is usually a recognized social leader among his fellows, at any rate while he holds his position. One interesting function which he performs in connection with his position is the bringing of his friends and relatives from foreign countries to America by letters and descriptions of the opportunities of profitable employment.' Thus, where companies themselves are prohibited by law from importing contract labor, the straw boss and his friends virtually import foreign labor for contract, often assisting their neighbors across the water to make the voyage by means of loans or gifts of money. Wages at the yards are usually better than those received in foreign countries by the peasants thus brought into the work in this country; and this fact indicates an often overlooked field of positive service rendered by great American industries to the growth of universal democracy.

The division of each department into sub-departments may be illustrated in the case of a single sausage department, as follows:

Now, it is significant for the present organization of business that all of these departments and sub-departments compete against each other just as sharply as they would and do against outside companies. All products and materials passing from one department to another are bought and sold by the departments concerned at the market rates given out at the beginning

It is noteworthy here that MR. J. M. GILLETTE, entirely independently of the present writer, found similar methods in use at South Chicago. Cf. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, July, 1901, p. 120.

of each day by the superintendent or his subordinates. In this way the strictest economy, division of labor, and definite location of responsibility are secured. Properly conducted, this organization of business is highly efficient and wholesome, but it, of course, may lend itself readily to abuses of management.

One of the chief difficulties in the management of a great plant is the proper organization and direction of foreign labor. And no place is more typical in this respect than the Chicago Stock Yards. As an illustration of this fact the following nationality census of a typical producing department is submitted. It is but slightly more varied than most of the other departments, and represents a total force of 225:

It will readily be seen from this showing that to maintain such a heterogeneous force in harmonious and efficient co-operation involves no small problem. The managers who endeavor to direct such a body of workmen—often new to American ways, ignorant of the language, timorous, quick to take offense, and slow to understand - deserve public encouragement and the fullest co-operation of all the agencies of general education and enlightenment.

The system of time-keeping and employment connected with one of these large plants is an important aspect of the organization. When workmen are needed in any department, the head concerned either goes out to the streets near the time-keeping office, where men are usually waiting to be employed, and selects the workmen himself, or he sends his instructions to the timekeeping office and has the workmen selected by officers there. In the plant taken above as an example, this selection is made by the private policeman stationed at the time-keeping offices. When a workman has been selected, he receives from the clerk

at the time-keeping office in the morning a small brass check with his number upon it. This is his individual certificate of employment. During the middle of the forenoon time-keeping clerks make the rounds of the various departments, noting all absences upon their records. This is again repeated in the middle of the afternoon, and at the end of the day's work the workman deposits again in the time-keeping office his brass check, to be received once more the next morning, when a new start is made. Thus each manual workman in the plant is regularly marked four times a day with respect to his presence or absence.

In addition to these general divisions of the organization, each of the larger plants has its own private police department, fire and water departments, and, as is coming to be the case, its own medical department, where accidents and sickness occurring in the course of the work are given attention at the expense of the company.

SECTION IV. BENEFITS TO DEMOCRACY BY THE LIVE-STOCK AND MEAT-PACKING INDUSTRY OF CHICAGO.

The positive and direct benefits to the cause of modern democracy most conspicuously evident in the organization of industry at the Chicago Stock Yards are, of course, chiefly commercial and economic. But through these means, and also more incidentally, there are very substantial benefits of a broader social nature conferred by the industry. The former may be enumerated as follows:

1. Increase and qualitative improvement in the live-stock production.

2. Increase in corn production.

3. Development of railway facilities.

4. The reduction in the cost of meat foods.

5. The expansion and development of export trade.

6. The stimulus to important banking and exchange interests. 7. The better regulation of the flow of goods and of the range of prices.

In addition to these, the more broadly social benefits arising from this great organization of business at the Chicago Stock Yards are as follows:

1. The improvement of legislative control over the conditions and methods of the business through its centralization and organization in the factory form.

2. The opening up of the great West to effective cultivation and settlement.

3. The bringing of the more backward peoples of the earth by immigration and disciplinary organization up more closely to the progressive American standard of life; and

4. The movement toward the organization — through the extension of foreign commerce and the attendant diffusion of the ideals and practices of civilization-of a more complete political and social unity throughout the world.

CHAPTER II.

THE STOCK YARD COMMUNITY AT CHICAGO.

THE chief cause of the difficulty in the problem of modern city life is the lack of accurate public information about local conditions. With our cities growing much more rapidly than the country districts, great hordes of population, of diverse languages, customs, and habits, are being annually crowded into congested city wards, where, in the absence of any adequate knowledge of the special laws and the peculiar conditions of health and livelihood, life becomes a wild, sodden sickening, inhuman, and infinitely tragical struggle; not only a menace to those finer dreams of a noble, joyous, and beautiful national life, but a threat even to the very essentials of a common and decent civilization itself. To supply some of these needed elements of knowledge, therefore, in the case of a single typical industrial community of a great American city, and thus to illustrate a method of gathering such data in general, is the purpose of the present chapter. The aim will be to take up, after a preliminary survey of the general physical and racial conditions of the locality, a description of the present local status of each of the fundamental elements which go to make a complete democracy.

SECTION V. GEOGRAPHICAL AND ETHNIC ASPECTS OF THE STOCK YARD COMMUNITY.

That the locality of the Chicago Stock Yards is a typical modern industrial community may be illustrated by the accompanying map, No. 4, of the city of Chicago. This map, made up from official drawings of the city election commissioners and commissioner of health as a basis,' indicates the geographical relation of the largest industries of the city to the districts of

'Cf. Chicago Department of Health, Monthly Bulletin, October, 1900.

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