Kitabı oku: «Belford's Magazine, Vol 2, December 1888», sayfa 4
THE SOLDIERS' DAY AT SHILOH
The wives and little ones at home who knelt one Sabbath morn,
And prayed for God to save our land, with battles rent and torn,
How little knew the quick reply, while yet they bent the knee,
In Shiloh's fierce and stubborn strife beside the Tennessee!
Oh, may they never cease to pray for our dear nation's good.
Till wrong no more shall lift a hand to claim the price of blood!
For heavy was the debt we paid in noble blood and true,
When Slavery cast the gage of war between the gray and blue.
Bright burst the dawn o'er Shiloh's field, as o'er the northland homes;
As o'er the worshippers that rose to seek their shining domes;
And gentle morn, that whispered low and woke the sleepers there,
Had almost led the soldier back the Sabbath joys to share,
When, lo! a murmur through the trees above the breezes came,
And shook the forest in our front with thunder-sound and flame!
Now all the dreams of peace and home in quick surprise dispelled;
Adown the line and far away the clamor rose and swelled!
Defenceless on a field of war – 'tis terrible in thought!
Then how the holy morn was changed for those who blindly fought!
At breakfast fire and forming line, their life-blood stained the green;
Before them flashed a fiery storm; behind, the river's sheen!
The army smitten in its camps, though flinching, rallied soon,
And steady rose the battle's roar on that red field ere noon,
While, mindful of their sad neglect, up came our generals then —
Alas! they could not form in rank the dead and dying men!
Against a crushing battle-tide right well we fought our ground;
Full oft the foe that smote our ranks the soldiers' welcome found.
That day the swaying underbrush a reaper, all unseen,
Smote with the battle's deadly breath as with a sickle keen;
The scorner of the widow's wail, the orphans' sore lament,
There gathered treasure in his grasp, from hut and mansion sent.
With deadly volleys crashing near, the cannons roll afar,
That Sabbath closed on Shiloh's field, a bloody scene of war.
Ere long the thrilling scenes will fade, the veterans will depart;
But ere we leave the land; my child, write this upon thy heart:
No soaring genius labored there to guide the stubborn fight —
That was the common soldier's day from morning dawn till night;
His stinging volleys checked the foe and laid their leader cold,
As ever near with gleaming front the wave of battle rolled.
Until the western sun was low and succor reached the field,
Madly they pressed the volunteers, Columbia's pride and shield.
The trump of fame has sounded long for those who led us then,
And echoes still where poets sing the praise of mighty men.
But where the commoner is found beneath his household tree,
The soldier's heavy tramp is heard, the bayonet's gleam we see!
Ah! never more in knightly ranks will nations put their trust,
And soon the fabled hero's sword will gather mould and rust:
As war disclosed the true defence in man's unarmored breast,
So has it shown a nation's strength above the dazzling crest.
The stars of union raise aloft that once on Shiloh led;
Give justice to that rank and file, the living and the dead!
And when ye see that flag on high, remember how they fared
Who sprang to meet a cruel strife, surprised and unprepared:
O children, often when I see our standard quick unfurled,
Unconsciously my steps are braced to meet those volleys hurled!
Still burdened with the memories of sad and glorious fight,
The morning breaks among the tents, by the river falls the night.
Remember, 'twas the Sabbath day – the holy, blessed time
When neighbors crowd the roadside walks, and bells do sweetly chime —
Your fathers thronged the gates of death in Shiloh's bloody fray,
Beside the rolling Tennessee: – call that the soldier's day!
And oh, for our dear country pray, that all her laws be good,
That wrong no more shall lift a hand to claim the price of blood!
For heavy was the debt we paid, in noble blood and true,
When Slavery cast the gage of war between the gray and blue.
Joel Smith.
CHRISTMAS IN EGYPT
"Christmas comes but once a year,
And when it comes it brings good cheer."
Or it ought to. But when a Christian finds himself, on that most sacred of all the Christian holidays, in a Moslem country, say in Egypt, the procuring of the wherewithal to make the prescribed good cheer becomes a matter of no small difficulty.
If the Christian be an English one, the difficulties are apt to be increased by the fact that an Englishman is nothing if not conservative.
To the average Englishman the correct celebration of Christmas means attendance at divine service, perhaps!– the regulation Christmas dinner, certainly.
Christmas means a crisp, cold day, the home bright with glowing fires – a yule-log, maybe – and flashing with the brilliant green of ivy and the crimson of holly-berries; a dinner of roast-beef and plum-pudding; and, to wind up with, a bowl of steaming wassail and a kiss under the mistletoe.
When an Englishman finds himself in a country where he can sit in the open air, under a blazing sun, on Christmas Day, and where neither roast-beef nor plum-pudding has any place in the domestic economy, and where the "wassail" is always drunk iced, and called by another name, and where mistletoe does not grow, the possibility presents itself that he would be obliged to accommodate himself to the situation and do without these particular features.
Not at all!
He immediately sets to work to obtain them, crying aloud, meantime, against the barbarity of a land that does not offer, at this particular season, the things that are peculiar to his own tight little island.
To the casual observer this may seem a light task that he has set himself. But it is by no means so. On every hand he is met by an almost impenetrable wall of difficulties.
The fire he cannot have, for the very simple reason that there is no chimney in the house.
The beef he can get by sending for it to England, where it has been purchased from either Northern Europe or America. But where is the great fire before which it ought to be roasted, by the aid of a "jack," and with frequent bastings at the hands of a comfortable, rosy-cheeked, red-armed woman cook, in "Merry England"?
Here, in Egypt, the only fire to be procured will be a tiny one of charcoal, one of a dozen, but each separate, like the squares on a chess-board, and not much larger. And the cook will, in all likelihood, be a wizened, yellow little man, smelling of "arrack," and much given to peculation.
He may succeed in procuring his Christmas pudding, if he, early in November, orders the ingredients for it from England, through his English grocer, and if the ladies of his household agree to compound it.
Then the dreadful question presents itself, how is it to be cooked? A Christmas pudding of fair proportions needs to be boiled from four to six hours, and during those hours it wants to be kept steadily and continuously boiling, or it becomes what the English cook calls "sad." And so do its consumers.
Now a charcoal fire is a good deal like Miss Juliet's description of lightning, "it doth cease to be, ere one can say it lightens." And no power on earth less than a file of the Khedive's soldiers would keep an Egyptian cook in his kitchen, feeding a fire, four or five hours.
Aside from the fact that he hates and despises, as a good Mussulman should, his Christian employer, and regards with horror and disgust the pudding around which cluster the hopes of this Christian family, he has a great number of little habits and customs that demand his frequent absence from the scene of his distinguished labors.
He has a "call" to the little shed at the corner of the street where "arrack" is illicitly sold by a cyclopean Arab. No sooner is this accomplished, and he slinks back to his kitchen, furtively watching the windows and wiping his treacherous mouth with the back of his dirty yellow hand, than he feels himself obliged to again rush out and indulge in a war of words with the old man who has brought the daily supply of water to the household.
This is a very dirty old man, bare as to his legs and feet, and without any toes to speak of. He is clothed in a goat-skin, as is also the water, for he carries that blessed commodity on his back, in a goat-skin that is distended like an over-fed beast, with its legs "foreshortened" and all in the air, like a "shipwrecked tea-table."
The greatly overtasked cook has scarcely had time to recover from this sally, when he feels himself called upon to again issue forth and attack the donkey-boy, a small and inoffensive child who brings him vegetables, which the patient little donkey carries in two panniers slung over his back.
After invoking upon the head of this child a string of polyglot curses, one of which is that his progeny, to the sixth generation, maybe born with their faces upside-down, he again retreats to his kitchen, gives the pudding a vicious punch and the fire a morsel of charcoal.
Soon he must go and squat in the sand at the back of the house, safe from all fear of observation, and play a game of dominoes with "Nicolo," the cook of the neighboring house.
Then he must smoke two or three cigarettes, which he deftly rolls with his dirty yellow fingers.
Is it surprising that after these manifold exertions his exhausted nature demands repose? He stretches himself in the warm white sand, and, indifferent to the sun and oblivious of the fleas, he falls into a sweet sleep.
For the pudding? Let us draw the mantle of silence over that heavy, stately ruin. When he wakes to find the ruin he has wrought, he will weep and wail and beat his breast, and call upon Allah to witness that never – not for an instant – has he left the kitchen.
And in his heart he will secretly rejoice.
The Moslem servant always secretly rejoices in the annoyances and discomfitures of his Christian employer. If that Christian employer is met by annoyance and discomfiture while attempting to keep up any custom associated with his religion, or to celebrate any Christian holiday, the Moslem servant is especially and particularly pleased.
And in this he obeys one of the laws of Mohammed, which forbids friendship or good-feeling between Moslems and either Christians or Jews.
The Moslems have a great number of holidays in their calendar, but these are nearly all fast-days.
The Arabs are a temperate, abstemious race, a race of light feeders; naturally, they have a contempt for gluttony. In the matter of food, an Egyptian would feast luxuriously for a week on the amount that an American or Englishman would consume at a single meal.
Thus the very abundance of the preparations which the Englishman makes for his Christmas dinner repels good Mussulmen.
Then, they do not celebrate the birthday of their own prophet; and the celebration, in their own country, of the day which to us is invested with so much love and reverence they consider an insult to them and to their faith, and they submit to it with an ill grace and in sullen silence.
All these things make a combination of opposing forces against which the Englishman, endeavoring to enjoy his Christmas in Egypt, struggles in vain.
So he eats his roast-beef, which is braized, and his boiled plum-pudding, which is fried; takes his kiss – if he has any sense – without mistletoe; winds up an unsatisfactory day by drinking, instead of the time-honored "wassail," a jorum of champagne punch, cooled with artificial ice; and goes grumbling to bed, with the conviction that a Christmas in Egypt is a very "brummagem" sort of Christmas.
Rose Eytinge.
STATISTICS OF IDLENESS
Reliable statistics relative to the number of men out of employment and seeking work have always been difficult to obtain. In June, 1879, the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor investigated the matter in that State, reporting "28,508 as the aggregate number of skilled and unskilled laborers, male and female, seeking and in want of work in Massachusetts." In November of the same year the number was reported as being 23,000. This was a little less than five per cent of the total number of skilled and unskilled laborers in the State at that time. Upon that basis, says the report, "there would be 460,000 unemployed able-bodied men and women in the United States, ordinarily having work, now out of employment." On the basis of the June report, there would have been 570,000 unemployed in the United States. This was the only statistical report upon the subject made prior to 1885; and coming, as it does, from Colonel Carroll D. Wright, through the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor, it possesses as much authority as statistical statements ever do.
While taking the census of Massachusetts for 1885, Colonel Wright thoroughly canvassed the subject of the unemployed in that State, the result being published in the Report of the Bureau of Labor for 1887. This report, though much delayed, is a remarkable one, not only for its completeness and the masterly analysis of the figures it contains, but also for its minute divisions of the classes of unemployed; giving the age, sex, nativity, and trade of each person unemployed, and how many months in the year such enforced idleness is suffered.
Out of a total of 816,470 persons employed in gainful occupations in Massachusetts in 1885, 241,589, or 29.59 per cent, were unemployed. The duration of the idleness varied greatly in different industries and localities, but the average loss of time was 4.11 months per year for each of the unemployed. Over 29 per cent of Massachusetts protected workingmen idle for over four months of each year! The idleness of 241,589 persons for 4.11 months is equivalent to 82.744 persons unemployed for an entire year. This is nearly 11 per cent of the entire population employed in gainful pursuits. Idleness, that is enforced idleness, increased 110 per cent in Massachusetts between 1879 and 1885; and this average time unemployed is net average, as the 10,758 persons, whose loss of time at their "principal occupation" or trade was partially made up by securing "other occupations" and "odd jobs," are separately tabulated, and the amount of work at "other occupations" is deducted from their loss of time at "principal occupation," thus giving a net average of the time wholly unoccupied at any sort of labor. It is interesting to note the industries in which the greatest percentage of this enforced idleness occurs. I take the following from an elaborate table given in Mr. Wright's report. In the boot and shoe industry of Massachusetts, 48,105 male adults are supposed to be employed. Of these 15,731 get steady work, while 32,374, or 67.3 per cent, are unemployed four months in the year. The same industry employs 14,420 females, of whom 10,250, or 71 per cent, are idle four months, an average of 2.62 months idleness for all persons employed in that industry. The cotton-mill operatives number 58,383 of whom 26,642 are males, 31,741 females. Of all these operatives, 24,250, or 41.5 per cent, are idle more than one third of the time.
In the manufacturing of agricultural implements, a protected industry that, being carried on in factories, needs not stop for weather, 69.1 per cent of all persons employed are idle 4.12 months per year; whereas, of farm laborers, whose occupation is unprotected, and whose employment is wholly at the mercy of seasons, only 30.19 are idle during any part of the year, while 69.81 per cent find steady employment the year around.
Carpenters, also, whose labor is unprotected and dependent largely upon season, report 52.82 per cent steadily employed, with 47.18 per cent idle three months in the year.
Compositors and printers number 4541 in the State, only 450, or 9.91 per cent, of whom are idle during any part of the year, while 90.09 per cent find steady work. On the other hand, 51.31 per cent of the stove-makers are idle 4.09 months per year, and 66.4 per cent of rolling-mill employés are idle 4.04 months. Stone-workers and brick-masons fare better, though unprotected, since but 46 per cent of these are idle during any part of the year; while the tack-makers, taking both sexes, have 70 per cent of idleness for one-third of the time, only 30 per cent finding steady work. The silk industry employs 1975 persons – 556 males and 1419 females; of these, 979, or 49.5 per cent, are idle nearly four months each year.
The woollen industries of Massachusetts employ 22,726 operatives of both sexes. Of these, 9463, or 42 per cent, are idle four months in the year.
Perhaps the infinite beauty of protection is best illustrated by a comparison of the work secured by blacksmiths with that of rolling-mill employés. Of blacksmiths, 82.25 per cent had steady work for the entire year, while only 17.75 per cent were idle 4.41 months. Of rolling-mill employés, as stated above, 66.40 per cent were idle 4.04 months, and of nail-makers 73.49 per cent were idle 3.86 months.
The manufacturing industries of Massachusetts furnish 69.14 per cent of the idleness of the State; i.e., of the 241,589 unemployed, 167,041 depend upon the manufacturers for work and sustenance. On the other hand, agriculture furnishes but 6.28 per cent, transportation 2.91 per cent, personal service but 1.72 per cent, and the day laborers but 8.43 per cent.
Fall River, with a total laboring population of 26,220, found steady employment for but 11,437, or 43.62 per cent, while 14,783, or 56.38 per cent of her population, were seeking work 3.49 months in the year. The result of it all is that one third of the persons engaged in remunerative employment in Massachusetts were unemployed for more than one third of the time.
It is significant that 129,272, or 53.51 per cent, of the total number of unemployed were found in twenty-three cities of the State, while 325 towns furnished 46.49 per cent.
It is often claimed that labor disturbances, strikes, and lock-outs are responsible for most of the idleness in manufacturing industries. The report under review goes into this question, and as a result ascertains that in the manufacturing industries "an average suspension of one-fifth of a month (0.20) was caused by repairs, improvements, etc. An average suspension of one-fiftieth of a month (0.02) was caused by strikes and lock-outs," while the balance was due to "slack trade." Just how much of the loss of time was due to combinations and trusts "restricting production, so as to control prices," does not appear; but when it is shown that in an average idleness of 4.11 months per year, strikes are responsible for but an average of one fiftieth of one month, or but little over one-half day, it is time for "statesmen" to abandon their stock argument of "strikes and strikers," and look about for some of the real causes of present conditions.
It is possible to only partially supplement this investigation in Massachusetts by similar investigations in other States.
In 1886 the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics, in an investigation of trade and labor organizations, covered the question of the number of weeks' work secured during the year. The following analysis of that report refers only to the membership of labor organizations in the State which reported upon that question, or 85,392 workingmen. For these the average was 37.1 weeks work and 14.9 weeks idleness during the year. Only one-fifth found steady work for the year; about one-third could get work but one-half the time; while, to quote from the report, "the industrial people, as a class, secure work for only 71.7 per cent of full time, and spend 28.3 per cent of their time in idleness, for want of work to do." (Illinois Report for 1886, page 319.) The coal-miners of the State secure work for but 23 weeks in the year. The occupations securing the greatest percentage of employment are those most removed from the protecting influences of that Congressional bill of fare called tariff. Thus the barbers, horseshoers, printers and pressmen, street-railway employés and railroad men, report nearly full time; iron-moulders and rolling-mill men, 35 weeks per year; while other metal-workers report 30 weeks of work and 20 weeks of want of work.
In commenting upon the tables given, Colonel John S. Lord, the able secretary of the Bureau, says: "Whatever value may be attached to the ultimate percentage of time lost, as deduced from all classes, the specific facts remain as to a great number of men and occupations. No interpretation of these facts can obscure the important fact that out of 85,329 workingmen, organized to promote their material interests, and presumably able to secure a greater share of them than the unorganized, only about one-fifth of them can obtain continuous work for a full year of working time. As the last table shows, those who get less than 40 weeks work are 65 per cent of the whole; and those who get only from 13 to 30 weeks' wages in the year are 35 per cent of the whole, or 30,451 in number." (Page 320.)
Another and not less important feature of the Illinois report is that it shows the number of members of labor organizations out of work at the time of the investigation – June and July, 1886.
The question of the number of weeks' work secured during the year might be sometimes loosely answered by the secretaries of labor unions; but as to the number at that time unemployed the answers would be almost as accurate as a census enumeration. The 634 labor organizations of Illinois had an enrolled membership in June, 1886, of 114,365. It was found that 17 per cent of these belonged to both the Knights of Labor and to a trade union, and had hence been duplicated. Deducting these, it was found that 103,843 persons were members of these bodies. Of these, 88,223, or 85 per cent, were employed, while 15,620, or 15 per cent, were idle. Applying this percentage to the entire number of persons engaged in the industries in which organizations were found, basing that number on the census of 1880, there must have been in the three grand divisions of industry – manufacturing, mining, and transportation – at least 50,000 men unemployed in Illinois in June, 1886. If that percentage could be applied to all occupations, this number would be swelled to 150,000. The Illinois Bureau found 15 per cent of all those engaged in manufacturing and mining industries idle in 1886.
Massachusetts finds the equivalent of 11 per cent of all her industrial population idle during the year 1885, and finds 69 per cent of this idleness in protected manufacturing industries.
So far as I can see, the result of the Illinois investigation strengthens and verifies that of Massachusetts, both resulting in the conclusion that for 1885 and 1886 the equivalent of at least 11 per cent of our industrial population was out of work. The Iowa Bureau of Labor Statistics in 1887 threw out the "raw material" of a report that would, if digested and tabulated, strengthen this position. Unfortunately, the report as printed is but the reproduction of individual returns, and the work of getting an average is too great for the time at command.
A brief computation, however, on the figures presented shows that, in a total of 1989 reports to that Bureau from workingmen in all industries, trades, and occupations, there was an average loss of time of 80 days per man per year; or, counting 300 working days per year, 26 per cent of the time of the workingmen of Iowa is unemployed.
After this survey of the field from the reports of three States, we turn to the report of the United States Bureau, at Washington, for 1885 (pages 65 and 66).
That report, from information gained by its agents and other sources of information at its hand, estimates that 7-1/2 per cent of the 255,000 manufacturing establishments of the country were absolutely idle during the year ending July 1, 1885, and that 168,750 factory hands were thus rendered idle. By applying the 7-1/2 per cent to all industries, that bureau stated that there "might be" 1,304,407 men out of employment that year, but again readjusts its estimate as being too large, and gives the number as 998,839. That same year 11 per cent of all the people engaged in all gainful pursuits in Massachusetts were idle; the next year 15 per cent of all those engaged in the three principal industries aside from agriculture were idle in Illinois. In Iowa, 26 per cent of the time of workingmen in all industries is spent in hunting work; and how, from this state of facts, the Federal Bureau could get at a 7-1/2 per cent estimate it is difficult to see. Massachusetts finds 29 per cent of her people idle one-third of the time, or 11 per cent all the time. If it is said that this percentage would be reduced in agricultural States, Iowa proves it to be not quite true, and at least the reduction would be slight. Allowing 4 per cent less of idleness for Western States than for Massachusetts is shown to be error by the reports of Illinois and Iowa. The first estimate of the Federal Bureau, 1,304,407, was not too high, but rather too low at that time. Applying the Massachusetts percentage to the entire country at that time, there must have been 1,913,130 persons out of work; and it should be remembered, too, that this is using as a base the number reported in the census of 1880, without allowing for the increase. Colonel Wright gives in his Massachusetts report for 1885, 816,470 persons engaged in all industries; the census of 1880 gives that State 720,774, showing an increase of 95,696, or a gain of over 13 per cent. Applying the Massachusetts gain to the entire class of productive industries, we find 19,753,071 as the number to which this percentage should be applied, instead of the Census number of 17,392,099.
I think no fair estimate of the number of unemployed in 1885 could be much under 1,900,000, and I believe no fair estimate of the present number of idle persons wishing employment and unable to find it, can be placed lower than 1,500,000. At least 6,000,000 of persons ordinarily employed are in enforced idleness from two to five months in the year, and thus forced to consume, while seeking work, the little it was possible to save during their six or eight months of employment.
It is not the purpose of this paper to consider the causes for this tremendous aggregate of enforced idleness. Doubtless much of it is due to the frantic attempts of combinations to control prices by limiting production. Protected by laws of Congress from competition with the industries of other nations, under the guise of "protection to American labor," the combined steel industries of the country pay the Vulcan Steel Works of St. Louis $400,000 to stand idle, thus throwing its workmen out of employ! The Waverly Stone Ring pays quarries thousands of dollars – in one instance, $4500 per year – to do nothing. The salt works along the Kanawha were bought up by the American Salt Manufacturers' Association, and have never employed a man since. Thus is American labor protected! The Standard Oil Company buys up competitors and dismantles their works. The tack manufacturers buy out a refractory fellow who would not join the pool, and not a wheel has turned since. The Western Lead and Shot Association buys the shot-tower at Dubuque, Iowa, to keep men from working there. A leading politician and prominent officeholder of Illinois goes to Washington to prevent the tariff reduction on jute bagging proposed by the Mills bill, and pleads manfully for the poor American workingman, though his own bagging mill has been idle for three years, while he draws a dividend from the pool for "limiting production," greater than he could realize by running his works. It doth not yet appear that his idle workmen have shared in the profits he derives from their idleness.
Sloan and Company stop as many coal-mines as is necessary to prevent the output from exceeding the limit agreed upon at the "annual meeting" of the combination. So with the coke-ovens.
The Joliet Steel Mills suspended "indefinitely" upon the publication of Cleveland's message to Congress, because "we can just as well as not, and we wish to impress upon our workmen the necessity of maintaining the tariff." Very timid is capital, and very shy when it uses its power to starve a thousand men into voting for its interest and against their own!
That very much of this idleness is caused by these attempts on the part of protected industries to limit the production of commodities at home, is probably true. That voluntary immigration into a country already cursed with a large idle population is the cause of much of it is probably also true; but not to so great an extent as the imported contract foreign labor. Voluntary immigrants usually come intending to go far west and take up land. They come with intelligent purposes, and intelligently carry them out. The imported laborers are of a very different type.
A Pennsylvania newspaper states: "There were six hundred and forty Bulgarians just from Europe, by way of Castle Garden, marched to the mouth of a coal-shaft at Johnstown yesterday and halted at the entrance like soldiers. On the opposite side of a close board fence six hundred and forty of the old miners marched out and were discharged. The new men, great, burly, blank-faced fellows, then marched into the dark hole and took up the task laid down by the malcontents. We doubt if one of the 'new arrivals' knew a word of English, or how much they were to receive for their labor. What grand opportunities these animals will have to study the beauties of our institutions!"
There is in New York a company, with a capital of $50,000, chartered by the State to furnish Italian and Hungarian laborers, in defiance of the laws of Congress. That a committee has been appointed to "investigate" this matter of the importation of foreign labor under contract would be a healthful sign, had not these investigations become so diseased by contamination with corporate influences that most of them end at the "gate." The immigration for the first six months of 1888 exceeds that of any year since 1880, and it must follow that a vast percentage of this is either imported under contract, or, what amounts to the same thing, deceived by the lying promises of the agents of those interested in flooding the American labor market. There is certainly no crying need for additional laborers in this country, except to accomplish the purposes of a circular not long ago issued from a New York banking house, stating that "to check the demands of labor for excessive wages, it is necessary to augment the tide of immigration to the United States." The excessive demands of labor average $1.16 per day.
