Moreover, in the sudden
expansion and great enterprises of these days, labor even more
than capital lost in stability. One great steadying influence,
the old personal relation between master and servant, which
prevailed during the days of handicraft and even of the small
factory, had disappeared almost completely. Now labor was put up
on the market--a heartless term descriptive of a condition from
which human beings might be expected to react violently--and they
did, for human nature refused to be an inert, marketable thing.
The labor market must expand with the trader's market. In 1860
there were about one and a third million wage-earners in the
United States; in 1870 well over two million; in 1880 nearly two
and three-quarters million; and in 1890 over four and a quarter
million. The city sucked them in from the country; but by far the
larger augmentation came from Europe; and the immigrant, normally
optimistic, often untaught, sometimes sullen and filled with a
destructive resentment, and always accustomed to low standards of
living, added to the armies of labor his vast and complex bulk.
There were two paramount issues--wages and the hours of labor--
to which all other issues were and always have been secondary.
Wages tend constantly to become inadequate when the standard of
living is steadily rising, and they consequently require
periodical readjustment. Hours of labor, of course, are not
subject in the same degree to external conditions.
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