FIRST PART.

INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER I.-THE NECESSITY FOR A LABOR REPORT UPON TAXATION.

It is the purpose of this report to expose existing methods of taxation in Illinois with especial reference to their effect upon labor interests, and to recommend such reforms in the tax system of the State as may tend to ameliorate the condition of the laboring class. That no more appropriate work could be undertaken by the Bureau, nor one of greater importance at this time, may be seen from a preliminary consideration of the Bureau's functions, and a review of its previous reports.

SECTION I.-GENERAL SCOPE OF THE BUREAU'S POWER.

The act for the establishment of the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics, passed in 1879 by the Thirty-first General Assembly, was distinctively a labor measure. Proposed by labor organizations and promoted by labor agitation, its recognized object was the gathering and collation of facts upon which the industrial classes of the State might in the future secure remedial laws. This appears not only from the history of the period, the name of the Bureau, and the fact that three of the Commissioners must be manual laborers, but also from the language of the organizing act in defining the duties of the Board. The Board is required to collect, assort, systematize and report to the General Assembly "statistical details relating to all departments of labor in the State, and especially in its relations to the commercial, industrial, social, educational and sanitary conditions of the laboring classes, and to the permanent prosperity of the mechanical, manufacturing and productive industry of the State." 1

(1) Revised Statutes, ch. 17a. Act approved May 29, 1879.

SECTION II.-PRECEDING REPORTS OF THE BUREAU.

Pursuant to the purpose for which the Bureau was established, the first Board expended its work, as shown in the first report, that for 1881, upon an investigation of labor questions. But the investigation was superficial in scope. While embodying an essay against socialism, and containing more or less statistical information about coöperation in Great Britain, school savings banks in France, coal mining and railroad employment in Illinois, loan associations, truck stores, trade societies, and women's work, and a digest of American and European laws relating to the employment and education of children, the report dealt chiefly with two labor subjects-prison labor, and the wages and expenses of workingmen. Its ouly recommendations, aside from an appeal for an enlargement of the powers of the Bureau, were prohibition of child. labor in factories and stores, and compulsory school attendance of children under fourteen years of age for three months in the school year.

The second report, that for 1882, made by the same Board as the first, but under the management of a new Secretary-John S. Lord, to whose faithfulness and ability the Bureau is indebted for six admirable biennial reports-begins with a general description of the State of Illinois as an industrial territory, including statistics of its population by counties; and contains comprehensive statistics by counties of its coal production and manufactures, together with statistics by trades of wages, rents and the cost of living. It also gives statistics of wages paid for railroad service, a short account of Illinois lead mines, information about loan and building associations in the State, and also about the public school system and the public indebtedness, and contains the labor laws of the State and an essay on strikes.

The five succeeding reports, 1881-86-88-90-92, all prepared under the direction of Mr. Lord, present the results of extensive investigation along the following special lines:

(1) The proportious of the results of manul labor in manufacturing which accrue to the proprietor and to the workingman respectively; (2) the economical and social condition of the industrial classes of Illinois-their earnings, expenses, hours of labor, etc.; (3) statistics of coal production; (4) convict labor; (5) labor organizations; (6) mortgages; (7) strikes and lock-outs;

(8) earnings of coal mine employés; (9) foreclosures, judgments, and farm values; (10) working women in Chicago; (11) sweating system in Chicago; (12) the eight-hour movement, and (13) the fining system in factories, stores, hotels and restaurants.

SECTION III.-DEPLORABLE CONDITION OF WORKINGMEN.

Nearly all these subjects, like those of the first report, are superficial. They are none the less important on that account; but the time to go beneath the surface has come. If simple observation were not convincing, the previous reports of this Bureau abound in evidence of the deplorable condition of the working classes. "Such glimpses of social conditions as are afforded by these tables," to quote from the report for 1882 language that is also applicable to succeeding reports, and especially to that for 1892, "reveal the disabilities which encumber honest industry, and illustrate how labor is filling the world with wealth and living itself in want; how labor saving machinery is neither saving the labor of men nor reducing the hours of that labor, and how the material progress of which we boast, and the prosperity of the few, may operate to intensify the poverty and distress of the many."

Investigation among comparatively skilled and prosperous workingmen has revealed incomes ranging from less than $500 to barely $700 a year, in return for work averaging more than 10 hours a day. Upon this sum families of from 4 to 6 people are supported. Of necessity the shelter they can secure within reach of their employment is contracted. It averages but four rooms to the family, and the rent rises considerably above $100 per year. After an average of over $100 in addition to rent is expended for food, fuel, and clothing-none of the best, as may readily be inferred, for it is at the rate of only $2 per week or less for each person--the remainder cannot go far toward meeting the innumerable petty and unavoidable expenses of city life, to say nothing of obtaining education and satisfying the wholesome cravings it generates, of buying the wished for home, or of laying up the traditional penny against a rainy day.

Such figures show, as the report for 1882 truly observes, "that the income of mechanics and laborers in Illinois is incompatible with comfortable living, to say the least." 2 And that is not

(1.) Report of Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics for 1882, p. 289. (2) R port of Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics for 1882, p. 294.

the worst. Of the 470 workingmen in over 40 different occupations from whom returns were obtained in 1882, Mr. Lord in the report for that year says: "One-half of them are not even able to earn enough for their daily bread, and have to depend upon the labor of women and children to eke out their misererable existence. Yet these averages are high, both as compared with those in other States, and as compared with the thousands of workingmen from whom no reports are received. In fact, the average earnings of the heads of families for the entire list of occupations is less than the general average for the cost of living; and that this is reduced to the minimum is painfully apparent from the tenements they occupy, the clothes they wear, and the food and fuel they consume."

1

This report was not made for a year of famine, but for one of the prosperous years foliowing our recovery from the hard times. of the late seventies. A much more extensive investigation, the results of which may be found in the report for 1834, exhibits no improvement.

But the mechanics and laborers from whose experience these figures were obtained, constitute, as Mr. Lord remarks and as their occupations show, the more prosperous class of the laborers that in common speech are distinguished as workingmen. The scale of wages and of living runs downward from them, not upward. What then must be the condition of poorer classes? what that of the poorest workingmen? Only observation or experience can vividly answer; but some idea may be gathered from a consideration of the condition of the working women of Chicago and the prevalence of the sweating system there, as exhibited in the report for 1892. Working women appear to receive an average of little more than $6 a week. Over 57 per cent. of them receive less, their average being under $5. The average of those who get more than $6 is only $8. And among victims of the sweating system, of whom there are already at least ten thousand in Chicago, the investigation disclosed such typical examples as these:

Twelve persons living in 6 rooms, two of the rooms being in constant use for a shop; nine men employed in one room, 12 by 14 feet, in the rear of a swarming tenement; four families in one four-room flat, using one cook stove in common, and all the women and children sewing in the bedrooms; a woman who earns $6:54 a month finishing knee pants at 6 cents a dozen pairs; a woman

(1) Report of Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics for 1882, p. 288.