Workers - An Experiment in Reality: The East — Chapter 2 - Part III - A Day Laborer at West Point

I shall be on the road again to-morrow morning, and I shall go as penniless as I came, but somewhat richer in experience.

I have been through nearly a week of labor, and have survived it, and have honestly earned my living as a working-man.

In the future I shall have the added confidence which comes of knowing that, if work offers, I shall probably be able to perform it.

But this is not the only cause of my increased light-heartedness.

I am frankly glad to get away from the job on the old Academic building.

This is a selfish feeling, and is not without the cowardice of all selfishness.

I hope for a job of another kind, for a time at least, because I wish to see some hopefuller side of the lot of common labor.

When we draw too near to the hand of Fate, and begin to feel as though there were a wrong in the nature of things, it is best, perhaps, to change our point of view--if we can.

This may account for some of the drifting restlessness among working-men of my class.

The salient features of our condition are plain enough.

We are unskilled laborers.

We are grown men, and are without a trade.

In the labor market we stand ready to sell to the highest bidder our mere muscular strength for so many hours each day.

We are thus in the lowest grade of labor.

We are here, and not higher in the scale, by reason of a variety of causes.

Some of us were thrown upon our own resources in childhood, and have earned our living ever since, and by the line of least resistance we have simply grown to be unskilled workmen.

Opportunities came to some of us of learning useful trades, and we neglected them, and now we have no developed skill to aid us in earning a living, and we must take the work that offers.

Some of us were bred to farm labor, and almost from our earliest recollection we worked in the fields, until, tiring of country life, we determined to try some other; and we have turned to this work as being within our powers, and as affording us a change.

Still others among us, like Wilson, really learned a trade; but the market offers no further demand for the peculiar skill we possess, and so we are forced back upon skilless labor.

And selling our muscular strength in the open market for what it will bring, we sell it under peculiar conditions.

It is all the capital that we have.

We have no reserve means of subsistence, and cannot, therefore, stand off for a "reserve price."

We sell under the necessity of satisfying imminent hunger.

Broadly speaking, we must sell our labor or starve; and as hunger is a matter of a few hours, and we have no other way of meeting this need, we must sell at once for what the market offers for our labor.

And for some of us there is other pressure, unspeakable, immeasurable pressure, in the needs of wife and children.

The contractor buys our labor as he buys other commodities, like brick and iron and stone, which enter into the construction of the new building.

But he buys of us under certain restrictions to us both.

The law of supply and demand does not apply to our labor with the same freedom as to other merchandize.

We are human beings, and some of us have social ties, which bricks and iron have not, and we do not, therefore, move to favorable markets with the same ease and certainty as these.

Besides, we are ignorant men, and behind what we have to sell is no trained intelligence, nor a knowledge of prices and of the best means of reaching the best markets.

And then we are poor men, who must sell when we find a purchaser, for no "reserve price" is possible to us.

The law of supply and demand meets with these restrictions and others.

If it applied with perfect freedom to our commodity, we should infallibly be where is the greatest demand for our labor; and with perfect acquaintance with the markets we should always sell in the dearest.

But the benefits of perfect freedom of supply and demand would not be ours alone.

If we sold in the dearest markets, the employer would as certainly buy in the cheapest.

He has capital in the form of the means of subsistence, and can stand off for a "reserve price," and could force us to sell at last in the pinch of hunger, and in competition with starving men.

As matters are, our wages might rise, in an increased demand for labor, far above their present point; but even under pressure of decreasing demand, and with scores of needy men eager to take our places, our wages, if we had employment at all, would not fall far below their present level.

So much has civilization done for us.

It does not insure to us a chance to earn a living, but it does measurably insure to us that what we earn by day's labor, such as this, will at least be a living.

As unskilled laborers we are unorganized men.

We are members of no union.

We must deal individually with our employer, under all the disadvantages which encumber our position in the market as compared with his.

But his position is not an enviable one.

He is a competitor in a freer market than ours.

He has secured his contract as the lowest bidder, under a keener competition than we know, and in every dime that he must add to wages in order to attract labor, and in every dollar paid to an inefficient workman, and in every unforeseen difficulty or delay in the work, he sees a scaling from the margin of profit, which is already, perhaps, the narrowest that will attract capital into the field of production.

The results of our labor are worth nothing to him as finished product until given sections of the work are completed.

In the meantime he must advance to us our wages out of capital which is a product of past labor, his own and ours as working-men, and of other capital.

And this he must continue to do, even if his margin of profit should wholly disappear, and even if ultimate loss should be the net result of the expenditure of his labor and capital.

In every case, before any other commodity has been paid for, we have insured to us the price for which we have sold our labor.

Our employer is buying labor in a dear market.

One dollar and sixty cents for a day of nine hours and a quarter is a high rate for unskilled workmen.

And the demand continues, for I notice that the boss accepts every man who applies for a job.

The contractor is paying high for labor, and he will certainly get from us as much work as he can at the price.

The gang-boss is secured for this purpose, and thoroughly does he know his business.

He has sole command of us.

He never saw us before, and he will discharge us all when the débris is cleared away and the site made ready for the constructive labors of the skilled workmen.

In the meantime he must get from us, if he can, the utmost of physical labor which we, individually and collectively, are capable of.

If he should drive some of us to exhaustion, and we should not be able to continue at work, he would not be the loser, for the market would soon supply him with others to take our places.

We are ignorant men, and we have a slender hold of economic principles, but so much we clearly see: that we have sold our labor where we could sell it dearest, and our employer has bought it where he could buy it cheapest.

He has paid high for it, but not from philanthropic motives, and he will get at the price, he must get, all the labor that he can;

and, by a strong instinct which possesses us, we shall part with as little as we can.

And there you have, in its rudimentary form, the bear and the bull sides of the market.

You tell us that our interests are identical with those of our employer.

That may be true on some ground unknown to us, but we live from hand to mouth, and we think from day to day, and we have no power to "reach a hand through time, to catch the far-off interest of tears."

From work like ours there seems to us to have been eliminated every element which constitutes the nobility of labor.

We feel no personal pride in its progress, and no community of interest with our employer.

He plainly shares this lack of unity of interest; for he takes for granted that we are dishonest men, and that we will cheat him if we can; and so he watches us through every moment, and forces us to realize that not for an hour would he intrust his interests to our hands.

There is for us in our work none of the joy of responsibility, none of the sense of achievement, only the dull monotony of grinding toil, with the longing for the signal to quit work, and for our wages at the end of the week.

We expect the ready retort that we get what we deserve, that no field of labor was closed to us, and that we are where we are because we are fit, or have fitted ourselves, for nothing better.

Unskilled labor must be done, and, in the natural play of productive activity, it must inevitably be done by those who are excluded from the higher forms of labor by incapacity, or inefficiency, or misfortune, or lack of ambition.

And being what we are, the dregs of the labor market, and having no certainty of permanent employment, and no organization among ourselves, by means of which we can deal with our employer and he with us by some other than an individual hold upon each other, we must expect to work under the watchful eye of a gang-boss, and not only be directed in our labor, but be driven, like the wage-slaves that we are, through our tasks.

All this is to tell us, in effect, that our lives are the hard, barren, hopeless lives that they are because of our own fault, and that our degradation as men is the measure of our bondage as workmen.

This seems to state an ultimate fact, and then, with the habit of much of such thinking, to settle itself peacefully, with an easy conscience, behind the inevitable.

But for us there is no such peace or comfort in the inevitable.

And yet, even in this statement of our case, we are not without hope.

We are men, and are capable of becoming better men.

We may be capable of no other than unskilled labor, but why should we be doomed to perform it under the conditions which now degrade us at our work?

Imagine each of us an ideal workman.

Through all the hours of the working-day we labor conscientiously, with no need of oversight beyond intelligent direction; for each of us feels the keenest interest in the progress of the work, because we are honest men, and, with far-sighted knowledge, we know that by our best labor in any form of useful production we are contributing our best to the general prosperity, as well as our own, and that it is by our energy and personal efficiency that we may open for ourselves a way to promotion.

Here clearly is a solution on ideal grounds.

Is there no remedy that can reach us as we are?

Our ambition must be fired, our sense of responsibility awakened and enlisted in our labor, our intelligences quickened to the vision of our own interests in the best performance of our duty.

Life will not be rendered frictionless thereby.

Work will still be hard, but to it will be restored its dignity, its power to call into play the better part of a man, and so build up his character.

We have already seen how such an end is realized in the initial betterment of character itself.

Let us see whether something might not be done by an initial improvement in the conditions of employment.

Let us suppose now that we are not ideal characters, but ordinary men, whose lot in life is to perform unskilled labor; but let us suppose that we are an organized body of workmen.

The contractor made terms with us as an organized gang for the removal of the old building.

Our organization, from long experience of such work, was able to enter into an eminently fair agreement.

The contract rests upon a basis of time.

For the completed work we are to receive a fixed sum, provided that it is finished by a given date.

If we finish the work, according to the terms of the contract, one week earlier, we are to receive a bonus in addition to the fixed amount; if two weeks earlier, there will be an increase in the bonus.

In the meantime advances are to be made to us, week by week, in the form of days' wages, but so regulated as to protect the contractor against loss if the gang should fail to complete the work.

Every member of the gang is perfectly familiar with the terms of the contract, and knows thoroughly the advantages of an early completion of the job.

We agree among ourselves upon the number of hours which shall constitute a day's work, and from our own number we elect a boss, who will give direction to our labor, and under whose orders we bind ourselves to serve.

It is no part of his duty now to stand guard over us in the office of a slave-driver to prevent our shirking, for we effectually perform that service for ourselves, seeing to it, with utmost regard for our interests, that no man among us fails to do his share in the common task.

The boss is now the best and most intelligent worker among us, and not only does he direct our efforts, but, with his own hands, he sets the example of energetic work for the securing of the best terms that the contract offers for our common good.

In a true sense now we have got a job.

It is ours.

The work is hard, but we have an object in working hard.

Every stroke of labor is not a listless, time-serving economy of effort, but an eager and willing furthering of the work toward its completion and our own advantage.

We are glad in the progress of our job, even if we are glad from no higher motive than our personal profit.

We have a sense of responsibility and the keen interest which comes of that, even if they rise in no better source than our greed for gain.

It is true that the root of the matter lies deeper than this.

We may work under hopefuller conditions and be, intrinsically, no better men.

Our selfishness may take on the refinement of the altruism that merely seeks our own in the welfare of others; our ignorance may become illumined by an enlightened self-interest; our vices may assume respectability; and yet our old hardness of heart remain in full possession of us.

But the truly pertinent question is this: Nearer to which of these ways of living lies the living way?

In which have we the better chance to become better men?

Life in its present course is to most of us a miserable bondage.

We work daily to physical exhaustion;

and, with no power left for mental effort, our minds yield themselves to the play of any chance diversion until they lose the power of serious attention.

In what constitutes for us the work of life there is no pleasure, no education, no evoking of our better natures.

All truly productive labor performed under right conditions is itself a blessing.

It partakes of the highest good that life offers.

It is a bringing of order out of chaos, a victory over forces which can be reduced from evil mastery to useful service.

It thus becomes the type of that labor which is the work of life, the mastery of self in the building of character.

In this sense it was that the monks of the Middle Ages framed their motto, _Laborare est Orare_--labor is prayer.

But robbed of its true conditions and reduced to the dishonor of time-service under the eye of a slave-driving boss, who impels us with insults infinitely more degrading than the lash, labor is no longer prayer, but a blasphemy, which finds expression in the words which rise readiest to our lips.

I have been writing from the position of an unskilled workman, with no apparent allowance for my newness to the life.

The physical stress and strain, for example, how different my experience of these as compared with that of the other men inured to them by long habit!

A year or two of such labor, and how great the physical change!

My hands would be hard, and the friction of this work, so far from wounding them, would render them the more impervious to harm.

My muscles would be like iron, and would lend themselves with far greater ease to the stress of manual labor.

Ten years would find me a seasoned workman.

But under conditions of labor such as these, what changes other than physical would there be?

My body might be hardened in fibre to the point of high efficiency in manual labor, but the hardening of mind and character--is it likely that this would be of the nature of the strength of more abundant life, or of the hardness of petrifaction?

I have received the strangest kindness from the men, the most tactful treatment of me as a novice.

They laughed at my strenuous efforts to do what was so much easier to them, and they laughed when the boss singled me out for abuse, but never ill-naturedly, I thought.

And those who made up to me, and with whom I picked up acquaintance, showed the kindest consideration.

They never pressed me with embarrassing questions, but fell gracefully into the easy assumption that I was a factory hand or a "tradesman" out of a job.

It was natural to adopt the general strain and speak of plans which involved my going West.

In spite of their roughness and hardness of manner and speech, one never felt the smallest fear of these men, and you had a growing feeling that their better natures were never far to seek.

And yet in reality here they were, a cursing, blaspheming crew; men upon whose lives hopelessness seems to have settled; whose idea of work is a slavish drudgery done from the instinct of self-preservation and to be shirked whenever possible; whose idea of pleasure is abandonment to their unmastered passions.

I had a purpose in quitting work in the middle of Saturday afternoon.

I went to my lodgings and asked Mrs. Flaherty for an early supper of anything that she could give me without trouble.

Then I brushed my clothes and washed myself, and made myself as presentable as my slender pack permitted.

My beard was now of nearly two weeks' growth, and my face was well burned by the sun, and my clothes, in spite of the protection of overalls, were much labor-stained.

I felt some security in my disguise, and after an early supper I walked over to see the sunset parade.

On the road I met the men returning from the works, and had to run a gauntlet of questions as to whether I had left the job for good, and what I meant to do.

There was bustle in the camp; a running to and fro of cadets, who appeared to be subject to many calls; a nervous appearing and vanishing at the tent-doors of figures which were in process of achieving parade-dress; a hasty personal inspection of arms and uniform; and then suddenly, out of apparently inextricable confusion, there emerged, without a trace of disorder, the two companies, in double lines of perfect symmetry, before the inspecting officer.

Then followed the sunset parade.

Seated on the benches under the trees, and grouped on the turf behind, was an eager crowd watching intently, in perfect stillness, every evolution of the cadets.

The fascination was in the sense it gave you of abounding life, of youth and strength and vigor, brought to perfect unity in willing subordination to authority.

Here was the type of highest organization, the voluntary submission of those who are "fit to follow to those who are fittest to lead."

So much has civilization achieved for the purpose of self-defence.

The mission of many of these young officers will be to take such men as those with whom I have been working, and teach them the manly lesson of obedience, and awaken in them the feelings of courage and loyalty and _esprit de corps_.

Civilization is yet a long way from such organization for industrial ends, if ever such corporate action will be possible or good; but certainly it will not belong before civilization gives birth in increasing numbers to "captains of industry," who will feel with their men other ties than the "_nexus_ of cash payment," and who will attack the problems of production with other aims than selfish accumulation.

Under the direction of such leaders, workingmen will be led to far greater conquests over the resources of nature than any in the past, and, sharing consciously in these victories as the fruits of their own labors, there will open to them a new life of liberty and hope in willing allegiance to true control.

The intense satisfaction I felt in the rest of yesterday (Sunday) was heightened by a feeling of hopefulness as I thought of the future of workingmen in a country like ours.

Here are almost boundless natural resources, capable of supporting many times our present population.

Under the stimulus of private acclamation, what marvellous genius and skill and enterprise have directed labor to the development of our national wealth!

When, with the growth of better knowledge, there is added to this stimulus among the great leaders of industry a sincere desire for the common good and a purpose to make the conditions of employment the means of achieving this good, how far greater must be the industrial results, and how far better the lives of the workers!

I felt aglow with this idea as I walked, in the afternoon, down the road below Highland Falls.

It was a warm mid-summer day, and in keeping with its restful quiet the air moved gently among the leaves in the tree-tops.

I was disturbed by the sound of music from the deck of an excursion steamer, and, seized with sudden desire for a glimpse of the river, I vaulted a low stone wall, and quickly made my way over the mossy carpeting of a wood which covers the bluff above the water.

I did not see, at first, the abrupt ending of the wood and the sweep of an open lawn, and when I caught sight of that I was only a few yards from a rustic bench.

There two persons sat, with their backs toward me, but I recognized the girl at once as an acquaintance, and I knew that I was a trespassing vagrant.

The man I knew well, for he was a college classmate and a charming fellow, and I longed to ask his views on the question of the improvement of the lot of unskilled laborers by means of organization.

But I grew painfully conscious of my work-stained clothes, and my faded flannel shirt, and the holes in my old felt hat, and of how all these marked me as belonging now to another world.

And so I quietly stole away and returned to "mine own people."

CHAPTER III