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or six weeks. That was governed entirely by circumstances. The period was not limited in any individual case.

Q. They went down there to get on the government work?—A. Yes, sir.

Q. But the contractor said, "We cannot put you on the government work now; we will put you on other work for government parties, which they have at a low price, and by and by we will put you on government work."-A. "Will put you on this contract work we have."

Q. I did not understand there was contract work and government work going on at the same time?-A. Then understand it now.

Q. I thought the government work stopped when the contract work began?—A. Ou the contrary, those works were conducted side by side, and by the same firm, or rather under the jurisdiction of the same firm. The Bodwell Granite Company at the same time employed about 150, or perhaps more, stonecutters on contract work, and right across, or rather on the same plot, the government sheds were. Now, then, getting nearly through with that subject, we find at the present time that this contract system is still held, and even countenanced, by the government, or, at least, we don't find that there has been any of the evils removed; for in this same Bodwell Granite Company there are men employed on the government work under the circumstances that I have jnst described, and their compensation is precisely as I have just described it in proportion to what they had formerly received for the same class of work.

Q. Is there any government work going on now on the present system?-A. None that I am aware of. There is none whatever The suppression of the percentage system was when this contract system was introduced, which I hold is still more outrageons-much more so by far than the percentage system, because it gives labor no chance. Then the laborer, or, rather, the mechanic, received a certain stipulated price for his day's labor, and it was no cost to the contractor, because the more he paid the more he got in percentage.

Q. You would not recommend the continuance of that system?-A. Certainly I would not; but what I would recommend is this: that when it is made manifest, as it has been that the government could take these works and execute them fully as well and at a less cost than it was then paying the contractor it should do so. Let me here be understood distinctly that I trace all the evils under which we have been laboring directly to the management of the government, because if it had taken hold of this matter and conducted those public buildings it would then employ about 30 per cent. of the entire granite-cutting element of the United States. Now, you must bear in mind this would be a great advantage to any trade and it would relieve it very materially from any sense of depression. When an outside and independent influence employs one-third of it and does it at a good, fair, reasonable compensation, it never allows the market to be glutted.

Q. I understand you to say that you are suffering from the fact that the government has been interfering in this business; that that is the cause of your present suffering-A. As I have described it, but in no other way. I have given you the reasons why, and in no other way. Now, then (producing a newspaper), here is a journal that we publish monthly. Many are prejudiced against trades-unionism. Such a thing as that never was heard among us in this country until this system of persecution was inaugurated against us. We appealed repeatedly not only to State legislatures but to Washington, and repeatedly presented our grievances in what I should consider a very intelligible form, and never yet received any redress.

Q. To whom did you appeal?-A. This question was fully and clearly represented to a commission appointed-I think it was in 1877, with Captain Casey as chairman of it. Q. Appoined by whom?-A. By the Secretary of the Treasury, I think.

Q. Not a Congressional commission?-A. No, sir; it was not. We have simply combined together in this union. Recollect we are nearly all Americans, and we have a membership, and included in this body are some seven hundred honorably-discharged soldiers-men certainly who have some claim upon the government. I am one myself, and I have no reason to blush when I say that I left a good, comfortable home when but sixteen years of age and remained, sir, until our starry banner came out triumphant on the battle-field; so that we have some little claim on the government. Now, then, we are banded together for the purpose simply, through this journal, of making the public acquainted with our grievances. There is not a solitary particle of what you might consider an arbitrary or unjust spirit pervading our organization. It is entirely American and entirely republican and simply for the protection of our trade. Now, then, to show you the prejudices under which many of us who have made it a point to present this question from time to time to the proper authorities have labored, you will, probably, by looking over that paper, see an extract from an Albany paper where I used some remarks in Albany, and the substance of those remarks was against the government and its management of public works. At this time I was employed on the new post-office building in Albany, and, sir, because I dared give utterance to anything against the government, I was dropped from the roll, and I would not even receive a hearing by the superintendent, Edward Ogden. To bring anything against

me as to my ability as a workman, he could not. On the contrary, I had to instruct men who were put there by political influence who had never worked a day at the stonecutting trade-told by the foreman to instruct them-and those men signed the pay-roll as mechanics and received the same compensation that I did. Now, then, sir, these are the influences, that I wish to impress upon your mind, that are depriving us of a just compensation, that are forcing many of us from our homes, and that are depriving our little families and those who are depending upon us of the necessary comforts of life.

Q. You mean the employment of men who are not good stonecutters on public work?-A. Yes, sir; and, as a consequence, in time increasing unnecessarily or unreasonably the amount of that class of labor. Let me describe the reason why. If these men had to serve a legitimate apprenticeship, or were forced, the same as I was, to give two or three years of their time to acquire a knowledge of this trade, in all probability they never would adopt it; but having the opportunity, through political influence, of acquiring a knowledge of the trade, and at the same time receiving as much as a competent mechanic, you cannot blame them for acquiring this knowledge. Q. What would your remedy be for that state of things?-A. The remedy that I would suggest is for the government to do entirely its own work. Where there is any public work to be executed, let the government do it exclusively itself, and allow no politicians to have any control over it.

Q. Give us the receipt for getting rid of the politicians ?—A. We will take the chances in that case. Let the government do it.

Q. The government works through certain agents. These agents are put in power by political influence, and you and I know enough of the business of politics to know that politicians have their friends appointed. How are we to stop that ?—A. It is a very strange question for a man of your legislative experience to ask me..

Q. That is a kind of work in which I am without experience, and therefore I want to know how we can stop other people from having it done.-A. So far as that is concerned, I don't think I will enter into it.

Q. But you said that was the cause of your trouble.-A. I gave that as one of the

causes.

Q. What is the remedy?-A. You must bear in mind, Mr. Hewitt, that at the present time we are not laboring under that grievance. During the percentage system we were, but we are not at the present time.

Q. You say you would have the government do its own work?-A. Yes, sir.

Q. Would that not bring about the very evil you complain of, of politicians getting men appointed as stone-cutters who are not stone-cutters, and who are appointed as you say they are?—A. I will agree with you when you say there are no honest people in the country.

Q. I have not said that; I know a good many honest men.-A. I do hold that we have some honest men, and as fast as we find one dishonest-using a vulgar phrase"bounce him." Now, the principal remedy for this is for the government to take exclusive control of the public buildings itself. It certainly can be proved that it can do it, and, at the same time, economize. It can do it at a less cost than it is already paying, and, at the same time, pay the mechanic a fair compensation. It is its duty to do it, and certainly it should. Now, sir, under this system, you will perceive that you simply give power to a monopoly to oppress a certain class of mechanical labor. Mr. Bodwell, the principal of this Bodwell Granite Company, which is one of the leading companies in the country, prior to their receiving government work, some of the boys have told me, used to be a bull-driver. However, that is nothing at all against the man; but, sir, through government money and government patronage he now controls a most powerful influence in our department of trade, and to-day, if you take government money away from him and government patronage, he would stand equally upon the same footing as any of your New York contractors.

Q. How are we to deprive him of the contract if he is the lowest bidder?-A. He does not bid for those government contracts.

Q. At present?-A. No, sir; he does not. Now, you see, they are receiving such an enormous amount for this work that they can afford to lose money on other work, and they can come into your city the same as they have done in the last twelve months and take nearly a million of dollars out of it in your East River bridge contract. Many of these contractors claim that the transportation of this stock in its raw state before it is dressed, that the extra heft of it carries the amount of freight over and above what it would cost if it was dressed; that they have a complete advantage over any one else, and, as a consequence, can underbid them. Now, sir, I hold there is not a stone to-day, of any good quality, but necessarily must be, when cut in the quarries, boxed to protect the work. Now, sir, the cost of boxing these stones amounts to more than the extra cost of freightage for the raw material. Consequently there is no economy whatever in having the work dressed in any of those islands. The government should study this matter closely, and it could certainly satisfy itself that it would be economy to itself, justice to the people, and fair dealing to the mechanic to execute the

work where the building is going up, and allow no contractor to have any dabbling in it whatever. My statement is closed, gentlemen, unless you have some questions to ask me.

Q. Under that system you would still have the politicians putting the men on the work. I don't know how it could be prevented.-A. I have come here in all sincerity-come here in my own time, refusing any compensation, come here because I am conscientiously satisfied of the injustice under which my trade is laboring.

By Mr. BOYD:

Q. The only difference it would make is, it would give the politicians control over the laborer instead of the contractor.-A. I recollect when I was a boy-and I was brought up in a locality where they had a good deal of stone-work, in West Rhode Island-that they used to do some fortification work. Most of those men having charge of this work at that time were engineers belonging to the United States service, and I presume, gentlemen, conscientious, honest men. We never heard of any such thing at that time. Now, sir, do we possess such men to-day? That is the question. If we did, I think politicians would have no control; but in my individual case-just look at it, that case I have cited to you in Albany-a man who has served his country honorably throughout the war, tbrown out of employment without a word of satisfaction. Q. Who discharged you there ?-A. Superintendent Ogden.

By the CHAIRMAN:

Q. If any man in my district had written to me that he had been discharged, and been refused a hearing, I should have gone to the Secretary of the Treasury and demanded an investigation, and, if found true, demanded the discharge of that superintendent, and if it was not done, I would have brought it up in Congress and stated the fact, so that the whole community would have known it. Your error was in not going to your Representative; I believe there is not a Representative in this State that would not respond to such a demand as that, because it ought to have been exposed at

once.

Mr. O'SULLIVAN. Possibly; it ought to be the case. It is not often that men in my sphere in life can communicate with Representatives, and what is the ultimate fate of their letters? They are committed to the waste-basket.

The CHAIRMAN. No; I get communications every day from my constituents, and I don't think one has ever been allowed to go unauswered. I think that is the rule of members of Congress that every man gets his communication answered, and it is one of the hardest duties of a member; so I don't think you do them justice.

Mr. O'SULLIVAN. I don't want to do them any injustice. I will tell the truth, if I can do it, and if I cannot do it, I will come as near to it as possible.

The CHAIRMAN. I know of no way in which you can stop an abuse, except by exposing it and demanding redress.

Mr. O'SULLIVAN. You are here for that purpose. There is not an expression I have used to you to-day but what I am prepared to prove on affidavit.

The CHAIRMAN. If you will send me an affidavit of those facts, I will forward it to Washington at once.

Mr. O'SULLIVAN. Very well, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Yon don't know who your Representative is?

Mr. O'SULLIVAN. No; my stay in the city of New York has not been very long. I have been down East a good deal, working on those government works, and I have never paid any attention to those politicians any way. I don't know but I might be better off if I did.

Adjourned to Angust 2, at 11 o'clock.

NEW YORK, August 2, 1878.

The committee met pursuant to adjournment.

Present, Hon. A. S. Hewitt, chairman; Hon. J. M. Thompson, of Pennsylvania; Hon. W. W. Rice, of Massachusetts; Hon. Thomas A. Boyd, of Illinois.

The CHAIRMAN. At the close of the session yesterday, the committee agreed to hear a delegation represented by Mr. Bartholomee. We are ready to proceed.

VIEWS OF MR. ROBERT H. BARTHOLOMEE.

ROBERT H. BARTHOLOMEE appeared and made the following statement:

By the CHAIRMAN:

Question. I understand you are chairman of the Socialistic Labor party of America?— Auswer. Yes, sir.

Q. How many members?-A. We are an organization all over the United States. This committee here to-day represents the main section of New York.

Q. How many members are there in the main section of New York?-A. There are four branch sections in the city, an American section, a French section, a Bohemian section, and a German section. The four sections combined form what they call the main section of New York, in numbers between 1,400 and 1,500, all told. We have got more on the list, but those that don't come up to the scratch we don't call members in good standing.

Q. Are they chiefly American citizens or foreign?-A. They are mostly all American citizens. A great number of them are of French descent.

Q. I speak of their citizenship merely.-A. Yes, sir; they are citizens.

Q. Are you an American citizen ?-A. I am, sir; and have been brought up in the city of New York, and received a public school education at grammar school No. 20, Christie street, between Delancy and Rivington, New York City. Our committee has not come here to represent, as you will find out from the name of the party, any trade union; because the organizers-the members of our party-have recognized the necessity of a radical change in the government, especially in the distribution of the results of labor. We, therefore, represent not one trade union, but the people at large. That is our case.

I presume there is no need for me to call your attention to the existing distress among the people, for that is the object which you are in session here for, but to show why the existing evil is among us; and we claim, in the first place, that the cause of the evil is the unnatural relation between capital and labor, the unnatural relation in distributing the results of labor, or perhaps better, between production and consumption. We hold and the statistics of 1869 and 1870 will sufficiently prove that our statement is a correct one-that during the year of the last census there were employed in 283 principal branches of labor, including agriculture and mining, 4,959,000 hands who received the yearly wages of $1,109,416,000, and furnished to their employers a profit or net income of $1,347,357,000. From this it appears that each employé received wages to the amount of $242 yearly, while the net profit to the employer amounted to $272. That includes the agricultural and mining department; but if you exclude that department the number of hands is reduced to 2,067,000, who received wages amounting to $799,130,000, and furnished to their employers a profit, or net income, of $792,093,000, so that each man on an average had a yearly wage of $386, and furnished to the employer a profit or net income of $383. This is taken from the census of the United States.

This being eight or nine years ago, we are honestly convinced, as members of this committee, representing the party, that times are, if anything, worse than what they were at the time the last census was taken. According to that census the total population of the United States at the time was 38,500,000. The total result of labor amounted to $6,679,000,000; out of which the working or laboring class, numbering 21,000,000, received $51 per head, or $204 to a family of four, making per year a total of $1,085,000,000 for this class. Now, the second class, including clerks, teachers, officials, and non-producers, numbered 7 millions and received an annual wage of $189 per head, or $756 to a family. The total amount the second class received, which were only 7 millions, was $1,419,000,000. The third class, representing capitalists, numbering to the amount of 94 millions, received $428 per head, or $1,730 to a family. The total amount received by the third class was $4,175,000,000.

You there see that the real producers received but $51 per head, according to the census of this government, which is claimed to be correct, while the non-producers received, through the investments of their capital, $428 per head, receiving more for one individual than eight other persons of the real producing class had received. Now, we know that wages have decreased right straight along. I can show it by my shopbook. I have been employed by Mr. Weber, piano manufacturer, corner of Seventeenth street and Seventh avenue, for eight years. I can show the wages I received when I started in 1869, and what I am receiving now. They have always increased the work and decreased the wages.

Q. What were your wages in 1869, and what are they now, a day?—A. I would rather bring my book down and let you copy it off. I was able to make then at my branch of work, regulating fine pianos, $9 apiece, being able to finish four a week, enabling me to make $36 a week.

Q. What is your present rate of income?-A. The present rate of wages is $5 for the same amount of work that we were paid $9 for then, so that we cannot now make more than $15 a week, as I make three instruments a week. They have crowded more work on to us since then, and have reduced the wages; and not only that, but then we managed to have steady work all the year around. I cannot speak of Mr. Weber's shop as one shop in particular, because I will say that his shop is the most steady in the city; but, speaking of the trade in general, it has been as unsteady as any other trade in existence. Men have not been able to obtain more than eight months' work during a year.

Q. Did your wages rise from 1869, through the period of inflation and prosperity?— A. There was an attempt made to advance wages in 1863.

Q. I speak of 1869-A. No; they did not rise.

Q. They did not rise during the whole period of inflation?-A. No, sir; not one cent. Q. In 1866 or 1867, when prices were highest, you got no more wages?-A. No; the wages were continued until the crisis set in in this city, and the first reduction came, and that was twenty per cent. off, and then so continued down to the present rate.

Q. How about the purchasing power of your wages now as compared with the purchasing power in 1867 and 1868, when prices were high?-A. That is something I desire to speak of. The purchasing power of the laborer or the mechanic, anybody working for a salary, decreases according as to the amount his wages are reduced. The price of the necessaries of life has not followed the reduction of wages, having the same ratio. They have come down some, but not sufficiently to correspond with the reduction of wages throughout the different trades; therefore by the mechanics or by the working people at large receiving less and less for their labor, their purchasing power becomes so much less every time, and, as a natural consequence, by a man being able to purchase so much less, the seller of these articles, in whatever line it may be, can sell so much less; there is so much less produced, and there are more hands thrown out of employment. Those hands so thrown out of employment become the superfluous stock of labor on the market, and, being non-producers, they are almost nonconsumers, thereby again throwing this superfluous labor on the market and inducing others that are working to work for less wages again, thereby again becoming smaller consumers than what they were previously.

Q. If I understand you right, your wages have fallen from $36 a week, which was the maximum, to $15 a week, which is the minimum?--A. Yes, sir.

Q. Have you compared the wholesale prices of the necessaries of life which prevailed during the war, or immediately after the close of the war, with the present wholesale prices of these necessaries of life, to see whether the reduction in prices is not equal to the reduction in wages?-A. I have not compared the wholesale prices for this reason. If you want to purchase a piano as an individual, you would pay the store price. I, as a mechanic, cannot buy a bag of coffee of 20 or 30 pounds or a barrel of flour or sugar; I am obliged to go to the storekeeper and purchase what I need. I am, perhaps, able to buy 7 pounds of flour at one time, because I have no money to invest, and the money I receive is just enough to pay the expense of my family for one week.

Q. If the wholesale prices had fallen in proportion to the wages, and the prices you pay at retail have not fallen, then it follows that the extra profit, as you claim, is absorbed, not by the producer, but by the middlemen, as they are called, the shopkeepers. Have you examined that question, and do you think that is the fact?-A. It is well for you, gentlemen, to ask us whether we have looked into these things. We are perfectly willing to do so, provided we are furnished with the means of so doing. We have gathered all the statistical facts we could; but by the different States and by the United States Government refusing to establish a bureau of statistics, we could not get the proper figures, because we could not as individuals go to anybody and request him or compel him to allow us to overhaul his books and find out what he pays and what the wholesale dealer pays when he receives the raw material. We cannot do this. The different States and the United States Government should establish a bureau of statistics, which is necessary for the people and for the government, for the gov ernment cannot otherwise understand the condition of its people; it wants to know how they live and how they are paid and fed; how they are educated, and that can only be obtained by a thoroughly-conducted bureau of statistics.

Q. You have given us some information taken from the census?-A. Yes, sir; I have given you some points here taken from the record of the labor bureau of Massachusetts, and some from the census of the United States also.

Q. Will you explain how much further you want the government to proceed in procuring information than it did go in taking the census of 1870; do you want it to investigate the private business of every man, and how much his profits are?-A. We don't want it; we demand it from the government that it shall authorize certain officers appointed for that purpose-appointed or elected, as the case may be. We claim that the officers of this bureau should be elected by the people, and that not politicians and hangers-on should hold such offices, such as has been done in the State of Massachusetts. When Mr. George McNeil was in that labor bureau it was conducted in the most fair manner, although it was not as complete as it ought to be, because the manufacturers of that State refused to give him the proper information, and threatened their employés with discharge if they gave him any information; but even he ascertained so many points that the capitalists of that State had him discharged from that office, and a man placed there wholly incapable of holding that office or conducting its business. For that reason we claim that the officers of that bureau ought to be elected by the people.

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Q. What limit would you put upon the functions of that bureau as to private bus:

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