* * * * *

As I have devoted some space to the general condition of labor in the whole country, and as some of my statements and conclusions may be looked upon as extravagant, I deem it very pertinent to add to the appendix a portion of the testimony of Dr. R. Heber Newton, given before Senator Blair’s Committee on the “Relations between Capital and Labor,” in New York City, September 18, 1883 (Vol.  II., p. 535).  Dr. Newton is recognized as a clear thinker and a ready writer not only on theological but on economic questions as well.  His testimony on the points to which I have asked attention was as follows: 

A LABOR QUESTION COMING

The broad fact that the United States census of 1870 estimated the average annual income of our wage-workers at a little over $400 per capita, and that the census of 1880 estimates it at a little over $300 per capita, is the quite sufficient evidence that there is a labor question coming upon us in this country.  The average wages of 1870 indicated, after due allowance for the inclusion of women and children, a mass of miserably paid labor—­that is, of impoverished and degraded labor.  The average wages of 1880 indicated that this mass of semi-pauperized labor is rapidly increasing, and that its condition has become 25 per cent worse in ten years.  The shadow of the old-world proletariat is thus seen to be stealing upon our shores.  It is for specialists in political economy to study this problem in the light of the large social forces that are working such an alarming change in our American society.  In the consensus of their ripened judgment we must look for the authoritative solution of this problem.  I am not here to assume that role.  I have no pet hobby to propose, warranted to solve the whole problem without failure.  I do not believe there is any such specific yet out. * * *

I

THE FAULTS OF LABOR

Plainly, labor’s fault must be found with itself.

1.  Leaving upon one side the class of skilled labor, a large proportion of our wage-workers are notoriously inefficient.  In the most common tasks one has to watch the average workingman in order to prevent his bungling a job.  Hands are worth little without some brains; as in the work done, so in the pay won.  Our labor is quite as largely uninterested—­having no more heart than brains back of the hands.  Work is done mechanically by most workingmen, with little pride in doing it well, and little ambition to be continually doing it better.

2.  There is too commonly as little sense of identity with the employer’s interests, or of concern that any equivalent in work should be rendered for the pay received.  In forms irritating beyond expression employers are made to feel that their employees do not in the least mind wasting their material, injuring their property, and blocking their business in the most critical