The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1911-03-25
HE HATH AN ESTATE
WHO HATH A TRADE
It Is the Alma Mater, at Whose
>a: Plentiful Breast All Men
N Are Nourished."
UNFRAMED LABOR IS
DRUG ON THE MARKET
Work at a Living Wage Is AL
ways Somewhere Assured
for Skilled Workmen.

| ways Somewhere Assured
for Skilled Workmen.
J Henry M. Hyde of Chicago, in a re-
cent contribution to the Chicago Tri-
bune, writes Of the man with trade
as follows:
| At Chicago Stockyardds.
| Every morning of the work day
crowd of at least 5000 people gathers
about the gates of the Chicago stock
yards.
| For an hour they wait in the rain
or the snow or the hot sun, pleading,
struggling together for work-for
chance to earn fifteen cents an hour
1T hard manual labor.
In that pathetic army, which is
| mustered every morning, there are old
men and young women, children and
grandm others, cripples and tall young
peasants, with the strength of a bull
in their broad, awkward frames.
When times begin, to grow a bit
hard the regular morning crowd
grows larger. At the first distant
! whisper Of panic there are five in
| stead of three thousand anxious,
hungry people waiting outside the
gates when the whistle blows. There
is no better index than this to busi-
ness conditions
Every morning the great majority
Of these patient people are sent away
without winning the vast favor of an
opportunity to work. At least they
are given only casual and temporary
jobs-they are put in to fill gaps in
the regular working force left by
illness or accident. All they can hope
for is, a few hours at fifteen cents
out Of each week.
Army of Unemployed.
They are a part of the great regular
4 army of the unemp1oye They are
unskilled: laborers, with nothing to
sell but the work OF their untaught
Hands. ''-'-'' "A'A"->'7'
1t is the continual presence of this
mass ON surplus labor that keeps
wages down at the stock yards. These
unframed workmen-because they are
untrained-must not only themselves
struggle on with a wretched pittance,
but their need and their helplessness
have a depressing effect on the wages
of every man employed in the whole
industry.
Skilled Workmen.
The carpenter, the bricklayer, the
plumber-the journeyman in any
handicraft-can, when work is slack
in his own neighborhood, throw his
| lit L. So ~I,@
where, with the fair certainty that
there will presently be a good demand
for his skill. The man who really
knows how to make things need never
go long without .work-and work at
a. living wage.
The casual, unframed day laborer,
on the other hands, has no such GER
tainty. Anybody can take his place.
What he has to sell is always drug
on the market.
| In almost the same evil case is
that other great army of unskilled
laborers who make up the mass of
clerks and office men. Most of them
are victims of the white shirt habit. -
Only half-educated and utterly un-
trained, it is their foolish ambition,
when they leave the grammar school,
to avoid, at any cost, the overalls and
jumper of the mechanic.
Beginning with a microscopic place
in some office, they rise within a
few years to ten or twelve or fifteen
dollars a. week, and there the great
majority of them stick, changing en-
ployers with more and more frequency
as they grow older, until, with the
coming Of gray hair, they are forced
out by the pressure of fresh raw ma
terial undertaking for the splendid
privilege of wearing white cuffs and
earning less than half the weekly
wages of a skilled workman in any
honest trade
Teach Boys Trade.
The invention and use of tools is
one of the things which set man apart
from the other animals: In the mas
terry of the tools of any trade man
demonstrates his kinship with the
gods, with the makers, the creators.
the powers which change and mold
the world to their will.
! No man in any walk in life can
give his son a better start than to
see that he is taught a trade. There
are certain families in Europe that
set the world an example in this re-
spect.
Not alone the young princess but
the princesses also, are apprenticed
to some trade and are kept at it until
they have qualified as journeymen.
Then-and not before-are they al
lowed to take part in the regular
work of the court. And in the same
way boy will be a better lawyer or
doctor or preacher If he has first
mastered some nandicraft.
The man who knows how to handle
tools gets in that way a firm grip on
the reality Of things which the scholar
and professional students almost al
ways lack. And, in an emergency,
q good trade is always an anchor to
windward.' H..sS ..s z4s4. $|. 3 @ss.&