VOL. X.

No. 1

The Vanishing We are inclined to accept certain evi

Hosts of the Unemployed.

dences that have come to our notice which indicate that a turn of the tide of business affairs will soon be apparent in all quarters. A return of industrial prosperity after a period of depression almost always comes without observation. The good times are upon us even while we are still imagining ourselves in the midst of bad times. Our readers will remember that, with perhaps more care and thoroughness than any other journal in the country, the REVIEW OF REVIEWS in the winter and spring took occasion to ascertain to what extent men were out of employment in the principal American centres of population and industry, and what measures had been devised for the relief of the unemployed. We have now, just before sending this number to press, again received direct and authoritative information from nearly all the cities mentioned in our discussion of relief measures early in the present year. We shall not attempt to report in detail, but we are glad to be able to state that almost everywhere it was found possible several weeks ago to abandon all special relief measures, and to disband the Citizens' Committees under which relief was administered in most of the large towns. Our Philadelphia informant, Mr. McWade of the Public Ledger, who is one of the officers of the Citizens' Permanent Relief Committee, assures us that after expending over $143,000, the committee has closed its work with a balance on hand amounting to more than $12,000. Mr. McWade gives us the very striking information that the recent opening of mills, factories, furnaces and manufacturing establishments in general, has given employment to more than 80,000 persons, the greater part of whom had been dependent upon the relief committee for help. He declares that "the committee's work would have been kept up during the summer months had there been any necessity for it; but matters have improved in almost every direction." From the New England towns, where important relief measures were necessary, we have received very encouraging reports. This is particularly true as regards such manufacturing places as Lynn, Cambridge, Springfield and Providence. The numbers of the unemployed in Boston last winter were variously estimated, as our readers will remember, but all reports made

The greatest relief work of all, in some Good Reports from respects, was that instituted by the citiMany Centres. zens' committee at Pittsburg. It expended more than a quarter of a million dollars, half of which Mr. Andrew Carnegie contributed. The committee gave total or partial support to more than 14,000 men, representing 47,000 persons dependent upon their labor. The relief operations have been wound up; and while we are informed that there are still a good many men in need of work, the exceptional stress has wholly disappeared. The Cincinnati situation, which, though severe, was admirably met

by the rally of business men and municipal authorities around the Associated Charities as a centre, is quite normal again; and one-third of the special municipal relief fund that was appropriated remains unexpended. Many men are employed only on part time, and from Cincinnati's workers in charity, as well as from those in many cities, come to us expressions of anxiety lest next winter should bring a return of enforced idleness, with less ability on the part of workingmen to bear the strain. The Baltimore measures of relief were notably successful, and the emergency already appears a matter of history. The brilliantly conceived relief plans of the Indianapolis Commercial Club have also been brought to a successful conclusion, and the labor conditions there are normal once more, cases of need being easily dealt with by the usual agencies of charity. Favorable reports come also from St. Paul and Minneapolis. At Chicago, even in the short period that has elapsed since the closing of the Fair, which left the labor market so abnormally congested, there seems to have been accomplished a very remarkable adjustment and assimilation, and we are told that there is no prospect that there will be left a residue of chronic seekers for aid or claimants upon public support. In Milwaukee and Toledo, in Cleveland and Columbus, greatly improved conditions are visible. Mayor Major of Toledo reports the recent demand for work of a body of several hundred men, who were all, however, with a few individual exceptions, members of the Polish colony. Our report from Kansas City begins with this sentence: "All necessity for special relief of the unemployed has disappeared in this community." Denver's situation has been disturbed again by the great Colorado mining strikes and the flocking of miners to the chief city; but apart from these disquieting events, the situation is quite transformed. In May, for example, the demand for labor in Colorado was very great. The adjustment of the strikes and the resumption of mining activity gives Colorado the assurance of a very busy autumn. A direct report from San Francisco has not reached us; but from general sources of information, we may conclude that such improvement as is visible elsewhere has been experienced in like measure on the Pacific coast. It can be said for New York City and Brooklyn that the most of the men and women who were seeking work in the winter and spring have found employment.

No Further Excuse

for
" 'Coxeyites."

Thus, curiously enough, even while several "industrial armies" are still on their tedious and adventurous line of march to Washington to report to Congress the state of the country and demand immediate legislation to give relief to the unemployed, the chief excuse for the rally has already disappeared. There is every reason to believe that if Congress will but pass the tariff bill and adjourn, the quickened wheels of manufacturing industry and the call for men to harvest ripening crops and to supply the demand for coal and lumber and other materials, will at once afford a

chance for every able-bodied man in the United States to work. It is reasonable to estimate that fully nine-tenths of the unemployed labor of three or four months ago has already been absorbed, and a very little quickening of the industrial life will provide for those remaining. Coxeyites will then melt away like magic, except as they are supported by the mistaken sympathy and hospitality of those who cannot resist the temptation to feed any applicant who professes hunger. In ordinary times in the United States, the existence of tramps is due simply to the amiability and kindness of the country folk, who subsidize that species of vagrancy. But let it not for a moment be thought that the Coxeyites are tramps. For the most part they are a very decent class of workingmen. They belong especially to the mechanical trades. The difficulty of an exact analysis of these bodies lies in the fact that there has been so much going and coming that their character has not been always just the same.

An Inspection

of the Camps.

Thus the writer made some personal inspection, about the middle of June, of the "industrials " encamped at Bladensburg, near Washington. In "General" Galvin's camp there were about 200 men, most of whom had come through from the Pacific Coast. Mr. Galvin explained that some hundreds who began the journey had dropped off at various points because they had found work. They were very largely carpenters and members of the building trades. Those who remained and were in camp were nearly all quite young. They were very stalwart, pleasant, wellspoken fellows, for whose presence in Washington no real reason could be given except that which we gave last month-namely, that being temporarily out of work, and being restless and high-spirited, they had taken quite congenially to the idea of such an adventure as this trip to the nation's capital. They had not tramped, but had made their way on railroad trains, their fares being in part paid by the communities through which they passed. They were, quite largely, young fellows who had gone to the Pacific Coast from points further East, and had not acquired a very fixed domicile. They were ready enough to say, as they had been taught to say,-that Congress ought to give work by proceeding to irrigate and improve the arid lands of the great West, and ought to shut down upon the importation of further foreign labor. But they were evidently ready for a good excuse to give up the mission and strike out for their own individual fortunes. In the Coxey camp nearby, there were about 400 men, of whom, perhaps, one in ten claimed to be a "married man." A little further inquiry generally revealed the fact that these so-called "married men" were widowers without children, rather than men who had left hungry families behind them and had gone forth in sadness and despair to seek relief for those who were dear to them. From some slight knowledge of communistic experiments and Utopian colonies, the writer was strongly

reminded by the Coxey camp of certain romantic characteristics that pertained to some of the attempts many years ago in the West to establish phalansteries on the Fourier plan, and that have marked other detached projects in the line of communism. The Coxeyites had pitched their tents around threeand-a-half sides of a nearly square field, the middle of which had been converted into an excellent baseball ground. Good ball players were numerous among them, and spirited match games seemed to be a part of each afternoon's diversion. In the stream hard by were plenty of fish; and Chief-Marshal Carl Browne had procured seines with which it was proposed to obtain an abundant supply of that kind of food. The various squads of commonwealers were vying with each other in the decoration of their tents and booths. They were laying out ornamental flower beds, and making much ingenious preparation of a festive nature in view of the approach of the 4th of July. They were all comfortable, and, so far as one could learn, were nearly all of them members of skilled trades. Most of them appeared to be from twenty to twenty-five years old. Inasmuch as the times were dull at home and they were out of work when they started for Washington, and inasmuch, furthermore, as they were not obliged to give support to dependent women or children, they felt at liberty to prolong somewhat indefinitely their quixotic sojourn at Washington. They were intelligent enough to enjoy the great notoriety they had attained. There was not a sick man in the entire camp, and not a particle of evidence of grief or distress or crushed spirits. The leaders were probably perplexed; but as for the men in the ranks, they were well aware that when the times improved, or the Coxey business was played out, they could find work at their trades. A good many of these men were from the industrial towns of Rhode Island and Connecticut, while Philadelphia was also well represented.

The great object of the leaders was to Trying to Save save something of the prestige of the Appearances. movement by organizing a 4th of July demonstration which should give evidence of a most excellent patriotic feeling. Every effort was being made to get the much-delayed Kelly forces to Washington to participate in the parade on the Nation's birthday. It was also proposed by Marshal Carl Browne to bring into the line of march a good many thousands of the colored people of the District of Columbia. It was evident enough that so far as anything serious was concerned, the movement had fallen completely flat. Among the plain people of the District of Columbia, especially the working people, one discovered that great sympathy was felt for Coxey and the "industrials." It was well nigh the unanimous opinion of the people that the reception of the Coxey army by the Washington police had been stupid and brutal in the extreme, and highly uncalled for by the facts of the situation. It was also held that the incarceration of Messrs. Coxey, Browne and Jones for twenty days, for the sole offense of

having trodden upon the grass in the Capitol grounds, was an unmerited and extreme punishment. There was no sign of any policy on the part of Mr. Coxey except to endeavor to collect food enough to maintain the camp for some time to come, and thus to wait for something to turn up that would lessen the appearance of complete fiasco.

The Serious

Aspect of
Coxeyism.

But although it seems to us evident that the improved conditions of employment are taking away the immediate occasion of this particular movement called Coxeyism, we have no desire to belittle that movement unduly or to refuse recognition of the fact that there are deeply serious conditions out of which it has in part come forth. The return of a brief season of prosperity may obscure those conditions somewhat, but may not remove them. It is the business of the statesman, the journalist, and the intelligent citizen to face these conditions frankly and earnestly in order that Coxeyism may not return to plague us in some more dangerous form. It is gratifying to believe that there is not so much distress throughout the country as there was three months ago. But we ought not lightly to forget how widespread and how painful that distress was through a period of about half a year. We cannot count forever upon the buoyancy of American conditions. Elsewhere we are glad to publish an article on Coxeyism from the pen of Mr. Stead. He prepared it primarily for the readers of his English Review of Reviews, and it was based of necessity upon newspaper reports. But it seems to us not only a more graphic and picturesque account of the rallying and marching of the "industrials" than anything that has appeared on our own side of the water, but it also approaches the subject with a better estimate of the significance of Coxeyism than most of our American writers have given in their disquisitions. We do not agree with all of Mr. Stead's inferences in detail, but with the general spirit and purport of his discussion we most heartily coincide.

The revised tariff bill has been making its Progress of the way through the Senate, and its schedules Tariff Bill. have undergone considerable further change, chiefly in the nature of increased protection. It seems to be the belief in well-informed political circles in Washington that the bill will be passed through all stages and become a law before the end of July. It is expected that the conference committee of the two houses will not very greatly alter the results of the closely contested work of the Senate, and that the whole measure, including the income tax, will be promptly accepted by both chambers in the form agreed upon by the conferrees; nor is there any question as to the President's prompt signature. The innovation of the income tax must be regarded as the most dubious feature of the programme. As for the tariff part of the measure, it remains strongly protective; but with duties that average perhaps twenty