,
also, there is much regard for character, and much
even for associated work in bettering the life of the
nation. But as to legislation as a means of achieving
this betterment, there is a cautious silence. There
is the declaration that each man in free America is
a ruler — glad tidings to the persons ignorant
thereof. There are some original lines, —

" The moulds of fate
That shape the State
And make or mar the commonweal,"

which, though somewhat reminiscent of the good-
natured Bottom's lines, —

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

" And Phibbus1 car
Shall shine from far
And make and mar
The foolish fates/'

do yet body forth the noble summation : —

" The crowning fact,
The kingliest act
Of Freedom is the Freeman's vote ! "

But though the freeman's vote is a kingly preroga-
tive, there is no suggestion that he shall use it in
initiating or passing upon legislation for the collec-
tive good. Rather the plea is for obedience; and
the warning is of those violators of the public peace,
the labor organizations.

So, too, Mr. Stimson. "The unexpected weak-
ness of democratic government," he writes, "is
its belief that statutes can amend both nature and
human nature." And he rejoices that the judiciary,
convinced, no doubt, that neither human nature nor
its manifestations can be amended by statutes, have
actively intervened by declaring many laws uncon-
stitutional. He finds, moreover, that the general
principle which has caused the adverse action of the
courts, is that these statutes have been " restrictive
of private liberty, of the right of a free citizen to use
his own property, and his own personal powers in
such a way as he will, if so be that he do not injure
others." A perspicuous and conclusive judgment,
no doubt, considering that the very point at issue is
the matter of injury to others. He is not satisfied
with condemning legislation, moreover, but proceeds

132

OUR MOULDERS OF OPINION

further to a gentle remonstrance with the classes of
persons who have urged certain regulative laws.
Labor leaders, he discovers, distrust experience, and
Socialists detest lucidity — a brace of acute judg-
ments in the face of the fact that the thing actually
rated highest in trade-union circles is experience, and
that whatever the defects of Socialists or of their
system may be, the signal contributions of the best
Socialist writers to the study of political economy
have been lucidity of thought and definiteness of
expression.

So, too, Professor Sumner, Professor Walter A.
Wyckoff, the entertaining author of "The Workers,"
and a host of other instructors of the public, the
mere roster of whose names would require several
pages of fine print. Of the only two safeguards of
the dependent classes against complete exploitation
— social legislation and the labor society — our
moulders of opinion would seem to have taken the
job of demolishing the former, leaving to the mag-
nates themselves the task of attending to the latter.

With many if not most of these publicists the criti-
cism is delivered not only at protective laws, but at
the force behind them — democracy. "Every age,"
writes Professor Sumner, " is befooled by the notions
which are in fashion in it. Our age is befooled by
' democracy.' We hear arguments about the industrial
organization which are deductions from democratic
dogmas, or which appeal to prejudice by using analo-
gies drawn from democracy to affect sentiment about
industrial relations." Many of our moulders of opinion
elaborate the argument often made in the writings of

133

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

our literary magnates, that only men who are them-
selves possessed of property should have any voice in
the disposition of wealth or the regulation of property
rights. To justify this view recourse is had to several
recently imported dogmas, fashioned by Mr. W. H.
Mallock, author of " Aristocracy and Evolution." All
increase of wealth, all advance in knowledge and
virtue, contends Mr. Mallock, come from an aristocracy

— a word which he defines as meaning the " excep-
tionally gifted and efficient minority, no matter what
the position in which its members may have been
born, or what the sphere of social progress in which
their efficiency shows itself." Therefore, since the
efficient have produced everything above the maximum
which the ignorant and unskilled workman can pro-
duce without this higher aid, it follows that the effi-
cient should be left in untroubled possession of their
holdings. The large assumption among others in
Mr. Mallock's argument — that those who efficiently
sow and those who richly reap are the same persons

— need not concern us here. It is sufficient to point
out that his argument has been eagerly taken up by
a number of our own moulders of opinion, fostered and
even developed to further conclusions.

Professor Peck, for instance, rather heroically im-
proving on the spirit, and not infrequently following
the text, of Mr. Mallock, puts the matter in this
way : —

" Every really great thing that has been accom-
plished in the history of man has been accomplished
by an aristocracy. It may have called itself a sacer-
dotal aristocracy, or a military aristocracy, or an aris-

134

OUR MOULDERS OF OPINION

tocracy based on birth and blood, yet these distinctions
were but superficial; for in reality it always meant
one thing alone — the community of interest and
effort in those whose intellectual force and innate
gift of government enabled them to dominate and
control the destinies of States, driving in harness the
hewers of wood and drawers of water who constitute
the vast majority of the human race, and whose hap-
piness is greater and whose welfare is more thoroughly
conserved when governed than when governing."

The argument that the gifted produce all, and the
assumption that the wealthy and the gifted are the
same persons lead up to the fervid praise of inequality
of condition which in recent years is so often heard.
Our literary magnates began the strain, doubtless
with the motive of self -justification. Since then it
has been taken up by our professional instructors —
from what motive is not precisely known — and the
result is a mighty chorus of many voices. Says Pro-
fessor Sumner : —

" If we could get rid of some of our notions about
liberty and equality, and could lay aside this eigh-
teenth-century philosophy, according to which human
society is to be brought into a state of blessedness,
we might get some insight into the might of the societal
organization : what it does for us and what it makes
us do. ... If we are willing to be taught by the
facts, then the phenomena of the concentration of
wealth which we see about us will convince us that
they are just what the situation calls for. They ought
to be because they are, and because nothing else
would serve the interests of society. ... I often see

135

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

statements published in which the objectors lay stress
upon the great inequalities of fortune, and having set
forth the contrast between rich and poor, they rest
their case. What law of nature, religion, ethics, or
the State is violated by inequalities of fortune ? The
inequalities prove nothing."

Professor John B. Clark, of Columbia University,
also sees in vast inequalities of fortune the basis of a
happy state. Aristotle taught differently, it is true.
" In human societies," he wrote, " extremes of wealth
and poverty are the main sources of evil. The one
brings arrogance and a lack of capacity to obey ; the
other brings slavishness and a lack of capacity to
command. Where a population is divided into the
two classes of very rich and very poor, there can be
no real state ; for there can be no real friendship be-
tween the classes, and friendship is the essential
principle of all association." But Professor Clark,
touched by prophetic fire, pictures a new society in
which inequality is the great blessing. "The world
of the near future," he writes in his recent article
on "The Society of the Future," "will not be one
with inequalities levelled out of it ; and to any per-
sons to whom inequality of possessions seems inhe-
rently evil, this world will not be satisfactory. It will
present a condition of vast and ever growing in-
equality. With a democracy that depends on a like-
ness of material possessions it will have nothing in
common. The rich will continually grow richer, and
the multi-millionnaires will approach the billion-dollar
standard. ... If an earthly Eden is to come through
competition, it will come not in spite of, but by means

136

OUR MOULDERS OF OPINION

of, an enormous increase of inequality of outward
possessions."

We must hear from Professor Peck again — and
for the last time. " When men by temper and train-
ing," he writes in his recent paper on " The Social
Advantages of the Concentration of Wealth," "come
to possess the ability to do large things in this direct
and simple way [i.e., the characteristic way, of the
magnates], they have an immense advantage over
those who can work only in committees, or boards, or
companies, and they will inevitably dominate them
and use them quite at will. . . . This [concentra-
tion] means, in the first place and as a first result,
the aggrandizement of individuals ; but in the end it
means the wide diffusion of a golden stream through
every artery and vein of our national and individual
life. America has already been enormously enriched ;
yet the actualities of the present are nothing when
compared with the potentialities of the future. Timid
minds which are appalled rather than inspired by the
vastness and magnificence of the whole thing shrink
back and croak out puling prophecies of evil. They
cannot rise to the greatness of it all because they
lack the dauntless courage of the typical American,
who, in Kipling's vivid phrase, can always —

* ' Turn a keen, untroubled face
Home to the instant need of things.' "

III

So much for a consensus of some of our notable
instructors of the public on things political and social.

137

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

That these opinions produce a powerful influence on
the mass, no one will deny. The wide respect in
which our teachers — particularly our commissioned
teachers — are held ; the general recognition of their
learning, their profundity, their unquestioned liberty
to speak what they will, their insulated freedom from
the influences arising out of seigniorial endowments,
compel a popular deference to their judgments. It
is, therefore, with pained surprise that an American
reads an uncharitable comment on their ability and
learning. Such a comment is that which appeared
last February in the conservative and ably edited
Paris Temps. " It is true," writes its editor, " that
American universities pay great attention to social
and political sciences. It is no less true that they
have at their disposal considerable financial resources
for the publication of reviews. But the question is
to know what the reviews and teachings are worth.
... I believe myself sufficiently conversant with
the matter. By professional duty I read, not every-
thing which is printed on the other side of the Atlan-
tic concerning these subjects, but a notable part of
the work which is considered the most weighty.
With a few honorable exceptions — honorable, but
rare — I must venture to say that these publications
are, for the most part, without originality and without
any real value.

" I imagine American professors will be the first to
feel surprise at the great honor [the establishment of
a French school in America] which it is proposed
to do them. They have a very keen feeling of what
they owe to European culture. They keep in close

138

OUR MOULDERS OF OPINION

touch with all that is published in their respective
specialties in France, Germany, England, and Italy.
They profit by such publications, of which their own
are sometimes — let us say things as they are — only
adaptations or reflections. Many of them have had
their intellectual training in old Europe, and had, at
their start, no other ambition than to model themselves
on their masters and repeat them. The development
of social and political studies is immense — on the
surface — in the United States. In depth it is not
quite the same."

The Temps, it may be remarked, is not, on the one
hand, radical, nor on the other, anti-democratic or
anti- American ; and so the reasons for its illiberal and
discourteous judgment must be left undiscerned. Its
startling declaration, that the sociological pronounce-
ments of our distinguished teachers " are, for the most
part, without originality and without any real value,"
rises to the dignity of a national affront, and rightly
calls for emphatic action from our strenuous State
Department.

It may be doubted if our commissioned teachers
exert so great an influence upon opinion as do our
newspapers. " The newspaper to-day," said Arch-
bishop Ireland recently before the National Educa-
tional Association, " is preeminently the mentor of
the people ; it is read by all ; it is believed by nearly
all. Its influence is paramount ; its responsibility is
tremendous." There is much truth in this dictum,

139

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

though something of qualification is needed. The
newspaper, though not "read by all," nor "believed
by nearly all," is indeed more widely read than ever
before. If the census is to be believed, the circulation
per issue of all daily, tri-weekly, semi-weekly, and
weekly publications has grown in the last ten years
from 38,000,000 to 58,000,000 copies. This is cer-
tainly a tremendous showing ; but it is doubtful if the
newspapers exert the direct sway over men's minds
which was exerted in earlier years. The influence
effected is due less to the formal expression of opinion
than to the color habitually given by them to the
news. The eager question, " What does old Greeley
say ? " which was once so often heard, was a tribute
to the power of an individual in whose rectitude
and wisdom many thousands put a rarely wavering
faith. Many a lesser editor had also his reverent
disciples, who believed as he taught and voted as he
urged.

But in our day the direct appeal of the newspaper
is more hesitatingly obeyed. Frequently it has hap-
pened, in municipal elections, that a candidate or
candidates have been elected in the face of an almost
solid opposition of the press. A newspaper may be
patronized for this or that special feature by persons
who pay no attention to its editorials, by others who
read them merely to learn an opposing view of things,
and by others still — a far larger class — who, reading
between the lines, choose for themselves what to rely
upon and what to doubt. All the larger cities, and
perhaps most of the smaller, have instances of news-
papers which, appealing to some special interest,

140

OUR MOULDERS OF OPINION

secure a considerable number of readers antipathetic
to the political views expressed. It happens that
radicals often read conservative publications, and that
conservatives sometimes look upon radical print. The
faithful devotees of a certain mercurial New York
newspaper probably read it as eagerly in 1884, when
it supported General Butler for the Presidency, as in
1892, when it supported Mr. Cleveland, or in 1896,
when it went over to Major McKinley. But reliance
upon editorial opinions is a wavering faith. A wiser
discrimination is employed, a more cynical scepticism
is maintained. When the New York newspaper which
boasts of printing all the fit news publishes in its
editorial columns the dictum that " the oversupply of
labor in the anthracite region is due to the great
attractiveness of the wages and the conditions of
work," none but the willing are convinced ; and so
for all the mis judgments, ignorant or deliberate, that
are daily put forth by newspapers of all classes
there are scoffers and sceptics as well as credulous
believers.

For the recognition has become general that the
average newspaper is owned and operated as a com.
mercial property. As Mr. Brooke Fisher, in a recent
number of the Atlantic, writes, the days when the
editor hired the publisher are gone; it is now the
publisher who hires the editor, and the counting-
room determines the policy. Advertising is the
material mainstay, and the merchants and magnates
who have largesse to distribute must be humored.
" Publishers," says the interesting census bulletin on
" Printing and Publishing," " are depending more on

141

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

advertising and less on subscriptions and sales for
financial return." Whether it be the sensational
"yellows," or the less sensational but characterless
"pinks," or the staid and ponderous "grays" of the
press, the same rule holds. Even the religious jour-
nals make a like appeal. " A superfluity of religious
weeklies," says the best-known publication of that
class, giving itself a left-handed pat on the shoulder,
"with no other basis for existence than sectional or
partisan pride, will not be tolerated nor supported by
the laity ; nor will advertisers much longer fail to
discriminate between religious journals that are pro-
gressive [meaning, for example, itself] and are
reaching well-to-do and intelligent people, and those
which are not." Statements of enormous sales, of
vast subscription lists, are published in glaring type,
and the phrase "greatest circulation in the city," or
State, or nation, or world, is trumpeted to the ears of
the buyers of advertising space. There is still an
appeal to the giver of largesse even when a publica-
tion cannot honestly boast of great circulation ; the
argument is then one of a "select" patronage — of
" fit audience, though few," but inferentially of great
purchasing power.

The pressure upon editorial policy of this deference
to the advertiser is constant and effective, and the
result is apparent to most readers. Even the more
rampant of the " yellows," which daily shriek against
political and social injustice, are affected by it. As
mournful a philosopher as Heraclitus might have
found food for humor in the manoeuvres of the metro-
politan newspapers some six years ago during the

142

OUR MOULDERS OF OPINION

agitation for the passage of the Andrews bill. This
measure required seats for women workers in all
mercantile establishments. Now it happened that
the heads of the department stores were in nearly
every instance violently opposed to the bill, and it
also happened that the amount of advertising from
the great stores cut a very pretty figure in the income
of the average metropolitan newspaper. To complete
the dilemma the bill won great favor from the public.
How the masterful purveyors of news and opinions
to the people managed to extricate themselves from
the difficulty, would make too long a story in the
telling. But that they triumphantly surmounted it,
is a matter of history.

With the advertiser in so commanding a position,
it is not needed that a newspaper shall be owned by
a magnate in order that it shall faithfully reflect the
special interests of " business." Yet that seigniorial
funds are back of many of our important newspapers
is a fact which to a person of intelligence needs no
proof. The census bulletin, revealing the character-
istic optimism of the compilers of the Twelfth Cen-
sus, will have it that individual ownership is still the
rule. The proportion of individually owned and
operated publications is given as 63.3 per cent, of
partnership concerns as 19.7 per cent, and of cor-
porate concerns as 17 per cent. "These figures
indicate," we are told, " the complete absence of
the extended combinations and consolidations so fre-
quently encountered in other industries." Yet there
are combinations, whether individually or jointly
owned, — the Hearst newspapers in San Francisco,

143

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

Chicago, and New York, the Ochs newspapers of
Chattanooga, New York, and Philadelphia, the Belo
newspapers of Texas, and those of the Scripps-Mc-
Rae concern in the middle West. Only this last
summer public announcement was made of a pro-
jected combination — under the control of Mr. P. F.
Collier, and with a capital of $1,000,000 — of a large
number of country newspapers in the State of New
York. The project has for the time been given up,
but others of a like nature may fairly be expected for
the future. Moreover, some of the features of the
industrial combinations — identity of product, for
instance — are discoverable in the so-called coopera-
tive newspapers, which make use of plate matter or
" patent-insides." More than half of all the periodi-
cals of the country are in this class. Finally, the
chief commodity of newspapers of all classes — the
news — is a trust product, a commodity in which
the Associated Press serves the function of gatherer
of raw material and manufacturer, and the periodical
the function of assorter and retailer.

But the census figures reveal little or nothing to
the point. Seigniorial backing, when actually given,
is not usually made visible in the form of investment
in newspaper stock. It is not to the best interests of
the purveyor of news and opinions that it should be ;
for the public, with a fine sense of its own indepen-
dence of judgment, requires that seigniorial influence
shall be less obviously shown. The odor of Standard
oil, the fumes of American tobacco, have proved fatal
to more than one newspaper enterprise, and even the
taint of railroad support has been shown to be harm-

144

OUR MOULDERS OF OPINION

ful. There is thus the greatest need of discretion in
arranging the nominal ownership ; and the result is,
that in many cases it is easier to discover the actual
ownership of a policy game than the actual owner-
ship of a newspaper. The curious can but surmise
and wonder. When a chaste and well-ordered daily
publication gives to a particular magnate's house-
warming the space of a column and a half, while its
rivals — even the "yellows," which deal in that sort
of thing — consider the event worth no more than a
half-column ; or when another magnate is persistently
"boomed " for a high office, or when for another a
franchise grant is skilfully proposed, one may put
two and two together, and apply the natural infer-
ences. Inferences, however, are not proof, and the
conclusion must remain doubtful.

But whether through the influence of potential
advertising or of secret ownership, the magnate, or
the magnate class, exercises a large measure of con-
trol, and the matter which appears is that which, on
the whole, is agreeable to seigniorial minds. The
coal magnates may be criticised, but it is not so much
on account of their refusal to grant concessions to
their men as for their failure to operate in defiance
of their men. So, too, the trusts come in for occa-
sional rough handling; but it is the abstract trust
that is at fault : the individual trust usually goes
scathless. Certain of the " yellows " furnish some
exception to the general rule, though here, too, the
influence of the great advertiser is shown, and one
may vainly read the columns of the most radical of the
anti-monopoly dailies for a suggestion that the great
L 145

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

department stores are other than abodes of comfort
and joy for all the souls employed therein.

Such is the newspaper bias, and the product of
the hired writer must conform. Whether editing
news or writing opinions, he must recognize the
divinity that hedges in the magnate class. It was a
savage, and in some respects extravagant, picture of
the function of the hired newspaper worker which a
brilliant journalist, now deceased, gave to the world a
few years ago : —

" There is no such thing in America as an inde-
pendent press, unless it is out in the country towns.
I am paid for keeping honest opinions out of the
paper I am connected with. Other editors are paid
similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should
allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of
my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation,
like Othello's, would be gone. The man who would
be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be
out on the street hunting for another job. The
business of a New York journalist is to distort the
truth, lie outright, to pervert, to villify, to fawn at
the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his
race for his daily bread, or for about the same thing,
his salary. We are the tools of vassals of the rich
men behind the scenes. We are jumping-jacks.
They pull the strings, and we dance. Our time, our
talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the property
of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."

But though in certain respects extravagant, it has
yet faithful and accurate touches which are recog-
nizable by every undeluded person who earns his

146

OUR MOULDERS OF OPINION

living in the employment of the daily press. Per-
haps, indeed, there are not many of the undeluded ;
for the recoil upon themselves of the character of
their tasks does not, to say the least, sharpen the
edge of conscience, and the service of a few years is
generally believed to be effective in indurating the
finest sensibilities.

It is not, as has been said, so much through their
editorial expressions as through their coloring of the
news that the weeklies and dailies mould the opinions
of the mass. A growing scepticism averts the former
influence ; but against the latter there is no prophy-
lactic. News is assorted, pruned, improved, to accord
with a predetermined policy. From an anti-imperi-
alist publication one gets small notion of other happen-
ings in the Philippines than devastations, rapes,
battle, murder, and sudden death ; and from an
administration organ one may learn only of Peace
piping her "languid note," of the diffusion of educa-
tion, and the progress of industry, varied only now
and then by slight outbreaks from a few ladrones.
In the far more important matter of the irrepressible
class conflict here at home, like influences color the
news ; and as ninety-nine out of every one hundred
periodicals support, in greater or less degree, the
existing regime, the impress upon the public mind is
overwhelming. Some of the " yellows " set up a bar
to the universal pervasion of this influence ; and the
activities of the social reformers, through their
weekly journals, their tracts, and their public dis-
cussions, somewhat affect it. But, on the whole,
these effects are but a ripple on the deep and

147

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

powerful stream that fertilizes the opinions of the
public.

Our laudatory stump orators have their measure
of influence on social thought, no doubt; but it is
one that surely declines, and the subject may be
passed with but scant mention. Likewise, the heter-
ogeneous small fry of seigniorial retainers in the
various walks of life, whose business it is, in season
and out, to glorify the prevailing regime, may be
noticed and dismissed in a sentence. The influence
of the pulpit, however, is a subject that requires some
attention. This influence, while greater than that of
either of the groups just mentioned, is unquestionably
less than that of either the editors or the professional
lay publicists. Among practical men in the upper
orders there is a widespread prejudice against pastoral
interference in social and political matters, unless it
be directed solely to seigniorial justification. The
shoemaker should stick to his last, runs the adage ;
and no less it is urged that the pastor should stick to
his text. He should, furthermore, discriminate and
sort his texts, making careful avoidance of the ethical
precepts of Jesus. For these are needlessly disturb-
ing to the code that prevails in commerce and politics,
and both politicians and magnates resent their cita-
tion. A future " popular " version of the Bible may
eliminate them, and thus do away with a fertile cause
of discord ; but until that is done the better part of
pastoral valor will continue to lie in discretion.

The sentiments of the politicians and the magnates
148

OUR MOULDERS OF OPINION

toward the pulpit filter down to the common mass of
the laity, and still further weaken pastoral influence.
But weakened as it has been, it is yet felt by the
magnates to be an instrument of social control which
by proper use can be made to perform a needed ser-
vice. A constant pressure is, therefore, brought to
bear upon pastoral utterances. It is the " safe " men
who are in most request to fill pulpits ; and it is the
" safe " men who draw to their churches the largest
endowments. Under the influence of this pressure
there has gradually been developed a code of pulpit
ethics, outside the limits of which no prudent minister
will dare range. The minister may be " long " on
spirituality, but he must be "short" on social pre-
cepts. He may preach faith, hope, and charity, and
also the future punishment of the unregenerate, so
long as unregeneracy is depicted in general terms;
but he must avoid, with the nicest delicacy, the men-
tion of tax-dodging and stock-watering as punishable
sins. He may denounce violence, and for a modern
instance he may cite the occasional riotous conduct
of striking workmen; but let him at his peril cite
such venial backslidings from grace as the blowing
up of a competitor's refinery, the seizure of a street
for track-laying, or the employment of armed mer-
cenaries for a private purpose. Political evils may be
denounced in the abstract, and the bribery of voters
in the concrete. The latter is an offence usually
committed by irreverent ward politicians, and may
justly receive, without injury to the State and to
society, the scathing anathemas of the pulpit. But
he that in a moment of inadvertence miscalls by the

149

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

name bribes the "gentle rewards," the " gratuities,"
as they were known in Bacon's time, which magnates
frequently bestow upon legislators and judges, had
best resign his pastorate and seek some other field.
Nor must any slight be thrown upon any of the con-
ventional practices in the ordinary daily conduct of
"business." These are hallowed by custom, and are
beyond criticism. Such a declaration as that of a
certain minister in a recent number of the Christian
Endeavor World — "What we call Napoleonic genius
in business is sometimes simply whitewashed high-
way robbery on a gigantic scale" — verges closely
upon contumacy. It is relieved slightly by the quali-
fying " sometimes," — much virtue in your " some-
times," as the immortal bard would remark, — but for
all that, it is a dangerous utterance, and one apt to
cause its enunciator grave trouble.

But pastoral pronouncements on social questions
are permitted — nay, welcomed — if only they properly
rebuke the occasional discontent and unquiet of the
masses and the aggression of those foes of order, the
labor unions. Such a pronouncement, for instance, is
that of the Rev. Lyman Abbott, put forth in his
recent philosophical disquisition, "The Rights of
Man." "Trades-unions . . . are ruled over gener-
ally," he declares, "by a directory scarcely less
absolute than that which governed the revolutionists
in the day of Mirabeau." This is unexceptionably
decorous, and runs no risk whatever of seigniorial
censorship. The recent coal strike brought forth a
large number of pastoral utterances of a like char-
acter, which must ultimately redound to the great

150

OUR MOULDERS OF OPINION

glory of the declaimers. The good Bishop Potter, in
his address before the Diocesan convention in New
York City, September 24, felt called upon to rebuke
envy and hatred and to deny the existence of social
classes in the republic : " Wealth is unequally dis-
tributed, we are told, and the sophistries that are
born of envy and hatred are hawked about the streets
to influence, in a land which refuses to enthrone one
class above another, the passions of the less clever or
thrifty or industrious against those who are more so."
The eminent Dr. Ethelbert Talbot, Bishop of the
Episcopal Church in Central Pennsylvania, according
to his public letter of September 28, saw in the
coal strike only a demand upon the part of the
miners "that the operators shall no longer manage
their own business." " How can the question of
whether a man has a right to conduct his own busi-
ness," he asks, with painfully defective forethought
for what subsequently happened, "be submitted to
arbitration ? " The no less eminent Rev. Dr. Newell
Dwight Hillis, in his recent address before the
Chicago Society of New York, demanded a wall of
bayonets from Washington to Wilkesbarre. The
Rev. Dr. Minot J. Savage of the Church of the Mes-
siah also called for arms instead of arbitration, and
the Rev. Dr. W. R. Huntington of Grace Church
echoed the good Bishop Talbot's opinion, and " from
the point of view of simple justice " could not see
" that we have any reason to blame the mine-owners
for refusing to allow the management of their own
business to be taken out of their hands." From
Calvary, too, — or at least from the Calvary Baptist

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

Church of New York, — came a further demand for
soldiery. " These labor leaders," declared the Rev.
Dr. R. S. MacArthur, "with their large salaries, are
forcing the men to be idle. They are more tyranni-
cal than the Czar of Russia." These are but samples
of the "safe" utterances on social questions — the
kind that involve no penalties, but on the contrary,
reap sure harvests of glory and recompense.

Occasionally from too close and exclusive reading
of the synoptic gospels, with their recital of Jesus'
specific teachings on social matters, a young and ar-
dent minister loses his perspective, and seeing over-
large the industrial and social evils of his time, seeks
to remedy them. Usually, however, the mood is but
transitory, and a few months, or at most a few years,
witness the reaction. Renunciation of heretical doc-
trines follows, and ultimately the errant is restored to
the fold of the " safe." But let no one imagine that
in seigniorial halls his sins are remembered against
him. On the contrary, there is more joy over the
recovery of one strayed sheep than over ninety and
nine that remain faithful.

Sometimes, it must be conceded, there are to be
found those who refuse to be forced or cajoled, and
who hold their intrepid way in defiance of power.
The World assails them, in the words of Matthew
Arnold, with its perpetual challenge and warning : -

" * Behold,' she cries, ' so many rages lulled ;
So many fiery spirits quite cooled down.
Look how so many valors, long undulled,
After short commerce with me fear my frown.' "

But they fear not her frown; and they teach the

152

OUR MOULDERS OF OPINION

social precepts of their Master regardless of material
consequences. What those consequences are, the
average man knows full well. They are ostracism,
a reduction, sooner or later, to the poorest livings ; a
hemming in and constraining to the narrowest fields
of effort and influence — in a word, the full sum of
the forceful rebuke which it is possible for the mag-
nate class and its retainers, in the present state of
society, to deliver. In the more developed state
of the future the rebuke will be yet more emphatic ;
for the influence of the pulpit, whatever it may be in
degree, must in kind be confirmatory of the right of
the magnate class to rule.

153

CHAPTER VIII

GENERAL SOCIAL CHANGES

THE historic props of class rule, according to Pro-
fessor Edward A. Ross, in his recent volume, " Social
Control," have been force, superstition, fraud, pomp,
and prescription. Our present seigniorial class
makes use, with fine discrimination as time and
occasion require, of each of these means of support,
though unquestionably it sets the greatest value
upon the last named. Force is employed less
openly, less obviously; decreasingly by the direct
imposition of the magnates, increasingly through
their ingenious manipulation of the powers of the
State. The superstition latent in most minds proves
. now, as ever, a means of ready recourse ; but though
supernatural sanction to the acts and authority of
the magnates is cunningly deduced and volubly
preached from a thousand pulpits, the prop fails
somewhat as a constant and sure reliance. Even
testimony so authoritative as that of President Baer
to the effect that the Great First Cause had intrusted
to himself and his co-magnates the control of the busi-
ness interests of the country, has been flouted in a
number of places. The notion of supernatural
sanctions, as most people know, and as Professor Gold-
win Smith has repeatedly taken pains to point out,

154

GENERAL SOCIAL CHANGES

is losing its hold upon the reason of mankind ; and
though it still has, and will ever have, a certain
potency, its best days are passed.

As for fraud, both of class against class, and indi-
vidual against individual, attempts to practise it no
doubt increase ; but the tooth-and-claw struggle of
the last generation has developed and sharpened
the wits of the combatants, so that it tends to become
a less profitable game. He would be a sharper
indeed, according to the proverb, who among the
Turks of the Negropont, the Jews of Salonika, or
the Greeks of Athens could cheat his fellow : each
knows by heart all the tricks and devices of which
the others are capable. Matters are not yet at such
a stage in free America : great frauds, both of the
group and of the individual, are still practised.
But the almost infinite possibilities of other days
have been sadly restricted by the operation of those
natural laws which tend to fit beings to their envi-
ronment. Pomp, too, is less a factor of control than
in past times. It has a powerful grip on the imagi-
nations of the poor, as the columns of our "yellow"
journals, which devote so large a space to the cere-
monies of the great, amply attest; but though it
charms the more, it deceives the less. It interests,
it delights ; but it does not overawe or subdue.

It is by prescription — by a constant appeal to the
sanctity of custom, a constant preaching of the valid-
ity of vested rights, and of the beauty, order, inevi-

155

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

tability, and righteousness of things as they are —
that the magnate class wins to its support the suf-
frages of the people. Other influences aid, but this
one is dominant. As Professor Ross pertinently
writes : —

"Those who have the sunny rooms in the social
edifice have ... a powerful ally in the suggestion
of Things-as-they-are. With the aid of a little nar-
cotizing teaching and preaching, the denizens of the
cellar may be brought to find their lot proper and
right, to look upon escape as an outrage upon the
rights of other classes, and to spurn with moral indig-
nation the agitator who would stir them to protest.
Great is the magic of precedent, and like the rebel-
lious Helots, who cowered at the sight of their masters'
whips, those who are used to dragging the social
chariot will meekly open their calloused mouths
whenever the bit is offered them."

The magnates, as has been shown, brook small
interference with prevailing customs. Their near
dependents, retainers, and " poor relations " think as
they think, and feel as they feel ; and the great ma-
jority of the professional moulders of opinion, draw-
ing their inspiration from above, preach and teach
as the magnates would have them. The general
social passivity following the pressure of all these
influences upon the public mind is as certain and
inescapable as a mathematical conclusion.

A powerful auxiliary to the preaching of the sanc-
tity of custom is the extolling of individual " success."

GENERAL SOCIAL CHANGES

At the very time when socio-industrial processes are
settling to a fixed routine and socio-industrial forms
to a fixed status , — when day by day there is faund
less room at the top and more room at the bottom, —
the chorus of exhortation to the men of the land to
bestir themselves reaches its highest pitch. Meddle
not with custom and the law, is the injunction ; leave
those to abler and wiser heads — meaning, of course,
the present formulators and manipulators thereof.
Meddle not with things as they are, but while your
companions sleep, "toil upward in the night," and
carve out a career for yourself among the stars. Put
no faith in general social changes, except such as
result from the combined effect of each unit concern-
ing himself solely with his own material salvation.
There is no social betterment without precedent in-
dividual betterment, it is urged. " You cannot make
a bad man good by legislation," is the admonitory
adage, and " You cannot make a poor man rich by
legislation " is its twin. If certain persons hold to
the theory that corrective laws have a definite reac-
tion upon character, and that in every civilization
worthy the name there are social institutions, founded
in law, which are immeasurably in advance of the
general average of sanity, sobriety, and honesty of
the citizenship, such persons are but dreamers, and
are not to be taken too seriously. So, too, with
the dictum regarding the statutory enhancement of
riches. There are those who insinuate that it is
heard most often from the lips of the industrial mag-
nates, the majority of whom are living examples of
the fact that riches may be garnered by means of

157

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

tariffs and other privilege-giving laws ; and from the
laissez-faire tariff reformers, whose reiterated argu-
ment against protective duties is that they are law-
given privileges by which the few gain wealth at the
expense of the many. But persons who question
this profound adage are unsophisticated. They fail
to discriminate properly. The adage is one which,
like a simile or metaphor, should not be stretched
too far. It has its true and legitimate bearing only
when it is applied to the very poor.

Personal endeavor toward the goal of " success "
is the urgent exhortation. Scarcely one of the mag-
nates who have recently entered literature, or who,
avoiding that province, have on occasion unbosomed
themselves to the interviewer, but takes pains to
declare how numerous and how mighty are the pos-
sibilities in the path of the energetic. All that is
needed, according to most of the seigniorial recipes,
are brains and health ; honesty, it is true, is often
included as an ingredient in the compound, but its
mention is possibly ironical, and need not concern
us. Brains and health are thus the two things need-
ful ; and though pursuing Satan may gather in, with
his drag-net, a vast army of the hindmost, the fortu-
nate possessors of these two boons will inevitably
forge to the front in the headlong race.

It is by no accident that this particular counsel
from the magnates is heard now more frequently
than any other. It is one that of course has been
given in all times ; but it has never been given with
such frequency and unction as now. Consciously or
subconsciously, it is an expression of class feeling

GENERAL SOCIAL CHANGES

— a revelation of the community of interests and
purposes of a particular division of our society. In
whatever cases its utterance is prompted by a general
social motive, that motive is the defence of class con-
trol. It is counsel that makes for the acquiescence of
the lower orders and the increased security of the
upper. " The heaving and straining of the wretches
pent up in the hold of the slaver is less," writes
Professor Ross again, " if now and then a few of the
most redoubtable are let up on deck. Likewise the
admitting of a few brave, talented, or successful com-
moners into the charmed circle above has a wonderful
effect in calming the rage and envy of the exploited,
and thereby prolonging the life of the parasitic sys-
tem." This counsel of endeavor, promulgated by the
few who have striven and "succeeded," is thus a
social sedative of great efficacy.

The professional moulders of opinion take their cue
from these exhortations of the magnates, improve,
elaborate, and redistribute them. The professors, the
editors, and the orators lead, and the hortatory pro-
nouncements of the pulpit follow closely. The Car-
penter of Nazareth, it is true, held other views of
" success " ; but his precepts would seem to have gone
out of fashion in the fanes and tabernacles ostensibly
devoted to his worship. With all ranks and conditions
Success becomes the great god ; and as though there
were not already priests and votaries enough for his
proper worship, a special class of publications has
recently arisen, which serve as his vowed and conse-
crated ministers. These teach to the devout but
unsophisticated followers of the great god the par-

159

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

ticular means best adapted to win his grace ; how his
frown may be averted ; or, if his anger be kindled, by
what penances and other rites he is to be propitiated.
They chant the praises and recite the life-incidents of
those who have been most conspicuously blessed, and
to all the rest of mankind they shout, " Follow our
counsel, and some day you shall be even like unto
these." It is a glittering lure, and it is eagerly pur-
sued. Sometimes, indeed, not without doubts and
misgivings ; for a recognition that " all the gates are
thronged with suitors," that "all the markets over-
flow," and that the settling and hardening of socio-
industrial processes has already begun, becomes more
general, and leads many to essay the trial of fortune's
pathway only as a desperate and forlorn adventure.
But these are the exceptions; the majority are still
to be caught by limed twigs. The gods denied man-
kind many gifts, and attached hard conditions to most
of those which they granted. But for all their with-
holding of certain gifts and their tainting of others,
they sought to compensate by giving an extra allow-
ance of credulity.

Ill

Not only by the showering of precepts, by the en-
couragement of individual effort, and by the dangling
of more or less illusory prizes before the wistful mul-
titude does the ruling class maintain its hold. It in-
vites, to some extent, a participation in the harvest.
The growth of the shareholding class, of which men-
tion has already been made, is by no means wholly

1 60

GENERAL SOCIAL CHANGES

fortuitous. New companies of small initial capital,
and with somewhat dubious chances in the great
struggle, may be glad enough to market their shares
wheresoever they can ; but something of seigniorial
grace and condescension, though not entirely un-
mixed with calculating foresight, is apparent in the
opening of opportunities for small investment in the
larger and more stable corporations. Mr. John B. C.
Kershaw, in the Fortnightly Review for May, 1900,
gives an interesting account of this fostering of share-
investment in England. The industrial magnates, he
says, saw that the best policy for preventing the
growth of a public sentiment favoring the encroach-
ments of labor would be to increase the number of
bourgeoisie interested in industrial affairs. Accord-
ingly they encouraged popular share-buying, with the
result that " a large and increasing proportion of the
general public is now financially involved in all in-
dustrial struggles, and our manufacturers feel assured
that the danger lest the workers should be backed by
a solid and enthusiastic public opinion in their de-
mands for shorter hours or increased pay no longer
exists."

As in England, so also here. The movement
toward corporate ownership is probably more pro-
nounced in the United States than in the older coun-
try, and it has been equally encouraged from above.
Joint-stock concerns increased in England from 9344
in 1885 to 25,267 in 1898. In Massachusetts, the
State in which the preparation of statistics most
nearly approaches the methods of science, corpora-
tions are reported to have increased during the years
M 161

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

1885-95 by more than 77 per cent. As for share-
holders, the nine principal manufacturing industries
of Massachusetts for the same period show percent-
ages of increase ranging from 13.87 in tapestry to
637.74 in leather, saddles, and harness. The entire
country has shown a marked growth in the number,
of this class, and it would seem that no one is too
poor to hold a share in some corporation. Indeed, to
read the arguments of the legal retainers of the mag-
nates in the Income Tax case, and in the various trust
cases that from time to time arise, one would think
that the main body of the shareholders of the nation
was composed of workingmen, widows, and orphans.
In no time since the prophet Ezekiel's day have there
been uttered words of such tender consideration for
the poor and needy, the widow and the orphan, and
of such bitter denunciation for their would-be de-
spoilers as were tearfully put forth in opposing the
income tax.

A great number of shareholders in a particular
company would seem, on first thought, to be some-
thing of a nuisance. Unquestionably they would
represent a wide range of conflicting views and antag-
onistic purposes, all bearing upon the one problem of
the proper operation of the company's property ; and
would thus give salient instances of that unwisdom
which is too often found in a multitude of counsellors.
At least this is the seigniorial argument against na-
tional collectivism — an argument which one might
naturally suppose to be quite as applicable to the par-
ticular collectivism of the stock company. But it
does not so apply ; the solid advantages of diffused

162

GENERAL SOCIAL CHANGES

shareholding in assuring general public sanction to the
acts of the magnates outweigh the confusion and
danger which are alleged to lie in public ownership.
The social and political effect of this general par-
ticipation in the ownership of industries may be readily
observed by all but the blind. " If the truth were
known," wrote that keen-witted financier, Mr. Russell
Sage, in a magazine article published last May, " con-
centration of wealth is popular with the masses."
Partners in the great enterprises, the multitude of
petty shareholders are led more and more to consider
economic questions from the employers' standpoint.
In the controversies between labor and capital ten
years ago the average citizen was but an onlooker,
sometimes a weak partisan of capital, but very often
a neutral, with a strong latent sympathy for the
"under dog." To-day, thanks to his holding of a
single share in the steel corporation or of two or three
shares in some street railway company, he is an em-
ployer, one of the men " to whom God, in His infinite
wisdom, has given the control of the property inter-
ests of the country." He sees, thinks, and feels as a
member, however humble, of the employing class ;
and what the magnates think and do is to him all
the law and the prophets. " Bound by gold chains
about the feet " of his feudatory lords, he is at the
same time a sharer in their responsibilities and a faith-
ful retainer in their service.

It would be idle to declare that all the tendencies
make toward acquiescence. Just as in the atmos-

163

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

phere a prevailing drift of the wind is accompanied
by cross currents, flurries, and rotatory motions, so
the dominant tendency discoverable in social indus-
try is qualified by many complex processes. Of the
cross currents here to be briefly noted, some are but
trifling, while others undoubtedly reveal a certain
force and constancy. A small part of the public is
ever in a state of ferment over imputed social evils,
and at rare times this ferment becomes general.
Recurring labor troubles indicate that the spirit of
resistance, if it really be dying, dies hard. Strikes
of the magnitude of those at Homestead and in the
Tennessee mines in 1892, at Chicago and other rail-
road centres in 1894, the several anthracite coal
strikes of 1897, 1900, and 1902, and the steel strike
of 1901 prove that organized labor has not wholly
succumbed to the encompassing forces about it. The
remarkable growth in numbers, these last two years,
of the unions composing the American Federation of
Labor, is confirmatory testimony. Radical political
movements, furthermore, have not been wanting. The
Socialists have increased their voting strength in the
nation from some 2000 ballots in 1888 to upward
of 130,000 in 1900. The Farmers' Alliance made
tremendous headway in the election of 1890, and its
political successor, the People's party, secured by
fusion more than 1,000,000 votes in 1892 and nearly
2,000,000 in 1894. " Labor " mayors and even Social-
ist mayors have been elected in several cities, and
the polling of 106,721 votes for Samuel M. Jones for
Governor of Ohio in 1899 was a truly remarkable
showing of the residual independence of the citizen-

164

GENERAL SOCIAL CHANGES

ship. There are also general social movements to
chronicle. Reform societies and clubs are occasion-
ally heard of ; arbitration movements have met with
some favor; there has been a considerable growth
in the number of university and college settlements ;
and anti-trust conferences and things of that sort have
frequently met, talked, and dispersed. Indeed, all of
us at times grumble and find fault with general condi-
tions. Even Mr. Russell Sage, in the face of his
exultant panegyric on the beneficence of combination,
has very recently given to the press a statement
denouncing the further consolidation of industry, and
predicting, in case his words are not heeded, " wide-
spread revolt of the people and subsequent financial
ruin unequalled in the history of the world." Though
only a few of us are irreconcilable at all times, all of
us are disaffected sometimes — especially when our
particular interests are pinched. We talk threaten-
ingly of instituting referendums to curb excessive
power, of levying income taxes, or of compelling
the Government to acquire the railroads and the
telegraphs. We subscribe to newspapers and other
publications which criticise the acts of the great cor-
porations, and we hail as a new Gracchus the ardent
reformer who occasionally comes forth for a season
to do battle for the popular cause.

It must be confessed, however, that this revolt is,
for the most part, sentimental ; it is a mental attitude
only occasionally transmutable into terms of action.

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

It is, moreover, sporadic and flickering; it dies out,
after a time, and we revert to our usual moods, con-
cerning ourselves with our particular interests, and
letting the rest of the world wag as it will. The
specific social reaction of the last few years has been
especially marked. It has shown itself in the weak-
ening or disruption of radical political movements, in
the more hesitant attitude of the trade-unionists, in
the decline of factory legislation, — in fact, of all
legislation tending to the protection of the weaker
and the regulation of the stronger, — and in a general
feeling of the futility of social effort. The Anti-
imperialists will have it that this admitted reaction
is due to the South African and Philippine wars, to
a lust of empire and a contempt for the rights of
weaker peoples. It is a pretty theory, but unfortu-
nately it has small basis in chronology. For the re-
action had already become apparent before either
war was waged. The date of its beginning may be
variously guessed at ; but it is probable that the time
assigned to it in Chapter V — somewhere within the
two years 1 896-97 — is not far wrong. Before that
time a very large part of the public could occasionally
be interested in social measures and movements, and
in social literature. Thousands of even the most
hardened philistines read Mr. George's " Progress
and Poverty," Mr. Bellamy's " Looking Backward,"
and Mr. Kidd's " Social Evolution." And as for
that minor section of the public, the social reform-
ers, there was then to be found among them a
radicalism of belief, a definiteness of aim, an ardency
and determination of spirit that are sadly wanting

1 66

GENERAL SOCIAL CHANGES

now. Doubtless to every one of these, as he ruefully
compares the two periods, there recurs the sentiment
of the Wordsworthian recollection, —

" Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven."

While in the bosom of every devotee of Things-as-
they-are there rises the sentiment of thankfulness
that the mass of the people have learned the wisdom
of letting well enough alone.

Political radicalism reached its culminating point
in the election of 1896. Despite certain foolish and
mischievous notions embodied in the two radical plat-
forms of that year, the combined movement was yet
a consistent and unified attack upon class rule. The
elections of the next two years revealed a waning
of Populist and Democratic strength, and in 1900
a fine sense of caution prompted the Fusionists to
subordinate the industrial demands of their platforms
to the issue of Imperialism. The Socialists, it is true,
usually increase their vote ; but the admitted fact of
a great growth of Socialist conviction throughout the
land makes these slight increases at the polls appear
but trivial, and only further confirms the view that
such radicalism is sentimental rather than potential.
Anti-trust conferences are not without an element of
humor ; at least, they are the cause of much humor
in outsiders ; and the widely heralded arbitration
court of the National Civic Federation breaks down
on the very occasion when most is expected of it —
that of the anthracite coal strike. Organized labor,
despite its greater numerical strength, is far less ag-

167

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

gressive than of old ; and except in isolated instances,
it observes a caution which would have further dis-
tinguished Fabius. As for the growth of college
settlements, the fact is only an added proof of reac-
tion. They do a great good, unquestionably ; but
their basis is philanthropy and not social adjustment.
As a people, we have heard enough, for the time,
about social problems, and prefer to interest ourselves
in other matters. Professor Walter A. Wyckoff, who
has recently changed the scene of his optimistic ob-
servances from America to England, has an article
in the September Scribner's on the English social sit-
uation. " The condition-of-the-people problem," he
writes, " lacks vitality for the moment because, as
one shrewd observer remarked, ' the public has grown
tired of the poor.' " We are feeling the same weari-
ness here. Our benevolence somewhat increases,
and we are willing to give, and more than willing that
the magnates shall give freely; but we want to be
troubled no more with remedial schemes. Rather,
we are disposed to trust to seigniorial wisdom and
virtue to set things right. Some of us will perhaps
decline to go so far in our trust as a certain prominent
Massachusetts lady who proposed to abolish work-
ing-class suffrage. " I think," said this lady in an
address to a club of working girls, "many of the
troubles between employer and men might be swept
away if the men could not vote. If he felt that they
did not stand on just the same footing as himself,
that they had not quite so many privileges as he,
the employer might have a chivalric feeling toward
them." Some of us may hesitate at this project, but

1 68

GENERAL SOCIAL CHANGES

withal we are willing to trust largely to seigniorial
guidance.

Instead of the personal fidelity that characterized
the older Feudalism, we are rapidly developing a
class fidelity. History may repeat itself, as the adage
runs; but not by identical forms and events. It is not
likely that personal fidelity, as once known, can ever
be restored : the long period of dislodgment from the
land, the diffusion of learning, the exercise of the
franchise, and the training in individual effort have
left a seemingly unbridgeable chasm between the past
and the present forms. But though personal fidelity,
in the old sense, is improbable, group fidelity, founded
upon the conscious dependence of a class, is already
observable, and it grows apace. Out of the sense of
class dependence arises the extreme deference which
we yield, the rapt homage which we pay — not as
individuals, but as units of a class — to the men of
wealth. We do not know them personally, and we
have no sense of personal attachment. But in most
things we grant them priority. We send them or
their legates to the Senate to make our laws; we
permit them to name our administrators and our
judiciary; we listen with eager attention to their
utterances, and we abide by their judgment. When the
venerable Mr. Hewitt, brought forth like the holy
man Onias, in the Judean civil war between Aris-
tobulus and Hyrcanus, to denounce the opposing
faction, utters his anathema against the minions of
Mr. Mitchell, we listen in awe and are convinced.
A three-line interview with the chief of the magnates
is read with an eagerness wholly wanting in our peru-

169

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

sal of an official pronunciamento by the most strenu-
ous of Presidents. Our racial sense of humor, it
must be confessed, saves us from the more slavish
forms of deference ; we jest about solemn themes and
take in vain the names of great beings. Even the
name of the great magnate is more or less humorously
played upon; and our latest national pastime of "trust-
busting" reveals a like levity, though an innocent one.
It shows, moreover, how far we have reacted from
our Puritan forefathers. For it is pursued not on
account of the pain it gives the trusts, but for the
harmless pleasure it gives both participants and spec-
tators. But our subserviency, though less formal than
that of old, is withal more real and fundamental.

Current passivity has, however, a reverse side. To
many persons a recognition of the changing condi-
tions brings demoralization or despair. All are not
won by the lure of " success." To an increasing
number the dangling prize in the distance is but a
mirage, and oppressed by a sense of the bankruptcy
of life they seek an oblivious relief. There is a drift
toward the twin dissipations of drink and gambling,
and there is an increase of suicide. The greater
drink consumption is a matter of common observa-
tion, and it is amply attested by statistics. Mr. J.
Holt Schooling's figures in a recent issue of the
Fortnightly Review show an increased consumption
in the United States of 20 per cent for the years
1896-1900, as against the years 1886-90. The

170

GENERAL SOCIAL CHANGES

percentage of increase is slightly less than that of
those industrially exploited nations, Germany and
France, but considerably more than that of Great
Britain and Ireland. The annual figures published
in the World Almanac for 1902 give more pertinent
lessons. The unsettled and troublous year, 1893,
witnessed an enormous increase in drink consump-
tion ; but the succeeding hard times of 1894 and 1895,
when drink-money was increasingly hard to obtain,
induced a greater sobriety. With 1896 drinking be-
came more general, or at least more energetic ; and
except for a slight falling off in 1899, the consump-
tion of liquors and wines has risen steadily, reaching
the enormous total of 1,349,176,033 gallons in 1900.
Much of this gain is confined to beer, the cheapest
of alcoholic beverages ; but there has also been a
phenomenal increase in the consumption of spirits.
From 71,051,877 gallons consumed in 1896 there has
been a steady annual rise to the total of 97,248,382
gallons in 1900, a gain of 36.8 per cent.

The recent increase of petty gambling is still more
noticeable. Playing for high stakes, a custom com-
mon enough in the late years of the eighteenth cen-
tury and the early years of the nineteenth, has long
been given over or transferred to the domain of
"business." But what is colloquially known as "tin-
horn " gambling has advanced, these last five years,
by leaps and bounds. Doubtless the high precedent
of our national Monte Carlos, the stock exchanges, is
ample cause for much of it ; but other causes are also
in operation. With those persons that hearken to,
but heed not, the seigniorial exhortation to bestir

171

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

themselves and conquer " success," petty gambling
is an expression of unbelief. They know that the
prizes advertised in the great industrial game are not
to be won ; they see nothing ahead but a dull routine
of poorly remunerated labor, and they turn to gam-
bling partly for recreation and partly for profit. With
those, on the other hand, who not only hearken but
heed, gambling is merely the application of their ambi-
tious plans to the branch of industry which promises,
however vainly, the most immediate returns.

Faro, keno, and roulette may have suffered some
decline in favor. If so, statutes and the police, in-
stead of a growing aversion to gambling, must be
held responsible. It is one of those conventional
puzzles which none can explain, that it is possible in
our cities to restrict table and wheel gambling, but
seemingly impossible to restrict certain other forms.
Poker, for instance, maintains its hold, unawed by
statute and unhampered by authority ; while policy
and race-betting, the special refuges of the desper-
ately poor and the desperately fatuous, win new and
lasting converts day by day. Indeed, the growth of
race-betting is one of the striking phenomena of our
time. It has become a habit, a disease ; and its con-
firmed victims are held in as slavish a thraldom as
are the victims of opium and hasheesh. One need
not penetrate to a pool-room or journey to a race-
track to discover evidences of its general diffusion.
He may hear of it on every side, and he may find de-
finitive proof in the daily journals. In nearly all of
these the space given to the reports of races, the lists
of betting odds and accounts of great winnings, is gen-

172

GENERAL SOCIAL CHANGES

erous ; and in some three or four of the metropoli-
tan dailies the subject rises to the rank of a specialty.
The flaunting advertisements of the "tipsters " in one
of these newspapers rival in extent of space used
and opulence of bargains offered, the announcements
of the dry-goods merchants. The glittering lures
dangled before the multitude by the seigniors seem
trivial by comparison. Uncertain, and at best re-
mote, they prove no match for the near-at-hand
prizes to be won in gambling ; and as a consequence
tens of thousands pin their hope of " success " in this
world to a series of fortunate winnings.

The meaning of the increase of suicide is clouded
by a number of factors, and it is impossible to ascribe
the tendency to one cause alone. Were we to accept
the explanation of the pulpit, we should see in it the
awful consequences of the decline of faith. Patholo-
gists, however, while not denying this influence,
enumerate many others. Racial and temperamental
factors, drink and vice, are all concerned in the
matter, and even climates and seasons are influential.
But whatever the effect of these may be, the intensi-
fying struggle for life these last few years, and what
appears to many minds a darkening outlook for the
future, must be acknowledged as powerful agents in
increasing the rate of self-destruction. The rate is
highest in the great industrial centres, where the
struggle is fiercest, where the richest stakes are won
and lost, where luxury is most flaunting and poverty
most galling ; and it is least where the struggle is in
some measure relaxed. The recent census shows for
the decade an increased rate per 100,000 of popula-

173

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

tion from 8.8 to 9.9 in the States where registration
of deaths is required, from n to 12.7 in registration
cities, and from 10.3 to n.8 for the entire registra-
tion record. There are a few anomalies in the figures
which are difficult of explanation ; the workaday cities
of Fall River and Allegheny have low rates of sui-
cide, the residence city of Los Angeles a high rate,
while San Francisco reveals the abnormal rate of 49
per 100,000. With all allowances, however, the rule
holds good : the more distinctly industrial and com-
mercial cities have remarkably high rates, the less
distinctly industrial and commercial cities remarkably
low rates. In the first group are Chicago, with a rate
of 21.8; Milwaukee, 21 ; St. Louis, 19.1 ; Boston, 14.4;
Cincinnati, 13.5; New York, 13.1; Philadelphia, 12.2;
Baltimore, 12 ; Pittsburg, 9.3. In the second group
may be instanced Atlanta, with a rate of 6.6 ; Denver,
6; Albany, 3.2 ; Hartford, 1.3 ; Richmond, 1.2. These
suicides are the unfit, say the complacent philosophers
of the day, and are quite as well off dead as alive ;
but they prove at least that some slight qualification
is needed to Professor Sumner's optimistic gener-
alization that " an air of contentment and enthusiastic
cheerfulness . . . characterizes our society." The win-
ners in the race are doubtless enthusiastically cheer-
ful, and the great mass that keeps steadily on, fed by
the delusion of ultimate " success," are at least cheer-
ful without enthusiasm ; but back of these are the
losers and the many who have seen the hollowness
of the world's promise, whose outlook upon life is one
of intensifying despair.

174

GENERAL SOCIAL CHANGES

VII

All of our general institutions reflect the changes
in public thought, taste, and feeling consequent upon
the changing conditions of the social regime. But on
none of them are these changes writ more clearly or
in larger characters than on the institution of letters.
Along with the morganization of industry steadily
proceeds the munseyization of literature. We are a
free people, our politicians tell us, and are strenu-
ously resolved to remain so. But if we are to be
judged by our popular literature, the verdict can
hardly be other than that we have reached an ad-
vanced stage of subserviency, and that the normal
mood of the overwhelming majority is one of com-
placence with its lot. Our popular magazines regu-
larly keep before us a justification, actual or inferential,
of things as they are ; and though it is couched in less
argumentative phrasing than that of the newspapers,
it is, no doubt, for that very reason, a more plausible
and effective expression of the plea. There are
panegyrics on our captains of industry, tales of their
exploits in the great industrial battle, descriptions of
their town-houses and country-seats, — all, in fact,
that makes for the emulation of their wisdom and
virtues, and particularly of their faculty of acquisitive- -
ness, — with a multitude of recipes for the winning of
"success." Along with this is provided a vaudeville
of idle entertainment : wonder tales, short stories, a
gallery of pictures of stage-folk, who, whatever their
merits may be, bear but a problematic relation to
literature ; and finally an amorphous compound of

175

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

sedative miscellany that not only charms the mind
from serious thinking, but in time paralyzes the very
power of thought.

Such of these publications as indulge in the gentle
art of reviewing give further evidence of changing
conditions. Reviewing, as now practised, studies the
amenities of life, with a particular regard for the
counting office, "wherein doth sit the dread and
fear " of the publisher who has advertising to distrib-
ute. With a few notable exceptions the reviewing
journals make it their business to be "nice." They
do not damn, not even with faint praise ; they com-
mend or extol. It is not that they praise insincerely
a bad book — reviewing is too highly developed a
craft for such crudity. But in a bad book all that
the widest exercise of charity can pronounce even
passably good comes in for praise ; and what is weak
or poor, or inclusive under old John Dennis's favorite
term of " clotted nonsense," is mercifully omitted
from mention. So it is when the advertising pub-
lisher is a factor in the game. But a reviewing jour-
nal must uphold a reputation for impartial judgment,
and must thus mingle blame with praise. Its oppor-
tunity comes when some inglorious Milton of Penob-
scot or Butte prints his verses at home at his own
expense. A copy drifts into the reviewing office and
effects a transformation. The angelic temper upon
which so many and such large drafts are made
becomes exhausted, and the humble poet is treated
to the sort of thing which Giff ord used to deal out to
the Delia Cruscans and the ireful Dennis to the
poetasters of Queen Anne's time. It was perhaps

GENERAL SOCIAL CHANGES

the last regret of the late J. Gordon Coogler, of
Columbia, S.C. , that instead of printing his amiable
verses on his own press, he had not guaranteed the
cost of their production, and secured their publication
by a metropolitan firm.

The literary distinction of former days has taken
wings. Whether or not Wordsworth was right in his
lament over the state of England in 1803 may be
questioned; but a like lament uttered for our own
land and time would be in large part justified. We
have the two extremes of exceedingly plain living
and of wildly extravagant living; but high thinking
seems to be the accompaniment of neither. For
several years the only really salable books have been
novels, and among these popular favor has centred
almost wholly on the kind called historical — called so
not because the stories bear any relation to history,
but because in them the action is put in a past time.
Lately, it is true, there have been signs of a reaction ;
but let none imagine that it is due to a growing taste
for stronger meat. Rather it is an evidence that in
our love of novelty we have tired of one trifle and
now demand another in its stead.

For the recent indications of declining favor for
the historical novel are accompanied by no signs of
reviving favor for more serious works. The Huxley
Memoirs, it is true, unexpectedly achieved the degree
of favor usually given to a fifth-rate novel ; but the
work, despite its science, philosophy, and religious
controversy, was yet an entertaining story, and won
its way for that reason. No more in fiction than in
other branches of literature is there promise of better

N 177

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

things. Even the " problem " novel, which, though
often crude or hysterical, was yet an attempt to deal
with some of the deeper facts of life, has been ban-
ished, and is not to be permitted to return. " Our
publishers," says the well-known literary supplement
of a New York daily newspaper, " are seeking on all
sides for wholesome stories, dealing optimistically
with life, and reaching happy conclusions." It is a
true judgment, and reveals most clearly the present
standards of public taste.

Our popular magazines most accurately reflect the
public mind. Pictures and stories are the substance
of its childish delight. Among periodicals we have
nothing in any way comparable to the Edinburgh, the
Quarterly, the Nineteenth Century, the Fortnightly, the
Contemporary, the Athenceum, the Spectator, the Satur-
day Review, or even the Academy. Whatever tenden-
cies of late have seemed to indicate the future planting
of such reviews on these shores, have very recently
been extinguished. Of three publications in which ar-
ticles of some thought and some importance were occa-
sionally printed, two have recently found a monthly
issue more frequent than the public taste required,
and have accordingly transformed themselves into
quarterlies, while the third has been forced to make
concessions to the general demand for " lightness
and brightness." For these are the qualities which
pay. " Make it light and bright," is the order which
the literary contributor hears in the editorial offices
when he submits his wares ; and though the terms
may be variously interpreted, he understands what
is meant : he must write down to the level of childish

178

GENERAL SOCIAL CHANGES

minds and complacent natures. Accordingly, he
writes so, to the best of his ability, and so, to that
limit, do all his fellows. The collective result is seen
in the character of the greater number of our books,
our magazines, our Saturday and Sunday supple-
ments. On all sides is poured forth a flood of print
which deludes the hope or flatters the vanity of the
mass, and which insures a state of mental subser-
viency, — the necessary requisite of the economic sub-
serviency imposed by the ruling class.

179

CHAPTER IX
TRANSITION AND FULFILMENT

UPON all the heterogeneous but coalescing units
of the social mass the group of magnates imposes
its collective will. There are still disputes and rival-
ries among the rulers, and may ever be; but these
are for the most part minor differences, to be settled
among themselves and their mutual arbitrators, the
judges, and qualify in no way the facts of a recog-
nized community of interests and of collective pur-
poses and plans. Whatever the individual rivalries,
they result in no deliberate betrayal of class interest ;
practically every magnate maintains, at all hazards,
his fidelity to the group. A sense of group honor
may in most instances prompt this fidelity, but a
lively sense of apprehension is also influential. For
should any magnate become possessed of heretical
notions, and thereupon make common cause with the
public against a particular interest of his class, he
would by that act banish himself from communion
with his fellows, and jeopard his possessions to the
last dime. There is, as every one knows, a definite
seigniorial resolve that no strike of workmen on trans-
portation lines or in public utilities shall succeed ;
and when such a strike occurs, every resource of the

1 80

TRANSITION AND FULFILMENT

magnate class is brought to bear to resist and defeat
it. Often there are attendant circumstances which
might tempt a rival, for his own interests, to interfere
on behalf of the workers. But the thing is never
done ; and he who should do it would declass himself
as effectually as a mediaeval nobleman would have
done by enlisting in a peasants' rebellion. There is,
furthermore, a definite seigniorial determination to
withstand to the utmost the agitation for public own-
ership ; every magnate, with his intellectual retainers
behind him, makes of himself a modern Stonewall
Jackson in resistance to this movement. Here, again,
industrial rivalry might at times prompt a desertion
to the public cause. But there is no such case;
here, as elsewhere, the ruling class maintains its
integrity. As is known, great strikes are some-
times won ; and occasionally, in isolated places, an
advance is made in the direction of public ownership.
But neither is accomplished through desertions in the
seigniorial group, and the instances prove only that
its rule has not yet become supreme.

The new Feudalism will be but an orderly outgrowth
of present tendencies and conditions. All societies
evolve naturally out of their predecessors. In sociol-
ogy, as in biology, there is no cell without a parent
cell. The society of each generation develops a mul-
titude of spontaneous and acquired variations, and
out of these, by a blending process of natural and
conscious selection, the succeeding society is evolved.

181

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

The new order will differ in no important respects
from the present, except in the completer develop-
ment of its more salient features. The visitor from
another planet who had known the old and should
. see the new would note but few changes. Alter et
idem — another yet the same — he would say. From
magnate to baron, from workman to villein, from
publicist to court agent and retainer, will be changes
of state and function so slight as to elude all but the
keenest eyes.

An increased power, a more concentrated control,
will be seen. But these have their limitations, which
must not be disregarded. A sense of the latent
strength of democracy will restrain the full exercise
of baronial powers, and a growing sense of ethics
will guide baronial activities somewhat toward the
channels of social betterment. For democracy will
endure, in spite of the new order. " Like death,"
said Disraeli, "it gives back nothing." Something
of its substance it gives back, it must be confessed ;
but of its outer forms it yields nothing, and thus it
retains the potentiality of exerting its will in whatever
direction it may see fit. And this fact, though now
but feebly recognized, will be better understood as time
runs on, and the barons will bear in mind the limit of
popular patience. It is an elastic limit, of a truth ;
for the mass of mankind are more ready to endure
known ills than to fly to others that they know not.
It is a limit which, to be heeded, needs only to be
carefully studied. Macaulay's famous dictum, that
the privileged classes, when their rule is threatened,
always bring about their own ruin by making further

182

TRANSITION AND FULFILMENT

exactions, is likely, in this case, to prove untrue. A
wiser forethought begins to prevail among the auto-
crats of to-day — a forethought destined to grow and
expand and to prove of inestimable value when be-
queathed to their successors. Our nobility will thus
temper their exactions to an endurable limit; and
they will distribute benefits to a degree that makes a
tolerant, if not a satisfied, people. They may even
make a working principle of Bentham's maxim, and
after, of course, appropriating the first and choicest
fruits of industry to themselves, may seek to promote
the "greatest happiness of the greatest number."
For therein will lie their greater security.

The Positivists, in their prediction of social changes,
give us the phrase, "the moralization of capital,"
and some of the more hopeful theologians, not to
be outdone, have prophesied " the Christianization of
capital." So far there is not much to be said confirm-
atory of either expectation. Yet it is not to be de-
nied that the faint stirrings of an ethical sense are
observable among the men of millions, and that the
principle of the " trusteeship of great wealth " has
won a number of adherents. The enormous benefac-
tions for social purposes, the construction of " model
workshops " and " model villages," though in many
cases prompted by self-interest and in others by a
love of ostentation, are at least sometimes due to a
new sense of social responsibility. A duty to so-
ciety has been apprehended, and these are its first
fruits. It is a duty, true enough, which is but dimly
seen and imperfectly fulfilled. The greater part of
these benefactions, asjias already been pointed out, is

183

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

directed to purposes which have but a slight or indi-
rect bearing upon the relief of social distress, the re-
straint of injustice, or the mitigation of remediable
hardships. The giving is even often economically
false, and if carried to an extreme would prove disas-
trous to the community ; for in many cases it is a
transmutation of wealth from a status of active capi-
tal, wherein it makes possible a greater diffusion of
comfort, to a status of comparative sterility. But,
though often mistaken as is the conception and futile
the fulfilment of this duty, the fact that it is appre-
hended at all is one of considerable importance, and
one that carries the promise of baronial security in
the days to come.

Bondage to the land was the basis of villeinage in
the old regime; bondage to the job will be the basis
of villeinage in the new. The new regime, absolving
itself from all general responsibility to its workers,
extends a measure of protection, solely as an act of
grace, only to those who are faithful and obedient;
and it holds the entire mass of its employed under-
lings to the terms of day-by-day service. The growth
of industries has overshadowed the importance of
agriculture, which is ever being pushed back into the
West and into other and remote countries ; and the
new order finds its larger interests and its greater
measure of control in the workshops rather than on
the farms. The oil wells, the mines, the grain fields,
the forests, and the great thoroughfares of the land
are its ultimate sources of revenue ; but its strong-

184

TRANSITION AND FULFILMENT

holds are in the cities. It is in these centres of
activity, with their warehouses, where the harvests
are hoarded ; their workshops, where the metals and
woods are fashioned into articles of use; their great
distributing houses ; their exchanges ; . their enor-
mously valuable franchises to be had for the asking
or the seizing, and their pressure of population,
which forces an hourly increase in the exorbitant
value of land, that the new Feudalism finds the field
best* adapted for its main operations.

Bondage to the job will be the basis of the new
villeinage. The wage-system will endure, for it is a
simpler and more effective means of determining the
baron's volume of profits than were the " boon-works,"
the "week-works," and the corvtes of old. But with
increasing concentration on the one hand, and the
fiercer competition for employment on the other, the
secured job will become the laborer's fortress, which
he will hardly dare to evacuate. The hope of better-
ing his condition by surrendering one place in the
expectation of getting another will be qualified by a
restraining prudence. He will no longer trust his
individual strength, but when he protests against ill
conditions, or, in the last resort, strikes, it will be
only in company with a formidable host of his fel-
lows. And even the collective assertion of his
demands will be restrained more and more as he
considers the constantly recurring failures of his
efforts. Moreover, concentration gives opportunity
for an almost indefinite extension of the black-list:
a person of offensive activity may be denied work
in every feudal shop and on every feudal farm from

185

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

one end of the country to the other. He will be a
hardy and reckless industrial villein indeed who will
dare incur the enmity of the Duke of the Oil Trust
when he knows that his actions will be promptly
communicated to the banded autocracy of dukes,
earls, and marquises of the steel, coal, iron, window
glass, lumber, and traffic industries.

There were three under-classes in the old Feudal-
ism, — free tenants, villeins, and cotters. The number
of tenants on the farms has approximately doubled
in the last twenty years, while in the great cities
nearly the whole population are tenants. The cotters,
with their little huts and small holdings in isolated
places about the margin of cultivation, are also in
process of restoration. The villeins are an already
existent class, more numerous proportionately than
ever before, though the exact status of their villeinage
is yet to be fixed. But modern society is character-
ized by complexities unknown in any of its predeces-
sors, and the specialization of functions requires a
greater number of subordinate classes. It is a diffi-
cult task properly to differentiate them. They shade
off almost imperceptibly into one another; and the
dynamic processes of modern industry often hurl, in
one mighty convulsion, great bodies of individuals
from a higher to a lower class, blurring or obscuring
the lines of demarcation. Nevertheless, to take a
figure from geology, these convulsions become less
and less frequent as the substratum of industrial
processes becomes more fixed and regular ; the classes
become more stable and show more distinct differ-
ences, arid they will tend, under the new regime, to

1 86

TRANSITION AND FULFILMENT

the formal institution of graded caste. At the bottom
are the wastrels, at the top the barons ; and the gra-
dation, when the new regime shall have become fully
developed, whole and perfect in its parts, will be
about as follows : —

I. The barons, graded on the basis of possessions.

II. The court agents and retainers.

III. The workers in pure and applied science,
artists and physicians.

IV. The entrepreneurs, the managers of the great
industries, transformed into a salaried class.

V. The foremen and superintendents. This class
has heretofore been recruited largely from the skilled
workers, but with the growth of technical education
in schools and colleges, and the development of fixed
caste, it is likely to become entirely differentiated.

VI. The villeins of the cities and towns, more or
less regularly employed, who do skilled work and are
partially protected by organization.

VII. The villeins of the cities and towns who do
unskilled work and are unprotected by organization.
They will comprise the laborers, domestics, and clerks.

VIII. The villeins of the manorial estates, of the
great farms, the mines, and the forests.

IX. The small-unit farmers (land owning), the
petty tradesmen, and manufacturers.

X. The subtenants on the manorial estates and
great farms (corresponding to the class of " free
tenants" in the old Feudalism).

XL The cotters.

XII. The tramps, the occasionally employed, the
unemployed — the wastrels of city and country.

187

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

The principle of gradation is the only one that can
properly be applied. It is the relative degree of com-
fort — material, moral, and intellectual — which each
class directly contributes to the nobility. The was-
trels contribute least, and they are the lowest. The
under-classes who do the hard work lay the basis of
all wealth, but their contribution to the barons is indi-
rect, and comes to its final goal through intermediate
hands. The foremen and superintendents rightly hold
a more elevated rank, and the entrepreneurs, who di-
rectly contribute most of the purely material comfort,
will be found well up toward the top. Farther up in
the social scale, partly from aesthetic and partly from
utilitarian considerations, will be the scientists and art-
ists. The new Feudalism, like most autocracies, will
foster not only the arts, but also certain kinds of learn-
ing — particularly the kinds which are unlikely to dis-
turb the minds of the multitude. A future Marsh or
Cope or Le Conte will be liberally patronized and left
free to discover what he will ; and so, too, an Edison or
a Marconi. Only they must not meddle with anything
relating to social science. For obvious reasons, also,
physicians will occupy a position of honor and com-
parative freedom under the new regime.

But higher yet is the rank of the court agents and
retainers. This class will include the editors of " re-
spectable " and " safe " newspapers, the pastors of
" conservative " and " wealthy " churches, the pro-
fessors and teachers in endowed colleges and schools,
lawyers generally, and most judges and politicians.
During the transition period there will be a gradual
elimination of the more unserviceable of these persons,

188

TRANSITION AND FULFILMENT

with the result that in the end this class will be largely
transformed. The individual security of place and
livelihood of its members will then depend on the
harmony of their utterances and acts with the wishes
of the great nobles. Theirs, in a sense, will be the
most important function in the State — " to justify the
ways of God [and the nobility] to man." They will
be the safeguards of the realm, the assuagers of pop-
ular suspicion and discontent. So long as they rightly
fulfil their functions, their recompense will be gen-
erous ; but such of them as have not the tact or fidel-
ity to do or say what is expected of them will be
promptly forced into class XI or XII, or, in extreme
cases, banished from all classes, to become the wretched
pariahs of society. At times two divisions of this class
will find life rather a burdensome travail. They are
the judges and the politicians. Holding their places
at once by popular election and by the grace of the
barons, they will be fated to a constant see-saw of
conflicting obligations. They must, in some measure,
satisfy the demands of the multitude, and yet, on the
other hand, they must obey the commands from above.

Ill

Through all the various activities of these classes
(except the wastrels and the cotters) our Benevolent
Feudalism will carry on the Nation's work. The full
measure of profit is its aim ; and having the substance
of its desire, it shows a utilitarian scorn of the mum-
meries and ceremonials by which the overlordship of
other days was formally acknowledged. The ancient

189

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

ceremony of " homage," the swearing of personal
fidelity to the lord, is relaxed into the mere beseech-
ing of the foreman for work. Directness and efficacy
characterize its methods. The wage-system, with its
mechanical simplicity, continuing in force, there is an
absence of the old exactions of special work. A mere
altering of the wage-scale appropriates to the noble
whatever share of the product he feels he may safely
demand for himself. Thus " week-work," the three
or four days' toil in each week which the villein had
to give unrecompensed to the lord, and "boon-work,"
the several days of extra toil three or four times a
year, will never be revived. Even the company
store, the modern form of feudal exaction, will in time
be given up, for at best it is but a clumsy and offen-
sive makeshift, and defter and less irritating means
are at han£ for reaching the same result. There will
hardly be a restoration of " relief," the payment of a
year's dues on inheriting an allotment of land, or of
" heriot," the payment of a valuable gift from the
possessions of a deceased relative. Indeed, these
tithes may not be worth the bother of collecting ; for
the villein's inheritance will probably be but moder-
ate, as befits his state and the place which God and
the nobility have ordained for him.

Practically all industry will be regulated in terms
of wages, and the entrepreneurs, who will then have
become the chief salaried officers of the nobles, will cal-
culate to a hair the needful production for each year.
Waste and other losses will thus be reduced to a
minimum. A vast scheme of exact systematization
will have taken the place of the old competitive

190

TRANSITION AND FULFILMENT

chaos, and industry will be carried on as by clock-
work. The workshops will be conducted practically
as now. Only they will be very much larger, the
individual and total output will be greater, the unit
cost of production will be lessened. Wages and hours
will for a time continue on something like the present
level; but, despite the persistence of the unions, no
considerable gains in behalf of labor are to be ex-
pected, except such as are freely given as acts of
baronial grace and benevolence. The owners of all
industry worth owning, the barons will laugh at
threats of striking and boycotting. No competitor
will be permitted to make capital out of the labor
disputes of another. There may or may not be com-
petitors. A gigantic merger of all interests, governed
by a council of ten, may supplant the individual duke-
doms and baronies in the different industries, or these
may continue as now, the sovereign units of a feder-
ated whole. But in neither case can labor carry its
point against them. Nevertheless, dissatisfaction
must be guarded against as a possible menace to the
regime. Wages and dividends will be nicely balanced
with a watchful regard for the fostering of content ;
workshops and villages of yet more approved models
than any of the present will be built, and a thousand
Pelzers and Pullmans will arise. Old-age pensions,
or at least the promise of them, will be extended to
new groups, and by all possible means the lesson that
protection and security are due only to faithfulness and
obedience will be made plain to the entire villein class.
Gradually a change will take place in the aspira-
tions and conduct of the younger generations. Here-

191

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

tof ore there has been at least some degree of freedom
of choice in determining one's occupation, however
much that freedom has been curtailed by actual
economic conditions. But with the settling of indus-
trial processes comes more and more constraint. The
dream of the children of the farms to escape from
their drudgery by migrating to the city, and from
the stepping-stone of a clerkly place at three dollars
a week to rise to affluence, will be given over, and
they will follow the footsteps of their fathers. A like
fixity of condition will be observed in the cities, and
the sons of clerks and of mechanics and of day
laborers will tend to accept their environment of birth
and training and abide by it. It is a phenomenon
observable in all countries where the economic pres-
sure is severe, and it is yet more certain to obtain in
feudal America.

The outlines of the present State loom but feebly
through the intricate network of the new system.
The nobles will have attained to complete power, and
the motive and operation of government will have
become simply the registering and administering of
their collective will. And yet the State will continue
very much as now, just as the form and name of the
Roman Republic continued under Augustus. The
present State machinery is admirably adapted for
the subtle and extra-legal exertion of power by an
autocracy ; and while improvements to that end might
unquestionably be made, the barons will hesitate to take
action which will needlessly arouse popular suspicions.

192

TRANSITION AND FULFILMENT

From petty constable to Supreme Court Justice the
officials will understand, or be made to understand, the
golden mean of their duties ; and except for an
occasional rascally Jacobin, whom it may for a time
be difficult to suppress, they will be faithful and obey.

The manorial courts, with powers exercised by the
local lords, will not, as a rule, be restored. Probably
the "court baron," for determining tenantry and
wage-questions, will be revived. It may even come
as a natural outgrowth of the present conciliation
boards, with a successor of the Committee of Thirty-
six of the National Civic Federation as a sort of gen-
eral court baron for the nation. But the " court leet,"
the manorial institution for punishing misdemeanors,
wherein the baron holds his powers by special grant
from the central authority of the State, we shall never
know again. It is far simpler and will be less dis-
turbing to the popular mind to leave in existence the
present courts so long as the baron can dictate the
general policy of justice.

Armed force will, of course, be employed to over-
awe the discontented and to quiet unnecessary turbu-
lence. Unlike the armed forces of the old Feudalism,
the nominal control will be that of the State ; the
soldiery will be regular, and not irregular. Not again
will the barons risk the general indignation arising
from the employment of Pinkertons and other private
armies. The worker has unmistakably shown his
preference, when he is to be subdued, for the militia
and the Federal army. It is not an unreasonable at-
titude, and it is hardly to be doubted that it will be
respected. The militia of our Benevolent Feudalism
o 193

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

will be recruited, as now, mostly from the clerkly
class ; and it will be officered largely by the sons and
nephews of the barons. But its actions will be tem-
pered by a saner policy. Governed by those who
have most to fear from popular exasperation, it will
show a finer restraint.

Peace will be the main desideratum, and its culti-
vation will be the most honored science of the age.
A happy blending of generosity and firmness will
characterize all dealings with open discontent ;
but the prevention of discontent will be the prior
study, to which the intellect and the energies of
the nobles and their legates will be ever bent. To
that end the teachings of the schools and colleges,
the sermons, the editorials, the stump orations,
and even the plays at the theatres will be skilfully
moulded ; and the questioning heart of the poor,
which perpetually seeks some answer to the painful
riddle of the earth, will meet with a multitude of
mollifying responses. These will be : from the
churches, that discontent is the fruit of atheism, and
that religion alone is a solace for earthly woe ; from
the colleges, that discontent is ignorant and irra-
tional, since conditions have certainly bettered in
the last one hundred years; from the newspapers,
that discontent is anarchy ; and from the stump
orators that it is unpatriotic, since this nation is the
greatest and most glorious that ever the sun shone
upon. As of old, these reasons will for the time

194

TRANSITION AND FULFILMENT

suffice; and against the possibility of recurrent
questionings new apologetics will be skilfully formu-
lated, to be put forth as occasion requires.

Crises will come, as in the life of all nations and
societies ; but these will be happily surmounted, and
the regime will continue, the stronger for its trial.
A crisis of some moment will follow upon the large
displacements of labor soon to result from the
shutting up of needless factories and the concen-
tration of production in the larger workshops. Dis-
content will spread, and it will be fomented, to some
extent, by agitation. But the agitation will be
guarded in expression and action, and it will be
relatively barren of result. For most ills there is
somewhere a remedy, if only it can be discovered and
made known. The disease of sedition is one whose
every symptom and indication will be known by
rote to our social pathologists of to-morrow, and the
possible dangers of an epidemic will, in all cases, be
provided against. In such a crisis as that following
upon the displacement of labor a host of economists,
preachers, and editors will be ready to show indis-
putably that the evolution taking place is for the
best interests of all ; that it follows a " natural and
inevitable law " ; that those who have been thrown
out of work have only their own incompetency to
blame; that all who really want work can get it,
and that any interference with the prevailing regime
will be sure to bring on a panic, which will only
make matters worse. Hearing this, the multitude
will hesitatingly acquiesce and thereupon subside ;
and though occasionally a radical journal or a radical

195

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

agitator will counsel revolt, the mass will remain
quiescent. Gradually, too, by one method or another,
sometimes by the direct action of the nobility, the
greater part of the displaced workers will find some
means of getting bread, while those who cannot
will be eliminated from the struggle and cease to be
a potential factor for trouble. Crises of other kinds
and from other causes will arise, only to be check-
mated and overcome. What the barons will most
dread will be the collective assertion of the villeins
at the polls ; but this, too, from experience, they will
know to be something which, while dangerous, may
yet be thwarted. By the putting forward of a hun-
dred irrelevant issues they can hopelessly divide the
voters at each election ; or, that failing, there is
always to be trusted as a last resort the cry of im-
pending panic.

Gradually the various processes in the social life
merge, like the confluents of some mighty Amazon,
into a definite and confined stream of tendency. A
more perfect, a better coordinated unity develops
in the baronial class, and the measure of its control
is heightened and extended to a golden mean which
insures supremacy with peace. The under-classes
settle in their appointed grooves, and the professional
intermediaries definitely and openly assume their
dual function of advisers to the barons and of inter-
preters to the people of the baronial will and ways.
Laws, customs, the arts, — all the institutions and
social forces, — change with the industrial transfor-

196

TRANSITION AND FULFILMENT

mation, and attain a finer harmony with the actual
facts of life. All except literature, be it said, for
this has outdistanced its fellows in the great current
and already reflects the conditions, the moods, and
ideals of the society of to-morrow. Here, at least,
the force of nature can no farther go, and no change
is to be anticipated for the present. But the other
institutions and social forces are gradually trans-
formed, and when the full coalescence of all the
factors is attained, our Benevolent Feudalism,
without a shock, without so much variance as will
enable any man to say, " It is here," passes to its
ascendency, and the millennium of peace and order
begins.

Peace and stability it will maintain at all hazards ;
and the mass, remembering the chaos, the turmoil,
the insecurity of the past, will bless its reign. Peace
and stability will be its arguments of defence against
all criticism, domestic or foreign. An observant
visitor from some foreign State may pick a defect
here and there; but the eloquent defender of the
regime will answer : Look upon the tranquillity that
everywhere prevails, and reflect upon the inquietude
and anarchy of the past. The disturbances of labor
have ceased, and sedition, though occasionally en-
countered, is easily thwarted and put down. The
crudities and barbarities of other days have given
way to ordered regularities. Efficiency — the faculty
of getting things — is at last rewarded as it should
be, for the efficient have inherited the earth and its
fulness. The lowly, "whose happiness is greater
and whose welfare is more thoroughly conserved

197

OUR BENEVOLENT FEUDALISM

when governed than when governing," as a twentieth-
century philosopher said of them, are settled and
happy in the state which reason and experience teach
is their God-appointed lot. They are comfortable,
too ; and if the patriarchal ideal of a vine and fig tree
for each is not yet attained, at least each has his
rented patch in the country or his rented cell in a
city building. Bread and the circus are freely given
to the deserving, and as for the undeserving, they
are merely reaping the rightful rewards of their con-
tumacy and pride. Order reigns, each has his justly
appointed share, and the State rests in security, " lapt
in universal law."

INDEX

Abbott, Rev. Dr. Lyman, quoted,

ISO-
Absolutism, of heads of combina-
tions, 24; " enlightened," 60.
Abstinence, seigniorial, 44.
Accidents, to railroad workers, 65,
loo-ioi ; to workmen generally,
94; laws regarding, 93-96.
Adams, Professor Henry C, 49;

quoted, 50.
Addams, Jane, 79.
Agriculture, 9, 19, 21, 47~57> l84-
Alger, George W., quoted, 89, 1 10.
Anacharsis the Scythian, quoted,

38.

Anarchist -Communism, 4.
"Anticipations," I, 3.
Arbitration, legislation in behalf

of, 97-98, 151.
Aristotle, quoted, 136.
Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 152.
Ashby-Macfadyen, Irene, 79 ;

quoted, 81.
Automobiles, 37, 38, 39.

Bacon, Francis, quoted, 117.
Baer, George F., quoted, 27, 81.
Baldwin, Judge Simeon A., 127;

quoted, 128.
Barons, see Magnates.
Benefactions, of the magnates, 9-

10, 39, 45-46, 59-66, 80, 149,

Benevolence, of the magnates, 9,
39, 40, 45, 46, 60, 64, 160-161,
183, 191, 196.

Blacklisting, 89, 185-186.

Blue, Leonard A., quoted, 84-85.

Brewer, Justice David J., quoted,
120, 131-132.

Bryan, Hon. W. J., 5.

" Business," main cult of magnates,
28; cultural effect of, 28; hon-
esty of, 30; sacred privileges of,
92, 98.

Capital, independent, persistence

of, 19, 20; transformation of, 20.

Carnegie, Andrew, quoted, 28, 29,

32.

Census, bulletin on industrial com-
binations, n; on agriculture,
51; on wages, 68-79; on print-
ing and publishing, 141-143.

Chapman, John Jay, 84.

Child labor, 76-82; abuses of, 79-
81.

Clark, Professor John B., 3, 6;
quoted, 136.

Coke, Sir Edward, quoted, 112.

Colorado Fuel and Iron Co., 60-6 1.

Combinations, industrial, n, 12;
recent growth of, 13, 14; com-
mercial, mining, and transporta-
tion, 14 ; unification of, 15 ;
absolutism of heads of, 24.

Commissions, state, 84-85.

199

INDEX

Competition, decline of, 5.
Conspicuous consumption, 40—41.
Contract-labor law, violations of,

35-

Court agents, 186, 187-188.
Courts, 86, 93, 96, 97, 99, 102-121.
"Courts baron," 98, 193.

Davies, Professor Henry, quoted,

7-
Democracy, persistence of, 182-

183.

Discontent, 66, 125-129, 191, 194.
Disraeli, Benjamin, quoted, 182.
Dodd, S. C. T., quoted, 29, 34.
Draper, William R., 49, 55.
Drink consumption, 170-171.

Edwards, Professor George Clinton,

quoted, 79.
Emery, Judge Lucilius A., quoted,

108.
Employers' duties (legal), 90-91,

104.
Employers' liability, 26, 83, 87, 99-

100, 103-112.

Endowments, see Benefactions.
Engels, Friedrich, 2.
Entrepreneurs, 187, 190.

Farmers, see Agriculture.
Fellow- servants, 108-109.
Fessenden, Stephen D., quoted, 90,

91, 96, 108-109.
Feudalism, 9, 10, 26, 66, 74, 88, 98,

181-199.

Fisher, Brooke, 141.
Flint, Charles R., 29; quoted, 30.
Fowler, Thomas P., 31.
Frick, H. C, 33.

Gambling, increase of, 170, 171-

172.

George, Henry, 5.
Godkin, E. L., quoted, 126-127,

130.
Gould, George, 33.

Hadley, Dr. Arthur Twining,

quoted, 129, 131.
Hall, Dr. Stanley, 7.
Hanna, Hon. Marcus A., 29.
Harriman, E. H., quoted, 35.
Hewitt, Hon. Abram S., quoted,

32, 169.

Hill, James J., 28.
Hillis, Rev. Dr. Newell Dwight,

151-

Honesty, in "business," 30, 158.
Huntington, Rev. Dr. W. R., 151.

Immigration, of farmers into Can-
ada, 49-50.

Income Tax, 162.

Industrial Commission, 95.

Industries, petty, numerical growth
of, 18; limitation of, 22; sub-
ordination of, 23.

Injunctions, against automobilists,
38; against workmen, 103, 1 1 8-

121.

Interstate Commerce Commission,

quoted, 34, 87, 101.
Ireland, Archbishop John, quoted,

139.

Jackson, Judge John J., 31; quoted,

118, 120.

Jones, Hon. Samuel M., 164.
Judiciary, 25, 83, 92, 99, 102-121.

200

INDEX

Keller, Judge B. F., quoted, 118.
Kelly, Edmond, 2.
Kershaw, John B. C., quoted, 161.
Kidd, Benjamin, 2, 3.
Kropotkin, Peter, 2, 4, 5.

Labor, seigniorial praise of, 30; in
factories, 66-82 ; of children,
76-82; attitude of lawmakers
toward, 85-89 ; attitude of judges
toward, 103 et seq.; under new
feudalism, 184-186, 190, 191-192.

Lacey, B. R., 80.

Lawmakers, 25, 83-101.

Legislation, " labor " and social,

85-89, 112, 130-133.

Literature, present state of, 175-

179.

Lloyd, Henry D., 2, 3; quoted, 28.
Low, Seth, 36; quoted, 37.

MacArthur, Rev. Dr. R. S., quoted,
152.

McLennan, Judge Peter B., 105.

Magnates, 8, 9, 16, 23, 24, 26; self-
consciousness of the, 27; cult
of "business" of the, 28; inva-
sion of literature by the, 28-29;
praise of labor by the, 30; atti-
tude toward trade-unions of, 30;
attitude toward government of
the, 32-39; benefactions of the,
9-10, 39, 45-46, 59-66, 80, 149,
151; ostentation of the, 39-44,
183; "liberality" to employees
of the, 59-66; control of legisla-
tion by the, 83-89, 99-101; in-
fluence upon judiciary of the,
121, 133, 135; praise of the,
137; influence upon the press

of the, 143-148; influence upon
the pulpit of the, 148-153; gen-
eral influence upon society of the,
154-170; influence upon litera-
ture of the, 175-179 ; class
consciousness of the, 180-181 ;
increased power of the, 182-183,
185, 187, 191, 192-193, 196-198.

Magruder, Justice B. D., quoted,
114-115.

Mallock, W. H., quoted, 134.

Manufactures, census of, 68-79.

Marx, Karl, 2; quoted, 102.

Matson, Clarence H., 49.

Militia, under new feudalism, 193.

Mitchell, John, 31.

Model workshops and villages, 60-
61.

Morganization of industry, 25, 175.

Mosso, Professor Angelo, quoted,
123.

Munseyization of literature, 175.

Neo-JefTersonians, 5, 6.
Newspapers, 25, 139-148, 188.

O'Brien, Judge Denis, 116.
Old-age pensions, 61-66, 191.
Ostentation, of the magnates, 39-
44, 183.

Pastors, of churches, 148-153, 188.
Patton, Professor Francis L.,

quoted, 15.
Peck, Professor Harry Thurston,

quoted, 128-129, I34~I35» J37'
Pensions, old-age, 6 1-66, 191.
Potter, Bishop Henry C, quoted,

16, 151.
Production, small-shop, 17.

201

INDEX

Railroads, combinations of, 14;

resistance to law and justice by,

34, 111-112; commissions for

control of, 35; accidents upon,

65, loo-ioi.

Relief organizations, 61, 62, 93.
Retailers, small, decline of, 22-23.
Richmond, Benjamin A., " The New

Feudalism," 58.
Rockefeller, John D., Jr., quoted,

29.

Roosevelt, Theodore, quoted, 127.
Ross, Edward A., 154; quoted,

156, 159.

Russell, George W. E., quoted, 41.
Russell, Hon. W. E., quoted, 85.

Sage, Russell, quoted, 29, 163, 165.
Sanborn, Judge Walter H., 104.
Savage, Rev. Dr. Minot J., 151.
Schooling, J. Holt, 170.
Seigniorial mind, renascence of,

27; instances of, 28, 29, 30, 32,

37, 39, 45, 180-181.
Shareholders, increase of, 17, 18,

160-163 ; subordination of, 23,

24, 163.

Shearman (Thomas G.) and Red-
field (Amasa A.), quoted, in.
Single-Taxers, 5, 6, 7.
Socialism, 5, 6, 7.
Socialists, 2, 164, 167.
Social Reform Club, pamphlet of,

quoted, 118-120.
Spencer, Herbert, 88.
Steel combination, magnitude of,

13, 16, 31, 66.

Stimson, F. J., 86, 1 12; quoted, 132.
"Success," 156-160.
Suicide, increase of, 173-174.

Sullivan, J. W., 79.

Sumner, Professor William G.,

quoted, 122-123, *33» 135-136,

174.
Swayne, Judge Charles, 117.

Talbot, Bishop Ethelbert, quoted,

151.
Tenantry, 9, 19; increase of, 21,

50-55, 1 86.

Thayer, Judge Amos M., 104.
Tolstoi, Lyof N., 2, 3.
Trusts, see Combinations.

Value of dollar, comparative, 73-

74-

Vandervelde, Emile, quoted, 22.
Veblen, Thorstein, quoted, 40, 43.
Villeinage, the new, 59, 184-185,

187.

Wadlin, Horace G., quoted, 87-88.
Wage-earners, 58, 66-82; number

in manufactures, 71; child, 76-

82; women, 74-76.
Wage-scale, adjustment of, 66;

comparisons of, 66-79.
Wage-system, continuance of, 185,

190.
Wallace, Judge William J., quoted,

106.

Warman, Cy, 49.
Webb, Sidney, 3.
Wells, H. G., I, 3.
Whittelsey, Dr. Sarah S., 95.
Willoughby, William F., 94.
Wright, Colonel Carroll D., 66-67.
Wyckoff, Professor Walter A., 133;

quoted, 1 68.

2O2

THE PRINCIPLES OF SOCIOLOGY

An Analysis of the Phenomena of Association and of
Social Organization

By FRANKLIN HENRY GIDDINGS, Ph.D., LL.D.

Professor of Sociology in Columbia University ;

Author of " Inductive Sociology" " Elements of Sociology"

" Democracy and Empire" etc.

Cloth. 8vo. $3.00, net

"The book is especially valuable because of the clearness and fulness
with which it discusses the psychical elements in social evolution. . . .
Professor Giddings has done good service by his clear exposition of the
present stage of sociology, and he has made a distinct and valuable con-
tribution to the subject. The book is also timely, and will doubtless have
wide reading and command the attention of all students of the subject, not
only because of Professor Giddings's acknowledged standing as a sociolo-
gist, but because of its intrinsic value. The style is particularly lucid, and
the tone of the book is judicial throughout." — The Bookman.

" Professor Giddings's book is highly stimulating. He a vigorous thinker
and a strong writer, and he has a broad knowledge of his subject and its
various affiliations, which is as refreshing as it is unusual in this day of
scientific specialists and non-scientific sociologists." — The New Unity.

INDUCTIVE SOCIOLOGY

A Syllabus of Methods, Analyses, and Classifications, and
Provisionally Formulated Laws

By FRANKLIN HENRY GIDDINGS, Ph.D., LL.D.

Professor of Sociology in Columbia University

Cloth. 8vo. $2.00, net

"Suggestive and stimulating as Professor Giddings's other works have
been, for the scientific student of society this book has a much higher value.
Indeed, it may be doubted whether as an illustration of the application of
scientific method to the study of social phenomena it has a superior. It is
a most successful attempt to show how that method can be applied to the
study of the problems of social life. It is perhaps not too much to say that
this book represents the high-water mark of scientific sociology in America."

— Annals of the American Academy.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

THE PLAIN FACTS AS TO THE TRUSTS
AND THE TARIFF

With Chapters on the Railroad Problem and Muni-
cipal Monopolies

By GEORGE L. BOLEN

Cloth i2mo $1.50 net

"The work undertaken has been thoroughly and conscien-
tiously done." — N. Y. Journal of Commerce.

" The book is really a valuable one."

— Evening Press, Grand Rapids.

" There is a vast fund of useful information in this."

— Nebraska State Journal, Lincoln.

" The author has his own views, but he gives his reasons for
them." — Cleveland Plain Dealer.

"A feature of the book is its up-to-date view."

— The Shareholder, New York.

" Probably contains more information as to trusts than does
any other yet published." — Financial Review.

" A notable book — an exhaustive re'sume' of the clearest
thought on the subjects now most prominent in politics."

Jacksonville (Fla.) Times-Union.

"The treatment is so direct that there can be no misunder-
standing it. The book deserves careful campaign study by those
who need enlightenment regarding the issue which is being dis-
cussed upon every political stump." — Public Ledger, Phila.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

THE ANTHRACITE COAL INDUSTRY

A study of the economic conditions and relations of the co-
operative forces in the development of the anthracite coal
industry of Pennsylvania.

By PETER ROBERTS, Ph.D.

With an Introduction by W. G. SUMNER, LL.D., Professor of
Political and Social Science in Yale University. With
Maps, Charts, and Diagrams.

Cloth 8vo $3.50 net

This important book is, it is believed, the first attempt to
cover the great subject of the anthracite coal industry in all
of its phases. The author has had quite exceptional advan-
tages for a thorough study of his subject, and his book is
both scholarly and practical. Professor Sumner has pointed
out in his Introduction that there is no other industry which
seems to affect the interests of so many classes of people as
the mining of anthracite coal — the staple fuel for household
use. The amount of supply, the length of time before it
will be exhausted, the methods of working and shipping, are
all matters of vital interest, not only to the mine-owner and
capitalist, but to the general public. Perhaps no industry
has brought out so many and so various experiments in the
organization of labor, improvement of methods, both of
mining and transportation, care of the destitute, etc.

The Table of Contents shows quite plainly the scope of
the work and the thorough manner in which each topic has
been handled. For the mine-owner, railroad official, coal-
dealer, or financier this volume will have a special and
timely interest.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

OJHOHOLJOUISmiNfl

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Books

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "Our benevolent feudalism"

See other formats