Recollections of the Twentieth Century

IN the festivities by which the advent of the twenty-first century was signalized a prominent part was assigned to the New York Historical Society. On the concluding day of the general celebration this society held a session in its new building on Palisade Avenue, near the western end of the Englewood bridge across the Hudson. The spectacular part of the celebration had come on the earlier days, when, with the booming of guns and the sound of inspiriting music, the people had given themselves over to a carnival of rejoicing. There is certainly enough in our present condition to make our gladness overflow, and to fill us with the hope that, though the carnival is over, the spirit of laughter and song may abide with us through the years that are coming.

Processions moving rapidly on trains of electric cars had traversed the elevated streets and many of the bridges spanning the East River and the North River, till the people living between the Hackensack and the remote confines of Brooklyn or the Great South Bay had had a chance to see them. Among the features of these processions were a few companies of men armed with rifles, and clad in such uniforms as were worn by military regiments of the year 1901. This unfamiliar sight awakened in the minds of the younger spectators such curiosity as their grandfathers had felt when they examined collections of antique armor ; but the quick - firing cannon and the machine guns made them shudder, by showing them to what purpose much of the ingenuity of our people was formerly devoted. The strangest commingling of horror and patriotic enthusiasm was caused by the nautical parade, in which, between passenger vessels so vast as to seem like floating cities, were rusty specimens of battleships of the last century, insignificant in size, but diabolical in their devastating power. What a demon must such a thing have been in action ! Yet, in spite of all that was repulsive about it, the sight of it warmed the blood into a patriotic glow. The stately merchantmen delight us, for they have carried the wares that have given us a peaceful dominance among nations ; but it is the demons of the sea, with their guns and their fighting flags, that wake a thrill in the heart and bring moisture to the eyes. Though we no longer fight, the martial spirit is still in us.

Two evenings were given over to illuminations, and there were fireworks so skillfully devised that they painted in the sky pictures illustrating the history of the twentieth century. There were also banquets innumerable, enlivened by song and story. When the time for processions and banquets had passed, a day was devoted to serious history and reminiscence, and of this part of the jubilee the Historical Society took the direction. Papers were read in the rooms of the society, and, thanks to the space-annihilating power that comes by the electrical transmission of sound, they were heard by audiences in all parts of the city. Historians described the primitive way in which in 1901 our fathers were living, and told what New York was like when its streets were only one story high, and its buildings were from ten to thirty. They threw on screens moving pictures that showed an actual business avenue of that period filled with a tangled mass of electrical cars and vehicles drawn mostly by horses, with a throng of pedestrians, in peril of life and limb, trying to make their way over the crossings. They recounted the steps by which this condition was relieved: the elevating, first of the sidewalks, then of the shop fronts and the entrances of dwellings, and finally of the entire roadways, — changes that ended by converting the old streets into roomy tunnels, and translating the whole life of the people, in a literal way, to a higher plane. They amused their hearers by quoting the objections to these changes that were at first offered, — the prediction, for example, that the alterations would make the streets dark and unsightly, instead of doing what they actually have done, and putting the darkness and ugliness beneath the level on which we live, giving us more of light, air, beauty, and comparative quiet than the city has ever enjoyed since it was merely a Dutch village.

Sociologists described the transforming of the slums into abodes of happiness and health by the building of good dwellings, and of parks and playgrounds many stories in height, with their frames of massive steel, and with their sides inclosed with glass in winter, and in summer shaded by awnings and adorned with shrubs and vines which, drooping as they do over the outer framework, have given to the structures the familiar name of “ hanging gardens.”

Mechanical engineers told us of the clumsy machines that were in use at the beginning of the twentieth century, — of the amount of watching and coddling that most of them required, and, in particular, of the wasteful way in which motive power was obtained for them. It seems incredible that power was once largely procured by burning coal under steam boilers, a process that wasted nine tenths of the potential energy of this invaluable substance, which should have been saved for smelting ores and heating buildings. Yet this was quite in harmony with the reckless manner in which our predecessors used up the other resources of the earth, — forests, fisheries, reservoirs of oil and gas, and the loam itself on which the supply of food depended. Showing us pictures of steam engines with their devouring furnaces, the narrators told us of the introduction of newer and better ways of obtaining mechanical power, by utilizing, first waterfalls, then waves of the sea, and finally the electric currents which are generated within the earth itself, — currents which, when they are not carried along wires and through storage batteries, reveal their presence in thunderstorms. Charging a battery from such a source is like dipping water from the sea. Any one can now have a reservoir full of mechanical energy for driving the larger machines, and he can, as it were, fill a canteen with it for driving the power tools which he can carry in his hands.

The historians showed us views in which old-time artisans were represented as working with hand implements in a painfully slow manner, and then, by way of contrast, threw on the screens moving pictures of modern carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, etc., with the powerful but light machines which they carry with them, creating products with a rapidity that suggests the work of the genii of Arabian stories. There were representations of farmers of the olden times, following the plough that cut a single furrow, and was drawn by horses that ate up no inconsiderable part of the farmer’s produce; and these were followed by representations of farmers of our own time, with their gangs of rotary spades doing a twentyfold labor at a trivial cost. What do we not owe to omnipresent and nearly gratuitous electrical energy ! It transports us, lights us, works in a thousand ways for us, and, by the productive power which it imparts to human labor, brings another sort of light and sweetness into the lives of our people.

Among the papers which were read was one that was devoted to the subject of aerial navigation. It recounted the early experiments in this art, and amused the listeners by recalling the fact that there was once an expectation that ships of the air would be used chiefly in warfare, — as if nations bound together by such economic ties as now unite the countries of the world would ever disrupt the great industrial organism and begin fighting. There was a paper of thrilling interest which recalled the degeneracy of democratic government in all large cities at the beginning of the twentieth century, and contrasted it with the genuine selfgovernment which now prevails.

The concluding meeting of the society, held in the evening, was devoted mainly to personal recollections of the century, given in an offhand way by men whose lives had extended through much of it, and whose participation in the changes that they described had been extensive enough to enable them to speak from direct knowledge. The concluding address was made by Otis Livingstone, Esq., editor of the Register of Progress, who was exceptionally familiar with the social and economic changes which had taken place within the last hundred years. He had been asked to tell about the movements which seemed to him, in the retrospect, to have contributed most toward the prosperity that the people of America are now enjoying. Interest in the events recounted was heightened by an interest in the personality of the narrator ; for he was eighty-two years old, and had had an honorable share in guiding his country through the crisis by which she has made her way to wealth, harmony, and a sound political life. The address is here printed as its author delivered it.

MR. LIVINGSTONE’S NARRATIVE.

Mr. President, and Members of the New York Historical Society, — I have yielded to your wish, and shall try briefly to tell how, out of what it was, industrially and politically, in 1901, our country has become what it is to-day. For a hundred years America has been acting a romantic drama, the plot of which no man invented. In the course of it she has gone through as great vicissitudes as a dramatist could devise, and reached as happy a dénouement as a reader would desire. Man himself has been improved by the course of events, but society has been completely transformed. Marvelous was the shape out of which it grew, and the forms which, at different stages, it took. Startling has been the rapidity of the transformations ; for in a life of ordinary length I have seen the being that we call Society take its present shape from one that was as far below it as a tree-climbing ape is inferior to a cultured man. Very unlike the slow evolution of an animal type has been this development of modern society ; and indeed, it seems, as I recall it, more like those changes of form through which ogres go in nursery tales. When the great consolidations of capital and of labor were made, the organism took one form ; and when a new democracy appeared, and made the consolidations harmless and beneficial, it took another.

These changes were natural ones, and no particular men can claim the credit of producing them; and yet the state has taken a hand in the development, and men have been able to guide the state. Democracy itself seemed at one time to be a vanishing institution, and the struggle which rescued it put the reformers under a strain like that which a runner undergoes in the final spurt of a race.

The nineteenth century was once called the age of steam, and the twentieth the age of electricity ; but to me the last century seems to be rather the era of organization. It was the period in which were formed those consolidations of labor and of capital which have enabled us to get out of electrical energy and automatic machinery more nearly the full service which they are capable of rendering.

Often have I asked myself whether the introduction of machines was of more importance to working humanity than the change which caused the machines to be used by highly organized working forces. Perhaps it is because the latter change has fallen largely under my direct view, or perhaps it is because I cannot help estimating improvements in the form of society itself as greater than improvements in its implements, that I consider the social gains that have come during the twentieth century greater than the mechanical gains which came in the nineteenth. Even our tools are better than they were, since they now go of themselves and with little overseeing. In the new form of an old saying, “We touch the button, and they do the rest; ” yet there is nothing in this that is as wonderful as the way in which society has shaped itself so as to get the full advantage of the mechanical progress. The machines that work so unerringly, like genii of the lamp, do not confine their favors to the persons who own them, for they enrich every one, and particularly the workers themselves; and if we gauge wealth by the comforts a man can have, a laborer may now be as rich as a prosperous employer was a century or two ago. Having to work does not now mean poverty, and even being poor does not mean forced idleness and want.

Efforts at political reformation marked the beginning of the twentieth century. Honest men tried to band together in numbers sufficient to break the power of bad political leaders, or “ bosses,” as they were termed, — the blackmailing agents who handled great sums of money paid either by evil doers who wanted to buy immunity, or by corporations which were doing a lawful business, but were attacked by officials themselves. Very sinister was then the relation of business to politics; and though the effort to purify the government finally succeeded, this success did not come till the middle of the century, when industry itself had been transformed and a new democracy had arisen.

The problems connected with the consolidated corporations were settled early in the century, but graver issues connected with trade unions continued to harass the public till near the middle of it, when these bodies took their true position in the state. It was trusts and laborers’ unions which, working together in a normal way, brought in the new democracy. The United States has become a country where the relations of classes are unusually fraternal, however rare was brotherly conduct during the transitional period. There is even an approach to equality, if the test be the amount of actual comfort to which different classes attain ; for though some men have a billion dollars apiece, and some have nothing, yet every man who keeps his health and works efficiently can live on a high plane of enjoyment, and can usually get about as much out of life as does the average multimillionaire.

The country has now had many years in which to get the benefit of the harmony between labor and capital which finally came, and it is in this period that the greater mechanical inventions have been made and applied. Those of us who worked for the social gains may therefore congratulate ourselves on having ushered in the reign of automatic machinery and gratuitous motive powers, since these things would not have come as early as they did if we had not brought labor and capital into friendly relations, and made it worth while for ingenious men to give their time to invention. We gave these men their chance by making a market for their wares.

Daring the latter part of the century a special kind of popular education has had a transforming effect; for it is in this period that the science of economics has been well taught in the common schools. Every boy of fifteen years now knows what, in the earlier decades, many men who were directing affairs did not know. What evil would not have come if certain patriotic citizens could have had their way ! They innocently did their best to make the ship that carried us go on the rocks.

If I were to describe in a phrase the chief gain that has been made, I should call it the democratizing of the institution of property. We had to make it something that should benefit all people and be cherished by all. I recall now with pleasure the manner in which the men with whom I was associated tested everything, and found it good or bad according as it was democratic or aristocratic. Massed capital had seemed to most people aristocratic; and yet it was in the power of the state to make it quite otherwise, and when my active life began it was rapidly becoming a democratic agency. The power to mass any number of holdings in one has invited saving on the part of working people, and has helped to stop the strife between labor and capital. It has even brought both of the contending interests into line with the interests of the general public. This has come, however, with the growth of a government that is truly of and by the people ; for what with so-called “ representatives ” making laws, and bosses choosing the representatives, there was little enough of this a hundred years ago. Astonishing as it seems to us now, even the referendum was not in use, except in a few special ways, and legislators were well worth buying, since there was no regular appeal to be taken from their plundering acts.

In my view, all the lesser changes of the century merge themselves in a few great ones. As the streams that appear in a bay at low tide are swallowed up and lost when the tide comes in, so it has been with the reforming of the tariff, the purifying of the police administration, and the breaking of the power of political machines. Big enough, indeed, were these achievements, and worthy to be the object of any man’s life ; but they were included in the great tide of reform that has democratized property, made it secure, and made it the means of putting two hundred millions of lives on a level of comfort that was dreamed of, but not expected as a reality at a date much short of the millennium.

Machinery and electrical energy would never have served us as they have done if we had not made ourselves ready to receive their ministrations. They are discriminating agents, and work reluctantly for a society that is at war with itself. We had to solve the trust problem and the problem of democratic government before the mechanical powers were ready to enlist heartily in our service. When these social issues were settled, invention sprang forward like an unleashed greyhound.

But how am I to tell about these social transformations ? Their complexity appalls me ; for three great movements so interlaced one another that each was dependent on the other two. The trade union did not develop independently of the trust, and the two did not go their way without reference to the course of popular government.

I can easily tell of the gradual change that took place in the mode of dealing with great corporations. This, in itself, is a simple story. It is not so easy to tell how trusts, trade unions, and political parties, all, as it were, thrown by fate into one caldron, brewed anything but the “ toil and trouble ” which the men of my early days had to undergo in trying to manage them. It was coming to be known, even in the early days of the century, that the natural reward of labor is its product. The wild man of the forest kept the fish that he caught, the game that he killed, and the fruits that he gathered ; and the man who works in a modern mill is under a law that causes him to take the fruit of his own labor as his pay. There are ways of ascertaining what this product is. There is no need of my telling any of you how the amount of it is tested, and how, where competition rules, the wages that the workman gets are made to conform to this amount. Familiar as all this is to you, it was, like many another economic truth, hidden from the mass of men when the problem of monopoly first became serious. The essential honesty of the wages system — the fact that when it works well it gives a man what he produces — is the fact that now makes every one friendly to it. With many men it was still an unrecognized truth when the century came in; and monopolies were then developing at a rate that bade fair to make it no longer a practical fact at all. They threatened to nullify every law that required for its working a true state of competition. “ What if the wages system is an honest one whenever competition rules ? It is no longer ruling.” Such was the answer of practical men to the economic theorist. There was a vanishing faith in the soundness of our system, because there was no assurance offered that competition itself could continue.

There was reason enough for much of this skepticism. Monopolies were actually developing, and they were perverting the plan of distribution. Some classes were oppressing others. Through all the struggles of organized capital, on the one hand, and organized labor, on the other, there ran an effort on the part of a consolidated power to gain something at the cost of the community. The trust wanted a scarcity price for its wares, and the trade union, by keeping down the number of its members, and by fighting off non-union labor from its field, tided to get a scarcity rate of pay for the labor which it controlled. Neither organization was wholly successful, but together they were taxing the community at a dearer and dearer rate.

The two kinds of combination worked, as it were, from opposite ends of the line. The trust shut up mills in order to make goods dear, and the labor union enforced rules which made the goods dear and caused the shutting up of mills. The public had the bills to pay, and workmen who were not in unions paid the largest share of them. These men found their spheres of labor overcrowded by those who were forced out of other fields. Their pay itself was reduced, and high prices of the goods that they bought with their pay taxed them still further.

Not noble, certainly, is a policy that has on it the taint of monopoly. Competition is indeed selfish, but it develops a rivalry in serving the public, since the man who offers a product more cheaply than another confers a larger benefit on the people for a given return. Cheap wheat feeds us well, cheap woolen goods clothe us well, and cheap transportation gives us, on easy terms, pleasure, health, and education. These fruits of competition take the ignoble quality out of it. What is then to be said about the reverse of competition ? How ought we to have regarded the restricting of production, the raising of prices, and the pushing of workers into crowded fields ? It means feeding, clothing, and educating the people ill. Strange indeed must such practices seem to you who have lived only in a time of economic freedom. They were once common ; and every act of this kind was a “ grab ” unredeemed by public benefits. It was an effort to thrive, not by producing wealth, but by filching it out of others’ pockets.

A trust and a trade union could sometimes work together. Their interests were at one in taxing the purchasers of their products. Both the steel trust and its employees wanted rails and ingots to be dear ; but when the returns were in each party wanted all it could get of them, and there were quarrels over the division of what the public paid. Strikes were frequent, and they put a damper on the hopes we were entertaining of gaining supremacy in the commerce of the world. If England and Germany had avoided these same troubles, they would have supplanted us ; but they had a share of them, and yet their rivalry pressed us so closely that self-preservation forced us to find the plan which has remedied the evils and again given us the lead.

The new footing on which strikes were placed by the formation of trusts is clear when one thinks that they often enabled employers to gain by the stoppage of their works. If a single factory were shut up, this would not much affect the price of its product; but if a hundred were closed at once, it might send the price skyward, and the employing corporation might find idle mills more profitable than active ones. Not many in number, but frightful for wastefulness, were the strikes of trade unions against trusts.

Of course there were tribunals of arbitration ; but what rule could they follow in making their awards ? When men could be had for two dollars a day, and the strikers demanded three, what amount should a court hit upon as the just one ? Only one thing could it do, if its purpose was to shorten the strike : it could find at what rate a settlement would probably be made, in case the contest were fought out to the bitter end, announce that rate, and advise the contestants to accept it. The advice would be taken whenever both parties concurred in the court’s estimate of probabilities. Arbitration actually became a method of deciding quarrels according to the endurance of the contestants rather than according to justice.

The time came when capitalists who were not in trusts started many mills, which they manned with workmen who were not in trade unions, and such mills the monopolies were unable to repress. They ran with great economy, since their machinery was modern and their labor was good and cheap. In the attacks which the trusts made on them organized labor sometimes joined, by boycotting the products of these independent mills on the ground that they employed what were then called “ unfair ” men. The monopolistic power that the trust was fighting to retain would have worked well for the men employed by it, and it came about that the situation stood thus : There were trusts wherever the nature of a business permitted it, and their mills were manned by union labor. There were independent mills, manned usually by independent labor, persecuted by the trusts, but saved by the economy and efficiency with which they ran. There was a further mass of labor unable to get into unions, or to get good or steady employment outside of them. It was a true proletariat, as destitute as any which the country had ever known. There was depression in agriculture, since in this department trusts could not thrive, and the tillage of the soil became an overcrowded occupation, receiving many of the men whom the exclusive policy of both trusts and trade unions forced out of other occupations. While this made food products cheap and helped the proletariat of the city, it put the farmers in the position of nearly starving themselves in order to save the poor in the cities from quite starving.

Then indeed was the demand for communism strong. “ Let the state intervene. Let it take possession of all the capital, and run every mill, shop, and railroad in the country.” In those states where politics were controlled by trusts on the one hand, and by trade unions on the other, the demand was effectually resisted. The time had been when labor organizations were socialistic, but those which were now thriving by an alliance with capitalistic monopolies ceased to wish for a general democracy of labor. In a commune they would have to go share and share with the excluded proletariat.

It was in agricultural states that the demand for the nationalization of industry had the greatest chance of success ; and yet the people there perceived that there was nothing to be gained by merely nationalizing the industry of their own particular section. The Canadian state of Saskatchewan was at that time purely agricultural, and when the influence of a few New Zealanders caused it to take the plunge into communism, and to declare all property a public possession, it was quickly evident that nothing had been gained. Agriculture was as unproductive as ever. Monopolies were taxing the life out of it, and they were all located in other regions. After an interval of confusion, this unfortunate state restored the titles to property, and resumed as nearly as it could its former condition. This lesson was taken to heart by other agricultural communities, and it was only the poor of the cities that continued to cry out for a nationalizing of wealth. Against them were not only the trusts and the independent capitalists, but all the strong bodies of organized labor. Trade-unionists had no relish for the plan of pooling their fortunes with those of the excluded poor.

Very slowly came a time of clear perception and action. It was monopoly that oppressed these men. That they were barred out of trade unions was one grievance, and that employments open to them were made unprofitable by the trusts was another : and then it was that the old anti-monopoly cry was taken up anew, and directed not only against massed capital, but against massed and exclusive labor. “ Let us destroy every rootlet of monopoly, and make both labor and capital free,” became the watchword. To this demand of the non-union workers, who were still a numerical majority, the independent capitalists lent a strong support. They needed protection against the terrorizing policy of the trusts as the men needed it against the oppressive course taken by trade unions.

Consolidated capital was dealt with in an effective way. Favoritism in freight charges was stopped. A fair scale of charges was presented to the railroads, and when they had accepted it they were allowed to form pools. The temptation to favor large shippers by giving secret rebates was now removed, since a favor of this kind had been granted only by a railroad which was trying to lure traffic from another; and when the business was pooled there was nothing to be gained by such a course. Enough facts concerning the trusts’ affairs were made public to enable an investor to see what he was getting when he bought any of its stocks or bonds.

These things saved the independent producers, and through them helped the public. The more of these free mills there were, the better off were consumers, laborers, and farmers ; but a still more complete economic freedom was needed. A man should be able to go into any business he pleased, and be wholly exempt from bullying attacks. A trust must not flood his territory with cheap goods till it forced him out of it, and it must do no other predatory act.

For some time it had been clear that if a trust could be forced to treat all its own customers alike, it could not crush an independent producer who had a well-equipped mill. If the great corporation, in order to cut prices in his section of the country, were compelled to cut them everywhere else, it could not keep up the war longer than its rival could ; for its losses would be in proportion to the magnitude of its business. Though it had a hundred times as much capital as the rival whom it was trying to ruin, yet, if its losses were also a hundredfold greater, its capital would be used up as soon as his. Though the law never tried to regulate the level of prices, it did demand that any scale which a producer might choose to adopt should be offered uniformly to all customers. “ Charge what you please, but charge it to every one,” was the rule.

A statute of this kind was enacted, and though, as had been anticipated, it was hard to execute, it helped greatly to take the monopolistic character out of the great producing companies. The common law, which forbids monopoly, had never been changed. Prosecutions under it had become infrequent, for the reason that the definition of a monopoly was not well established. Judges were baffled in the effort to put their fingers on specific acts of a great corporation, and to say : “ This makes you a monopoly. Your charter is forfeited.” When, however, the law made its demand for equal prices to all customers, the courts were quick to perceive that a violation of this statute was a monopolistic act. It was done to extinguish competition, and to prevent the trusts from doing it was to keep competition alive. Proceedings under the common law acquired additional vigor. The great corporations could not exercise a predatory power without violating this statute ; and yet, if they violated it, they risked being made outlaws under an old and venerated legal principle. From about the time when this law was passed trusts ceased to be dangerous, and they soon became the very useful things that they now are. Not to many of you would it occur that they could ever have been a menace to the public.

A later law ordered that any violation of the statute of which I have just told you, or of certain other statutes of a similar kind, should be treated by the courts as a conclusive proof that the company so transgressing was a monopoly, and that for a first offense a bond equal to one quarter of the capital of the company should be given to a special commission, and on a second offense the bond should be declared forfeited. It prescribed that, if the amount were not paid, property enough of the trust should be sold to satisfy the judgment. Few trusts ever took the risk of having to give these bonds, and only one, the great Aluminium Company, allowed the bond to be forfeited. The era of predatory competition was over, and the wild beasts of commerce had had their teeth drawn and were tamed for human service.

There remains to be told the sequel of this story. If you find it hard to imagine a state in which great corporations were menacing things, still harder will you find it to imagine a condition in which trade unions could be oppressive. At their worst these unions did a vast amount of good, and not within my recollection has the necessity of having them been questioned. Labor must be consolidated if it is to have a fair chance in its dealings with capital; and when the organization proceeds on a free and generous plan, it is unqualifiedly good. When it keeps good men out of its membership, and drives all but members away from its field of labor, it is clearly not a good thing for the excluded men. This is maintaining by force a certain monopoly.

The force that is used to keep outside men from working is, of course, illegal. The non-union man is a citizen, with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and every missile that is thrown at him for working where he is not wanted is a criminal assault. If it be done with the connivance of policemen and other local officials, it means a government by mob, and not a true democracy ; and yet for a score of years the people of this country saw this going on, and winked at a certain amount of it. They stopped it in extreme cases, but not in others.

It is easy to say that this meant simply a rotten condition of the body politic; and yet there was a principle that, in an unconscious way, was governing the conduct of the people. It was seen that trade unions and strikes could be of little value to laborers if outside men could be gathered together from all parts of the country, taken to the point of conflict, and used to break up the strike. Enough could always be thus secured to man any one mill; and if these were fully protected, the old operatives could be made either to work for reduced wages or to lose their places. Union labor could thus never get a rate of pay much higher than that earned by those men who had not the advantage of collective bargaining. The offer of employment had the effect of drawing together a force made up of persons who had been handicapped by their isolation, and were now glad to take even an unnaturally low rate of pay. What advantage is there in union, if the gain that comes through collective action has to be sacrificed whenever employers choose to get together a force made up of men of the helpless class ?

On the other hand, it was clear that one chief reason for the low wages that these men were willing to take lay in the fact that they were excluded from certain lucrative fields of employment. Not only were they isolated, but they were oppressed. Trusts had harmed them, and certain trade unions had contributed to the injury. The people could not be passive and see them clubbed ad libitum; and it came about that the mob itself sometimes protected them during a strike which seemed to the local public to be very unjust, and sacrificed them in any strike which seemed at all just. It was the crudest kind of arbitration, and made victims of the unfortunate men who were trying to work ; but through the first decades of the century it was what we had to depend on, and we forced ourselves to become inured to it.

In new mills, built to compete with trusts and manned by non-union men, the workers enjoyed protection, and this became complete whenever they made independent unions of their own. A considerable number of new and democratic labor unions were formed, and this policy was favored by employers, since it gave the men security and made it easier to retain them. As the new mills increased in number, they drew to themselves more and more men from the ranks of the proletariat and put them in positions of comfort. Occupations for the poor were opening in many directions.

It remained for the state to offer charters to the new organizations of workmen. It was done by a law of Congress making it possible for labor everywhere to incorporate itself under the federal authority. Such charters were accepted at once by the newer unions; and when the older ones learned that a responsible body can get higher wages than one whose contracts are liable to be broken, they began to accept charters for themselves. This was the beginning of that system of legalized trade unions which is now universal.

Admission to the newer unions had always been free, and admission to the older ones finally became so. The monopoly of labor was at an end. There were tests for the admission of members, and the quality of workmanship was very properly guarded ; but good workmen were no longer debarred from practicing their trades. In the end membership in the unions became compulsory, and the system became essentially the one under which we are still living. Prove your fitness for working at a trade, register your name in a public office, pay a nominal fee for the registration, and you may practice the craft in security in any city in the United States. The issue between union and non-union labor is at an end ; for it is all in unions. The benefit of collective bargaining is enjoyed by all, but that of monopoly is enjoyed by none.

The enlightened policy of the new labor unions gave us our “ schools of industry,” or “tramp houses,” as they were once called. You may not remember that the original purpose of them was to furnish work for the unemployed, and not to give instruction or to examine candidates for admission to the various trades. They grew naturally into the institution which, as you know, has taken the only great evil out of our progressive industry. When men lose their occupations by the invention of a new machine, the schools keep them employed, at a reduced rate of pay, till they can learn a new craft and find a place to practice it. This instruction could not be given, except at a ruinous cost to the state, unless the schools made goods and sold them in the market; and well do I remember how the proposal to do this was once combated. Would not the products of these schools overstock the markets ? Would they not be sold cheaply, and be the means of breaking down the prices of goods made in the ordinary shops ? Would they not throw good workmen out of employment ? Very well,” said the advocates of the scheme. “ We will see to it that the goods made in these training shops never reach the general market at all. We will have farms, flouring mills, bakeries, woolen mills, cotton mills, shoeshops, etc., and we will make in them just the varieties of goods that the inmates need for their own use. We will pay these men in orders on the shops themselves. The idle throng that lives in misery, and is both a burden and a menace to the country, shall be changed into an independent, self-sustaining population.” For a few years this was done. We had within the general body of the people a class of workers so organized that they catered solely to their own wants, and lived much as they would have done if they had been the sole population of a large and productive island. They neither bought goods from the ordinary makers nor sold them to the ordinary consumers. If all the unemployed had been taken bodily out of the country, the effect on the remaining population would have been much the same as was that of these places of refuge and instruction. There was, however, this important gain from the presence of the schools : they received from the environing society every man who lost his employment, and in due time gave back a man trained to work well, and they put him into a place where his work was needed. While there was no commerce in goods between the world of the schools and the larger world about them, there was a constant exchange of men between them; and in these exchanges society without was vastly the gainer. This isolating of the schools was before long abandoned, since every one saw that merging the smaller market for goods which the schools contained within themselves in the larger and more general market could endanger no one’s position. If the apprentices of the state sold their products to other citizens, they would buy products in return, and for nothing would the demand be reduced. It was this step which put the beneficent institution on its present footing as a natural clearing house for labor, to which every one applies when he wants trained employees. The idea that a system which finds work for all who need it can deprive men of employment while it is fulfilling its purpose would occur to no one to-day ; and it will take an effort of imagination on your part to put yourselves into the place of those who once actually entertained it. Very real and serious, however, was this early opposition to employing tramps, prisoners, paupers, pupils of schools, soldiers, or any other persons whom the state might take into wardship, in making goods that should be offered for sale. We are well rid of a bad delusion.

Naturally and quite early these schools became places for testing the attainments of men who wished to be enrolled in trade unions, though it is only recently that a certificate from one of them has been required of every such applicant. Through this gateway to-day every candidate for a position must pass : and the redeeming fact is that every one can pass it if he has the needed skill; and if he has not the skill, he can gain it in the schools themselves.

I should be glad to tell you how the dangers inherent in this institution were avoided. The chief of them was political. At an earlier date the bosses would have found a way of controlling the votes of this army of public apprentices. The new democracy was able to surmount the peril; for now the power of the boss was greatly reduced, that of the new trade unions was increased, and the voters saw to it that the pay given to the apprentices should be kept far below the rate that, on leaving the schools, they could earn. They had no desire to become dependents of the politicians.

Gladly would I tell of the growth of our courts of arbitration for the settlement of disputes between employers and employed. They have evolved out of the old and inefficient tribunals, and their success is due to the fact that they now have what the early courts lacked, — a basis on which to found just decisions. In the way of wages, whatever an authorized trade union is willing to take is certain to be nearly a fair rate. If a local union strikes for one rate, and no other union will do the work for less, the rate demanded is apt to be a fair one. With all bargains made collectively between responsible and incorporated bodies, the difficulty of agreeing on fair terms is not a tithe of what it was.

I might tell of reforms in the tenure of land ; and very loud, at one time, was the outcry from a few persons against all private titles to it. Was not this the gift of nature ? Does not society in its collective capacity own it ? If it does, let it take it, and that, too, without the smallest compensation to the usurping holders. This outcry came to an end when it was found that the savings of working people were chiefly invested in “land values.” With security of employment many of them had developed what used to be called “ land hunger,” and had become proprietors of homes. More of them had deposited their savings with banks and trust companies which had loaned it on the security afforded by land. A large number had insurance policies which would have become nearly worthless if the mortgages held by the insuring companies had been deprived of their chief security. “ Are we ourselves the usurpers ? ” these workingmen asked. “ Have we seized anything that we did not pay for in money honestly earned ? Did not the state invite us to put our earnings into this form, and will it take them from us because we have accepted its own policy ? ” The demand for confiscation subsided, but the need of a free use of the power of eminent domain has been met. For any good purpose the state takes land and pays for it. It has changed the laws of trespass, and made it impossible for a chain of estates so to stretch itself along the shore of the sea as to debar the multitude from access to the ocean. Great mountains are now virtually all men’s property, and the right of man to go where he will is nowhere unduly restricted.

I should like to tell how workers generally became capitalists, in their way, by means of their savings, and of the encouragement to saving that was given when the bonds and even the stocks of corporations ceased to be of doubtful quality, and I should like to speak of the fair taxation that has been made possible by the incorporating of so many industries.

It all comes to this : we have a new democracy, and it is on a sound industrial basis. Most men still live largely by labor ; but work is not merely honorable, — it is profitable. The accumulated results of it have put the multitude on a plane of comfort that has never before been approached. The people are economically independent and politically sovereign. They really rule, and it appears that this is a guarantee of good ruling ; for though they sometimes blunder, they discover and correct their mistakes. Collectively they will not cheat, for that would be cheating themselves. They are the principal party in interest when important measures are pending.

The century is not closing without issues to be settled. You know what foreign relations now mean: not a struggle to keep from fighting, but an effort to adjust trade connections and other vast and involved interests. The very intimacy in which nations live, while it guarantees peace, makes work for the international courts. In individual morality we are not yet at the portal of the millennium ; for prosperity has brought its sore temptations. Here, indeed, our gains seem to be in some danger, and in this direction the strongest effort is needed in order to save them. A certain manly quality in our people gives assurance that we have the personal material out of which a millennium may grow. Fraternity abounds where once it was rare. We can all look with toleration on our billionaires, knowing as we do how little the excess of their property really does for them. In the retrospect, it seems to me as if the ship that carries our fortunes had once been half disabled by storms, but had outridden them and were well on its way to port. More wealth, strength, and virtue are yet to be attained, and in the struggle against evils we shall gain moral stamina. There are contests enough still in progress to give virility to the popular character. You have work before you, children of the twenty-first century ; but my hope is that the area of greatest danger has been passed, and that your tasks will be lighter than ours have been, and your strength greater.

At the close of Mr. Livingstone’s address the Historical Society adjourned, and the people of the city closed their festivities by singing together the new Hymn of the Republic. With a more buoyant feeling than has ever before been apparent they have now resumed their usual tasks.

John Bates Clark.