them. Its agitation and its publications were lively; and it had great effect in bringing about combined and simultaneous demands for the various items in the labour programme. The leaders fixed upon an eight-hour day (commonly interpreted as 48 hours a week) as the basic working time; by which they meant that any work beyond the eight hours was overtime, to be paid for at extra rates. The eventual demand was for a “time and a half” rate (each hour to be counted as an hour and a half) for ordinary overtime, and “double time” for Sundays and holidays. The next item was the minimum wage, which made its way slowly and was not altogether acceptable to labour, since it tended to end the employment of feeble and old persons who could not earn even the minimum wage. Another demand was that American citizens should have the preference over aliens in employment. The Supreme Court set aside an Arizona statute in that direction, and affirmed a somewhat similar New York statute. Labour in general was unfriendly to child labour and was, therefore, interested in a Federal statute of Sept. 1 1916. Since Congress had no right to regulate child labour directly, it stretched the Interstate Commerce clause of the Constitution to cover the prohibition of the transport of products made by child labour under specified conditions. This Act was afterwards set aside by the Supreme Court. Some of the states set up public employment bureaus. Many labour acts were contested and nullified by the state courts; but there was an unmistakable gain in public sentiment favouring protection of labour.
As the labour unions gained in numbers and strength they used their energies in favour of the “closed shop,” that is, a system by which union men refused to work in any establishment where men not members of the union were also employed. Their object was to bring everybody in that particular trade into the union so as to form a firm front. From this idea rapidly developed the system of sympathetic strikes, in which members of one union back up another union by refusing to handle or use or transport products of non-union labour. Thus a factory employing a thousand hands might be compelled to stop work because it directed two or three non-union men to clean a truck, or because it bought machinery built by non-union labour hence boycotts and perhaps ruin for employers who had no difficulty or quarrel with their own workmen.
Never in the history of the United States had there been so many and so violent strikes as from 1913 to 1917. In New York 150,000 garment workers were unionized and they struck. In May 1916 nearly a million men in various states were out of work because they or some other union had struck. The I.W.W. organized long and tumultuous strikes among the silk weavers of Paterson, N.J., and the textile workers of Lawrence, Mass. More than half of these strikes were attempts to get higher wages; many of them aimed at new working conditions, and very often sought working rules which would add to the wages without increasing the service. In the trying years of 1916-7 there were violent strikes directed not only against non-striking workmen, but against the public peace for instance, among the Michigan ironworkers and the Spokane lumbermen. In 1913 there were armed conflicts in Colorado. In July 1917 at Bisbee, Ariz., the tables were turned. A kind of vigilance committee seized and carried out of town, with orders not to return, about 1,200 striking miners and their friends. When after many months a trial was obtained in the state courts for those responsible for this illegal action, it was found that no jury would convict.
The most serious of all these labour struggles was the threatened strike in 1916 of the large and very powerful unions of railway employees. A day was set for a general strike all over the country. The companies refused to make further concessions, believing that a few days of strike would bring the public to their side. President Wilson intervened and all but compelled Congress to pass (Sept. 3 1916) the Adamson Act by which a basic eight-hour day was secured with pro-rata for overtime. This turned out to be in effect a large increase of wages. The Supreme Court upheld this statute, which went to the furthest verge of the Federal Government's authority over labour matters, and formed a basis for the increases of following years.
Social Movements, 1913-7.—These struggles between the railways and the courts, between the trusts and Congress, between labour and state Governments, between strikers and the President of the United States, are part of American history, because they were vital to the welfare of the country. Combinations, both of capital and labour, were too large to be dealt with by any kind of private organization, or by the local and state Governments. Neither the capitalist nor the labourer respected the restraint of state legislation. It was apparent that in the long run the country would go back to the “might makes right” of the middle ages, unless some peaceful settlement could be made by a force that must be respected. Yet the ordinary plain citizen was not much disturbed by these contests, unless he held stock in a trust or his son was a member of a trade union. The first concern of most people is their bread-getting, and the greater part of the population was earning its bread daily. The farmers everywhere were aroused, for they looked on railways as hostile to their interests, by overcharging for carrying their products, and they resented the trusts which they believed raised prices. The storm centre was in Washington, where President Wilson stood intent on finding the remedy for these difficulties.
The anti-liquor forces steadily developed strength. They
urged out-and-out prohibition and secured it in more than half
the states. At the end of 1917 war prohibition was enacted by
the Federal Government and also prohibition in the district of
Columbia. December 19 1917 a two-thirds majority was secured
in Congress for a prohibition constitutional amendment—the
18th amendment—which was at once submitted to the states.
Woman suffrage also advanced steadily. When it appeared in
1915 that a third of the male voters in the conversservative eastern
states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts
favoured woman suffrage, the result was beyond doubt.
Congress submitted an amendment in 1919. Thus changes that
had been 50 years on the way finally were brought about by the
force of public opinion.
A change was also visible in the attitude of the country toward immigration which Congress was determined to reduce by an intelligence qualification. Wilson followed the example of Taft by vetoing the new bill not once but twice; yet on Feb. 5 1917 it was passed over his veto. Besides a literacy test it raised the head-tax to $8 and excluded oriental labourers coming from certain geographical areas which did not include Japan but did apply to Hindus and Malays. Causes connected with the World War at the same time brought about a reduction in the number of immigrants.
Educational Progress, 1909-21.—The decade following 1909 was marked by a new sense of the possibility of general education, and the responsibility of the various governments within the United States for a more direct, searching and practical type of education. The country was accustomed to a system of graded public schools, offering the “common school education,” and leading up to the few surviving endowed academies, and the thousands of public high schools, which were expected to “prepare” the small proportion of young men who went on to institutions of higher education. This system had been enriched in various ways.
By 1910 girls were given about an equal chance in the public elementary and secondary schools, and in a large number of coeducational colleges and universities, besides a small group of high-class colleges open to women only. Secondary education was subdivided into literary, commercial and industrial schools. The institutions of higher learning set up new professional departments including the intensive study of education and separate schools of science, engineering, agriculture and other specialties. Private enterprise created a great number of so-called business colleges, and a few very efficient trade schools. The prestige of the classics and of the so-called culture courses was declining; and the most conservative universities moderated their requirements for entrance and offered degrees to men and women on a variety of specialized and technical courses. The number of students in the higher institutions increased to 355,131 in 1918.
Nevertheless there was general complaint that the schools did not relate themselves to the life of the community in which the children were to pass their later lives. It was a common experience that the numerous boys and girls who left school at from 12 to 16 years of
