Our Benevolent Feudalism

II

With the decline of the petty trades, the growth of the combinations, and the concentration in fewer hands of the machinery of production, the subordination of the wage-earner becomes more certain and more fixed. If ever he were a free agent, – in the sense and to the degree that any one in human society can be free, – the day is passed. Through agencies constantly augmenting and extending, he is “cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d, bound in,” to a narrowing circle of possible efforts. Divorced from the land and from the tools of production, he can live only by accepting such wages and conditions as are offered him; and the terms are always such that the kernel of his product goes to some other man, while the husks and the tares remain his own portion. The patronizing orators of Labor Day and of campaign times sometimes delight to symbolize him as a sturdy Gulliver, though it needs little reflection to see that it is the Gulliver of Brobdingnag, and not that of Lilliput, that more correctly figures his present status. The mass of current tendencies tends to fix him as a dependent – a unit of a lower order in a series of gradations running up to the Big Men. “The corporation,” writes Mr. Richmond,4 “holds of the State, and its officers hold of the corporation, and their retainers, managers, and servants all hold the tenure of their employment from their superiors in office, from the highest to the lowest.” But whether corporation, or partnership, or individual, employs the laborer’s services, his status is practically the same. Trade-unions and other labor societies tend to modify that dependence; and occasionally social legislation, when it runs the fierce gantlet of the courts, exerts a further modification. But it is coming to be recognized that there is a limit, perhaps now nearly attained, beyond which the labor societies can exert no influence; and as for social legislation, as will be shown farther along, it has certainly reached its culmination.

To the natural causes making for the laborer’s subordination have been added in recent years certain conscious and deliberate forces. There is a collective pressure brought to bear upon his wages; there is a collective antagonism maintained against his unions; there is a growing movement in the direction of holding him for the term of his profitable service to the company or corporation by which he is employed, and there is a judicial tendency to pretend still to regard him, despite his changing status, as an economically free agent, able to do what he wills, and to protect himself from all injustice.

III

The assurance of villein fidelity is a prime need of a feudal order. The fidelity need not be personal, as in the old days; instead, the altered ceremony of “homage” may take in whole regiments by a single rite. Recent acts of the great employers make strongly for creating inducements for this fidelity. In spite of instances of conduct like that of the coal magnates of Pennsylvania, there is a growing tendency to unite for life-long service the careers of the more faithful workers with the corporations by whom they are employed. “Model workshops,” and even “model villages,” are unquestionably increasing in numbers. Their character is almost pure paternalism – “enlightened absolutism,” Professor Ely calls it. Rarely have the workers themselves the slightest word to say as to their construction or conduct. What is thought to be good for them, what is thought will win their devotion, is given them. Whether at Pullman, Ill., at Dayton or Cleveland, Ohio, or at Pelzer, S.C., the general spirit manifested is the same. The perfervid chapter on “American Liberality to Workmen,” which Mr. Nicholas Paine Gilman gives us in his volume, “A Dividend to Labor,” contains dozens of instances wherein employers have indulged their benevolence by the gift of flower-pots, wash-basins, and other cultural paraphernalia to their employees. Mr. Victor H. Olmsted, in the Bulletin of the Department of Labor for November, 1900, gives another, though somewhat duplicated, list; and the Rev. Josiah Strong’s monthly journal, Social Service, furnishes a current record of such benevolences. The providences of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company alone make a remarkable showing. This corporation has even a “sociological department,” and it is at present building a $10,000 mission at Bessemer, near Pueblo. The plan of the mission, we read, is to have a refuge, with all modern improvements, for “floaters,” or the unemployed. These wayfarers may make a temporary living by working in an attached woodyard. In all its camps in Colorado this company has established kindergartens, libraries, and, in remote places, grade schools for the children of its employees. Its hospital at the Pueblo works is said to be the best equipped in the West. “It is the announced purpose of this corporation,” we read, “to solve the social problem.”

Model workshops and the distribution of relief are but a small part of the tendency. The giving of old-age pensions, particularly by railroad companies, has recently taken on the dimensions of a national movement. The pension system is not a conspicuously expensive one, for the numbers of workmen who live long enough to avail themselves of its benefits are but scant. The sums paid out for pensions by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Relief Department in eighteen years average $31,185.85 yearly – about the salary of a first vice-president – and the employees themselves have borne a considerable part of the expense. A total of 697 pensions has been granted during this time, but 365 of the beneficiaries have considerately died, and thus reduced the expenses.

The pension system as it obtains among railroads is more or less an outgrowth of the relief association begun by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company on May 1, 1880. Prototypes can possibly be found, but this instance is the first of any consequence. The State of Maryland revoked the charter of the association in 1888. This was an embarrassing interruption, but by no means a fatal one, for the society was immediately reorganized as a department of the company. The plan was to pay accident, sick, and death benefits and old-age pensions, the company contributing $33,500 yearly, and the employees paying monthly dues based on their wages. Section 100 of the regulations for 1889 declares that “the fund for the payment of pensions will be derived wholly from the contributions of the company,” a change from the earlier method in the direction of pure paternalism. The usual age for pensioning is sixty-five years, and the president and directors determine the roll.

The Pennsylvania Railroad Voluntary Relief Department was begun in 1886. In a number of respects it followed the details of the earlier association. As to pensions, however, it put the matter forward by arranging for the gradual growth of a superannuation fund out of the department’s surplus. There were six companies, according to Mr. William Franklin Willoughby’s “Workingmen’s Insurance,” that before 1898 had created regular insurance departments. These were the Baltimore and Ohio, the Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania west of Pittsburg, the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy, the Philadelphia and Reading, and the Plant System. Though in two or three instances the plans have been altered, all these companies founded their pension systems on employees’ contributions.

The Pennsylvania’s fund reached the figure set for it January 1, 1900, and the pension system was proclaimed. On the first day of 1901 the Chicago and Northwestern put in operation a gratuitous pension system, appropriating $200,000 for the purpose. The beneficiaries, all of whom must have been thirty years with the company, were divided into two classes: first, those seventy years old, who were to be retired and pensioned at once; and second, those from sixty-five to sixty-nine years inclusive, who were to be retired and pensioned at the discretion of the pension board. The rate fixed is one per cent per year of service of the average monthly pay for the preceding ten years. An employee whose average wages were $55 per month, and who had been with the company for thirty years, would thus receive $16.50 a month.

The Illinois Central proclaimed its pension system July 1, 1901. On March 1, 1902, the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western took the same course, appropriating $50,000. The terms are somewhat more liberal, in that only twenty-five years’ service is required, and that some employees may be retired between the ages of sixty and sixty-five. The Metropolitan Street Railway Company followed on March 6th, and the Philadelphia and Reading Company on May 21. The details, while varying somewhat, are in the main alike for all of these companies.

Though the experiment is a comparatively frugal one, there is no doubt that it brings compensatory returns; for it serves to keep quiescent and faithful large bodies of men, and perhaps to loosen the bonds of the labor-union. It holds in servicemen above thirty-five or forty-five years of age, for they know the difficulty of securing work elsewhere; and it feeds them with a more or less illusory hope of an ultimate pension. Indeed, the motive of inducing a closer dependence of the laborer upon the employer is more or less frankly confessed. “Under it” (the pension system), reads the Lackawanna’s advertisement to the public, “the road and its employees are to be more closely knit by substantial ties.” The president of the Metropolitan Street Railway Company, however, sounds a more altruistic and benevolent note. “My object in establishing this department,” he is quoted as saying, “is to preserve the future welfare of aged and infirm employees and to recognize efficient and loyal service.”

Despite such benevolent professions there are grave grounds for scepticism regarding the tangible benefit of the system to the employees. If Hope lingers with them, it must be because, as Mr. William Watson sings, “airiest cheer suffices for her food.” For both the ascertained results of an eighteen years’ operation of the system, and a moment’s glance at conditions surrounding the new applications of it, point to a most rigorous limitation of its benefits. In the first place, there is a growing disinclination to employ in any industry men past forty-five years of age. The new regulations of the Philadelphia and Reading reduce even this limit ten years, prohibiting the taking on of employees past thirty-five years of age, except by the approval of the board of directors of the company, although in special cases where unusual qualifications are desired the age limit may be waived. So general is this attitude of employers that the Chicago Federation of Labor was recently moved to the passing of a resolution proposing that “every unemployed man forty-five years of age who cannot show what the charity authorities call ‘visible means of support’ shall be mercifully shot in a lawful and orderly manner.” Moreover, the chances of a railroad employee reaching the age of sixty-five or seventy years are about equal to the chances of winning a large sum at policy. Discharges are frequent and arbitrary, and usually there is no appeal. Aside from this, the casualties are enormous. Of the 191,198 railroad workers classed as trainmen employed throughout the country in 1900, 1396 (or one in every 138) were killed, and 17,571 (or one in every 10.8) injured. The corrected figures for 1901 (given to the public in August of the present year) show about the same percentages. Of the 209,043 trainmen, 1537 (or one in every 136) were killed, and 16,715 (or one in every 12.5) were injured. Thanks to the new safety appliances, casualties caused by coupling and uncoupling cars declined by 84 killed and 2461 injured; but in other classes of accidents the percentages brought the averages to near the previous figures. At best, the chances of maiming or death constantly increase with every one of the twenty-five or thirty years’ service required for the earning of a pension. In the Metropolitan (now Interurban) Street Railway service, where accidents are few but discharges many, the benevolent instincts of the president will prove difficult of realization. This official admitted that discharges had at one time reached an average of 300 a month. An employee informed the author that he knew of but two or three men in the entire service whom the published terms entitled to pensions, while another employee conceded a possible dozen.

IV

The new Feudalism evidently requires a tempering – let us say, a conservative adjustment – of the wage-scale. Those whom the gods dower with plenty may for the present give freely of their store, while those who feel the parsimony of Providence must withhold. The recent increase of 10 per cent in wages given by the steel corporation, and the refusal of the anthracite magnates to increase the average, according to the Pennsylvania Bureau of Mines, of 79 1/2 cents a day which their operatives now receive, are but examples of the contrasts which may be expected during the transition period. The collective feudal policy will avoid both extremes. It will pay something better than that which breeds discontent, something less than that which breeds luxury and pride. It will provide not exactly what the workers desire, but what is good for them.

Already the more or less collective pressure upon the wage-scale shows its effects. Hon. Carroll D. Wright’s 250 wage-quotations for 25 selected occupations (Bulletin of the Department of Labor, September, 1898) reveal for the years 1895-98 a steady decline from the wages paid in the panic years, 1893-94, to about the same wages as were paid in 1882. The figures in the Bulletin for September, 1900, pertain to 148 establishments, representing 26 industries and 192 occupations. They show a slight increase for 1899 and another for 1900. This slight increase, however, is resolved into a marked decrease by the rise in the price of commodities necessary for the average life. From July, 1897, to July, 1901, according to the careful index-figures published in Dun’s Review, the price of commodities advanced 27 per cent; and from July 1 to December 1, of the latter year, an almost steady advance was recorded. Comparing January 1, 1896, with January 1, 1902, the Wall Street Journal finds an increase of 36 per cent.

The wage-quotations used by Col. Wright in his table of 1898 are from the larger cities, and pertain to trades the workmen in which are organized. Here, if anywhere, one would expect evidences of increased wages. Generally, however, the figures for 1897-98 show a parity with the figures for 1881-82. Compositors, for instance, received $2.81 1/2 daily in 1898, $2.81 in 1882. Carpenters received $2.52 3/4 in 1898, $2.55 in 1882. Often the figures for the latter year show a considerable decline; but the averages are maintained through the advances gained by those affluent mechanics, the plumbers; by the stone-cutters, and by the better-paid wage-earners of the railroads, – conductors, engineers, and firemen. With the increase of railroad traffic the hours of labor have been extended; and the increase of wages follows, at least for the engineers and firemen, as a consequence of longer hours. As for the common laborer, he is being left behind in the race. His wages were less in 1898 than in 1882 in six of the ten cites quoted, and in four of them there was no change.

All wage-statistics are questionable, and particularly the more generalized wage-statements which proceed from Washington, during the fall months of election years. A look into the figures themselves is usually fatal to the optimism voiced in the generalizations. From other sources the conflict of figures is puzzling and irritating. It may be shown by selections from these that wages are rising, that they are falling, or that they are stationary. There is always a disparity between the figures of the State bureaus, the National bureau, and the census, and usually it is a disparity that cannot be harmonized.

The national census figures ought to be, as most persons will declare, a sufficiently correct guide. According to the last census, the number of wage-earners in manufacturing pursuits has increased in ten years 25.2 per cent, wages have increased 23.2 per cent. Despite the acknowledged increase in the country’s wealth, wages, if the census is correct, have declined. It is officially explained, however, that these figures are not to be taken too literally. The schedules for 1890 included among wage-earners, “overseers, foremen, and certain superintendents (not general superintendents or managers), while the census of 1900 separates from the wage-earning class such salaried employees as general superintendents, clerks, and salesmen.” “It is possible and probable,” says each of the reports on manufactures, “that this change in the form of the question has resulted in eliminating from the wage-earners, as reported by the present census, many high-salaried employees included in that group for the census of 1890.”

Possibly and probably. But aside from the fact that the elimination of the comparatively few overseers and foremen, with their somewhat higher salaries, could make but slight influence on averages in the tremendous total of 5,321,087 wage-earners, with $2,330,275,021 of wages, there is another point or two to consider. According to Part I (page 14 et seq.) of the Report of Manufacturing Industries for the census of 1890, it appears that wages underwent a considerable inflation in that record. The questions asked in 1880, it would appear, resulted in reporting more wage-earners than there really were. The questions for 1890, it is declared, produced the real number. It is further stated that “the questions for 1890 also tended to obtain a large amount of wages as compared with 1880.” It would seem so, indeed, even to a neophyte in the ingenious art of figuring; for while the wage-increase of the decade 1870-80 could show but 22.2 per cent, that for the following decade revealed the astonishing figure of a fraction less than 100 per cent. When, therefore, one seeks to compare the averages of 1890 with those of 1900 he may not unreasonably infer that the elimination of overseers and foremen in the later census is no more than a set-off to the ample generosity given to the wage-figures in the earlier census. There is no telling for a certainty, but it is not unlikely that the present census figures give a result approximately near the truth.