Hired laborer

“ They assembled, and on Monday the 6th thousands turned out to work, and continued to labor, unless prevented by the Manager, until arrangements were made.
You will remember, that prior to the 1st of August, a white man who hired out a gang of apprentices to an estate was paid at the rate of 1s. 6d. sterling per diem for each able laborer. ”

“ You, who have but few dependents, or, perhaps, but one drudge dependent upon you, whether as servant, apprentice, or hired labourer, do not think that you have not an ample opportunity for exercising the duties of an employer of labour. Do not suppose that these duties belong to the great manufacturer with the population of a small town in his own factory, or to the landlord with vast territorial possessions, and that you have nothing to do with them. ”

“ To suppose a servant robbed of his earnings because he is not called a hired servant, is profound induction! If I employ a man at twelve dollars a month to work my farm, he is my "hired" man, but if I give him such a portion of the crop, or in other words, if he works my farm "on shares," every farmer knows that he is no longer called a "hired" man. ”

“ We are not insisting, be it understood, on a four-hour or eight-hour system of labor. No industry or occupation will be hampered or meddled with by doing justice to the laborer in the way proposed. The railroad employee, printer, baker, factory hand, etc., can work on as now, but they must be compensated with just wages for the labor done. ”

“ In the 5th of Elizabeth comes the last and greatest Statute of Laborers. This statute is a consolidation of all previous laws, and it begins by recognizing the principle that the fixing of wages is a mistake and all such laws are repealed so far as they relate to terms of hiring and wages. Servants in certain employments, generally speaking the tailoring and shoemaking trades, may still be hired by the year, and persons unmarried, not having an income of forty shillings a year, may be compelled to serve in their own handicraft. ”

“ To go into the market-place and hire, instead of standing there to be hired, are obviously very different things. It implies, besides, permanent wages at increased rate, without manual work to do, for the capataz only orders. ”

“ Skilled labor commands higher wages than unskilled labor.
This will be evident from Table VIII on the following page based on the schedules received from employers and employees and the returns from a Boston employment bureau.
In every instance it is seen that it is the skilled laborer—the cook—who commands the highest wages. The general servant who is expected to unite in herself all the functions of all the other employees named in the list becomes, on account of this fact, an unskilled worker, and, therefore, receives the lowest wages. ”

“ In the following year were passed several other acts relating to labourers, by one of which, 25 Edward III. stat. i. c. i., entitled, "The Year and Day's Wages of Servants and Labourers in Husbandry," it was enacted that ploughmen and all other labourers should be hired to serve for the full year, or other usual terms, and not by the day; and further,
"That such labourers do carry openly in their hands, in market towns, their instruments of labour, and be there hired in a public place, and not privately." ”

“ There are hundreds of thousands of small masters who are obliged on Saturday to run about for hours in order to borrow the week's pay for their workers and who are happy if their profit is equal to the wages of a factory laborer. ”

“ They may be willing to pass through the class of servants in their way to that of employers; but not to remain in it all their lives. To begin as hired labourers, then after a few years to work on their own account, and finally employ others, is the normal condition of labourers in a new country, rapidly increasing in wealth and population, like America or Australia. ”

“ In the event the union is unable to furnish competent workers, the Employer may hire from outside sources, provided that employees so hired shall make application for membership in the Union within fifteen (15) days of their employment. ”

“ Laborers are forbidden to be hired by the week or to be paid for holidays or half days. In 1405 the old Statute of Laborers is re-enacted, particularly the cruel law forbidding any one to take up any other trade than husbandry after the age of twelve, nor can any one bind his child as apprentice to learn a trade unless he has twenty shillings per annum in landed property. ”

“ A wage earner who is working outside his specialty, and who has stated his wish that this be only temporary, shall retain his place on the register on the Department of Labor Distribution until he gets work at his vocation. ”

“ The spirit of unrest that I have commended, and which I have termed an American type, is not noisy and clamorous in its nature, and it manifests itself mostly through organizations 858of labor, in demands for adequate or increased compensation, or the fixing of a stated reasonable number of hours to constitute a day’s work. With these purposes, and the aims of Labor-Unions generally, I want to state that I am in the fullest accord. The laborer is worthy of his hire, as the Bible says. ”

“ Not only are less than a fifth of our workers servants today, but the character of their service has been changed. The million menial workers among us include 300,000 upper servants,—skilled men and women of character, like hotel waiters, Pullman porters, janitors, and cooks, who, had they been white, could have called on the great labor movement to lift their work out of slavery, to standardize their hours, to define their duties, and to substitute a living, regular wage for personal largess in the shape of tips, old clothes, and cold leavings of food. ”

“ Labor in the Old and the New Industrial Order.—So long as the system of hand-industry was in existence there was no sharp division of employers and laborers into two separate classes. The employer was himself a workman at the loom, the bench, or the forge. He might have as helpers a couple of apprentices who were learning the trade, and perhaps a journeyman or two; but rarely were there more than a half dozen men or women employed in a single establishment. ”

“ This is clear from the large number of contracts relating to hire which have come down to us. The variability of the terms agreed upon is witness for the existence of competition. As a rule, the man was hired for the harvest and was free directly after. But there are many examples in which the term of service was different—one month, half a year, or a whole year.
Slaves or dependents secured from owners One might hire labor from the master of a slave, or from the parents of a young man, not yet independent, and then the wages were small, a shekel or two. ”

“ Why, that from the time voluntary labor began, there was no want of men to work for hire, and that there was no difficulty in getting those who as apprentices had to give the planters certain hours of work, to extend, upon emergency, their period of labor, by hiring out their services for wages to strangers. ”

“ At the end of the apprenticeship the young industrialist becomes a hired worker, perhaps in his old master's shop, perhaps somewhere else. [115] He is engaged and paid by the week, and often changes employers many times while in this stage of his career. The guild protects him against gross exploitation, but his hours are long—from 5 A.M. to 7 P.M. during the summer months. Finally, if he has led a moral life, proved a good workman, and accumulated a small capital, he may apply to the syndics for admission as a full master himself. ”

“ For illustration, factory workers are customarily employed at will, without obligation of employer or employed to continue the relationship when the day's work is done; or, if there is an agreement fixing salary or wages per unit of service, at so much per day, week or month, there may be an indefinite employment terminable by either party at the end of any unit period. ”

“ After the enactment of the Fair Labor Standards Act, by interpretations of the Wage and Hour Administrator, it was held that certain preparatory activities such as sharpening the tools, oiling the machinery, preparing his machinery for work, were so closely related to his productive activity that the employer must compensate the employee for it. ”

“ There is scarcely another condition of any portion of our working population thus free from external control. The factory operative is not only mulcted of his wages for absence, but, if of frequent occurrence, discharged altogether from his employment. The bricklayer, the carpenter, the painter, the joiner, the stonemason, the outdoor labourer, have each their appointed daily hours of labour, a disregard of which would lead to the same result. ”

“ One large candy factory bid for “girls and women, good wages to start, experience not necessary,” and in a part of town which could be reached without starting out the night before. At 7.15 of a Monday morning we were off, with a feeling something akin to stage fright. Once we heard a hobo tell of the first time he [6] ever tried to get on a freight train in the dark of night when it was moving. But we chewed our gum very boldly.
One of the phases of finding a job often criticized by those who would add somewhat of dignity to labor is the system of hiring. ”

“ I at once replied that my master had sent me to town to hire myself out for a few weeks, and that I was ready to go with him immediately. The joy I felt at finding employment so overcame me, that all thought of my wages was forgotten. Bidding farewell to the man who had given me my breakfast, and thanking him in my heart for his kindness, I followed my new employer, who informed me that he had engaged to remove a thousand bales of cotton from a large warehouse, to the end of a wharf at which a ship lay, that was taking in the cotton as a load. ”

“ Where the skilled unemployed belong to trades carried on everywhere, such as baking, shoemaking, tailoring, etc., they should be employed at their own trades in municipal workshops, and their products garnered in municipal stores. These workshops will be under the direction of foremen, thoroughly skilled workmen, able to superintend and direct as though in private employment. The working-day must be of eight hours, and the wages, for the present, the Trades Union minimum. ”

“ The person responsible for the observance of the acts is the “employer” of the “young persons” (i.e. persons under the age of eighteen years) , whose hours are limited, and of the “female assistants” for whom seats must be provided. Neither the term “employer” nor “shop assistant” (used in the title of the act of 1899) is defined; but other terms have the meaning assigned to them in the Factory and Workshop Act 1878. ”

“ Without organization, the helpless workers were compelled to labor sixteen hours a day.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century factory workers a to be on the job at 4 A. M. and work until dark for a wage that was a mere pittance. A first class mechanic got 50c a day. Laborers worked for three and four dollars a month and board. Women toiled in the cotton mills from dawn till dark for $1.50 a week. ”

“ As has been seen, indented servants disappeared and every employee was free to break as well as to make an engagement for service. The establishment of the factory system of manufactures and the consequent substitution of mechanical for skilled processes of labor broke down the system of apprenticeship, and workmen of every occupation, except domestic service, ceased to be members of the families of their employers. A mobility of labor was made possible such as could not have been secured under the old system. ”

“ Generally speaking there is no distinction between one laborer and another in the same field—except where the eminently fair method of piece work can be employed. Even the skilled laborer is usually paid by the day, and the amount he is to receive is commonly fixed by a Union regardless of his efficiency as compared with other laborers of the same [28] class. And there is no possibility of his receiving any such sums as the man who plans the work, but does nothing with his own hands. ”

“ The rank and, file, too, get the splendid training that is conferred when persons actually and not merely nominally work together for a common end. Their introduction to the great problems of labor is through their practical understanding and handling of those problems as they encounter them in the everyday difficulties of the shop and the factory and as dealt with when they come up before the union meeting or have to be settled in bargaining with an employer. ”

“ In case of urgent public work the Department of Labor, in agreement with the respective professional unions, may order the transfer of a whole group of wage earners from the organization where they are employed to another situated in the same or a different locality. ”

“ The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 enacted a comprehensive scheme providing for minimum wages and overtime pay for workers 'engaged in' or 'in the production of goods for' interstate and foreign commerce. ”

“ The Rise of Trade Unions.—One of the most manifest effects of the introduction of the factory system was the intensification of the distinction between employers and employees. When a large number of laborers were gathered together in one establishment, all in a similar position one to the other and with common interests as to wages, hours of labor, and other conditions of their work, the fact that they were one homogeneous class could hardly escape their recognition. ”

“ Skilled workers have often been able to form skilled labor monopolies, or unions, where their particular skill has been in demand, and have forced their employers to give them shorter hours, higher wages or better working conditions. ”