A few of the railroad companies after 1865 had more employees than a number of the state governments--and more power to inflict harm. When cutthroat competition failed to eliminate abuses, Congress finally passed the precedent-shattering Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. But this pioneer measure fell far short of providing adequate safeguards. Competing industries had meanwhile been merging as monopolistic trusts, notably Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company. Congress belatedly tried to restrain these monsters with the rather toothless Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890. The emerging "Titans of Industry"--notably Andrew Carnegie--also developed an articulate social and economic philosophy to justify the new social order they were helping to create. The new industrial regime transformed the lives of working Americans and stimulated the trade union movement. The Knights of Labor, who in the 1870s and 1880s made the most successful attempt until then to organize the nation's army of toilers, amassed considerable numerical strength. But they overreached themselves in the 1880s, and the wage-conscious American Federation of Labor, with its component skilled unions, forged to the front.

A Defense of Long-Haul Rates (1885)
A serious grievance against the "railroad rascals" was discrimination. Their rates were often lower where a line had competition, and higher elsewhere. Charges were sometimes heavier for a short haul than for a long haul over the same track. At one time the freight rate on cotton goods shipped from Boston to Denver was $1.79 a hundredweight; if the shipment went fourteen hundred miles farther, to San Francisco, the total charge was only $1.50. Is the following justification of this practice by a southern railroad manager (H. S. Haines) convincing? Why did certain farmers favor this type of discrimination?

If it costs $600,000 per annum to keep up a [rail] road, then the money must come out of the freight and passengers that are obliged to pass over it. Whether the amount of business be small or large, the money to keep up the road must be forthcoming, or it will go to decay.

If 100,000 bales of cotton were the only freight that passed over a road which carried no passengers, that cotton would have to pay a freight of $6 per bale if it cost $600,000 per annum to maintain the road, and no legislation could make it otherwise. But if the quantity of cotton to be transported could be increased to 200,000 bales, then the cost of transportation could be fixed at $3 per bale, to the great joy and relief of the shippers of the first 100,000 bales; and yet the $600,000 required to operate the road would be forthcoming.

Now, suppose that the community which raised this second 100,000 bales had a water route to market and said to the railroad company, "It only costs a dollar per bale to ship our cotton by water, but we prefer to ship it by rail at the same price." Who would be benefited if the company took the cotton at a dollar per bale? Who but the local shippers themselves, for without this addition to the business of the road they would have to pay $600,000 per year, or $6 per bale, to keep up the road, while with the $100,000 obtained from the other 100,000 bales of competitive or through cotton they would have to pay but $500,000 or $5 per bale on their own cotton. Should they turn around upon the managers of the railroad and say that it was unjust to the local shippers to charge only a dollar per bale on the through cotton?

No, it is not only just, but to the benefit of the local shippers, that the railroad which they are obliged to use should get all the business it can from those who are not obliged to use it, and at any rate the latter choose to pay, provided--and it is a very important provision--that such competitive business adds something to the net revenue of the road; or, in other words, if it be carried at anything above the actual cost of transportation.

Report of the Senate Select Committee on Interstate Commerce, 49th Cong., 1st sess., Senate Reports, no. 46, vol. 2, part 1, Appendix, pp. 130-131.

Railroad President Sidney Dillon Supports Stock Watering (1891)
Critics of the railroads especially condemned "stock watering"--the practice of issuing stocks and bonds grossly in excess of the value of the property. The more the stock was watered, the higher the freight and passenger rates would have to be to ensure a normal return on the investment. Sidney Dillon, a later president of the Union Pacific Railroad, stoutly defended stock watering. Beginning his career at the age of seven as a water boy--appropriately enough--on a New York railway, he ultimately amassed a fortune by building railroads, including the Union Pacific. Present at the "wedding of the rails" in Utah in 1869, he retained one of the final silver spikes until his death. Here he attacks regulatory legislation in an article for a popular magazine. What is his social philosophy? Why does he place his faith in competition and the courts?

Statutory enactments interfere with the business of the railway, even to the minutest details, and always to its detriment. This sort of legislation proceeds on the theory that the railroad is a public enemy; that it has its origin in the selfish desire of a company of men to make money out of the public; that it will destroy the public unless it is kept within bounds; and that it is impossible to enact too many laws tending to restrain the monster. The advocates of these statutes may not state their theory in these exact words. But these words certainly embody their theory, if they have any theory at all beyond such prejudices as are born of the marriage between ignorance and demagoguism.

Many of the grievances that are urged against railways are too puerile to be seriously noticed, but the reader will pardon a few words as to "overcapitalization." . . .

Now, it is impossible to estimate in advance the productive power of this useful and untiring servant. Sometimes a railway is capitalized too largely, and then it pays smaller dividends; sometimes not largely enough, and then the dividends are much in excess of the usual interest of money. In the former case stockholders are willing to reduce the face of their shares, or wait until increase of population increases revenue; in the latter they accept an enlarged issue. But, as a matter of reason and principle, the question of capitalization concerns the stockholders, and the stockholders only. A citizen, simply as a citizen, commits an impertinence when he questions the right of any corporation to capitalize its properties at any sum whatever. . . .

Then as to prices, these will always be taken care of by the great law of competition, which obtains wherever any human service is to be performed for a pecuniary consideration. That any railway, anywhere in a republic, should be a monopoly is not a supposable case. If between two points, A and B, a railway is constructed, and its charges for fares and freight are burdensome to the public and unduly profitable to itself, it will not be a long time before another railway will be laid between these points, and then competition may be safely trusted to reduce prices. We may state it as an axiom that no common carrier can ever maintain burdensome and oppressive rates of service permanently or for a long period. . . .

Given a company of men pursuing a lawful and useful occupation,--why interfere with them? Why empower a body of other men, fortuitously assembled, not possessing superior knowledge, and accessible often to unworthy influences, to dictate to these citizens how they shall manage their private affairs? Wherever such management conflicts with public policy or private rights, there are district attorneys and competent lawyers and upright courts to take care that the commonwealth or the citizen shall receive no detriment. . . .

Sidney Dillon, "The West and the Railroads," North American Review 152 (April 1891): 445-448, passim.

General James B. Weaver Deplores Stock Watering (1892)
General James B. Weaver, a walrus-mustached veteran of the Civil War, had early experienced extortion when he had to borrow $100 at 33 1/3 percent interest to finish law school. Fiery orator and relentless foe of the railroads and other "predatory" corporations, he won the presidential nomination of the People's party (Populists) in 1892. (See Chapter 28, William Allen White Attacks the Populists, 1896.) His book A Call to Action, published during the campaign, condemned stock waterers. To what extent does the following excerpt from it cast doubts on the testimony of President Dillon, whose article, presented in the previous selection, he sharply attacks? What is Weaver's view of the citizens' "impertinence"?

In their delirium of greed the managers of our transportation systems disregard both private right and the public welfare. Today they will combine and bankrupt their weak rivals, and by the expenditure of a trifling sum possess themselves of properties which cost the outlay of millions. Tomorrow they will capitalize their booty for five times the cost, issue their bonds, and proceed to levy tariffs upon the people to pay dividends upon the fraud.

Take for example the Kansas Midland. It cost $10,200 per mile. It is capitalized at $53,024 per mile. How are the plain plodding people to defend themselves against such flagrant injustice?

Mr. Sidney Dillon, president of the Union Pacific, . . . is many times a millionaire, and the road over which he presides was built wholly by public funds and by appropriations of the public domain. The road never cost Mr. Dillon nor his associates a single penny. It is now capitalized at $106,000 per mile! This company owes the government $50,000,000 with accruing interest which is destined to accumulate for many years. The public lien exceeds the entire cost of the road, and yet this government, which Mr. Dillon defies, meekly holds a second mortgage to secure its claim. . . .

It is pretty clear that it would not be safe for the public to take the advice of either Mr. Dillon or Mr. Gould [a railroad promoter] as to the best method of dealing with the transportation problem.

[Responding to a mounting public outcry, in 1887 Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act, the first regulatory legislation of its kind in U.S. history. Among various reforms, it forbade unreasonable or unjust rates, discriminatory rates or practices, the payment of rebates, the pooling of profits among competing lines, and a higher charge for a short haul than for a long haul. In practice, however, the law proved to be riddled with loopholes, and subsequent legislation was required to provide adequate safeguards.]

J. B. Weaver, A Call to Action (Des Moines: Iowa Printing Company, 1892), pp. 412-413.

John D. Rockefeller Justifies Rebates (1909)
John D. Rockefeller, who amassed a fortune of nearly a billion dollars, lived to give away more than half of his "oil-gotten gains" in philanthropy. A prominent lay Baptist, he yearly donated one-tenth of his income to charities and, in 1859, helped a Cincinnati black man to buy his slave wife. As a founding father of the mighty Standard Oil Company, he here puts the best possible face on railroad rebates, which were finally banned by the Interstate Commerce Act. He tactfully neglects to add that at one time his company also extorted secret payments ("drawbacks") from the railways on shipments by his competitors. What were the advantages to the railroads of the rebate system? To what extent did they, rather than Standard Oil, profit from these under-the-counter deals?

Of all the subjects that seem to have attracted the attention of the public to the affairs of the Standard Oil Company, the matter of rebates from railroads has perhaps been uppermost. The Standard Oil Company of Ohio, of which I was president, did receive rebates from the railroads prior to 1880, but received no advantages for which it did not give full compensation.

The reason for rebates was that such was the railroads' method of business. A public rate was made and collected by the railroad companies, but, so far as my knowledge extends, was seldom retained in full; a portion of it was repaid to the shippers as a rebate.

By this method the real rate of freight which any shipper paid was not known by his competitors nor by other railroad companies, the amount being a matter of bargain with the carrying company. Each shipper made the best bargain that he could, but whether he was doing better than his competitor was only a matter of conjecture. Much depended upon whether the shipper had the advantage of competition of carriers.

The Standard Oil Company of Ohio, being situated at Cleveland, had the advantage of different carrying lines, as well as of water transportation in the summer. Taking advantage of those facilities, it made the best bargains possible for its freights. Other companies sought to do the same.

The Standard gave advantages to the railroads for the purpose of reducing the cost of transportation of freight. It offered freights in large quantity, carloads and trainloads. It furnished loading facilities and discharging facilities at great cost. It provided regular traffic, so that a railroad could conduct its transportation to the best advantage and use its equipment to the full extent of its hauling capacity without waiting for the refiner's convenience. It exempted railroads from liability for fire and carried its own insurance. It provided at its own expense terminal facilities which permitted economies in handling. For these services it obtained contracts for special allowances on freights. But notwithstanding these special allowances, this traffic from the Standard Oil Company was far more profitable to the railroad companies than the smaller and irregular traffic, which might have paid a higher rate.

To understand the situation which affected the giving and taking of rebates, it must be remembered that the railroads were all eager to enlarge their freight traffic. They were competing with the facilities and rates offered by the boats on lake and canal and by the pipe lines. All these means of transporting oil cut into the business of the railroads, and they were desperately anxious to successfully meet this competition. . . .

The profits of the Standard Oil Company did not come from advantages given by railroads. The railroads, rather, were the ones who profited by the traffic of the Standard Oil Company, and whatever advantage it received in its constant efforts to reduce rates of rates of freight was only one of the many elements of lessening cost to the consumer which enabled us to increase our volume of business the world over because we could reduce the selling price.

How general was the complicated bargaining for rates can hardly be imagined; everyone got the best rate that he could. After the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act, it was learned that many small companies which shipped limited quantities had received lower rates than we had been able to secure, notwithstanding the fact that we had made large investments to provide for terminal facilities, regular shipments, and other economies.

I well remember a bright man from Boston who had much to say about rebates and drawbacks. He was an old and experienced merchant, and looked after his affairs with a cautious and watchful eye. He feared that some of his competitors were doing better than he in bargaining for rates, and he delivered himself of this conviction:

"I am opposed on principle to the whole system of rebates and drawbacks--unless I am in it."

J. D. Rockefeller, Random Reminiscences of Men and Events (1909), pp. 107-109, 111-112. Copyright 1909, Doubleday & Company, Inc.

An Oil Man Goes Bankrupt (1899)
Rockefeller's great passion was not so much a love of power or money as a dislike of waste and inefficiency. Having begun as a $3.50-a-week employee, he ultimately moved into the chaotically competitive oil business with a vision that enabled him to see far ahead, and then "around the corner." Overlooking no detail, he insisted that every drop of solder used on his oil cans be counted. By acquiring or controlling warehouses, pipelines, tankers, railroads, oil fields, and refineries, he helped forge the United State's first great trust in 1882. He produced a superior product at a lowered price but, in line with existing ethics, resorted to such "refined robbery" as ruthless price cutting, dictation to dealers, deception, espionage, and rebates. George Rice, one of his ill-starred competitors, here complains to the U.S. Industrial Commission. What are his principal grievances?

I am a citizen of the United States, born in the state of Vermont. Producer of petroleum for more than thirty years, and a refiner of same for twenty years. But my refinery has been shut down during the past three years, owing to the powerful and all-prevailing machinations of the Standard Oil Trust, in criminal collusion and conspiracy with the railroads to destroy my business of twenty years of patient industry, toil, and money in building up, wholly by and through unlawful freight discriminations.

I have been driven from pillar to post, from one railway line to another, for twenty years, in the absolutely vain endeavor to get equal and just freight rates with the Standard Oil Trust, so as to be able to run my refinery at anything approaching a profit, but which I have been utterly unable to do. I have had to consequently shut down, with my business absolutely ruined and my refinery idle.

This has been a very sad, bitter, and ruinous experience for me to endure, but I have endeavored to the best of my circumstances and ability to combat it the utmost I could for many a long waiting year, expecting relief through the honest and proper execution of our laws, which have [has] as yet, however, never come. But I am still living in hopes, though I may die in despair. . . .

Outside of rebates or freight discriminations, I had no show with the Standard Oil Trust, because of their unlawfully acquired monopoly, by which they could temporarily cut only my customers' prices, and below cost, leaving the balance of the town, nine-tenths, uncut. This they can easily do without any appreciable harm to their general trade, and thus effectually wipe out all competition, as fully set forth. Standard Oil prices generally were so high that I could sell my goods 2 to 3 cents a gallon below their prices and make a nice profit, but these savage attacks and [price] cuts upon my customers' goods . . . plainly showed . . . their power for evil, and the uselessness to contend against such odds. . . .

Report of the U.S. Industrial Commission, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1899), pp. 687, 704.

Weaver Attacks the Trusts (1892)
Rockefeller's Standard Oil of Ohio was not authorized to operate outside the state, so in 1882 the Standard Oil Trust, the first of its kind, was born. "A corporation of corporations," it secretly merged forty-one different concerns. In 1892 the courts held this trust to be illegally in restraint of trade, but Rockefeller and his associates were able to achieve their semi-monopolistic ends by less formal agreements. General Weaver, the fiery Populist candidate for president in 1892 (see Chapter 28, William Allen White Attacks the Populists, 1869), here assails the trusts, whose unwritten motto was said to be, "Let us prey." Note his enumeration of the evils of the trusts. What does he make of the monopolists' claim that the elimination of wasteful competition is advantageous to the consumer?

The trust is organized commerce with the Golden Rule excluded and the trustees exempted from the restraints of conscience.

They argue that competition means war and is therefore destructive. The trust is eminently docile and hence seeks to destroy competition in order that we may have peace. But the peace which they give us is like that which exists after the leopard has devoured the kid. This professed desire for peace is a false pretense. They dread the war of competition because the people share in the spoils. When rid of that, they always turn their guns upon the masses and depredate without limit or mercy.

The main weapons of the trust are threats, intimidation, bribery, fraud, wreck, and pillage. Take one well-authenticated instance in the history of the Oat Meal Trust as an example. In 1887 this trust decided that part of their mills should stand idle. They were accordingly closed. This resulted in the discharge of a large number of laborers who had to suffer in consequence. The mills which were continued in operation would produce seven million barrels of meal during the year. Shortly after shutting down, the trust advanced the price of meal one dollar per barrel, and the public was forced to stand the assessment. The mills were more profitable when idle than when in operation.

The Sugar Trust has it within its power to levy a tribute of $30,000,000 upon the people of the United States by simply advancing the price of sugar one cent per pound for one year. If popular tumult breaks out and legislation in restraint of these depredations is threatened, they can advance prices, extort campaign expenses and corruption funds from the people, and force the disgruntled multitude to furnish the sinews of war for their own destruction. They not only have the power to do these things, but it is their known mode of warfare, and they actually practice it from year to year.

The most distressing feature of this war of the trusts is the fact that they control the articles which the plain people consume in their daily life. It cuts off their accumulations and deprives them of the staff upon which they fain would lean in their old age.

J. B. Weaver, A Call to Action (Des Moines: Iowa Printing Company, 1892), pp. 392-393.

Andrew Carnegie's Gospel of Wealth (1889)
Andrew Carnegie, the ambitious Scottish steel magnate, spent the first part of his life in the United States making a half-billion or so dollars and the rest of it giving his fortune away. Not a gambler or speculator at heart, he gambled everything on the future prosperity of the United States. His social conscience led him to preach "the gospel of wealth," notably in the following magazine article. Why does he believe that the millionaire is a trustee for the poor and that direct charity is an evil?

This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of wealth: first, to set an example of modest, unostentatious living, shunning display or extravagance; to provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him; and after doing so to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds, which he is called upon to administer, and strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the manner which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community--the man of wealth thus becoming the mere agent and trustee for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience, and ability to administer, doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves. . . .

Those who would administer wisely must, indeed, be wise, for one of the serious obstacles to the improvement of our race is indiscriminate charity. It were better for mankind that the millions of the rich were thrown into the sea than so spent as to encourage the slothful, the drunken, the unworthy. Of every thousand dollars spent in so-called charity today, it is probable that $950 is unwisely spent; so spent, indeed, as to produce the very evils which it proposes to mitigate or cure.

A well-known writer of philosophic books admitted the other day that he had given a quarter of a dollar to a man who approached him as he was coming to visit the house of his friend. He knew nothing of the habits of this beggar; knew not the use that would be made of this money, although he had every reason to suspect that it would be spent improperly. This man professed to be a disciple of [conservative English social theorist] Herbert Spencer; yet the quarter-dollar given that night will probably work more injury than all the money which its thoughtless donor will ever be able to give in true charity will do good. He only gratified his own feelings, saved himself from annoyance--and this was probably one of the most selfish and very worst actions of his life, for in all respects he is most worthy.

In bestowing charity, the main consideration should be to help those who will help themselves; to provide part of the means by which those who desire to improve may do so; to give those who desire to rise the aids by which they may rise; to assist, but rarely or never to do all. Neither the individual nor the race is improved by almsgiving. Those worthy of assistance, except in rare cases, seldom require assistance. The really valuable men of the race never do, except in cases of accident or sudden change. Everyone has, of course, cases of individuals brought to his own knowledge where temporary assistance can do genuine good, and these he will not overlook.

But the amount which can be wisely given by the individual for individuals is necessarily limited by his lack of knowledge of the circumstances connected with each. He is the only true reformer who is as careful and as anxious not to aid the unworthy as he is to aid the worthy, and, perhaps, even more so, for in almsgiving more injury is probably done by rewarding vice than by relieving virtue.

The rich man is thus almost restricted to following the examples of Peter Cooper, Enoch Pratt of Baltimore, Mr. Pratt of Brooklyn, Senator Stanford,* and others, who know that the best means of benefiting the community is to place within its reach the ladders upon which the aspiring can rise--parks, and means of recreation, by which men are helped in body and mind; works of art, certain to give pleasure and improve the public taste; and public institutions of various kinds, which will improve the general condition of the people;--in this manner returning their surplus wealth to the mass of their fellows in the forms best calculated to do them lasting good. . . .

The man who dies leaving behind him millions of available wealth, which was his to administer during life, will pass away "unwept, unhonored, and unsung," no matter to what uses he leaves the dross which he cannot take with him. Of such as these the public verdict will then be: "The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced."

Such, in my opinion, is the true Gospel concerning Wealth, obedience to which is destined some day to solve the problem of the Rich and the Poor, and to bring "Peace on earth, among men good will."

*Cooper founded an institute in New York City for educating the working classes; Enoch Pratt established a free library in Baltimore; Charles Pratt created an institute in Brooklyn for training skilled workers; and Leland Stanford endowed Stanford University.

Andrew Carnegie, "Wealth," North American Review 148 (June 1889): 661-664.

The Nation Challenges Carnegie (1901)
Carnegie avoided the "disgrace" of dying rich. He gave away $350 million of the fortune he had accumulated. Some $60 million went to public municipal libraries, many named after himself. Finley Peter Dunne ("Mr. Dooley") poked fun at this immodest arrangement, especially the feature that required the community to provide the site, the books, the upkeep: "Every time he [Carnegie] drops a dollar, it makes a noise like a waither [waiter] falling' downstairs with a tray iv dishes." The New York Nation reviewed rather critically Carnegie's essay on the gospel of wealth when it was published in book form. Does Carnegie or The Nation have the better of the argument as to the baleful effects of inherited riches? How have these issues changed since Carnegie's day?

Mr. Carnegie's philosophy is perfectly simple, and it is stated clearly and forcibly. He holds, first, that the present competitive system, which necessarily creates millionaires, or allows men to get rich, is essential to progress, and should not be altered. Secondly, rich men should not leave their fortunes to their children, because their children will be demoralized by having money to spend which they have not earned. Thirdly, rich men should not indulge in luxury. Fourthly, they should dispose of their fortunes while living, or the government should confiscate them at their death. Fifthly, the only practical way of disposing of them is to found libraries and other public institutions, requiring the public to contribute to their support.

Evidently, this system assumes that millionaires are sinners above other men. The number of persons who have wealth sufficient to maintain their children in idleness is very large, and such persons are able to indulge in many luxuries. We cannot concede that the children of millionaires will go straight to perdition if they inherit their parents' wealth, while those who get but a hundred thousand shall be immune. Everyone familiar with the life of the common people knows that an inheritance of a very few thousand dollars may demoralize a young man, and this principle has been illustrated on a prodigious scale in our pension largesses.

On the other hand, virtue among the children of millionaires is not quite so rare as Mr. Carnegie intimates. Instances are known where inherited wealth has been wisely administered by men of respectable and even irreproachable habits. Mr. Carnegie's dictum, "I would as soon leave to my son a curse as the almighty dollar," is too sweeping. Millions of people who are not millionaires desire to give their children the advantages of wealth, and this desire is one of the greatest incentives to accumulation. Provided they educate their children wisely, it is impossible to maintain that the gift of these advantages is necessarily injurious.

On this point Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Gladstone [a British statesman] had some debate; the latter contending that "the hereditary transmission of wealth and position, in conjunction with the calls of occupation and of responsibility, is a good and not an evil thing." Of course, this is nothing but the old conflict between the ideals of democracy and aristocracy, and we need not restate it. . . .

Probably we shall see the experiment of confiscating large fortunes at the death of their owners tried on an increasing scale, together with progressive taxes on incomes.

Nation (New York) 62 (January 17, 1901): 55.

Russell Conwell Deifies the Dollar (c. 1900)
The Reverend Russell H. Conwell was a remarkable Baptist preacher from Philadelphia who founded Temple University and had a large hand in establishing three hospitals. He delivered his famous lecture, "Acres of Diamonds," more than six thousand times. The proceeds went toward the education of some ten thousand young men. His basic theme was that in seeking riches, people were likely to overlook the opportunities (the "acres of diamonds") in their own backyards. Critics charged that Conwell was merely throwing the cloak of religion about the materialistic ideals of his time, especially since he combined philanthropy with dollar-chasing. In the following excerpt from his famous lecture, what is his attitude toward the poor? How might one reconcile this brand of Christianity with the teachings of Christ, who said to the young man, "Go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor" (Matthew 19:21)?

You have no right to be poor. It is your duty to be rich.

Oh, I know well that there are some things higher, sublimer than money! Ah, yes, there are some things sweeter, holier than gold! Yet I also know that there is not one of those things but is greatly enhanced by the use of money.

"Oh," you will say, "Mr. Conwell, can you, as a Christian teacher, tell the young people to spend their lives making money?"

Yes, I do. Three times I say, I do, I do, I do. You ought to make money. Money is power. Think how much good you could do if you had money now. Money is power, and it ought to be in the hands of good men. It would be in the hands of good men if we comply with the Scripture teachings, where God promises prosperity to the righteous man. That means more than being a goody-good--it means the all-round righteous man. You should be a righteous man. If you were, you would be rich.

I need to guard myself right here. Because one of my theological students came to me once to labor with me, for heresy, inasmuch as I had said that money was power.

He said: "Mr. Conwell, I feel it my duty to tell you that the Scriptures say that money 'is the root of all evil.' " . . .

So he read: "The love of money is the root of all evil." Indeed it is. The love of money is the root of all evil. The love of money, rather than the love of the good it secures, is a dangerous evil in the community. The desire to get hold of money, and to hold on to it, "hugging the dollar until the eagle squeals," is the root of all evil. But it is a grand ambition for men to have the desire to gain money, that they may use it for the benefit of their fellow men.

Young man! you may never have the opportunity to charge at the head of your nation's troops on some Santiago's heights. Young woman! you may never be called on to go out in the seas like Grace Darling to save suffering humanity. But every one of you can earn money honestly, and with that money you can fight the battles of peace; and the victories of peace are always grander than those of war. I say then to you that you ought to be rich. . . .

No man has a right to go into business and not make money. It is a crime to go into business and lose money, because it is a curse to the rest of the community. No man has a moral right to transact business unless he makes something out of it. He has also no right to transact business unless the man he deals with has an opportunity also to make something. Unless he lives and lets live, he is not an honest man in business. There are no exceptions to this great rule. . . .

It is cruel to slander the rich because they have been successful. It is a shame to "look down" upon the rich the way we do. They are not scoundrels because they have gotten money. They have blessed the world. They have gone into great enterprises that have enriched the nation and the nation has enriched them. It is all wrong for us to accuse a rich man of dishonesty simply because he secured money. Go through this city and your very best people are among your richest people. Owners of property are always the best citizens. It is all wrong to say they are not good.

R. H. Conwell, Acres of Diamonds (1901), pp. 145-147, 151. Reprinted from Modern Eloquence.

Henry Grady Issues a Challenge (1889)
The industrialized South--the new South--was slow to rise from the ashes of civil conflict. A kind of inferiority complex settled over the area. Henry W. Grady, eloquent editor of the Atlanta Constitution, did more than anyone else to break the spell. With Irish wit he preached the need for diversified crops, a readjustment of the freed slaves, the encouragement of manufacturing, and the development of local resources. In demand as a speaker, he broadcast his message widely and with demonstrable effect. The South of the 1880s was experiencing a marvelous economic boom, and new industries were spreading like its own honeysuckle. Following is a selection from a speech in Boston in which Grady contrasted the broken-down South of Reconstruction days with the new industrialized South. What major lesson must this passage have impressed upon his northern listeners?

I attended a funeral once in Pickens county in my state [Georgia]. A funeral is not usually a cheerful object to me unless I could select the subject. I think I could, perhaps, without going a hundred miles from here, find the material for one or two cheerful funerals. Still, this funeral was peculiarly sad. It was a poor "one-gallus" fellow, whose breeches struck him under the armpits and hit him at the other end about the knee--he didn't believe in décolleté clothes.

They buried him in the midst of a marble quarry--they cut through solid marble to make his grave--and yet a little tombstone they put above him was from Vermont. They buried him in the heart of a pine forest, and yet the pine coffin was imported from Cincinnati. They buried him within the touch of an iron mine, and yet the nails in his coffin and the iron in the shovel that dug his grave were imported from Pittsburgh. They buried him by the side of the best sheep-grazing country on earth, and yet the wool in the coffin bands and the coffin bands themselves were brought from the North. The South didn't furnish a thing on earth for that funeral but the corpse and the hole in the ground.

There they put him away and the clods rattled down on his coffin, and they buried him in a New York coat and a Boston pair of shoes and a pair of breeches from Chicago and a shirt from Cincinnati, leaving him nothing to carry into the next world with him to remind him of the country in which he lived, and for which he fought for four years, but the chill of blood in his veins and the marrow in his bones.

Now we have improved on that. We have got the biggest marble-cutting establishment on earth within a hundred yards of that grave. We have got a half-dozen woolen mills right around it, and iron mines, and iron furnaces, and iron factories. We are coming to meet you. We are going to take a noble revenge, as my friend Mr. Carnegie said last night, by invading every inch of your territory with iron, as you invaded ours [in the Civil War] twenty-nine years ago.

Joel C. Harris, Life of Henry W. Grady (New York: Cassell and Company, Ltd., 1890), pp. 204-205. Shortly after delivering this speech, Grady contracted pneumonia and died.

A Yankee Visits the New South (1887)
New England-born Charles Dudley Warner--lecturer, newspaper editor, essayist, and novelist--shone as one of the literary lights of the post-Civil War years. World traveler and humorist, he collaborated with his friend and neighbor Mark Twain in writing a satirical novel that gave a name to an era, The Gilded Age (1873). He revisited the South, after a two-year absence, on an extensive six-week tour. The result was the charming magazine article from which the following selection is excerpted. What is most remarkable about the industrial flowering of the South, and who or what was primarily responsible for it?

When we come to the New Industrial South, the change is marvelous. . . . Instead of a South devoted to agriculture and politics, we find a South wide awake to business, excited and even astonished at the development of its own immense resources in metals, marbles, coal, timber, fertilizers, eagerly laying lines of communication, rapidly opening mines, building furnaces, foundries, and all sorts of shops for utilizing the native riches.

It is like the discovery of a new world. When the Northerner finds great foundries in Virginia using only (with slight exceptions) the products of Virginia iron and coal mines; when he finds Alabama and Tennessee making iron so good and so cheap that it finds ready market in Pennsylvania, and foundries multiplying near the great furnaces for supplying Northern markets; when he finds cotton mills running to full capacity on grades of cheap cottons universally in demand throughout the South and Southwest; when he finds small industries, such as paper box factories and wooden bucket and tub factories, sending all they can make into the North and widely over the West; when he sees the loads of most beautiful marbles shipped North; when he learns that some of the largest and most important engines and mill machinery were made in Southern shops; when he finds in Richmond a "pole locomotive," made to run on logs laid end to end, and drag out from Michigan forests and Southern swamps lumber hitherto inaccessible; when he sees worn-out highlands in Georgia and Carolina bear more cotton than ever before by help of a fertilizer the base of which is the cotton seed itself (worth more as a fertilizer than it was before the oil was extracted from it); when he sees a multitude of small shops giving employment to men, women, and children who never had any work of that sort to do before; and when he sees Roanoke iron cast in Richmond into car irons, and returned to a car factory in Roanoke which last year sold three hundred cars to the New York and New England Railroad--he begins to open his eyes.

The South is manufacturing a great variety of things needed in the house, on the farm, and in the shops, for home consumption, and already sends to the North and West several manufactured products. With iron, coal, timber contiguous and easily obtained, the amount sent out is certain to increase as the labor becomes more skillful. The most striking industrial development today is in iron, coal, lumber, and marbles; the more encouraging for the self-sustaining life of the Southern people is the multiplication of small industries in nearly every city I visited.

When I have been asked what impressed me most in this hasty tour, I have always said that the most notable thing was that everybody was at work. In many cities this was literally true: every man, woman, and child was actively employed, and in most there were fewer idlers than in many Northern towns. There are, of course, slow places, antiquated methods, easygoing ways, a-hundred-years-behind-the-time make-shifts, but the spirit in all the centers, and leavening the whole country, is work. Perhaps the greatest revolution of all in Southern sentiment is in regard to the dignity of labor. Labor is honorable, made so by the example of the best in the land. There are, no doubt, fossils or Bourbons, sitting in the midst of the ruins of their estates, martyrs to an ancient pride; but usually the leaders in business and enterprise bear names well known in politics and society. The nonsense that it is beneath the dignity of any man or woman to work for a living is pretty much eliminated from the Southern mind. It still remains true that the purely American type is prevalent in the South, but in all the cities the business signboards show that the enterprising Hebrew is increasingly prominent as merchant and trader, and he is becoming a plantation owner as well.

It cannot be too strongly impressed upon the public mind that the South, to use a comprehensible phrase, "has joined the procession." Its mind is turned to the development of its resources, to business, to enterprise, to education, to economic problems; it is marching with the North in the same purpose of wealth by industry. It is true that the railways, mines, and furnaces could not have been without enormous investments of Northern capital, but I was continually surprised to find so many and important local industries the result solely of home capital, made and saved since the war.

C. D. Warner, "The South Revisited," Harper's New Monthly Magazine 74 (March 1887): 638-639.

Life in a Southern Mill (1910)
From Charles Dickens's England to the modern-day Third World, the onset of industrialization has repeatedly wrenched people out of traditional habits of life and forced harsh accommodation to the cruel discipline of the factory floor. The rapidly industrializing late-nineteenth-century South was no exception, as the following excerpt from a congressional investigation illustrates. What were the hardest conditions of life in the southern textile mills? Were there any distinctively Southern aspects to these mill workers' plight?

In many mill villages the mill whistles blow at 4.30 or 5 A.M. to awaken the inhabitants, and in winter employees begin work in the mills before daybreak and they work until after nightfall.

When a mill is operated longer than its nominal working schedule, the machinery is started before the announced time of beginning work in the morning and at noon, and, in some cases, continues to run later than the announced time of stopping work at noon and in the evening. Mill managers, when questioned as to this practice, said that employees are not required to work before or after the announced scheduled time. In reality, however, employees are required to be at their machines whenever the machines are running. Otherwise the work gets in bad condition, and in the case of weavers dockage is made for imperfections, which are liable to occur when the weaver is not attending the looms.

The practice of requiring employees to begin before the announced beginning time and to work after the announced stopping time is called by them "stealing time." . . .

Taking the 28 North Carolina mills which employed women or children at night, all together, the children working by day in all these mills were 25.32 per cent of all the day employees there, and the 437 children working by night in all these mills were 26.29 per cent of all the night workers. . . .

In only 2 establishments investigated did the night force work more than 5 nights a week. In each of these mills, both of which were in North Carolina, an additional half day's work on Saturday was demanded, and this demand caused much dissatisfaction. In 1 of these 2 establishments the night shift worked 11 hours and 15 minutes nightly from Monday to Friday, inclusive, and on Saturday resumed at noon and worked until 6.15 in the evening, making a total of 62 hours and 30 minutes a week. In the other mill the night shift worked 11 hours and 30 minutes nightly, from Monday to Friday, inclusive, and on Saturday resumed at 3 P.M. and worked until 10 P.M., making a total of 64 hours and 30 minutes. Other mills which had had such a schedule had discontinued the Saturday work for its night workers, because of the dissatisfaction which such a time-table caused. . . .

In interviewing cotton-mill operatives, women expressed more dissatisfaction with night work than children did. Many of the latter claimed that they much preferred to work at night. Spinners asserted that the "work runs better at night," because the increased moisture in the air keeps the threads from breaking so frequently. In consequence the young spinners received less reproof from the overseers.

Then, with the exception of 2 mills in North Carolina the night shifts worked only 5 nights a week, from Monday to Friday, inclusive. This means that three full days were given for rest, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. If the children should sleep on Saturday, as they ought to do, but rarely do, they would see that they have very little more spare time than the day workers--only the one night, Saturday, which they surely need for recuperation after their sixty hours' work at night. Mothers complain that the children who work at night are nervous.

In visiting families of cotton-mill operatives who worked at night, night workers were often found sitting drowsily before a scant fire between 9 and 11 o'clock in the morning. They had begun work the night before at 6, had quit at 6 A.M., and at 11 o'clock they had had no sleep. Usually they arose at 4 or 5 in the afternoon and again took their seats before the fire, too weary and sluggish to think of a walk in the open air. Even when they went to bed early in the morning, sleep was not continuous throughout the day, nor could it be sound sleep. In the small houses, with thin wood partitions, every sound in the house can be heard by the night worker, even though he may sleep in a separate room. Moreover, night workers often sleep in the same room occupied by the nonworkers during the day. The non-workers frequently include children and the room can not be kept quiet.

In cases where both the mother and father worked at night, the mother nearly always did her housework, including her washing and ironing. This means that on one day at least the mother went from 18 to 24 hours without sleeping. One woman, who gave as her reason for working at night that she could take care of her home, garden, cow, and boy during the day, was found at 11 in the morning hanging up her clothes. She had had no sleep during the preceding 24 hours.

Shocking abuses in connection with night work were found in two small mills in North Carolina, where night employees frequently worked in the daytime in addition to their regular night work, and where day employees frequently worked at night after a full day's work. These cases are not cited here as typical, but they are given to show the extremes to which unregulated labor of women and children can go in the absence of legal regulation or of efficient means of enforcement, and to show the callous disregard of every consideration for a child wage-earner that can be shown by his employer and his natural protector alike.

In one of these mills the day shift worked 66 hours per week and the night shift 60 hours. Owing to a scarcity of help, day workers were frequently requested to return to the mill immediately after supper and work until midnight, and frequently some one was sent to the homes of employees early in the evening or at midnight to request day workers to come and work half of the night. Some employees usually declined to do overtime work. Others worked alternate nights as a regular custom.

Ordinarily this overtime work was paid for at the time it was performed and there was no record to show its extent. In the case of one family, however, the names of workers were entered on both the day roll and the night roll and this record showed that 4 children, 2 boys, doffers, one 10 and one 15 years old, and 2 girls, spinners, one 11 and one 13, and also a youth 17 years old, all members of the same family, had been paid for 78 to 84 hours of work per week. They had worked this number of hours, less a little time for supper and breakfast, on days when extra work was done. It was found that during a considerable part of the eight months that this family had been at this mill these children had worked two or three half nights each week, in addition to day work. After working from 6 A.M. to 6 P.M., with 35 minutes for dinner, they had returned to the mill, usually every other night, immediately after supper and worked until midnight, when they went home for four or five hours of sleep before beginning the next day's work; or, they had been aroused at midnight and sent to the mill for the second half of the night, where they remained until 6 o'clock the following afternoon, except when eating breakfast and dinner. In either case, they were on duty for a working day of 17 hours, with no rest period save for meals. Those who worked the second half of the night went home for a hurried breakfast just before 6 A.M. The mill stopped only 35 minutes out of the 24 hours, from 12 M. to 12.35 P.M. On one or two occasions two younger children of the same family, one a girl spinner and spooler-helper 7 years old, and the other a male doffer, reported 10 years old but apparently 8, had worked half of the night in addition to day work.

The father of this family was apparently an active, hard-working man. He expressed the opinion that night work in addition to day work was rather hard on the children, but said that he was trying to get money to buy a home. He also said that as the children were in two sets, part his and part his wife's, he must be careful not to show any favor to either portion of the family. No member of this family could read or write. . . .

Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United States, U.S. Congress, 61st Cong., 2d sess., Senate Document No. 645 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1910), pp. 280-291.

In Praise of Mechanization (1897)
As capitalists competed for markets and profits, they pushed their workers ever harder. Factory laborers came to dread the "speedup"--the order to produce more goods in less time. The already screeching din of the shop floor then whined to an even higher pitch, as machines were made to run faster--and more dangerously. Some observers claimed that the peculiarly profit-hungry and competitive U.S. business environment rendered the conditions of labor in the United States particularly intolerable. Yet new workers by the millions fled the farms of both America and Europe to seek work tending the rattling industrial machines. In the following comments by a French economist who visited the United States near the end of the nineteenth century, how does he appraise the overall impact of mechanization? Is he convincing? What differences does he see between work conditions in Europe and those in the United States? What does he identify as the principal complaints of U.S. workers? Does he consider them justified?

"The pay here is good, but the labor is hard," said an Alsatian blacksmith employed in a large factory. I could verify nearly everywhere the truth of this remark, for I have seen such activity both in the small industry, where the tailors in the sweating-shops in New York worked with feverish rapidity, and in the great industry, where the butchers of the Armour packing house prepared 5800 hogs a day, where the cotton weavers tended as many as eight looms, or where the rolling-mill in Chicago turned out 1000 tons of rails in a day. Everywhere the machine goes very rapidly, and it commands; the workman has to follow. . . .

In the Senate inquiry of 1883, upon education and labor, a weaver of Fall River, who had been a member of the Massachusetts Legislature, and who was then secretary of the Weavers' Union, said that he had worked seventeen years in England, and that conditions were much better than in America. The manufacturers there were not so desirous as they are here of working their men like horses or slaves; they do not work with the extraordinary rapidity which is customary at Fall River. In England, one man manages a pair of looms with two assistants; one between the looms and the other behind. In America, the manufacturer, with one or two exceptions, will not hear of that, and whatever the number of spindles they do not wish that a man shall have more than one assistant. The spindle is turned more rapidly; the laborers have more to do and for each loom Fall River produces more. . . .

The manufacturers judge that the movement [to mechanize] has been advantageous to workmen, as sellers of labor, because the level of salaries has been raised, as consumers of products, because they purchase more with the same sum, and as laborers, because their task has become less onerous, the machine doing nearly everything which requires great strength; the workman, instead of bringing his muscles into play, has become an inspector, using his intelligence. He is told that his specialized labor is degrading because monotonous. Is it more monotonous to overlook with the eye for ten hours several automatic looms, and to attach, from time to time, one thread to another with the finger, than to push for fourteen hours against the breast the arm of a hand-loom, pressing at the same time the pedals with the feet?

In proportion as the machines require more room, the ceilings become higher, the workshops larger, the hygienic conditions better. From a sanitary standpoint, there is no comparison between the large factory to-day and the hut of the peasant, or the tenement of the sweating system. The improvement of machinery and the growing power of industrial establishments, have diminished the price of a great number of goods, and this is one of the most laudable forward movements of industry whose object is to satisfy, as well as possible, the needs of man.

The laboring classes do not share this optimism. They reproach the machine with exhausting the physical powers of the laborer; but this can only apply to a very small number of cases, to those where the workman is at the same time the motive power, as in certain sewing-machines. They reproach it with demanding such continued attention that it enervates, and of leaving no respite to the laborer, through the continuity of its movement. This second complaint may be applicable in a much larger number of cases, particularly in the spinning industries and in weaving, where the workman manages more than four looms. They reproach the machine with degrading man by transforming him into a machine, which knows how to make but one movement, and that always the same. They reproach it with diminishing the number of skilled laborers, permitting in many cases the substitution of unskilled workers and lowering the average level of wages. They reproach it with depriving, momentarily at least, every time that an invention modifies the work of the factory, a certain number of workmen of their means of subsistence, thus rendering the condition of all uncertain. They reproach it, finally, with reducing absolutely and permanently the number of persons employed for wages, and thus being indirectly injurious to all wage-earners who make among themselves a more disastrous competition, the more the opportunities for labor are restricted.

In one of the reports of the census of 1880, Mr. [Carroll D.] Wright examined other accusations which have been brought generally against manufacturing: (1) necessitating the employment of an excessive number of women and children, it tends to destroy the family ties; (2) it is injurious to health; (3) it tends toward intemperance, prodigality, and pauperism; (4) it encourages prostitution and criminality. It was not difficult to prove that these accusations rest upon errors or exaggerations.

To these grievances political economy replies by the general results of statistics, which show that the total number of laborers, far from having diminished, has steadily increased from one census to another in the United States; that, on the other hand, the total wages paid to laborers shows an increase of average wages, that the diminution in the price of goods is advantageous to consumers among whom are to be reckoned the wage-earners. These three facts are indisputable.

However, the American laborer is not reassured by such a reply, because he rarely consumes the goods he manufactures, because the average wages of the country is not necessarily the measure of his wages; because when dismissed in consequence of an improvement of machinery, he runs great risk of finding no employment in the same industry, while in another he finds it generally only after long delays; in the meantime, he has a family to support. Although the American is more mobile than the European, the transition is not easy either for one or the other. And on both sides of the Atlantic, there is individual misery and professional crises which touch painfully, very cruelly sometimes, the laboring classes. That fact is not to be disputed.

The chief of the Labor Bureau of New York has made a suggestive comparison: the United States and Great Britain, he says, are the countries which own and use the most machines. Compare the general condition of laborers in those countries with that of any country whatever in the world, where machines are unknown, except in the most primitive forms. Where is the superiority? It is almost a paradox, and yet it is a truth that machines bring about a much larger employment and improvement, not only because they increase production, but because they multiply the chances of employment, and incidentally the consumption of products. In fact, the census of the United States shows that the proportion of laborers to the total number of inhabitants has increased in the same period that the machine has taken most complete possession of manufactures. From 1860 to 1890, while the population of the United States doubled, the number of persons employed in industry increased nearly threefold (increase of 172 per cent), and at the same time the mechanical power, measured by horse-power, increased fourfold. Inventions have created new industries, such as photography, electricity, telegraphy, electrotyping, railroading, manufacture of bicycles, etc., and have thus given to labor much more employment than they have withdrawn from it. Thus, even in old industries, transformed by machinery, the progress of consumption has generally maintained a demand for hands.

There is no social evolution which does not produce friction. That which urges industry toward machinery and large factories appears to me to-day irresistible, because it leads to cheapness, which the consumer seeks first of all, and which is one of the objects of economic civilization. It is Utopia to believe that the world could come back by some modification of the social order, or of mechanical motive powers to the system of the little family workshop. Such a workshop is far from being an ideal, as the sweating system proves.

E. Levasseur, "The Concentration of Industry, and Machinery in the United States," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 9, no. 2 (March 1897): 12-14, 18-19, 21-24.

A Tailor Testifies (1883)
In 1883 a Senate investigating committee heard the testimony of several workers about the conditions of labor in the United States' burgeoning industries. The witness who gave the following account had been a tailor for some thirty years. What changes in work conditions had he seen in his lifetime? Were they for good or ill? What did they imply for his family life?

Senator Pugh.

Please give us any information that you may have as to the relation existing between the employers and the employees in the tailoring business in this city, as to wages, as to treatment of the one by the other class, as to the feeling that exists between the employers and the employed generally, and all that you know in regard to the subject that we are authorized to inquire into?

A. During the time I have been here the tailoring business is altered in three different ways. Before we had sewing machines we worked piecework with our wives, and very often our children. We had no trouble then with our neighbors, nor with the landlord, because it was a very still business, very quiet; but in 1854 or 1855, and later, the sewing machine was invented and introduced, and it stitched very nicely, nicer than the tailor could do; and the bosses said: "We want you to use the sewing machine; you have to buy one." Many of the tailors had a few dollars in the bank, and they took the money and bought machines. Many others had no money, but must help themselves; so they brought their stitching, the coat or vest, to the other tailors who had sewing machines, and paid them a few cents for the stitching. Later, when the money was given out for the work, we found out that we could earn no more than we could without the machine; but the money for the machine was gone now, and we found that the machine was only for the profit of the bosses; that they got their work quicker, and it was done nicer. . . . The machine makes too much noise in the place, and the neighbors want to sleep, and we have to stop sewing earlier; so we have to work faster. We work now in excitement--in a hurry. It is hunting; it is not work at all; it is a hunt.

Q. You turn out two or three times as much work per day now as you did in prior times before the war?

A. Yes, sir; two or three times as much; and we have to do it, because the wages are two-thirds lower than they were five or ten years back. . . .

Senator Blair.

What proportion of them are women and what proportion men, according to your best judgment?

A. I guess there are many more women than men.

Q. The pay of the women is the same as the pay of the men for the same quantity of work, I suppose?

A. Yes; in cases where a manufacturer--that is, a middleman--gets work from the shop and brings it into his store and employs hands to make it, women get paid by the piece also. If the manufacturer gets $.25 for a piece, he pays for the machine work on that piece so many cents to the machine-worker, he pays so many cents to the presser, so many cents to the finisher, and so many to the button-sewer--so much to each one--and what remains is to pay his rent and to pay for the machinery.

Q. What is your knowledge as to the amount that workers of that class are able to save from their wages?

A. I don't know any one that does save except those manufacturers.

Q. As a class, then, the workers save nothing?

A. No.

Q. What sort of house-room do they have? What is the character, in general, of the food and clothing which they are able to purchase with what they can make by their labor?

A. They live in tenement houses four or five stories high, and have two or three rooms.

Q. What is the character of their clothing?

A. They buy the clothing that they make--the cheapest of it.

Q. What about the character of food that they are able to provide for themselves?

A. Food? They have no time to eat dinner. They have a sandwich in the middle of the day, and in the evening when they go away from work it is the same, and they drink lager or anything they can get.

Q. They are kept busy all the time and have but little opportunity for rest?

A. Yes.

Q. What is the state of feeling between the employers and their employees in that business? How do you workingmen feel towards the people who employ you and pay you?

A. Well, I must say the workingmen are discouraged. If I speak with them they go back and don't like to speak much about the business and the pay. They fear that if they say how it is they will get sent out of the shop. They hate the bosses and the foremen more than the bosses, and that feeling is deep.

U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Education and Labor, Report of the Committee of the Senate Upon the Relations Between Labor and Capital (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1885), vol. 1, pp. 413-421.

The Life of a Sweatshop Girl (1902)
Sadie Frowne was approximately sixteen years old when she dictated the following account of her life to a reporter from The Independent magazine in 1902. What are the greatest differences between her life in Poland and her life in the United States? What are the best and worst parts of her job in a garment factory? What is her attitude toward her job? Toward her labor union?

My mother was a tall, handsome, dark complexioned woman with red cheeks, large brown eyes and a great quantity of jet black, wavy hair. She was well educated, being able to talk in Russian, German, Polish and French, and even to read English print, tho[ugh], of course, she did not know what it meant. She kept a little grocer's shop in the little village where we lived at first. That was in Poland, somewhere on the frontier, and mother had charge of a gate between the countries, so that everybody who came through the gate had to show her a pass. She was much looked up to by the people, who used to come and ask her for advice. Her word was like law among them.

She had a wagon in which she used to drive around the country, selling her groceries, and sometimes she worked in the fields with my father.

The grocer's shop was only one story high, and had one window, with very small panes of glass. We had two rooms behind it, and were happy while my father lived, altho[ugh] we had to work very hard. By the time I was six years of age I was able to wash dishes and scrub floors, and by the time I was eight I attended to the shop while my mother was away driving her wagon or working in the fields with my father. She was strong and could work like a man.

When I was a little more than ten years of age my father died. He was a good man and a steady worker, and we never knew what it was to be hungry while he lived. After he died troubles began, for the rent of our shop was about $6 a month and then there were food and clothes to provide. We needed little, it is true, but even soup, black bread and onions we could not always get.

We struggled along till I was nearly thirteen years of age and quite handy at housework and shop keeping, so far as I could learn them there. But we fell behind in the rent and mother kept thinking more and more that we should have to leave Poland and go across the sea to America where we heard it was much easier to make money. Mother wrote to Aunt Fanny, who lived in New York, and told her how hard it was to live in Poland, and Aunt Fanny advised her to come and bring me. I was out at service at this time and mother thought she would leave me--as I had a good place--and come to this country alone, sending for me afterward. But Aunt Fanny would not hear of this. She said we should come at once, and she went around among our relatives in New York and took up a subscription for our passage.

We came by steerage on a steamship in a very dark place that smelt dreadfully. There were hundreds of other people packed in with us, men, women and children, and almost all of them were sick. It took us twelve days to cross the sea, and we thought we should die, but at last the voyage was over, and we came up and saw the beautiful bay and the big woman with the spikes on her head and the lamp that is lighted at night in her hand . . . [Statue of Liberty].

Aunt Fanny and her husband met us at the gate of this country and were very good to us, and soon I had a place to live out (domestic servant), while my mother got work in a factory making white goods.

I was only a little over thirteen years of age and a greenhorn, so I received $9 a month and board and lodging, which I thought was doing well. Mother, who, as I have said, was very clever, made $9 a week on white goods, which means all sorts of underclothing, and is high class work.

But mother had a very gay disposition. She liked to go around and see everything, and friends took her about New York at night and she caught a bad cold and coughed and coughed. . . . [A]t last she died and I was left alone. I had saved money while out at service, but mother's sickness and funeral swept it all away and now I had to begin all over again.

Aunt Fanny had always been anxious for me to get an education, as I did not know how to read or write, and she thought that was wrong. Schools are different in Poland from what they are in this country, and I was always too busy to learn to read and write. So when mother died I thought I would try to learn a trade and then I could go to school at night and learn to speak the English language well.

So I went to work in Allen street (Manhattan) in what they call a sweatshop, making skirts by machine. I was new at the work and the foreman scolded me a great deal.

"Now, then," he would say, "this place is not for you to be looking around in. Attend to your work. That is what you have to do."

I did not know at first that you must not look around and talk, and I made many mistakes with the sewing, so that I was often called a "stupid animal." But I made $4 a week by working six days in the week. For there are two Sabbaths here--our own Sabbath, that comes on a Saturday, and the Christian Sabbath that comes on a Sunday. It is against our law to work on our own Sabbath, so we work on their Sabbath.

In Poland I and my father and mother used to go to the synagogue on the Sabbath, but here the women don't go to the synagogue much, tho[ugh] the men do. They are shut up working hard all the week long and when the Sabbath comes they like to sleep long in bed and afterward they must go out where they can breathe the air. The rabbis are strict here, but not so strict as in the old country.

I lived at this time with a girl named Ella, who worked in the same factory and made $5 a week. We had the room all to ourselves, paying $1.50 a week for it, and doing light housekeeping. It was in Allen street, and the window looked out of the back, which was good, because there was an elevated railroad in front, and in summer time a great deal of dust and dirt came in at the front windows. We were on the fourth story and could see all that was going on in the back rooms of the houses behind us, and early in the morning the sun used to come in our window.

We did our cooking on an oil stove, and lived well, as this list of our expenses for one week will show:

Ella and Sadie for Food (one week)
Tea $0.06

Cocoa .10

Bread and rolls .40

Canned vegetables .20

Potatoes .10

Milk .21

Fruit .20

Butter .15

Meat .60

Fish .15

Laundry .25

Total $2.42

Add rent 1.50

Grand total $3.92

Of course, we could have lived cheaper, but we are both fond of good things and felt that we could afford them.

We paid 18 cents for a half pound of tea so as to get it good, and it lasted us three weeks, because we had cocoa for breakfast. We paid 5 cents for six rolls and 5 cents a loaf for bread, which was the best quality. Oatmeal cost us 10 cents for three and one-half pounds, and we often had it in the morning, or Indian meal porridge in the place of it, costing about the same. Half a dozen eggs cost about 13 cents on an average, and we could get all the meat we wanted for a good hearty meal for 20 cents--two pounds of chops, or a steak, or a bit of veal, or a neck of lamb--something like that. Fish included butter fish, porgies, codfish and smelts, averaging about 8 cents a pound. . . .

It cost me $2 a week to live, and I had a dollar a week to spend on clothing and pleasure, and saved the other dollar. I went to night school, but it was hard work learning at first as I did not know much English.

Two years ago I came to this place, Brownsville, where so many of my people are, and where I have friends. I got work in a factory making underskirts--all sorts of cheap underskirts, like cotton and calico for the summer and woolen for the winter, but never the silk, satin or velvet underskirts. I earned $4.50 a week and lived on $2 a week, the same as before. . . .

It isn't piecework in our factory, but one is paid by the amount of work done just the same. So it is like piecework. All the hands get different amounts, some as low as $3.50 and some of the men as high as $16 a week. The factory is in the third story of a brick building. It is in a room twenty feet long and fourteen broad. There are fourteen machines in it. I and the daughter of the people with whom I live work two of these machines. The other operators are all men, some young and some old.

At first a few of the young men were rude. When they passed me they would touch my hair and talk about my eyes and my red cheeks, and make jokes. I cried and said that if they did not stop I would leave the place. The boss said that that should not be, that no one must annoy me. Some of the other men stood up for me, too, especially Henry, who said two or three times that he wanted to fight. Now the men all treat me very nicely. It was just that some of them did not know better, not being educated.

Henry is tall and dark, and he has a small mustache. His eyes are brown and large. He is pale and much educated, having been to school. He knows a great many things and has some money saved. I think nearly $400. He is not going to be in a sweatshop all the time, but will soon be in the real estate business, for a lawyer that knows him well has promised to open an office and pay him to manage it.

Henry has seen me home every night for a long time and makes love to me. He wants me to marry him, but I am not seventeen yet, and I think that is too young. He is only nineteen, so we can wait. . . .

I get up at half-past five o'clock every morning and make myself a cup of coffee on the oil stove. I eat a bit of bread and perhaps some fruit and then go to work. Often I get there soon after six o'clock so as to be in good time, tho[ugh] the factory does not open till seven. I have heard that there is a sort of clock that calls you at the very time you want to get up, but I can't believe that because I don't see how the clock would know.

At seven o'clock we all sit down to our machines and the boss brings to each one the pile of work that he or she is to finish during the day, what they call in English their "stint." This pile is put down beside the machine and as soon as a skirt is done it is laid on the other side of the machine. Sometimes the work is not all finished by six o'clock and then the one who is behind must work overtime. Sometimes one is finished ahead of time and gets away at four or five o'clock, but generally we are not done till six o'clock.

The machines go like mad all day, because the faster you work the more money you get. Sometimes in my haste I get my finger caught and the needle goes right through it. It goes so quick, tho[ugh], that it does not hurt much. I bind the finger up with a piece of cotton and go on working. We all have accidents like that. Where the needle goes through the nail it makes a sore finger, or where it splinters a bone it does much harm. Sometimes a finger has to come off. Generally, tho[ugh], one can be cured by a salve.

All the time we are working the boss walks about examining the finished garments and making us do them over again if they are not just right. So we have to be careful as well as swift. But I am getting so good at the work that within a year I will be making $7 a week, and then I can save at least $3.50 a week. I have over $200 saved now.

The machines are all run by foot power, and at the end of the day one feels so weak that there is a great temptation to lie right down and sleep. But you must go out and get air, and have some pleasure. So instead of lying down I go out, generally with Henry. Sometimes we go to Coney Island, where there are good dancing places, and sometimes we go to Ulmer Park to picnics. I am very fond of dancing, and, in fact, all sorts of pleasure. I go to the theater quite often, and like those plays that make you cry a great deal. "The Two Orphans" is good. Last time I saw it I cried all night because of the hard times that the children had in the play. I am going to see it again when it comes here.

For the last two winters I have been going to night school at Public School 84 on Glenmore avenue. I have learned reading, writing and arithmetic. I can read quite well in English now and I look at the newspapers every day. I read English books, too, sometimes. The last one that I read was "A Mad Marriage," by Charlotte Braeme. She's a grand writer and makes things just like real to you. You feel as if you were the poor girl yourself going to get married to a rich duke.

I am going back to night school again this winter. Plenty of my friends go there. Some of the women in my class are more than forty years of age. Like me, they did not have a chance to learn anything in the old country. It is good to have an education; it makes you feel higher. Ignorant people are all low. People say now that I am clever and fine in conversation.

We have just finished a strike in our business. It spread all over and the United Brotherhood of Garment Workers was in it. That takes in the cloakmakers, coatmakers, and all the others. We struck for shorter hours, and after being out four weeks won the fight. We only have to work nine and a half hours a day and we get the same pay as before. So the union does good after all in spite of what some people say against it--that it just takes our money and does nothing.

I pay 25 cents a month to the union, but I do not begrudge that because it is for our benefit. The next strike is going to be for a raise of wages, which we all ought to have. But tho[ugh] I belong to the Union I am not a Socialist or an Anarchist. I don't know exactly what those things mean. There is a little expense for charity, too. If any worker is injured or sick we all give money to help.

Some of the women blame me very much because I spend so much money on clothes. They say that instead of a dollar a week I ought not to spend more than twenty-five cents a week on clothes, and that I should save the rest. But a girl must have clothes if she is to go into high society at Ulmer Park or Coney Island or the theatre. Those who blame me are the old country people who have old-fashioned notions, but the people who have been here a long time know better. A girl who does not dress well is stuck in a corner, even if she is pretty, and Aunt Fanny says that I do just right to put on plenty of style.

I have many friends and we often have jolly parties. Many of the young men like to talk to me, but I don't go out with any except Henry.

Lately he has been urging me more and more to get married--but I think I'll wait.

"The Story of a Sweatshop Girl," The Independent 54, no. 2808 (September 25, 1902): 2279-2282.

The Knights of Labor Champion Reform (1887)
The blue-eyed, ruddy-complexioned Terence V. Powderly, a nimble-witted son of Irish immigrants, became a machinist and joined the secret order of the all-embracing Knights of Labor. He ultimately rose to be its influential head as Grand Master Workman and saw the organization attain a maximum strength of some 700,000 members--skilled and unskilled, white and black. But lawyers, bankers, gamblers, and liquor dealers were barred. The Knights strove primarily for social and economic reform on a broad front, rather than the piecemeal raising of wages that was the chief concern of the skilled-crafts unions. Powderly favored the substitution of arbitration for strikes, the regulation of trusts and monopolies, and the replacement of the wage system with producers' cooperatives. Shot at from the front by conservatives, who accused him of communism, he was sniped at from the rear by some of his own following. In the following selection, Powderly defends the Knights against charges in 1887 that they were "breaking up." What does he identify as the Knights's most important goals? Which of these goals would be approved by the modern-day labor movement? How relevant were they to the problems of workers in late-nineteenth-century America?

It is true, the Knights are breaking up. We are at last forced to acknowledge the truth so long, so stubbornly, resisted. We are breaking up--breaking up as the plowman breaks up the soil for the sowing of new seed. We are breaking up old traditions. We are breaking up hereditary rights, and planting everywhere the seed of universal rights. We are breaking up the idea that money makes the man and not moral worth. We are breaking up the idea that might makes right. We are breaking up the idea that legislation is alone for the rich. We are breaking up the idea that the Congress of the United States must be run by millionaires for the benefit of millionaires. We are breaking up the idea that a few men may hold millions of acres of untilled land while other men starve for the want of one acre. We are breaking up the practice of putting the labor of criminals [convict labor] into competition with honest, industrious labor and starving it to death. We are breaking up the practice of importing [European] ignorance, bred of monarchies and dynamite, in order to depreciate intelligent, skilled labor at home. We are breaking up the practice of employing little children in factories, thus breeding a race of deformed, ignorant, and profligate. We are breaking up the idea that a man who works with his hands has need neither of education nor of civilized refinements. We are breaking up the idea that the accident of sex puts one-half of the human race beyond the pale of constitutional rights. We are breaking up the practice of paying woman one-third the wages paid man simply because she is a woman. We are breaking up the idea that a man may debauch an infant [minor] girl and shield himself from the penalty behind a law he himself has made. We are breaking up ignorance and intemperance, crime and oppression, of whatever character and wherever found.

Yes, the Knights of Labor are breaking up, and they will continue their appointed work of breaking up until universal rights shall prevail; and while they may not bring in the millennium, they will do their part in the evolution of moral forces that are working for the emancipation of the race.

[With Samuel Gompers at the helm, the skilled-crafts American Federation of Labor emerged in 1886. By 1890 it had overshadowed the fast-fading Knights of Labor. Skilled carpenters, striking for their own narrow objectives, could not easily be replaced by strikebreakers; unskilled workers could be. The skilled crafts became weary of sacrificing themselves on the altar of large social objectives. This, in brief, was the epitaph of the Knights of Labor.]

Journal of United Labor, July 16, 1887, in Public Opinion 3 (July 23, 1887): 318.

Samuel Gompers Condemns the Knights (c. 1886)

Samuel Gompers, a stocky Jewish cigar maker who had been born in a London tenement, emerged as the potent leader of the skilled-crafts American Federation of Labor. Once asked what organized labor wanted, he is said to have replied, "More"--by which he meant more wages, more power, more liberty, more leisure, more benefits. He and his skilled-crafts workers battled the unskilled laborers of the Knights of Labor to defeat revolutionary schemes for remaking U.S. society. What are the principal weaknesses of the Knights of Labor from the skilled-union point of view? Which one is the most serious in the eyes of Gompers?

In 1886 a definite order went out from D.A. [District Assembly No.] 49 [of the Knights of Labor] to make war on the International Cigar makers' Unions. It was the culmination of years of friction developing over Knights of Labor encroachments on trade union functions.

The two movements were inherently different. Trade unions endeavored to organize for collective responsibility persons with common trade problems. They sought economic betterment in order to place in the hands of wage-earners the means to wider opportunities.

The Knights of Labor was a social or fraternal organization. It was based upon a principle of cooperation, and its purpose was reform. The Knights of Labor prided itself upon being something higher and grander than a trade union or political party. Unfortunately, its purposes were not always exemplified through the declarations and the acts of its members.

The order admitted to membership any person, excluding only lawyers and saloonkeepers. This policy included employers among those eligible. Larger employers gradually withdrew from the order, but the small employers and small businessmen and politicians remained.

The order was a hodgepodge with no basis for solidarity, with the exception of a comparatively few trade assemblies. The aggressive policy inaugurated in 1886 [against the Cigar makers' Unions] was not due to any change of heart or program, but solely to the great increase in the membership of the Knights of Labor that made it seem safe to put declarations into effect.

When the order began to encroach upon the economic field, trouble was inevitable, for such invasion was equivalent to setting up a dual organization to perform a task for which they were entirely unfitted. It was particularly unfortunate when it endeavored to conduct strikes. The Knights of Labor was a highly centralized organization, and this often placed decision upon essential trade policies in the hands of officers outside the trade concerned. Strikes are essentially an expression of collective purpose of workers who perform related services and who have the spirit of union growing out of joint employment. . . .

Talk of harmony with the Knights of Labor is bosh. They are just as great enemies of trade unions as any employer can be, only more vindictive. I tell you they will give us no quarter, and I would give them their own medicine. It is no use trying to placate them or even to be friendly. They will not cooperate with a mere trades union, as they call our organization. The time will come, however, when the workingmen of the country will see and distinguish between a natural and an artificial organization.

From Seventy Years of Life and Labor by Samuel Gompers, pp. 176, 244-245, 284. Copyright 1925 by Samuel Gompers, renewed (c) 1953 by Gertrude Gleaves Gompers. Used by permission of the publisher, Dutton, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Books USA, Inc.