Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis

Mr. Coal
This is a story told by the National Child Labor Committee to persuade Americans to support the regulation and elimination of child labor. We have scanned this story from the original Child Labor Bulletin, part of The Ohio State University Library collections.
Mr. Coal's Story
Our warm friend, Mr. Coal of Pennsylvania, tells us:
I lay snug and comfortable for many years, way down in the middle of a large mountain, until I grew into a great big coal.
One day a sharp steel pick cut through the rocks and I was pulled down from my bed and fell to the ground. All was so dark, I could have seen nothing if it had not been for tiny lamps which two men wore in their caps. The men were miners, digging for coal.
My former neighbor, old Mr. Wise Coal, soon fell beside me. He used to tell about the great world outside, where every one, to be really good, must make someone else happy. When he heard the picks he said, "We are going there now, and we will make some children and grown­ups warm and comfortable. But I am sad when I think of the little boys who must help take us there. Watch to see what happens and you will understand."
A coal car, drawn by mules, came along. I thought they must he men, who threw us in and drove the mules; but on looking closely I found that one of them was a boy about 12 years old. My companion shook his head. "It is only half past seven o'clock in the morning. Boys of his age should be eating breakfast and getting ready for school," he said.
Driving through the mine we came to a big trap door. "When men work in mines, air is forced in to them from the outside," said old Mr. Wise Coal. "The trap doors must be kept closed so that the air will go where the men are working. Boys open and close these trap doors for the cars to pass from one chamber to the other. They are called trapper boys.

"Look back and see how lonely this one is" I heard him cough and tell one of the drivers that medicine didn't help him anymore. The mine was so damp, he always got a new cold."

The next trapper boy we passed was John. John wanted to go to school but his parents made him work. They didn't know that he could earn better wages later, if he went to school now. The trap door was the nearest thing to a blackboard he had, so he drew pictures on that. John liked birds, and couldn't see any out­of­doors, because it was after dark evenings when he left the mine. So he drew them on the trap door, and played they were alive and he wrote on the door, "Don't scare the birds!" and this was all the fun he had.
When we passed a place where the roof had caved in, old Mr. Wise Coal shuddered. "I hope no boys and men are buried there." he said, "they often get killed in that way."
As we came out of the mine we met James. They call him "a greaser" because he has to keep the axles of the car greased so that they run smoothly. He had grease all over himself and his clothes.
Next we met Harry. He does odd jobs about the mine. When he first started at work, he wanted to go to school, but now he does not care. He is too tired to think about it, even.
At last our car full of coal came to a building, called a "coal breaker." Here the coal was put into great machines, and broken into pieces the right size for burning.
Then the pieces rattled down through long chutes, at which the breaker boys sat. These boys picked out the pieces of slate and stone that cannot burn. It's like sitting in a coal bin all day long, except that the coal its always movie;, and clattering and cuts their fingers. Sometimes the boys wear lamps in their caps to help them see through the thick dust. They bend over the chutes until their backs ache, and they get tired and sick because they have to breathe coal dust instead of good, pure air.
Hundreds and hundreds of boys work in the mines and in the breakers from early morning until evening, instead of going to school and playing outdoors.
Do you suppose the little fellows sitting all alone in the deep coal mine, or bending over the chutes, ever think of the merry children sitting around the burning coal?
This bright room is better than the dark mine. The happy talk is better than the silence. The warm fire glow is better than the cold.
Do you suppose that the happy children made warm by the coal ever think of the boys who helped to get it ready for them?
Do they think of the children who make medicine bottles in glass factories and cotton dresses in mills and tenement homes?
What can these children who play around the fire do to help the boys and girls who work in mines and factories? They can do this:
They can ask their fathers and mothers to make laws to help these other children. Fathers and mothers can make laws. They know how to make laws that will kelp children. They also know how to make sure that the laws are obeyed.
Sometimes fathers and mothers are so busy taking care of their own children-the children round the fire at home-that they forget the others-the children in mines and factories. But we must not let them forget the other children The most important matter in the world is, that all the children-all the children -- shall grow up healthy and intelligent and good.

Rockefeller Interview
(1) John D. Rockefeller was interviewed by the United States Industrial Commission in 1899. He was asked about the advantages of industrial combinations to companies such as Standard Oil.
It is too late to argue about the advantages of industrial combinations. They are a necessity. And if Americans are to have the privilege of extending their business in all the states of the Union, and into foreign countries as well, they are a necessity on a large scale and require the agency of more than one corporation. Their chief advantages are: (1) command of necessary capital; (2) extension of limits of business; (3) increase of number of persons interested in the business; (4) economy of the business; (5) improvements and economies which are derived from knowledge of many interested persons of wide experience; (6) power to give the public improved products at less prices and still make a profit for stockholders; (7) permanent work and good wages for labourers.

(2) John D. Rockefeller, Atlantic Monthly (January 1916)

Labor and Capital are rather abstract words with which to describe those vital forces which working together become productively useful to mankind. Reduced to their simplest terms, Labor and Capital are men with muscle and men with money - human beings, imbued with the same weaknesses and virtues, the same cravings and aspirations.
It follows, therefore, that the relations of men engaged in industry are human relations. Men do not live merely to toil; they

also live to play, to mingle with their fellows, to love, to worship. The test of the success of our social organization is the extent to which every man is free to realize his highest and best self; and in considering any economic or political problem, that fundamental fact should be recognized.

If in the conduct of industry, therefore, the manager ever keeps in mind that in dealing with employees he is dealing with

human beings, with flesh and blood, with hearts and souls; and if, likewise, the workmen realize that managers and investors are themselves also human beings, how much bitterness will be avoided!

Are the interests of these human beings with labor to sell and with capital to employ necessarily antagonistic or necessarily mutual? Must the advance of one retard the progress of the other? Should their attitude toward each other be that of enemies or of partners? The answer one makes to these fundamental questions must constitute the basis for any consideration of the relationship of Labor and Capital.
Our difficulty in dealings with the industrial problem is due too often to a failure to understand the true interests of Labor and Capital. And I suspect this lack of understanding is just as prevalent among representatives of Capital as among representatives of Labor. In any event the conception one has of the fundamental nature of these interests will naturally determine one's attitude toward every phase of their relationship.
Much of the reasoning on this subject proceeds upon the theory that the wealth of the world is absolutely limited, and that if one man gets more, another necessarily gets less. Hence there are those who hold that if Labor's wages are increased or its working conditions improved. Capital suffers because it must deprive itself of the money needed to pay the bill. Some employers go so far as to justify themselves in appropriating from the product of industry all that remains after Labor has received the smallest amount which it can be induced or forced to accept; while, on the other hand, there

are men who hold that Labor is the producer of all wealth, hence is entitled to the entire product, and that whatever is taken by Capital is stolen from Labor.

If this theory is sound, it might be maintained that the relation between Labor and Capital is fundamentally one of antagonism, and that each should consolidate and arm its forces, dividing the products of industry between them in proportion as their selfishness is enforced by their power.
But all such counsel loses sight of the fact that the riches available to man are practically without limit, that the world's wealth is constantly being developed and undergoing mutation, and that to promote this process both Labor and Capital are indispensable. If these great forces cooperate, the products of industry are steadily increased; whereas, if they fight, the production of wealth is certain to be either retarded or stopped altogether and the wellsprings of material progress choked.
The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890
Sec. 1. Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise; or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is hereby declared to be illegal. Every person who shall make any such contract or engage in any such combination or conspiracy, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
Sec. 2. Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
Sec. 3. Every contract, combination in form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce in any Territory of the United States or of the District of Columbia, or in restraint of trade or commerce between any such Territory and another, or between any such Territory or Territories and any State or States or the District of Columbia, or with foreign nations, or between the District of Columbia and any States or States or foreign nations, is hereby declared illegal. Every person who shall make any such contract or engage in any such combination or conspiracy, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
Sec. 4. The several circuit courts of the United States are hereby invested with jurisdiction to prevent and restrain violations of this act; and it shall be the duty of the several district attorneys of the United States, in their institute proceedings in equity to prevent and restrain such violations. Such proceedings may be by way of petition setting forth the case and praying that such violation shall be enjoined or otherwise prohibited. When the parties complained of shall have been duly notified of such petition the courts shall proceed, as soon as may be, to the hearing and determination of the case; and pending such petition and before final decrees, the court many at any time make such temporary restraining order or prohibition as shall be deemed just in the premises.
Sec. 5. Whenever it shall appear to the court before which any proceeding under Section four of this act may be pending, that the ends of justice require that other parties should be brought before the court, the court may cause them to be summoned, whether they reside in the district in which the court is held or not; and subpoenas to that end may be served in any district by the marshal thereof.
Sec. 6. Any property owned under any contract or by any combination, or pursuant to any conspiracy (and being the subject thereof) mentioned in section one of this act, and being in the course of transportation from one State to another, or to a foreign country, shall be forfeited to the United States, and may be seized and condemned by like proceedings as those provided by law for the forfeiture, seizure, and condemnation of property imported into the United States contrary to law.
Sec. 7. Any person who shall be injured in his business or property by any other person or corporation by reason of anything forbidden or declared to be unlawful by this act, may sue therefor in any circuit court of the United States in the district in which the defendant resides or is found, without respect to the amount in controversy, and shall recover threefold the damages by him sustained, and the costs of suit, including a reasonable attorney's fee.
Sec. 8. That the word "person," or "persons," wherever used in this act shall be deemed to include corporations and associations existing under or authorized by the laws of either the United States, the laws of any of the Territories, and the laws of any State, or the laws of any foreign country.

Jane Addams, "First Days at Hull-House," 1910
From Jane Addams. Twenty years at Hull-House, with Autobiographical Notes. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1920. 97-100, 101-103, 109, 111-112.
Halsted Street has grown so familiar during twenty years of residence, that it is difficult to recall its gradual changes,--the withdrawal of the more prosperous Irish and Germans, and the slow substitution of Russian Jews, Italians, and Greeks. A description of the street such as I gave in those early addresses still stands in my mind as sympathetic and correct.
Halsted Street is thirty-two miles long, and one of the great thoroughfares of Chicago; . . . Hull-House once stood in the suburbs, but the city has steadily grown up around it and its site now has corners on three or four foreign colonies. Between Halsted Street and the river live about ten thousand Italians. . . . To the south on Twelfth Street are many Germans, and side streets are given over almost entirely to Polish and Russian Jews. Still farther south, these Jewish colonies merge into a huge Bohemian colony, so vast that Chicago ranks as the third Bohemian city in the world. . . .
The policy of the public authorities of never taking an initiative, and always waiting to be urged to do their duty, is obviously fatal in a neighborhood where there is little initiative among the citizens. The idea underlying our self-government breaks down in such a ward. The streets are inexpressibly dirty, the number of schools inadequate, sanitary legislation unenforced, the street lighting bad, the paving miserable and altogether lacking in the alleys and smaller streets, and the stables foul beyond description. Hundreds of houses are unconnected with the street sewer. . . .
The houses of the ward, for the most part wooden, were originally built for one family and are now occupied by several. They are after the type of the inconvenient frame cottages found in the poorer suburbs twenty years ago. . . . Rear tenements flourish; many houses have no water supply save the faucet in the back yard, there are no fire escapes, the garbage and ashes are placed in wooden boxes which are fastened to the street pavements. . . ."
Volunteers to the new undertaking came quickly; a charming young girl conducted a kindergarten in the drawing room. . . . One day at luncheon she gaily recited her futile attempt to impress temperance principles upon the mind of an Italian mother, to whom she had returned a small daughter of five sent to kindergarten "in quite a horrid state of intoxication" from the wine-soaked bread upon which she had breakfasted. The mother, with the gentle courtesy of a South Italian, listened politely to her graphic portrayal of the untimely end awaiting so immature a wine bibber; but long before the lecture was finished, quite unconscious of the incongruity, she hospitably set forth her best wines, and when her baffled guest refused one after the other, she disappeared, only to quickly return with a small dark glass of whisky, saying reassuringly, "See, I have brought you the true American drink." The recital ended in seriocomic despair, with the rueful statement that "the impression I probably made upon her darkened mind was, that it is the American custom to breakfast children on bread soaked in whisky instead of light Italian wine. . . .
In those early days we were often asked why we had come to live on Halsted Street when we could afford to live somewhere else. I remember one man who used to shake his head and say it was "the strangest thing he had met in his experience," but who was finally convinced that it was "not strange but natural." In time it came to seem natural to all of us that the Settlement should be there. If it is natural to feed the hungry and care for the sick, it is certainly natural to give pleasure to the young, comfort to the aged, and to minister to the deep-seated craving for social intercourse that all men feel. Whoever does it is rewarded by something which, if not gratitude, is at least spontaneous and vital and lacks that irksome sense of obligation with which a substantial benefit is too often acknowledged. . . .
From the first it seemed understood that we were ready to perform the humblest neighborhood services. We were asked to wash the new-born babies, and to prepare the dead for burial, to nurse the sick, and to "mind the children." . . .
[W]e were constantly impressed with the uniform kindness and courtesy we received. Perhaps these first days lad the simple human foundations which are certainly essential for continuous living among the poor: first, genuine preference for residence in an industrial quarter to any other part of the city, because it is interesting and makes the human appeal; and second, the conviction, in the words of Canon Barnett, that the things which make men alike are finer and better than the things that keep them apart, and that these basic likenesses, if they are properly accentuated, easily transcend the less essential differences of race, language, creed and tradition.
Perhaps even in those first days we made a beginning toward that object which was afterwards stated in our charter: "To provide a center for a higher civic and social life; to institute and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises, and to investigate and improve the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago."

The Condemned-Meat Industry, 1906
From Upton Sinclair. "The Condemned-Meat Industry," Everybody's Magazine. 14 (1906). 608-616.
"I saw six hogs in a line which had been condemned. A truck loaded with chopped-up condemned hogs was, in my presence (I followed it), placed in one of the tanks from which lard comes. I asked particularly about this, and the inspector, together with Mr. Hull, stated that lard and fertilizer would be the product from that tank. The tanks are in a long room. The east side is lined with tanks for manufacture of lard and fertilizer; the west side with tanks whose product is grease and fertilizer. The grease is for soap, lubricator, etc. Here is a clear infraction of the law, because it requires that such condemned meat be mixed with sufficient offal to destroy it as food. Of the six condemned hogs referred to, two were afflicted with cholera, the skin being red as blood and the legs scabbed; three were marked 'tubercular,' though they appeared normal to a layman; the sixth had an ulcer in its side which was apparent. Two men were engaged in chopping up hogs from this line. The truck-load prepared while I stood there was deposited in a lard tank. I asked particularly about the line of demarcation between the carcasses used for lard and carcasses used for grease. No explanation was given either by the inspector or by my conductor. 'It all depends on how bad he is,' was the answer. I gathered the impression, however, that not very many carcasses were placed in grease tanks."
I have no comments to make on the above narrative, except to refer the reader to the law, Department of Agriculture Rules, June 27, 1904, Article IX; and then to quote once more the italicized statement from Mr. Armour's article: "Not one atom of any condemned animal or carcass finds its way, directly or indirectly, from any source, into any food product or food ingredient.". . .
At the time of the embalmed-beef scandal, at the conclusion of the Spanish War, when the whole country was convulsed with fury over the revelations made by soldiers and officers (including General Miles and President Roosevelt) concerning the quality of meat which Armour & Co. had furnished to the troops, and concerning the death-rate which it had caused, the enormity of the "condemned-meat industry" became suddenly clear to one man who had formerly supervised it. Mr. Thomas F. Dolan, then residing in Boston, had, up to a short time previous, been a superintendent at Armour & Co.'s, and one of Mr. Philip D. Armour's most capable and trusted men. He had letters, written in a familiar tone, showing that Mr. Armour was of the opinion that he Mr. Dolan could kill more cattle for him in a given time than any other man he ever had; he had a jeweled pin presented to him by Mr. Armour, and a gold watch with Mr. Armour's name in it. When he read of the death-rate in the army, he made an affidavit concerning the things which were done in the establishment of Armour & Co., and this affidavit he took to the New York Journal, which published it on march 4, 1899. Here are some extracts from it:
"For ten years I was employed by Philip D. Armour, the great Chicago beef packer and canner. I rose from a common beef skinner to the station of superintendent of the beef-killing gang, with 500 men directly under me. . . .
"There were so many ways of getting around the inspectors--so many, in fact, that not more than two or three cattle out of one thousand were condemned. I know exactly what I am writing of in this connection, as my particular instructions from Mr. W. E. Pierce, superintendent of the beef houses for Armour & Co., were very explicit and definite.
"Whenever a beef got past the yard inspectors with a case of lumpy jaw and came into the slaughterhouse or the "killing-bed," I was authorized by Mr. Pierce to take his head off, thus removing the evidences of lumpy jaw, and after casting the smitten portion into the tank where refuse goes, to send the rest of the carcass on its way to market.
"In cases where tuberculosis became evident to the men who were skinning the cattle it was their duty, on instructions from Mr. Pierce, communicated to them through me, at once to remove the tubercles and cast them into a trap-door provided for that purpose.
"I have seen as much as forty pounds of flesh afflicted with gangrene cut from the carcass of a beef, in order that the rest of the animal might be utilized in trade. . . .
"Of all the evils of the stock-yards, the canning department is perhaps the worst. It is there that the cattle from all parts of the United States are prepared for canning. No matter how scrawny or debilitated canners are, they must go the route of their brothers and arrive ultimately at the great boiling vats, where they are steamed until they are reasonably tender. Bundles of gristle and bone melt into pulpy masses and are stirred up for the canning department.
"I have seen cattle come into Armour's stock-yard so weak and exhausted that they expired in the corrals, where they lay for an hour or two, dead, until they were afterward hauled in, skinned, and put on the market for beef or into the canning department for cans.
"It was the custom to make a pretense of killing in such cases. The coagulated blood in their veins was too sluggish to flow, and instead of getting five gallons of blood, which is the amount commonly taken from a healthy steer, a mere dark-red clot would form at the wound.
"In other words, the Armour establishment was selling carrion."