The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Volume VIII Part 42

_Question_. What is your opinion of the work undertaken by the _World_ in behalf of the city slave girl?

_Answer_. I know of nothing better for a great journal to do.

The average girl is so helpless, and the greed of the employer is such, that unless some newspaper or some person of great influence comes to her a.s.sistance, she is liable not simply to be imposed upon, but to be made a slave. Girls, as a rule, are so anxious to please, so willing to work, that they bear almost every hards.h.i.+p without complaint. Nothing is more terrible than to see the rich living on the work of the poor. One can hardly imagine the utter heartlessness of a man who stands between the wholesale manufacturer and the wretched women who make their living--or rather r.e.t.a.r.d their death--by the needle. How a human being can consent to live on this profit, stolen from poverty, is beyond my imagination.

These men, when known, will be regarded as hyenas and jackals.

They are like the wild beasts which follow herds of cattle for the purpose of devouring those that are injured or those that have fallen by the wayside from weakness.

_Question_. What effect has unlimited immigration on the wages of women?

_Answer_. If our country were overpopulated, the effect of immigration would be to lessen wages, for the reason that the working people of Europe are used to lower wages, and have been in the habit of practicing an economy unknown to us. But this country is not overpopulated. There is plenty of room for several hundred millions more. Wages, however, are too low in the United States.

The general tendency is to leave the question of labor to what is called the law of supply and demand. My hope is that in time we shall become civilized enough to know that there is a higher law, or rather a higher meaning in the law of supply and demand, than is now perceived. Year after year what are called the necessaries of life increase. Many things now regarded as necessaries were formerly looked upon as luxuries. So, as man becomes civilized, he increases what may be called the necessities of his life. When perfectly civilized, one of the necessities of his life will be that the lives of others shall be of some value to them. A good man is not happy so long as he knows that other good men and women suffer for raiment and for food, and have no roof but the sky, no home but the highway. Consequently what is called the law of supply and demand will then have a much larger meaning.

In nature everything lives upon something else. Life feeds upon life. Something is lying in wait for something else, and even the victim is weaving a web or crouching for some other victim, and the other victim is in the same business--watching for something else. The same is true in the human world--people are living on each other; the cunning obtain the property of the simple; wealth picks the pockets of poverty; success is a highwayman leaping from the hedge. The rich combine, the poor are unorganized, without the means to act in concert, and for that reason become the prey of combinations and trusts. The great questions are: Will man ever be sufficiently civilized to be honest? Will the time ever come when it can truthfully be said that right is might? The lives of millions of people are not worth living, because of their ignorance and poverty, and the lives of millions of others are not worth living, on account of their wealth and selfishness. The palace without justice, without charity, is as terrible as the hovel without food.

_Question_. What effect has the woman's suffrage movement had on the breadwinners of the country?

_Answer_. I think the women who have been engaged in the struggle for equal rights have done good for women in the direction of obtaining equal wages for equal work. There has also been for many years a tendency among women in our country to become independent --a desire to make their own living--to win their own bread. So many husbands are utterly useless, or worse, that many women hardly feel justified in depending entirely on a husband for the future.

They feel somewhat safer to know how to do something and earn a little money themselves. If men were what they ought to be, few women would be allowed to labor--that is to say, to toil. It should be the ambition of every healthy and intelligent man to take care of, to support, to make happy, some woman. As long as women bear the burdens of the world, the human race can never attain anything like a splendid civilization. There will be no great generation of men until there has been a great generation of women. For my part, I am glad to hear this question discussed--glad to know that thousands of women take some interest in the fortunes and in the misfortunes of their sisters.

The question of wages for women is a thousand times more important than sending missionaries to China or to India. There is plenty for missionaries to do here. And by missionaries I do not mean gentlemen and ladies who distribute tracts or quote Scripture to people out of work. If we are to better the condition of men and women we must change their surroundings. The tenement house breeds a moral pestilence. There can be in these houses no home, no fireside, no family, for the reason that there is no privacy, no walls between them and the rest of the world. There is no sacredness, no feeling, "this is ours."

_Question_. Might not the rich do much?

_Answer_. It would be hard to overestimate the good that might be done by the millionaires if they would turn their attention to sending thousands and thousands into the country or to building them homes miles from the city, where they could have something like privacy, where the family relations could be kept with some sacredness. Think of the "homes" in which thousands and thousands of young girls are reared in our large cities. Think of what they see and what they hear; of what they come in contact with. How is it possible for the virtues to grow in the damp and darkened bas.e.m.e.nts? Can we expect that love and chast.i.ty and all that is sweet and gentle will be produced in these surroundings, in cellars and garrets, in poverty and dirt? The surroundings must be changed.

_Question_. Are the fathers and brothers blameless who allow young girls to make coats, cloaks and vests in an atmosphere poisoned by the ignorant and low-bred?

_Answer_. The same causes now brutalizing girls brutalize their fathers and brothers, and the same causes brutalize the ignorant and low-lived that poison the air in which these girls are made to work. It is hard to pick out one man and say that he is to blame, or one woman and say that the fault is hers. We must go back of all this. In my opinion, society raises its own failures, its own criminals, its own wretches of every sort and kind. Great pains are taken to raise these crops. The seeds, it may be, were sown thousands of years ago, but they were sown, and the present is the necessary child of all the past. If the future is to differ from the present, the seeds must now be sown. It is not simply a question of charity, or a question of good nature, or a question of what we call justice--it is a question of intelligence. In the first place, I suppose that it is the duty of every human being to support himself--first, that he may not become a burden upon others, and second, that he may help others. I think all people should be taught never, under any circ.u.mstances, if by any possibility they can avoid it, to become a burden. Every one should be taught the n.o.bility of labor, the heroism and splendor of honest effort. As long as it is considered disgraceful to labor, or aristocratic not to labor, the world will be filled with idleness and crime, and with every possible moral deformity.

_Question_. Has the public school system anything to do with the army of pupils who, after six years of study, willingly accept the injustice and hards.h.i.+p imposed by capital?

_Answer_. The great trouble with the public school is that many things are taught that are of no immediate use. I believe in manual training schools. I believe in the kindergarten system. Every person ought to be taught how to do something--ought to be taught the use of their hands. They should endeavor to put in palpable form the ideas that they gain. Such an education gives them a confidence in themselves, a confidence in the future--gives them a spirit and feeling of independence that they do not now have.

Men go through college studying for many years, and when graduated have not the slightest conception of how to make a living in any department of human effort. Thousands of them are to-day doing manual labor and doing it very poorly, whereas, if they had been taught the use of tools, the use of their hands, they would derive a certain pleasure from their work. It is splendid to do anything well. One can be just as poetic working with iron and wood as working with words and colors.

_Question_. What ought to be done, or what is to be the end?

_Answer_. The great thing is for the people to know the facts.

There are thousands and millions of splendid and sympathetic people who would willingly help, if they only knew; but they go through the world in such a way that they know but little of it. They go to their place of business; they stay in their offices for a few hours; they go home; they spend the evening there or at a club; they come in contact with the well-to-do, with the successful, with the satisfied, and they know nothing of the thousands and millions on every side. They have not the least idea how the world lives, how it works, how it suffers. They read, of course, now and then, some paragraph in which the misfortune of some wretch is set forth, but the wretch is a kind of steel engraving, an unreal shadow, a something utterly unlike themselves. The real facts should be brought home, the sympathies of men awakened, and awakened to such a degree that they will go and see how these people live, see how they work, see how they suffer.

_Question_. Does exposure do any good?

_Answer_. I hope that _The World_ will keep on. I hope that it will express every horror that it can, connected with the robbery of poor and helpless girls, and I hope that it will publish the names of all the robbers it can find, and the wretches who oppress the poor and who live upon the misfortunes of women.

The crosses of this world are mostly born by wives, by mothers and by daughters. Their brows are pierced by thorns. They shed the bitterest tears. They live and suffer and die for others. It is almost enough to make one insane to think of what woman, in the years of savagery and civilization, has suffered. Think of the anxiety and agony of motherhood. Maternity is the most pathetic fact in the universe. Think how helpless girls are. Think of the thorns in the paths they walk--of the trials, the temptations, the want, the misfortune, the dangers and anxieties that fill their days and nights. Every true man will sympathize with woman, and will do all in his power to lighten her burdens and increase the suns.h.i.+ne of her life.

_Question_. Is there any remedy?

_Answer_. I have always wondered that the great corporations have made no provisions for their old and worn out employees. It seems to me that not only great railway companies, but great manufacturing corporations, ought to provide for their workmen. Many of them are worn out, unable longer to work, and they are thrown aside like old clothes. They find their way to the poorhouses or die in tenements by the roadside. This seems almost infinitely heartless.

Men of great wealth, engaged in manufacturing, instead of giving five hundred thousand dollars for a library, or a million dollars for a college, ought to put this money aside, invest it in bonds of the Government, and the interest ought to be used in taking care of the old, of the helpless, of those who meet with accidents in their work. Under our laws, if an employee is caught in a wheel or in a band, and his arm or leg is torn off, he is left to the charity of the community, whereas the profits of the business ought to support him in his old age. If employees had this feeling--that they were not simply working for that day, not simply working while they have health and strength, but laying aside a little suns.h.i.+ne for the winter of age--if they only felt that they, by their labor, were creating a fireside in front of which their age and helplessness could sit, the feeling between employed and employers would be a thousand times better. On the great railways very few people know the number of the injured, of those who lose their hands or feet, of those who contract diseases riding on the tops of freight trains in snow and sleet and storm; and yet, when these men become old and helpless through accident, they are left to s.h.i.+ft for themselves.

The company is immortal, but the employees become helpless. Now, it seems to me that a certain per cent. should be laid aside, so that every brakeman and conductor could feel that he was providing for himself, as well as for his fellow-workmen, so that when the dark days came there would be a little light.

The men of wealth, the men who control these great corporations-- these great mills--give millions away in ostentatious charity.

They send missionaries to foreign lands. They endow schools and universities and allow the men who earned the surplus to die in want. I believe in no charity that is founded on robbery. I have no admiration for generous highwaymen or extravagant pirates. At the foundation of charity should be justice. Let these men whom others have made wealthy give something to their workmen--something to those who created their fortunes. This would be one step in the right direction. Do not let it be regarded as charity--let it be regarded as justice.

--_New York World_, December 2, 1888.

PROTECTION FOR AMERICAN ACTORS.

_Question_. It is reported that you have been retained as counsel for the Actors' Order of Friends.h.i.+p--the Edwin Forrest Lodge of New York, and the Shakespeare Lodge of Philadelphia--for the purpose of securing the necessary legislation to protect American actors-- is that so?

_Answer_. Yes, I have been retained for that purpose, and the object is simply that American actors may be put upon an equal footing with Americans engaged in other employments. There is a law now which prevents contractors going abroad and employing mechanics or skilled workmen, and bringing them to this country to take the places of our citizens.

No one objects to the English, German and French mechanics coming with their wives and children to this country and making their homes here. Our ports are open, and have been since the foundation of this Government. Wages are somewhat higher in this country than in any other, and the man who really settles here, who becomes, or intends to become an American citizen, will demand American wages.

But if a manufacturer goes to Europe, he can make a contract there and bring hundreds and thousands of mechanics to this country who will work for less wages than the American, and a law was pa.s.sed to prevent the American manufacturer, who was protected by a tariff, from burning the laborer's candle at both ends. That is to say, we do not wish to give him the American price, by means of a tariff, and then allow him to go to Europe and import his labor at the European price.

In the law, actors were excepted, and we now find the managers are bringing entire companies from the old county, making contracts with them there, and getting them at much lower prices than they would have had to pay for American actors.

No one objects to a foreign actor coming here for employment, but we do not want an American manager to go there, and employ him to act here. No one objects to the importation of a star. We wish to see and hear the best actors in the world. But the rest of the company--the support--should be engaged in the United States, if the star speaks English.

I see that it is contended over in England, that English actors are monopolizing the American stage because they speak English, while the average American actor does not. The real reason is that the English actor works for less money--he is the cheaper article.

Certainly no one will accuse the average English actor of speaking English. The hemming and hawing, the aristocratic stutter, the dropping of h's and picking them up at the wrong time, have never been popular in the United States, except by way of caricature.

Nothing is more absurd than to take the ground that the English actors are superior to the American. I know of no English actor who can for a moment be compared with Joseph Jefferson, or with Edwin Booth, or with Lawrence Barrett, or with Denman Thompson, and I could easily name others.

If English actors are so much better than American, how is it that an American star is supported by the English? Mary Anderson is certainly an American actress, and she is supported by English actors. Is it possible that the superior support the inferior?

I do not believe that England has her equal as an actress. Her Hermione is wonderful, and the appeal to Apollo sublime. In Perdita she "takes the winds of March with beauty." Where is an actress on the English stage the superior of Julia Marlowe in genius, in originality, in naturalness?

Is there any better Mrs. Malaprop than Mrs. Drew, and better Sir Anthony than John Gilbert? No one denies that the English actors and actresses are great. No one will deny that the plays of Shakespeare are the greatest that have been produced, and no one wishes in any way to belittle the genius of the English people.

In this country the average person speaks fairly good English, and you will find substantially the same English spoken in most of the country; whereas in England there is a different dialect in almost every county, and most of the English people speak the language as if was not their native tongue. I think it will be admitted that the English write a good deal better than they speak, and that their p.r.o.nunciation is not altogether perfect.

These things, however, are not worth speaking of. There is no absolute standard. They speak in the way that is natural to them, and we in the way that is natural to us. This difference furnishes no foundation for a claim of general superiority. The English actors are not brought here on account of their excellence, but on account of their cheapness. It requires no great ability to play the minor parts, or the leading roles in some plays, for that matter. And yet acting is a business, a profession, a means of getting bread.

We protect our mechanics and makers of locomotives and of all other articles. Why should we not protect, by the same means, the actor?

You may say that we can get along without actors. So we can get along without painters, without sculptors and without poets. But a nation that gets along without these people of genius amounts to but little. We can do without music, without players and without composers; but when we take art and poetry and music and the theatre out of the world, it becomes an exceedingly dull place.

Actors are protected and cared for in proportion that people are civilized. If the people are intelligent, educated, and have imaginations, they enjoy the world of the stage, the creations of poets, and they are thrilled by great music, and, as a consequence, respect the dramatist, the actor and the musician.

_Question_. It is claimed that an amendment to the law, such as is desired, will interfere with the growth of art?

_Answer_. No one is endeavoring to keep stars from this country.

If they have American support, and the stars really know anything, the American actors will get the benefit. If they bring their support with them, the American actor is not particularly benefitted, and the star, when the season is over, takes his art and his money with him.

Managers who insist on employing foreign support are not sacrificing anything for art. Their object is to make money. They care nothing for the American actor--nothing for the American drama. They look for the receipts. It is the sheerest cant to pretend that they are endeavoring to protect art.

On the 26th of February, 1885, a law was pa.s.sed making it unlawful "for any person, company, partners.h.i.+p or corporation, in any manner whatsoever, to prepay the transportation, or in any way a.s.sist or encourage the importation or emigration of any alien or aliens into the United States, under contract or agreement, parol or special, previous to the importation or emigration of such aliens to perform labor or services of any kind the United States."