The spirit of labor

Front matter

SPIRIT ' LABOB

II mm

HAPGOOD

Contents

Chapter Page

Preface 9

I. Early Youth 23

Preface

On and off for eight months I looked about in Chicago, for a man. I was more fortunate than Diogenes, for I found a great many of them. But it was a long time before I discovered the one I was looking for, and when I finally laid hands on him, I found him other, though far more interesting, than what I had, like the German metaphysician, evolved from my inner consciousness.

I had had several previous experiences with the "human document" ; and had, in journalistic and literary experiments, attempted to present my material in such a way that the type and the individual should be at once portrayed. For this purpose the autobiography seemed the best form. In that way, a whole class with its ideals and conditions might be expressed, and at the same time a definite per-

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sonality vividly and sympathetically presented; the man and his environment could thus speak for themselves.

This method seemed to work very well as a means of expressing the world of crime, the world of the stage, or any milieu not too complicated and not too important. In my "Autobiography of a Thief," the simple story, in the first person, of a pickpocket's life, seemed sufficient to give the reader a fairly complete idea of the manners, customs and mental habits of the professional criminal. The material of professional crime is picturesque, in that it is exceptional and comparatively unfamiliar. It is also limited in scope. For all these reasons, the very definite manner of the autobiography is a vivid, central and adequate form for the artistic expression of this material.

But when I became interested in the laborer, I found the problem a very different one. At first, indeed, I thought the form of the autobiography would be sufficient to suggest the world of the workingman. I imagined

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that I should be able to find a man who would occupy a sufficiently typical position and who would be sufficiently expressive to enable me to convey, merely by telling his story, as far as possible in his own words, an idea of the conditions, the ideals and the broad humanity underlying the labor situation.

;It seemed to me that I should be more likely to find such a man in Chicago than anywhere else. In the democratic Middle West of the United States the common man is probably more expressive than anywhere else in the world. Labor, there, is more self-conscious and socially, if not politically, more powerful than elsewhere. The proletariat of America, and more especially of the progressive and intensely vital Middle West, is no real proletariat, in the dumb and crushed European sense, but in its hopefulness and early activity, in the breadth of its interests; in its mental joyousness and vitality, seems to have the quality of a Renaissance.

In my search for a man who stood at the

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center of the labor world, I therefore went to Chicago, the hot-bed of the Middle West, the place where labor is most riotous, most expressive, where the workingman abounds in his own sense and has formed an atmosphere of democracy extending far beyond his own class. There I at once came in contact with so many vigorous personalities, that I was, for a long time, swamped by the richness of the human material.

I went to their saloons, I visited them in their homes. I was astonished by their practical knowledge of mankind, I was fascinated by their temperament and robustness and joy in life, I was touched by their altruism and feeling of human solidarity. I felt a kind of class sweetness under their rough manners, and also a class rebelliousness, a rebelliousness which could not have arisen if they had not been comparatively well-off, for the necessary energy would otherwise have been lacking. I saw how a new morality was forming on the basis of a new public opinion different from

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the past public opinion upon which much of present law is based. One rather disagreeable expression of this new morality was the suspiciousness with which for a long time they regarded me. They saw that I was, in their meaning of the word, a parasite: I did not work with my hands. I was therefore a member of the capitalist class, they felt^ and would bear watching. One night, early in my Chicago experience, I was set upon in a saloon and slugged by friends of Sam Parks, about whom I had in all sincerity and friendliness expressed an unfavorable opinion.

This little episode hurt my feelings at the time, and, incidentally, changed the shape of my nose. But, after a few months, when I had come more sympathetically to understand the feeling of the men and the difficulties of the leaders, I saw that I was at least ignorant, if not unkind, when I expressed an absolute, unmodified condemnation of a man like Parks. And, although even now, I do not approve of the manner in which the men in the saloon

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expressed their sense of my unphilosophic narrowness, I can realize that their action was based upon some obscure feelings not entirely unjust and brutal.

After a time, my friends became less suspicious, and pari passu more interesting to me. But as the richness of the material grew more apparent, the difficulties in the way of my task became greater. The men with temperament among them were intensely alive, so alive that "art" seemed to them a mere trivial excrescence due to the superfluous well-being of the capitalist class: and since, in their feeling, literature, history, art, law and religion, as they are to-day, had for the most part originated on the basis of an unjust social order, so these things tended to keep the proletariat enslaved: they tended to cradle the mind and senses and make man ignobly content with his bonds.

So that my scheme for a book did not interest them in the slightest — not the real men among them. They were too active to take

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the contemplative point of view : they thought, but their thought had the unformed and fragmentary character of action. And then, too, as I have said, they distrusted the moral and social tendencies of "culture." They were too genuinely interested in themselves and the "movement" to be able to see themselves as a whole. They lacked variety, arid though they talked extremely well about the things that interested them, they became stiff, inexpressive and conventional when I induced them to talk about their lives and their personal opinions. The vanity of a pickpocket, the sense for self-advertisement of a soubrette, easily lends itself to the egotism of autobiography. But the active impersonality arid seriousness of a laborer lacks the pleasure in subjective contemplation and in the recherche of the ego which is of prime necessity iri autobiography.

The world of labor is so big — it has so markedly not only the character of a great human thing, but also connects itself so defi-

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nitely with history and politics, — it has so many aspects, so many threads, that no one man can possibly stand at the center of it. That is another discovery, which, indeed, I was rather slow in making, and another difficulty in the way of my enterprise. I became deeply interested in one man after another, but in every case I found that either the man was not sufficiently typical of what I imagined the labor situation to be, or that he lacked an interest in my work, or was not sufficiently expressive for my purpose.

At last, however, after being in Chicago for several months, I did meet a man whose temperament and character, and experience, both as a type and as a person, seemed to combine much that I wanted. I remember well the occasion of our first meeting. It was at the bar of the Briggs House. He stood, drinking a glass of beer, and talking with energy and rough irony to a couple of newspaper men, about the teamsters' strike. I was immediately struck with his intellectual vigor, his

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free, anarchistic habit of mind, and the rough, sweet health of his personality. We had a long discussion about Tolstoi's ideas of "non-resistance," about labor, about life. I found him wonderfully expressive: he excited me most pleasurably, and I made an appointment with him for the next day.

He was too busy for me to see much of at that time. He worked in the shop every day, and his nights were usually given up to trades-union activities, or to "radical" meetings, of one kind or another. Soon after, I left town for the summer. While away, I wrote my friend, told him what I wanted, described as well as I could the work that I had planned, and asked him for his co-operation. He wrote back a good-natured letter of consent; and on the basis of that I returned to Chicago in the autumn and spent there three of the most interesting months of my life.

He lived in Austin, a suburb of Chicago. I went to a boarding-house near by, so as to be near him and his family. He was busier than

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ever: he was a man of growing importance in the Federation, he still actively worked in the shop, his need of social pleasure was strong and constant, and his "radical" friends and activities were many. When I was with him in the bosom of his family — where I was received with the utmost hospitality, — or in company with his trades-union co-workers, or his "radical" friends, I found his talk always expressive, significant and most interesting.

But I discovered to my disappointment that I could not interest him in my work. He was not at all interested in his autobiography or in what I could make out of it; and it was only when he thought himself working with me that he was comparatively uninteresting. He hated to commit himself to anything, or to feel that, when once he was out of the shop, he need do anything except enjoy his body or his mind and temperament in the way he saw fit. And no prospect of any material compensation as a result of the work had any effect upon him. I found him so thoroughly a man

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of temperament, that by excess, it precluded the artistic results of temperament.

But, although we did not "hit it off" very well in what we called our work, we got along extremely well together in life. I became almost a member of his family, and came to occupy an acknowledged place in the circle of his radical friends. I grew to be so much interested in many of his companions, male and female, and so thoroughly absorbed and fascinated, that the need of making use of it all seemed very remote to me. My own family, however, beckoned to me from distant New York, and I finally tore myself up by my acquired roots, and departed.

The total result of my Chicago experience was to make me feel that in this work the autobiographical form must be given up. The man and the subject was at once too interesting, too significant and too inexpressive. I was compelled to choose the more circumstantial, comprehensive, if slower, less vivid and less exciting form of biography; to tell

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about the man, his life, his friends, often quoting his words, but sometimes resorting to my own. The looser and freer form of biography had the advantage of enabling me to bring into the book a good deal in Chicago and its people which is influenced and determined by the character of America's intellectual proletariat; although not immediately belonging to the world of labor.

The Spirit of Labor.

CHAPTER I. Early Youth

Anton, when I met him in the saloon of the Briggs House, was thirty-three years old — old enough to have experienced a great deal, and young enough to retain the excited point of view about life. He is a woodworker, making the best wages at his trade, and has been in steady employment for some years. That fact, however, has not limited his energy in other ways. Of late he has become an important man in Chicago labor circles, and last autumn was the Chicago delegate to the International Labor Congress at Pittsburg. He is the President of his local union, and in trades-union matters very active in every way. He is an effective speaker, and enjoys an intellectual bout on the floor with any man. He now meets men of all walks of life and [23 J

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finds it interesting to measure his strength with theirs. He derives keen mental satisfaction from contact with local philosophers and "radicals" — and to their meetings he goes as a relief from the more strenuous occupation in trades-union matters.

The contrasts in the life of this workingman have been marked. He began adult life as a tramp, picked up a knowledge of his trade on the road, and came in contact there, also, with the injustice of organized society: this made him think, and laid the foundation of his later radicalism. Love for a girl came in — he had his great adventure — and this took him, eventually, away from the road. Children came, and with them comparative fixity of purpose, and the turning of the man's energy into the deepening of his social and intellectual life. Many leaders in the labor world, starting with sympathy for the "rank and file," lose that sympathy when they become leaders. But Anton has, at any rate as yet, retained the essential qualities of the workingman, although he is endowed with far more energy and brains and character than the average. This is partly due to the fact that he still works in the shop, among the men, [24 J

Early Youth.

and partly to his steadfast refusal to become a "politician" in the movement. In the Federation meetings he is a free-lance, bold, aggressive, terribly frank at times, with a youthful pleasure in shocking his companions, but of sterling honesty and a deep joy in the truth, because it is the truth, the exciting truth, no matter if it hurts, no matter though it be quite out of place. To express what he deems the truth, in season and out, is to him almost an emotional dissipation. ^

When I met Anton in the Briggs House, his face and manner indicated his character and his experience. He has the powerful body of the young mechanic — not lithe or graceful, but with the strength of a gnarled root. He is short and thick-set, with stubbed and horny hands; his head is a bullet, his brow broad, his eyes large, deep, and kind; his voice big. The lines in his face show a man who has lived roughly: his life on the road was almost as rough as they come. Yet his hard life has not made his face hard. He is rough in manner and in look; and his appearance shows experience. But in spite of the many sordid facts of his life, there is no suggestion of hardness about him. He looks big and open, as

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he is. The sweetness and the roughness of simple humanity are in his face. And he meets men in this spirit — often with brusque roughness, but always with the essential respect for others that sweetness gives.

This man was born abroad: as is the way with the typical American workingman. His home was in Germany, in Schleswig-Holstein. His father was a house-roofer, a jolly fellow who liked to drink too much and who caused his family much trouble. He was a fat, round person, a great story-teller, and great as a father, for he had twelve children, of whom eight died, through neglect, for the mother was forced to go out working, and the children were left to themselves. She washed for the farmers in the neighborhood, often not returning home till 2 o'clock in the morning, and going away to work again at 6.

When the father went to America, to find a home for his family, the oldest sister was glad to see him go. He was in the way, she thought. The wife cried, when he went, and Anton prayed, for Anton was the only earnest Christian among the children. "When mother was out working," he said "I always waited till she came back, no matter how late [26]

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it was, so that I could say my prayers, before I went to sleep. At that time I accepted everything that the preacher said. I imagined that his every remark was the essence of the Holy Ghost."

He was a loving child, and by nature and education had the patience and reverence that is part of the laborer's character. "I was very happy," he said, "when I could bring my mother some pennies. I used to sing for them, on the farms." It was the custom for the children to stand at the back-door to beg for the dinner that they were to take to school. In the fall of the year, the farmers killed hogs, and the children begged part of the meat, and took it home. On New Year's eve the children would go around the village, singing, for coins and baked things. Anton was a favorite on that night, for he was a good singer, and had, as he said, "an unlimited amount of gall."

He went to the parish school where he "learned religion," as he put it, and a little mathematics; also to swim, as that was a part of the program of the government, to train the boys for soldiers. He also learned to take a beating with equanimity.

For the grown people in that village had [27]

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many superstitions. One was a strong belief in the need of beating little children. Anton's father, mother, sister and school-teacher all beat him with great frequency. "My father was good-natured," he said, "but bad whiskey drove him to this brutality. In spite of my religious tendencies, the slightest error or mistake on my part would mean a sound thrashing; The effect of the rod was to make me want revenge, but not at that time so much as later, for I thought I was born to work and slave and be beaten — that was the fundamental doctrine of the Bible, as it was conveyed to me." "^

Another superstition was the universal belief in witches. The parents "grafted," said Anton, "on this superstition, using it as a club to keep us indoors at night. I imagined I saw witches everywhere, and used to turn it to account by frightening other children. I remember getting under the house and making horrible noises. I didn't see why I should not make use of the witches, if my parents did. But they objected to my graft, and my sister beat me with a soup-bone."

One of the most vivid memories from his childhood was of the insufficient food. Many

Early Youth.

is the time he went hungry to bed, because there was nothing to eat in the house. At the best, the bill of fare was dry bread and potatoes, salt lard and tallow in place of butter. Once a year, "on Christmas, when the birth of Christ was celebrated," he interjected, satirically, "we had butter and white bread." Meat was to be had only when the farmers were killing. The mother used to go out early in the morning for craw-fish, and would also gather driftwood for the fires.

After the father had been away two years, the family followed him to Clinton, Iowa, where he had settled. They were only four then ; the other children had died. The only doctors in the village were the druggists and the preachers, but probably the children would have died anyway, from poor food and neglect. "I was glad," said Anton, "to go to America, for I thought I would not need to beg there, and that I could get enough to eat."

"I enjoyed the trip across the ocean, for I got extra food from the steward for doing dirty work. The grub was awful filthy, but there was enough of it. One day I went without my extra rations, because I fell downstairs with a dozen bottles, and the cook [29]

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thought he ought to discipline me. A boy finds a moral teacher wherever he goes. This world is said to be a bad one, but as for me I find virtue everjrwhere, more's the pity.

"After nineteen days we reached New York, very lousy from our steerage experience, and landed in Castle Garden. The first thing I noticed was a negro. I had never seen one before, and I thought he was the devil. But he told me his color was due to the climate, and that I would soon be as black as he was. As my youngest brother had been very ill on the voyage, the doctor in New York sent him and mother to a hospital for ten days, and the other children to an orphan asylum. In this place they put us through a course of gymnastics: we had all the exercises except stomach exercises. The food, indeed, was little and bad. Here, too, I got my regular beatings. I began to think that I was owned by the whole world and that everybody was good 'but me."

When they reached Clinton, Iowa, they found the father there doing much better than he had done in Germany. He was driving a beer wagon for a German brewer, and was a great favorite with his employer, who [30]

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weighed four hundred pounds and enjoyed the father's jokes. "Father was naturally a great jollier," said Anton, "and that kind of a man gets along in America." The brewer drank a keg of beer every day and soon "died of avoirdupois." Anton's father then became bartender and afterwards saloon-keeper, and prospered, because he told good stories and knew when to treat and when to extort payment.

In this American town Anton went to school more or less for two winters; and acquired there the reputation of a bad boy. "The spirit ^• of protest," he said, "which is now developed to a considerable extent, began to stir in me. Whenever the teacher asked me why I was tardy, I told her the truth, and the other boys lied. So I was beaten and the other boys were not; and this seemed to me unjust. One day the school-teacher beat my little brother, and I attacked the teacher, and the stove fell over on us. Father took my side, and rescued me from this affair. A few months before Easter, when I was preparing for confirmation, the teacher and the minister asked me, with a view to finding out the effect of the religious teaching, what I would do with my wife, if she [31]

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were negligent in the household affairs. I replied promptly that I would run away. On another occasion I insisted there were witches in the town. The teacher said there were not. But as I had seen them with my own eyes, and as my parents had told me these things existed, I thought the teacher was a liar, and told him so."

Finally the school became too warm for him, and he left and went to work in a brick yard at twenty-five cents a day. This was his first experience as a workingman. He was then twelve years old, and worked ten hours a day, at turning and hacking brick, hard work, but he became the best turner in the yard. He was a favorite with the boss, for when work was slack he peeled potatoes for the employer's wife. "I did this for a couple of years, but my industry had no effect on my boss. He took it as a matter of course. Wasn't I getting twenty- five cents a day?"

Although Anton's father was working steadily at this time, his mother still went out to wash, and his sister worked as hired girl. He had no holidays but Sunday, and so his life, at twelve years of age, was almost all work. "I don't think," he said, "that any one of my [32]

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family enjoyed life ; I am sure I did not, as a child. Perhaps my father did, for he drank heavily, and always had a good story to tell." The father was the only one of them who lived the life of the temperament. At least, he belonged to the poor man's club, and often talked eloquently to the men in the saloon.

When he was fourteen, Anton went to work in a sash and door factory, where every man and boy had his place like a machine. He worked there on and off for eight years, making window frames and nothing else. It was monotonous work, and he learned little from it. "If I had never run away from home," he said, "I would never have become a mechanic. The work there was too monotonous, and the men took no interest in the boys and did not teach them anything. I got fifty cents a day for ten hours' work, and after six years was getting only a dollar a day. But at that time I did not think much about the wages. I wouldn't have minded if it had not been for the monotony of it. I became awfully bored, which always happens to me when anything lasts too long."

When Anton was sixteen, there was a strike, under the auspices of the Knights of Labor. [33J

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It did not involve his shop, but he at once felt in sympathy with the purposes of the strikers. It was a mob strike ; the strikers were not organized and they lost. This was the first strike that came to Anton's attention. "But I felt at once," he said, "that the other fellows were in reality our enemies, and were trying to get all they could out of us and give us as little in return as we would accept. "^

"Under the circumstances, I felt justified in killing as much time as I could without being discharged. The monotony of the employment and the greed of the employer took all V interest away from the work. So I organized a number of boys into a kind of entertainment society. We built a watch-house in the shop, and while one boy acted as the look-out, the others played cards, during the work hours. We kept this up for months, but I was finally caught and laid ofif a day. My father threatened to thrash me if I didn't get my job back. At that time my father was running the saloon and I sometimes used to tend bar for him in the evening. I was to do so on that night, as the old gent was uptown. Instead, I left home without saying good-bye to anybody, got in a box-car half loaded with shelled corn, and in a few hours I v^^as in Chicago. I was then eighteen years old."

CHAPTER II. On the Road

Now began a period of wandering, often interrupted by brief returns to his family in Clinton. He became one of the large class of nomadic workingmen, so to speak, who are as much hobo as laborer; indeed, many of them more so, as they work only in order to earn enough money for a "front," a suit of clothes, and then restlessly pass on.

On this first trip he was in Chicago only a short time. He boldly pretended to be a mechanic, but was discharged for incompetency a few days after finding his first job. He then washed dishes in a restaurant for a night or two, but dropped this for a magnificent position on a railroad at $1.40 a day — high wages for him, who lived at the time on 25 cents a day. The old feeling of mbnotony interrupted this lucrative work, and, after three days, he quit — and did not get his money. Beating his way to Burlington, he worked [35]

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eight days as a woodworker, but was discharged: he was not yet a mechanic. But each time this happened, he was a little wiser : knew a little more of his trade. Conditions were slightly different in each shop, there was greater variety than in the monotonous work at Clinton, and, as time went on, he learned.

At Burlington he lost his watch, as well as his job, and was "broke." Then he begged, for the first time, and took another step towards membership in Hoboland. Previously to begging he had lived for two days on watermelons that had burst and been thrown away. At this time, he was very much discouraged. He was willing to work, and saw the utter lack of sympathy in the people he met. He felt particularly the jealousy of the mechanics, who refused to teach him anything. He perceived that he was thrown entirely on his own resources, and as he is naturally generous and kind himself, he felt this coldness deeply.

He managed to beat his way in a box-car to Cedar Rapids, and thence home, to Clinton. His trip had not been a spectacular success, but, when he reached home, he was, he said, "as proud as a peacock." He felt he was a hero and had been almost around the world.