THE LABOR MOVEMENT. 319 



business is concentrated into what is termed a Board of Trade, com- 

 posed of one representative of each mill or corporation represented in 

 the combination. And this again is concentrated down to an Executive 

 Committee of five persons. And this combination of capital is of such 

 a character that the little bobbin boy that pieces behind the mules 

 cannot ask for a five-cent raise in wages, without causing a throb to go 

 through the whole $30,000,000 of capital. And the same concentra- 

 tion of capital has been going on in all other manufacturing industries, 

 as well as the cotton and woollen. 



At the time these industries were in their infancy, the employees were 

 all either American or skilled English. The farmers' daughters, after 

 they had finished their education in the common school or village acad- 

 emy, would come. into the town or village, and work in these manufac- 

 turing establishments. Dickens, in one of his works describing one of 

 his visits to the United States, says that he found a well-edited maga- 

 zine published in Lowell, Massachusetts, and the articles were written 

 by the operatives in the mills of that city. This was as early as 1 840. 



The moment a person becomes educated, that moment he demands 

 a higher standard of civilization. That was the case with these New 

 England mill operatives. They wanted magazines, daily papers, fine 

 surroundings, shorter hours of labor, more leisure to devote to pleasure 

 and study, better and more comfortable homes. The moment this was 

 asked for, capital, which, under our present competitive system, treats 

 labor as a commodity, and our civilization according to the doctrine of 

 the survival of the fittest, rebelled against it, and said that the business 

 would not warrant it ; that fourteen hours was little enough for workmen 

 to toil ; and when this labor began to rebel by organization and com- 

 bination, they began to place their boycott upon it. 



There had been a race of people living in Ireland for over four hun- 

 dred years, in a sort of semi-slavery bordering upon starvation. In 1848 

 this island was visited with a famine, and emigration began to set in 

 towards the United States. The moment that these people set foot 

 upon our shores, the capitalists looked upon them as their prey. They 

 said, " There is a workman that does not need fine things. He has 

 never had them, and he has no taste for them. Look at that frieze 

 coat that he wears. He has worn that for ten years, and he will be 

 content to wear it for ten years more." Then they offered this man 

 twenty-five per cent less than the educated American was getting ; but 

 it was twenty-five per cent more than the Irishman had been receiving, 

 and so was a step upwards for him. In the course of time the Irishman 

 had children that grew up under our civilization ; they were educated 



