hoard, squander, bury, or throw in
the ocean, if his fancy so dictated, the revenue produced by the labor
of millions of beings as human as he, with the same born capacity for
eating, drinking, breathing, sleeping and dying. Many of his workers had
a better digestive apparatus which had to put up with inferior food,
and, at times, no food at all. He could eat no more than three meals a
day, but his daily income was enough to have afforded him ten thousand
sumptuous daily meals, with exquisite "trimmings," while periods came
when those who drudged for him were fortunate to have any meals at all.
Few of his workers received as much as $2 a day; Field's income was
estimated to be at the rate of about $500 to $700 an hour.

First--and of prime importance--was his wholesale and retail drygoods
business. This was, and is, a line of business in which frantic
competition survived long after the manufacturing field had passed over
into concentrated trust control. To keep apace with competitors and make
high profits, it was imperative not only to resort to shifts, expedients
and policies followed by competitors, but to improve upon, and surpass,
those methods if possible. Field at all times proved that it was
possible. No competing firm would pay a certain rate of wages but what
Field instantly outgeneraled it by cutting his workers' wages to a point
enabling him to make his goods as cheap or cheaper.

HIS EMPLOYEES' WRETCHED WAGES.

In his wholesale and retail stores he employed not less than ten
thousand men, women and children. He compelled them to work for wages
which, in a large number of cases, were inadequate even for a bare
subsistence. Ninety-five per cent. received $12 a week or less. The
female sewing-machine operators who bent over their tasks the long day,
making the clothes sold in the Field stores, were paid the miserable
wages of $6.75 a week. Makers of socks and stockings were paid from
$4.57 to $4.75 a week. The working hours consisted variously of from
fifty-nine to fifty-nine and a half a week. Field also manufactured his
own furniture as well as many other articles. Furniture workers were
paid: Machine workers, $11.02, and upholsterers $12.47 a week. All of
Field's wage workers were paid by the hour; should they fall sick, or
work become slack, their pay was proportionately reduced.

The wretchedness in which many of these workers lived, and in which they
still live (for the same conditions obtain), was