Chapter 6 No.6

Labor Conditions

The laborer employed in the manufacturing enterprises of the South, whether white or black, is native born and Southern born. Sporadic efforts to import industrial workers from Europe have not been successful and there has been no considerable influx of workers from other sections of the Union. A few skilled workers have come, but the rank and file in all the factories and shops were born in the State in which they work or in a neighboring State. Speaking broadly, those dealing with complicated machines are white, while those engaged in simpler processes are white or black. We find, therefore, a preponderance of whites in the textile industries and in the shops producing articles from wood and iron, while the blacks are found in the lumber industry, in the tobacco factories, in the mines, and at the blast furnaces. There are some skilled workmen among the negroes, especially in tobacco, but generally they furnish the unskilled labor.

The textile industry employs the greatest number of operatives, or at least concentrates them more. From the farms or the mountain coves, or only one generation removed from that environment, they have been drawn to the mills by various motives. The South is still sparsely settled, and the life of the tenant farmer or the small landowner and his family is often lonely. Until recently, roads were almost universally bad, especially in winter, and a visit to town or even to a neighbor was no small undertaking. Attendance at the country church, which sometimes has services only once a month, or a trip to the country store on Saturday afternoon with an occasional visit to the county-seat furnish almost the only opportunity for social intercourse. Work in a cotton mill promised not merely fair wages but what was coveted even more-companionship.

During the period of most rapid growth in the textile industry, agriculture, or at least agriculture as practiced by this class, was unprofitable. During the decade from 1890 to 1900 the price of all kinds of farm produce was exceedingly low, and the returns in money were very small. Even though a farmer more farsighted than the average did produce the greater part of his food on the farm, his "money crop"-cotton or tobacco-hardly brought the cost of production. The late D. A. Tompkins, of Charlotte, North Carolina, a close student of cotton, came to the conclusion, about 1910, that cotton had been produced at a loss in the South considered as a whole, at least since the Civil War. Many farmers, however, were in a vicious economic circle and could not escape. If they had bought supplies at the country store at inflated prices, the crops sometimes were insufficient to pay the store accounts, and the balance was charged against the next year's crop. Men who did not go heavily into debt often handled less than $200 in cash in a year, and others found difficulty in obtaining money even for their small taxes. To such men the stories of $15 to $25 earned at a mill by a single family in a week seemed almost fabulous. The whole family worked on the farm, as farmers' families have always done, and it seemed the natural thing that, in making a change, all should work in the mill.

To those families moved by loneliness and those other families driven by an honest ambition to better their economic condition were added the families of the incapable, the shiftless, the disabled, and the widowed. In a few cases men came to the mills deliberately intending to exploit their children, to live a life of ease upon their earnings. There were places for the younger members of all these families, but a man with hands calloused and muscles stiffened by the usual round of farm work could seldom learn a new trade after the age of forty, no matter how willing. Often a cotton mill is the only industrial enterprise in the village, and the number of common laborers needed is limited. Too many of the fathers who had come to the village intending themselves to work gradually sank into the parasite class and sat around the village store while their children worked.

During the early expansion of the industry, the wages paid were low compared with New England standards, but they were sufficient to draw the people from the farms and to hold them at the mills. In considering the wages paid in Southern mills, this fact must never be forgotten. There was always an abundance of land to which the mill people could return at will and wrest some sort of living from the soil. For them to go back to the land was not a venture full of unknown hazards. They had been born on the land and even yet are usually only one generation removed, and the land cries out for tenants and laborers. It must also be remembered that though the wages measured in money were low, the cost of living was likewise low. Rents were trifling, if indeed the tenements were not occupied free; the cost of fuel and food was low; and many expenses necessary in New England were superfluous in the South.

With the increasing number of mills and the rising price of agricultural products, the supply of industrial laborers became less abundant, and higher wages have been necessary to draw recruits from the farms until at present the rate of wages approaches that of New England. The purchasing power is probably greater for, while the cost of living has greatly increased in the South, it is still lower than in other parts of the country. This does not mean that the average Southern wage is equal to the New England average. While there is a growing body of highly skilled operatives in the South, the rapid growth of the industry has made necessary the employment of an overwhelmingly large number of untrained or partially trained operatives, who cannot tend so many spindles or looms as the New England operatives. Again, much yarn in the North is spun upon mules, while in the South these machines are uncommon. For certain purposes, this soft but fine and even yarn is indispensable. Only strong, highly skilled operatives, usually men, can tend these machines. The earnings of such specialists cannot fairly be compared with the amounts received by ordinary girl spinners on ring frames. Again the weekly wage of an expert weaver upon fancy cloth cannot justly be compared with that of a Southern operative upon plain goods. Where the work is comparable, however, the rates per unit of product in North and South are not far apart.

From the standpoint of the employer it may be possible that the wages per unit of product are higher in some Southern mills than in some New England establishments. In the case of an expensive machine, an operative who gets from it only sixty to seventy-five per cent of its possible production may receive higher wages, or what amounts to the same thing, may produce at a higher cost per unit than a more highly paid individual who more nearly approaches the theoretical maximum production of the machine. There is much expensive machinery in the Southern mills. In fact, on the whole, the machinery for the work in hand is better than in New England, because it is newer. The recently built Southern mills have been equipped with all the latest machinery, while many of the older Northern mills have not felt able to scrap machines which, though antiquated, were still running well. However, the advantage in having a better machine is not fully realized if it is not run to its full capacity. Both spinning frames and looms have generally been run at a somewhat slower speed in the South than in the North. This fact was noted by that careful English observer, T. M. Young: "Whether the cost per unit of efficiency is greater in the South than in the North is hard to say. But for the automatic loom, the North would, I think, have the advantage. Perhaps the truth is that in some parts of the South where the industry has been longest established and a generation has been trained to the work, Southern labor is actually as well as nominally cheaper than Northern; whilst in other districts, where many mills have sprung up all at once amongst a sparse rural population, wholly untrained, the Southern labor at present procurable is really dearer than the Northern." 1 This does not mean that Southern labor is permanently inferior; but a highly skilled body of operatives requires years for its development.

1 T. M. Young, The American Cotton Industry, p. 113.

In the beginning there were no restrictions upon hours of work, age, or sex of operatives, or conditions of employment. Every mill was a law unto itself. Hours were long, often seventy-two and in a few cases seventy-five a week. Wages were often paid in scrip good at the company store but redeemable in cash only at infrequent intervals, if indeed any were then presented. Yet, if the prices at the store were sometimes exorbitant, they were likely to be less than the operatives had been accustomed to pay when buying on credit while living on the farms. The moral conditions at some of these mills were also bad, since the least desirable element of the rural population was the first to go to the mills. Such conditions, however, were not universal. Some of the industrial communities were clean and self-respecting, but conditions depended largely upon the individual in charge of the mill.

As the years went on and more and more mills were built, the demand for operatives increased. To draw them from the farms, it was necessary to improve living conditions in the mill villages and to increase wages. Today the mill communities are generally clean, and care is taken to exclude immoral individuals. Payment of wages in cash became the rule. The company store persisted, but chiefly as a matter of convenience to the operatives; and in prices it met and often cut below those charged in other stores in the vicinity. The hours of labor were reduced gradually. Seventy-two became the maximum, but most mills voluntarily ran sixty-nine or even sixty-six. The employment of children continued, though some individual employers reduced it as much as possible without seriously crippling their forces. This was a real danger so long as there were no legal restrictions on child labor. Children worked upon the farm as children have done since farming began, and the average farmer who moved to the mill was unable to see the difference between working on the farm and working in the mill. In fact, to his mind, work in the mill seemed easier than exposure on the farm to the summer sun and the winter cold.

Men who were not conscious of deliberately exploiting their children urged the manager of the mill to employ a child of twelve or even ten. If the manager refused, he was threatened with the loss of the whole family. A family containing good operatives could always find employment elsewhere, and perhaps the manager of another mill would not be so scrupulous. So the children went into the mill and often stayed there. If illiterate when they entered, they remained illiterate. The number of young children, however, was always exaggerated by the muckrakers, though unquestionably several hundred children ten to twelve years old, and possibly a few younger, were employed years ago. The nature of the work permits the employment of operatives under sixteen only in the spinning room; the girls, many of them older than sixteen, mend the broken ends of the yarn at the spinning frames, and the boys remove the full bobbins and fix empty ones in their stead. The possible percentage of workers under sixteen in a spinning mill varies from thirty-five to forty-five. In a mill which weaves the yarn into cloth, the percentage is greatly reduced, as practically no one under sixteen can be profitably employed in a weaving room.

Public sentiment against the employment of children became aroused only slowly. Crusades against such industrial customs are usually led by organized labor, by professional philanthropists, by sentimentalists, and by socialistic agitators. The mill operatives of the South have shown little disposition to organize themselves and, in fact, have protested against interference with their right of contract. The South is only just becoming rich enough to support professional philanthropists, and an outlet for sentimentality has been found in other directions. There has been as yet too little disproportion of wealth among the Southern whites to excite acute jealousy on this ground alone, and the operatives have earned much more money in the mills than was possible on the farms. In comparatively few cases does one man, or one family, own a controlling interest in a mill. The ownership is usually scattered in small holdings, and there is seldom a Cr?sus to excite envy. This wide ownership has had its effect upon the general attitude of the more influential citizens and hindered the development of active disapproval.

The chief reason for the inertia in labor matters, however, has been the fact that the South has thought, and to a large extent still thinks, in terms of agriculture. It has not yet developed an industrial philosophy. Agriculture is individualistic, and Thomas Jefferson's ideas upon the functions and limitations of government still have influence. Regulation of agricultural labor would seem absurd, and the difference between a family, with or without hired help, working in comparative freedom on a farm, and scores of individuals working at the same tasks, day after day, under more or less tension was slow to take shape in the popular consciousness. It was obvious that the children were not actually physically abused; almost unanimously they preferred work to school, just as the city boy does today; and the children themselves opposed most strongly any proposed return to the farm. The task of the reformers-for in every State there were earnest men and women who saw the evils of unrestricted child labor-was difficult. It was the same battle which had been fought in England and later in New England, when their textile industries were passing through the same stage of development. Every student of industrial history realizes that conditions in the South were neither so hard nor were the hours so long as they had been in England and New England.

The attempt to apply pressure from without had little influence. Indeed it is possible that the resentment occasioned by the exaggerated stories of conditions really hindered the progress of restrictive legislation, just as the bitter denunciation of the Southern attitude toward the negro has increased conservatism. Every one knew that the pitiful stories of abuse or oppression were untrue. No class of laborers anywhere is more independent than Southern mill operatives. It has been a long while since a family of even semi-efficient operatives has been compelled to ask for employment. Runners for other mills, upon the slightest hint of disaffection, are quick to seek them out and even to advance the expense of moving and money to pay any debts. It is well known that families move for the slightest reason or for no reason at all except a vague unrest. Self-interest, if nothing else, would restrain an overseer from an act which might send a whole family or perhaps half a dozen families from his mill.

Gradually the States imposed limitations upon age of employment, hours of labor, and night work for women and children, which practically meant limiting or abolishing night work altogether. These restrictions were slight at first, and the provisions for their enforcement were inadequate, but succeeding legislatures increased them. Mild compulsory attendance laws kept some of the children in school and out of the mill. A more or less substantial body of labor legislation was gradually growing up, when state regulation was stopped by the action of the Federal Government. Since the first Federal Child Labor Act was declared unconstitutional, several States have strengthened laws previously existing, and have further reduced the hours of labor.

Until comparatively recently whatever provision was made for the social betterment of the operatives depended upon the active manager of the particular mill. Some assumed a patriarchal attitude and attempted to provide those things which they thought the operatives should have. Others took little or no responsibility, except perhaps to make a contribution to all the churches represented in the community. This practice is almost universal, and if the term of the public school is short, it is usually extended by a contribution from the mill treasury. During recent years much more has been done. Partly from an awakening sense of social responsibility and partly from a realization that it is good business to do so, the bigger mills have made large expenditures to improve the condition of their operatives. They have provided reading rooms and libraries, have opened many recreation rooms and playgrounds, and have furnished other facilities for entertainment. Some of the mills have athletic fields, and a few support semi-professional baseball teams. At some mills community buildings have been erected, which sometimes contain, in addition to public rooms, baths, and a swimming pool, an office for a visiting nurse and rooms which an adviser in domestic science may use for demonstration. The older women are hard to teach, but not a few of the girls take an interest in the work. Nothing is more needed than instruction in domestic science. The operatives spend a large proportion of their income upon food-for the rent they pay is trifling-but the items are not always well chosen, and the cooking is often bad. To the monotonous dietary to which they were accustomed on the farms they add many luxuries to be had in the mill town, but these are often ruined by improper preparation. Owing to this lack of domestic skill many operatives apparently suffer from malnutrition, though they spend more than enough money to supply an abundance of nourishing food.

Not many years ago the improvidence of the mill operatives was proverbial. Wages were generally spent as fast as they were earned, and often extravagantly. Little attempt was made to cultivate gardens or to make yards attractive, with the result that a factory village with its monotonous rows of unkempt houses was a depressing sight. The "factory people," many of whom had been nomad tenant farmers seldom living long in the same place, had never thought of attempting to beautify their surroundings, and the immediate neighborhood of the mill to which they moved was often bare and unlovely and afforded little encouragement to beauty.

The improvident family is still common, and many ugly mill villages yet exist, but one who has watched the development of the cotton industry in the South for twenty-five years has seen great changes in these respects. Thousands of families are saving money today. Some buy homes; others set up one member of the family in a small business; and a few buy farms. More than seventy-five families have left one mill village during the last ten years to buy farms with their savings, but this instance is rather unusual; comparatively few families return to the land. Efforts have been made to develop a community spirit, and the results are perceptible. Many mill villages are now really attractive. Scores of mills have had their grounds laid out by a landscape architect, and a mill covered with ivy and surrounded by well-kept lawns and flower beds is no longer exceptional. In scores of mill communities annual prizes are offered for the best vegetable garden, the most attractive premises, and the best kept premises from a sanitary standpoint.

The Southern operative is too close to the soil to be either socialistic in his views or collectivistic in his attitude. The labor agitator has found sterile soil for his propaganda. Yet signs of a dawning class consciousness are appearing. As always, the first manifestation is opposition to the dominant political party or faction. This has not yet, however, been translated into any considerable number of Republican votes, except in North Carolina. In the other States, the votes of the factory operatives seem to be cast in something of a block, in the primary elections. The demagogic Blease is said to have found much of his support in South Carolina in the factory villages.

Employees in other industries show so much diversity that few general statements can be made concerning them. The workers in the furniture factories-who are chiefly men, as few women or children can be employed in this industry-are few in number compared with the male employees in the cotton mills and, except in the case of a few towns, can hardly be discussed as a group at all. Both whites and negroes are employed, but the white man is usually in the responsible post, though a few negroes tend important machines. The general average of education and intelligence among the whites is higher here than in the cotton mills, and wages are likewise higher. Conditions in other establishments making articles of wood are practically the same.

Lumber mills range from a small neighborhood sawmill with a handful of employees to the great organizations which push railroads into the deep woods and strip a mountain side or devastate the lowlands. Such organizations require a great number of laborers, whom they usually feed and to whom they issue from a "commissary" various necessary articles which are charged against the men's wages. As the work is hard, it has not been at all uncommon for employees who had received large advances to decamp. The companies, however, took advantage of various laws similar to those mentioned in the chapter on agriculture to have these deserters arrested and to have them, when convicted, "hired out" to the very company or employer from whom they had fled. Conditions resulting from this practice in some of the States of the Lower South became so scandalous about 1905 that numerous individuals were tried in the courts and were convicted of holding employees in a state of peonage. In 1911 the Supreme Court of the United States declared unconstitutional the law of Alabama regarding contract of service. 1 This law regarded the nonfulfillment of a contract on which an advance had been made as prima facie evidence of intent to defraud and thus gave employers immense power over their employees. Conditions have therefore undoubtedly improved since the peonage trials, but the lumber industry is one in which the labor has apparently everywhere been casual, migratory, and lawless.

1 Bailey vs. Alabama, 219 U. S., 219.

The manufacture of tobacco shows as much diversity of labor conditions as the lumber industry. There are small establishments with little machinery which manufacture plug and smoking tobacco and are open only a few months in the year, as well as those which cover half a dozen city blocks. In the smaller factories the majority of the laborers are black, but in the larger establishments both negroes and whites are employed. Sometimes they do the same sort of work on opposite sides of the same room. In some departments negro and white men work side by side, while in others only whites or only negroes are found. The more complicated machines are usually tended by whites, and the filling and inspection of containers is ordinarily done by white girls, who are also found in large numbers in the cigarette factories. Not many years ago the tobacco industry was supposed to belong to the negro, but with the introduction of machinery he has lost his monopoly, though on account of the expansion of the industry the total number of negroes employed is greater than ever before.

In the smaller factories labor is usually paid by the day, but in the larger establishments every operation possible is on a piecework basis. These operations are so related in a series that a slacker feels the displeasure of those who follow him and depend upon him for a supply of material. In the smaller factories the work is regarded somewhat in the light of a summer holiday, as the tasks are simple and the operatives talk and sing at their work. This social element largely disappears, however, with the introduction of machinery. As might be expected in a labor force composed of men, women, and children, both white and black, with some engaged in manual labor and others tending complicated machines, there is little solidarity. An organized strike including any large percentage of the force in a tobacco factory is a practical impossibility. Those engaged in a particular process may strike and in consequence tie up the processes depending upon them, but any sort of industrial friction is uncommon. The general level of wages has been steadily rising, and among the negroes the tobacco workers are the aristocrats of the wage earners and are content with their situation. Since the larger factories are almost invariably in the cities, the homes of the workers are scattered and not collected in communities as around the cotton mills.

Experiments have been made in employing negro operatives in the textile industry, so far with little success, though the capacity of the negro for such employment has not yet been disproved. Though several cotton mills which made the experiment failed, in every case there were difficulties which might have caused a similar failure even with white operatives. Negroes have been employed successfully in some hosiery mills and in a few small silk mills. The increasing scarcity of labor, especially during the Great War, has led to the substitution of negroes for whites in a number of knitting mills. Some successful establishments are conducted with negro labor but the labor force is either all white or all black except that white overseers are always, or nearly always employed.

An important hindrance in the way of the success of negroes in these occupations is their characteristic dislike of regularity and punctuality. As the negro has acquired these virtues to some extent at least in the tobacco industry, there seems to be no reason to suppose that in time he may not succeed also in textiles, in which the work is not more difficult than in other tasks of which negroes have proved themselves capable. So far the whites have not resented the occasional introduction of black operatives into the textile industry. If the negroes become firmly established while the demand for operatives continues to be greater than the supply, race friction on this account is unlikely, but if they are introduced in the future as strikebreakers, trouble is sure to arise. In the mines, blast furnaces, oil mills, and fertilizer factories the negroes do the hardest and most unpleasant tasks, work which in the North is done by recent immigrants.

The negroes are almost entirely unorganized and are likely to remain so for a long time. Few negroes accumulate funds enough to indulge in the luxury of a strike, and they have shown little tendency to organize or support unions. However, their devotion to their lodges shows the loyalty of which they are capable, and their future organization is not beyond the range of possibility. Generally the South has afforded little encouragement to organized labor. Even the white workers, except in the cities and in a few skilled trades, have shown until recently little tendency to organize. In the towns and villages they are not sharply differentiated from the other elements of the population. They look upon themselves as citizens rather than as members of the laboring class. Except in a few of the larger towns one does not hear of "class conflict"; and the "labor vote," when by any chance a Socialist or a labor candidate is nominated, is not large enough to be a factor in the result.

During 1918 and 1919, however, renewed efforts to organize Southern labor met with some success particularly in textile and woodworking establishments, though the tobacco industry and public utilities were likewise affected. The efforts of employers to prevent the formation of unions led to lockouts and strikes during which there was considerable disorder and some bloodshed. Communities which had known of such disputes only from hearsay stood amazed. The workers generally gained recognition of their right to organize, and their success may mean greater industrial friction in the future.