Women Wage-Earners Part 4

Lack not only of machinery but of any facilities for its manufacture hampered and delayed the progress of the factory movement in the United States; but these difficulties were at last overcome, and in 1813 Waltham, Ma.s.s., saw what is probably the first factory in the world that combined under one roof every process for converting raw cotton into finished cloth.

Manufacturing, even when most hampered by the burden of taxation then imposed and the heavy duties and other restrictions following the long war, began under happier conditions than have ever been known elsewhere.

Unskilled labor had smallest place, and of this cla.s.s New England had for long next to no knowledge. Her workers in the beginning were recruited from the outlying country; and the women and girls who flocked into Lowell, as in the earliest years they had flocked into Pawtucket, were New-Englanders by birth and training. This meant not only quickness and deftness of handling, but the conscientious filling of every hour with the utmost work it could be made to hold.

The life of the Lowell factory-girls has full record in the little magazine called the "Lowell Offering," published by them for many years.

Lucy Larcom has also lately given her "Recollections," one of the most valuable and characteristic pictures of the life from year to year, and it tallies with the summary made by d.i.c.kens in his "American Notes."

Beginning as a child of eleven, whose business was simply to change bobbins, she received a wage of one dollar a week, with one dollar and a quarter for board, the allowance made by most of the corporations while the system of boarding-houses in connection with the factories lasted.

The oldest corporation, known as the Merrimack, introduced this system, and for many years retained oversight of all in its employ. With increasing compet.i.tion and the increase of the foreign element, alteration of methods began, and Lowell lost its characteristic features.

In the beginning the conditions of factory labor for New England at the point where work was initiated, were, as compared with those of England, almost idyllic. The Lowell workers came from New England farms, many of them for the sake of being near libraries and schools, and thus securing larger opportunities for self-culture.

The agricultural cla.s.s then outranked merchants and mechanics. There were no cla.s.s distinctions, and the workers shared in the best social life of Lowell. The factory was an episode rather than a career; and the buildings themselves were kept as clean as the nature of the work admitted, growing plants filling the windows; and the swift-flowing Merrimac turning the wheels.

In 1841 the girls had to their credit in the savings-banks established by the corporations over one hundred thousand dollars; and many of them shared their earnings with brothers who sought a college education, or lifted the mortgages on the home farms. At the International Council of Women, held in Washington in 1888, Mrs. H.H. Robinson, after telling how she entered the Lowell Mills as a "doffer," when a child, gave a brilliant description of the intellectual life and interests of the workers. She remained in the mill till married, and said: "I consider the Lowell Mills as my _alma mater_, and am as proud of them as most girls of the colleges in which they have been educated."

With the growth of the factory system under very different conditions from that of Lowell, there were as different results. Factories had risen, at every available point in New England, all of them thronged by women and girls. But great cities were still unknown; and the first census, that for 1790, showed that hardly four per cent of the people were in them. The tide set toward the factory towns as strongly as it now does toward the cities, though factory labor for the most part was of almost incredible severity. The length of a day's labor varied from twelve to fifteen hours, the mills of New England running generally thirteen hours a day the year round. Several mills are on record, the day in one of which was fourteen hours, and in the other fifteen hours and ten minutes, this latter being the Eagle Mill at Griswold, Conn.; and previous to 1858 there were many others where hours were equally long. Work began at five in the morning, or at some points a little later; and there is a known instance of a mill in Paterson, N.J., in which women and children were required to be at work by half-past four in the morning.

In most of the New England factories, the operatives were taxed for the support of religion. The Lowell Company dismissed them if often absent from church, and their lives without and within the factory were regulated as minutely as if in the cloister. Women and children were urged on by the cowhide; and the first inspection of the factories, notably in Connecticut, revealed a state of things hardly less harrowing than that which had brought about the pa.s.sage of the first Factory Acts in England. At the same time wages were very inadequate. In twelve hours' daily labor the weavers of Baltimore were able to earn from sixty to seventy cents a day, the wage of the women being half or a third this amount; and they declared it not enough to pay the expenses of schooling for the children.

With the increase of production and the growing compet.i.tion of manufacturers, wages were steadily forced downward. Less and less attention was paid to the comfort or well-being of the operatives, and many factories were unfit working-places for human beings. Overseers, whose duty it was to keep up the utmost rate of speed, flogged children brutally; and the treatment was so barbarous that a boy of twelve at Mendon, Ma.s.s., drowned himself to escape factory labor. Windows were often nailed down, and their raising forbidden even in the hottest weather.

The most formidable and trustworthy arraignment of these conditions is to be found in a pamphlet printed in 1834, the full t.i.tle of which is as follows: "An Address to the Working-men of New England, on the State of Education, and on the Condition of the Producing Cla.s.ses in Europe and America."

The author of this pamphlet, a mechanic of some education, stirred to the heart by the abuses he saw, made an exhaustive examination of the New England mills; and he gives many details of the hours of labor, the wages of employees, and the abuses of power which he found everywhere among unscrupulous manufacturers. The princ.i.p.al value of his work lies in this, and in his reprint of original doc.u.ments like the "General Rules of the Lowell Manufacturing Company," and "The Conditions on which Help is hired by the Cocheco Manufacturing Company, Dover, N.H." These conditions were so oppressive that in several cases revolt took place,--usually unsuccessful, as no organization existed among the women, and they were powerless to effect any marked change for the better.

By 1835 chiefly the poorer order of workers filled the mills, but even skilled labor made constant complaint of cruelties and injustices. Not only were there distressing cases of cruelty to children, but outrage of every kind had been found to exist among the women workers, whose wage had been lowered till nearly at the point known to-day as the subsistence point. Parents then, as now, gave false returns of age, and caught greedily at the prospect of any earning by their children; and any specific enactments as to schooling, etc., were still delayed.

These evils were not confined to New England, but existed at every point where manufacturing was carried on. But New England was first to decide on the necessity for some organized remonstrance and resistance, and the first meeting to this end was held in February, 1831. Of this there is no record; but the second, held in September, 1832, is given in the first "Report of the Ma.s.sachusetts Bureau of Labor," issued in 1870.

Boston sent thirty delegates, and the workingmen of New York City addressed a letter to the workers of the United States, showing that the same causes of unrest and agitation existed at all points.

"These evils," they said, "arise from the moral obliquity of the fastidious, and the cupidity of the avaricious. They consist in an illiberal opinion of the worth and rights of the laboring cla.s.ses, an unjust estimation of their moral, physical, and intellectual powers, and unwise misapprehension of the effects which would result from the cultivation of their minds and the improvement of their condition, and an avaricious propensity to avail of their laborious services, at the lowest possible rate of wages for which they can be induced to work."

The evils protested against here did not lessen as time went on. Irish emigration had begun in 1836, and speedily drove out American labor, which was in any case insufficient for the need. A lowered wage was the immediate consequence, the foreigner having no standard of living that included more than bare necessaries. At this distance from the struggle it is easy to see that the new life was educational for the emigrant, and also forced the American worker into new and often broader channels.

But for those involved such perception was impossible, and the new-comers were regarded with something like hatred. English and German emigrants followed, to give place in their turn to the French-Canadian, who at present in great degree monopolizes the mills.

In the beginning little or no effort was made toward healthful conditions of work and life, or more than the merest hint of education.

England, in which far worse conditions had existed, had, early in the century, seen the necessity of remedial legislation. But though the first English Factory Act was pa.s.sed in 1802, it was not till 1844 that women and children were brought under its provisions. The first one, known as the Health and Morals Act, was the result of the discovery made first by voluntary, then by appointed inspectors, that neither health nor morals remained for factory-workers, and that hopeless deterioration would result unless government interfered at once. Hideous epidemic diseases, an extinction of any small natural endowment of moral sense, and a daily life far below that of the brutes, had showed themselves as industries and the attendant compet.i.tion developed; and the story in all its horror may be read in English Bluebooks and the record of government inspectors, and made accessible in the works of Giffen, Toynbee, Engels, and other names identified with reform.

The bearing of these acts upon legislation in our country is so strong that a summary of the chief points must find mention here. In the Act of 1802 the hours of work, which had been from fourteen to sixteen hours a day, were fixed at twelve. All factories were required to be frequently whitewashed, and to have a sufficient number of windows, though these provisions applied only to apprenticed operatives. In 1819 an act forbade the employment of any child under nine years of age, and in 1825 Sat.u.r.day was made a half-holiday. Night work was forbidden in 1831, and for all under eighteen the working day was made twelve hours, with nine for Sat.u.r.day.

By 1847 public opinion demanded still more change for the better, and the day was made ten hours for working women and young persons between thirteen and eighteen years, though they were allowed to work between six A.M. and six P.M., with an allowance of an hour and a half at mealtime. Our own evils, while in many points far less, still were in the same direction. Here and there a like evasion of responsibility and of the provisions of the law was to be found. Even when a corps of inspectors were appointed, they were bribed, hoodwinked, and generally put off the track, while the provisions in regard to the shielding of dangerous machinery, cleanliness, etc., were ignored by every possible method. Were law obeyed and its provisions thoroughly carried out, English factory operatives would be better protected than those of any other country, America not accepted. Sanitary conditions are required to be good. All factories are to be kept clean, as any effluvia arising from closets, etc., renders the owners liable to a fine. The generation of gas, dust, etc., must be neutralized by the inventions for this purpose, so that operatives may not be harmed thereby. Any manufacturer allowing machinery to remain unprotected is to be prosecuted; and there are minute regulations forbidding any child or young person to clean or walk between the fixed and traversing part of any self-acting machine while in motion. At least two hours must be allowed for meals, nor are these to be taken in any room where manufacturing is going on.

For this country such provisions were long delayed, nor have we even now the necessary regulations as to the protection of machinery. In the early days, though many mills were built by men who sought honestly to provide their employees with as many alleviations as the nature of the work admitted, many more were absolutely blind to anything but their own interest. With the disabilities resulting we are to deal at another point. It is sufficient to say here, that the struggle for factory-workers became more and more severe, and has remained so to the present day.

The increase of women workers in this field had been steady. In 1865 women operatives in the factories of Ma.s.sachusetts were 32,239, or nineteen per cent of men operatives. In 1875 they were 83,207, or twenty-six per cent; and the increase since that date has been in like proportion. From the time of their first employment in mills the increase has been on themselves over three hundred per cent. In Ma.s.sachusetts mills women and children are from two thirds to five sixths of all employed, and the proportion in all the manufacturing portions of New England is nearly the same.

In judging the factory system as a whole, it is necessary to glance at the conditions of home work preceding it. These are given in full detail in historical and economical treatises, notably in Lecky's "History of the Eighteenth Century," and in Dr. Kay's "Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Cla.s.ses." A list of the more important authorities on the subject will be found in the general bibliography at the end.

The conditions that prevailed in other countries were less strenuous with us, but the same objections to the domestic system held good at many points. In weaving, the looms occupied large part of the family living s.p.a.ce, and overcrowding and all its evils were inevitable.

Drunkenness was more common, as well as the stealing of materials by dishonest workers. Time was lost in going for material and in returning it, and only half as much was accomplished. Homes were uncared for and often filthy, and the work was done in half-lighted, airless rooms.

These conditions are often reproduced in part even to-day in buildings not adapted to their present use; but as a whole it is certain that the homes of factory-workers are cleaner, that regulation has proved beneficial, that light and air are furnished in better measure, and that overcrowding has become impossible. This applies only to textile manufactures, where machines must have room.

In an admirable chapter on the "Factory System," prepared by Colonel Carroll D. Wright for the Tenth Census of the United States, he takes up in detail the objections urged against it. These are as follows:--

A. The factory system necessitates the employment of women and children to an injurious extent, and consequently its tendency is to destroy family life and ties and domestic habits, and ultimately the home.

B. Factory employments are injurious to health.

C. The factory system is productive of intemperance, unthrift, and poverty.

D. It feeds prost.i.tution, and swells the criminal list.

E. It tends to intellectual degeneracy.

Under "A" there is small defence to be made. The employment of married women is fruitful of evil, and the proportion of these in Ma.s.sachusetts is 23.8 per cent. Wherever this per cent is high, infant mortality is very great, being 23.5 per cent for Ma.s.sachusetts and 19 per cent for Connecticut and New Hampshire. The "Labor Bureau Reports" for New Jersey treat the subject in detail, and are strongly opposed to the employment of mothers of young children outside the home; and the conclusion is the same at other points.

In the matter of general injury to health, under "B," it is stated that many factories are far better ventilated and lighted than the homes of the operatives. Ignorant employees cannot be impressed with the need of care on these points, and the air in their homes is foul and productive of disease. A cotton-mill is often better ventilated than a court-room or a lecture-room. A well-built factory allows not less than six hundred cubic feet of air s.p.a.ce to a person, thirty to sixty cubic feet a minute being required. Ranke, in his "Elements of Physiology," makes it thirty-five a minute.

The homes of operatives have steadily improved in character; and wherever there is an intelligent cla.s.s of operatives, regulations are obeyed, and sanitary conditions are fair and often perfect, while the tendency is toward more and more care in every respect. Operatives'

homes are often better guarded against sanitary evils than those of farmers or the ordinary laborer.

Under "C" it is shown conclusively that the factory has diminished intemperance,--Reybaud's "History of the Factory Movement" giving full statistics on this point, as well as in regard to the growth of banks and benefit societies. The standard of living is higher here, but there are countless evidences of thrift and a general rise in condition.

In the matter of prost.i.tution, under "D," it is shown that but eight per cent of this cla.s.s come from the factory, twenty-nine per cent being from domestic service. In Lynn, Ma.s.s., a town chosen for ill.u.s.tration because of the large percentage of factory operatives, it was found that but seven per cent of those arrested were from this cla.s.s; and this is true of all points where the foreign-born element is not largely in the majority.

Last comes the question of intellectual degeneracy, under "E." On this point it is hardly fair to make comparison of the present worker with the Lowell girl of the first period of factory labor, since she came from an educated cla.s.s, and was distinctively American. Taking workers as a whole, a vast advance shows itself. Regularity and fixed rule have often been the first education in this direction; and the life, even with all its drawbacks, has the right to be regarded as an educational force, and the first step in this direction for a large proportion of the workers in it. There are points where the arraignment of Alfred, in his "History of the Factory Movement," is still true.[16] He speaks of it as a "system which jested with civilization, laughed at humanity, and made a mockery of every law of physical and moral health and of the principles of natural and social order." The "Report of the New York Bureau of Labor for 1885" shows that the charge might still be righteously brought; and Mr. Bishop gives the same testimony in his reports for New Jersey. Evil is still part of the system, and well-nigh inseparable from the methods of production and the conditions of compet.i.tion; but that there are evils is recognized at all points, and thus their continuance will not and cannot be perpetuated.

FOOTNOTE:

[16] Alfred's History of the Factory Movement, vol. i. p. 27.

IV.

RISE AND GROWTH OF TRADES UP TO THE PRESENT TIME.

Defeat and discouragement attend well-nigh every step of the attempt to reach any conclusions regarding women workers in the early years of the century. It is true that 1832 witnessed an attempt at an investigation into their status, but the results were of slight value, actual figures being almost unattainable. The census of 1840 gave more, and that of 1850 showed still larger gain. In that of 1840 the number of women and children in the silk industry was taken; but while the same is true of the later one, there is apparently no record of them in any printed form. The New York State Census for the years 1845 and 1855 gave some s.p.a.ce to the work of women and children, but there is nothing of marked value till another decade had pa.s.sed.

It is to the United States Census for 1860 that we must look for the first really definite statements as to the occupations of women and children. Scattered returns of an earlier date had shown that the percentage of those employed in factories was a steadily increasing one, but in what ratio was considered as unimportant. In fact, statistics of any order had small place, nor was their need seriously felt, save here and there, in the mind of the student.

To comprehend the blankness of this period in all matters relating to social and economic questions, it is necessary to recall the fact that no such needs as those of the mother country pressed upon us. To those who looked below the surface and watched the growing tide of emigration, it was plain that they were, in no distant day, to arise; but for the most part, even for those compelled to severest toil, it was taken for granted that full support was a certainty, and that the men or women who did not earn a comfortable living could blame no one but themselves.

There were other reasons why any enumeration of women workers seemed not only superfluous but undesirable. For the better order, prejudice was still strong enough against all who deviated from custom or tradition to make each new candidate for a living shrink from any publicity that could be avoided. Society frowned upon the woman who dared to strike out in new paths, and thus made them even more th.o.r.n.y than necessity had already done.