Doing us good and plenty

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I Current Styles in Governmental Bunk 5

II When Workingmen Seek to Better

Chapter I Current Styles In Govern- Mental Bunk

Well, fellow Americans, tariff reform wasn't the thing, after all, was it?

Do you remember how we were told year after year that the abominable tariff was the root of all our troubles? It was the tariff that increased the cost of living ; it was because of the tariff that we were getting relatively poorer all the time. Whenever we pointed out that provisions were constantly growing dearer, clothing cost more, and rents were higher, the answer from the wise men was al- ^ ways pat. Blame all this to the tariff, they said. It was behind the protecting wall of the tariff that all such evils grew.

They made the thing look rather plausible, too.

There was an import duty on meat, for instance. Therefore, we could bring no meat from abroad, and the American packer having no competition, could charge us what he pleased. That was the reason why meat was dear.

There was an import duty on wool; that was the reason why clothing was so dear.

There was an import duty on sugar; that was the reason why sugar was high and all articles into which sugar entered cost us so much.

There was an import duty on lumber; that made houses dear and rents high.

On practically everything we consumed was an import duty, and thus we suffered from it. To make living cheap, therefore, behold the simple, certain prescription — Reduce the tariff and you reduce the price we must pay.

Same way with the trusts.

Those hideous monsters of our dreams, how quickly they would vanish when the fierce, man-eating tariff should be driven from our midst! <; The tariff is the origin of the trusts," sang from ocean to ocean a large, if indiscriminate, chorus. Some persons thought the trust question was complex and difficult to handle. Gifted thinkers that were editing Democratic newspapers knew better. The simple way to abolish the trusts was to abolish or reduce the tariff that nourished the trusts.

For instance, if beef were admitted free of duty, that would dispose of the Beef Trust, because then we could buy our meat from abroad and be independent and happy.

If sugar were admitted free the Sugar Trust would not last twenty-four hours. Put lumber on the free list and watch the Lumber Trust melt away, and rents come down with a rush. Reduce the tariff on steel and the Steel Trust would cease to bother and the Wire Trust be at rest.

And it seemed well that we should do something of the kind, for even to the dullest and fattest witted observer the situation was becoming alarming; if not for himself, being full of beef and mutton, at least to his country. You see the cost of living had been increasing rather rapidly for many years, and as wages had increased comparatively little, and in some instances not at all, this did seem to make a tough situation for the workingman. Even a fat millionaire Senator could see that — if it were brought to his attention often enough. It wasn't serious for him, of course, but it might be serious for somebody else.

As to the fact itself, that was not a matter of assertion; it was a matter of statistics as well as of common knowledge among the millions and millions affected by it. Of course old Senator Sorghum does not know anything about it from personal experience, because an increase in the cost of his living is offset by the natural increase in his revenue from the investments that are fattened upon other folks. But he can very easily ascertain all about it if he will turn to the official and other reports. Thus, for instance, what are called " index numbers," a device for registering average prices on the markets, show that in twelve years the average cost of living has increased 50 per cent., and in seventeen years it has increased nearly 80 per cent., but in the same period of seventeen years the average of wages and salaries has increased no more than 20 per cent.

In other words, here is demonstration for the well-fed Senators of a fact that to all the workers needs no other demonstration than their experience. The worker in America is constantly growing poorer. Every year he must pay more for practically everything he buys, and whatever good luck he may have had in securing an increase of wages the prices have soared faster than his income. Every worker knows this. It is only set down here to explain what happened to the mind of Senator Sorghum when the fact was driven in upon him.

Not only is the cost of living increasing more rapidly than any increase in wages, but every time wages are forced up, whether by strikes, threats, appeals, the work of the unions or what else, the fact is made an excuse for jacking up the cost of living another notch, so that the increase in the good man's wage really reacts to his disadvantage.

Thus, when in 1910 the anthracite coal miners succeeded in extracting from the Coal Trust a slight increase in their wages, the Trust immediately used the fact as an excuse to advance the price of coal 25 cents a ton, and thereby increased its income $15,000,000 a year ; whereas the increase of wages it had granted to the miners cost the Trust only $6,440,000 a year — thus adding $8,560,000 net to its yearly gouge. But the increase of 25 cents a ton went into the production cost and the transportation cost of 90 per cent, of the things the miners bought; with the result that they were no better off than they were before.

But the Trust had $8,560,000 more to divide.

All these facts were undeniable and not pleasant to contemplate, even to the gentlemen of the professional and well-to-do classes, to whom exclusively (for some reason never disclosed) we entrust our government.

It was all well enough to have a working class perpetually on a lower social plane, but if that working class was every year being worse fed and worse housed, and was getting constantly poorer, those among our legislators that were able to think at all conceived that the outlook was not wholly reassuring.

Suppose the working class, for example, under such conditions, should get tired of being forever fooled into supporting Lawyer Sorghum and Politician Mazuma; suppose the worker should quit voting for his employers, as represented in the Republican and Democratic parties, and begin to vote for himself. You see the possibilities were not nice. Of course the worker never had revolted nor shown signs of insubordination in his politics, but there was no telling what might happen in such an extraordinary situation. Where the cost of living was always increasing, and there was no corresponding increase in wages, was every possibility of trouble. Every year it was harder for the workingman's wife to make her husband's income buy the food for the household and clothe the children; every year she must scrimp more and practice more self-denial; and every year the chances for the children grew worse.

For all this again some of the well-fed contingent told us the simple remedy was to reduce the tariff. If we could import the articles now monopolized by the innumerable trusts the trusts would dry up and blow away, all commodities would necessarily be cheapened, and, of course, down would come the cost of living.

Workingmen were told this throughout the campaign of 1912, and seemed to believe what they were told, for the country elected a Democratic President and a Congress Democratic in both houses, and this Democratic administration promptly applied the simple remedy that had been doped out by the wise men. Congress passed the law reducing the tariff on most things and abolishing it on those important articles that were supposed to control the high cost of living.

Bread was put on the free list ; so were crackers.

Meat was put on the free list.

Milk and eggs, potatoes, cattle and hogs, fruits and lard were put on the free list.

Wool was put on the free list.

Corn and cornmeal were put on the free list ; so were bacon and hams.

Lumber was put on the free list.

Wheat and flour were put practically on the free list.

Coal was put on the free list to reduce manufacturing cost and household expenses ; so was kerosene.

Iron ore, pig iron, hides, leather, boots and shoes, cotton, steel ingots, billets and slabs were put on the free list.

The duty on sugar was greatly reduced for the time being, to be abolished a little later.

Salt was put on the free list ; so were fresh water fish.

As you will see, a whole bill of fare, and then some.

This great and wonderful reform has now been in operation about one year.

The result is that the cost of living has not been reduced; the trusts have not been busted, but only benefited; the situation of labor has not been improved.

Exactly as before, the workers continue to grow poorer. The cost of living continues to increase upon them. There is no corresponding increase in their wages. The winter of

1913-14 was the worst that the working class has seen in the country for many years ; more men were out of work; there was in all parts of the country a more acute distress. Chicago, St. Louis, San Francisco, and many other cities saw demonstrations by the unemployed the like of which had never before been witnessed in American communities. In New York the charitable societies estimated that there were 350,000 men without employment, and it was admitted that the resources of the city government and of private charity were utterly unable to cope with the situation. Many of the unions were caring for unusual numbers of the destitute among their members. In more than one city the well-to-do were appalled at the plain manifestations of distress and discontent among what are called in snobbish speech " the unfortunate."

So it is apparent, brethren, that Tariff Reform isn't the thing; they were not giving to us the correct dope when they handed that out. We have had the blessed old tariff reformed and reduced and amputated and tinkered with in every way those experts could suggest, and the trouble keeps on exactly as before.

Still the cost of living increases, and there is no corresponding increase in wages and salaries. Still, therefore, the whole working class is getting poorer and the prospect for the children of that class gets darker.

But the tariff tinkers were not the only Old Docs that undertook to find a cure for these augmenting troubles. A great many declared that at bottom the whole thing was a question of getting more out of the land. We were not producing enough.

Thus, if we produced more wheat the price would fall, and that would bring down the price of bread, and when bread fell of course other things would fall, too, and there you are with a full solution. Back to the farm — that was the grand idea. Let everybody go to farming. Only a small part of the total surface of the land was cultivated. Immense areas in addition were susceptible of cultivation. Let all those now suffering from poverty in our cities go west and turn farmer. This would relieve the congestion in the labor market and at the same time reduce the cost of living by increasing enormously the supplies of food. How the people of the cities were to get possession of farms was not explained, nor how if they got the land they would find farming profitable when the prices of all farm products were to be cut in half or so. But trifles like these were not allowed to stand in the way of the only true and infallible remedy for all the ills of the nation. Hence, back to the land! Let everybody turn farmer! Shoes, probably, would grow on trees, and trousers on bushes. Anyway, back to the land!

Well, it seems we have been going back to the land, and we have been increasing our farm products, and yet nobody can detect any change in the general situation, except that it grows worse.

I have here the figures before me. In 1913 there were more farms than ever, and they produced more food. The value of the farm products raised in the United States in that year was more than six billion dollars, and exceeded any crop records in our history. We raised about twice as much in 1913 as we raised in 1899, and a billion dollars' worth more than we raised in 1909. It was the bumper crop of America,

The number of farms had increased 11 per cent, since 1910. The total number in 1913 was 6,600,000.

So we have been going back to the land, and we have been applying this far-famed remedy, and these are the results. I do not need to preach any pessimistic view of the outcome.

An official bulletin of the Agricultural Department tells the story and supplies the comment. First, the facts. The bulletin says :

Corn, with a value of $1,692,000,000, comprised 28 per cent, of the value of all crops, although the volume was under the record. The other principal crops with values are given in the order in which they come: Cotton, $798,000,000; hay, $797,000,000; wheat — the largest crop ever raised in this country — $610,000,000; oats, $440,- 000,000; potatoes, $228,000,000; tobacco, $122,- 000,000; barley, $96,000,000; sweet potatoes, $43,000,000; sugar beets, $34,000,000; Louisiana cane sugar, $26,000,000; rye, $26,000,000; rice, $22,000,000; flaxseed, $21,000,000; hops $15,000,- 000; buckwheat, $10,000,000.

In quantity of estimated production the record has been broken by wheat, rye, rice, sugar beets, beet sugar, and the total of beet and cane sugar. Of the remaining crops, oats, barley, cotton and hops have been exceeded twice in production.

The value of the crops of 1913 is high. A new high record in estimated value is made by the total of all cereals, and separately by corn, cotton, cottonseed, tobacco, and sugar beets. Only once has there been a higher estimated value of oats, rye, rice, potatoes, hay, hops, and the total of beet and cane sugar. Only twice has the estimated value of wheat and of beet sugar been exceeded.

Dairy products of 1913 are estimated at more than $814,000,000; eggs and fowls have an estimated value of more than $578,000,000.

The wool production of 1913 was estimated at 304,000,000 pounds.

The prices of fourteen principal crops average about 20.2 per cent, higher than a year ago and 4.6 per cent, higher than two years ago. Their total values average about 3.8 per cent, higher than a year ago and 7-6 per cent, higher than two years ago.

The value of the agricultural exports of domestic production in the fiscal year 1913 was $1,123,- 021,469, an amount which has not before been equaled. The reexports, otherwise called the exports of foreign agricultural products, are estimated at $12,000,000. The so-called balance of trade in agricultural products is in favor of the exports of domestic farm products by $296,000,- 000.

The cotton crop now seems to be established in value as next in order after corn. The lint of this crop in 1913, at the price of December 1, had an estimated value of $798,000,000, and this was not equaled in any former year. It is 14% per cent, above the average of the preceding five years. The estimated number of bales of 500 pounds gross weight in this crop is 13,677,000; consequently, this crop has been exceeded in quantity by the crops of 1911 and 1912. If the estimated value of the cotton seed is added to that of lint> the total farm value of this crop amounts to $945,000,000, an increase of 16 per cent, over the average of the previous five years.

That seems to make the back to the farm argument look pretty sick. But listen to what the department says :

However desirable increased production on farms may appear to be from the consumer's standpoint, it does not follow that such increased production would result in any increase in the cash income per farm or per capita of farm population, or that prices paid by consumers would be any lower.

Had the total production in 1913 equaled or exceeded the 1912 production, it seems probable that the cash income per farm would not have been greater, and might have been less than in 1912; but it is extremely doubtful whether the cost to the consumer would have been any less, because retail prices are promptly raised on a prospect of underproduction, but are very slow to decline if there is overproduction.

So it seems there is little hope here; the prices of food continue to increase, but the farmer gets nothing of the increase.

Something deeper and far more radical than this seems to be our ailment.

Not long ago Congressman H. W. Summers of Texas, who represents a cotton growing constituency, made a sensation in the House of Representatives by a speech on the condition of the Southern farmer. He said:

It is said that the man who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew is a public benefactor, but we are offering mighty poor encouragement for the two-blade production if the two blades bring less money than the one would have brought.

In 1910 Southern farmers produced 12,000,000 bales of cotton. The world said that was not enough. The next year they produced 16,000,000 bales. It cost them millions of dollars more.

The world's appreciation was shown by penalizing them $125,000,000. The corn crop of 1912 was considerably larger than that of the preceding year, yet it brought $50,000,000 less.

Plainly, then, the farmer is not getting the profit from the increased cost of living.

To a worker no demonstration is needed that the working class is not getting it; he knows that well enough from his own daily experience. For the benefit of others it may be well to refer again to the statistics. The census of 1910 showed that the average income of a workingman that was the head of a family was a trifle oVer $500 a year. Investigations of the Agricultural Department showed a year or two ago that to support an average family in anything like decency anywhere in the United States at least $900 a year would be required. The New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor recently went into this subject scientifically, and its tests showed that the conclusions of the Agricultural Department were too optimistic. The Association took twenty-seven tenement house families that it was caring for, and, after deliberate investigation, adduced the following table as giving the least a family could subsist upon in New York city, anyway:

20 DOING US GOOD AND PI^ENTY

Rent and light $ .65

Clothing 433

Fuel 045

Lunches L 089

Dues 068

Medicine 079

Ice 05

Carfare 065

Household supplies 091

Miscellaneous 097

Total daily budget $2,965

Total yearly budget $1,082.00

If we take the Agricultural Department's figures as indicating the best that can be done in small communities, which is probably the case, and the tables of the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor as showing the conditions in larger cities, we must be appalled at the next fact we are called upon to contemplate, which is that an analysis of the income tax facts of 1913 showed that 96 per cent, of the people of the United States that have any income at all, whether from wages, salaries or investments, have an average annual income of $601.

It is very common among well-fed persons that think superficially, or not at all, to push aside any such terrible facts as these by saying that anyway the worker can better his condition if he wishes to do so. All he needs to do is to practice thrift, economy, zeal and other virtues, and be diligent in the performance of his duties. If he is faithful and intelligent he is sure to rise, and meantime let him deny himself and put money in the savings bank and get rich and independent.

Having delivered himself of which, this kind of a philosopher usually lights a fresh cigar and delivers an impressive lecture on the improvidence of the working classes. The thing has become so common that we even have now a National Thrift Society for the purpose of teaching workingmen and their wives how to make two dishes of one soup bone and to turn papa's trousers a third time for little Willie.

It is easy enough for a man with an income of $25,000 a year to preach thrift. If he were one of the many millions of workers whose average annual income is $500 with a $900 family to support his eloquence on this subject would drop a little. How are you to practice economy when every cent you can earn or hope to earn is swept away the moment it touches your hand by pressing needs and imperative demands? The Thrift Society has not told us this. I wish it would in the next beautifully printed bulletin.

But about this matter of improving your condition and rising in the world and all that.

It is customarily put forth with a wealth of instances to make the grand old truth apparent to every workingman. James J. Hill began iife as a farmer's boy, Charles M. Hays was an obscure clerk in a railroad office, Thomas F. Ryan's first job was to sweep out a store at $3 a week, Charles M. Schwab used to be a workman in an iron mill, Andrew Carnegie landed on these shores all but penniless. See? These are the opportunities offered in this country to men that are zealous and industrious. Be zealous ; that's the thing. Regard your employer's interest as your own. Serve him faithfully and get your wages increased. Then you will not have to complain about hard times and the increased cost of living.

Yes. Well, there is about one foreman, overseer, superintendent or other salaried officer to every 333 workers, so that even at the best the gaudy prospect offered by this prescription is that maybe one person in 333 can rise and the rest must remain exactly as they are, no matter how hard they may strive, no matter how diligent, industrious, zealous and serviceable they may be. They can wear out their hearts and lives in the effort to improve their condition, and have nothing to show for it but their pains.

This is on the theory that all officers of all corporations and industries are taken from the ranks, and that such officers have the same average length of life that workers have.

But, as a matter of fact, the situation is much worse than I have shown, because most officers are not taken from the ranks, and the average length of life among them is much greater than among toilers.

Prof. Scott Nearing, in his valuable book, " Financing the Wage Earner's Family," has some interesting facts that illuminate this subject. He takes the railroad worker as a typical case, which is good, since it is the officer of the railroad that is most frequently held up to the admiring throng as an example of " getting on in the world."

It appears that ostensibly and on the face of the returns a railroad trainman has one chance in three hundred of becoming some kind of an officer on his line, but he has every year a far greater chance of being killed in the performance of his duty for his kind and generous employer. Every year he has one chance in twenty of being injured and one chance in one hundred of being killed. If he shall work as long as twenty years while he seeks by diligence and zeal to better his condition, the chances are even that in that period he will be injured, and one to six that he will be killed, so that the chance of being injured is three hundred times as great and of being killed is fifty times as great as his chance of becoming a general officer in the company.

From this and other illustrations Prof. Nearing deduces that the tendency of modern industry is toward a form of organization that will require the wage-worker to remain a wage-worker, and without the least hope of being anything else.

Prof. Nearing also seems to find that when a worker reaches thirty years of age the slender, elusive chances he may have had, one in three hundred or four hundred of securing a better position, are practically exhausted, and from that time on he can look for nothing better, but only things worse. At thirty he has reached the maximum of his earning power. But there is no limit to the minimum, for wages are always subject to contingencies of sickness, accidents, suspensions in the industry, over-production, new inventions and the like.

So while the cost of living increases upon this working class and there is no corresponding increase in its wages, it is confronted with an iron-bound condition that offers no possible escape from a state steadily growing worse. This is not the deduction of an agitator ; it is the conclusion of the highest authority in the United States on work and wages.

No, it is perfectly obvious that the working man is not getting any of the profit that is reaped from the increased cost of living. Nor is the working woman. Mr. Abram I. Elkus, of the recent New York State Commission to investigate factory conditions, made a searching inquiry about two great industries that employed together 10,893 women, and found that hundreds of these women received a compensation of $3 a week or less, while other hundreds received less than $8 each. On this he said:

" Some remedy is needed for such conditions. You know and I know that women can't live and keep body and soul together on such a wage as this. We have got to give the employes a living wage/'

Miss Mary Dreier, another investigator, said that the object of the state was to discover if there were any industries that were paying wages upon which employees could not live, and the Commission had ascertained that there were thousands of girls earning from $3.50 to $7 a week.

" We know they can't live properly on that," said Miss Dreier, " and still they go along doing the best they can. We also know big ablebodied men earning not more than $7 or $9 a week. They have families to support, and we know it can't be done."

Miss Dreier said that in one store she investigated the rule was that the chairs for sales girls which were required by law were not to be used, and that the girls were afraid to tell about it.

"Why is that?" she asked.

A girl in the crowd called back, " Blacklist."

So it appears that not only do these women work for less than enough to live on, but they are denied the right of speaking about the conditions under which they work, even when those conditions violate the law. Some one with an expert mind sh'ould point out the difference between such a situation and the slavery that existed in the South before the Civil War.

Still, the great toll is collected, and more of it every year, for still the perilous condition is maintained under which the cost of living is increasing, and there is no corresponding increase in wages and salaries. Where, then, does the tribute go? The farmer does not get it, but complains all the time of diminished returns for his hard work, complains so bitterly that he is now organizing or trying to organize a huge marketing system of his own that will save him a part of the money now taken from him. The worker does not get it, because he grows always poorer, and slides downward to lower standards of living and bleaker prospects for himself and his children. Where does it go?

Fortunately, as to that also we have some official documents of great interest and value, so that no one need be driven to speculation or mere guess work, nor yet to individual assertions. It is all in the records.

When the Interstate Commerce Commission was investigating the financial wreck of the New Haven Railroad it found that in eight years the capitalization of that road was increased 1500 per cent, and that a very large part of the increase was not represented by improvements of any kind, but was merely the graft or " benefits " pulled off for the insiders that had control of the property. Nevertheless the increased capitalization was a burden on the road the operations of which must be taxed to pay the resulting dividends and interest charges.

That meant that the charges must be passed along for the public to pay, and that meant that all of them must in the end come out of the toiler.

About $125,000,000 of such "benefits" in the shape of these issues of interest-bearing securities were traced to the fortunate insiders, and suits were subsequently begun to try to recover these amounts. But in any case the securities remain a charge upon the property that the public must pay and in the end this charge must fall upon the back of the producer.

One of these operations may serve as a sample of all. There was a piece of trolley road, more or less junk, that bore the resounding name of the New York, Westchester & Boston. Its stock, we now learn, on high authority, was worth "10 cents a pound," but its purchase would afford a good opportunity to issue more securities for the benefit of the gentlemen on the inside, and others, and also to make further deals. So this junk railroad was hitched up with other " properties," some real and some imaginary, having a total outside worth for everything of not more than $4,722,348, and for the lot a price of $11,550,000 was fixed up and paid through Morgan & Co. to Oakleigh