White Slaves; or, the Oppression of the Worthy PoorBanks, Louis Albert
History
White Slaves; or, the Oppression of the Worthy Poor
Banks, Louis Albert
Poor -- Massachusetts -- Boston; Sweatshops; Working class -- Massachusetts -- Boston
The Chicago _America_, commenting on the incident, says this picture is
a startling contrast to the prate of demagogues concerning the dignity
of American labor. While they scheme to get the votes of intelligent
workingmen, labor in many parts of this country is being enslaved by
means of the hordes of foreigners who are imported in violation of law
and right. Mr. Powderly tells, in the _North American Review_, of a
visit which he paid to a mining-camp to investigate the condition of
the men who were imported to take the places of American workmen who
had demanded higher wages for labor done. These men lived in huge
barracks. Their dining-room, smoking-room, sitting-room, kitchen, and
bedchamber were one. There were five rows of bunks, three deep, each
one thirty inches in width and seventy-eight inches long--the first
bunk eighteen inches from the floor, the next, supported by rough
hemlock posts, but two feet above it, and a third two feet above the
second one. Each bunk was filled with straw, and covered with coarse
coffee-sack material for bed-clothing. Two rows of hemlock boards, each
one twenty feet in length by three feet in width, constituted the
tables. The men came in from the mines while he was present, and,
before washing face or hands, sat down to their supper of salt pork,
meal, and water. One hundred and five men lived in a building one
hundred and sixty feet in length by thirty feet in width. He found no
one to answer him in the English tongue. When it was bedtime they lay
down without divesting themselves of a single article of clothing; some
of them took off their shoes, but the majority did not even do that.
These men took the places of American workmen who were receiving from
two dollars to two dollars and a half per day. The compensation allowed
them was but seventy-five cents a day, and board. As a careful
investigation proved that fifteen and three-eighths cents would provide
the food furnished each man, the outlay was but ninety and
three-eighths cents a day. It is getting to be quite a common custom on
railroads and in mines and other places where this class of laborers
are employed, to attach to the waistband of each man a leather strap
fastened to a large brass check, similar to a baggage check. Every
check bears a number, and the man who carries it, or to whom it is
fastened, is known by the number on his check. Mr. Powderly grimly
comments: "Fancy the future of the American laborer, whose name is
forgotten, and whose only means of identification rests with a brass
check, which may be substituted for another while he sleeps." If this
is not white slavery, what is it?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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