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183 3 ---------
LABOR
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193 3
THROUGH THE CENTURY
A n illustrated account as presented by the
United States Department of Labor at the
Century of Progress Exposition
Chicago 1933
http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/
Federal Reserve
of BSt.
Louisof L abor S tatistics, U nited S tates D epartment
BulletinBank
of the
urbau
of
L abor
No. 597
LABOR
T H R O U G H T HE C E N T U R Y
1833
—
1933
A n illustrated account as presented
by the United States Department of Labor
at the Century of Progress Exposition
Chicago 1933
Prepared by the
B U R E A U OF L A B O R S T A T I S T I C S
OF T H E
U N I T E D S T A T E S D E P A R T M E N T OF L A B O R
UNITED STATES
GOV ERNM EN T PRINTING OFFICE
W A S H I N G T O N : 1933
PREFA CE
The series of forty pictures which constitutes part of
the exhibit of the United States Department of Labor at
the Century of Progress Exposition at Chicago attempts
to portray pictorially the history of American labor, its
progress and its problems, since 1830.
These pictures are reproduced in miniature in this
booklet, which has been prepared by the Bureau of
Labor Statistics of the Department of Labor, in com'
memoration of the exposition and as a partial record of
labor’s part in the progress of the century that the exposi'
tion celebrates. In the exhibit legends attached to the
pictures form a running outline of the story. These
legends appear in the booklet as headings to the text
which is used to amplify the pictured history.
In the text suggestion is also made of the contribution
of governmental agencies, Federal and State, to the web
fare of American workers during the past hundred years.
M ost of the pictures of the earlier periods are repro'
ductions or adaptations of authentic contemporary prints
before the days of photography. This is especially true
of picture on page 3, which is a Currier fe? Ives lithograph,
and of the entire series from page 7 to page 15, inclu'
sive. Some of these are Currier fe? Ives lithographs,
some are drawings in early issues of Harper's Weekly,-and
some are undated prints of a still earlier period.
The New England Blacksmith Was Typical
o f the Early Free Mechanic
the industrial
-L-J era, which began about
1840, labor in America was
divided into three classes—
slave, indentured, and free.
Free labor was almost
wholly skilled labor, and
skilled craftsmen held an
important place in the development of the new country.
The blacksmith, for example, was wagonwright, manufac"
turer of farm and household implements, and nail maker,
as well as horseshoer.
Skilled labor was scarce in the early days and remained
so until increasing immigration brought craftsmen from
Europe in greater and greater numbers. But while work
was plentiful and unemployment was perhaps not a seri"
ous problem, hours were long, work was hard, and stand"
ards of living were low. The artisan’s food was simple,
often coarse, confined to the bare necessities of life, and
his clothes, M cM aster, the historian, remarks, “ would
now be thought abominable.” His home was a small,
rather dreary, crowded place, heated by open fires and fur"
nished with handmade furniture crudely constructed.
Working tools were primitive compared to those of to"
day. and the workday was from “ sunrise to sunset,” with
brief periods of rest for breakfast and dinner. When the
carpenters of Boston struck in 1832 for a lOhour day, the
master builders offered a rate of $2 a day to break the strike.
That rate was 50 cents a day higher than carpenters were
receiving at the time. The prevailing wages for skilled
labor in 1833 ranged from $1.12,/2 to $1.75 a day, and a
workday might be 13 or even 14 hours.
/Q E F O R E
til
But Thousands o f White “ Indentured Servants ” Served
Terms o f Bondage fo r Passage Money
first laborers to mi'
grate to America in
large numbers were “ indent
tured servants” from Great
Britain and “ redemption'
ers” from Europe. An in'
dentured servant, before
leaving his home country,
signed a contract to work for the master who transported
him, but a redemptioner, or “ free'willer” , came on his own
responsibility, expecting to find upon his arrival a master
to whom to sell his services in order to obtain passage
money.
A servant became the property of his master as soon as
the sale was effected. The indenture specified the dura'
tion of bondage, the kind of service to be given, the obliga'
tions of both master and servant, and the amount of money
or goods to be paid the servant at the expiration of his term,
which, for adults, was usually either four or five years.
A servant had practically the same status as a slave. He
could be resold without his consent, he could not marry
without his master’s consent, and his living and working
conditions were wholly beyond his control. Running
away was a crime, punished by extending the time in
bondage.
Some early industries in Pennsylvania and Maryland
were manned almost entirely by these workers, in some
instances skilled craftsmen, to whom even personal liberty
was denied until they had worked out their terms as
bondsmen.
The indenture system died out as the population of the
country grew and labor became more plentiful. A few
contracts were drawn up as late as 1833, however, and
many were still in force in that year.
In the Southern States the Heavy Work Was
Done by Negro Slaves
year before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock a Dutch ship
unloaded at Jamestown,
Virginia, a cargo of African
Negroes who were sold to
the planters as slaves. Thus
at the very beginning of
colonisation was introduced the system of slave labor
which obtained in America for nearly 250 years, and by
which most of the heavy, menial labor of a new country
was performed.
Slavery was at first general throughout the New World
settlements, but it proved impracticable in the North and
was gradually eliminated as an economic system. Within
a few years after the establishment of the Republic all the
States north of Maryland had abolished slavery.
On the great tobacco and cotton plantations of the
South, however, slave labor was regarded as the only possible method of meeting their labor needs. While slaves
were used chiefly as agricultural laborers, a great many
were also employed, even outside the plantation country,
in domestic pursuits and as skilled workers.
When the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and the
defeat and collapse of the Confederacy in 1865 ended
slavery, four million Negroes were thrown upon the labor
market for their livelihood. The two generations of freed
men following emancipation remained agricultural laborers and domestic servants almost entirely, but as greater
educational opportunities opened up for them they ex
tended their fields of employment. During and since the
World War, especially, Negroes have become industrial
workers and skilled craftsmen, and are rapidly entering
the professions.
The Sea and the Building o f Clipper Ships Offered
Work to Many
A
C E N T U R Y ago mer\ chant shipping and
the building of the beau
tiful “ Yankee clippers”
were among the foremost
Am erican industries.
American sailing ships
were the fastest up to that
time, and New England shipyards were kept busy turn
ing them out for use at home and for sale abroad.
Merchant shippers sent their fleets out from Boston,
New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston to the ports of
the world, and especially to the Orient. Officers and
crews in the employ of the great shippers received what
were in those days high salaries—often $50 a month for
the captain, $30 for the mate, and $20 for able seamen and
cooks, in addition to maintenance.
The story of the maritime industries changed abruptly,
however, with the development of the steamship in the
middle of the nineteenth century. American labor was
not attracted to the new method of transportation as it
had been to the old. Consequently, a different type of
worker and a different labor policy were introduced, and
standards tended constantly to degenerate. During the
latter half of the century hours of labor on shipboard
increased to appalling length, and living conditions be
came intolerable. Seamen deserted in great numbers, and
their recapture was attended with violence and severe
punishment.
These conditions continued until the Seaman’s A ct,
passed in 1915, brought about material improvements. It
requires that decent and sanitary living quarters shall be
provided for crews, regulates their hours, and protects
their earnings against exploitations formerly practiced.
Whaling Was a Very Important Industry, Employing
Some Seventeen Thousand Persons
A M A JO R industry a
• S jl century ago, whaling
is practically extinct today.
It is difficult now to real'
ize that whales were once
of the greatest importance,
industrially and commerdally. Whale oil was used
for lubricating and for general illuminating; sperm oil pro
vided the finest grade of illuminant for lighthouse beacons;
high-grade candles were made from the spermaceti.
Whalebone was extensively used in the manufacture of
many articles, and ambergris provided an essential element
in perfumes.
To meet the demand for these products ten thousand
whales were needed annually, and to keep the industry
supplied with ships, men, and equipment, related enter
prises were developed on a large scale.
Whaling was an occupation of youth. The rank and file
of whalemen were boys still in their teens, and only offi
cers were men of middle age. But the lure of adventure
and daring was probably counteracted by the living and
working conditions on the whalers, and one voyage was
apt to prove quite enough.
Danger, privation, and grueling monotony were inher
ent in the work. Voyages were very long, often as many
as four years. Earnings were ludicrously low, averaging
as little as 10 cents a day for some voyages. While wages
were in addition to maintenance, they were subject to
many charges and deductions, such as purchases from the
ship’s stores and indebtedness for the outfits sold at extor
tionate prices. It was not unusual for a whaleman to find
himself actually in debt to his employer after working on
a vessel throughout a long voyage.
A Century Ago M ost Workers H ad Only Hand Tools—
Iron Was Wrought in Simple Forges
^PR A C T IC A LLY all the
JL development in the iron
i n d u s t r y has o c c u r r e d
within the past century.
In 1830 many of the old
colonial forges and furnaces
were still in use, and new
ones were built upon the
old designs and operated with the same primitive methods.
The productive capacity of blast furnaces was as great in
1800 as in 1850.
Discoveries and inventions between 1830 and 1850,
including the hot blast and substitution of anthracite and
coke for charcoal, and increased demand resulting from
railroad building and power machinery, stimulated the
expansion of the industry.
Shortly after the Civil War the “ United Sons of V ul
can,11 the organised ironworkers, undertook to stabilise
wages and end the almost constant strife between em
ployers and workers by introducing a sliding-scale system
in fixing wages. An agreement was reached which fixed
a basic minimum and provided for additional earnings
conditioned upon the selling price of iron.
Three outstanding characteristics have colored the his
tory of iron and steel— the long workday and workweek,
the frequency and bitterness of industrial disputes, and
the physical hazards of the work.
Recent years have seen pronounced changes in all three.
Working conditions and industrial relations in the indus
try, probably more than in any other American enterprise,
have been subjected to study and severe criticism by
outside forces, and radical reforms have resulted in
consequence.
A Shoemaker Without Machinery Could Make Only
Two P airs o f Shoes Per Day
H O EM A K IN G , a hundred
S
years ago, was strictly
a handicraft, and machine
production had not been
heard of. Since ev en the
m o st sk i l l f u l shoemaker
could not tu rn o u t more
tha n two p a i r s o f sh o e s
in a day, a good many of these workers were required
to keep the country in shoes, and little one-man shops
were found everywhere. These shoemakers did only
“ bespoke work ” to order for individual customers.
Even before the introduction of machinery, however,
the one-man custom shop was giving way to big shops
manufacturing for the market instead of on individual
order. In these shops a worker sometimes made the
whole shoe, but more often, in order to speed production,
the work was divided into separate operations. Stitch
ing the uppers, which was known as “ binding” , was
done by women in their own homes. This work was so
heavy and the pay so low that the exploitation of women
who earned their living “ binding shoes” was vigorously
protested in the literature of the period. Machinery
introduced in the 1850’s ended that practice.
A t Lynn, Massachusetts, the center of the industry,
workers were paid in orders on the store operated by
the employing shoe manufacturers. A writer comments
thus on that system as it prevailed in 1830:
Fortunately, necessities of life were cheap. So a shoemaker who
got an order on the store in payment for his wages was usually able
to exchange that order for enough goods to keep himself and his
family alive for the week.
179228 0 —33---- 2
In the Print Shop, Type Was Set by Hand and the
Presses Were Primitive
g reeley, a
hundred years ago,
s a w in c o n d i t i o n s and
changes affecting journey'
man printers “ the passing
of the ‘’golden age’ of print'
ing,” While in 1833 power
machinery had not yet been introduced, craft standards
were breaking down. Printers up to that time had always
been highly skilled craftsmen, for the most part educated
far beyond other workers. Their status was in fact
comparable to the professional man of today; often they
were editors and writers as well as printers. They had
had organisations since 1802 which had been effective in
maintaining wages and trade standards of skill and long
apprentice training. But many conditions, among which
were the stereotyping process, an improved type of print'
ing press, and disruption of the unions through unsuccess'
ful strikes, were operating to destroy these high standards.
Apprentices were allowed to become journeymen long
before their terms had expired, “ roller boys” were put to
running the new presses, and women were employed as
compositors at very low rates. Wages were materially
lower in 1831 than they had been in 1815.
A revival of unionism began about 1845, which resulted
in the organi^tion in 1851 of what is now the Inter'
national Typographical Union, and the apprentice system
was restored.
Machinery has produced radical changes in the char'
acter of the printer’s work and has increased output
enormously in the past fifty years. We of today take for
granted a daily paper which, in si?e and price, would
have been impossible a century ago with the facilities
available then.
H
orace
Machinery, However, Was Developing— The Whitney
Cotton Gin Was Already in Use
cotton gin, invented by Eli Whitney
in 1793, has been credited
with causing more epochmaking changes than any
other American invention.
To make cotton of value
commercially the seed must
be removed from the fiber. Before the gin was intro
duced this work was done by hand or with rollers. Five
pounds of lint cotton was considered a good day’s out
put for a slave, using rollers to separate fibers from seed.
With the Whitney machine 300 pounds could be ginned
by slave labor in a day.
The effect of this simplification was immediate and tre
mendous. It made possible the manufacture of cotton
textiles on a large scale and led directly to the establish
ment of the first factories. The textile industry, on its
part, created a great demand for lint cotton, which was
met by expanding cotton culture enormously.
For years before the cotton gin was adopted the feeling
had been growing throughout the South that slave labor
cost more than it was worth, and slavery was on the de
cline. The gin and the consequent demand for lint cotton
changed that situation. Slavery was not only retained
but was greatly increased. Out of that stimulation of a
waning economic system grew the “ slavery problem,”
which was a political controversy for generations and
which only war solved.
Now cotton ginning is done by automatic machinery,
which practically does away with all human labor and
produces ten times as much lint in a day as did the revolu
tionary Whitney gin.
Cotton M ills Were Spreading Rapidly, Creating a
Demand fo r Woman and Child Labor
T?
[HE American factory
system began in the
early 1800‘s, with the establishment of textile mills
in which all the processes
of manufacture, from raw
material to finished prod
uct, w ere c a r r i e d on.
These factories used machinery run by water power.
Spinning and weaving had always been the work of
women and children in the homes, and when this work
went from the homes into the mills the women and
children went with it. Some mills employed whole
families; others hired women and children almost entirely,
leaving the men free to run the farms. The attitude of the
day toward industrial employment of women and chil
dren was expressed by Alexander Hamilton:
The husbandman himself experiences a new source of profit and
support from the increased industry of his wife and daughters. . . .
It is worthy of particular remark that in general women and chil
dren are rendered more useful, and the latter more early useful,
by manufacturing establishments than they will otherwise be.
Working hours were from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m., with halfhour recesses for breakfast and dinner. In 1842 M assa
chusetts passed a law limiting the hours of work for
children under twelve years of age to 10 a day. Weekly
earnings averaged about $1 for children and $2.50 to $3
for women. Often they were paid in goods instead of
money.
The introduction of automatic machinery, child-labor
laws enforced by State labor agencies, and compulsory
school attendance have combined to eliminate largely the
child-labor evil, with its attendant physical degeneration
and illiteracy.
The McCormick Reaper Was Demonstrated as
Early as 1831
N 1830 only twenty-six
tow ns in the United
m States had a population of
8,000 or more, and city
dwellers constituted only
6.7 percent of the total pop
ulation. Agriculture was
the principal occupation
of the American people, and over 90 percent of them
lived on farms and in small rural villages.
Farming methods were simple— almost primitive. Prac
tically all the work on the farm except plowing and haul
ing was done by hand. Grain was sown by hand, reaped
with a cradle, and threshed with a flail. Mowing was
done with a scythe, and the hoe was used to plant and cul
tivate corn.
The year 1831 saw the introduction of two agricultural
machines—a reaper and a mower. They were forerunners
of a development in mechanisation which within the next
hundred years was to revolutionise farming and almost
reverse the proportion of agricultural and nonagricultural
workers in the total population.
Young Cyrus McCormick demonstrated the first M c
Cormick reaper one July day in 1831 before a crowd of
curious, skeptical Virginia farmers. By 1840 successful
inventions had practically eliminated hand methods in
threshing.
Because farming was a hand industry, the demand for
farm laborers was great. This demand was met in large
part by slavery and the indenture system, but free workers
were also employed as farm hands. They were paid almost
as much as tradesmen in some cases. The usual rate for
day work on the farms in the years 1830 to 1840 was $1
for a “ sunrise to sunset” day.
[
The Canal Boat Was the Latest Word
in Transportation
and early
JL settlers from the be'
ginning of American his'
tory had moved inland from
the seaboard. Their trans'
portation facilities at first
w ere o f the c r u d e s t —
wagon trails through the
wilderness and dirt roads, poor at best and impassable at
times. Then came turnpikes and plank roads. By 1838
the “ National Pike” , a macadam road out of Cumberland,
Maryland, had been completed as far west as Vandalia,
Illinois, and over this highway much of the westward
migration flowed.
Steamboats made possible navigation of the Great Lakes,
the many eastern rivers, the Ohio, and the Mississippi.
Sailors and boatmen employed on inland waterways num'
bered 32,000 in 1846, and the volume of business was
great and constantly growing.
But communication between the Atlantic States and the
interior for the exchange of the agricultural products of
the new settlements and the manufactured articles of the
East was still very difficult. This problem was met by
building canals to connect the waterways. The most
important of these was the Erie Canal, completed in 1825,
which connected Lake Erie and the Hudson River.
Freight rates between Buffalo and New York fell from
$100 to $5 a ton and time in transit from 20 to 6 days,
while transportation costs between Ohio and the seaboard
fell about 90 percent.
The success of the Erie Canal led to the construction of
many more canals. Inland waterways connected by canals
became the most important medium of transportation of
both passengers and freight until the rise of the railroads.
£ T )IO N E E R S
The Steam R ailroad Was Beginning, Although in 1830
It Lost a Famous Race at Relay, M aryland
skepticism
J l toward the innovation
of the railroad in 1830 was
very much what it was
about seventy years later,
when the derisive cry of
“ get a horse11 greeted the
first a u t o m o b il e s . One
point of difference was that in 1830 skepticism expressed
itself in a literal challenge to the new to prove its superb
ority over the old. And in the race between locomotive
and horse which resulted from that challenge the horse
actually won. That was, of course, due to an accident to
the mechanism and not to an inherently wrong principle,
as America soon learned. It was not long before the rail'
road had demonstrated its superiority over all other exist'
ing methods of transportation.
For fifty years the building, equipping, and operating of
railroads constituted a major industry, the ramifying
activities of which created many new occupations and
varied opportunities for the workers.
Thirty-nine years after the train drawn by the little
locomotive, Tom Thumb, was beaten by a horse'drawn
car, another public gathering near Ogden, Utah, watched
in a very different spirit the driving of a silver spike which
connected the eastern and western railroads into a railway
system reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Thus,
within the span of one generation, invention, capital, and
American labor had conquered the transportation prob'
lems of a continent.
Improvement, maintenance, and operation of our vast
network of railways give employment, in normal times, to
nearly two million workers who are for the most part well
organized.
^ T )O P U L A R
With New Means o f Transportation the Great Move
ment to the Central West Was Accelerated
A t TH E time of the pur'
• S J l chase of the Louisiana
territory from France in
1803, w hi ch more than
d o u b l e d the ar ea o f the
United States, Thomas Jeff
ferson predicted that it
would take a thousand
years to settle and populate the new region. But his vis'
ion did not encompass the rise of industrialism in the East,
the economic effects of the War of 1812, the growth of
seaboard cities through immigration, or the development
of canal and railroad transportation. All these factors and
others, combined with the desire for land and the pioneer'
ing spirit inherent in the American people, produced a
westward movement which in half a century had exceeded
what Jefferson had expected of ten centuries.
The western migration of families and groups of indi'
viduals, by covered wagons, canal boats and flatboats, and
by railroads, constitutes probably the most picturesque
phase of American history.
Land could be purchased from the Government at prices
ranging from $1 to $2 an acre, and even the more daring
pioneers who “ squatted” outside the areas opened to set'
tlement by purchase were later protected in their rights
to the preempted land if they had established a homestead
and had cleared the land for cultivation.
Within twenty years after the Louisiana Purchase the
Mississippi and Ohio Valleys were settled and made into
States; in the next two decades the Southwest was de'
veloped; by 1860 these regions were “ old.” Towns and
cities, with schools, industries, and commerce, had taken
the place of the Indians and fur traders of Jefferson’s day.
Lured by Gold and Land, M any Moved On to the
Pacific Coast
was discovered
in California in 1849,
and one historian says that
“ almost overnight we be'
came a nation of gamblers.”
Rather, a considerable part
of the Nation became ad'
venturers and fortune hunt'
ers, caught up in the fever of the “ gold rush.”
The earlier westward migration was a movement of
individuals, families, and small groups. During the gold
rush whole towns were sometimes depopulated by the
lure of quick, easy wealth. But tradesmen and laborers
soon learned that their prosperity was to be found in
building towns and providing for the constant flow of
people, rather than in the very uncertain fortunes of the
prospectors and the gold miners.
Settlers were at the same time moving out to the coast
over the Oregon trail. After the Civil War the home'
stead laws opened to free settlement the great public
domains lying between the Missouri River and the far
West. This legislation granted 160 acres of arable land
to any American citizen on the sole condition that he
establish a home. Thus anyone desiring land to farm had
the opportunity to obtain it, and the property became his
own after five years’ continuous residence upon it. This
movement resulted in extensive settlement of the North'
west.
While the homesteading policy was adopted largely in
the interest of discharged soldiers of the Union Army, it
served also to afford an outlet for surplus labor in the
East. Accordingly, wages stayed up after the war, in spite
of the steadily increasing immigration from Europe.
G
179228 0 —33-----3
C 151
O LD
While the E ast Continued to Receive Increasing Numbers
o f Immigrants from Europe
I
MMIGRATION as a mass
movement, characterised
by horrible overcrowding
on shipboard and the herding of aliens through our
ports of entry in vast num
bers, was unheard of a cen
tury ago. In the ten years
from 1830 to 1840 the entire immigration from Europe
was a little more than half a million. Between 1880
and 1904 that number was entering annually, and in
the decade following 1904 aliens came in at the rate of
a million a year.
While increased immigration resulted in part from polit
ical, social, and economic conditions in the Old World,
the stronger stimulus lay in rapid economic developments
in the New World and in the “ land of promise” tradition.
Because of the rise of the factory system, the loss of
many sturdy young workers who migrated to the West,
and the opening of markets through improved transporta
tion facilities, American industries faced a shortage of
labor, particularly in unskilled and semiskilled occupations
calling for strength and endurance.
To meet that demand, manufacturers, railroads, and
steamship companies in 1865 began the system of recruit
ing workers in Europe under contract which became a
medium for breaking strikes, demoralised wage scales,
and threatened to overthrow American working and liv
ing conditions. A t the insistence of the Knights of
Labor alien contract labor was later prohibited by law.
The unregulated flow of illiterate, low-wage immigrants
has been protested by organised labor ever- since. Immi
gration fell off during the World War, and afterward was
so regulated as virtually to have ceased.
Meanwhile Labor’s Long Struggle fo r Better Working
Conditions H ad Begun
F
ROM th e d o g g e d l y
persistent struggle of
organized labor to bre ak
d o w n th e “ sun-to-sun”
workday to serious consid
eration of a statutory 30hour workweek runs the
century’s record on hours
of labor.
The 13- and 14'hour day was practiced and accepted as
a matter of course in the early days because agriculture,
predominantly the basic industry, set work standards.
The first organized effort to shorten the workday was
the “ 10-hour movement” of the decade 1830-1840, a
frankly militant undertaking which made extensive use of
the strike to attain its end. The first spectacular success
was achieved by the building trades in Philadelphia in
1833. After that the movement spread rapidly and, for
the building trades, successfully in most cities.
Shipbuilding workers had been prominent in the move
ment from the start, and after a campaign of 10-hour
strikes nearly all private shipbuilding plants had adopted
the plan. Government building in navy yards, however,
did not respond to the change but continued the old sunto-sun system. Then on March 31, 1840, President Van
Buren issued a proclamation fixing 10 hours as the standard
workday for mechanics in the employ of the Government.
Manufacturing industries proved more difficult, and
the movement made so little headway that legislation was
demanded to relieve factory workers, especially children,
from the inhumanly long workday.
By the close of the nineteenth century the 8-hour day
had been accepted in many trades, and the World War
accelerated this movement.
The Sweatshop Developed A fter the Civil War and
Created New Labor Problems
of the most serious
and menacing problems
arising out of greatly in
creasing immigration was
the development and spread
of “ sweatshop” manufac
ture, particularly of cloth
ing and tobacco. Tene
ment sections of cities, crowded with recently arrived
aliens with low-living and low-wage standards, with no
definite occupational training and unable to speak English,
proved to be fertile ground for its development.
Machinery, if needed at all, was inexpensive, and the
subcontractors operating sweatshops required little capi
tal, since material was obtained from the large manufac
turers. Men, women, and children worked shockingly
long hours for ludicrously low piece rates in airless, poorly
lighted quarters reeking with dirt and disease.
Even after factory regulation and inspection had been
established by law, control of sweatshops was practically
impossible because of their mobility and the ease with
which they escaped detection. Child-labor laws improved
conditions somewhat, and a system of licensing was estab
lished as a public-health measure to check infection.
The efforts of consumers’ leagues to create a demand for
goods produced only under decent standards gave public
ity to the evils of the sweating system and resulted in some
amelioration of conditions.
The rise of the modern factory, with its power machin
ery and highly organised productive methods, did much
to eliminate the sweatshop by making factory -production
cheaper, better, and more profitable. More recently, how
ever, the current depression seems to be causing a rever
sion to sweating in some of its worst phases.
O
NE
7 he Knights o f Labor Movement to Organize Workers
Began in 1869 and Spread Rapidly but Secretly
£*7®HE American labor
VJy movement has trav
eled far from the days when
union meetings were called
by cabalistic symbols writ
ten on sidewalks and shop
walls and held in secret.
Because the b l a c k l i s t i n g
and victimising of leaders had defeated many promising
efforts to organise workers, the Knights of Labor started
its movement in 1869 in strictest secrecy. Instead of a
name the symbol of the “ Five Stars” was used in all the
activities of the order. This policy was later discon
tinued, but not until the membership had become large
and powerful enough to make secrecy unnecessary.
The Knights of Labor, the first successful movement to
ward national organization of workers, differed radically
both from the organizations which preceded and those
which followed it. Early trade unions were purely local
in character and included only skilled workers. The
underlying philosophy of the Knights of Labor was work
ing-class solidarity irrespective of trade or occupation.
Trade unionism as we know it grew Out of the move
ment of craftsmen away from general organization under
the Knights of Labor for the declared purpose of preserv
ing their own craft entities. This development was both
a cause and a result of the founding, in 1881, of the Amer
ican Federation of Labor.
The Order of the Knights of Labor has passed into his
tory, but it left behind it the educational influence of its
leaders and its many labor papers, as well as the tangible
results of the movements it sponsored. Chief among these
are the Federal and State labor agencies created at its
insistence.
1191
Efforts o f Labor to M aintain Wages Led to the
F irst General Strike, 1877
United States de'
veloped so rapidly
from an agricultural to an
industrial nation that evils
inherent in that haphazard
g r o w t h w e n t unnoticed
and un rec o gn ize d. T h e
serious industrial disputes
which have characterized our economic history have been
dramatic evidence of the existence of those evils.
Major labor disturbances of national significance have
largely involved the steel, mining, and transportation in'
dustries. The first general strike in our history occurred
in 1877, when the eastern railroads cut wages 10 percent,
in addition to reductions following the panic of 1873.
The answer of the railroad employees was unpremedi'
tated and unorganized revolt. The strike started in Penn'
sylvania and spread to San Francisco. In some parts of the
country canshop workers and miners in mines supplying
the ro? Js joined the striking trainmen. Riots, fires, and
mob violence, causing death and injury, resulted from
clashes between strikers and State troops, and for the first
time the United States Army was called upon to act in an
industrial disorder.
Many other serious strikes, the reverberations of which
have been Nationwide, have focused public and govern'
mental attention upon the conditions in industry and in the
lives of the workers which could produce such conflicts.
Today railroad strikes very rarely occur. The United
States Government has provided machinery in the Board
of Mediation for the orderly settlement of disputes
through mediation or arbitration. State and Federal
agencies also serve as conciliation mediums for the adjust'
ment of actual or threatened disputes in other industries.
The New Machine E ra, Beginning in the i 88o’s, Produced
the Distinctive Skyline o f Our Industrial Cities
TCHANICAL prog'
ress and the change
from hand labor to machine
production between 1830
and 1880 were so remark'
able that an economist,
writing in 1889, said:
To one whose present memory and life experience do not extend
over a period of time more extensive than what is represented by a
generation, the recital of the economic experiences and industrial
conditions of the generation next preceding is very much akin to a
recurrence to ancient history.
The latter half of that era saw the discovery and de'
velopment of many of the basic elements which made
technological progress possible. Among these are petro'
leum and the adaptation of electricity to motor power.
Some of the important changes, however, represented only
improvements upon principles and practices of earlier
periods.
Shoemaking machinery, power printing presses and
typesetting machines, the regenerative furnace, power
sewing machines, electroplating, photography, the tele'
phone, and agricultural machinery are illustrative of the
extent to which industrial mechanization had spread by
the close of the nineteenth century. The job opportune
ties and new occupations created by this expansion are
as notable as is the change in the character of the product
and the speed and comparative ease with which it was
produced.
Suggestive of our own day is the comment made by
Carroll D. Wright in 1895, that—
It is fair to say, perhaps, that it would require from fifty to one
hundred million persons, working under the old system, to . . . do the
work performed by the workers of today with the aid of machinery.
The Great Power Station Is a Principal Factor m the
Enormous Increase in Productivity
been said that the
first machine - equipped
t e x t i l e f a c t o r i e s o f the
ear ly nineteenth century
c h a n g e d t h e method of
production “ from daugh
ter power to water power.”
Then invention and me
chanical development changed water power to electrical
energy, which produced the second industrial revolution
in production methods and productivity that we now
call the machine age. When a textile factory was estab
lished in South Carolina in 1893 equipped entirely with
electrically driven machinery a new era was entered.
The first survey of the amount of power used in indus
try, made in 1870, showed 2,346,142 horsepower em
ployed, about equally divided between water and steam.
By 1929 the number of horsepower had grown to 43,079,000. During the twenty-five years from 1899 to 1923 the
horsepower equipment utilised per wage earner increased
from 1.40 to 3.76 in manufactures, from 3.36 to 6.53 in
mines and quarries, and from 2.32 to 4.74 in agriculture.
The change in the kind of power produced is even more
significant than the increase in volume. Electric power
and the internal-combustion engine, both of which are
available at practically any point and any time, have been
revolutionary in their effects not only upon industry and
transportation but upon our entire social life.
The metaphorical number of “ slaves” placed at our
command by pushing a button or starting a gasoline motor
becomes rather more than a figure of speech when me
chanical power estimated at the rate of 1 horsepower to
10 manpower is thus made immediately available.
I
T HAS
The Combine Harvester Symbolizes the Mechanization
o f Agriculture
(T ® HROUGHOUT the ages
v / many of the advan
tages of rural life have been
offset by its isolation and
by the excessive labor in
the field and the household
dr u d g ery n ec essa ry for
making even the most mea
ger livelihood.
Now, if the facilities that science and invention have
provided can be properly utilized, all that may be changed.
Almost every kind of farm work, from plowing and
harvesting to milking the cows, can be done by machinery.
Machines adaptable to every purpose are manufactured,
and gasoline or oil engines and electric motors are available
to drive them.
Instead of living in a continuous round of household
drudgery, farm women may now use electric devices in
wide variety both for their housework and for their dis
tinctive farm duties. The telephone and the radio afford
ready contact with the world outside the farm, and the
railroad and the automobile provide swift and economical
transportation. With the full utilization of these facili
ties, the farms will be linked up with the interests and
activities of the whole civilized world.
The effect of the use of modern farm equipment is vastly
to reduce the total amount of labor necessary for the pro
duction of the raw materials required to feed and clothe
the Nation. Free time will bring the farmer opportunities
for travel, for enjoyment, and for culture. In fact, he may
in the future enjoy all the advantages that are available
to dwellers in cities without sacrificing any of the blessings
that spring from life on the land.
The Automobile, Barely Thirty Tears Old, H ad Cre
ated Some Three or Four M illion Jo b s in ig2g
than three decades
the automobile changed
from a toy to one of the
dominant factors in American society. Probably no
other single development in
history has so quickly ex
erted such profound influ
ence on the life of a nation.
Figures of increase in the registration of automobiles,
from 8,000 in 1900 to 25,814,103 in 1931, staggering as
they are, convey no suggestion of the extent of that influ
ence. Primarily, the automobile created a mighty indus
try, employing, directly and indirectly, millions of work
ers. The ramifications of its secondary effects go all the
way from rubber plantations in the Tropics to the little
“ tourist cabins’1 which spring up all over the country
beside the magnificent highways which are themselves a
byproduct of the automobile.
Socially, inexpensive cars have revolutionised the rec
reation habits and the leisure time, and added to the ex
periences of great numbers of American workers. Eco
nomically, having transportation facilities at their fingers’
ends made employment easier to find, and in prosperous
times gave greater mobility to seek advancement.
These advantages have not depended wholly upon pri
vate ownership of an automobile, since development of the
bus system has reduced the transportation costs to a point
where travel is no longer the privilege of the few.
Depression caused the registration of private automo
biles to shrink about 3 percent between 1930 and 1932.
But “ the car” has become so vital a part of life that it is one
of the last items to be sacrificed, even when unemploy
ment demands retrenchment.
I
N LESS
At Modern Docks Ships Are Loaded and Unloaded
By Powerful Machines
£"7*?HE mechanisation of
v l / industry has pro'
gressed from comparatively
simple machines applicable
to a few m a n u f a c t u r i n g
processes a century ago to
the point where the “ me'
ch a n ic a l man” a ls o per'
forms the grueling tasks of lifting, carrying, and digging
which formerly could be done only by tremendous exer'
tion of human labor power.
Mechanical devices, not overstrained human muscles,
now load and unload ships and freight cars; conveyor
belts move merchandise easily and speedily; automatic
stokers fire engines. Even that picturesque figure so often
used to personify manual labor, the ditch digger, has been
supplanted by a motor'driven shovel which digs in one
hour a ditch which would require the labor power of 40
or 50 men working with hand shovels.
Machinery is now used in varying degrees in the pro'
duction of practically all manufactured goods. In some
instances it has displaced human labor almost wholly; in
others it has resulted in the elimination of craft skill. Glass
bottles, for examples, are made by automatic machines
which produce in an hour 41 times the possible output
under hand production. The skill of the old glass'bottle
maker is gone, but with it has gone the extensive employ'
ment of children for long hours which was characteristic
of glass factories of the old days.
On the other hand, the technological developments
which have made possible the production of 390,000
copies of a 62'page newspaper every day in the year have
so expanded the market that the demand for labor in that
industry has increased enormously.
High-Power Lighting H as Converted N ight Into
Day fo r Both Work and Pleasure
of the hardships of
the 14-hour day in the
early textile factories was
having to spin and weave
properly in the feeble light
of the oil lamps with which
the mills were inadequately
equipped. A custom grew
up of celebrating the lengthened daylight in the spring by
ceremoniously blowing out the lamps and decorating them
with garlands.
Now a great many workers, particularly in offices, work
and prefer to work under artificial light all day. But it is
a very different light.
Midway of the hundred-year span, 1833-1933, the elec
tric lamp made a somewhat timorous entrance upon the
scene, when at a public demonstration in New York two
electric engines produced light “ simultaneously in thirty
little balloon-shaped globes.” From that point the history
of electric lighting has been one of continuous progress,
from the experimental pioneering on the part of a few
hotels and newspaper offices in the 1880’s to practically
universal adoption.
The evenness of electric light and the ease with which
it may be diffused throughout work places make it a better
illuminant than daylight for some processes. A window
less factory has recently been constructed which will de
pend entirely upon artificial lighting and air conditioning.
Just as we have reversed tradition by burning artificial
fight in daytime, we have turned night into day by the
same medium. Darkness no longer interferes with any
thing we wish to do, whether it is flying or playing base
ball, because high-power flood fights and beacons conquer
darkness everywhere.
O
NE
But Modern Industry H as Brought New H azards, Such
as the Perilous L ife o f the Building Worker
of the penalties of
industrial progress is
the increase in industrial
hazards. Skyscraper con
s t r u c t i o n , h ig h - s p e e d
machinery, fast transporta
tion, fatigue, and nervous
tension are among the fac
tors contributing to the American casualty record.
Through heartlessness or inability to meet the problem,
the “ human scrap heap” was accepted during the early
periods of machine production as the inescapable price of
advancement. That attitude was challenged by two
viewpoints— that of humanitarianism, which declared
that the value of human life transcends all other considera
tions, and that of practical economics, which contended
that industrial slaughter cost more than prevention.
Beginning with the enactment of laws requiring installa
tion of mechanical safeguards on certain types of machin
ery, the movement to control hazards in industry has
been slowly gaining ground. Mandatory legislation is
enforced by State labor agencies, or, in the case of inter
state railroads, by the Federal Government.
A broader, more comprehensive effort lies in the educa
tional work of the safety movement, which undertakes to
instill the doctrine of “ safety first” into the conscious
ness of workers, employers, and the general public. The
objective of that educational work is not, however, to
shift responsibility to the worker. Rather, the accidentprevention movement attempts primarily to secure the
cooperation and practical support of employ'rs in all in
dustries. This effort is greatly stimulated by workmen’s
compensation laws, which assess industry for the social
cost of industrial accidents.
O
1271
NE
The Hidden H azard o f a D ust Explosion or an
Occupational D isease
\ W O R K M A N on his
% S j L way to work, passing
a coal miner, or, perhaps,
seeing a structural-iron
worker hundreds of feet
above his head, or a line
man handling a high-ten
sion wire, might, with a
grateful sense of his own security, enter the flour mill or
the starch factory where he earned a living for himself and
his family. And it would be entirely within the realm of
probabilities for the man whose precarious job had im
pressed him to be making every possible effort, a few
hours later, to rescue him from death or serious injury
resulting from the terrific dust explosion which had just
wrecked his “ safe'” work place.
Many jobs are inherently dangerous. The risks are rec
ognised and understood, and in many instances guarded
against. Other industries, on the other hand, are subject
to dangers as insidious as the explosion of accumulated
dust, against which protection is not provided because of
lack of realisation of the risk.
What is true of threatened accident is even truer of
disease. That hidden danger lies back of many occupa
tions in trades which appear wholly safe. Dust is not only
an accident risk but a menace to health. The painter
spraying an automobile and the girl painting a watch dial
with radium paint are exposed to serious hasards, just as
are the building-trades man and the worker in high ex
plosives, except that the risk is of slow instead of sudden
death.
Recognition and control of these insidious dangers are
imperative for the protection of workers.
High-Speed Production Tends to D iscard the Worker at
Early Middle Age
HAT there should be
v l'' any question of the
e m p l o y a b i l i t y o f th e
worker of middle age and
older, with his skill, experience, and years of service,
his probable dependability
and loyalty, would urn
doubtedly have astonished the employer not only of a
century ago but of a decade ago. Those very qualities
were looked for in taking on new workers, and corm
manded respect and remuneration.
Nevertheless, under modern industrialism the question
has not only arisen but has become a definite menace to the
worker whose youth is past, because it has introduced the
idea of age limitation as an employment policy.
Among the reasons given for the adoption by industry
of maximum age limits in hiring workers are these : M ass
production by machinery requires speed, not skill; older
workers do not adapt to changing methods; under group
life insurance and pension plans the employment of any
but young workers is poor business practice; older
workers are more liable to injury, and hence increase
compensation costs.
So far discharge of employees of long standing because of
age has not been practiced extensively. On the contrary,
many socially minded employers, while agreeing that new
methods of production need the elasticity and alertness of
young people, place a compensating valuation upon the
experience and judgment gained by years of service. Real
izing the danger in unemployment which is threatening
older workers, they are in some instances keeping their old
employees by reassigning them to tasks within their
capacity.
1291
Irregularity o f Employment Is Accentuated By the New
Industrial Conditions
C lV '/’ASS p ro d u ctio n ,
J 0 m ech an izatio n of
industry, and world mar'
kets have become catch'
words of the society which
a century of progress has
created. Pride in these de'
velopments is an American
characteristic.
But pride in a record output or enthusiasm over the
marvelous performance of a new machine can very quickly
turn to fear in the heart of a workman who sees his factory
close because that record output filled all the available
orders, or of one who finds his labor no longer needed
because the marvelous machine is doing his work better,
faster, and more cheaply.
“ Hard times” throughout our industrial history have
resulted in Nationwide unemployment and the destitu'
tion which loss of wages entails.
But the menace is not confined to hard times. The con'
dition which economists call “ unemployment within em
ployment” and which workers know as “ being laid off” is
characteristic of seasonal industries, such as the construe'
tion and clothing industries. In any industry or trade
situations apparently beyond control may suddenly throw
employees out of work for indefinite periods.
The worker’s fear of being displaced by a machine is as
old as machinery. When machinery was an innovation
confined to the manufacture of a very few products its
labor'displacing tendencies were offset by the greatly
increased consumption which followed lower production
costs. With mechanization of industry practically uni'
versal, the old terror is revived by what we call techno'
logical unemployment.
t
Concentration o f Industry and Commerce in Large Centers
Leads to Overcrowding o f Cities
O
NE of the most pro
nounced and signifi
cant changes in American
life is the shift of popula
tion from the country to
th e c ity . In 1880 th e
United States was still an
agricultural country, with
71.4 percent of its people living in rural areas. Fifty
years later that proportion had been cut to 43.8 percent,
and 56.2 percent of the people were living in urban areas.
In 1930 the twelve largest cities contained one sixth the
population of continental United States.
This enormous growth of cities and urban population
produces increasingly distressing problems. Difficulties of
housing, sanitation, traffic, safety, and health grow with
the congestion produced by concentration of population.
The trend of the heavy immigration of the early twen
tieth century was toward the seaboard cities and the
great industrial centers of the Middle West. Industries
in the same period tended to concentrate in localities
where conditions proved peculiarly advantageous for
their development. The workers employed in these in
dustries of necessity gravitated to these centers, and with
rents high and wages low, congestion in poor quarters
Was the inevitable consequence.
Later, changed conditions in agriculture aggravated the
situation, because of unprofitable farming on one hand and
mechanization on the other, both of which displaced farm
workers, who then drifted to the cities.
Some headway has been made in the past twenty years
toward improved living standards and control of housing
conditions in the congested areas of our great cities, but
the solution of the problem is still far in the future.
1311
Hopeful Signs— Safety and Compensation Law s Afford
Some Protection to the Worker and H is Family
scientific inquisiv - / tiveness of our day
has produced tenets which
are of distinct value to the
workers, however much like
heresy they would have
seemed a hundred years
ago. An illustration of
this is the slogan: “ Accidents don’t just happen.”
Far from accepting accidents as acts of God, and hence
beyond human control, industry and Government today
maintain that most accidents are preventable. From that
starting point they are developing on a scientific foundation principles and methods of accident prevention.
The United States Bureau of Mines is constantly striv
ing to lessen the frequency and severity of mine disasters.
State mine inspectors require the installation of safety de
vices as dictated by law, and inspect their operation.
The safety activities of the Interstate Commerce Com
mission serve the same ends for workers engaged in rail
road transportation. The factory inspectors of State
labor departments are primarily concerned with accident
prevention and the enforcement of safety laws.
But effective as these efforts are, they have not elimi
nated the evil. The social cost of death and injury from
work ■ accidents is so great that legislation has been
necessary to compel industry to carry some of the burden,
since it is chiefly responsible. Compensation for death
and injury on duty is now the right of a considerable por^
tion of American workers.
In addition, State agencies, with the aid of the Federal
Government, and to a limited extent private employers
as well, have undertaken the retraining of injured workers
whose earning power is seriously impaired.
Some Employers Furnish Excellent Working Conditions in
Healthful Surroundings
ABOR laws administered
J by State agencies set
minimum standards of accep table w o r k i n g co ndi tions to which e m p l o y e r s
are required to c o n f o r m .
O r g a n i s e d w o r k e r s are
often able to s e c u r e for
themselves standards of hours, wages, safety and health,
and plant equipment considerably in advance of the legal
minimum.
In still other instances found in many industries the
labor policies of individual establishments create working
conditions designed to promote the welfare of the workers
not only in matters covered by labor legislation but with
regard to recreation and health, and sometimes housing.
Among the welfare activities of plants of the type sug
gested are rest rooms and recreation facilities, cafeterias,
medical and dental service and health clinics, and personnel
management dealing directly with employment relations,
occupational adjustment, and problems of individual
workers.
An outstanding characteristic of plant welfare programs
is the medical service furnished free to employees. First,
aid rooms, dispensaries, and sometimes hospital quarters
are part of the factory equipment. Nurses, and not infre
quently doctors and dentists, are regularly employed.
Safety and protection from industrial disease are the
primary considerations in this type of welfare work.
These institutions are carrying out the theory and practice
of the principles of industrial hygiene which State labor
agencies and public health services are trying to instill into
industry as a whole.
L
Good Low-Cost Housing H as Been Found
Practicable
C
ROWDED, insanitary
living quarters, with
insufficient light and air,
without comfort or con
veniences and devoid of the
spirit of home, are not a
new development. Presentday slum conditions are
probably different only to the extent that they concern so
many more people than were affected by the city housing
problems of an earlier period in our history. Investiga
tions of slum areas in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York
City during the 1850’s disclosed conditions quite similar
to those with which we are now familiar, and movements
for improved housing began about that time.
The “ battle of the slums,’’ which was vigorously waged
in the early 1900’s, resulted in tenement-house laws and an
inspection system which undertook to control some of the
worst evils of city congestion. City health departments
directed attention to the menace to public health.
Plans for eliminating slums and starting all over with
rebuilding projects have been broached from time to time
with little progress. Such development as has come in
that line has been due in considerable degree to efforts of
the workers themselves. Two organized groups of work
ers in New York City, the Amalgamated Clothing Work
ers and the Jewish National Workers’ Alliance, have
carried through successfully a number of apartment-house
projects, in some cases razing old tenements and erecting
modern buildings in their stead.
The cooperative apartment movement in New York,
under the stimulation of the State housing law, is also
tending slowly to afford good housing facilities, with
modern equipment, at a price which workers can afford.
1341
Public and Private Provision fo r the Aged Makes
Old Age Less to Be Feared
C7*Z\HE worker of a century
V J/ ago who reached old
age worn out, without
money, earning power, or
means of support outside
himself, went to the poorhouse as a matter of course.
Once there, he probably
ended his days in surroundings far more dismal and squalid
than those which he had been able to provide for himself
out of his meager earnings.
But while in too many cases the poorhouse is still the
only refuge of workers whose earning power is gone, even
that traditionally awful place has, generally speaking, re
sponded somewhat to the standards and ideals of progress.
And it is no longer taken for granted that the poorhouse
offers the only answer to the problem of the broken-down,
dependent worker, for a different viewpoint is developing.
The workers themselves in some trades are dealing with
the problem through their own organizations. Five inter
national unions operate homes for their aged and disabled
members, where provision is made for medical care and
recreation. Other international unions, in the building
trades chiefly, grant pensions to their superannuated
members.
The system of State assistance to the indigent old has
now been adopted by practically half the States, and
public service retirement systems afford protection to
many Federal and State employees and municipal teachers,
policemen, and firemen who are no longer able to work
because of age or disability.
|3 5 |
Industrial as Well as General Education H as
Vastly Improved
free educa
tion as practiced in the
United States is very defi
nitely attributable to the
democratic ideals of the
workers of a century ago
and to the determination
which organised workers
have shown in realising the goal they advanced in the
1840’s— “ a complete and systematic course of instruction
for every child at public expense.”
The effort to attain that goal has continued ever since,
and is a vital part of the story of the century. A hundred
years ago the public-school movement was confined to the
cities, where workers predominated. When urban workers,
began migrating west, the principle of free schooling had
become so ingrained that they built their schoolhouses and
their dwellings at the same time.
From such beginnings have evolved practically Nation
wide compulsory schooling up to a minimum of 14 years
of age, and the assumption, at least, that all children in
the United States have equal opportunity to share in the
Nation’s public educational institutions.
The workers of later eras in our history have shared this
interest in education, and have tried to make the system
founded by their predecessors serve the needs of an indus
trial society. Trends toward undemocratic formalism dis
cernible in our educational system have been opposed and
have been countered with demands for the inclusion of
industrial and vocational training in school curricula.
Since 1917 the Federal Government has fostered the
objective of adequate vocational training for those whose
schooling must be limited to the grammar and high schools.
U
N IV E R SA L
A Representative o f Labor Takes H is Place in the
President’s Cabinet, 1913
O
NE of the most forceful
demands of the Knights
of Labor was for the crea
tion of governmental agen
cies, State and Federal, to
deal with labor problems
and workers’ welfare. Prec
edent was found in M as
sachusetts, where the first bureau of labor statistics had
been established in 1869, in response to the need of both
employers and employees for some means of determining
facts about industrial conditions, uncolored by bias and
self-interest.
The agitation developed so effectively that by the time
the Federal Bureau of Labor was created, in 1884, eleven
State bureaus were in existence. Out of the nucleus of
State factory inspection and statistical and investigative
agencies State departments of labor and industrial com
missions have evolved, as the medium for the enforcement
of labor laws, the study of working conditions, the media
tion of industrial disputes, and the promotion of the wel
fare of the workers so far as State authority and influence
may be directed to that end.
While a Federal Department of Commerce and Labor
was established in 1903, that was not a satisfactory re
sponse to the specific demand for recognition of labor by
the Government through a department equal in rank to
other executive departments.
With the consummation of this effort in the creation of
the United States Department of Labor on March 4,1913,
a representative of the workers of the country, in the
person of the Honorable W. B. Wilson, took his place in
the Cabinet of the President of the United States as the
first Secretary of Labor.
Organized Labor, Grown Vastly in Significance, Is
Represented at the Peace Conferences, ig ig
I
N THE years from 1869 to
1919 organized labor ad
vanced from the secrecy
imposed upon it by the
antagonism of employers
and the suspicion of the
public to official recogni
tion by the United States
Government.
The American Federation of Labor, established in 1881,
never adopted the policy of secrecy. Instead, it took the
position that the right of labor to organize is absolute, and
began the long struggle for recognition which triumphed
during and immediately after the World War.
One of the methods used to create for unionism a place
in national affairs was to undertake the election of trade
unionists to Congress and the State legislatures. The idea
of acceptance of trade unionism as a factor in the national
life was present also in the demand for the inclusion of
“ labor planks” in party platforms.
Formal recognition came when the United States Gov
ernment called upon organized labor as such to take part
in developing and carrying out measures for control of
war production. Boards of adjustment were created to
deal with labor relations in the important war industries,
and representatives of the organized trades in each indus
try were appointed to membership. President Wilson
appointed five men to represent organized labor on the
National War Labor Board.
Organized labor’s prestige was further strengthened
when, in 1919, Samuel Gompers, president of the Ameri
can Federation of Labor, was appointed by President
Wilson to represent the United States on one of the
advisory boards of the International Peace Conference.
f 38]
Industrial Disputes Are Often Satisfactorily Adjusted by
Conciliators Representing Federal and State Governments
A HUNDRED years ago
%yJL strikes were crimes.
When organized workers
struck they were in danger
of prosecution for “ crim
inal conspiracy” ; unorgan
ized strikes were called
riots and treated as such.
The right to strike is no longer questioned. Rather the
issue now is whether the exercise of that right is good
policy, or whether, in the interest of workers, employers,
and the public, a better method of adjustment can be
found.
Governmental agencies have been established to help
find a better way. Threatened or actual strikes on inter
state railroads and on American ships have long been sub
ject to Federal intervention, through the United States
Board of Mediation in the former instance and the ship
ping commissioners of the United States Department of
Commerce in the latter.
The Conciliation Service of the United States Depart
ment of Labor is organized to act either to avert or to
adjust strikes in any industry and in any part of the coun
try at the request of employers, workers, or the public
involved.
The labor departments of most of the industrial States
provide machinery both for prevention and adjustment of
industrial disputes within the State, through conciliation
or voluntary arbitration.
Through trade agreements and adjustment agencies
within the industry, employers and workers in various
lines have developed plans for reconciling differences be
fore they develop into strikes and lockouts.
The Great Problem o f the Future: Security o f
Employment
O
NE hundred years of
social and economic
progress and industrial de"
velopment have brought
advancement and achieve"
ment to the American
worker. He has won lei"
sure through shorter hours,
and through education, higher living standards, and better
wages he has attained appreciation of the cultural value of
leisure. His work is less arduous and he has acquired some
voice in determining the conditions under which he
works.
But partly because of this phenomenal industrial de"
velopment, a factor vital to complete emancipation has
been sacrificed. That is security of employment.
Organized workers in some trades have tried to meet un"
employment emergencies with “ out-of-work benefits",
but that plan of necessity falls down when great numbers
are displaced. Insurance to cover periods of unemploy"
ment has been undertaken experimentally by a few em"
ployers, and the principle has been enacted into law in
Wisconsin.
Long"term planning to end seasonal production, and the
shorter workday and workweek to “ spread employ"
ment” among all attached to the industry are among the
plans projected as a means of attaining labor’s next goal,
security of employment and a dependable income.
With all our dramatic progress, the curtain falls upon a
period of continued, widespread unemployment, with
greatly depressed wages and breakdown of industrial
standards, such as the country never before experienced,
a condition which of itself is a challenge to the spirit that
achieved the “ Century of Progress.”
A C T IV IT IE S OF TH E
U N IT ED ST A T E S D E P A R T M E N T OF LA BO R
1411
U N IT ED ST A T E S D E P A R T M E N T OF LA BO R
( 7 ° HE United States Department of Labor, established by act of
( O Congress March 4, 1913, grew out of the demand of American
workers to be represented in the Federal Government through a
department equal in rank to other departments comprising the executive arm of government.
For administrative purposes the department is organised into eight
major units: Office of the Secretary, Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Children’s Bureau, Women’s Bureau, Bureau of Immigration, Bureau
of Naturalisation, Conciliation Service, and Employment Service.
OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY
The organic act declares that “ the purpose of the Department of
Labor shall be to foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage
earners of the United States, to improve their working conditions, and
to advance their opportunities for profitable employment.’’ It is the
duty of the Secretary of Labor to promote that purpose, to serve as
adviser to the President in the development of ways and means
whereby the condition of the workers may be improved according to
the intent of the act, and to execute whatever acts of Congress
or orders of the President may be assigned to the Department of
Labor in furtherance of the principles and objectives declared by the
organic act.
BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is the nucleus out of which the
present Department has developed, and its major functions and organ'
iz&tion have remained practically intact throughout the various changes
which the original Bureau of Labor of 1884 has undergone. When the
Department of Labor was organized, the former Bureau of Labor,
then in the Department of Commerce and Labor, became the Bureau
of Labor Statistics of the new agency.
Primarily the Bureau is a fact-finding medium. Its duty, as stated in
the law creating it, is to “ collect information upon the subject of labor,
its relation to capital, the hours of labor and the earnings of laboring
men and women, and the means of promoting their material, social,
intellectual, and moral prosperity.’’ The functions of the Bureau are,
therefore, considerably broader than those suggested by the word
“ statistics.” Its field of work covers not only purely statistical information, but other subjects relating to human welfare as well, such,
for example, as accident prevention, labor legislation, and social insur
ance in all its phases.
Statistical data dealing with wages and hours of labor, productivity
of labor, trend of employment, cost of living, wholesale and retail
prices, are published regularly by the Bureau, while special publica
tions cover a wide range of subjects dealt with in the various special
studies made by the Bureau. The Monthly Labor Review is another
periodical publication of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
CHILDREN’S BUREAU
The Children’s Bureau was created by act of Congress dated A pril
9, 1912, as a Bureau in the Department of Commerce and Labor. A
year later it was transferred to the Department of Labor.
The Bureau as created was directed by the law to “ investigate and
report upon all matters . . . pertaining to the welfare of children and
child life among all classes of our people,” and to investigate especially
“ the questions of infant mortality, the birth rate, orphanage, juvenile
courts, desertion, dangerous occupations, accidents and diseases of
children, employment, and legislation affecting children in the several
States and Territories.”
The work of the Bureau is carried on through divisions dealing with
child and maternal health; juvenile employment and industrial prob'
lems; juvenile delinquency; dependent, neglected, and physically or
mentally handicapped children; statistical, editorial, and general ad'
ministrative work.
Through these divisions the Bureau gathers and analyzes facts about
children, their care and protection, and distributes popular bulletins
for the use of parents and technical reports for use by educators and
child'welfare specialists. It cooperates with public departments and
private organizations through studies and consultation service, helps
to develop standards of child care and child welfare, and in many
ways promotes public understanding of children’s needs and the ways
in which they may be met.
WOMEN’S BUREAU
The Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor grew out of the
Woman in Industry Service which was organized in 1918 as a war
agency of the Department. That service was primarily concerned
with formulating and recommending definite standards to be observed
in the working conditions and employment relations of women eim
ployed in war work. After the war a strong demand for the continu'
ance of the work as a permanent function of the Department resulted
in the act of Congress of June 5, 1920, which created the Women’s
Bureau of the Department of Labor.
The organic act declared it to be the duty of the Bureau to “ formu'
late standards and policies which shall promote the welfare of wage'
earning women, improve their working conditions, increase their
efficiency, and advance their opportunities for profitable employment.
The said Bureau shall have authority to investigate and report to the
said Department upon all matters pertaining to the welfare of women
in industry.”
In accordance with this authorization the Women’s Bureau makes
investigations of wages, hours, working and living conditions, economic
responsibilities, occupational hazards and diseases, labor legislation,
work opportunities, and occupational progress, all from the viewpoint
of women. Upon the basis of information obtained through these
surveys, it formulates and promulgates minimum standards for women
workers. While without authority to enforce these standards, the
Bureau, through its publications, exhibits, and personal contacts, gives
{4 4 I
wide publicity to them and seeks their voluntary acceptance by the
woman-employing industries. The Bureau renders an important service in functioning as a clearing house for all information about women
workers from other sources. It cooperates in various ways with many
agencies, official and private, concerned with the problems of wage
earning women.
BUREAU OF IMMIGRATION
While statistics about immigrants have been kept since 1820, Federal
control over their admission was not undertaken until 1864, an effort
which continued only four years. The first restrictive law was enacted
in 1882 and was administered by the Treasury Department through
State officers. The Bureau of Immigration was established in 1891,
with inspection offices at seaboard and land-border ports of entry. It
was transferred to the new Department of Commerce and Labor in
1903 and to the Department of Labor in 1913.
The Immigration Service administers the many laws and regulations
governing the admission of aliens to the United States and their con
tinued residence therein. Its officers examine all applicants for admis
sion and debar those who are inadmissible. They also examine resi
dents of the United States alleged to be aliens not entitled to live in our
country and deport those who are here contrary to law. They prose
cute citizens and aliens who violate the penal provisions of the immi
gration laws.
The Bureau of Immigration in Washington is the central executive
office. The field work is done by commissioners or district directors o f
immigration and their staffs at 184 ports of entry on the coasts and
land borders and at 35 strategic inland points.
BUREAU OF NATURALIZATION
The practice of according citizenship to aliens through naturalization
is as old as the Nation and has been carried on under Federal statutes
as a judicial function, by both State and Federal courts, since 1790.
However, uniformity of procedure and centralized control are com
paratively recent.
The naturalization law of 1906 created a central Federal agency for
the supervision of all matters concerning the naturalization of aliens
and the maintenance of a central repository for naturalization records.
This agency, the Bureau of Naturalization, operating through thirtyseven field offices throughout the country, including Alaska, Hawaii,
Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands, among other duties, investigates
all applicants for citizenship, conducts preliminary naturalization
hearings for United States district courts, and represents the Govern
ment before all courts at all final hearings on petitions for citizenship.
CONCILIATION SERVICE
One of the duties assigned to the Commissioner of Labor under the
old form of Department was to serve in the mediation of disputes
involving employees and employers in interstate transportation. A
development of that precedent is seen in the organic act of the Department of Labor, which grants the Secretary ‘"power to act as mediator
and to appoint commissioners of conciliation in labor disputes when
ever in his judgment the interests of industrial peace may require it to
be done."
Under that authority the Conciliation Service of the Department of
Labor was established, as an administrative unit of the office of the
Secretary. Commissioners of conciliation attached to the service repre
sent the Secretary of Labor directly in all matters which come within
their province.
The service does not usually take the initiative in entering industrial
disputes. Rather it participates upon the request of employers,
employees, or of responsible representatives of the public directly
affected.
Conciliators assigned to cases cooperate freely with State or local
agencies and exercise all proper means to bring about satisfactory
adjustments of differences, and to restore or maintain industrial peace.
EMPLOYMENT SERVICE
The United States Employment Service was created by act of Con
gress in June 1933 to supersede the placement agency formerly main
tained in the Department of Labor. Under a director appointed by the
President, its duty is “ to promote the establishment and maintenance
of a national system of public employment offices" in cooperation with
the States. The United States Employment Service administers the
Federal aid granted to cooperating State placement agencies and
coordinates and supervises their activities.
LIBRARY
One highly important function of the Department of Labor is neces
sarily confined to the executive offices in Washington. That is the part
played by the library, which is one of the most complete reference
libraries in the country in the field of labor economics and related
material. All the research activities of the Department itself, other
than first-hand investigations, center around the library. It is widely
used as well by other Government departments and agencies, and by
students of labor and economics everywhere.
1833
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THROUGH THE CENTURY
@FedFRASER