Part 2 (2/2)
All through the long, hot summer, All through the cold, dark time, With fingers that numb and number Grow, white as the frost's white rime.
n.o.body ever conceiving The throb of that warm, young life, n.o.body ever believing The strain of that terrible strife!
n.o.body kind words pouring In that orphan heart's sad ear; But all of us all ignoring, What lies at our door so near!”
There is nothing wholesome in the question whether it is better to pauperize people a little in the attic, or to pauperize them altogether in the almshouse. We ought not to pauperize them at all. A n.o.ble Christian woman, who has a young men's Bible cla.s.s in the North End, and who by her womanly tact and Christian sympathy has gained the confidence of some of the most hopeless cases in that section, told me that one of these boys said to her, ”When the Back Bay folks know that we are made of flesh and blood, they won't pauperize us any longer.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: CLARK'S MISSION.]
The eighth question returns in some of its aspects to the first: ”The use of the term 'slave' implies a slave-owner and a slave-driver. In this series of the manufacturer, the sweater or middleman, and the working-woman with her children, which is the slave-owner, and which is the slave-driver? Under what authority does the slave-master force this woman to render her labor for all that it is worth?” Answering the last part of the question first, I have already shown that the woman does not get all that her work is worth. The manufacturer, who makes from seventy-eight to a hundred and fifty per cent profit, gets a far larger proportion of the profits than rightly belongs to him.
Under the sweating system, the sweater is, most emphatically, both the slave-master and slave-driver; and no Georgia overseer was ever more cruel than some of these sweater taskmasters in Boston to-day.
Even at the wretched wages they pay, they will not give any of their workers all the work they can do; they dole out the work to them, trying to make them think it is very scarce. If they ask for higher pay, they are met at once with a threat of discharge. Do you ask why they do not hunt for something better? What can a poor, half-broken-down mother, with three little babies, do hunting work? Who will pay the rent, furnish them food, and care for the children while she makes her search? There are thousands of laboring people, both men and women, in all our great cities, who are in the same condition that a majority of the Israelites were when Moses came to them, and told the marvellous story of his talk with Jehovah, and painted before their dim eyes the picture of the Canaan, and recounted to their dull ears the promise of their deliverance from bondage. Pathetic, indeed, is the record, ”They hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit and for cruel bondage.” It is idle to talk, as so many newspapers as well as private individuals do, as though domestic service were the cure-all for these half-starving, under-paid women. A great majority of the women who are slaves to these sweaters, have families of little children depending on them, that are as dear to their hearts as are the children of more fortunate mothers to them. Dr. Barnardo, of London, who has had a most extensive experience among the poor, tells of a poor woman, with a husband lying disabled in the hospital, earning her living by charing and odd jobs, while she herself was receiving out-door hospital relief for physical debility. Driven at last to accept a.s.sistance from the relieving officer, she hastened home, placed the bread and meat on a table, and fell dead of exhaustion. Dr.
Barnardo was sent for, and beside the dead body of the mother he was surprised, as well he might be, to find five well-fed, chubby children.
The poor, slum mother had literally starved herself to death that her children might live! Truly, as Coleridge says, ”A mother is the holiest thing alive;” and G.o.d never intended that the almshouse or the orphan asylum should be the only refuge held open for a mother who is able and willing to work to support her children.
In the ninth question our critic says: ”If her work is worth more than she gets, can she not get it? A little inquiry into the condition of the clothing trade and some examination of the facts might disclose to you that the poor sewing-woman is poor because she sews poorly, and that there is always a scarcity of skilful and intelligent sewing-women, at full wages.” The more thorough my examination into the facts of the case, the more I am convinced that the sweating system is demoralizing the entire clothing trade, as it will every trade it touches. Whether the woman sews poorly or not, she does not, in any cla.s.s she may be placed, receive the wages to which she is ent.i.tled.
[Ill.u.s.tration: NORTH END JUNK SHOP.]
The conclusion of my critic's letter is, I think, as remarkable as anything in it. He says: ”My final question is, how do you propose to help those who are incapable of helping themselves, without pauperizing them yet more than they are pauperized under their present conditions?
What will you do when you have destroyed the house and done away with the sweater?” To this part of the concluding question I simply say, I will be a Christian, and pay honest wages for honest work. But the critic continues: ”Are you justified, as a Christian minister, in creating prejudice and arousing malignant pa.s.sion by the use of the term 'slave?' Can you defend or justify this term under the conditions as they are stated in the printed report of your sermon? I venture to put these questions to you because I think that the dangerous cla.s.s in this community is to be found among persons who, without intelligence, create animosity and, by their method of preaching, tend to r.e.t.a.r.d rather than to promote the progress of the poor and ignorant in this country.” My answer to all that is, that, as a Christian minister, I am a follower of Him, who, standing in the midst of the self-satisfied and wealthy oppressors of His times, exclaimed, ”Woe unto you, Pharisees!
for ye t.i.the mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pa.s.s over judgment and the love of G.o.d.” And who, standing in the audience of all the people, said unto His disciples, ”Beware of the Scribes which devour widows' houses, and for a show make long prayers: the same shall receive greater d.a.m.nation;” who, standing in the presence of the lawyers, cried aloud, ”Woe unto you, also, ye lawyers! for ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers.” I am a follower of Him who came ”not to send peace on the earth, but a sword.” All an infernal system of oppression, like the sweating system, asks, is to be let alone. To uncover its atrocities is like turning over a huge stone in the meadow in springtime, that has been a hiding-place for bugs and worms that nest away in the dark. As soon as the hot, searching sunlight finds them, they will wriggle and squirm in agony until they can crawl under cover again. So I do not wonder that, when the hideous cruelty of the tenement-house sweat-shop is brought to light, the sweater and all his friends wriggle and squirm in an agony of fright and shame. Neither am I alarmed that this critic, as a type of conservatism, regards me as a member of the most dangerous cla.s.s in the community. It was ever thus.
The old antislavery agitators were considered the most dangerous men in the republic, and I remember that a very distinguished minister once bitterly regretted the agitation on the evils of slavery, because he feared it would destroy the prospect for a revival of religion in the city where he lived.
[Ill.u.s.tration: HOME OF THE MATHERS.]
If to be a Christian minister is to stand as a policeman to hold back the righteous indignation of the robbed and degraded laborer, or preach patience and contentment to empty stomachs,--empty that the sweater may grow rich and fat on the toil of orphans and widows,--then I spurn the t.i.tle as beneath the dignity of my manhood; but if, as I take it, to be a Christian minister is to be like my Master, the brother of all men, rich or poor, standing forever as the unflinching enemy of oppression and injustice wherever found, as the friend and advocate of the defenceless and the weak, then I am proud of the t.i.tle, and thank G.o.d for its unspeakable privilege.
IV.
THE PLAGUE OF THE SWEAT-SHOP.
”Can the heart be deformed, and contract incurable ugliness and infirmity under the pressure of disproportionate misfortune, like the spine beneath too low a vault?”
--VICTOR HUGO: _Les Miserables_.
The Klamath Lake Indians in Oregon have a strange and weird fas.h.i.+on of mourning their dead. They dig a hole in the ground, and roof it over with willows, which they cover with dirt, forming a sort of underground cabin. In case of death in the family, the relatives go into this dug-out, which is called a ”sweat-lodge,” and heated rocks are brought in and heaped in the centre of the lodge, and water sprinkled over them, so as to fill the room with steam. In the midst of this steam-heated, poisonous air the family hover around their heap of rocks, and sweat for days at a time, in memory of their departed friends.
When the mourning days are over, they heap up into a cairn beside the sweat-lodge the stones that have been used, as a monument to their dead.
But that, after all, is only a brief torture which is soon over, and is constantly lightened by the hope of relief. The sweat-lodge of our modern civilization is a much more serious matter. The tortured victims who are suffering there, are not mourning for their dead friends, but for the living, and in the dark night of their sorrow there is no promise of a brighter dawn.
The word ”sweater” derives its origin from the Anglo-Saxon word _swat_, and means the separation or extraction of labor or toil from others, for one's own benefit. Any person who employs others to extract from them surplus labor without compensation, is a sweater. A middleman-sweater is a person who acts as a contractor of such labor for another man. The position becomes aggravated when the middleman-sweater, as is usually the case in the modern sweat-shop, employs the labor himself, at his own house, for the purpose of extracting a double quant.i.ty of labor, either by lowering wages or working longer hours.
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