Chautauqua University Extension. Three Lectures on Labor Movement. Ely, 1889

While preparing a later post on the economics component of the 1889-90 C. L. S. C. (Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle), I came across a reference to a syllabus for a series of lectures given by Richard T. Ely in Chautauqua, New York. I tracked down the three reports of the syllabus (transcribed for this post below) in the Chautauqua Assembly Herald which can be consulted on-line from what appear to be scans of microfilm images.

For a brief history of the Chautauqua Education Movement in the United States.

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Chautauqua University Extension.
Lectures on the Labor Movement in the Hall of Philosophy
by Dr. Richard T. Ely.

I.
The Nature of the Labor Problem, August 7, 1889.
SYLLABUS OF TOPICS

1. Introductory Remarks
   1. University Extension lectures are primarily for instruction and not for entertainment. They are to give popular presentations of serious subjects. Those who do not care for this sort of lectures are advised to remain away rather than annoy the lecturer and disturb the rest of the audience by coming and going.
   2. The character of the present course, which is an adaptation of class-room work.
   3. The examination at the close of the course.
2. Comments on the Annotated Bibliography.
3. The Existence of Social Classes.
   1. What is meant by classes? Stormonth gives this definition: “A number of persons in society supposed to have the same position with regard to means, rank, etc.” Webster’s definition is as follows: A group of individuals ranked together as possessing common characteristics.” Modern classes are industrial, especially in republics, but industrial pursuits are everywhere acquiring increasing importance in class-formation.
   2. Ancient and modern classes compared. The influence of occupation in early times seen in the castes of India. “Sir Henry Maine.”
   3. Law and industry as a basis of classes compared. Economic forces often more powerful than legal forces. Illustrated by the contrast between nominal and actual freedom. “The Tribe of Ishmael.”
   4. It is a mistake to shut our eyes to the fact of the existence of classes in the United States, and to the further fact that with us class lines are becoming more inflexible and difficult to cross. America is becoming more like European countries.
   5. The good and evil effects of the existence of classes. The ideal is the harmonious and helpful co-existence of classes. “For…the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that body being many are one body…But God hat tempered the body together, having given more abundant honor so that part which lacked, that there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; if one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it.”—St. Paul, First Epistle to the Corinthians. This bring us naturally to
4. The solidarity of social classes.
   Modern society cannot prosper unless all parts participate in this prosperity, but wealth may increase while society decays. The oneness of society and the oneness of social life, illustrated by Professor Burrough’s Chautauqua sermon of Sunday, July 7, of this year.
   “While there is a single guilty person in the universe, each innocent one must feel his innocence tortured by that guilt”—Hawthorne in the Marble Faun.
5. The labor problem, a problem of such real living importance that it may be called the problem of problems, but it must never be regarded as a class-problem.
   The error of the more radical forms of socialism in treating the labor problem as merely a class-problem, thereby promoting class-hatred and delaying social reform.
   The emancipation of the laboring classes can never be accomplished by the laboring classes alone.
6. The true meaning of this phrase of Gladstone. The individual and social standpoint contrasted. The social standpoint illuminated by the labor problem.
   “A sense of wrong is a mighty strong eyewash. It will clear out a lot of sophisms which blind men’s eyes.”—Dr. Heber Newton—Also true of love. Illustrations taken from American and English experience, of social benefits from the agitation of the labor problem.

Source: Chautauqua Assembly Herald. Vol. XIV, No. 13 (August 7, 1889), p. 3.

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II.
The Causes of Existence of the Modern Labor Problem
August 8, 1889.
SYLLABUS OF TOPICS

1. Introductory Remarks
   The multiplicity of causes render their comprehension difficult.
2. The organic character of all forms of social life, and the youthful features of the present politico-economic organism in civilized nations.
   The hopefulness of this view.
3. Movement the law of life.
   The newness of our present economic life. Illustrations.
4. 1. Transportation one hundred years ago.
      Adam Smith, in 1776, assumes that beef and grain are too bulky to be transported with profit from Ireland to England. These are his words:
      “Even the breeding countries of Great Britain never are likely to be much affected by the free importation of Irish cattle. *** Even the free importation of Irish corn could very little affect the interests of the farmers of Great Britain. Corn is a much more bulky commodity than butchers’ meat. *** The small quantity of foreign corn imported, even in times of greatest scarcity, may satisfy our farmers that they have nothing to fear from the freest importation.” With this, contrast American competition in the supply of wheat and beef in 1889, in its effects on European agriculture.
   2. Banks One Hundred Years Ago.
      Banks have increased in number, and their functions have changed within fifty years.
      “in [illegible] the fourth bank was established, the Bank of Maryland, in the city of Baltimore, if I am not mistaken; and that bank was open one year before a single depositor came to its counters. Bagehot, the English authority, says that as late as 1880 all the discussions of bankers were upon the circulation and not at all upon the deposits of their banks. *** I looked at the bank statements of the banks of New York the other day, and the figures were these: The circulation of all banks was $5,000,000; the deposits of the banks in the same week were over $400,000,000.
      Seth Low in a speech before Boston Merchants’ Association, January 8, 1889.
   3. Corporations one hundred years ago compared with corporations and trusts to-day.
      One hundred years ago Adam Smith expressed the belief that corporations could not succeed on account of their inability to hold their own in competition with individuals and private firms. Now, the conviction is expressed that the individual as such is disappearing in industrial life, and Mr. Seth Low holds that this must be offset by increasing the importance of the individual in political life.
   4. Free Trade in Land a modern fact.
      Former system of land tenure in Europe and America.
   5. The Relative freedom of Trade and Commerce likewise Recent.
   6. The Free Choice of Occupations a new right.
   7. The freedom of migration a nineteenth century right.
      Illustrations of the former condition of the law taken from Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations.”
   8. The right of free combinations of labor and capital likewise a modern fact.
   9. The universal, personal freedom of the manual laboring classes, in all civilized lands, is a fact not a generation old.
      The opinion of Aristotle on slavery quoted.
   10. Capital, as we understand it, a force peculiar to modern times.
       “Such war cries as we find, Lassalle raising against capital would not have been understood among the ancients and the oppressed classes of the middle ages.”—Kaufman.
       Confirmation of this view found in Aristotle. The word “capital” not found in the index of Jowett’s Aristotle’s “Politics.”
   11. Railroads, telegraphs, telephones and other applications of steam and electricity very recent facts.
   12. The division of labor as now understood a recent fact.
   13. Our present manufacturing class a recent creation.
       The use of the word “manufacturer” in 1776.
   14. Some common materials are new discoveries.
       Cotton, anthracite coal, and protection.

4. A new industrial world requires a new industrial organization and a new industrial science, but both the organization and the science are incomplete.
   As a consequence of the foregoing, progress produces long-continued social distress.
5. Some of the results of the above described changes on the laboring classes.
   The changes a condition without which the labor problem would be an impossibility.
   1. Deterioration in the condition of the masses may be relative or absolute.
      The condition of the masses must be examined in both respects.
   2. Diminished security of [illegible word, “asistence”?]
      Illustrations taken from North and South.
   3. Irregularity of employment and income, and attended evils.
   4. Increased reparation of classes.
   5. Changed and deteriorated environment of the majority of wage-earners.
      “Beyond a doubt, sickness is the greatest foe of the poor. It absorbs their savings, creates poverty and pain, and fills our public and private institutions. It is the tenement house system that creates or fosters most of the prevalent disease, degradation, misery and pain. It invites pestilence and destroys morals.”— F. Wingate. [Charles F. Wingate]
      Father Huntington’s testimony quoted.
   6. Industrial and moral evils attendant on frequent migrations of wage-earners.
   7. Machinery both a blessing and a curse.
   8. Increased wants and their effect on the industrial situation.
      Character of these increased wants, some good, some bad.
      Table showing comparative percentage expenditure of working men’s families in Illinois and Massachusetts.

Items.	ILLINOIS.	MASS.
Subsistence	41.38	49.28
Clothing	21.00	15.95
Rent	17.42	19.74
Fuel	5.63	4.30
Sundries	14.57	10.73
[Totals]	[100.00]	[100.00]

Source: Chautauqua Assembly Herald. Vol. XIV, No. 14 (August 8, 1889), p. 3.

Cf. Table on p. 282 of Ely’s An Introduction to Political Economy (1889) .

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III.
Industrial Evils and Their Remedies,
August 9, 1889.
SYLLABUS OF TOPICS

1. Child Labor.
   “The number of males over sixteen engaged in manufacturing in 1880 was 2,019,035, an increase in ten years of 24.97 per cent. The number of females over fifteen was 531,639, an increase in the same time of 64.2 per cent. and of children 181,921, an increase of 58.79 per cent. ** The employment of women in all gainful occupations is increasing fifty per cent. faster than the population, or than the employment of men, and the same is true to still greater degree of the employment of children, save in the very few states which have stringent factory laws and make any genuine effort to enforce them.”— W. Bemis in the article “Workingmen in the United States,” in the American edition of the Encylopaedia Britannica. A workingman’s paper quoted on child labor in the coal mining regions. The testimony of President Crowell.
2. The increasing number of women wage-
3. The dwellings of the laboring classes in cities.
4. Sunday work an evil of increasing magnitude.
   The opinion of workingmen on the “abolition of Sunday.” Is there any law of New Jersey in defense of Sunday? If so, why is it not enforced against the railroad corporations? When laboring men violate any law of the money power it is anarchy, and the law breakers are imprisoned or hanged. But when the money power violates all laws, both human and divine there is neither penalty nor remedy.
   “Look at the Central Railroad of new Jersey running coal trains every Sunday, compelling its employes to work upon that day. ** God knows it is hard enough to work for a mere pittance six days in the week, but it is intolerable to be compelled to work on Sunday for nothing as we do—to desecrate the Sabbath and to be deprived even of the boon of preaching. If this is not anarchy, what is it? And how much longer shall the Golden Calf rule in New Jersey?—Correspondence of John Swinton’s Paper.” Comment on the statement, “work on Sunday for nothing.”
   The agitation for a free Sunday on the part of the bakers in New York and Philadelphia. Remarks of the former secretary of the Journeyman Bakers’ National Union in a letter to the lecturer.
   The agitation of the Sunday question by other workingmen in New York; also in Chicago. Editorial in the “Knights of Labor” on Sunday slavery.
   The American Sabbath Union and the testimony of its secretaro, Rev. Wilbur F. Crafts.
   The true spirit of Sunday observance and the Sunday reform socially considered.
5. Over-work and night-work:
6. Excessive mortality of the wage-earning classes, especially of their children.
   This evil economically and socially considered. The principal causes of death are social. “Some 16,000 children under five die every year in New York—just twice the normal mortality for a large city. ** If viewed rightly, this would be called simply massacre.”— F. Wingate.
   Mortality among the white and colored people of the South:

	WHITE.	COLORED.
Memphis, 1888	19	37
Average for nine years	19	37
Chattanooga, 1888	16	33
Knoxville, 1888	13	29
Average for 8 years	14	31
Clarksville, av. for 2 years	13	28
Columbia, av. for 2 years	13	16

These cities are in Tennessee. Statistics for Columbus, Savannah and Atlanta, Georgia, for Richmond, Mobile and Charleston, are similar in significance.
Dr. G. W. Hubbard, of Meharry Medical School, gives four causes of the large mortality of colored people, viz., poverty, ignorance of the laws of health, superstition and lack of proper medical attendance.
“At present the average age at death among the nobility, gentry and professional classes in England and Wales was 55 years; but among the artisan classes of Lambeth it only amounted to 29; and while the infantile death rate among the well-to-do classes was such that only eight children died in the first year of life out of 100 born, as many as 30 per cent. succumbed among the children of the poor in some districts of our large cities. The only real cause of this enormous difference in the position of the rich and the poor with respect to their chances of existence lay in the fact that at the bottom of society wages were so low that food and other requisites of health were obtained with too great difficulty.”
Dr. C. H. Drysdale, in report of Industrial Remuneration Conference, 1885. Investigations of Joseph Korosi, director of municipal statistics of Buda Pesth. Comments on other data.

7. Intemperance as an Industrial Evil
   Intemperance must be regarded both as with cause and effect.
   Music as a remedy for intemperance. Experiments in London where oratorios like “St. Paul,” the “Messiah,” “Elijah,” and Spohr’s “Last Judgment” have been appreciated by “crowds of the lowest classes, some shoeless and bonnetless, and all having the savor of the great unwashed; who sat in church for two hours ‘quietly and reverently.’” See Barnett’s “Practicable Socialism” p. 56. Testimony: “If I could hear music like that every night I should not need the drink.” A New York experiment.
   Positive measures required for the cure of intemperance and not merely negative. Working-men’s halls. The efforts of working-men in Baltimore. Modified Prohibition considered.
8. Other Evils.
   “Pluck-me Stores.” Excessive immigration, monopolies, accidents, a wide-spread spirit of lawlessness, pauperism.

Source: Chautauqua Assembly Herald. Vol. XIV, No. 15 (August 9, 1889), pp. 6-7.

Image Source: The University of Wisconsin yearbook, The Badger 1894.