The Dignity of Lowly Work
A lesson, Lord, those eighteen years to me;
Not elsewhere I could so divinely learn That humble tasks are best, however I yearn For higher sphere where I may work more free Blest were those patient toiling years to Thee,
If cross of death cast shadows on thy way,
What son was that so darkened in his light?
O Nazarene, out of their toils there came That which we prize most dear - a brothers name.
As the United States entered the Industrial Revolution, it faced the same labor shortage problem that Great Britain had encountered. What industrialization needed to take root was an adequate work force that could peddle its labor to factory owners in return for wages. However, in the early 19th century, nearly every adult white male still worked as a farmer or in other self-employed positions such as mechanics, artisans, or tradesmen, while women and children performed important tasks to supplement the family income. Only 10% of the population could claim to be employees or working for someone else. There were several reasons for this situation. First, the westward expansion of the nation continued to open up new land and kept many men ‘‘down on the farm’’ as land was cheap and plentiful. Indeed, the reverence for the agrarian worker lingered for a long time in America as the poem below emphasizes:
It was no curse that said to men,
‘‘Labor thy lot shall be;
And with the seat upon thy brow Thy hand shall nourish thee.’’
All who obey this high behest Blessing in it have found;
And health and wealth are gathered best By those who till the ground.27
Second, manufacturing was already being done on a small scale with the domestic or ‘‘putting out’’ system. Like his European counterpart, a merchant distributed materials such as yarn, straw, or leather, for example, to rural homes to be spun, plaited, or sewn, respectively. He returned on a designated date to pick up the finished articles for sale. Third, news of factory life emerging from Great Britain with its images of disease, monotony, squalor, family separation, and crime initially made American laborers more than wary of the experience.
For a few years, factory owners with facilities requiring only a small number of workers managed to survive, usually by recruiting widows and women with children and housing the family close to the mills while the men worked in the fields. Child labor was regulated by state laws in the 19th century. The first national child labor laws did not appear until the early 20th century, and these were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.28 The labor situation in the United States changed dramatically with the arrival new technology that caused the creation of larger factories and required not a dozen but perhaps hundreds of employees. An answer to this challenge appeared with the approach advanced by Francis C. Lowell (see Document 6) who in 1826 introduced one of the most innovative movements in American labor history.
Lowell had traveled abroad and while in Great Britain became fascinated with the textile industry. Because the British government forbade the export of any industrial technology, it is said that Lowell memorized what he observed. Upon his return to Massachusetts, he and his partner, Nathan Appleton, began their own manufacturing firm. Lowell’s experience in Great Britain convinced him that he wanted a new type of labor force that did not resemble its impoverished laborers and their families. Thus, the saga of the Lowell mill girls was born. Lowell recruited young women of sound character to his factory system and provided work, supervised housing, and regular pay for a few years so they could return home with a dowry upon marriage. Lowell’s project has received both praise and criticism from some historians. One school claims that his effort had commendable results while other scholars opine that his approach did not have all the altruism about which he boasted. While it is true that the hours were long and the pay low (there was a strike over wages), many of the girls looked back on the experience with gratitude for the opportunity to work and make new friendships. By the 1830s women made up approximately 80% of the textile mill work force in America. Sometimes factory owners recruited entire families, including the children, or widows who had a number of mouths to feed. Within a few decades, the toil of the factory worker began to be viewed as a positive and uplifting experience and one that generated additional loyalty to the nation as the following poem, ‘‘The Song of the Artizan [sic],’’ demonstrates:
Sing, comrades, sing!
Not alone in the workshop’s clamor,
When wielding the saw and hammer,
In each of us, here, a king.
For as part of our noble nation,
We stand in a glorious station,
And learn to think, at every clink Whatever the fools may say.29
Despite the success of the Lowell enterprise, some proprietors struggled with their workers. In 1846 one cotton mill owner, in an effort to reduce costs, lowered wages by 25%. His pool of workers dwindled, and he attempted to lure them back with a promise to restore wages to their previous level. Unfortunately, his business collapsed because his disgruntled employees had found other acceptable mill jobs.30 Furthermore, in this early period of industrialization, the downside aspects of the new society surfaced. The number of urban poor began to be a visible problem and attracted the interest of reformers. The following poem, ‘‘Pity the Poor,’’ illustrates this concern:
The winter-times are coming fast,
Pipes loud and shrill the autumn blast.
And leafless limbs are quivering;
And the houseless ones are shivering;
With your eye You may spy Naked feet Mid the sleet
Then pity, oh! Pity the poor Who stand in the cold at your door.
Who are the poor?
The poor! The poor are everywhere They who life’s labor never touch,
But at its table take too much,
Feel poverty’s severest clutch,
As I opine,
The work-house were a bliss to such Poor soul less swine.
There are so many in this city,
Few to aid and few to pity.31
The pool of available women to work in the factories dwindled by the 1840s, brought about in part by a decline in the birth rate in rural areas just as the new source of labor arrived: immigrants. The use of immigrant labor began in earnest in the 1820s during the canal age. By the 1840s a steady, growing stream of German, Irish, British, Scandinavian, and Polish workers escaping political upheaval, the collapse of the potato crop, or just seeking employment opportunities for even the most minimum of pay came to the United States. The labor force in one factory in Massachusetts changed from being just 4% immigrant labor in the mid-1820s to more than 50% two decades later. The immigrant tide swelled rapidly: 8400 in 1820, 23,000 in 1830, 84,000 in 1840, and
310,000 in 1850. The initial immigrants were mostly agrarian workers rather than industrial laborers. However, by 1850 just over 50% were farmers while the laborer pool had increased to 38%.32 Indeed, almost one-half of the non-slave labor in the United States was performed by immigrants on the eve of the Civil War. The torrent of immigration continued in the last half of the century and is estimated to have been 14 million from 1860 to 1900. This new immigrant pool of workers stood in stark contrast to America’s first immigrants in the 17th century. Whereas many of America’s first immigrants were literate and skilled, their 19th-century counterparts were for the most part uneducated, unskilled, desperate for work, and easily exploited. These workers who were willing to toil long hours for minimum pay began to replace women and children in American factories and by the mid-19th century nudged industrial development forward in the United States.33
In many respects, the Civil War was a holding pattern in the nation’s drive to industrialization. National productivity increased at the slow pace of only 7% over the period 1860 to 1865, primarily because all surplus labor had been siphoned off for the war effort. But during the five years following the war that percentage increased sixfold. Northern cotton textile production, which had actually declined during the conflict, doubled in the first year after the war and then was 50% higher again by 1869. During the war there was little iron to spare for capital or infrastructure uses because weapons created an insatiable demand for iron. The situation reversed itself immediately, and production increased from 1 million tons in 1865 to 3 million tons in 1873. Railroad construction actually declined during the conflict despite Congressional approval of the transcontinental railroad. In 1865 just over 800 miles of new construction took place. By 1871, however, nearly 50,000 new miles of track had been put into operation.
The war did encourage the growth of several industries. The Union army required the production of more than four million uniforms and three million pairs of socks. This substantial requirement led to the creation of ready-made sizes and the heavy reliance on the sewing machine to produce the garments. The idea of ready-made clothing was nearly foreign in 1860, but by the end of the century 90% of men’s clothing fell into this category. Another industry that the war stimulated was that of milling machinery. Early in the war, this machinery drilled holes in the key components of guns. By the end of the war, this same procedure had been applied to the creation of cutlery, tools, locks, locomotives, etc. But perhaps no industry represented the new age dawning in the United States more than that of steel production. In 1865 the nation produced 16,000 tons of steel. Sixty years later the annual production was 56 million tons. The development of the Bessemer process (see Biographies) influenced Andrew Carnegie to establish a steel-making plant in 1875, even in the midst of the deepest economic downturn in the nation’s history. Carnegie had a keen vision and became the epitome of the entrepreneurial spirit that dominated the last three decades of the 19th century. Carnegie, like other notables of big business such as Jay Gould, John D. Rockefeller, and Cornelius Vanderbilt, demonstrated that talent, ambition, personality, and at times the reliance ruthless tactics resulted in fabulous wealth and influence. Carnegie introduced the age of steel in America, as steel became the basic building material of manufacturing industries. His thrust dropped the price of steel from $50 a ton in 1875 to just $12 in the 1890s. Railway rails converted to steel in 1881, and by 1890 nearly
100,000 miles of new steel track had been laid in the country.34 To state it most simply, between the years 1850 and 1870 the total dollar value of the nation’s production more than quadrupled from $1 billion to $4.2 billion.35
After the Civil War the lot of most industrial workers had improved, although long hours and taxing work remained the norm. The increased speed and efficiency of industrial equipment also encouraged employers to demand more from workers. Efforts by the workers to organize were usually met with stiff resistance. Most early unions met in secret because identification with unionism would often result in the firing of a worker, and his public identification would make finding other employment difficult. Trade union membership in 1869 was estimated at 500,000. That number had declined by 1878, but a union voice remained active. In time two types of unions emerged. The first took an idealistic approach that advocated improved conditions not only for workers but also for society in general. Thus, the creation of the National Labor Union in 1866 and the Knights of Labor in 1869 stressed the eight-hour workday and educational opportunities, women’s rights, and temperance. The second type of union worked for issues specific to members of its organizations and did not seek broad reform. The creation of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1886, a loose federation of a conglomerate of different unions, is representative of this type.
The movement toward unionism was not entirely quiet. In an apparent anomaly the number of strikes increased three-fold at the same time that working conditions seemed to improve. For instance, in 1880 some 762 strikes and lockouts took place, costing an estimated $12 million in lost wages for laborers.36 Some strikes gained widespread notoriety. Two examples are the Haymarket Affair of 1886 and the Homestead Strike of 1892. In the former a nationwide series of strikes by industrial workers had the goal of an eight-hour workday. On May 3, 1886 striking workers at the McCormick Reaper Works factory in Chicago clashed with police resulting in several deaths. The following evening a meeting was held near Haymarket Square under the auspices of several radical labor leaders. Just as the meeting adjourned a bomb was hurled into the group of police and gunfire erupted, killing a number of workers. Authorities rounded up labor activists and trials quickly ensued. After a series of appeals, three labor leaders were executed and several others went to jail. The Homestead Strike took place several years later in Pennsylvania at a Carnegie steel plant with a strong AFL union tradition. Discussions between management and labor representatives broke down over the issue of wage reductions. Plant leadership closed the facility and called in the Pinkerton Detective Agency to break the strike line. A confrontation turned violent and resulted in the death of 16 people. The National Guard arrived and restored order within a short period of time. The workers who returned to their jobs found themselves forced to endure twelve-hour days, wages reduced by 50%, and the loss of extra pay incentives.37
Despite these two extreme examples of labor unrest and the outbreak of other smaller confrontations, membership in union organizations on the eve of World War I only represented 15% of the nonagricultural workers in the United States. Although health and safety conditions did not improve substantially until the early 20th century, workers for the most part did enjoy higher wages and fewer working hours although on occasion they were tempered by extended periods of layoffs created by the unpredictable business cycle. The factories produced a seemingly endless variety of cheap goods. While the gap between rich and poor grew, in reality the lower classes did not get poorer because of their increasing purchasing power. Real wages—the actual purchasing power of earnings—rose in the last three decades of the 19th century, and the work week declined from 66 to 59 hours. The U. S worker became increasingly competitive with his British counterpart. The wages earned by U. S. workers in the late 19th century illustrate this point. In 1892 the average annual wage for workers in the U. S. cotton industry was $457.76, second only to Great Britain’s $556.14. In the woolen industry the difference was $663.13 versus $915.64. And in the glass related industries the United States actually reversed the earlier situation and had wages measured at $859.64 compared to Great Britain’s $501.69.38
World History
