common laborers worked twelve hours a day under
circumstances and conditions hardly better than those of 1830, for labor
unions had only begun their agitation, and foreign immigrants were
always ready to accept work without asking any questions. One or two
States had passed laws regulating hours of labor; but none had thought
of the cost to the race of hard toil and long hours for women and
children, and most men regarded the builder of a mill as a public
benefactor because he furnished employment to just this element of the
population. A man who had steady work on a farm was paid from ten to
fifteen dollars a month with board; a day-laborer received a dollar a
day without perquisites. Skilled laborers were paid two dollars a day in
the South and slightly less in the East. The industrial belt continued
to draw upon the country districts of the East, which, with the
continued migration to the West, greatly impoverished the rural life and
resulted in many abandoned farms. In the city housing conditions of the
poor were worse if anything than they had been thirty years before.
Crowded tenements, filthy streets, flies, and vermin abounded. Under the
English common law accidents in the mills were matters of concern only
to the employees, and the human toll of the railways was enormous. Years
of toil, a worn-out frame, a dependent old age, and finally the potter's
field was the weary round of life to the millions of dependent people
who swarmed about the industrial centers.

Under the pressure of outside criticism and the influence of religion,
the lot of the slave was mending, though there was room enough for
improvement. From sun to sun was always the plantation day, and the
weekly ration was a peck of meal and four pounds of meat--salted "side
meat" packed in Cincinnati or Chicago. Each negro family had a
single-room cabin, where man, wife, and a dozen children were tucked
away in the loft or slept on the floor, though there was usually a bed
for the parents. There was, however, always plenty of fresh air, a big
open fireplace, and generally shade trees about the negro quarters,
which conditions probably account for the lower mortality rate in the
South than in the East. Of clothing the slave had only what was
absolutely necessary, children being limited to a single garment which
reached slightly below the knees. Against accidents and disease more
precautions were taken by masters of plantations than by masters of
mills,