One of the commonest sights in the city is that of the people going to work in the early morning; the streets are thronged with men carrying dinner pails, and girls and women carrying bundles. Many are hurrying with a worried look on their faces as if fearful of being a minute or two late. At night the same people are again on the streets with their faces turned in the opposite direction going home after the day’s work. A few hours’ rest, then a new day, and the same people may be seen in the same streets, hurrying to the ever unending tasks.

The country holds the same urge of work. Nothing is more interesting than a trip through the country early in the morning. With the first hint of dawn you see a thin pencil of smoke begin to stream from the chimneys of the farmhouses. Bobbing lanterns appear by the barn. You hear the clanking of chains and the rattle of harness as the teams are being made ready for the day’s toil. As the morning grows older, you meet the workers out on the road with their faces set sturdily toward the field of their labor.

All night long from a thousand centers massive trains are rushing toward other centers. In each engine two men, with nerves alert and eyes peering out into the darkness ahead, guide the power that pulls the train. Every few minutes the door of the firebox is opened and a gleam of light makes an arc through the darkness of the night as the fireman mends his fire.

During the daytime thousands of trackmen have inspected the rails; other thousands have been at work repairing the ties, putting in new rails, and improving the grade. Telegraphers are continuously flashing their messages along the wires; their invisible hands guide these flying trains. In factories, workshops, mills, mines, forests, on steamships, on the wharves, wherever there are human beings, there is work being done. Work is as ceaseless and persistent as life itself.

The Song of the World of Work. You remember, perhaps, the first time that you visited a big city. From your room in the hotel you could hear the roar of the streets. That roar is made up of hundreds of separate sounds. It is the voice of work from the throat of the city. It changes with each hour of the night. Just before dawn there is a lull and the voice is almost quiet but only for a short period; then it takes on a new volume of sound and grows in intensity to the full force of its noonday chorus. What is this voice saying? It is telling the story, and pouring out the complaint, and singing the song of the world of work. The idler or the parasite is the exception. People can live without working, but such is human nature that the person is rarely found who is willing to bear the odium of being a member of the class that never toils.

Work and Life. “What are you going to do when you grow up?” This is a common question asked of every girl and boy. Very early in our lives we begin to try to answer this question. Our environment shapes our attitude toward life, and helps us to choose the type of work to which we think we are adapted, but, having once settled the question of the kind of work we are to do, that choice eventually determines, in a large measure, our character. Work is so much a part of our lives that it marks us and puts us in groups. All ministers are very much alike, doctors are alike, lawyers are alike, business men are alike, business women resemble each other, so do miners and woodsmen. In fact, the work that we do groups us automatically with the others in the same profession or trade. Work creates our world for us and also gives us our vocabulary. A man who made his fortune on a big cattle-ranch in the West moved with his family to Chicago. His wife and daughter succeeded in getting into fashionable society and with the money at their command made quite a stir in the social world. Foolishly they were ashamed of their old life on the ranch. They had difficulty in living down their past, and the husband never reached a place where his family could be sure of him. He carried his old world with him into the new environment. One of the standing jokes among their friends was the way in which this man told his cronies at the club how his wife had “roped a likely critter and had him down to the house for inspection.” This was his description of a young man who was considered eligible for his daughter’s hand. The men who have been brought up in mining communities use the phraseology of the mines. One of the most prominent preachers in America was a miner until he was past twenty years of age. His sermons, lectures, and books are filled with the phrases learned in his early life. A preacher in a fishing village in the northern part of Scotland, in making his report to the Annual Conference, stated: “The Lord has blessed us wonderfully this year. In the spring, with the flood-tide of his grace, there was brought a multitude of souls into our harbor. We set our nets and many were taken. These we have salted down for the kingdom of God.” Needless to say, he and his people were dependent upon the fishing industry for a living.

Purpose of Work. Life is divided into work and play. Work is the exertion of energy for a given purpose. People accept the claim of life as they find it with little or no protest because one must work in order to eat. The compulsion of necessity determines the amount of work and the amount of play in the average life. Even a casual study of the industrial life of to-day convinces one that work absorbs a large part of the time and conscious energy of all the people. The letters T.B.M. meaning “Tired Business Man” are now used to typify a fact of modern life. Business takes so much time and effort that it leaves the individual so worn out at the end of every day that he is not able to think clearly, or to render much service to himself or to his friends. He is simply a run-down machine and must be recharged for the next day’s work.

In one of the American cities a group of nineteen girls formed themselves into a Bible study class, and met at the Young Women’s Christian Association building on Thursday nights. A light, inexpensive dinner was served and the pastor of one of the churches was asked to teach the group. All of these girls were members of the church and were engaged in work in the city. One was in a secretarial position, four were stenographers, two were saleswomen, and thirteen were employed in a department store. The hours of work were long for the majority of the class. On Saturday nights they were forced to work overtime. The average wage for the group was $7.25 a week. Out of this they had to buy their food, pay for their rooms, buy their clothes, and pay their car-fare. Whatever was left they could save or give away just as they pleased. After the classes had been meeting for about six weeks, it developed that only four of the girls went to church with any degree of regularity. Ten of them gave as a reason for not going that they were so tired on Sunday mornings that they could not do their work and get up in time to go to church. When they did get up, there were dozens of hooks and eyes and buttons that had to be sewed on, clothes which had to be mended, and the week’s washing to be done. In telling of their experiences one girl said, “Sunday is really my busiest day.” These girls can be taken as typical of a large number of workers, men and women. Life to the majority becomes simply the performance of labor. Work is the whole end of existence. All brightness and cheer is squeezed out by the compulsion of labor.

In a Pennsylvania coal town the employees of the company live in a little village built around the coke ovens. There is not a green thing in the whole village. A girl from Pittsburgh married one of the men who was interested in the mines. They moved to this town, and she took all her wedding presents and finery with her. In three weeks the smoke had ruined her clothes, had made the inside of her little home grimy, and the dirt and soot had ground itself into the carpets and floor, till she said, “I feel that all the beautiful life that Frank and I had planned to live together has become simply an incidental adjunct to the coke-ovens.” We often hear it said that the minds of people are stolid, stodgy, or indifferent, and that they do not appreciate the best things in life. The wonder is that the masses of the people appreciate them as much as they do.

The Purpose of Life. A well-known catechism teaches that, “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” Herbert Spencer says, “The progress of mankind is in one aspect a means of liberating more and more life from mere toil, and leaving more and more life available for relaxation, for pleasure, culture, travel, and for games.” The struggle for existence consumes so much time that it becomes an end in itself. This ought not to be. The true purpose of life is not work, nor wealth, nor anything else that can be gained by human striving, but it is life itself. Therefore, the work that people do ought to contribute to an enrichment of life. We are indebted to Henry Churchill King for the splendid phrase, “The fine art of living.” William Morris said that whatever a man made ought to be a joy to the maker as well as to the user, so that all the riches created in the world should enrich the creator as well as those who profit by the use of the riches. Under the old form of production, where every man did his own work with his own tools, it was easy for him to take pleasure in the thing that he was making. The factory system breaks the detail of production into such small parts that no one worker can take very much pride in the actual processes of his work. It is not a very thrilling thing to stand by a machine and feed bars of iron into it for ten hours a day, and to watch the completed nuts or screws dropping out at the other end of the machine. The pleasure in the work must be secured from the conditions under which the work is performed—the cooperation in the production, and the feeling that the worker is a part, and is being blessed by being a part, of the modern industrial system.

Specialization in Work. Specialization has been carried so far that to-day there are very few skilled workers in the sense in which this term was used several years ago. Shoemakers very rarely know how to make shoes, for they now make only some one part of the shoe. The automobile industry, by methods of standardizing, is organized so that each worker performs some simple task. He repeats this over and over, but his task added to that done by the others, produces an automobile. In the glove factory one set of workers spend their lives making thumbs; another group stitch the back of the gloves. In the clothing industry some make buttonholes, others sew on buttons; some put in the sleeves, and others hem; each has a very small part to do. This specialization in industry has been carried so far that it is seldom that a worker knows anything about the finished product.

A study of the organization of labor shows to what extent specialization has been carried. One of the chief complaints of the American manufacturer is that his men and women are not loyal. There is undoubtedly ground for this complaint, but on the other hand it must be conceded that it is very difficult for a worker—in the garment trade, for instance—to be loyal to a long succession of buttonholes; and for glovemakers to be loyal to a multitude of thumbs. The lack of loyalty comes largely from the failure of the directors of modern industry to bring their workers into that relationship with the business which would give them a feeling that they are an essential part of the industry. Loyalty grows by what it feeds on. The specialization that has been going on has been the very force which has made the worker simply a part of the machine, and as such, detaches him from the business of which he ought to feel himself an integral part.

Unity of the Workers. The extent to which specialization has been developed has had another effect. While the process of differentiation has been carried on at a rapid pace, and the individual worker has known but little about the finished product, he has come to know a great deal about the other disintegrated units in the workshop, the mine, the factory, and the mill. Consequently, with the differentiation in the work there has been a growing solidarity or feeling of unity among the workers themselves. Evidence of this is found in the philosophy that there are only two classes of people in the world, the people who work and the people who do not work, and which is used by the revolutionary groups with tremendous force. We do not like to think of classes in America, but the forces of industrial life have created classes in spite of ourselves.

A World Apart. The workers live in a world apart. Unconsciously they drift together. They talk each other’s language; they understand each other’s point of view. In every town and city we find groups of the workers living to themselves. The work which men do inevitably groups them together; and social life centers so completely about their work that it is really the factory and mill that mark out the lines and define the limits within which the classes must live. Consequently, in our American cities we find such designations as these: “Shanty Town,” “Down by the Gas Works,” “Across the Tracks,” “Murphy’s Hollow,” “Tin-Can Alley,” “Darktown,” “On the Hill,” “Out by the Slaughter-Pen,” “Over on the West Side,” and “Down in the Bottoms.” Just think of your own town, and you probably can add some new phrase that tells where your laboring group lives. In one Western town the community was divided by the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks. The boys in the school on the north side of the tracks were all known as “Sewer Rats.” On the opposite side of the town they were known as “Depot Buzzards.” Whenever one group met the other there was always a war. A friend tells of a similar condition in a Canadian village where the Scotch boys were banded against the Irish and the Irish against the Scotch. Whenever the Macks met the Micks, or the Sandys met the Paddys, there was a row. A large part of this classification is temporary and need not be considered very seriously. Underlying it, however, is the deeper fact that we have come to recognize that there is a world of the workers, and that it is a world apart. In this world of the workers the rewards and the profits of toil are barely adequate to take care of the needs of the families of the workers.

It is assumed that in pre-war times it required from $800 to $900 a year to support a family in the average American community. Since 1914 the cost of living has increased approximately 60 per cent. It is estimated that even to-day with the advances that have been made in the wages by nearly all industries, 61 per cent. of the workers of America are receiving an average wage of less than $800 a year. “Shanty Town” and that section “Down by the Gas Works” have been built of poor material and allowed to become dilapidated not because the people living there like that sort of thing, but because the returns for the labor of these people are totally inadequate for their needs. The housing and living conditions of the people who live in the world of the workers is determined by the wages which they receive.

The Interdependence of All. Now, if we do recognize that the world of work is a world apart, we must not fail to recognize also that behind this disintegration that has been going on, there is an integration of society more comprehensive than we have ever known before in the history of the world. While the people may be allowed to live by themselves in a part of the town that is less desirable as a dwelling-place than other parts, yet we are all dependent one upon the other. There is an old story which illustrates this point. A boy complained to his father about being poor and said that he wished that he had been born in a rich man’s home. The father told him that he was mistaken, for he really had wealth which he had never considered. That night the boy had a dream. It seemed to him that there came and stood at his bed a little fellow dressed like a farmer. The boy asked him who he was. He replied that he was the soul of all the farmers that were working to produce the flour that went into bread. Another little figure appeared beside the first, a black man with a turban on his head; he was the spirit of the workers in the tea and spice gardens of India. Another black man dressed in the rough clothes of a day-laborer joined the others; he was the spirit of the workers on a Southern plantation who make the cotton and produce the sugar. Other workers appeared so fast that the boy could hardly keep up with their approach—the coal-miner, the iron-miner, the woodsman, the carpenter, and the girl workers in the flax-mills of Dublin, who produce the linen in the rough, red-checked tablecloths. When they had all gathered together there was a multitude, and all were in reality the servants of this one boy.

Our dependence upon each other was clearly illustrated in the shut-down of non-essential industries on certain days in the winter of 1917–18. In order to keep people from starving and freezing, the government of the United States ordered the suspension of certain industries so that the conservation of fuel might protect the lives of the people.

The Good Neighbor. We are “members one of another.” The basic industries provide the necessities of our lives—feeding, housing, clothing, warmth, means of traveling, and the things which are part and parcel of our very being. The workers who are engaged in producing these things are true servants of humanity, and we are all under deep and abiding obligations to them. Just in the proportion that we produce something that adds to the wealth and happiness of the world, we are discharging the obligation which others by their labors have placed upon us. The division into classes, and the setting off of groups by themselves, the creating of the world of labor as a world apart, makes the practise of neighborliness a difficult thing. Now neighborliness is the very essence of Christianity. To be a friend of man ought to be the supreme desire of every individual. In the parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus defined the meaning of Christianity in terms of neighborliness. The church must answer this question: How can Christian people be good neighbors in modern industrial society?

Neighbor to the Group. We recognize the call to neighborliness in individual cases. If a man is knocked down by an automobile when he is crossing a street, people will run to help him to his feet, will call a cab or an ambulance, and he will be cared for just as carefully by the stranger as if he were a near relative. The individual idea of neighborliness is thoroughly appreciated. We have learned how to practise it. When it comes to a group, however, we find it difficult. The same men that would rush into the street to help an individual that is hurt, will live in a community and not appreciate the needs of the people living in the same block. The industrial class may be knocked down by adverse social conditions, and no one will recognize just what the situation means; or, recognizing it, will know how to apply the remedy, or even how to offer intelligent assistance.

In a small city in Ohio there lived an old man and his wife. Their children had married and moved away, leaving the old people to shift for themselves. The man was nearly blind and his wife was paralyzed and unable to take care of herself. The neighbors used to go to see them once in a while but no one felt any special responsibility for them and the community knew very little about the conditions under which they lived. One of the neighbors remarked one day that he had not seen anybody around the house and no smoke coming from the chimney. An investigation was made and it was found that the old man had been dead three days and was lying in bed with his paralyzed wife who could not help herself, nor could call for assistance. For three days she had been suffering unspeakable agony beside the form of her dead husband. The whole community was shocked. No one could believe that such a lack of neighborliness could exist. No one was particularly to blame; it was merely one of those things that occur because the man and his wife had dropped out of the main-traveled path of the city’s life.

The church is making every effort to meet the needs of the individual, but when it preaches the need of regeneration, it must meet the group needs as well, and the minister of a church for a world of labor must be minister to the group as well as to the individual. The world war has impressed upon us many facts, none with more insistence than this—that we are living in a very small world; and that nations, as well as groups of people everywhere, must learn to appreciate each other for what they are, and for the contribution which they are making to the well-being of humanity. Recognizing this, however, does not mean that we are all to try and think alike, to be alike, or to live alike. As Americans we are very likely to think that our way of doing things is entirely right, and that enlightenment comes in proportion to the degree in which other people copy our example in clothes, methods of living, and even our manner of speaking.

A Specialized Program for Group Needs. The church’s program for a world of work must be a specialized program. It must be based upon a thorough knowledge of the facts incident to the life of the people, an appreciation of their view-points, and must take into consideration the ultimate ends to be achieved, the means by which these ends can be reached, and a willingness to subordinate the program of the church to the needs of the group. The program of a city church appealing to well-to-do, middle-class people, will utterly fail in the average rural community. A program for a mining community must consider the needs as well as the character of the miners, and the quality of their work. The church is sharply challenged by the specialization in industry, and by the fact that there are classes who do not hear, or at least fail to heed its appeal. In the growing demand for democracy, the church must not only be the most democratic of all institutions but it must be the leader in setting before the people the ideals and in keeping before their minds the great ends of democracy.

Approach to the Subject. In the following chapters are set forth some of the conditions under which the workers in the basic industries toil and live; also the great needs of each group and what the church is doing, what it ought to do, and what it can do. We will consider each group in relation to the contribution it makes to the life of us all. Food is a first need of each individual, therefore, we will study the rural workers first, for they are the ones who feed the world. Next we will study the makers of our clothing; then the mines, for they provide for our warmth and shelter; then the steel workers, who are the real builders of our material civilization. We are a restless race, and demand the labor of thousands of men and women to move us from place to place, so we will study the lives of these providers of transportation. We will also think together of that large group who amuse us and who labor to produce the luxuries which we enjoy. There are certain groups that we will find in each of these larger groups, such as the seasonal workers, the women in industry who toil. We will take a glimpse at these.

Men and Things. Men produce things, and often the created thing seems to become greater than its creator. We will hope through these discussions to show that man is infinitely greater than all the things which he produces. We will also endeavor to arrive at some decision as to what constitutes a proper message and ministry for the church in the midst of a world of work, so that working men and women may be protected in their toil, and freed from the incessant and always present danger of becoming slaves to the wealth they create.