in the golden days of american society, as i have said, great fortunes were very rare indeed. the few that there were came mostly from merchandising and trade. the accumulations of john jacob astor, john hancock, and stephen girard, in new york, boston, and philadelphia, respectively, had not been dwarfed by the accumulations of a later era. they remained, up to about 1850, as the typical marvels of the american world of business.
the middle of last century was the harvest time of opportunity in this land. agriculture and trade remained the staple62 occupations of the race; yet there had grown up throughout the land a wonderful manufacturing industry. away back in the days of the embargo, a man named samuel slater had come over from england and built, from memory, the first american cotton mill. he little knew what seeds he sowed. that little mill set up in rhode island was the mother of american industry.
it had grown, this infant, until in every valley of the east there stood factories and mills uncounted. turning from the little iron mines of new jersey, the pioneers of our greatest industry had begun to open up the hills of pennsylvania and even michigan. in that age, which has been called the golden age of industry, fortune followed swiftly upon the heels of honest labour.
always, it was free, democratic, independent, 63this march of the manufacturers. a hundred men manufactured cotton cloths in one small area of new england. no one of them would have listened to the call of combination. they worked out their own destinies, took their own profits, built up their own plants from very small to very large. in the twenty years from 1840 to 1860 the independent american manufacturer became the true american type. in 1850, for the first time, the products of industry surpassed in value the products of agriculture. america came into its destiny.
often have i heard this tale of the making of america; and i can trace, by hearsay, the evolution of the mighty industrial enterprises of to-day from the puny beginnings of the days of franklin.64 then, in our nation’s youth, manufacturing was carried on in the home, by household industry. in the homes of new england men spun and wove the cotton; or beat the stubborn iron implements of agriculture. long the battle of industry was fought along these lines.
then came the change, when, after the war of 1812, the english manufacturers, armed with new industrial machinery, flooded the united states with manufactured goods. in self-defence america took to its arms the hated factory system, realizing that here and here alone lay its industrial salvation. instead of the scattered household manufacturing, the country developed the gathering and working of all sorts and conditions of manufacturing under one roof. instead of piece work, paid for as delivered, men began to work for wages.
how strange, in this day, sounds the 65warning of franklin in our ears! at the risk of being tiresome, let me quote a paragraph from his writings:
a people spread through the whole tract of country on this side of the mississippi, and secured by canada in our hands, would probably for some centuries find employment in agriculture, and thereby free us at home effectually from our fears of american manufactures. unprejudiced men well know that all the penal and prohibitory laws that ever were thought of will not be sufficient to prevent manufactures in a country whose inhabitants surpass the number that can subsist by the husbandry of it. that this will be the case in america soon, if our people remain confined within the mountains, and almost as soon should it be unsafe for them to live beyond, though the country be ceded to us, no man acquainted with political and commercial history can doubt. it is the multitude of poor without land in a country, and who must work for others at low wages or starve, that enables undertakers to carry on a manufacture,66 and afford it cheap enough to prevent the importation of its own exportation.
but no man who can have a piece of land of his own, sufficient by his labour to subsist his family in plenty, is poor enough to be a manufacturer, and work for a master. hence while there is land enough in america for our people, there can never be manufactures in any amount or value.—writings of benjamin franklin: smith ed. vol. iv, pp. 48–49.
this was written in 1761—just a century before the civil war! what a transition to our day—and we have but begun! in the days of franklin, according to our best authorities, less than one out of eight of the population depended for a living on manufacturing, trade, transportation, and fisheries. as early as 1851, it was one out of five. the character of the nation had undergone a complete and sweeping change.
yet, let me repeat, the american industrialist67 of that day was not the serf he is to-day. in every sense, he was a free and independent man. true, he had been forced to leave the household plan for the factory plan; but yet he managed without any trouble to keep the spirit of individualism and independence thoroughly alive. industry, in the middle of the last century, was carried on in this country in scattered individual plants, each one a little independent republic of its own. the owners generally worked in the factory and the mill. half a dozen partners, perhaps, laboured side by side with the men in their employ. men stepped swiftly from the position of wage workers to the independence of ownership. the doors of individual opportunity stood wide open.
i would, if i dared risk tiring the reader with extended comment upon subject matter68 that has been handled often much better than i can handle it, dwell upon this happy phase of the making of america. for it is germane to my subject. and then, again, it is gone from us forever—gone with the happy simplicity and innocence of the youth of our nation. in its stead there has come upon us an age of industrial terror, of fierce, abnormal struggle for expansion and wealth beyond the dreams of the fathers.
often, as the years have passed, i have heard older men talk with affection of the “good old days.” i put it down to the failing memory of man, which forgets all that is ugly and repugnant, and remembers best the beautiful. when men in society spoke of the past, they seemed to me to be ignoring the many advantages of the present. as time has fled, however,69 i come to realize that they spoke truly. they were thinking of this “golden age,” this high mid-day of our industrial history.
they were thinking of the free american, son of the soil, of the factory, as you will, yet free, independent, unafraid. they were thinking of a nation that did not tolerate tyranny, political or industrial, within its borders. they were thinking of that rich america where no man dwelt in poverty. they were thinking of the utter astonishment with which european travellers noted in our cities the absolute lack of beggars, of want, of hunger, and of cold. they were thinking of that happy day, now dead and gone, when evenly and justly the reward of labour fell upon the people, scattered far and wide and sufficiently, like the dew that falls at night upon the fields.
perhaps you think that society, as such, 70cares little about these things. you are eternally wrong. society is a group of men and women and children. the best of the men and the best of the women think deeply, as the best of men and women think deeply everywhere. because it is educated, and because it, too, is engaged in an eternal fight for life, society, perhaps, studies these matters more zealously and more accurately than the rest of the world that makes a nation.
the leaders of the social world in the middle of the last century saw as clearly as any one the tendencies of the time, and recognized as fully as any one the bearing of the conditions of labour and capital upon the purely social problems. they knew that because wealth was evenly distributed as it flowed from the mine,71 the forest, and the field, society had nothing to fear. they knew, too, that, when the division of wealth began to be uneven, danger to the social world began. the lesson of the french revolution was better understood in those days than it is to-day in high society—because high society in those days had, at least, read carlyle or junius; while to-day it reads little more than the sunday editions of the newspapers.
very few, in that time, were the new recruits in the army of society. the old laws still lived. the ancient families of new york, boston, and philadelphia still held sway. the leader of the social world could afford to speak of her father and her grandfather and even, in some cases, of her great-grandfather, without treading on dangerous ground. the subtle barriers of caste, flimsy as they always are in a new72 country, had yet withstood all the puny assaults to which they had been exposed.
happy, indeed, was society; and happy, too, were the people of the country. yet the poison was even then at work within their veins. already, here and there, rich men were selling out of industry, taking their mighty profits, and moving away from the industrial cities and towns into the great social and business centres. there is no social index to record the exodus; but one may note, here and there, in government reports of the time, strange facts that to-day are all too clear in their meaning.
in the year 1840, at the beginning of this golden period of national happiness and prosperity, there were in this country 1,240 cotton manufacturing plants, with a combined gross output of $46,000,00073 worth of goods. each plant made $37,000 worth of goods. twenty years later, the number of plants was 1,091, and the output was $115,000,000.
our fathers saw these figures; but it is not on record that any man, at that time, saw their true meaning. it was simply, to their minds, the working out of the factory system to its completion. it meant economy. it was part of the same system that had reduced the cost of making a yard of broadcloth from fifty cents in 1823 to fifteen cents in 1840.
they could not, naturally, see in it, as we can, the seeds of a revolution that was to make over again the america of that day, to drag the boasted freedom of america in the mire of poverty, to prostitute our political system, to tear and wreck and sweep away the sacred barriers74 of society. it was, in truth, the handwriting on the wall, but america lacked a prophet. if, indeed, there had been such a one, his warning would have been in vain. for evolution is inexorable; and the nation, high and low, rich and poor, poverty and society—all are but its creatures, brought into life by it, buried at its command.
let me hurry on to sketch the progress of this wonderful change that was to found in america two great new classes, the idle rich and the slaves of industry.
i have compiled a table from the census reports, dealing with textile industries alone, because that branch of manufacturing was the oldest and one of the greatest, as it is to-day, and because it illustrates perhaps better than any other the progress of principles, rather than the influence of75 special causes, particularly through this twenty-year period of which i am writing:
textile industries of the united states
year no. average
capital av. no. of
employés product average
1860 3027 50,000 65 75,500
1870 4790 62,500 57 108,600
1880 4018 103,000 96 144,000
in these few figures all the industrial history of that great period may be found epitomized. the number of plants, instead of increasing as the volume of demand for products increased, was contracted. the leadership of the trade, and, therefore, the making of prices, was taken by the houses of larger capital. the average capital employed in the trade doubled in the twenty years. the output also doubled for the average factory. the number of employés, on the other hand, increased but half. better machinery, more efficient control over the workers, more drastic industrial discipline, fiercer industrial competition76 for individual work, did their destiny-appointed task.
here one begins to see on this broad canvas, but faint in outline, the tracing of the picture of america to-day. the chains began to tighten. men who had grown to comfortable wealth in the long period of small factories, scattered industries, and free and easy industrial democracy, began to gather together into industrial groups. little industries were rolled together into big industries. the capital of the factory expanded, doubling, on an average, in the decade. at the same time, by more intense methods of carrying on the trades, the number of employés needed to produce a given value of products was cut down.
let me turn, for a moment, to introduce a slight record of that industry which has77 done more, perhaps, than any other to bring about the creation of the class of whom i write—the idle rich. i have not dwelt upon it in the beginnings of american industry, for it was scarcely existent. i refer to the iron and steel industry.
in 1860 there were in this country only 402 plants manufacturing wrought, forged, and rolled iron. they used an average of $58,000 of capital apiece, produced products worth $91,000 each, and employed an average of 55 men. in 1880—twenty years—there were 1,005 such plants, with an average capital of $23,000, average products of $296,005, and an average roll of 121 men. here the evolution of an industry from the small, scattered plants to the concentrated, efficient, and powerful “combine” is unmistakable.
to summarize: in this twenty-year period,78 the value of products trebled, while the number of workers doubled. the wealth-producing capacity of each worker increased from $1,438 to $2,015.
if the tendency toward monopoly was striking in the twenty years from 1860 to 1880, what may one say of the twenty years that followed? in the iron and steel trade, the 699 plants of 1880, with an average production of $419,000 each, became 668 with an average production of $1,203,500 in 1900. the average number of employés per plant rose from 197 to 333. in the cotton mills, the average number of employés in each mill rose during the same period from 287 to 1,185.
here is the birthplace of the idle rich. hundreds of men who had owned small manufacturing plants sold them out at good profits in the first ten years of this79 era and retired to live on the proceeds. men who, twenty years before, had built their puny mills on river banks and rapidly developed them into great wealth-producing plants by natural growth, then turned them over to the trusts and combinations at prices that would have staggered the imagination of the fathers of the industry.
the firm gave way to the corporation. industries that had been for generations family affairs were suddenly capitalized in the form of stocks and bonds, and the owners retired from the active business, hiring skilled men to carry on the work. they themselves sat down in comfort and ease and luxury to draw their sustenance from interest and dividends on the securities that represented the plants.
into the mighty cities of the east there moved an ever-growing army of those who80 had gathered, from the mines of california, from the forges of pittsburg, from the forests of michigan, from the metalled mountains of montana, wealth beyond the dreams of midas. they had capitalized the products of their own labour, and brought with them the tangible evidences of wealth in the shape of stocks and bonds.
i remember very well the first great march of the suddenly rich upon the social capitals of the nation. very distinctly it comes back to me with what a shock the fact came home to the sons and daughters of what was pleased to call itself the aristocracy of america that here marched an army better provisioned, better armed with wealth, than any other army that had ever assaulted the citadels of society.
the effect of these immigrations from the fields of labour to the cities of capital81 i shall sketch more fully in another chapter. i would now, instead, touch upon the conditions that they left behind them, the conditions that made possible their own retirement from actual labour to the ease and comfort of luxurious leisure.
it is not too much to say that they left behind them a people reduced to industrial slavery. gone forever was the free america our fathers knew. faded into history was the ideal of washington and jefferson and lincoln. from the year 1890 onward the progress of the united states has been the fearful march of manufacturing industry. in that year the products of industry and agricultural wealth were about equal. ten years later the products of industry were two to one against the wealth gathered from the fields.
side by side with this conquest of america82 went the growth of tenant farming, as against the old free tenure farming that had marched steadily into the farthest untilled corners of the land so long as land was free. to-day there is no free land within the borders of the nation, save for a few small tracts hardly worth mentioning. here, as in the industries, capital did not hesitate to claim and capture all that it dared. law after law was passed to prevent the centralization of the power of exploiters over great tracts of the west. law after law was broken, evaded, or laughed at. once the spirit of exploitation on a large scale was abroad in the land, nothing could stand against it.
to gain its ends, wealth crept stealthily into every seat of power. the law stood in its way; therefore, in legislative halls and in political caucuses, wealth had to83 have its representatives. the legislatures, the courts, the press—these were made pawns in the game of exploitation. where-ever possible, the army of exploiters laid profane hands even upon the trusteed funds that guard the poverty of the spoiled and broken, the funds of the savings-banks, and of the insurance companies. nothing was sacred; nothing was secure.
the raw material of wealth, as i have stated in a previous chapter, is the labour of men. in the days of individual effort, exploitation of labour was not possible, for men shied off from the chains of the exploiter, took to the boundless free fields of the west, and declared over again that they would dwell and labour in freedom, or they would die.
but, in the census of 1900, it is shown clearly that the average employé in this84 country produces every year $1,280 of wealth, after full allowance for the cost of the material he works with and all possible running expenses that are paid by his employer. out of this amount of wealth he gets $437. the remainder, $843, goes into the hands of other men—the capitalist or the exploiter of labour.
that money, nearly two thirds of the wealth produced by the men who labour with their hands and heads, goes to pay interest and dividends on the securities that represent the increment gathered by those who sold out in other days, or who capitalized their plants and settled down to draw their sustenance from the labour of other men.
hence the idle rich. i do not mean to say that by any means all of the dividends and interest are gathered by the idle rich.85 such a condition as that can exist but once in the history of a nation. it came about in rome—and it led to the fall. it came about in france—and it led to the terror. here, in america, it has gone far to be sure, and the tendency is still onward; but it has not yet quite reached a point where one may say: “to-morrow the harvest is ripe!”
“as well might the oligarchy attempt to stay the flux and reflux of the tides as to attempt to stay the progress of freedom in the south. approved of god, the edict of the genius of universal emancipation has been proclaimed to the world, and nothing, save deity himself, can possibly reverse it. to connive at the perpetuation of slavery is to disobey the commands of heaven. not to be an abolitionist is to be a wilful and diabolical instrument of the devil. the south needs to be free, the south wants to be free, the south shall be free!”
—hinton rowan helper.
