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| Carpenters and contractor pose while framing a house amid orchard in turn-of-the-century California. |
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More Dates May/Jun 1899 Mar/Apr 1899 >Jan/Feb 1899 Nov/Dec 1898 Sep/Oct 1898 Jul/Aug 1898 May/Jun 1898 Mar/Apr 1898 |
In February of 1899, P.J. McGuire printed an article about the changes that had taken place in the industry in the preceding half century, written by J.W. Brown, of Hartford, Conn., and excerpted here.
"How it came about that a nation of free-born people, intelligent, industrious, and aspirant, in a land richly endowed by nature with inexhaustible natural resources, find themselves deprived of the land, destitute of the means of production, and possessing only the right to sell their labor to those who are in possession of the land and the means of production and distribution, is a page in American history on which the polite politician keeps as mum as a petrified oyster.... The object of this article is simply to show how the carpenter's craft has been affected.
"The social conditions surrounding the daily lives of the carpenters have changed. Fifty years ago, when an employer hired a carpenter, he would send his team [of horses] after his chest and have it taken to the shop. And as long as the man worked for him, the employer felt himself under a moral obligation to keep him employed steadily; and when a rainy day came, he always provided for him in the shop or elsewhere.
"But conditions have changed. Then it was necessary for a carpenter to carry around a chest of tools; today the majority of carpenters carry their tools around in a 'collar box.' It is a common thing to see, between 6 and 7 a.m., several of these boxes going, not to the shop, as fifty years ago, but direct to the job; not in the employer's team, but on the backs of the carpenters; not to work as a permanent employee, but simply to do a "job," to put a floor on a brick block, or nail up some trim that has already been fitted together in the factory, after which he has to wait until the masons have gone up another floor, or another lot of trim arrives from the factory, and after a couple of weeks picking at such a job, he packs his 'collar box' and takes up his march again.
"The introduction of improved machinery into the carpenter's trade, and the displacement of carpenter work on large buildings by the application of steel, brick, stone, terra cotta, and other chemical compounds, has so simplified what was 50 years ago the most difficult part of the work, that a man of average intelligence, who is willing to work hard, and also willing to work for a quarter or a half dollar less than the carpenter, can most always get a job with some one or other of our unscrupulous employers. Our craft actually has become the catch-basin for mechanics who have been displaced by the introduction of improved machinery in other industries.
"And lastly, our trade suffers greatly on account of the lack of interest displayed on the part of the carpenters themselves, first, as to the time-honored position our craft has held in the past, and second, because of the utter indifference to the present."
- P.J. McGuire
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