CHAPTER II

IN A PITTSBURG FACTORY


In choosing the scene for my first experiences, I decided upon
Pittsburg, as being an industrial centre whose character was determined
by its working population. It exceeds all other cities of the country in
the variety and extent of its manufacturing products. Of its 321,616
inhabitants, 100,000 are labouring men employed in the mills. Add to
these the great number of women and girls who work in the factories and
clothing shops, and the character of the place becomes apparent at a
glance. There is, moreover, another reason which guided me toward this
Middle West town without its like. This land which we are accustomed to
call democratic, is in reality composed of a multitude of kingdoms whose
despots are the employers--the multi-millionaire patrons--and whose
serfs are the labouring men and women. The rulers are invested with an
authority and a power not unlike those possessed by the early barons,
the feudal lords, the Lorenzo de Medicis, the Cheops; but with this
difference, that whereas Pharaoh by his unique will controlled a
thousand slaves, the steel magnate uses, for his own ends also,
thousands of separate wills. It was a submissive throng who built the
pyramids. The mills which produce half the steel the world requires are
run by a collection of individuals. Civilization has undergone a change.
The multitudes once worked for one; now each man works for himself first
and for a master secondarily. In our new society where tradition plays
no part, where the useful is paramount, where business asserts itself
over art and beauty, where material needs are the first to be satisfied,
and where the country's unclaimed riches are our chief incentive to
effort, it is not uninteresting to find an analogy with the society in