The Spirit of America Part 10

The first work of the leagues was to investigate the actual condition of labour in the great stores. The law forbade them to publish a _black list_ of the establishments where the employees were badly treated.

That would have been in the nature of a boycott. But they ingeniously evaded this obstacle by publishing a _white list_ of those which treated their people decently and kindly. Thus the standard of a "_Fair House_"

where a living wage was paid, where children of tender years were not employed, where the hours of work were not excessive, and where the sanitary conditions were good, was established, and that standard has steadily been raised.

Then the leagues went on to investigate the conditions of production of the goods sold in the shops. The National League issues a _white label_ which guarantees that every article upon which it is found has been manufactured in a place where, (1) the State factory law is obeyed, (2) no children under sixteen years of age are employed, (3) no night work is required and the working-day does not exceed ten hours, (4) no goods are given out to be made away from the factory. At the same time the Consumers' League has been steadily pressing the legislatures and governors of the different States for stricter and better laws in regard to the employment of women and children.

The third cla.s.s of societies which are at work in this field are those which deal directly with the question of child labour. It must be remembered that under the American system this is a matter which is left to the control of the separate States. Naturally there has been the greatest imaginable diversity among them. For a long time there were many that had practically no laws upon the subject, or laws so defective that they were useless. Even now the States are far from anything like harmony or equality in their child-labour laws. Illinois, Ma.s.sachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, and Wisconsin are probably in the lead in good legislation. If we may judge by the statistics of children between ten and fourteen years who are unable to read or write, Tennessee, Mississippi, the Carolinas, Louisiana, Georgia, and Alabama are in the rear.

It must be remembered, also, that the number of children between ten and fifteen years employed in manufacturing pursuits in the United States increased from 1890 to 1900 more than twice as fast as the population of the country, and that the Census of 1900 gives the total of bread-winners under fifteen years of age as 1,750,000. A graphic picture of the actual condition of child labour in the United States may be found in _The Cry of the Children_, by Mrs. John Van Vorst (New York, 1908).

Here is a little army--no, a vast army--of little soldiers, whose sad and silent files are full of menace for the republic.

The princ.i.p.al forces arrayed against this perilous condition of things have been the special committees of the Women's Clubs everywhere, the Child-Labour Committees in different States, and finally the National Child-Labour Committee organized in 1904. Through their efforts there has been a great advance in legislation on the subject. In 1905, twenty-two States enacted laws regulating the employment of children. In 1906 there were six States which legislated, including Georgia and Iowa, which for the first time put a law against child labour on their statute-books. In 1907 eight States amended their laws. In the same year a national investigation of the subject was ordered by Congress under direction of the Federal Commissioner of Labour.

A bill was prepared which attempted to deal with the subject indirectly through that provision of the Const.i.tution which gives Congress the power to "regulate commerce." This bill proposed to make it unlawful to transport from one State to another the product of any factory or mine in which children under fourteen years of age were employed. It was a humane and ingenious device. But it is doubtful whether it can ever be made an effective law. The best judges think that it stretches the idea of the regulation of interstate commerce beyond reasonable limits, and that the national government has no power to control industrial production in the separate States without an amendment to the Const.i.tution. If this be true (and I am inclined to believe it is), then the best safeguard of America against the evils of child labour must be persistent action of these private a.s.sociations in each community, investigating and reporting the actual conditions, awakening and stimulating the local conscience, pushing steadily for better State laws, and, when they are enacted, still working to create a public sentiment which will enforce them.

It is one thing to love your own children and care for them. It is another thing to have a wise, tender, protecting regard for all the children of your country. We wish and hope to see better and more uniform laws against child labour in America. But, after all, nothing can take the place of the sentiment of fatherhood and motherhood in patriotism. And that comes and stays only through the voluntary effort of men and women of good-will.

The last sphere in which the sense of common order in America has been expressed and promoted by social cooperation is that of direct and definite reform accomplished by legislation, as a result, at least in part, of the work of some society or committee, formed for that specific purpose. Here a small, but neat, ill.u.s.tration is at hand.

For many years America practised, and indeed legally sanctioned, the habit of literary piracy. Foreign authors were distinctly refused any protection in the United States for the fruit of their intellectual labours. A foreigner might make a hat, and no one could steal it. He might cultivate a crop of potatoes, and no one could take them from him without paying for them. But let him write a book, and any one could reprint it, and sell it, and make a fortune out of it, without being compelled to give the unhappy author a penny. American authors felt the shame of this state of things,--and the disorder, too, for it demoralized the book-trade and brought a ma.s.s of stolen goods into cheap compet.i.tion with those which had paid an honest royalty to their makers.

A Copyright League was formed which included all the well-known writers of America. After years of hard work this league secured the pa.s.sage of an international copyright law which gave the same protection to the foreigner as to the American author, providing only, under the protective tariff system, that his book must be printed and manufactured in the United States.

But the most striking and important example of this kind of work is that of the Civil Service Reform a.s.sociation, which was organized in 1877.

Here a few words of explanation are necessary.

In the early history of the United States the number of civil offices under the national government was comparatively small, and the appointments were generally made for ability and fitness. But as the country grew, the number of offices increased with tremendous rapidity.

By 1830 the so-called 'Spoils System' which regarded them as prizes of political war, to be distributed by the successful party in each election for the reward and encouragement of its adherents, became a fixed idea in the public mind. The post-offices, the custom-houses, all departments of the civil service, were treated as rich treasuries of patronage, and used first by the Democrats and then by the Republicans, to consolidate and perpetuate partisan power.

It was not a question of financial corruption, of bribery with money. It was worse. It was a question of the disorder and impurity of the national housekeeping, of the debauchment and degradation of the daily business of the State.

Notoriously unfit persons were appointed to responsible positions. The tenure of office was brief and insecure. Every presidential election threatened to make a clean sweep of the hundreds of thousands of people who were doing the necessary routine work of the nation. Federal office-holders were practically compelled to contribute to campaign expenses, and to work and fight, like a host of mercenaries, for the success of the party which kept them in place. Confusion and inefficiency prevailed everywhere.

In 1871 the condition of affairs had become intolerable. President Grant, in his first term, recommended legislation, and appointed a national civil service commission, with George William Curtis at its head. Compet.i.tive examinations were begun, and a small appropriation was made to carry on the work. But the country was not yet educated up to the reform. Congress was secretly and stubbornly opposed to it. The appropriation was withdrawn. The work of the commission was ridiculed, and in his second term, in 1875, Grant was obliged to give it up.

Then the Civil Service Reform a.s.sociation, with men like George William Curtis, Carl Schurz, Dorman B. Eaton, and James Russell Lowell as its leaders, was organized. A vigorous and systematic campaign of public agitation and education was begun. Candidates for the Presidency and other elective offices were called to declare their policy on this question.

The war of opinion was fierce. The a.s.sa.s.sination of President Garfield, in 1881, was in some measure due to the feeling of hostility aroused by his known opposition to the Spoils System. His successor, Vice-President Arthur, who was supposed to be a spoilsman, surprised everybody by his loyalty to Garfield's policy on this point. And in 1883 a bill for the reform of the Civil Service was pa.s.sed and a new commission appointed.

The next President was Grover Cleveland, an ardent and fearless friend of the reform, who greatly increased its practical efficiency. He fought against Congress, both in his first and in his second term, to enlarge the scope and operation of the act by bringing more offices into the cla.s.sified and compet.i.tive service. In his second term, by executive order, he increased the number of cla.s.sified positions from forty-three thousand to eighty-seven thousand.

Presidents Harrison and McKinley worked in the same direction. And President Roosevelt, whose first national office was that of Civil Service Commissioner from 1889 to 1895, has raised and strengthened the rules, and applied the merit system to the consular service and other important departments of governmental work.

The result is that out of three hundred and twenty-five thousand positions in the executive civil service one hundred and eighty-five thousand are now cla.s.sified, and appointments are made either under compet.i.tive examination or on the merit system for proved efficiency.

This is an immense forward step in the promotion of common order, and it is largely the result of the work of the Civil Service Reform a.s.sociation, acting upon the formation of public opinion. I believe it would be impossible for any candidate known to favour the Spoils System to be elected to the Presidency of the United States to-day.

A moment of thought will show the bearing of this ill.u.s.tration upon the subject which we are now considering. Here was a big, new, democratic people, self-reliant and sovereign, prosperous to a point where self-complacency was almost inevitable, and grown quite beyond the reach of external correction and control. They had fallen into wretched habits of national housekeeping. Their domestic service was disorderly and incompetent. The party politicians, on both sides, were interested in maintaining this bad service, because they made a profit out of it. The people had been hardened to it; they seemed to be either careless and indifferent, in their large, happy-go-lucky way, or else positively attached to a system which stirred everything up every four years and created unlimited opportunities for office-seeking and salary-drawing.

What power could save them from their own bad judgment?

There was no higher authority to set them right. Everything was in their own hands. The case looked hopeless. But in less than thirty years the voluntary effort of a group of clear-sighted and high-minded citizens changed everything. An appeal to the sense of common order, of decency, of propriety, in the soul of the people created a sentiment which was too strong for the selfish politicians of either party to resist. The popular will was enlightened, converted, transformed, and an orderly, just, business-like administration of the Civil Service became, if not an accomplished fact, at least a universal and acknowledged aim of national desire and effort.

It is to precisely the same source that we must look with hope for the further development of harmony, and social equilibrium, and efficient civic righteousness, in American affairs. It is by precisely the same process that America must save herself from the perils and perplexities which are inherent in her own character and in the form of government which she has evolved to fit it.

That boastful self-complacency which is the caricature of self-reliance, that contempt for the minority which is the mockery of fair play, that stubborn personal lawlessness which is the bane of the strong will and the energetic temperament, can be restrained, modified, corrected, and practically conquered, only by another inward force,--the desire of common order, the instinct of social cooperation. And there is no way of stimulating this desire, of cultivating this instinct, at least for the American republic, except the way of voluntary effort and a.s.sociation among the men and women of good-will.

One looks with amazement upon the vast array of "societies" of all kinds which have sprung into being in the United States during the last thirty years. They cover every subject of social thought and endeavour. Their doc.u.ments and pamphlets and circulars fill the mails. Their appeals for contributions and dues tax the purse. To read all that they print would be a weariness to the flesh. To attend all their meetings and conferences would wreck the most robust listener. To speak at all of them would ruin the most fluent orator. A feeling of humorous discouragement and dismay often comes over the quiet man who contemplates this astonishing phase of American activity.

But if he happens also to be a conscientious man, he is bound to remember, on the other side, that the majority of these societies exist for some practical end which belongs to the common order. The Women's Clubs, all over the country, have been powerful promoters of local decency and good legislation. The Leagues for Social Service, for Political Education, for Munic.i.p.al Reform, have investigated conditions, collected facts, and acted as "clearing-houses for human betterment."

The White Ribbon, and Red Ribbon, and Blue Ribbon Clubs have worked for purity and temperance. The Prison a.s.sociations have sought to secure the treatment of criminals as human beings. The City Clubs, and Munic.i.p.al Leagues, and Vigilance Societies have acted as unpaid watchmen over the vital interests of the great cities. The Medical and Legal Societies have used their influence in behalf of sanitary reform and the improvement of the machinery and methods of the courts.

There is no subject affecting the common welfare on which Congress would venture to legislate to-day until the committee to which the bill had been referred had first given a public hearing. At these hearings, which are open to all, the societies that are interested present their facts and arguments, and plead their cause.

Even a.s.sociations of a less serious character seem to recognize their civic responsibilities. The Society of the Sons of the Revolution prints and distributes, in a dozen different languages, a moral and patriotic pamphlet of "Information for Immigrants." The Sportsmen's Clubs take an active interest in the improvement and enforcement of laws for the protection of fish and game. The Audubon Societies in many parts of the country have stopped, or at least checked, the extermination of wild birds of beauty and song for the supposed adornment of women's hats.

It cannot be denied that there are still many and grave defects in the common order of America. For example, when a bitter and prolonged conflict between organized capital and organized labour paralyzes some necessary industry, we have no definite and sure way of protecting that great third party, the helpless consuming public. In the coal strike, a few years ago, the operators and the workmen were at a deadlock, and there was a good prospect that many people would freeze to death. But President Roosevelt, with the approval of men like ex-President Cleveland, forced or persuaded the two warring parties to go on with the mining of coal, while a committee of impartial arbitration settled their dispute.

We have no uniformity in our game laws, our forestry laws, our laws for the preservation and purity of the local water-supply. As these things are left to the control of the separate States, it will be very difficult to bring them all into harmony and good order.

The same thing is true of a much more important matter,--the laws of marriage and divorce. Each State and Territory has its own legislation on this subject. In consequence there are fifty-one distinct divorce codes in the United States and their Territories. South Carolina grants no divorce; New York and North Carolina admit only one cause; New Hampshire admits fourteen. In some of the States, like South Dakota, a legal residence of six months is sufficient to qualify a person to sue for a divorce; and those States have always a transient colony of people who are anxious to secure a rapid separation.

The provisions in regard to re-marriage are various and confusing. A man who is divorced under the law of South Dakota and marries again can be convicted of bigamy in New York.

All this is immensely disorderly and demoralizing. The latest statistics which are accessible show that there were 25,000 divorces in the United States in the year 1886. The annual number at present is estimated at nearly 60,000.

But the work which is being done by the National League for the Protection of the Family, and the united efforts of the churches, which have been deeply impressed with the need of awakening and elevating public sentiment on this subject, have already produced an improvement in many States. It is possible that a much greater uniformity of legislation may be reached, even though a national law may not be feasible. It is certain that the effective protection of the family must be secured in America, as elsewhere, by a social education and cooperation which will teach men and women to think of the whole subject "reverently, soberly, and in the fear of G.o.d, duly considering the causes for which marriage was ordained."

In this, and in all other things of like nature, we Americans look into the future not without misgivings and fears, but with an underlying confidence that the years will bring a larger and n.o.bler common order, and that the Republic will be peace.

In the minor problems we shall make many mistakes. In the great problems, in the pressing emergencies, we rely upon the moral power in reserve. The sober soul of the people is neither frivolous nor fanatical. It is earnest, ethical, desirous of the common good, responsive to moral appeal, capable of self-control, and, in the time of need, strong for self-sacrifice. It has its hours of illusion, its intervals of indifference and drowsiness. But while there are men and women pa.s.sionately devoted to its highest ideals, and faithful in calling it to its duties, it will not wholly slumber nor be lost in death.

If there is to be an American aristocracy, it shall not be composed of the rich, nor of those whose only pride is in their ancient name, but of those who have done most to keep the Spirit of America awake and eager to solve the problems of the common order, of those who have spoken to her most clearly and steadily, by word and deed, reminding her that

"By the Soul Only, the Nations shall be great and free."

VI

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION

VI

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION