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Title: Men and Things
Author: Henry A. Atkinson
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEN AND
THINGS ***
Press Illustrating Service.
CUTTING STEEL FOR SHIPS WITH
GIGANTIC SHEARS.
These workers are the servants of civilization and
without them we would have no such trade as we
have to-day.
MEN AND THINGS
BY
HENRY A. ATKINSON
SECRETARY, SOCIAL SERVICE DEPARTMENT OF THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES
AND ASSOCIATE SECRETARY OF THE COMMISSION ON THE CHURCHES
AND SOCIAL SERVICE OF THE FEDERAL COUNCIL OF THE
CHURCHES OF CHRIST IN AMERICA
NEW YORK
MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT
OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA
1918
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY
MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT OF THE
UNITED STATES AND CANADA
CORRESPONDENCE CONCERNING
MISSION STUDY
Send the proper one of the following blanks to the se
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your denominational mission board whose address is in t
he “List of
Mission Boards and Correspondents” at the end of this b
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TO MY FATHER
THE REV. THOMAS A. ATKINSON
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
Foreword xiii
I The World of Work 1
II The World of the Rural Workers 17
III The World of the Spinners and Weavers 33
IV The World of the Garment Workers 49
V The World of the Miners 65
VI The World of the Steel Workers 79
VII The World of the Transportation Men 95
VIII The World of the Makers of Luxuries 113
IX The World of Seasonal Labor and the
Casual Workers 135
X The World of Industrial Women 155
XI The World of the Child Workers 173
XII The Message and Ministry of the Church 191
Bibliography 211
Index 215
ILLUSTRATIONS
These workers are the servants of
civilization Frontispiece
PAGE
The work which men do inevitably
groups them together 10
Not many of us stop to consider the
man who made possible the white
bread that we eat 18
The worker in these mills is a worker
and little or nothing else 42
The workers on the sidewalks of Fifth
Avenue 50
We forget the men who are toiling
underground 66
The New U. S. Bureau of Mines Rescue
Car 74
Commerce and transportation are
dependent upon the steel workers 82
The church must preach from the text
“A man is more precious than a bar
of steel” 90
Living upon the canal-boats and barges
are the families of the workers 106
The cigarmakers carry no moral
enthusiasm into their trade 122
The casual workers are the true
servants of humanity 146
In the army of laborers the girl and the
woman are drafted 162
Thousands of children in America are
doing work which they ought not to
do 186
A Russian Forum in session in the
Church of All Nations, Boston 194
The Church of All Nations provided a
sleeping place for the unemployed 202
“Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.”
FOREWORD
A friend said to me this last week, “There are two things that I
instinctively distrust, one is prophecy, the other is statistics. Now
that the war has lengthened into the fourth year and America has
taken her place by the side of the Allies, I find my gorge rising every
time any one attempts a prophecy and quotes statistics. All
prophecies have proved false and statistics are utterly unreliable.
Even the clocks have been made to lie by official decree.”
Granted that my friend is pessimistic, at the same time we must
all sympathize with him in this feeling. In writing this book, I have
tried to keep out of the realm of prophecy and have used just as few
statistics as possible. Most of the facts were secured by
investigations made prior to August, 1914. I have endeavored to
check up every statement with all the reports I could secure from
the Department of Labor at Washington, through the Survey and the
New Republic, and through other sources. I feel reasonably certain
that all the statements concerning conditions will bear investigation
and are substantially correct. If there are discrepancies, it will be
found after making due allowance for the judgment of others, that
they are due to changes brought about by unusual conditions in
industry. The principles are unchanged and it is upon these that I
have attempted to place the most emphasis. Concrete facts are but
illustrative of the principle involved. Conditions affect cases but leave
principles undisturbed.
I am greatly indebted to the help in research given me by Miss
Lucy Gardner, of Salem, Massachusetts. As far as possible I have
given credit to the proper authorities for material used. If I have
failed to do so I take this opportunity of acknowledging my
indebtedness to all unknown authors and authorities who have
contributed in any way.
This book goes forth to the young people of America in the hope
that they will find in it some small inspiration that will prove an
incentive to them to give themselves to the cause of humanity,
realizing that through service, and through service alone, can any
one make the fullest contribution to his generation.
“Men and Things,”—a nation is great only in its citizens. The
great task before the church to-day is to help to readjust the
conditions existing in all industries so that men and women may
labor and enjoy the fruits of their labor and profit physically and
spiritually in the wealth which they help to create.
Henry A. Atkinson.
New York, May, 1918.
CHAPTER I
The World of Work
One of the commonest sights in the city is that of the people
going to work in the early morning; the streets are thronged with
men carrying dinner pails, and girls and women carrying bundles.
Many are hurrying with a worried look on their faces as if fearful of
being a minute or two late. At night the same people are again on
the streets with their faces turned in the opposite direction going
home after the day’s work. A few hours’ rest, then a new day, and
the same people may be seen in the same streets, hurrying to the
ever unending tasks.
The country holds the same urge of work. Nothing is more
interesting than a trip through the country early in the morning.
With the first hint of dawn you see a thin pencil of smoke begin to
stream from the chimneys of the farmhouses. Bobbing lanterns
appear by the barn. You hear the clanking of chains and the rattle of
harness as the teams are being made ready for the day’s toil. As the
morning grows older, you meet the workers out on the road with
their faces set sturdily toward the field of their labor.
All night long from a thousand centers massive trains are rushing
toward other centers. In each engine two men, with nerves alert and
eyes peering out into the darkness ahead, guide the power that pulls
the train. Every few minutes the door of the firebox is opened and a
gleam of light makes an arc through the darkness of the night as the
fireman mends his fire.
During the daytime thousands of trackmen have inspected the
rails; other thousands have been at work repairing the ties, putting
in new rails, and improving the grade. Telegraphers are continuously
flashing their messages along the wires; their invisible hands guide
these flying trains. In factories, workshops, mills, mines, forests, on
steamships, on the wharves, wherever there are human beings,
there is work being done. Work is as ceaseless and persistent as life
itself.
The Song of the World of Work. You remember, perhaps, the
first time that you visited a big city. From your room in the hotel you
could hear the roar of the streets. That roar is made up of hundreds
of separate sounds. It is the voice of work from the throat of the
city. It changes with each hour of the night. Just before dawn there
is a lull and the voice is almost quiet but only for a short period;
then it takes on a new volume of sound and grows in intensity to the
full force of its noonday chorus. What is this voice saying? It is
telling the story, and pouring out the complaint, and singing the
song of the world of work. The idler or the parasite is the exception.
People can live without working, but such is human nature that the
person is rarely found who is willing to bear the odium of being a
member of the class that never toils.
Work and Life. “What are you going to do when you grow up?”
This is a common question asked of every girl and boy. Very early in
our lives we begin to try to answer this question. Our environment
shapes our attitude toward life, and helps us to choose the type of
work to which we think we are adapted, but, having once settled the
question of the kind of work we are to do, that choice eventually
determines, in a large measure, our character. Work is so much a
part of our lives that it marks us and puts us in groups. All ministers
are very much alike, doctors are alike, lawyers are alike, business
men are alike, business women resemble each other, so do miners
and woodsmen. In fact, the work that we do groups us automatically
with the others in the same profession or trade. Work creates our
world for us and also gives us our vocabulary. A man who made his
fortune on a big cattle-ranch in the West moved with his family to
Chicago. His wife and daughter succeeded in getting into fashionable
society and with the money at their command made quite a stir in
the social world. Foolishly they were ashamed of their old life on the
ranch. They had difficulty in living down their past, and the husband
never reached a place where his family could be sure of him. He
carried his old world with him into the new environment. One of the
standing jokes among their friends was the way in which this man
told his cronies at the club how his wife had “roped a likely critter
and had him down to the house for inspection.” This was his
description of a young man who was considered eligible for his
daughter’s hand. The men who have been brought up in mining
communities use the phraseology of the mines. One of the most
prominent preachers in America was a miner until he was past
twenty years of age. His sermons, lectures, and books are filled with
the phrases learned in his early life. A preacher in a fishing village in
the northern part of Scotland, in making his report to the Annual
Conference, stated: “The Lord has blessed us wonderfully this year.
In the spring, with the flood-tide of his grace, there was brought a
multitude of souls into our harbor. We set our nets and many were
taken. These we have salted down for the kingdom of God.”
Needless to say, he and his people were dependent upon the fishing
industry for a living.
Purpose of Work. Life is divided into work and play. Work is
the exertion of energy for a given purpose. People accept the claim
of life as they find it with little or no protest because one must work
in order to eat. The compulsion of necessity determines the amount
of work and the amount of play in the average life. Even a casual
study of the industrial life of to-day convinces one that work absorbs
a large part of the time and conscious energy of all the people. The
letters T. B. M. meaning “Tired Business Man” are now used to typify
a fact of modern life. Business takes so much time and effort that it
leaves the individual so worn out at the end of every day that he is
not able to think clearly, or to render much service to himself or to
his friends. He is simply a run-down machine and must be recharged
for the next day’s work.
In one of the American cities a group of nineteen girls formed
themselves into a Bible study class, and met at the Young Women’s
Christian Association building on Thursday nights. A light,
inexpensive dinner was served and the pastor of one of the churches
was asked to teach the group. All of these girls were members of the
church and were engaged in work in the city. One was in a
secretarial position, four were stenographers, two were saleswomen,
and thirteen were employed in a department store. The hours of
work were long for the majority of the class. On Saturday nights
they were forced to work overtime. The average wage for the group
was $7.25 a week. Out of this they had to buy their food, pay for
their rooms, buy their clothes, and pay their car-fare. Whatever was
left they could save or give away just as they pleased. After the
classes had been meeting for about six weeks, it developed that only
four of the girls went to church with any degree of regularity. Ten of
them gave as a reason for not going that they were so tired on
Sunday mornings that they could not do their work and get up in
time to go to church. When they did get up, there were dozens of
hooks and eyes and buttons that had to be sewed on, clothes which
had to be mended, and the week’s washing to be done. In telling of
their experiences one girl said, “Sunday is really my busiest day.”
These girls can be taken as typical of a large number of workers,
men and women. Life to the majority becomes simply the
performance of labor. Work is the whole end of existence. All
brightness and cheer is squeezed out by the compulsion of labor.
In a Pennsylvania coal town the employees of the company live
in a little village built around the coke ovens. There is not a green
thing in the whole village. A girl from Pittsburgh married one of the
men who was interested in the mines. They moved to this town, and
she took all her wedding presents and finery with her. In three
weeks the smoke had ruined her clothes, had made the inside of her
little home grimy, and the dirt and soot had ground itself into the
carpets and floor, till she said, “I feel that all the beautiful life that
Frank and I had planned to live together has become simply an
incidental adjunct to the coke-ovens.” We often hear it said that the
minds of people are stolid, stodgy, or indifferent, and that they do
not appreciate the best things in life. The wonder is that the masses
of the people appreciate them as much as they do.
The Purpose of Life. A well-known catechism teaches that,
“The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.”
Herbert Spencer says, “The progress of mankind is in one aspect a
means of liberating more and more life from mere toil, and leaving
more and more life available for relaxation, for pleasure, culture,
travel, and for games.” The struggle for existence consumes so
much time that it becomes an end in itself. This ought not to be. The
true purpose of life is not work, nor wealth, nor anything else that
can be gained by human striving, but it is life itself. Therefore, the
work that people do ought to contribute to an enrichment of life. We
are indebted to Henry Churchill King for the splendid phrase, “The
fine art of living.” William Morris said that whatever a man made
ought to be a joy to the maker as well as to the user, so that all the
riches created in the world should enrich the creator as well as those
who profit by the use of the riches. Under the old form of
production, where every man did his own work with his own tools, it
was easy for him to take pleasure in the thing that he was making.
The factory system breaks the detail of production into such small
parts that no one worker can take very much pride in the actual
processes of his work. It is not a very thrilling thing to stand by a
machine and feed bars of iron into it for ten hours a day, and to
watch the completed nuts or screws dropping out at the other end
of the machine. The pleasure in the work must be secured from the
conditions under which the work is performed—the cooperation in
the production, and the feeling that the worker is a part, and is
being blessed by being a part, of the modern industrial system.
Specialization in Work. Specialization has been carried so far
that to-day there are very few skilled workers in the sense in which
this term was used several years ago. Shoemakers very rarely know
how to make shoes, for they now make only some one part of the
shoe. The automobile industry, by methods of standardizing, is
organized so that each worker performs some simple task. He
repeats this over and over, but his task added to that done by the
others, produces an automobile. In the glove factory one set of
workers spend their lives making thumbs; another group stitch the
back of the gloves. In the clothing industry some make buttonholes,
others sew on buttons; some put in the sleeves, and others hem;
each has a very small part to do. This specialization in industry has
been carried so far that it is seldom that a worker knows anything
about the finished product.
A study of the organization of labor shows to what extent
specialization has been carried. One of the chief complaints of the
American manufacturer is that his men and women are not loyal.
There is undoubtedly ground for this complaint, but on the other
hand it must be conceded that it is very difficult for a worker—in the
garment trade, for instance—to be loyal to a long succession of
buttonholes; and for glovemakers to be loyal to a multitude of
thumbs. The lack of loyalty comes largely from the failure of the
directors of modern industry to bring their workers into that
relationship with the business which would give them a feeling that
they are an essential part of the industry. Loyalty grows by what it
feeds on. The specialization that has been going on has been the
very force which has made the worker simply a part of the machine,
and as such, detaches him from the business of which he ought to
feel himself an integral part.
Unity of the Workers. The extent to which specialization has
been developed has had another effect. While the process of
differentiation has been carried on at a rapid pace, and the individual
worker has known but little about the finished product, he has come
to know a great deal about the other disintegrated units in the
workshop, the mine, the factory, and the mill. Consequently, with the
differentiation in the work there has been a growing solidarity or
feeling of unity among the workers themselves. Evidence of this is
found in the philosophy that there are only two classes of people in
the world, the people who work and the people who do not work,
and which is used by the revolutionary groups with tremendous
force. We do not like to think of classes in America, but the forces of
industrial life have created classes in spite of ourselves.
A World Apart. The workers live in a world apart.
Unconsciously they drift together. They talk each other’s language;
they understand each other’s point of view. In every town and city
we find groups of the workers living to themselves. The work which
men do inevitably groups them together; and social life centers so
completely about their work that it is really the factory and mill that
mark out the lines and define the limits within which the classes
must live. Consequently, in our American cities we find such
designations as these: “Shanty Town,” “Down by the Gas Works,”
“Across the Tracks,” “Murphy’s Hollow,” “Tin-Can Alley,” “Darktown,”
“On the Hill,” “Out by the Slaughter-Pen,” “Over on the West Side,”
and “Down in the Bottoms.” Just think of your own town, and you
probably can add some new phrase that tells where your laboring
group lives. In one Western town the community was divided by the
Southern Pacific Railroad tracks. The boys in the school on the north
side of the tracks were all known as “Sewer Rats.” On the opposite
side of the town they were known as “Depot Buzzards.” Whenever
one group met the other there was always a war. A friend tells of a
similar condition in a Canadian village where the Scotch boys were
banded against the Irish and the Irish against the Scotch. Whenever
the Macks met the Micks, or the Sandys met the Paddys, there was a
row. A large part of this classification is temporary and need not be
considered very seriously. Underlying it, however, is the deeper fact
that we have come to recognize that there is a world of the workers,
and that it is a world apart. In this world of the workers the rewards
and the profits of toil are barely adequate to take care of the needs
of the families of the workers.
It is assumed that in pre-war times it required from $800 to
$900 a year to support a family in the average American community.
Since 1914 the cost of living has increased approximately 60 per
cent. It is estimated that even to-day with the advances that have
been made in the wages by nearly all industries, 61 per cent. of the
workers of America are receiving an average wage of less than $800
a year. “Shanty Town” and that section “Down by the Gas Works”
have been built of poor material and allowed to become dilapidated
not because the people living there like that sort of thing, but
because the returns for the labor of these people are totally
inadequate for their needs. The housing and living conditions of the
people who live in the world of the workers is determined by the
wages which they receive.
McGraw-Hill Company.
The work which men do inevitably groups them together.
The Interdependence of All. Now, if we do recognize that the
world of work is a world apart, we must not fail to recognize also
that behind this disintegration that has been going on, there is an
integration of society more comprehensive than we have ever known
before in the history of the world. While the people may be allowed
to live by themselves in a part of the town that is less desirable as a
dwelling-place than other parts, yet we are all dependent one upon
the other. There is an old story which illustrates this point. A boy
complained to his father about being poor and said that he wished
that he had been born in a rich man’s home. The father told him
that he was mistaken, for he really had wealth which he had never
considered. That night the boy had a dream. It seemed to him that
there came and stood at his bed a little fellow dressed like a farmer.
The boy asked him who he was. He replied that he was the soul of
all the farmers that were working to produce the flour that went into
bread. Another little figure appeared beside the first, a black man
with a turban on his head; he was the spirit of the workers in the tea
and spice gardens of India. Another black man dressed in the rough
clothes of a day-laborer joined the others; he was the spirit of the
workers on a Southern plantation who make the cotton and produce
the sugar. Other workers appeared so fast that the boy could hardly
keep up with their approach—the coal-miner, the iron-miner, the
woodsman, the carpenter, and the girl workers in the flax-mills of
Dublin, who produce the linen in the rough, red-checked tablecloths.
When they had all gathered together there was a multitude, and all
were in reality the servants of this one boy.
Our dependence upon each other was clearly illustrated in the
shut-down of non-essential industries on certain days in the winter
of 1917–18. In order to keep people from starving and freezing, the
government of the United States ordered the suspension of certain
industries so that the conservation of fuel might protect the lives of
the people.
The Good Neighbor. We are “members one of another.” The
basic industries provide the necessities of our lives—feeding,
housing, clothing, warmth, means of traveling, and the things which
are part and parcel of our very being. The workers who are engaged
in producing these things are true servants of humanity, and we are
all under deep and abiding obligations to them. Just in the
proportion that we produce something that adds to the wealth and
happiness of the world, we are discharging the obligation which
others by their labors have placed upon us. The division into classes,
and the setting off of groups by themselves, the creating of the
world of labor as a world apart, makes the practise of neighborliness
a difficult thing. Now neighborliness is the very essence of
Christianity. To be a friend of man ought to be the supreme desire of
every individual. In the parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus defined
the meaning of Christianity in terms of neighborliness. The church
must answer this question: How can Christian people be good
neighbors in modern industrial society?
Neighbor to the Group. We recognize the call to
neighborliness in individual cases. If a man is knocked down by an
automobile when he is crossing a street, people will run to help him
to his feet, will call a cab or an ambulance, and he will be cared for
just as carefully by the stranger as if he were a near relative. The
individual idea of neighborliness is thoroughly appreciated. We have
learned how to practise it. When it comes to a group, however, we
find it difficult. The same men that would rush into the street to help
an individual that is hurt, will live in a community and not appreciate
the needs of the people living in the same block. The industrial class
may be knocked down by adverse social conditions, and no one will
recognize just what the situation means; or, recognizing it, will know
how to apply the remedy, or even how to offer intelligent assistance.
In a small city in Ohio there lived an old man and his wife. Their
children had married and moved away, leaving the old people to
shift for themselves. The man was nearly blind and his wife was
paralyzed and unable to take care of herself. The neighbors used to
go to see them once in a while but no one felt any special
responsibility for them and the community knew very little about the
conditions under which they lived. One of the neighbors remarked
one day that he had not seen anybody around the house and no
smoke coming from the chimney. An investigation was made and it
was found that the old man had been dead three days and was lying
in bed with his paralyzed wife who could not help herself, nor could
call for assistance. For three days she had been suffering
unspeakable agony beside the form of her dead husband. The whole
community was shocked. No one could believe that such a lack of
neighborliness could exist. No one was particularly to blame; it was
merely one of those things that occur because the man and his wife
had dropped out of the main-traveled path of the city’s life.
The church is making every effort to meet the needs of the
individual, but when it preaches the need of regeneration, it must
meet the group needs as well, and the minister of a church for a
world of labor must be minister to the group as well as to the
individual. The world war has impressed upon us many facts, none
with more insistence than this—that we are living in a very small
world; and that nations, as well as groups of people everywhere,
must learn to appreciate each other for what they are, and for the
contribution which they are making to the well-being of humanity.
Recognizing this, however, does not mean that we are all to try and
think alike, to be alike, or to live alike. As Americans we are very
likely to think that our way of doing things is entirely right, and that
enlightenment comes in proportion to the degree in which other
people copy our example in clothes, methods of living, and even our
manner of speaking.
A Specialized Program for Group Needs. The church’s
program for a world of work must be a specialized program. It must
be based upon a thorough knowledge of the facts incident to the life
of the people, an appreciation of their view-points, and must take
into consideration the ultimate ends to be achieved, the means by
which these ends can be reached, and a willingness to subordinate
the program of the church to the needs of the group. The program
of a city church appealing to well-to-do, middle-class people, will
utterly fail in the average rural community. A program for a mining
community must consider the needs as well as the character of the
miners, and the quality of their work. The church is sharply
challenged by the specialization in industry, and by the fact that
there are classes who do not hear, or at least fail to heed its appeal.
In the growing demand for democracy, the church must not only be
the most democratic of all institutions but it must be the leader in
setting before the people the ideals and in keeping before their
minds the great ends of democracy.
Approach to the Subject. In the following chapters are set
forth some of the conditions under which the workers in the basic
industries toil and live; also the great needs of each group and what
the church is doing, what it ought to do, and what it can do. We will
consider each group in relation to the contribution it makes to the
life of us all. Food is a first need of each individual, therefore, we will
study the rural workers first, for they are the ones who feed the
world. Next we will study the makers of our clothing; then the
mines, for they provide for our warmth and shelter; then the steel
workers, who are the real builders of our material civilization. We are
a restless race, and demand the labor of thousands of men and
women to move us from place to place, so we will study the lives of
these providers of transportation. We will also think together of that
large group who amuse us and who labor to produce the luxuries
which we enjoy. There are certain groups that we will find in each of
these larger groups, such as the seasonal workers, the women in
industry who toil. We will take a glimpse at these.
Men and Things. Men produce things, and often the created
thing seems to become greater than its creator. We will hope
through these discussions to show that man is infinitely greater than
all the things which he produces. We will also endeavor to arrive at
some decision as to what constitutes a proper message and ministry
for the church in the midst of a world of work, so that working men
and women may be protected in their toil, and freed from the
incessant and always present danger of becoming slaves to the
wealth they create.
CHAPTER II
The World of the Rural Workers
There have grown up on the western plains of Canada a number
of large cities and a great many small villages and towns. These are
the direct results of a process of civilization dependent upon the
fertile soil from which vast quantities of wheat are reaped each year.
Just before harvest the sea of grain extends as far as the eye can
see. The first settlers built their little cabins, bought as much seed
grain as was available, and planted it; doing nearly all of the work
themselves. Improved methods of planting and harvesting have
added thousands of acres to the wheat-fields. Railroads have been
built to carry the wheat to the great shipping and milling centers.
Cities such as Winnipeg have grown rich through being the
connecting-links between the farmer, with his field and his wheat,
and the breakfast tables all over the civilized world.
Our Daily Bread. The development of the grain-belt of western
Canada is similar to that which has taken place in Minnesota, the
Dakotas, and other Northwestern states. In California, Oregon,
Washington, Oklahoma, and Kansas we find great areas devoted to
the growing of wheat. The wheat that is put on the market is of two
general varieties: what is known as winter wheat sown in the
autumn, and spring wheat that is sown early in the spring. These
great wheat areas have been called the bread-basket of the Western
world. Few of us realized the importance of wheat to the life of the
world until Mr. Hoover began to tell us that we must save it by
having wheatless days and by eating more corn bread and war-
breads of various kinds. The total annual consumption of wheat is
974,485,000 bushels, and of this amount the United States
produced, in 1917, 678,000,000 bushels. The needs of the world
have been figured as calling for about 20 per cent. advance upon all
that is available under normal conditions.
Not many of us who live in cities stop to consider the man who
made possible the roll or the piece of white bread that we eat with
our meal. We forget the long day’s work, the painstaking toil, and
the grim struggle of the pioneers who first worked the land. We
seldom think of the planting and reaping year after year, the
construction of transportation, the building of warehouses, the
venturing of money in mill-building, until finally were developed not
only the vast farms but also cities, railroads, wheat-carrying
steamship lines, elevators, and the mills that go to make up the
great bread-making industry. Only when the war interfered with the
processes and threatened to cut off the supply of wheat, did we
begin to realize how important the wheat farm is to the very life of
the nation. If bread is the staff of life, wheat is the chief material out
of which that staff is made. Other grains when used for bread, as we
are forced to use them to-day, are all substitutes for wheat.
Press Illustrating Service.
Not many of us stop to consider the
man who made possible the white
bread that we eat at our daily meals.
The Cane-Sugar Makers. If we travel in a direction a little
east of south from the wheat-fields of Canada, we come to the great
plantations of Louisiana and Mississippi where sugar-cane is grown.
Here we find people of a different type living under different
conditions. Sugar-cane is grown in fields that have been won from
the swamps by hard toil. In this rich soil, cultivated and ridged by
the plow, the sugar-cane is laid in long parallel rows. After it has
been buried a few days it begins to sprout, and from each one of the
joints on the stalk of cane there grows up a new plant. These are
tilled and come to maturity in October. The stalks grow from eight to
fifteen feet high and at harvest-time are cut down and then stripped
of their leaves by the workers, who take them up in their hands and
with a flat knife slash off the long, bladelike leaves, leaving them
clean and smooth. The stalks are piled in rows to be picked up later
and put into wagons, taken to the siding, loaded into freight-cars,
and hauled to the mill, where they are crushed between rollers, and
the juice pressed out. The liquid so obtained is then put into large
vats and evaporated, leaving brown sugar and molasses. The crude
or brown sugar is sent to the refinery and passed through various
processes until we get the white sugar that comes to our tables.
Practically all of the work on the sugar plantation is done by
Negroes. These people live in small cabins and work for a very small
wage, ranging from 75 cents to a $1.25 a day. Their tiny houses,
which are usually whitewashed and surrounded by a little plot of
ground, are the property of the owners of the plantation. The Negro
is expected to buy everything from the company’s stores. The prices
are high and it is rarely that one finds a family that is not in a
perpetual state of debt to the owner of the plantation.
When the migration of Negroes from the South to the North
began some few years ago, a great concern was felt in many
quarters as to what the result would be. A meeting was held in one
of the Southern cities and the Negroes were invited to be present.
One of the Negroes said: “If you let me tell you what I think, it is
about like this. We-all have been working here for about 75 cents to
$1 a day, but we never see the time when we have any money of
our own. It takes more than we make for the things we use. Folks in
Iowa, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Massachusetts offer us $15 to $18 a
week, tickets for ourselves and our families, and a free house to live
in with two weeks’ rations provided and in the house. Now none of
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