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Chapter 6: Database Design 2: Design Method
True / False

1. The information-level design methodology involves representing the individual user view as a collection of tables,
refining them to eliminate any problems, and then merging them into a cumulative design.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: True
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 178

2. A design that supports all user views is called a constructive design.

a. True
b. False
ANSWER: False
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 178

3. The second step in creating a user view is to represent the user view as a collection of tables.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: False
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 178

4. The first step in creating a user view is to normalize the tables.

a. True
b. False
ANSWER: False
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 178

5. When provided with a user view or some sort of stated requirement, you must develop a collection of tables
that will support it.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: True
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 178

6. The primary key is a unique identifier.

a. True
b. False
ANSWER: True
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 179

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Chapter 6: Database Design 2: Design Method

7. The basic relationships among entities are: one-to-many, many-to-many, and one-to-one.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: True
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 179

8. In a one-to-many relationship, the primary key of the “many” table becomes the foreign key of the “one”
table.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: False
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 179

9. Careful planning in the early stages of the normalization process will usually avoid the need to consider fourth normal
form.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: True
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 180

10. You create a many-to-many relationship by creating a new table whose primary key is the combination of
the primary keys of the original tables.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: True
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 179

11. There are two types of primary keys that you can use in your database design.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: False
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 180

12. A foreign key is a column or collection of columns in one table that is required to match the value of the primary key
for some row in another table, or be null.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: True
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 180

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Chapter 6: Database Design 2: Design Method

13. In DBDL, you represent a table by listing all columns and then underlining the primary key.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: True
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 181

14. In an entity-relationship diagram, rectangles represent foreign keys.

a. True
b. False
ANSWER: False
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 182

15. When you use an E-R diagram to represent a database, it visually illustrates all the information listed in the
DBDL.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: True
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 183

16. In an E-R diagram, a dashed line represents an identifying relationship and a solid line represents a nonidentifying
relationship.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: False
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 190

17. Nulls are used when a value is either unknown or inapplicable.

a. True
b. False
ANSWER: True
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 207

18. When you combine third normal form tables, the result will always be in third normal form.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: False
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 211

19. The use of an “m” and an “n” in an E-R diagram indicates a many-to-many relationship.
Cengage Learning Testing, Powered by Cognero Page 3
Chapter 6: Database Design 2: Design Method

a. True
b. False
ANSWER: True
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 212

20. A weak entity is a column or collection of columns that could have been chosen as a primary key, but was
not.
a. True
b. False
ANSWER: False
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 215

Multiple Choice

21. A set of requirements that is necessary to support the operations of a particular database user is known as a(n) ____.
a. user view
b. user table
c. user attribute
d. user field
ANSWER: a
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 178

22. The properties of the entities you choose as you design the user view will become the ____ in the appropriate tables.
a. rows
b. columns
c. data
d. DBMS
ANSWER: b
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 179

23. If each employee works in a single department and each department has only one employee, the relationship between
employees and departments is ____.
a. one-to-one
b. one-to-many
c. many-to-one
d. many-to-many
ANSWER: a
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 180

24. A(n) ____ is a primary key that consists of a column that uniquely identifies an entity, such as a person’s Social
Security number.
Cengage Learning Testing, Powered by Cognero Page 4
Chapter 6: Database Design 2: Design Method

a. surrogate key
b. weak entity
c. artificial key
d. natural key
ANSWER: d
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 180

25. A column that you create for an entity to serve solely as the primary key and that is visible to users is called a(n) ____.
a. synthetic key
b. weak entity
c. artificial key
d. natural key
ANSWER: c
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 181

26. A(n) ____ is a system-generated primary key that is usually hidden from users.
a. weak entity
b. surrogate key
c. natural key
d. artificial key
ANSWER: b
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 181

27. When a DBMS creates a(n) ____ key, it is usually an automatic numbering data type, such as the Access AutoNumber
data type.
a. surrogate
b. artificial
c. natural
d. logical
ANSWER: a
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 181

28. A natural key is also called a(n) ____ key.

a. surrogate
b. intelligent
c. secondary
d. defining
ANSWER: b
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 180

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Chapter 6: Database Design 2: Design Method
29. Which of the following shows sample DBDL documentation for the Employee table?
a. Employee (EmployeeNum, LastName, FirstName, Street, City, State, PostalCode)
b. Employee (EmployeeNum, LastName, FirstName, Street, City, State, PostalCode)
c. Employee (EmployeeNum, LastName, FirstName, Street, City, State, PostalCode, (WageRate, SocSecNum,
DepartmentNum) )
d. Employee (EmployeeNum, LastName, FirstName, Street, City, State, PostalCode, WageRate,
SocSecNum, DepartmentNum)
AK SocSecNum
SK LastName
FK DepartmentNum→Department
ANSWER: d
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 181

30. An alternative to the primary key of a table is listed with the ____ abbreviation in DBDL.
a. SK
b. FK
c. PK
d. AK
ANSWER: d
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 1821

31. Combining the following two tables would result in ____.

Employee (EmployeeNum, LastName, FirstName, WageRate, SocSecNum, DepartmentNum)
Employee (EmployeeNum, LastName, FirstName, Street, City, State, PostalCode)
a. Employee (EmployeeNum, LastName, FirstName, WageRate, SocSecNum, DepartmentNum, (Street, City,
PostalCode) )
b. Employee (EmployeeNum, LastName, FirstName, WageRate, SocSecNum, DepartmentNum, Street, City,
State, PostalCode)
c. Employee (EmployeeNum, LastName, FirstName, Street, City State, PostalCode, WageRate, SocSecNum)
d. Employee (EmployeeNum, LastName, FirstName, WageRate, SocSecNum, DepartmentNum, EmployeeNum,
LastName, FirstName, Street, City, State, PostalCode )
ANSWER: b
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 183

32. Independent entities have ____ in an E-R diagram

a. dashed borders
b. dark backgrounds
c. square corners
d. rounded corners
ANSWER: c
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 190

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Chapter 6: Database Design 2: Design Method
33. An entity that does not require a relationship to another entity for identification is called a(n) ____.
a. alternative entity
b. foreign entity
c. independent entity
d. single entity
ANSWER: c
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 190

34. A relationship that is necessary for identification is called a(n) ____.

a. objectifying relationship
b. merging relationship
c. identifying relationship
d. referential relationship
ANSWER: c
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 190

35. Convert the following table to first normal form:

Branch (BranchNum, BranchName, (BookCode, Title, OnHand) )
a. Branch (BranchNum, BranchName)
Book (BookCode, Title)
b. Branch (BranchNum, BranchName)
c. Book (BookCode, Title)
d. Branch (BranchNum, BranchName, BookCode, Title, OnHand )
ANSWER: d
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 193

36. When implementing the physical-level design, for secondary keys, you must ensure that it is possible to retrieve data
rapidly on the basis of a value of the ____ key.
a. primary
b. secondary
c. alternate
d. foreign
ANSWER: b
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 195

37. After the information-level design is completed, ____ is the next step.
a. The physical-level design
b. The modality-level design
c. The DBMS-level design
d. The table-level design
ANSWER: a
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Chapter 6: Database Design 2: Design Method

POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 195

38. When designing a database, you might find it helpful to design a(n) ____ to obtain the required information from
users.
a. E-R diagram
b. table
c. report
d. survey form
ANSWER: d
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 197

39. The type of information collected on the survey form that describes how data is updated is ____.
a. Attribute information
b. Processing information
c. Relationships
d. Entity information
ANSWER: b
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 198

40. The crucial issue in making the determination between a single many-to-many-to-many relationship and two (or three)
many-to-many relationships is the ____.
a. independence
b. data dependence
c. redundancy
d. cardinality
ANSWER: a
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 207

41. If a many-to-many-to-many relationship is created when it is not appropriate to do so, the conversion to ____ normal
form will correct the problem.
a. first
b. second
c. third
d. fourth
ANSWER: d
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 207

42. A subtype is called a(n) ____ in IDEF1X terminology.

a. dependent
b. inner type

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Chapter 6: Database Design 2: Design Method

c. specification
d. category
ANSWER: d
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 208

43. In IDEF1X, the ____ is the symbol for category.

a. square
b. rectangle
c. diamond
d. circle
ANSWER: d
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 208

44. Complete categories are represented by ____ line(s) below the category symbol.
a. one
b. two
c. three
d. four
ANSWER: b
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 210

45. In the standard E-R diagrams, relationships are drawn as ____, with lines connecting the entities involved in
relationships.
a. rectangles
b. diamonds
c. circles
d. squares
ANSWER: b
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 211

46. An entity that exists to implement a many-to-many relationship is called a(n) ____.
a. composite entity
b. complex entity
c. complicated entity
d. circular entity
ANSWER: a
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 213

47. On an E-R diagram, the number closest to the rectangle represents ____ cardinality.
a. maximum
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Chapter 6: Database Design 2: Design Method

b. minimum
c. midvalue
d. smallest
ANSWER: a
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 215

48. On an E-R diagram, the number closest to the relationship represents ____ cardinality.
a. maximum
b. minimum
c. midvalue
d. largest
ANSWER: b
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 215

49. ____ means that an entity has a minimum cardinality of zero.

a. The entity has a mandatory role in the relationship.
b. The entity is not required in the relationship.
c. The entity should not be in the relationship as an attribute.
d. The entity must be listed with all zeroes in the data fields.
ANSWER: b
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 216

50. ____ means that an entity has a minimum cardinality of one.

a. The entity is required in the relationship.
b. The entity is not required in the relationship.
c. The entity should not be in the relationship as an attribute.
d. The entity must be listed with all ones in the data fields.
ANSWER: a
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 216

Completion

51. During the ____________________ design, designers must consider the characteristics of the particular
DBMS that the organization will use.
ANSWER: physical-level
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 177

52. For each table, you must identify the primary key and any alternate keys, secondary keys, and
____________________ keys.
ANSWER: foreign
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Chapter 6: Database Design 2: Design Method

POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 180

53. Columns that are of interest strictly for the purpose of retrieval are known as ____________________.
ANSWER: secondary keys
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 180

54. It is through foreign keys that you can create relationships among tables and enforce certain types of
____________________ constraints in a database.
ANSWER: integrity
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 180

55. The style of E-R diagram used in the text is ____________________.

ANSWER: IDEF1X
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 182

56. ____________________ key restrictions determine the relationships between tables.

ANSWER: Foreign
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 182

57. A relationship that is not necessary for identification is called a(n) ____________________ relationship.
ANSWER: nonidentifying
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 190

58. On an E-R diagram, ____________________ entities have rounded corners.

ANSWER: dependent
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 190

59. In the ____________________ design method, specific user requirements are synthesized into a design.
ANSWER: bottom-up
bottom up
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 196

60. The ____________________ design method begins with a general database design that models the overall
enterprise and repeatedly refines the model to achieve a design that supports all necessary applications.
ANSWER: top-down
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 196

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Chapter 6: Database Design 2: Design Method
61. To obtain information about ____________________ you might ask users questions such as: “If you know a
particular employee number, can you establish other information, such as employee name?”
ANSWER: functional dependencies
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 197

62. A(n) ____________________ is a special value that represents the absence of a value in a field.
ANSWER: null
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 207

63. You can recognize entity subtypes by the fact the primary key is also a(n) ____________________.
ANSWER: foreign key
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 208

64. An entity-relationship (E-R) model is an approach to representing data in a(n) ____________________.

ANSWER: database
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 211

65. A(n) ____________________ is essentially both an entity and a relationship and is represented in an E-R
diagram by a diamond within a rectangle.
ANSWER: composite entity
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 213

66. When the existence of one entity depends on the existence of another related entity, there is a(n)
____________________.
ANSWER: existence dependency
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 215

67. An entity that depends on another entity for its own existence is called a(n) ____________________.
ANSWER: weak entity
dependent entity
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 215

68. A weak entity corresponds to the term ____________________.

ANSWER: dependent entity
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 215

69. ____________________ refers to the number of items that must be included in a relationship.
ANSWER: Cardinality

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Chapter 6: Database Design 2: Design Method

POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 215

70. One way to indicate a one-to-many relationship is to place a crow's foot at the ____________________ end
of the relationship.
ANSWER: “many”
many
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 215

Essay

71. List the steps that must be followed for each user view, as suggested by the information-level design
methodology.
ANSWER:
The steps are:
1. Represent the user view as a collection of tables.
2. Normalize these tables.
3. Identify all keys in these tables.
4. Merge the results of Steps 1 through 3 into the cumulative design.
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 178

72. Describe the different types of primary keys.

ANSWER: A natural key (also called a logical key or an intelligent key) is a primary key that consists of a column
that uniquely identifies an entity, such as a person’s Social Security number, a book’s ISBN
(International Standard Book Number), a product’s UPC (Universal Product Code), or a vehicle’s VIN
(Vehicle Identification Number). If a natural key does not exist for an entity, it is common to create a
primary key column that will be unique and accessible to users. A column that you create for an entity to
serve solely as the primary key and that is visible to users is called an artificial key. The final type of
primary key, which is called a surrogate key (or a synthetic key), is a system-generated primary key that
is usually hidden from users. When a DBMS creates a surrogate key, it is usually an automatic
numbering data type, such as the Access AutoNumber data type.
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 180
181

73. List the types of information that must be included on a survey form in order for it to be considered valuable
to the design process.
ANSWER: The survey form should contain the following information:
Entity information
Attribute (column) information
Relationships
Functional dependencies
Processing information
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 197
198
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Chapter 6: Database Design 2: Design Method

74. How can you attempt to avoid the problem of creating a table that is not in third normal form?
ANSWER: First, you should be cautious when presenting user views. The problem occurs when a column A in one
user view functionally determines a column B in a second user view. Thus, column A is a determinant
for column B, yet column A is not a column in the second user view. If you always attempt to determine
whether determinants exist and include them in the tables, you often will avoid this problem.
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 211

75. Explain the difference between a minimum cardinality of zero and a minimum cardinality of one.
ANSWER: An entity in a relationship with minimum cardinality of zero plays an optional role in the relationship.
An entity with a minimum cardinality of one plays a mandatory role in the relationship.
POINTS: 1
REFERENCES: 216

Cengage Learning Testing, Powered by Cognero Page 14

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CHILD LABOR IN
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“Atlanta, Ga., June 12—‘The sceptre of commercial supremacy is

falling from the palsied hand of New England industry; apparently it
is to be taken up by the South. Grasp it firmly. The whole country,
torn by labour disputes, looks to the South to make the final stand
against legislative encroachments on the liberty of the individual
workman and the individual employer.’
“So Daniel Davenport of Bridgeport, Conn., spoke to the members
of the Georgia Industrial Association, at their annual convention at
Warm Springs, Ga., last week. This association was one of the
earliest to recognise the depressing effect of restrictive labour
legislation upon the cotton manufacturing of New England; its
members fear that similar legislation in the South would be followed
by even more disastrous consequences, and what has injuriously
affected the more hardy and older establishments of the North,
would, they believe, stunt the growth of the infant industries of the
South, if it did not actually crush them.”
I made an effort in “The Jungle” to show what is happening to the
wage earner in our modern highly concentrated industries, under the
régime of a monopoly price and a competitive wage. I spent seven
weeks in Packingtown studying conditions there, and I verified every
smallest detail, so that as a picture of social conditions the book is as
exact as a government report. But the reader does not have to take
my word for it, there are any number of studies by independent
investigators. Let him go to a library and consult the American
Journal of Sociology for March, 1901, and read the reports of a
graduate of the University of Chicago, who investigated the
conditions in the garment-trade in that city. Here were girls working
ten hours a day for forty cents a week. The average of all the
“dressmakers” was but ninety cents a week, and they were able to
find employment on the average only forty-two weeks in the year.
The “pants-finishers” received a dollar and thirty-one cents, and they
were employed only twenty-seven weeks in the year. The general
average in the entire trade was less than two dollars and a half a
week, and the average number of weeks of work was only thirty-one,
making an average yearly wage for a whole industry of seventy-six
dollars and seventy-four cents per year. Or let the reader get Mr.
Jacob A. Riis’s pictures of conditions in the slums of New York. In his
book, “How the Other Half Lives,” Mr. Riis states that in the block
bounded by Stanton, Houston, Attorney and Ridge streets, the size of
which is two hundred by three hundred feet, are two thousand two
hundred and forty-four human beings. In the block bounded by
Sixty-first and Sixty-second streets, Amsterdam and West End
avenues, are over four thousand. Jack London, in his “War of The
Classes,” quotes the Rev. Dr. Behrends, speaking of the block
bounded by Hester, Canal, Eldridge and Forsyth Streets: “In a room
twelve feet by eight, and five and a half feet high, it was found that
nine persons slept and prepared their food. In another room, located
in a dark cellar, without screens or partitions, were together two men
with their wives and a girl of fourteen, two single men and a boy of
seventeen, two women and four boys, nine, ten, eleven and fifteen
years old—fourteen persons in all!” Apropos of this it may be well to
add that an investigation conducted in Berlin established the fact
that with families living in one room the death rate was one hundred
and sixty-three per thousand, while with families living in three or
four rooms it was twenty. What it was with three or four families
living in one room does not appear. According to a recent report of
the New York Tenement House Commission there were four
hundred thousand “dark rooms”—rooms without any outside
opening whatever. Mr. Riis has been so successful in battling with
such conditions that he has been called by President Roosevelt “the
most useful American.” Neither the President nor Mr. Riis
understand economics, and so probably they are both perplexed at
the result of his ten years of effort—which is that rents on the East
Side have gone up about fifty per cent. in the last two years, and
there have been riots and evictions—and a Socialist all but elected to
Congress!
But Mr. Riis is a business man, and he can figure the social cost of
these evil conditions. Of the New York tenements he writes:
“They are the hot beds of epidemics that carry death to the rich
and poor alike; the nurseries of pauperism and crime that fill our
jails and police courts; that throw off a scum of forty thousand
human wrecks to the island asylums and workhouses year by year;
that turned out in the last eight years a round half million beggars to
prey upon our charities; that maintain a standing army of ten
thousand tramps with all that that implies; because, above all, they
taint the family life with deadly moral contagion.”
In his newly published discussion of social problems called “In the
Fire of the Heart,” Mr. Ralph Waldo Trine writes of the country’s
situation as follows:
 “And over ten millions of our people are in a state of chronic
poverty at this very hour—almost one out of every seven, or, to make
full allowance, one out of every eight of all our people are in the
condition where they have not sufficient food, and clothing, and
shelter to keep them in a state of physical and mental efficiency. And
the sad part of it is that large additional numbers—numbers most
appalling for such a country as this, are each year, and through no
fault of their own, dropping into this same condition.
“And a still sadder feature of it is, that each year increasingly large
numbers of this vast army of people, our fellow-beings, are,
unwillingly on their part and in the face of almost superhuman
efforts to keep out of it till the last moment, dropping into the pauper
class—those who are compelled to seek or to receive aid from a
public, or from private charity, in order to exist at all, already in
numbers about four million, while increasing numbers of this class,
the pauper, sink each year, and so naturally, into the vicious, the
criminal, the inebriate class. In other words, we have gradually
allowed to be built around us a social and economic system which
yearly drives vast numbers of hitherto fairly well-to-do, strong,
honest, earnest, willing and admirable men with their families into
the condition of poverty, and under its weary, endeavour-strangling
influences many of these in time, hoping against hope, struggling to
the last moment in their semi-incapacitated and pathetic manner to
keep out of it, are forced to seek or to accept public or private charity,
and thus sink into the pauper class.
“It is a well-authenticated fact that strong men, now weakened by
poverty, will avoid it to the last before they will take this step. Many
after first parting with every thing they have, break down and cry like
babes when the final moment comes, and they can avoid it no longer.
Numbers at this time take their own lives rather than pass through
the ordeal, and still larger numbers desert their families for whom
they have struggled so valiantly—it is almost invariably the woman
who makes her way to the charity agencies. The public and private
charities cost the country during the past year as nearly as can be
conservatively arrived at, over two hundred million dollars.
“Moreover, a strange law seems to work with an accuracy that
seems almost marvellous. It is this. Notwithstanding the brave and
almost superhuman struggles that are gone through with, on the part
of these, before they can take themselves to the public or private
charity for aid, when the step is once taken, they gradually sink into
the condition where all initiative and all sense of self-reliance seems
to be stifled or lost, and it is only in a rare case now and then that
they ever cease to be dependent, but remain content with the alms
that are doled out to them—practically never do they rise out of that
condition again. Talk with practically any charity agent or worker,
one with a sufficiently extended experience, and you will find that
there is scarcely more than one type of testimony concerning this.
And as this condition gradually becomes chronic, and endeavour and
initiative and self-respect are lost, a certain proportion then sink into
the condition of the criminal, the diseased, the chronically drunk, the
inebriate, from which reclamation is still more difficult.”
The fullest and most authoritative treatise upon conditions in
America is of course Mr. Robert Hunter’s “Poverty.” Mr. Hunter is a
settlement worker, and he has gathered his material in the midst of
the conditions of which he writes. He quotes, for instance, the
following definite facts, which are obtained from official sources:
“1903: twenty per cent. of the people of Boston in distress.
“1897: nineteen per cent. of the people of New York state in
distress.
“1899: eighteen per cent. of the people of New York state in
distress.
“1903: fourteen per cent. of the families of Manhattan evicted.
“Every year ten per cent. (about) of those who die in Manhattan
have pauper burials.” “On the basis of these figures,” Mr. Hunter
continues, “it would seem fair to estimate that certainly not less than
fourteen per cent. of the people, in prosperous times (1903), and
probably not less than twenty per cent. in bad times (1897), are in
distress. The estimate is a conservative one, for despite all the
imperfections which may be found in the data, and there are many,
any allowance for the persons who are given aid by sources not
reporting to the State Board, or for those persons not aided by the
authorities of Boston, or for those persons who, although in great
distress, are not evicted, must counterbalance the duplications or
errors which may exist in the figures either of distress or evictions.
 “These figures, furthermore, represent only the distress which
manifests itself. There is no question but that only a part of those in
poverty, in any community, apply for charity. I think anyone living in
a Settlement will support me in saying that many families who are
obviously poor—that is, underfed, underclothed, or badly housed—
never ask for aid or suffer the social disgrace of eviction. Of course,
no one could estimate the proportion of those who are evicted or of
those who ask assistance to the total number in poverty; for whatever
opinion one may have formed is based, not on actual knowledge,
gained by inquiry, but on impressions, gained through friendly
intercourse. My own opinion is that probably not over half of those
in poverty ever apply for charity, and certainly not more than that
proportion are evicted from their homes. However, I should not wish
an opinion of this sort to be used in estimating, from the figures of
distress, etc., the number of those in poverty. And yet from the facts
of distress, as given, and from opinions formed, both as a charity
agent and as a Settlement worker, I should not be at all surprised if
the number of those in poverty in New York, as well as in other large
cities and industrial centres, rarely fell below twenty-five per cent. of
all the people.”
Such are the conditions in America to-day; what they would be in
the future, if present tendencies went on unchecked, the reader may
learn by going to Europe, where industrial evolution has been slower
in coming to a head, and where the people have been held down by
religious superstition and military despotism. Let him take Mr.
Richard Whiteing’s “No. 5 John Street”; or, if he has a particularly
strong stomach, let him try Jack London’s “People of the Abyss,” or
Charles Edward Russell’s terrifying story of the poverty of India, in
his “Soldiers of the Common Good.” Here is a scene in a London
park, selected, by way of example, from the first-named book:
“We went up the narrow, gravelled walk. On the benches on either
side was arrayed a mass of miserable and diseased humanity, the
sight of which would have impelled Doré to more diabolical flights of
fancy than he ever succeeded in achieving. It was a welter of filth and
rags, of all manner of loathsome skin-diseases, open sores, bruises,
grossness, indecency, leering monstrosities and bestial faces. A chill,
raw wind was blowing, and these creatures huddled there in their
rags, sleeping for the most part, or trying to sleep. Here were a dozen
women, ranging in age from twenty years to seventy. Next a babe,
possibly nine months old, lying asleep, flat on the hard bench, with
neither pillow nor covering, nor with anyone looking after it. Next,
half a dozen men sleeping bolt upright, and leaning against one
another in their sleep. In one place a family group, a child asleep in
its sleeping mother’s arms, and the husband (or male mate) clumsily
mending a dilapidated shoe. On another bench a woman trimming
the frayed strips of her rags with a knife, and another woman with
thread and needle, sewing up rents. Adjoining, a man holding a
sleeping woman in his arms. Farther on, a man, his clothing caked
with gutter mud, asleep, with his head in the lap of a woman, not
more than twenty-five years old, and also asleep. ‘Those women
there,’ said our guide, ‘will sell themselves for thru’pence or tu’pence,
or a loaf of stale bread.’ He said it with a cheerful sneer.”
And then turn back to the preface: “It must not be forgotten that
the time of which I write was considered ‘good times’ in England.
The starvation and lack of shelter I encountered constituted a
chronic condition of misery, which is never wiped out, even in the
periods of greatest prosperity. Following the summer in question
came a hard winter. To such an extent did the suffering and positive
starvation increase that society was unable to cope with it. Great
numbers of the unemployed formed into processions, as many as a
dozen at a time, and daily marched through the streets of London
crying for bread. Mr. Justin McCarthy, writing in the month of
January, 1903, to the New York Independent, briefly epitomises the
situation, as follows: ‘The workhouses have no space left in which to
pack the starving crowds who are craving every night at their doors
for food and shelter. All the charitable institutions have exhausted
their means in trying to raise supplies of food for the famishing
residents of the garrets and cellars of London lanes and alleys.’”
And then consider that in the city where this was going on, the
leading newspaper (the Times) was printing a three-column article
setting forth the fact that competition had grown so great that it was
now no longer possible for a “gentleman” to maintain his status with
a family in London upon an income of half a million dollars a year!
Yet if one wishes for social contrasts, there is really no need of
crossing the ocean. Mr. Schwab’s nine million dollar palace in New
York will answer the purpose; or so will the St. Regis Hotel. The
swinging doors of the St. Regis, so the visitor is informed, cost ten
thousand dollars apiece; the panelling of the smoking-room cost
forty-five thousand dollars, and the carriage-entrance rain-shed cost
eighty-five thousand dollars. The walls of it are covered with a silk
brocade, which cost twenty dollars a yard, and the ceiling is gilded
with material costing one dollar an ounce. It cost a hundred
thousand dollars to fit up the office, and four million dollars to build
the whole structure. A two-room apartment in it, without meals, is
valued at nine thousand six hundred dollars a year; and for your
meals you may try—say, “milk-fed chicken” at two dollars for each
tiny portion.

Courtesy of
Penna.
Child Labor
Committee
 From
Stereograp
h,
Copyrighte
d 1906, by
Underwood
&
Underwood

THE SOCIAL
CONTRAST IN NEW
YORK

Perhaps this seems monstrous; but it really is not—it is a perfectly

inevitable consequence of industrial competition, and of the
“constantly increasing mass of capital.” Mr. John Jacob Astor, who
owns the hotel, has an income of more than its value every year, and
he is in desperate straits to find any way of investing it by which he
can make profits. There are seven thousand millionaires in this
country, who want the best, the only best they know being what costs
the most; and so he knew that if he built a hotel exceeding in cost any
other hotel in the world, that hotel would pay him profits. For
precisely the same reason a number of buildings are now being torn
down in Brooklyn to make room for a graveyard for wealthy people’s
pet dogs.
The founder of the Astor fortune came to New York a century ago
and bought land while it was cheap. Millions of men have since
contributed their labour to the building up of New York; and no one
of them did anything without adding to the wealth of the Astors—
who merely sat by and watched. Now the property of the family is
estimated to be worth four hundred and fifty millions of dollars,
according to Mr. Burton J. Hendricks’s recent account of it in
McClure’s Magazine. It includes half a dozen hotels like the St.
Regis; it includes also innumerable slum-tenements with “dark
rooms.” Its value grows by leaps and bounds—one corner lot on Fifth
Avenue “made” them seven hundred thousand dollars in two years.
To Mr. William Waldorf Astor alone the harried and overdriven
population of Manhattan Island delivers eight or ten millions of
tribute money every year; and Mr. William Waldorf Astor resides at
Clieveden, Taplow, Bucks, England—giving as his reason the fact that
“America it not a fit place for a gentleman to live in.”
The fundamental characteristic of the régime under which we live
is that it values a man only in so far as he is capable of producing
wealth. Hence one of the signs of the increasing difficulty of making
profits will be an increasing recklessness of human life. Our railroads
killed six thousand people in 1895, seven thousand in 1899, eight
thousand in 1902, nine thousand in 1903, and ten thousand in 1904;
they injured thirty-three thousand in 1895, forty-four thousand in
1899, sixty-four thousand in 1902, seventy-six thousand in 1903, and
eighty-four thousand in 1904. According to the statistics of the
Interstate Commerce Commission, our railways injured one
passenger out of every one hundred and eighty-three thousand
passengers they carried in 1894; in 1904 they injured one out of
every seventy-eight thousand. If casualties are to continue increasing
at the same rate until 1912, there are one hundred thousand people
under sentence of sudden death, and a number doomed to be
maimed greater than the entire population of the District of
Columbia, Delaware, Montana, Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming, Alaska,
Idaho and the Hawaiian Islands.
In 1890, before the present appalling slaughter began, we were
killing, of a given number of employees, twice as many as the State-
owned roads of Germany, and three times as many as Austria. The
street railroads of New York City alone take one human life every
day, or one in ten thousand of the population every year. People walk
about the streets carelessly, but tremble when there is a
thunderstorm; yet the street-cars kill ten persons in a year for every
one that the lightning kills in the lifetime of a man!
These things create indignation in our pulpits and editorial rooms;
but any practical railroad man could tell you that to stop them would
be to overthrow society. The reason they occur is that it costs less to
pay the damages than it would to take proper precautions, and if the
railroads were forced to take the precautions, many of them would
have to shut down at once. The situation is covered so completely in
the following news item, clipped from the Minneapolis Journal of
May 26, 1904, that I cannot do better than to quote it entire:
“Because James J. Hill guaranteed eight per cent. to the
stockholders of the Burlington when he assumed control of that
system, many of the older employees are undergoing what they
consider real hardship. Ten days ago the Journal voiced the
complaints of Burlington employees on other parts of the system,
mentioning the fact that the runs to and from the Twin Cities had
been combined in some way, to squeeze more work out of the train
crews. The new schedule has now been in effect longer and
complaints are correspondingly more emphatic. No dissatisfaction is
openly expressed, as the Hill guillotine gets nobody more surely than
the man who talks too much.
“Trainmen complain that with the long runs and long hours they
are forced to work to a point almost beyond human endurance. They
are haunted by the fear of accidents from unpreventable neglect of
duty. They hold that the running of trains in safety depends upon the
vigilance and alertness of the crews and they cannot do themselves
and their employers justice, when compelled to work long hours on
fast runs.
“Crews are now running from Minneapolis to Chicago, a distance
of about 430 miles, with seventy-two stops. The men start from
Minneapolis at 7:30 A. M., and arrive, on locals, in Chicago at 9:35 P.
M. The men leaving Chicago on No. 50 at 10:50 P. M. arrive in
Minneapolis at 1:20 P. M. the next afternoon.
“Trainmen declare that in making this schedule the management
has broken faith and virtually abrogates previous working
agreements. Hints of a strike are made. In discussing the conditions
an old Burlington employee said:
 “‘A conductor and his crew feel a sense of responsibility for the
lives of those upon a train. A man can only be worked so far when he
becomes actually irresponsible. I hate to feel that I am in any way
responsible for the lives of passengers on a train when the length of
the run and hours have worked me beyond my limit. There is no
flagman on the train, and the brake-man has to help load baggage,
brake, flag, and do anything that comes up. He is certainly not in
good condition to be an alert flagman on the latter end of the run.’”[4]
4. “In the matter of rigging the stock-market the American railroad manager
has no superior. In the matter of providing safe and expeditious facilities for
transportation he has no inferior in any nation of the first rank. He can manipulate
political conventions. He can debauch legislatures. He can send his paid attorneys
to Congress and sometimes put them on the bench. In these matters he is a master,
just as he is a master in the art of issuing and juggling securities. It is only in the
operation of railroads that he is deficient. The mere detail of transporting lives and
property safely and satisfactorily he seems to regard as unworthy of his genius. His
equipment is usually inadequate. His road-bed is generally second class or worse.
His employees are undisciplined and his system is archaic. Whatever the causes
may be, the fact remains that, judged by the results of operation, the American
railroad manager is incompetent, and the records of death and disaster prove it.”—
New York World.
In the same way it is cheaper for a theatre-manager to bribe police
officials with free tickets than to comply with the regulations of the
Fire Department; and so it is that five or six hundred people are
burned up in five minutes. It is easier to bribe a building inspector
than it is to put steel rivets in a building, and so you have a
Darlington Hotel collapse, and kill ten or twenty workingmen. And a
few weeks later came the Slocum disaster, and a helpless steamboat
captain was punished, and the responsible capitalists not even
named. At the same time, in Trenton, New Jersey, some other
capitalists were arrested for making life-preservers with iron bars in
them. Of course they were not punished, for everyone understands
that such things cannot be helped. In 1893 the number of miners
killed in the United States and Canada was two and fifty-three
hundredths per thousand; in 1902 it was three and fifty-one
hundredths. Better precautions against accidents were one of the
demands for making which the miners of Colorado were strung up to
telegraph poles, shut in bull-pens, beaten and “deported.” Their
mortality was thirty-two per thousand in ten years; the mortality
among railroad brake-men is now thirty-two per thousand in two
years, so it was very unreasonable of the miners to complain.
There are annually, says Social Service, 344,900 accidents among
the 7,086,000 people engaged in this country in manufacturing and
mechanical pursuits. It calculates that if the percentage of accidents
among the other 23,000,000 employed in other occupations is only
one-tenth as much as the above, it means that another 100,000 must
be added to the list. “This is perpetual war on humanity,” the paper
goes on to say, “and more bloody than any civil or international war
known to history. This war is costing suffering, physical and mental,
which is beyond calculation. It is costing great economic loss. It is
creating a sense of wrong and a feeling of class-hatred on the part of
those who are its victims.”
In the same category of waste of human life belong all the facts of
over-driving, long hours, and irregular employment among
workingmen. Under the old Southern system of slavery the master
took care of his servant the year round; but the wage-slave is kept
only while he is needed, and only while he remains at his maximum
of working efficiency. Recently in a single month, I clipped from a
New York newspaper, items to the effect that the Brooklyn street-
railroad combine was discharging all of its superannuated
employees; that the master-pilots of the Great Lakes had agreed to
engage no man over forty; that the Delaware and Hudson Railroad
Company had just published a rule barring all over thirty-five; and
that the Carnegie Steel Company had done the same.
And in this same category of waste of human life belong all the
facts of woman and child-labour. For of course the children die; and
the women produce deformed and idiot and degenerate offspring, to
fill our asylums and prisons. The reader is referred, for first-hand
accounts of the life of the American woman wage-slave, to Van
Vorst’s “The Woman who Toils,” and to that fascinating human
document, “The Long Day.” In Mr. John Spargo’s “The Bitter Cry of
the Children,” he will find a mass of facts about child-labour, the
most hideous of all the evils incidental to the process of wealth-
concentration.
There is, if one had only time to point it out, no tiniest nook of our
society where human lives are not being ground up for profit; the
capitalists are ground up, as Mr. Schwab was, and the meanest
woman of the town shares his fate. There was a time when a
prostitute was an independent person, who could support herself
until she grew old; nowadays, under the stress of competition, every
city has its prostitution trust. It takes capital to pay the police, and
the business is therefore in the hands of the proprietors of houses,
who buy young girls out of the slums and immigrant population by
thousands and tens of thousands, use them up in a year or two, and
then fling them out into the gutters to die, often when they are not
out of their teens. In the same way the gambler and the saloon-
keeper are now as much employees as are the officials of the
Standard Oil Company: the whole profits of these occupations
flowing into the hands of some “captain of industry” as inevitably as
all the rills on the mountain-side flow into the river. All of these facts
are perfectly familiar, but for the sake of concreteness, I will quote a
paragraph from Mr. Steffens’s book, “The Shame of the Cities.” He is
telling of the city of Pittsburg:
“The vice-graft ... is a legitimate business, conducted, not by the
police, but in an orderly fashion by syndicates, and the chairman of
one of the parties at the last election, said it was worth two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars a year. I saw a man who was laughed at for
offering seventeen thousand five hundred dollars for the slot-
machine concession; he was told that it was let for much more.
‘Speakeasies’ (unlicensed drinking places) pay so well that when they
earn five hundred dollars or more in twenty-four hours their
proprietors often make a bare living. Disorderly houses are managed
by ward syndicates. Permission is had from the syndicate real-estate
agent, who alone can rent them. The syndicate hires a house from the
owners at, say, thirty-five dollars a month, and he lets it to a woman
at from thirty-five to fifty dollars a week. For furniture, the tenant
must go to the ‘official furniture-man,’ who delivers one thousand
dollars worth of ‘fixings’ for a note for three thousand dollars, on
which high interest must be paid. For beer the tenant must go to the
‘official bottler,’ and pay two dollars for a one-dollar case of beer; for
wines and liquors to the ‘official liquor-commissioner,’ who charges
ten dollars for five dollars’ worth; for clothes to the ‘official wrapper-
maker.’ These women may not buy shoes, hats, jewellery, or any
other luxury or necessity except from the official concessionaries,
and then only at the official, monopoly prices.”
 And by way of conclusion, in reference to this particular aspect of
the consequences of the “increasing mass of capital,” let me quote the
following little incident, which a friend of mine clipped from one of
the New York newspapers:
“One night a young girl called at the entrance to the House of the
Good Shepherd in New York City; she asked for food and a place to
sleep. ’Twas a pitiful tale she told the matron in charge. She told of
her parents having died and left her alone in the great dark city; she
told of jobs she had secured but was discharged owing to her physical
inability to keep pace with the machine, and as a last resort she
appealed to this institution for succour and support. The matron in
attendance, after having heard this terrible tale of woe and being
thoroughly convinced as to the girl’s honesty and integrity, as well as
to her virtue, informed her that she could not take her in there, as
that institution was established for the reclamation of fallen women
only. The poor girl went away, but on the following night she
returned.... ‘You may take me now,’ she said, ‘you may take me now,
for I am a fallen woman!’”
 CHAPTER V
BUSINESS AND POLITICS

I n this discussion of the process of wealth-concentration, I have so

far purposely omitted all mention of the most important aspect of
the phenomenon—the seizing by the “constantly increasing mass of
capital” of the powers of the State, and their use for purpose of
intensifying exploitation. I have avoided that feature, partly because
it is conspicuous enough to deserve a chapter to itself, but mainly in
order to make clear my view-point, that the phenomenon, while
important, is secondary—an effect rather than a cause.
This is, of course, contrary to the view usually taken. In most
discussions of the problems of the time, it is taken for granted that
“government by special interests” is the source of all the evil. But
while recognising how enormously the process of wealth
concentration has been accelerated by the political alliance, it is my
thesis that exactly the same conditions would have developed had
economic forces been left to work out their own results. I maintain
that economic competition is a self-destroying stage in social
development; and that to regard it as permanent is simply not to
realise what it is. For competition is a struggle, and the purpose of
every struggle is a victory; to conceive of a struggle without the
intention to end the struggle, is simply impossible in the nature of
things. In the industrial combat the end is the victory of a class, and
the reduction of all other classes to servitude—with the ultimate
extinction of all individuals not needed by the victors.
Again, it is generally the custom to regard this phenomenon of
class-government with indignation and astonishment, as if it were
something abnormal and monstrous; but from the point of view of
this discussion, it is a perfectly natural and inevitable incident of the
intensification of competition. You are to picture Capital, seeking
profits; like a wild beast in a cage, pacing about, watching for an
opening, here and there; like water, caught behind a dam, creeping
up, crowding forward, feeling for a weak spot. And the one thing to
be determined is: Is there any way in which profits can be made
through the powers of government? If so, it is quite certain that
there will be an attempt made by capital to get possession of those
powers.
You can see the thing in its germ in any primitive community; I
once amused myself by studying it in a little village in Canada, where
the trusts had never been heard of. The storekeeper was a rich man,
and he had a “pull” with the squire and with the constable and with
the game-warden; he did little favours for them, and they for him—so
that a poor “Frenchman” who was suspected of stealing a pair of
socks found himself in jail before he knew why. And then there was a
big “lumber man” in the township; he owned all the jobs, and he
traded with the storekeeper, and the storekeeper in return ran the
political machine. That was the whole story of the politics of the
district—except that there were several fellows of independent
temperament, who grumbled, and who constituted the germ of the
Socialist movement.
Political corruption first became epidemic in our country in 1861,
when the government had to go into business upon an enormous
scale. There were contractors—and competition. And then, of course,
there was the tariff, a shrewd scheme to compel the people to pay
high prices without knowing it. Later on someone discovered the
brilliant idea of the franchise, the selling for a nominal sum of the
right to tax the public without limit. And so capital went into politics.
At first it did a purely retail business, buying up the legislators as it
needed them; but soon the thing became systematised, and Capital
got wholesale prices—it financed the machines, and chose its own
candidates. The process culminated at the beginning of the present
decade, when “big business” was in practically undisputed
possession of both the majority parties, of Congress and the
Presidency, and of the governments in every town, city and state in
America.
You see, it was as if our society was in unstable equilibrium. We
had a political democracy, and we were developing an industrial
aristocracy; and it was impossible for them to exist side by side.
Innocent people had taken it for granted that they could; but it is no
more possible for a democracy to be aristocratic in any of its aspects
and remain a democracy, than it is for a virtuous man to be vicious in
one particular, and remain a virtuous man. Democracy is not a code
of laws, nor is it a system of government—it is an attitude of soul. It
has as its basis a perception of the spiritual nature of man, from
which follows the corollary that all men either are equal, or must
become so. And so between aristocracy and democracy, wherever
and under whatever aspects they appear, there is, and forever must
be, eternal and deadly war. Here is the testimony and the warning of
the greatest of American democrats, Abraham Lincoln, who if he
could rise from his grave to speak to us in these times of our
country’s trial could speak no more pertinent words than these. He
had declared that the Slavery question was one between right and
wrong. “Right and wrong,” he said—“that is the issue that will
continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas
and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two
principles—right and wrong—throughout the world. They are the
principles which have stood face to face from the beginning of time
and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of
humanity, and the other is the divine right of kings. It is the same
principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit
that says: ‘You work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’ No
matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king
who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation, and live by the
fruit of their labour, or from one race of men as an apology for
enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.”
It is worth while pointing out the utter hopelessness of the
struggle. On the one hand was the capitalist, with his millions, alert,
aggressive and resourceful; he had an army of experts to help him—
shrewd attorneys, skilful lobbyists, newspapers and publicity
bureaus, political henchmen trained all their lifetime to the trade; he
was cold and unscrupulous—as a rule he was not a man at all, but a
corporation, a thing without a soul, a monster “clamouring for
dividends.” He had a thousand devices, a thousand pretences, a
thousand disguises. And opposed to him was the Public—
unorganised, uninformed, and sound asleep!
 Recently, when Mr. H. G. Wells was in this country, I had a long
talk with him, and he asked me how I accounted for the saturnalia of
corruption in our political life; he said that our people did not seem
to him degraded or brutal, and he could not understand why things
were so much worse here than in England. I said that in England the
economic process had been modified by the existence of an
hereditary aristocracy, holding over from old times and having high
traditions of public service. By nature this aristocracy sympathised
with capital, and to a certain extent fraternised with it; but it would
not abdicate to it, and occasionally, to preserve its own power, it
made concessions to the public, and so served as a check upon the
forces of commercialism. On the other hand the American people
had only themselves to rely upon and until they had been goaded
into revolt, there was no limit whatever to the power of greed.
I suppose it is unnecessary to offer any proofs of the existence of
“government by special interests.” If there is anyone who has been
out of the country for the past three years and has not read any of the
magazines, it will be sufficient to refer him to the two books of Mr.
Lincoln Steffens—“The Shame of the Cities” and “The Struggle for
Self Government.”
Steffens himself is a proof of the evil conditions: a man who has
spent ten years studying our politics, who went to the task with no
preconceptions, and only a passion for honesty and fair dealing—and
who has been made into a thorough-going radical by the irresistible
logic of facts. It was his particular service to the Republic to trace the
stream of graft to its fountain-head, which is what he calls “big
business”; and the series of papers in which he proved that thesis to
our people will long be studied as models of the higher journalism—
the journalism which is to ordinary newspaper writing what
statesmanship is to politics.
As I say, there is no need of proof; but simply by way of
illustration, and to call the picture to the reader’s mind, let me quote
a few paragraphs from one of these papers—“Pittsburg, a City
Ashamed”:
“The railroads began the corruption of this city. There always was
some dishonesty, as the oldest public men I talked with said, but it
was occasional and criminal till the first great corporation made it
business-like and respectable. The Pennsylvania Railroad was in the
system from the start, and as the other roads came in and found the
city government bought up by those before them, they purchased
their rights of way by outbribing the older roads, then joined the ring
to acquire more rights for themselves and to keep belated rivals out.
As corporations multiplied and capital branched out, corruption
increased naturally, but the notable characteristic of the ‘Pittsburg
plan’ of misgovernment was that it was not a haphazard growth, but
a deliberate, intelligent organisation.... The Pennsylvania Railroad is
a power in Pennsylvania politics, it is part of the State ring, and part
also of the Pittsburg ring. The city paid in all sorts of rights and
privileges, streets, bridges, etc., and in certain periods the business
interests of the city were sacrificed to leave the Pennsylvania road in
exclusive control of a freight traffic it could not handle alone.”
The “bosses” who ruled Pittsburg were Magee and Flynn, and Mr.
Steffens prints in full the agreement between them and Senator
Quay, by which they divided the boodle of the state. “Magee and
Flynn were the government and the law. How could they commit a
crime? If they wanted something from the city they passed an
ordinance granting it, and if some other ordinance was in conflict it
was repealed or amended. If the laws of the state stood in the way, so
much the worse for the laws of the state; they were amended. If the
constitution of the state proved a barrier, as it did to all special
legislation, the Legislature enacted a law for cities of the second class
(which was Pittsburg alone) and the courts upheld the Legislature. If
there were opposition on the side of public opinion, there was a use
for that also.
“As I have said before, unlawful acts were exceptional and
unnecessary in Pittsburg. Magee did not steal franchises and sell
them. His councils gave them to him. He and the busy Flynn took
them, and built railways, which Magee sold and bought and financed
and conducted, like any other man whose successful career is held up
as an example for young men. His railways, combined into the
Consolidated Traction Company, were capitalised at thirty million
dollars. There was scandal in Chicago over the granting of charters
for twenty-eight and fifty years. Magee’s read, ‘for nine hundred and
fifty years,’ ‘for nine hundred and ninety-nine years,’ ‘said Charter is
to exist a thousand years,’ ‘said Charter is to exist perpetually,’ and
the Councils gave franchises for the ‘life of the charter.’”
 And all this was a regular profession, a custom of the country,
which its devotees studied. “Two of them told me repeatedly that
they travelled about the country looking up the business, and that a
fellowship had grown up among boodling aldermen of the leading
cities in the United States. Committees from Chicago would come to
St. Louis to find out what ‘new games’ the St. Louis boodlers had,
and they gave the St. Louisans hints as to how they ‘did the business’
in Chicago. So the Chicago and St. Louis boodlers used to visit
Cleveland and Pittsburg and all the other cities, or, if the distance
was too great, they got their ideas by those mysterious channels
which run all through the ‘World of Graft.’ The meeting place in St.
Louis was Decker’s stable, and ideas unfolded there were developed
into plans which the boodlers say to-day, are only in abeyance. In
Decker’s stable was born the plan to sell the Union Market; and
though the deal did not go through, the boodlers, when they saw it
failing, made the market-men pay ten thousand dollars for killing it.
This scheme is laid aside for the future. Another that failed was to
sell the court-house, and this was well under way when it was
discovered that the ground on which this public building stands was
given to the city on condition that it was to be used for a court-house
and nothing else.... The grandest idea of all came from Philadelphia.
In that city the gas-works were sold out to a private concern, and the
water-works were to be sold next. The St. Louis fellows have been
trying ever since to find a purchaser for their water-works. The plant
is worth at least forty million dollars. But the boodlers thought they
could let it go at fifteen million dollars, and get one million dollars or
so themselves for the bargain. ‘The scheme was to do it and skip,’
said one of the boodlers who told me about it, ‘and if you could mix it
all up with some filtering scheme it could be done. Only some of us
thought we could make more than one million dollars out of it—a
fortune apiece. It will be done some day.’...
“Such, then, is the boodling system as we see it in St. Louis.
Everything the city owned was for sale by the officers elected by the
people. The purchasers might be willing or unwilling takers; they
might be citizens or outsiders; it was all one to the city government.
So long as the members of the combines got the proceeds they would
sell out the town. Would? They did and they will. If a city treasurer
runs away with fifty thousand dollars there is a great halloo about it.
In St. Louis the regularly organised thieves who rule have sold fifty
million dollars’ worth of franchises and other valuable municipal
assets. This is the estimate made for me by a banker, who said that
the boodlers got not one-tenth of the value of the things they sold.”
Two or three years ago, before I met Mr. Steffens, I thought that he
knew only as much as he “let on”; and so I wrote him an “open
letter,” to point out the consequences of this régime of “big
business.” The story of this manuscript is an amusing one, and worth
telling for the light it throws upon my argument. Mr. Steffens was so
good as to say that it was the best criticism of himself that he had
ever read; and it was scheduled for publication in one of our three or
four largest magazines. But alas—it was purchased by the
enthusiastic young editor, and then read by the elderly and
unenthusiastic proprietor. When I rebelled at the long wait which
followed, the proprietor invited me to dinner, and unbosomed his
soul to me. He was the dearest old gentleman I ever met, and he put
his arm about me while he explained the situation. “My boy,” he said,
“you are a very clever chap, and you know a lot; but why don’t you
put it all into a book, where you can’t hurt anyone but yourself? Why
do you try to get it into my magazine, and scare away my half million
subscribers?”
So the letter was shelved. But the questions it asked are now the
questions which events are asking of the American people; and so I
shall take the advice of the elderly and unenthusiastic proprietor—
and publish some of the letter in a book! It ran as follows:

T his is the question I have wished to ask you, Mr. Steffens. “A

revolution has happened,” you tell us; we have no longer “a
government of the people, by the people, for the people,”—we have “a
government of the people, by the rascals, for the rich.” And if we find
that that revolution, which has overthrown the law, and which defies
the law, cannot be put down and overcome by the means of the law—
what are we going to do then? Are we going to sit still, and content
ourselves with saying it is too bad? Are we going to bear it—to bear it
forever? Can we bear it forever? And if we cannot bear it forever
what are we going to do when we can bear it no longer?
A revolution is a serious thing, Mr. Steffens. A man should not talk
about a “revolution” except with a thorough realisation of what the
word implies. A revolution means that the social contract has been
broken, that rights have been violated and justice defied—that, in a
word, the game of life has not been fairly played, that those who have
lost may possibly have had the right to win. And the game of life is a
pretty stern game for many of us, Mr. Steffens.
You and your friends, I and my friends, belong to a class whom
this “system” touches only through our ideals. Editors and authors,
clergymen and lawyers, we are pained to know that corruption is
eating out the heart of our country—but still, if the problem be not
solved to-day, we can put it off till to-morrow, and not realise what a
difference it makes. But there are some in our country whom the
System touches far more intimately and directly than this—some to
whom the difference between to-day and to-morrow is simply a
difference between life and death. I happened only yesterday to be
reading a letter from a man who, I think, knows that “System,” which
is our new government, in this personal and intimate way. I will
quote a few words from his letter:
“I have been arrested, put in jail, prosecuted and persecuted. I
have had my customers driven away; I have been boycotted to the
extent that men who dared to trade with me have lost their jobs; I
have had my home broken into at night; been beaten with guns and
abused by vile and foul-mouthed thugs; been torn, partly dressed
and bleeding, from the side of my wife, who was driven from her
bedroom and roughly handled; and finally I have been shipped out
and told that if I returned to my home I would be hung. Not satisfied
with this they have twice deported my brother, who was conducting
the business in which we were both earning our living, so that it
became necessary for an adjuster to take charge, of our store.” All
this was, needless to say, in Colorado; the writer is Mr. A. H. Floaten,
a storekeeper of Telluride, but now of Richmond County, Wisconsin,
where he was working in a hayfield when he wrote. He goes on to add
that the charge upon which he was “deported” was that of selling
goods to members of the Western Federation of Miners. “As for my
brother and myself,” he states, “I defy any and all persons to show a
single instance where either of us have ever violated any law or even
been suspected of crime, or have ever wronged any person.”
Here is your “revolution,” Mr. Steffens, in full swing. One of the
questions which I have for some months found myself longing to ask
you is, how clearly you recognised in the Colorado civil war the
natural and inevitable consequences of a continuation of your
“government of the people, by the rascals, for the rich?” Here is an
unequivocal declaration, by a vote of two to one, by the people in one
of the states of this free country, in favour of a constitutional
amendment permitting an eight-hour law; and here are
representatives of both the majority parties pledging themselves to
enact it, and then openly and shamelessly selling themselves out to
the predatory corporations of the state. The people then resort to a
strike to secure their rights; and when they are seen to be winning,
the militia is summoned, criminals are hired to commit a dynamite
outrage and afford the necessary pretext, and then every tradition of
American liberty and every safeguard of free institutions is
overthrown, and the strike crushed and the striker’s organisation
exterminated with a ruthlessness and a recklessness which no police
official in Russia could have surpassed. And then the party of “law
and order”—that is the “System”—sat enthroned in Colorado, and the
guileless reader of newspaper despatches believed that an “election”
took place in that state last November! The “System” suspended the
Habeas Corpus Act, censored newspapers and telegrams, opened
mails, entered houses without warrant and drove women from their
beds at dead of night, deported men, defied and threatened judges,
shut down mines in spite of their owners’ will—and finally haled a
score or two of elected officials before it and put ropes around their
necks and compelled them to resign. And then the “rebellion,” that
is, the agitation for an eight-hour law, attempted to reassert itself in
the form of ballots; and by means of a threat of deposition it
compelled the newly elected governor to accede in everything to its
will—and in particular to retain in office the infamous militia official
who was its agent in these crimes!
But we, as I said before, are touched by these things only through
our ideals. We are sorry to see American institutions overthrown in
an American state; but we do not live in Colorado, and we are quite
sure that there is no danger of our being turned out of our homes.
And yet we know that the system exists in our own city and state, and
sits just as surely intrenched there as in Colorado. And we know also
that it exists for a purpose—that it exists to rule. And are we to
imagine that it exists to rule the people of Patagonia, of Greenland
and Afghanistan? Do we not know that it exists to rule us?
 How does it rule us? How does it rule the people of Colorado?
Whatever is it that is wanted of the people of Colorado? Why, simply
that they should go into the mines and factories and work, not eight
hours a day, as they wished to, but twelve hours a day, the time the
“System” bade them to. And what is it that it wants everywhere else—
in California, in Maine and in Texas? What, save that those who have
labour to sell shall sell it at the price the “System” is paying, and that
those who have goods to buy shall buy them at the price the “System”
asks? If this be so, is not the only difference between us and the
people of Colorado that they went on strike against the “System,”
whereas we are not on strike—we pay?
Let us deal with facts. Here is a corporation which runs a street-
railroad in a city. It gives an abominable service, its cars are cold and
filthy, its employees are underpaid wretches who work thirteen and
fifteen hours a day—and the fare is just double that of the splendid
government service of Berlin. And the public-spirited men of the city
have for ten or twenty years been trying to do something with that
corporation at the state capital; but the corporation has its lobby and
continues to pay pig dividends upon its watered stock year after year.
And then do the people of the city organise and go on strike against
that corporation? No indeed—they pay.
You know of the agitation for a parcels post; you know that under
the parcels-post system an Englishman can send a package to
California for one-third of what it costs us to send one from New
York. In Germany a ten-pound package may be sent anywhere in the
Empire for twelve cents; and our post office pays the railroads more
for its service than all the rest of the civilised world combined,
though the quantity of mail matter carried is less than that of Great
Britain, France and Germany alone! Yet we know that it is a waste of
ink setting these facts forth. Is not the president of the United States
Express Company the United States senator from your own state?
The railroad systems of this country have, of course, their lobby in
every state capital, and in Washington as well; and every single year
the railroad systems of this country slaughter and maim the
equivalent of a Gettysburg campaign—there were as many people
killed in the last three years as the British lost in the entire Boer war.
Yet there is not the least reason for this; the railroads could, if they
chose, build cars which will not crumble up like matchboxes—they
have proven it by killing only six Pullman-car passengers in the same
three years. But of course you have to pay a large sum extra to ride in
a Pullman car. If you cannot pay with money, you pay with your
bones—in either case, of course, you pay.
And then there is the tariff. You, Mr. Steffens, are a man who has
both the ability and the honesty to think, and you know what the
tariff is. You know that it is a device to keep out foreign competition
and thus enable home manufacturers to charge higher prices. You
know that in the early days its effect was to make manufacturing
possible by keeping prices at a level where a fair profit was paid.
Above this level they could not go, because there was free domestic
competition. The tariff was thus a tax, self-imposed by every man in
the country, for the purpose of building up the country’s home
industries; exactly as if the owner of a sugar-plantation should
conclude it would pay him to grind his own cane, and should set
aside his gains for a few years to buy the machinery. Now I might
stop to argue the socialistic implications of such a procedure—
involving as it does the doctrine that the manufactures are the
interest and concern of the whole people, to the advantages of which,
when completed, they all have a right. (No plantation master, I take
it, would expect to furnish himself with machinery out of the wages
of his hands.) Continuing, however, to discuss facts and not theories,
you see that these industries which we have “encouraged” have now
become the mightiest power in the land. It is they who have
accomplished the revolution and set up the “System”; it is they who
use the money which the people have turned over to them, to
maintain and perpetuate the old arrangement—an arrangement
which now enables them, since they have become monopolies, to
charge for their products from thirty to fifty per cent. more than a
fair price, as is proven by what they charge abroad.
The workingman, you know, Mr. Steffens, has all this justified to
him by the fact that he gets his share of this “prosperity”; but of late
the workingman has been finding that he does not get his share. He
has brought the industrial machinery of the country to such a pitch
of perfection that he produces more than the country needs; and so
when foreign markets fail he is out of work part of the time; and the
mass of unemployed labour operates by the “iron law” to beat down
wages and to break strikes, and to make his share less and less. And
all the time, to pay interest on the constantly increasing capital of the
country, the prices of trust products are being raised yet higher, and
the cost of living is rising, year by year.
In the cotton mills of Alabama and Georgia little children six and
eight years of age are working twelve hours for a wage of nine cents a
day. And how do you think they fare in this fearful race for profits—
what do you think is the effect upon them of the continued operation
of the “System”? You may remember that I said a little way back that
there were people in this country to whom the difference between to-
day and to-morrow is simply a difference between life and death. It
was such people as these I had in mind.
Look, Mr. Steffens; you go from town to city, and from city to state,
and everywhere you show us hordes of political parasites battening
on corruption; and you tell us that the fortunes that they make
represent but a small portion of what is made by the “big business
men” who bribe them. Magee and Quay, you tell us, made thirty
millions out of the street railroads of Pittsburg; and all over this land,
year in and year out, such sums are being “made.” And soon
afterward came Mr. Lawson’s story of how the Standard Oil group
“made” forty-six million dollars in a single deal without turning over
their hands. Mr. Lawson expatiates upon this way of “making”
dollars—he makes reflections which I had often wondered if you
were making. I have wondered if you realised entirely that these
millions of dollars were real dollars? Dollars that a man might
spend, just the same as any other dollars—with which he might
purchase food that men had toiled to raise, and houses that men had
toiled to build! I am writing these words in October, and the
windows of my room look out upon a cornfield. All the year long I
have watched a farmer and his son at work in this field—first plowing
it, then harrowing it back and forth and across, then planting the
corn, patiently, row by row. The field is ten acres in size, and it
seemed to me that not a week passed all summer that the farmer was
not plowing and weeding it; and now that the fall has come he has
cut it stalk by stalk, and stacked it; and now I can see him and his son
sitting on the bare, bleak hillside this morning, husking it, ear by ear.
That will take them all of two or three weeks, and when the whole
thing has been done they will gather up the ears to cart them to town,
and the farmer will have five hundred bushels of corn and will get for
them two hundred and fifty dollars. And then I read Mr. Lawson’s
account of how the Rockefellers “made” forty-six million dollars out
of Amalgamated Copper—and strive to realise that what they made
was the equivalent of the labour of the farmer and the farmer’s sons
and the farmer’s horses in one hundred and eighty-six thousand ten-
acre cornfields such as the one I look out upon!
Is it not obvious that if I were to have the power to call a piece of
paper one dollar and to put it into circulation, exchanging it for two
bushels of corn, I could only do it by diminishing the value of every
other dollar in the country a certain small amount? Supposing that
the total wealth of the country was one billion dollars, I should
diminish every single dollar by one-billionth. Suppose that similarly I
“made” one million dollars—by any sort of “making” whatever save
by producing some useful thing and increasing the total wealth of the
country—I should then tax the holder of every dollar one mill. A man
who owned ten thousand dollars would be robbed by me of ten
dollars—he would be robbed of it just as literally and as actually as if
I had broken into his house and stolen his watch. He would not know
that he was robbed, perhaps—all that he would know would be that
when he spent his ten thousand dollars he would not get quite so
much. In Dun’s and Bradstreet’s the event would be recorded in the
statement that the cost of living had risen one-tenth of one per cent.
since last week, and that interest rates had similarly declined. And
now here is the young girl who works in the sweatshops of Chicago
for a wage of forty cents a week, as thousands of them do. The great
Amalgamated Copper deal is consummated, Mr. Rockefeller and his
fellow-conspirators “make” forty-six million dollars—and the young
girl’s wage becomes thirty-nine cents and a fraction. At forty cents
she was hanging on for her life; at thirty-nine cents and a fraction
she enters the nearest brothel. Here is the little child of eight years
toiling from six at night till six in the morning in the midst of
throbbing cotton-looms for nine cents. Magee and Quay of Pittsburg
“make” thirty million dollars in street railroads—and the little child’s
wage becomes eight cents and a fraction. At nine cents he was
starving; at eight and a fraction he faints, and the machinery seizes
him, and his arm has been torn out of him before anyone can answer
his screams. So it is, Mr. Steffens, that there are people in this
country to whom the difference between to-day and to-morrow is
simply a difference between life and death.
 That farmer about whose work I spoke will take his two hundred
and fifty dollars to the bank for deposit; and in the line before the
window will be a young spendthrift idler with a month’s income from
his father’s estate, and a politician with a bribe for a street railway
franchise; and to the banker all these deposits will stand upon equal
terms, they will all be equally “good,” and will claim and get interest
at the same rate. The farmer will have to content himself with a lower
rate, because of the competition of the others; and next week, when
the activities of some speculator in Wall Street bring about a failure
of the bank, he will get not a bit more out of the wreck than the other
two. And then he will go back and toil for another year, to raise a
similar crop—and what will he find then? Why this: the forty-six
millions of the Standard Oil gang will have survived all mischances,
and having by their enormous mass attracted profits, will have
become fifty millions, or even sixty; and the thirty millions of Magee
and Quay will have become thirty-five. All the untold millions of the
capital of the country will have increased similarly; and the
investment field will have become more crowded yet, and the prizes
fewer yet, and the chances more hazardous yet; and the cost of living
will be a little higher yet; and the interest rate a little lower yet, and
wages a little lower yet; and the whole of human society will be
toiling a little harder yet to pay the profits upon that heaped-up mass
of wealth. More men will be taking to drink, and more women will be
taking to brothels—more to suicide, madness, vagabondage and
crime. The race for profits will be a little more fierce, social
ostentation will be a little more vulgar, political corruption will be a
little more shameless, strikes and riots will be a little more common,
the socialists will be a little more active—and you, Mr. Lincoln
Steffens, will be a little more saddened at the sight of your country’s
downward career.
I have noticed the very curious fact about your views, that all your
hope of betterment is in the future—it is always how we can prevent
new stealing, never how we can punish the past. And so those thirty
million dollars of Magee and Quay, the forty-six millions of the
Amalgamated deal—they are safe and beyond recall forever? Mr.
Lawson talks about “restitution”; do you think he will ever bring it
about—do you see any signs of it so far? And yet those forty-six
million dollars, assuming that they grow at ten per cent., a small
earning for such a sum—year after year they will be, roughly
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