CHAPTER VIII

LABOR FROM THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE TO THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION

Labor Conditions after the Revolution. Slavery in the South. The First Labor Problem-Slave versus Free Labor. Low Wages in the North. Depreciated Money. High Prices. Simple Food and Clothing. No Comforts or Luxuries. No Education and No Vote for the Workingman. No Mechanics' Lien. Imprisonment for Debt. The Right to Strike Denied. Gradual Improvement. Wages Rise. A Shorter Working Day. The Work of Women. The Beginnings of a Labor Movement.

THE

'HE Declaration of Independence did not make all men "free and equal," and the American Revolution did not throw off all the shackles of labor. Politically, America was free to enter upon her glorious career among the nations of the earth; economically, however, the Revolution did not effect a direct, immediate improvement in the condition of the workingmen. The new-born country awoke to the tidings of peace and independence, suffering, impoverished, and debt-ridden, and to the American workman the overthrow of British sovereignty did not, at least at the outset, bring higher wages, more regular wages, or wages in better money.

The history of the United States from the Declaration of Independence, in 1776, to the Emancipation Froclamation, in 1863, is the solution of a labor problem--the problem of slave versus free labor. From the founding of the Republic there had threatened an irrepressible conflict between the labor of freemen and of bondmen. Men saw that one of two things must come to pass: the freemen must break the shackles of the slaves or the ; slaves would forge fetters for the free. The Northern workingmen, and especially the trade unionists of that day, cried aloud for the abolition of chattel slavery, and it was in large part due to the patriotism of American workingmen that slavery disappeared from the North American continent.

At the time of the first census of the United States in 1790, seven

years after the close of the Revolutionary War, there were in the country some 750,000 negroes, or almost one in five of the population. Of these negroes the great majority were slaves on the cotton and tobacco plantations of the South. The Constitution had not prohibited slavery and had even withheld from the Federal Government, before the year 1808, the right to prohibit the importation of slaves. At the time of the adoption of the Constitution it was generally believed that slavery would not continue much longer. So great was the expensiveness, ignorance, unreliability, and wastefulness of slave labor, that it seemed probable that the slaves would be largely liberated, or, at least, permitted to purchase their freedom. But the invention of the cotton-gin in 1793 changed this and made slavery exceedingly profitable. From this time on cotton growing paid well, and slaves were largely sought and became extremely valuable. The history of the United States from 1790 to 1860 is the story of a long industrial and political conflict between the states where slave labor prevailed and those in which labor was free. In other words, the principal question that demanded solution was a labor problem, the problem of slave versus free labor.

The evolution and solution of this first labor problem in the United States and the terrific struggle and awful sacrifice which accomplished it, are too well known to require repetition. For some time the slave states grew with great rapidity, owing to the phenomenal development of the cotton industry, and year by year slavery extended westward from the southern Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River. Thereafter the struggle took the form of a contest for the territory west of the Mississippi, and in this contest the states with free labor won. The European immigrants arriving in this country prior to the Civil War, settled in the states with free labor and held aloof from the states with slave labor. The population, intelligence and wealth of the free states increased more rapidly than those of the slave states and the opposition to chattel slavery grew so strong in the North that the South, despairing of the future, attempted to solve the problem by secession. With the close of the Civil War and the success of the North, the

victory of free over slave labor was complete. It is a sign full of promise for the future that during the last two decades the South has made wonderful progress, and it cannot be doubted that the prosperity of the Southern States will be greater under free labor than was possible under a system of slavery.

While the chief labor problem of the United States during the period from 1790 to 1860 was the question of free versus slave labor, there was fought out during the same period in the North the problem of the proper status of free labor. The close of the Revolution found the workingmen of the North in a condition but little, if at all, superior to that in which he had been at the beginning of the contest. The ordinary unskilled workman still earned his two shillings (50¢) a day; he still worked from sun-up to sun-down; the commodities which he purchased were still expensive. According to Professor McMaster, the price of corn in 1784 was 3s. (75¢) per bushel and that of wheat 8s. 6d. ($2.12) a bushel, while the price of a pound of salt pork was 10d. (20¢), so that an ordinary unskilled laborer would have to work a day and a half for a bushel of corn, four days and a quarter for a bushel of wheat, and about two days for five pounds of salt pork.

The standard of living of the American workman at the close of the Revolution was extremely low. Staple articles of consumption seem to have been expensive and the variety of food, limited. Workingmen rarely tasted fresh meat more than once a week and even this was considered a luxury. The large number of fresh foods and vegetables which can now be obtained at reasonable cost were at that time either unknown or so expensive as to be beyond the reach of the poor, and such fruits and vegetables as the canteloupe, tomato, rhubarb, sweet corn, cauliflower, egg plant, and others were entirely unknown. The dress of the workman was simple and "A pair of yellow buckskin or leathern breeches, a checked shirt, a red flannel jacket, a rusty felt hat cocked up at the corners, shoes of neat's skin set off with huge buckles of brass, and a leathern apron comprised his scanty wardrobe." The wives and daughters of the workingmen were

coarse.

clothed and fed with equal economy, and with as little regard for taste or comfort. Their homes were extremely plain; the floors of the dingy rooms were sprinkled with sand, which took the place of a carpet, and the walls were bare of adornment. There were no pictures or prints of any sort and no glass or china, the dishes of the working classes being made entirely of pewter. There were no stoves, no coal, no matches, and fire for the modest cooking of the poor was lighted from the sparks of a flint.

In many other respects the workingmen of that day were at a great disadvantage as compared with their descendants of the present time. The facilities for securing an education were extremely meagre, and where schools existed the cost was usually prohibitive. There was no regularity in the payment of wages, and frequently a workman was obliged to wait many weeks or months for any, pay at all. Even when he received his wages he was liable to be deceived into accepting depreciated currency or the notes of banks which had failed, money of all forms and kinds being in circulation. Further, he might be deprived of his earnings by the failure or dishonesty of his employer, and his situation was in every way precarious. In many parts of the country truck stores existed, and it was not infrequent for payment of wages to be made in commodities or in an order on a store instead of in legal tender. For such injustices as the workingman suffered there was small redress. In many states he did not possess the suffrage, and as a non-voter he had practically no influence in political and social life. There were no savings banks in which to deposit his savings, if he possessed any, and no beneficial societies or strong trade unions which could insure him against a rainy day.

Bad as was the condition of the average workingman in times of health and steady work, it was incalculably worse with the first buffet of misfortune. The law was extremely scrupulous about the rights of property and in those days even more than at present placed the dollar above the man. The wage earner whom misfortune overtook, whose wife fell ill, or who himself was crippled or disabled temporarily, was subjected to the severest penalties of the law for the crime of having no money. In the newly-freed

United States, as in England, a man could be thrust into prison because he was in debt. No matter how small the sum, there was no immunity from this punishment, if the creditor wished to take advantage of the law. The jails were filled with debtors, many of them workingmen. It was estimated that of the inmates of the prisons of Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania in 1829, 20,000 were there for the non-payment of debts, most of these being small in amount. The average per capita indebtedness of 1,085 debtors in the Philadelphia prison in 1828 was less than $24.00, and one case is on record in which a man was confined in jail thirty-two days for a debt of two cents. The character of these debtors' prisons beggars description. The workingman who, through illness or lack of work, fell into arrears of rent, might be thrown into an indescribably filthy and unsanitary jail, amid a swarm of murderers, thieves, and hardened criminals. The miseries of some of the debtors' prisons can be compared only with the horrors of the slave ships.

While the American Revolution did not result in an immediate improvement of labor conditions, it rendered this improvement ultimately pos-) sible. As long as the Colonies remained under the dominion and tutelage of Great Britain, they were debarred from developing to the full their natural resources. The impetus to industry given by freedom and by the establishment of a stable home government was not immediately effective in materially bettering labor conditions. The administrations of Washington and Adams passed without marked improvement in the condition of the workingman. Even in the days of Jefferson the state of the American wageearner was still far from satisfactory. The great mass of unskilled laborers in the cities were hired by the day, while on the farms and upon public works men were employed by the month and were given free board. The wages of such men did not average much over five or six dollars a month. The diggers on the Pennsylvania canals were wretchedly housed, were fed upon coarse, cheap food, and received six dollars a month in summer and a dollar less per month in winter. About the same wages were paid to the unskilled workers, hod carriers, mortar mixers, diggers and choppers, who,