The Family and the Workers : Part 1

The Family and it's Members
by Anna Garlin Spencer

(Page 14 of 23)

"It is all work, and forgotten work, this peopled, clothed, articulate-speaking, high-towered, wide-acred world. For the thistle a blade of grass, later a drop of nourishing milk, later a nobler man. Man perfects himself as well as the world by working." - Carlyle.

"Every man's task is his life preserver." - Emerson.

"What was his name? I do not know his name.
No form of bronze and no memorial stones
Show me the place where lie his mouldering bones.
Only a cheerful city stands,
Builded by his hardened hands;
Only ten thousand homes,
Where every day
The cheerful play
Of love and hope and courage comes;
These are his monuments, and these alone, -
There is no form of bronze and no memorial stone."
- Edward Everett Hale.

"Let us now praise the artificer and the workmaster
Who is wakeful to finish his work.
These put their trust in their hands
And each becometh wise in his own work.
Though they sit not in the seat of the judge,
Nor understand the covenant of judgment;
Though they declare not instruction nor utter dark sayings
Yet without these shall not a city be inhabitedv Nor shall men sojourn therein.
For these maintain the fabric of the world
And in the handiwork of their craft is their prayer."
- Ecclesiasticus.

Changes from Ancient to Modern Forms of Labor. - The change from the domestic and handicraft stage in industry to the capitalized, power-driven, machine-dominated, and highly specialized work-system of the present day has been often described and is a part of all the economic problems of modern times. We do not need here to rehearse the details of that change or to speak of its effect upon workers in general. What we must do, however, is to trace specifically some of the results of that industrial change in the constitution and in the development of family life.

In the old order the worker owned his tool, selected his material, controlled the process of his task, and often was master of the sale of the finished product. Hence, as has so often been shown, the character of a man was so obviously a part of the stock-in-trade of the worker, his judgment, probity and skill were so clearly causes of his success in handicraft, that the ethical training of life came definitely through the exercise of work-power. Now, as we are often reminded, the worker is divorced from the management and control of his work-process and is a "hand," merely attached to a machine that others must choose, buy and install, the product of which is in only an infinitesimal part his responsibility and of the profit from which another takes the lion's share. This has made many feel that ethical training in life must come to the worker from his leisure hours only, and that his task must be always merely a routine one, to be got through with as soon as possible each day in order that he may "live" in the hours left from work.

This idea cannot be accepted by anyone who realizes the character-drill that may inhere in any form of useful labor. The need is to permeate the methods of modern industry with the creative spirit, to mix the management of all business and manufacturing with the brains of workmen as well as of directors and to make a new connection, strong, obvious, and thought-compelling, between the worker and the control and responsibility of his work. While this is being accomplished the results of the change from handicraft to machine work in the family order must be understood and unsocial elements in that change minimized. It must be remembered that among the opportunities of character-training in work lost by the man, the woman and the child and youth, by the change in industrial methods, is the constant influence of the home life while at work. The old industries clustered about the fireside.

It made the household a work-place, and some feel that this was a detriment to home life and that we have a better chance to make real centres of love and happiness now that we have taken out of the domestic field almost all the elements of manufacture and of trade. However that may be, this much is sure, that when father and mother worked together, and children learned how to work while still within the family influence, it was easier than it is now to make the daily task one of mutual coöperation and mutual service within the family circle.

The Old Household a Work-place. - We have passed laws now, forbidding "home industries" because so many "sweated trades" find their last and often impregnable fortress in the crowded rooms of the tenement living-places. This may be necessary and may be well to do, but the fact remains that something inhered in the old domestic training of children and youth in useful work within the home which was lost when the factory was built and the young workers had to seek their jobs outside the family circle. And that something of work-drill and habit-forming in the interest of self-support and family usefulness we are now trying to reintroduce into the education of children and youth by elaborate and costly "manual training," "Pre-vocational and Vocational courses" and similar departments in the schools.

Welfare Managers in Modern Times. - The fact that hours of work and conditions affecting the workers can be standardized more easily when those workers are massed in large numbers under one recognized owner and manager of a great industry has sometimes blinded us to the need of each young person to have constantly near at hand a personal representative of society's interest in the development of his character; some interpreter of social customs and ideals to follow which will make for his advantage. We are trying now to get "Welfare Managers," paid chaperons, nurses and teachers, into business concerns to take the place of older forms of social direction and care for youthful workers.

These functionaries often do much good and are recognized expressions of the social interest of employers. Since they are installed avowedly for the purpose of making conditions better for the younger, weaker, less trained and more needy of the workers, "Welfare Managers" often find a hostile or at least indifferent attitude toward their efforts on the part of the higher paid, the better established, and more competent women workers, especially those organized in Trade Unions with the slogan of "Not Charity, but Justice." They do, however, reach with light and leading some of the darker sides of modern industry as related to the younger workers.

Copyright, 1923 by J.B. Lippincott Company

About the Author

Anna Garlin Spencer (1851-1931) was an American educator, feminist, and Unitarian minister. Born in Attleboro, MA, she married the Rev. William H. Spencer in 1878. She was a leader in the women's suffrage and peace movements. In 1891 she became the first woman ordained as a minister in the state of Rhode Island.