LIFE AND LABOUR IN NEW YORK

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2506, 6 July 1915, Page 6

LIFE AND LABOUR IN NEW YORK

IMPRESSIONS AND FACTS GERMANIC ATROCITIES BY THE "I,W.WV' : Mr. F. M. B. Fisher,- Nciv Zealand Minister of Customs ana Marine in the previous Parliament and now touring abroad, lias!written some vivid'impressions of the places ho 'has visited. Hero is a picture of New York, riot tho I least compelling feature of which the sinister shadow of the "I.W.AV." which darkens tho industrial' lifo of America. "And now," runs the diary, "I am in New York. As I sit in my room with my window open, the roar "of this great city beats ceaselessly upon my ears like the everlasting moan of: a great ocean. There, is no rest—no peace. Day and nipht it never ceases. Ayiiat a .wonderful'city,it is. . Now the', second largest in the world,; with one million Germans one million Italians, and, I was almost going to say, 'one million cafes, one million millionaires, and ten million motors. At leastf it seems like it. There are : these thousands of miles of beautiful streets, avenues, and parks and drives, and all crowded and packed with traffic. Elevated railways thunder along above your head, trams scurry along the streets, thousands; and thousands <of motor-cars buzz about like flies, and underground tens of thousands' of people are being whirled along at tiie rate of 50 miles, an hour. . Everything moves so fast, and yet the handling of. the traffic is more wonderful than I can describe. Nothing could surpass the wonderful scene at what I call 'my' corner,' at o o'clock. This is the corner of Forty Second Street and Fifth Avenue. never get tired of standing and watching the ceaseless crosscurrents of traffic. Or stand on Brooklyn Bridge and watch the stream of humanity—a human river flowing over the bridge—thousands, even tens of thousands of all nationalities, pouring out of the. sweating dens: to their slum quarters. The Worker's Lot.

: It is interesting) but it is equally horrible, to find tliese products of squalor breathing the same atmosphere with men Who cannot,even count their incomes./ so vast are they. No uonder they ljvo as they do' ' these workers. Why, if one New Zealand workman had to'exist under those conditions he would beglad to.ipass in his "checks;'' v The cost of living is enormously high. Meat and' the s ordiiiary necessaries of 'a/decent home' l are anything from 50 per cent-, to 100 per cent, niglier tlian in New Zealand, 1 and wages are not as a rule mucli in oxoess of, our own rate. I hope to heaven tbat none of our employees will ever have to submit to t'ho conditions , tbat exist here. If I were not here to ask my' own questions, and seek my own information I should flatly refuse to believe_ that such conditions were possible in any civilised country. ■ ' ' "1.W.W." Excesses. "And if tbe conditions imposed by the employer are bad, the conditions imposed, by the union leaders upon tlie men are worse. Almost extraordinary, unbelievable and unheard of case is now before the Courts. The Labour leaders are being prosecuted by the State.for tlio most revolting practices. The whole story reads like, some hideous creation of a disordered imagination. "This will, perhaps, give- you some idea of what the 1.W.W., or Independent Works of the World Leage, is capable of. An employer employed some hands who were not in the union. He was asked to desist. 'He would not. The employees were asked to join' the union.. They ; would (not, because it meant forced levies to enable the union bosses' to live in idleness. So this is wliat resulted. A bomb exploded in. the factory., A few employees were killed. In tho confusion and :excitement ; tlie employer was seized, one of Ms eyes was gouged out, and both he and his factory were ruined. The man who was employed to undertake this and other equally dastardly outrages, turned, as tho evidence accumulated, what we term "lung's counscl." He confessed and 'blew the gaff.' "He told how the men who refused to, join. the . union were spotted; waylaid and maimed for life. One man's hand was split into, three witha jack knife. Another 'had lis nose amputated. Another lost both ears. These Germanio atrocities have been going on' here, in civilised, 'police protected New York City. \ ■■■'•

• "At jlast the real instigators ' havebeen laid by tho heals, and. to convey some -idea of their strength they .have made a forced levy on the workers of' 200,000 dollars (£40,000) to. defend ■them from charges for which' they ought to be hanged.. This will convey some idea-.of -.the '.workers'','paradise in which the unfortunato American - labourer oxists. The case is engrossing, much attention, and no doubt you -will, as soon as the trial is concluded,,get fuller particulars from the American papers-.-The Money-Makers. "New York is_ a vastly 'entertaining city, highly civilised on the cne hand; and cruelly-barbario on the other. The main and predominating idea in a New Yorker's mind is to make, money. His interest in world-wide matters, is not very great. Ho has, as a rule, a tremendous sense' of the United States. He ;thinks the United States could,''if it liked to take off its coat, lick anything on earth. ; He has never heard of Asquith - or Borden. He knows every baseball player, by heart-. ;He lives away out,in tho suburbs because he loves/the country. ' He dashes into .town at B.a.m. at 60 miles-an hour. Lilrtf> a frightened rabbit he ducks'down a little hole to the subway, - hops into the electric railway, and is whisked off to the * other end of his journey—six miles in sevon minutes—amidst' tho most deafening roar, for in the underground here, four sets of rails lie abreast, and you are continually passing express trains that make such a clatter that you think tho top of your head is coming off. .'paring this.journey the countryloving .business man reads a one cent paper,, with enormous scare-head columns about "New Chum Daintily Done to Death, 'Young Girl Chloroformed and Robbed,' or 'Marrying Mattliew-s Divorced by Fifth Wife.' Arrived, at his destination he rushes out 'of the train, stopping but one instant to slip a cent into a slot machine and get a flat equare-inch of scented chewing-gum-. Then' lie races up the steps, emerges into the daylight, momentarily pauses to get his bearings, and .then'scoots off like a redshank to his office. "At this 6ide is. a telegraph machine clicking away all'day long, and emitting endloss yards of paper tape, upon which is recorded every transaction ofthe Stock Exchange as' it. takes place. He touches an electric button and the telegraph messenger cpmes over at once, for tho wire. Instead of sending your boy' to the office with a wire the office sonds a boy to you-for the wire, and equips'you free with a; call bell direct to the Telegraph Company. This economy of labour is tho result of keen competition. There tho busy man talks to tho dictaphone, a' sort of gramaphono, record. He sends this out to the typist,_ she puts a gramaphono re-', corder on it, and-takes down the message. ' 'Whilst-'she is doing this he is dictating another.' The "Rush Lunch." • /'Then he rushes over to the barber; While ho is being shaved a , girl manicures .his-nails and a boy cleans his JMs.. SoaAMfiop to lunch. He eoesj

into what is called in the busy _part 'a mercantile rush lunch.' You don't sit down,. apparently experience has proved that you can either eat faster standing up or you are apt to stay longer if you submit to any degree of comfort. So you can see rows on rows, liundrods upon hundreds, of men eating a 'mercantile rush lunch;' It costs, 30 cents. Thu6, swish, bang, back to the dictaphone and the telephone, and the scurry and hustle of the ofßce.

' "Stop work at 5.30 or 6 p.m., buy a one cent, paper. Dcwn the rabbit hole, into the clattering, jarring express, 50 miles an' hour for soven minutes, out of the. hole at the other end, three seconds pause to. watch tho latest baseball bulletins, and perhaps the war news,, then into the great railway station where 20,000 people are all hustling out of the city with their express, trains, and back again to the country, ■which' ho loves so well.

' "It is a wouderful life, and it is marvellous how well 'these men stand it.- There are, of course, other men of other types, who motor down to business at 10 a.m., and lunch at the club in luxurious ease, and play golf all tho afternoon. That other fellow I have der Gcribed just wants this life of ease if he can get it. One w% to get -it, ho knows, is to hustle, and he hustles. In tho "Stmt." ' . "Whilst-1 am in this business area let : nie tell you something of the wonderful Stock Exchange. and: Wall Street,. the great financial centre of the world at' present. You can imagino with what thrilled expectancy I espied, as I walked down Broadway, ■ a neat little blue and white en imel sign upon which was'lettered "Wall Street." This then was tho famous' street of which 1 had heard so much. Here it was that millions were made and lost in a day. I was all a-tingle. Wall Street is approached through a narrow little street 110 wider than Lambton Quay at the' Bank of New Zealand ccrner. It appears much narrower for the buildings lipon either hand are high and massive. It is always busy during daylight, and the narrow paths are packed with hurrying men.'; A short distance down it widens considerably, and is quite afine street. I was surprised to find in this street a fine old building standing on the spot where tho First, National Congress was held, and where George Washington first , took tho oath of allegiance.

"The Stock Exchange is Just off Wall Street. A few yards and' I was fortunate enough to know a member who first took mo to lunch at the Stock Exchange Club, and-then into the Exchange itself. This exchange is quite a .fine' interior, with an actual floor space'of about double the size of the Concert . Hall in our 'Wellington Town Hall. There is a large and commodious •gallery specially erected for visitors, and here • I watched tho game.. The "Cams In tha Pits" "Imagine yourself in the small gallery at'the Concert. Hall and I, will try. and give you -an idea of'what goes on. On;t'ho far side there are arranged hundreds of telephones direct to the brokers' offices.-; These are private lines. On the wall on your right is what appears to bo a huge blackboard. - As you watch it you see that it is an ele©-. trically-n'orked call-board. Numbers are continually appearing thereon. These are Stokers' private telephone numbers. They watch this board. The moment a man's number is indicated he rushes liko mad to his 'phone and sometimes returns with his frenzy doubly intensified. . - - "On the left side of the /room are the call-boys, messengers, and attendants. The aotual floor space, is capable- of holding. about 2000 brokers if packed. You would call it full with ,500 ieally on the job. The ' 'posts" 'are sixteen in: number. They are divided into special groups. No. 1, say, is railways, No. 2 is oil, 1 No. 3 is steel, and so on.-: As a matter of fact- No. 5 is steel, and-the day I was there, steel was the»all-absorbing item on account of war contracts. You have. seen : a wool sale. Well, there you see sixteen wool sales going all at once. Tho naice is dreadfully awful. "Hit up" For £140,000! ' "But the real interest centres ; in. watching particular riieii, and then you miist have a guide. All round the room those clicking telegraph tapes are .at work recording every transaction: every minute at St. Louis, Montreal, Chicago, London, Paris and so on. You seea man go over and,watch/' the London, tape. Soon the information, he wants ' comes. He rushes like a madman to post 10, wo will ; Say,- Shouting at the top of his .voice, pushing everyone out of his way, : and> announcing _his wares. Theif the crowd becomes! infected. Many movo from the posts tri join in. and then they l go on like <i .hundred devils let loose. - What they say or what they mean I don't know,' but even in that scene of furious excitement 1 am told' that few. mistakes, are made. "My friend and I passed a man in the club who was not looking too-happy. My friend said: 'Bill, old chap, I'm d—-J sorry,' and we passed on. The man just riodded his head, shrugged his shoulders, and remarked: 'Come again.' Ho was 'hit lip' the day before for 700,000 dollars (£140,000).; Evori : I would have felt miserable, under such oircumstances. Ha wasn't ruined," but it was inconvenient, and unpleasant. "On the> edg^-of; the Exchange floor there are 48 telegraph operators all engaged in wiring the market,i.and send.ing brokers wires. It seems incrediblo that such things can be done, 1 but just fancy watching a man buy ,a parcel of shares in front of; your' nose.: 'He is making a fortune, and in a few minutes that transaction will be read off tho telegraph tapes in Paris, London,; Montreal, San Francisco,, and Now Qrlea'ns, and many other places—but not Borlin."