11: Northern Life During the War
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The real effects of war on the life of nations is one of those
old and complicated debates which lie outside the scope of a
volume such as this. Yet in the particular case of the Northern
people it is imperative to answer two questions both of which
have provoked interminable discussion: Was the moral life of the
North good or bad in the war years? Was its commercial life
sound?
As to the moral question, contemporary evidence seems at first
sight contradictory. The very able Englishman who represented
the "Times", William H. Russell, gives this ugly picture of an
American city in 1863:
"Every fresh bulletin from the battlefield of Chickamauga, during
my three weeks' stay in Cincinnati, brought a long list of the
dead and wounded of the Western army, many of whom, of the
officers, belonged to the best families of the place. Yet the
signs of mourning were hardly anywhere perceptible; the noisy
gaiety of the town was not abated one jot."
On the other hand, a private manuscript of a Cincinnati family
describes the "intense gloom hanging over the city like a pall"
during the period of that dreadful battle. The memories of old
people at Cincinnati in after days—if they had belonged to the
"loyal" party—contained only sad impressions of a city that was
one great hospital where "all our best people" worked
passionately as volunteer assistants of the government medical
corps.
A third fact to be borne in mind in connection with this apparent
contradiction in evidence is the source of the greater fortunes
of Cincinnati, a large proportion of which are to be traced,
directly or indirectly to government contracts during the war.
In some cases the merciless indifference of the Cincinnati
speculators to the troubles of their country are a local scandal
to this day, and it is still told, sometimes with scorn,
sometimes with amusement, how perhaps the greatest of these
fortunes was made by forcing up the price of iron at a time when
the Government had to have iron, cost what it might.
Thus we no sooner take up the moral problem of the times than we
find ourselves involved in the commercial question, for here, as
always, morals and business are intertwined. Was the commercial
management of the North creditable to the Government and an honor
to the people? The surest way to answer such questions is to
trace out with some fullness the commercial and industrial
conditions of the North during the four years of war.
The general reader who looks for the first time into the matter
is likely to be staggered by what statistics seem to say.
Apparently they contradict what he is accustomed to hear from
popular economists about the waste of war. He has been told in
the newspapers that business is undermined by the withdrawal of
great numbers of men from "productive" consumption of the fruits
of labor and their engagement as soldiers in "unproductive"
consumption. But, to his astonishment, he finds that the
statistics of 1861-1865 show much increase in Northern business
—as, for example, in 1865, the production of 142 million pounds
of wool against 60 million in 1860. The government reports show
that 13 million tons of coal were mined in 1860 and 21 million in
1864; in 1860, the output of pig iron was 821,000 tons, and
1,014,282 tons in 1864; the petroleum production rose from 21
million gallons in 1860 to 128 million in 1862; the export of
corn, measured in money, shows for 1860 a business of $2,399,808
compared with $10,592,704 for 1863; wheat exporting showed, also,
an enormous increase, rising from 14 millions in 1860 to 46
millions in 1863. There are, to be sure, many statistics which
seem to contradict these. Some of them will be mentioned
presently. And yet, on the whole, it seems safe to conclude that
the North, at the close of the third year of war was producing
more and was receiving larger profits than in 1860.
To deal with this subject in its entirety would lead us into the
labyrinths of complex economic theory, yet two or three simple
facts appear so plain that even the mere historian may venture to
set them forth. When we look into the statistics which seem to
show a general increase of business during the war, we find that
in point of fact this increase was highly specialized. All those
industries that dealt with the physical necessities of life and
all those that dealt peculiarly with armies flourished amazingly.
And yet there is another side to the story, for there were other
industries that were set back and some that almost, if not
entirely, disappeared. A good instance is the manufacture of
cotton cloth. When the war opened, 200,000 hands were employed
in this manufacture in New England. With the sealing up of the
South and the failure of the cotton supply, their work
temporarily ceased. What became of the workmen? Briefly, one of
three things happened: some went into other trades, such as
munitions, in which the war had created an abnormal demand for
labor; a great number of them became soldiers; and many of them
went West and became farmers or miners. Furthermore, many whose
trades were not injured by the war left their jobs and fled
westward to escape conscription. Their places were left open to
be filled by operatives from the injured trades. In one or
another of these ways the laborer who was thrown out of work was
generally able to recover employment. But it is important to
remember that the key to the labor situation at that time was the
vast area of unoccupied land which could be had for nothing or
next to nothing. This fact is brought home by a comparison of
the situation of the American with that of the English workman
during the cotton famine. According to its own ideas England was
then fully cultivated. There was no body of land waiting to be
thrown open, as an emergency device, to a host of new-made
agriculturists. When the cotton-mills stopped at Manchester,
their operatives had practically no openings but in other
industrial occupations. As such opportunities were lacking, they
became objects of charity until they could resume their work. As
a country with a great reserve of unoccupied land, the United
States was singularly fortunate at this economic crisis.
One of the noteworthy features of Northern life during the war is
that there was no abnormal increase in pauperism. A great deal
has been written upon the extensive charities of the time, but
the term is wrongly applied, for what is really referred to is
the volunteer aid given to the Government in supporting the
armies. This was done on a vast scale, by all classes of the
population—that is, by all who supported the Union party, for
the separation between the two parties was bitter and
unforgiving. But of charity in the ordinary sense of the care of
the destitute there was no significant increase because there was
no peculiar need. Here again the fact that the free land could
be easily reached is the final explanation. There was no need
for the unemployed workman to become a pauper. He could take
advantage of the Homestead Act1, which was passed in 1862, and
acquire a farm of 160 acres free; or he could secure at almost
nominal cost farm-land which had been given to railways as an
inducement to build. Under the Homestead Act, the Government gave
away land amounting to 2,400,000 acres before the close of the
war. The Illinois Central alone sold to actual settlers 221,000
acres in 1863 and 264,000 in 1864. It was during the war, too,
that the great undertaking of the transcontinental railway was
begun, partly for military and partly for commercial reasons. In
this project, both as a field of labor and as a stimulus to
Western settlement, there is also to be found one more device for
the relief of the labor situation in the East.
There is no more important phenomenon of the time than the
shifting of large masses of population from the East to the West,
while the war was in progress. This fact begins to indicate why
there was no shortage in the agricultural output. The North
suffered acutely from inflation of prices and from a speculative
wildness that accompanied the inflation, but it did not suffer
from a lack of those things that are produced by the soil—food,
timber, metals, and coal. In addition to the reason just
mentioned—the search for new occupation by Eastern labor which
had been thrown out of employment—three other causes helped to
maintain the efficiency of work in the mines, in the forests, and
on the farms. These three factors were immigration, the labor of
women, and labor-saving machines.
Immigration, naturally, fell off to a certain degree but it did
not become altogether negligible. It is probable that 110,000
able-bodied men came into the country while war was in
progress—a poor offset to the many hundred thousand who became
soldiers, but nevertheless a contribution that counted for
something.
Vastly more important, in the work of the North, was the part
taken by women. A pathetic detail with which in our own
experience the world has again become familiar was the absence of
young men throughout most of the North, and the presence of women
new to the work in many occupations, especially farming. A
single quotation from a home missionary in Iowa tells the whole
story:
"I will mention that I met more women driving teams on the road
and saw more at work in the fields than men. They seem to have
said to their husbands in the language of a favorite song,
'Just take your gun and go;
For Ruth can drive the oxen, John,
And I can use the hoe!'
"I went first to Clarinda, and the town seemed deserted. Upon
inquiry for former friends, the frequent answer was, "In the
army." From Hawleyville almost all the thoroughly loyal male
inhabitants had gone; and in one township beyond, where I
formerly preached, there are but seven men left, and at Quincy,
the county seat of Adams County, but five."
Even more important than the change in the personnel of labor
were the new machines of the day. During the fifteen years
previous to the war American ingenuity had reached a high point.
Such inventions as the sewing machine and the horse-reaper date
in their practical forms from that period, and both of these
helped the North to fight the war. Their further improvement,
and the extension of the principles involved to many new forms of
machinery, sprang from the pressing need to make up for the loss
of men who were drained by the army from the farms and the
workshops. It was the horse-reaper, the horse-rake, the
horse-thresher that enabled women and boys to work the farms
while husbands, fathers, and elder brothers were at the front.
All these causes maintained Northern farming at a high pitch of
productivity. This efficiency is implied in some of the figures
already quoted, but many others could be cited. For example, in
1859, the total production of wheat for the whole country was 173
million bushels; in 1862, the North alone produced 177 millions;
even in 1864, with over a million men under arms, it still
produced 160 million bushels.
It must be remembered that the great Northern army produced
nothing while it consumed the products of agriculture and
manufacture—food, clothing, arms, ammunition, cannon, wagons,
horses, medical stores—at a rate that might have led a poetical
person to imagine the army as a devouring dragon. Who, in the
last analysis, provided all these supplies? Who paid the
soldiers? Who supplemented their meager pay and supported their
families? The people, of course; and they did so both directly
and indirectly. In taxes and loans they paid to the Government
about three thousand millions of dollars. Their indirect
assistance was perhaps as great, though it is impossible today to
estimate with any approach to accuracy the amount either in money
or service. Among obvious items are the collections made by the
Sanitary Commission for the benefit of the hospital service,
amounting to twenty-five million dollars, and about six millions
raised by the Christian Commission. In a hundred other ways both
individuals and localities strained their resources to supplement
those of the Government. Immense subscription lists were
circulated to raise funds for the families of soldiers. The city
of Philadelphia alone spent in this way in a single year
$600,000. There is also evidence of a vast amount of unrecorded
relief of needy families by the neighbors, and in the farming
districts, such assistance, particularly in the form of fuel
during winter, was very generally given.
What made possible this enormous total of contributions was, in a
word, the general willingness of those supporting the war to
forego luxuries. They ceased buying a great multitude of
unnecessary things. But what became of the labor that had
previously supplied the demand for luxuries? A part of it went
the way of all other Northern labor—into new trades, into the
army, or to the West—and a part continued to manufacture
luxuries: for their market, though curtailed, was not destroyed.
There were, indeed, two populations in the North, and they were
separated by an emotional chasm. Had all the North been a unit
in feeling, the production of articles of luxury might have
ceased. Because of this emotional division of the North,
however, this business survived; for the sacrifice of luxurious
expenditure was made by only a part of the population, even
though it was the majority.
Furthermore, the whole matter was adjusted voluntarily without
systematic government direction, since there was nothing in the
financial policy of the Government to correspond to conscription.
Consequently, both in the way of loans and in the way of
contributions, as well as in the matter of unpaid service, the
entire burden fell upon the war party alone. In the absence of
anything like economic conscription, if such a phrase may be
used, those Northerners who did not wish to lend money, or to
make financial sacrifice, or to give unpaid service, were free to
pursue their own bent. The election of 1864 showed that they
formed a market which amounted to something between six and nine
millions. There is no reason to suppose that these millions in
1864 spent less on luxuries than they did in 1860. Two or three
items are enough. In 1860, the importation of silk amounted to
32 million dollars; in 1862, in spite of inflated prices, it had
shrunk to 7 millions; the consumption of malt liquors shrank from
101 million gallons in 1860 to 62 million gallons in 1863; of
coffee, hardly to be classed as a luxury, there were consumed in
1861, 184 million pounds and in 1863, 80 millions.
The clue to the story of capital is to be found in this fact, too
often forgotten, that there was an economic-political division
cutting deep through every stratum of the Northern people. Their
economic life as well as their political life was controlled on
the one hand by a devotion to the cause of the war, and on the
other hand by a hatred of that cause or by cynical indifference.
And we cannot insist too positively that the Government failed
very largely to take this fact into account. The American spirit
of invention, so conspicuous at that time in mechanics, did not
apply itself to the science of government. Lincoln confessedly
was not a financier; his instinct was at home only in problems
that could be stated in terms of men. Witness his acceptance of
conscription and his firmness in carrying it through, as a result
of which he saved the patriotic party from bearing the whole
burden of military service. But there was no parallel
conservation of power in the field of industry. The financial
policy, left in the hands of Chase, may truly be described as
barren of ideas. Incidentally, it may be mentioned that the
"loyal" North was left at the mercy of its domestic enemies and a
prey to parasites by Chase's policy of loans instead of taxes and
of voluntary support instead of enforced support.
The consequence of this financial policy was an immense
opportunity for the "disloyally" and the parasites to make huge
war profits out of the "loyals" and the Government. Of course,
it must not be supposed that everyone who seized the chance to
feather his nest was so careless or so impolitic as to let
himself be classed as a "disloyal." An incident of the autumn of
1861 shows the temper of those professed "loyals" who were really
parasites. The background of the incident is supplied by a
report of the Quartermaster-General:
"Governors daily complain that recruiting will stop unless
clothing is sent in abundance and immediately to the various
recruiting camps and regiments. With every exertion, this
department has not been able to obtain clothing to supply these
demands, and they have been so urgent that troops before the
enemy have been compelled to do picket duty in the late cold
nights without overcoats, or even coats, wearing only thin summer
flannel blouses.... Could 150,000 suits of clothing, overcoats,
coats, and pantaloons be placed today, in depot, it would scarce
supply the calls now before us. They would certainly leave no
surplus."
The Government attempted to meet this difficulty in the shortest
possible time by purchasing clothing abroad. But such disregard
of home industry, the "patriotism" of the New England
manufacturers could not endure. Along with the report just
quoted, the Quartermaster-General forwarded to the Secretary of
War a long argumentative protest from a committee of the Boston
Board of Trade against the purchase of army clothing in Europe.
Any American of the present day can guess how the protest was
worded and what arguments were used. Stripped of its
insincerity, it signified this: the cotton mills were inoperative
for lack of material; their owners saw no chance to save their
dividends except by requipment as woolen mills; the existing
woolen mills also saw a great chance to force wool upon the
market as a substitute for cotton. In Ohio, California,
Pennsylvania, and Illinois, the growers of wool saw the
opportunity with equal clearness. But, one and all, these
various groups of parasites saw that their game hinged on one
condition: the munitions market must be kept open until they were
ready to monopolize government contracts. If soldiers contracted
pneumonia doing picket duty on cold nights, in their summer
blouses, that was but an unfortunate incident of war.
Very different in spirit from the protest of the Boston
manufacturers is a dispatch from the American minister at
Brussels which shows what American public servants, in contrast
with American manufacturers, were about. Abroad the agents of
North and South were fighting a commercial duel in which each
strove to monopolize the munitions market. The United States
Navy, seeing things from an angle entirely different from that of
the Boston Board of Trade, ably seconded the ministers by
blockading the Southern ports and by thus preventing the movement
of specie and cotton to Europe. As a consequence, fourmonth
notes which had been given by Southern agents with their orders
fell due, had to be renewed, and began to be held in disfavor.
Agents of the North, getting wind of these hitches in
negotiations, eagerly sought to take over the unpaid Confederate
orders. All these details of the situation help to explain the
jubilant tone of this dispatch from Brussels late in November,
1861:
"I have now in my hands complete control of the principal rebel
contracts on the continent, viz.: 206,000 yards of cloth ready
for delivery, already commencing to move forward to Havre; gray
but can be dyed blue in twenty days; 100,000 yards deliverable
from 15th of December to 26th of January, light blue army cloth,
same as ours; 100,000 blankets; 40,000 guns to be shipped in ten
days; 20,000 saber bayonets to be delivered in six weeks.... The
winter clothing for 100,000 men taken out of their hands, when
they cannot replace it, would almost compensate for Bull Run.
There is no considerable amount of cloth to be had in Europe; the
stocks are very short."
The Secretary of War was as devoid of ideas as the Secretary of
the Treasury was and even less equipped with resisting power.
Though he could not undo the work already done by the agents of
the Government abroad, he gave way as rapidly as possible to the
allied parasites whose headquarters, at the moment, were in
Boston. The story grows uglier as we proceed. Two powerful
commercial combinations took charge of the policy of the woolen
interests—the National Woolgrowers' Association and the National
Association of Wool Manufacturers, which were soon in control of
this immense industry. Woolen mills sprang up so fast that a
report of the New York Chamber of Commerce pronounced their
increase "scarcely credible." So great was the new market
created by the Government demand, and so ruthless were the
parasites in forcing up prices, that dividends on mill stock rose
to 10, 15, 25, and even 40 per cent. And all the while the wool
growers and the wool manufacturers were clamoring to Congress for
protection of the home industry, exclusion of the wicked foreign
competition, and all in the name of their devoted
"patriotism"--patriotism with a dividend of 40 per cent!
Of course, it is not meant that every wool grower and every
woolen manufacturer was either a "disloyal" or a parasite. By no
means. Numbers of them were to be found in that great host of
"loyals" who put their dividends into government bonds and gave
their services unpaid as auxiliaries of the Commissary Department
or the Hospital Service of the Army. What is meant is that the
abnormal conditions of industry, uncorrected by the Government,
afforded a glaring opportunity for unscrupulous men of business
who, whatever their professions, cared a hundred times more for
themselves than for their country. To these was due the pitiless
hampering of the army in the interest of the wool-trade. For
example, many uniforms paid for at outrageous prices, turned out
to be made of a miserable cheap fabric, called "shoddy," which
resisted weather scarcely better than paper. This fraud gave the
word "shoddy" its present significance in our American speech and
produced the phrase—applied to manufacturers newly become
rich—"shoddy aristocracy." An even more shameful result of the
selfishness of the manufacturers and of the weakness of the
Government was the use of cloth for uniforms not of the
regulation colors, with the result that soldiers sometimes fired
upon their comrades by mistake.
The prosperity of the capitalists who financed the woolen
business did not extend to the labor employed in it. One of the
ugliest details of the time was the resolute attempt of the
parasites to seize the whole amount of the abnormal profits they
wrung from the Government and from the people. For it must not
be forgotten that the whole nation had to pay their prices. It
is estimated that prices in the main advanced about 100 per cent
while wages were not advanced more than sixty per cent. It is
not strange that these years of war form a period of bitter
antagonism between labor and capital.
What went on in the woolen business is to be found more or less
in every business. Immense fortunes sprang up over night. They
had but two roots: government contracts and excessive profits due
to war prices. The gigantic fortunes which characterized the
North at the end of the war are thus accounted for. The
so-called prosperity of the time was a class prosperity and was
absorbed by parasites who fattened upon the necessities of the
Government and the sacrifices of the people.
1This Act, which may be regarded as the culmination of the long
battle of the Northern dreamers to win "land for the landless,"
provided that every settler who was, or intended to be, a citizen
might secure 180 acres of government land by living on it and
cultivating it for five years.
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