The city worker's world in America

Front matter

SJ ets

Library

Brigham Young University

Preface

It is by art that the life of the industrial family is best portrayed. The high lights of verse or canvas or drama give the poignant and direct testimony of experience.

This little book, alas, fails of being either art or science. But while it cannot claim these high avenues of expression, it may serve the more modest but no less useful purpose of furnishing a plain description of the facts of the city dweller’s life, together with some indications of the evolutionary process going on at the city’s heart.

Books have taught me much. No doubt their messages have coloured my reflections. But experience has led me to discard much book knowledge as untrue, more as irrelevant, and most as-anemic in the face of life itself.

More than to all other experiences the rich years have bestowed, do I owe to the illumination of my fifteen years at Greenwich House. No day goes by without its quota of testimony given by our whole resident group from association with our neighbours. This body of experience, growing day by day, is larger than the individual observer could hope to grasp. And I want, therefore, gratefully to acknowledge to my associates their helpful share in the formation of such convictions as I have been able here to present.

More frequent illustration would greatly have enlivened this attempt to present an introduction to the understanding of the industrial family, but this had to be sacrificed in the interest of a desirable brevity. Adequate illustration indeed would involve the story _ of Greenwich House itself. This I hope at some later day to tell in different guise. But without the strenuous life that I have lived under its happy egis, I could not have ventured to offer to student and general reader this attempt at bringing together in one volume the varied aspects of the city worker’s world.

CHAPTER

I II

Tue INpDusTRIAL FAMILY .

DwWELLINGs

STANDARD oF LIVING .

At Work .

LEISURE HEALTH PovEerRTY Po.itics e

Le)

Chapter I

American society is still so dynamic and so fluid that a consideration of any particular class is almost offensive to the instinctive belief that we are members all of one group and that such differentiation as exists is one of function rather than of status. This belief does credit to our ideals if not to our pragmatic sense.

The hired man may still eat at the same table with his employer, the iron worker may still become a master of iron and of gold, the factory hand may yet become the boss. For relatively speaking our country is still a classless land. But it would be an affectation to pretend that in the large this is as true to-day as it was yesterday or that it may be as true to-morrow as it is to-day.

In any case there exists to-day vast groups of - workers who spend their lives in industry. And with the development of manufacture and the growth of cities this group is becoming larger and more important. Their life is an increasing factor in the life of the nation. Their standard of life, their labour, recreation, education, and health, their social relationships and aspirations are of vital interest to every American. So important is this group that an understanding of its nature would seem to be a matter both of profound curiosity and of deep concern. The cook who sets out to make a cherry pie —the last word of culinary perfection — will see that the table is cold, the ice at hand, the flour of the right quality and the butter properly worked, the cherries of luscious ripeness and the oven of the exact moderation of heat designed to produce that fusion of stickiness and crispness that melts, while it both thrills and inspires. Our social life also as a whole is dependent on the proper fusion of parts. Failure in any direction mars the whole. A proper understanding, therefore, lies at the root of all our conscious social progress; for misunderstandings result in prejudice, in antagonisms and in passion, which check the harmonious progress of the nation.

The deepest misapprehension in regard to the life of the industrial classes is based upon a double attitude toward poverty. On one side we hear poverty exalted as the desirable mother of virtues and on the other we perceive a tendency to associate poverty with crime. The poor man is the “ good man ”— the poor man is the “bad man.” He is the good man when we are trying to excuse the existence of poverty; he is the bad man when we are trying to shift our responsibility to his shoulders. If goodness and kindness and brotherliness are to be found in a more marked degree among the more lowly, what is the objection to lowliness? On the other hand, if crime and ignorance are associated more largely with the poor, what hope have we that the poor will be able to rise to a higher status or that, if they do, they will not overthrow society with its culture and hard-won attainments? LEjither of these attitudes leads to a disastrous conclusion. ‘The former ends in a false mysticism, in the worship of “‘my lady Poverty ”; the latter results in an identification of the poor with the ignorant and the criminal which turns the attention away from evil-doing in other classes and which engenders a fear that is is largely, as we shall hope to show, groundless.

The lumping of people in classes is for the most part dangerous. What do we mean by the poor? What is the industrial family? In a succeeding chapter on the standard of living we shall try to indicate the nature of this problem more clearly. Here it is enough to say that roughly all those who fail to have the means by which they may become assets to the community may be considered “ poor,” and that by the industrial family we mean all those who are engaged in trade, manufacture, mining, etc., who are working for others than themselves, with the exception of those employes who receive so high a ‘salary or whose work is of such a nature that they are no longer conscious of being wage-workers, but identify themselves rather with the owners and capitalists whose agents they are. The professional classes, though often poorer than industrial wage-workers, are here omitted from consideration. To place a somewhat arbitrary figure as our upper limit, we may say roughly that our consideration of the Industrial Family includes wage-workers of various sorts whose family income ranges from $1500 down to the minimum of subsistence below which the family becomes a public charge.

An examination into the life of this family will show that, whatever be its stratifications and its relation to society as a whole, neither “ goodness ” nor “‘ badness ” are to be regarded as more characteristic of this group than of any other. Groups develop standards and there are certain virtues and vices which correspond to their needs or their stages of development. The relativity of morals to group life makes it incumbent upon us at once to discard both the sentimental point of view that would exalt poverty as the safeguard of virtues, or the selfexonerating position that makes the poor the dumping ground of undesirable vices and ignorances. While questions of personal morality will always play a part in social development, they are to be found alike in all classes, and it is a matter of interest rather than of importance to marshall the virtues and vices of separate groups for admiration or condemnation.

Our question then is, How does this important group of workers live? Not only what are the incomes and expenditures of this group, but what values lie in this group that we cannot afford to lose from the social whole, and what is society already doing or failing to do to protect these values and develop them for the sake of us all?

The proportion of the group that is of native stock we know only approximately, for our census of occupations goes back only one generation.'

But of the total engaged in domestic service, trade and transportation, in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits, we may be sure, census or no, that a very large proportion of them, as of our farmers, and many professional men are of alien stock. In other words, our wage-earners are mainly foreigners and the life of the industrial family is the life of the immigrant or of his children. Their traits, customs, habits, desires must therefore be of intensest concern to us all.

The early stream? from Northern Europe has steadily given way to the vast industrial army from Southern and Eastern Europe. The Irish who poured in after the great potato famine of 1846 succeeded the original English, Scotch-Irish, Dutch, and Huguenot immigrants. These original settlers by the beginning of the nineteenth century had become

Ord At FOTEI SN COURLTIES |).5)) 05s. e 1G UAT de 6 13,345,545 Total population at least 10 years of age ........ 71,580,270 Engaged in all gainful occupations .............. 6,615,046

2Students of immigration will find Vol. XV of the Report of the Industrial Commission (1901) invaluable, especially Chapter IX entitled “The Foreign Immigrant in New York City” by Kate H. Claghorn, Ph.D.

Much of interest is to be found passim in Commons’s “ Races and Immigrants in America.” Vide also R. Mayo-Smith’s “Emigration and Immigration.” The most important recent report is the report of the Commission on Immigration of Massachusetts, 1914. House Document No. 2300.

our Americans. “Immigrant” has come to connote in general the Irish, the Scandinavian, the German, the Italian, the Slav, the Jew.

The Irish * still remain largely in the cities, though many abandoned New England and other farms have been regenerated by their labour. Their poor physical condition on arrival, due to poverty at home, to evil conditions on board ship, and to insanitary dwellings in their adopted land, rendered the Irish less ambitious or able to take advantage of the opportunity for pressing on to Western homesteads and wider chances for economic advancement.

The Irish still suffer from their original handicap of poverty. They furnish their striking quota of pauperism and of criminality in our large cities. Their high death rate from tuberculosis, second only to that of the negro, testifies to their bad physical condition, though it may be due equally to their large consumption of alcohol which so accelerates a fatal course in tuberculosis. ‘Their supreme gift for conversation make them numerous in the law, the church and in journalism, and their sociability and gift for human relationship has given them their pre-eminence in politics,” and is responsible for their genius as contractors. In trade and commerce they have lost ground fast to the German and latterly to the Italian and the Jew. As wage-workers they are teamsters, dock labourers, etc. Their native cour-.

1 Herbert Casson’s articles in Munsey’s Magazine: “The Irish in America,” April, 1906, p. 86, Vol. XXXV, No. 1; “The Germans in America,” March, 1906, p. 694, Vol. XXXIV, No. 6.

2“ Friendship and Politics,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. XVII, No. 2, 1902, by M. K. Simkhovitch, age and bravery has foreordained them to be the heroes of our fire departments, and their pleasing physique as well as a fine fighting quality make them good soldiers in war and police officers in peace.

Their women are distinguished by a refinement and native good taste that results with their vivid personal religion in chastity in morals, in a simplicity in dress and a feeling of personal pride and self-possession that is unequalled. The Irish girl takes a high place in industry, owing to this sense of style that makes of her our best dressmaker and milliner, and her refinement and agreeable manners fit her pre-eminently for all positions where one comes in contact with people. In the professions she shines as teacher. A great social gift and good taste are the pre-eminent characteristics of the Irish, investing them with a charm that is unique. A sense of personal dignity exists even when based on nothing visible to the beholder.

The anthropologists will no longer allow us to use _ the expression “ race traits” and any characterisation of a race group is bound to be partial and limited. Due as these qualities doubtless largely are to environment, we can yet not fail to observe the differentiation that marks off one group from another. Brave, extravagant, proud, fond of life and with a genius for extracting the juice from simply living, the Irish are pre-eminently the socially gifted among America’s children. Their personal pride manifests itself also in a physical self-respect.

The Germans came to this country for varying reasons. ‘There was the small political group, the ’48ers, which has ever since formed a coterie by itself, the leaders among German Americans. The great mass of Germans came over, some to escape military service, but more as a result of the economic pressure at home and in search of the more favourable opportunities afforded by the new land.

Thrifty, thorough and hard-working, the Germans have made headway in an inconspicuous but steadfast and continuous manner that has made them a valuable integral part of our life. In business and the professions they are widely spread. Early emigrating west from New York, they have built up whole western cities and states. The German women, famed for house-keeping, keep their homes tidy and attractive, and a good diet doubtless helps preserve the fine home life so traditionally German.

The Scandinavians, coming here to improve their economic conditions, have largely gone west to develop our farms, and with their reliability, intelligence, force of character and industry, they have helped to make the Northwest the fortress it is of strength and progress. Their women make the most superior houseworkers, and the higher classes of personal service, such as chauffeurs, are largely recruited from this group. Their amalgamation with American life is practically accomplished, and their contribution of ability and general soundness has been considerable. The Irish, Germans and Scandinavians all furnish a growing quota to the higher rewards of industry and in public life they are contributing an increasing number of distinguished names.

The Slavs,’ the latest large group of incom-

1“ Our Slavic Fellow Citizens,” by Emily G. Balch.

ing aliens, are recruited partly by hopes of improvement, partly by the work of steamship agents and others interested in obtaining a supply of strong, cheap labour, and most of all by the “letter home.” One prosperous immigrant is gradually followed by all his kin and acquaintance from the little village where he was born. This group of varying nationalities, the Croatian, the Slovak, the Ruthenian and others, are strong of body, and simple in thought and action. The distinctively human traits of family life, play, relationship, and neighbourliness,' are seen in their nakedness more markedly in this group than in any others. The veneer of education, political aspiration, modern fashion of whatever sort, is almost absent. Unfitted for skilled industrial work, with sparing adaptability to modern modes, the Slav falls easily a prey to the mines, the slaughter houses and the steel mills. There his primitive strength is demanded and used. The wages are so high from his old-home point of view and his standard of living so low that even with a low wage, large savings are made and banked or more likely returned to enrich the members of the family still remaining on the other side, or to bring them on here. The accidents, the exhaustion, the early break-down, do not result in a scarcity of labour in the great industries they support, for an ever fresh supply pours in at Ellis Island.

The Syrian makes the cities his headquarters. There he lives in the poorest quarters at a very low expenditure. He is a trader, a seller of cheap lace and a manufacturer of cheap garments. He is fa-

1 See Cooley, “ Social Organisation.”

miliar also as a peddler and sells a low grade of goods in the country districts. As a trader and merchant he rises in the economic scale. As an importer, as a maker of sweetmeats, as a trader, he succeeds in advancing himself, but only by a low standard of living, by engaging in sweated industries or by displacing others at a lower wage in industry, and by taking advantage of every opportunity of placing his children in institutions. The silk mills attract the Syrian immigrant. The Turk fills the night shift in the steel works. Unaccompanied by their families these latest comers will live in the cheapest manner and engage in any work that they can get, in order to gain a foothold in American industry.

Oriental immigrants cannot be said as yet to be an important element in American life, except the Chinese and Japanese, whose importance is local and in regard to whom a fairly definite policy of exclusion may be said to have crystallised.

We may then say with an approximation to truth that the German and the Scandinavian have melted into our life and strengthened it, that the Slav is to be found in the industrial centres doing our hardest work, and that the Irish have either risen and become American assets or else they have sunk to form a part of the problem of poverty in our cities.

With agricultural labour, with industry in the smaller centres, this book does not deal. For important as these aspects of our national life are, it is in the great and increasingly great cities that the problem of democracy is being wrought out. It is there that success or failure is to be made. The two most important peoples in our cities beside the

Irish are the Jew and the Italian. The great Jewish stream rose to its full height in the ’80s, due to the persecution of the Jews in Russia. Previous Jewish immigration (and this dates back to early colonial days) was not due to other causes than those that attracted their fellow-countrymen from various lands, but the tide of the ’80s had its origin in escape from religious persecution and the racial antagonism of the ruling class at home.

Once a stream of immigration gets under way it flows by itself in increasing numbers till the group is exhausted, until some artificial check of governmental prevention succeeds in stemming it, or until conditions here become so unfavourable as to retard it, or conditions in the parent country improve enough to resist it. None of these hindrances to continued immigration exist in the case of the Jews. The early German Jewish group is vastly outnumbered by this more recent stream from Russia, Poland, Austria, Galicia and Roumania. Without any preparation on the part of America to meet this new group, it naturally clotted in the great cities into self-sufficient quarters, where the old life could be continued, though under vastly more favourable conditions. Accustomed through centuries of oppression to the crowded life of ghettos, the American tenement proved nothing strange. A sociable, excitable, intellectual people, used to city or village life, the new environment offers exactly what is to them most desirable — opportunities for education, for free discussion and for work. Free from the curse of alcoholism that endangers the Irish and the Slav and to a certain extent the Scandinavian and even the German, and apparently immune from the worst ravages of tuberculosis through centuries of elementary hygiene, and it may be through long acquaintance with this very disease, gifted with purposive mental habits which have enabled them to concentrate their attention on the end in view and to attain it—a vigour of body and of mind have resulted that gives them a great advantage in modern life. Eagerly seeking every chance for advancement, and largely disinclined through disuse, to agriculture or the manual arts,’ the Jews continue to engage in commerce or to rise in the professions. The notable exception is that of the sweated manufacture of clothing, in which occupation the Jews are the most conspicuous group, easily explicable, first, in that it is a sedentary occupation, second, that it allows an informality in which conversation and discussion are still possible and in which regularity of hours is not insisted upon,” and third, it is, in the majority of cases, a stepping-stone to something else. It is an easy way for the foreigner to begin to make his way. It demands no particular skill in many branches and no knowledge of English. Many a distinguished lawyer or teacher or doctor has served his apprenticeship at the sewing machine and there earned the money which enabled him to abandon it forever. The rise of the Jew to economic independence is largely due to his desire to be free

1 Every such characterisation is bound to be inaccurate. Handworkers are numerous among the Jews of Russia and of Galicia, but their number is relatively small to the whole. See “ Jewish Immigrants as Tobaccomen and Dairymen,” Survey,

Nov. 4, 1911. 2 Largely piece work.

for the enjoyment of a higher kind of life, the nature of which his mind perceives and his will attains. With the break-up of religious orthodoxy, old standards of home life and of racial custom disappear. A ready adjustment to new modes of life does not dissipate the interior energy born of this remarkable group,’ which seizes upon every advantage offered and makes. the most of it. The unpopularity of the Jew is due more largely to his aggressive manner than to his economic success, though this is an additional reason felt most keenly by former alien groups, who see themselves outrivalled in many directions.

This sudden entrance into industry, and for the most part into the worst-paid occupations, has given a sense of freedom to the Jewish girl unaccustomed | to a life away from the home, which, combined with a low wage, a desire for dress and a natural ambition to have everything others have, has rendered her situation precarious. A stock that is rich in vivid personality is bound to react in violent readjustment to a new environment and to be deeply marked by it. Quick to learn, ready to work in trade and in the professions, indifferent housekeepers and unhandy with tools, deeply interested in social economic problems, ardent but calculating, passionate and rational, good citizens and equally good revolutionists, musical and with a gift for debate, with a love of finery, good food and luxury, the Jewish people seem to possess more contrasting traits than any others of our newcomers, but this is only because

1 We do not say “race,” for even among the Jews racial purity is questionable. [13]

they are of stronger fibre in each. They increasingly discard religion, or else conceive it as a social ethical matter bound up with the common life. A sense of values makes the Jew prefer education to wealth, but he perceives that wealth means the open door and prizes it accordingly. If a wider opportunity for all can be obtained by a different distribution of wealth the Jew acquiesces. He becomes a socialist under certain circumstances or a social reformer and philanthropist under others. The fundamental strength of the Jew is his power for purposive concentration. His weakness is his aggressiveness, which is the natural reaction occasioned by social repression.

Though fond of city life under proper circumstances, the Jew is not averse to rural life if it can be combined with social and educational advantages. Attempts that have been made to colonise the Jews | by their co-religionists 1 have met with a partial success that makes it seem probable that further efforts in this direction will not be misplaced.

From Italy comes the other most notable stream that is filling our cities. Agricultural depression at © home, the high taxes of a country just refinding itself and drained for military purposes, send the Italian to us. The Northern Italian of different blood and of different social antecedents of every sort, is a very real addition to our national life. Gifted, strong, with depth of character, grace and charm, the Northern Italian combines perhaps as many valuable elements in his composition as can be

1See work of Industrial Removal Society, New York City.

found in Europe. But.the Northern Italian is only a very small part of our immigration.

The Southern Italian comes to us with great capacity for work, and with a strong constitution. He is for the most part ignorant, where not positively illiterate. Of agreeable manners, he is passionate and uncontrolled in temper. He marries early and the ensuing large families finding it difficult to get along even with a simple and often insufficient diet, send their children early to work. ‘The child labourer of the cities is par excellence the Italian child. The very early marriage of the Italian woman results in a lack of proper training of the children, for the Italian woman is uneducated and enters her mature responsibilities as an untrained ~ child. Freedom from parental restraint and an early entrance without proper preparation of any sort into industrial life creates a second generation of Italians of inferior physique ready for physical or moral breakdown. How can anyone read with surprise the reports from our reformatories, etc., that indicate an increase in juvenile criminality among the Italians? The high rentals of the cities’ tenements preclude the possibility of the proper amount of room for families on low wages. ‘The result is an overcrowding increased by the very general custom of taking in boarders or lodgers. ‘The fruits, of this over-crowding are a lowered vitality that lends itself at once to the entrance of disease germs into the exhausted system and an increasing nervousness that tends towards heart troubles, insanity, and an excitement in general social intercourse, resulting in family friction and often in violence.

The Southern Italian comes to us a strong labourer and an undisciplined personality. He becomes whatever the discipline of his environment makes him. <A low standard of living, bad housing, over-crowding, the prevalence of child labour, too early marriage, the lack of education of the Italian woman, these are all preventable evils, but it takes time, effort, thought, to prevent them. Gifted in the manual arts, with a taste for music and for simple social pleasures, the Italian, when freed from the most sordid conditions, has an apitude for getting along with others that makes him most easy to assimilate. He must first, however, overcome the not unnatural suspicion he has of all overtures made to him, no matter how friendly. From experience he has learned that he cannot rely upon the good-will of this country and until that good-will is both more general and more genuine he will continue to foster his suspicions due to ignorance from which, again, it is the duty of the new country to which he is invited, to free him.

The Italian loves the country. Accustomed at home to work in the fields and to return at night to the social enjoyments of a small village, a similar development in our country would no doubt be the most acceptable form in which agricultural labour could be presented to him. Used to the care which intensive farming and gardening entails, the Italian has the patience for market gardening which the earlier Americans, accustomed to the extensive use of land, have largely lost. Already the overflow [16]

from our great cities indicates the profitable directions in which the Italian may turn. The colonies in New Jersey,’ in Western New York, and especially in California, give promise that to the American, German, Dutch and Scandinavian farmers of the past and the present we shall add, and very soon, the Italian farmer of to-morrow.

The Poles with their onion farms in Massachusetts, the French Canadians in the New England mills, the Greeks in the florist business, as candy manufacturers and as bootblacks, these and other minor groups can only command an interesting glance. But in the study of the industrial family of the great cities, it is the Irish, the German, the Jew and the Italian that form the principal groups around which the problems of city life cluster.2 For “ the popular impression among the workmen of Europe is that the United States is one of four things, a city street, the bed of a railroad, a factory or a coal mine.” * The Slavs go to the mines, all nations to the factories, the Italians to the railroad beds and the city streets, the Jews centre in cities, and the Irish have largely remained in congested centres, as have a number of Germans.

It is still generally believed, as was officially stated in the report of the Commissioner General of Immigration for June, 1908,* “ that proportionately our immigration does not come from as desirable sources as in earlier times, i.e. the aliens who come

1“ The Italian on the Land.” Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 70.

2 But the Slavs are increasing in the large cities.

3P. 179, Report of Commissioner General of Immigration, June, 1908. 4P, 120, line 6.

to us now, being so different from our original stock, cannot so readily be assimilated into the body politic,?

But such statistics as are available relating to pauperism and criminality by no means confirm this popular belief, and no satisfactory evidence has been produced to show that immigration as a whole has resulted in an increase in crime, disproportionate to the increase in adult population. No scientific crime distribution figures by races are obtainable.

It would be fair to state that in general the recently arrived immigrants who have passed the federal requirements for admission do not show any dangerous signs of pauperism or criminality. These are products of their environment here, and in the second generation more disturbing indications are presented of our failure to assimilate than of their lack of assimilability, while for the third generation we have no reliable data of any sort. Our failure seems to consist in allowing the congestion of great cities to continue and increase and in doing too little to permeate with education and improvement of living conditions, united alien groups to be found dotted over all our industrial centres, and so bring about a rapid merger with the main stream of American life.