Literacy for "Mental and Social Uplift"

The writings of Fitzpatrick in the pre-1907 period generally reflected the concerns of middle class elements about conditions dependence on public charity, crime, public drunkenness, unsanitary living conditions and outbreaks of epidemics that were associated with the presence of resource and construction workers in the northern areas. 16 However, he rejected what was a prevalent conservative belief that these problems were the result of hereditary deficiencies among these men, and worked hard to disseminate his own view (as influenced by the social gospel and Progressive Movement thought of the time) that the major causes of these conditions were environmental in nature, and therefore remediable.17

What were these environmental influences? Fitzpatrick recognized that employer practices constituted one source:

At present it is to be confessed with shame that the conditions in which these men labor are not always desirable, that a species of sweating system is not unknown in the development of our great natural resources.18

He criticized the lack of governmental regulation of 'the setting of wages and conditions by employers;

To give employers and contractors a free hand in determining their relation to their employees is to grant a license often to compel men to work overtime and on Sundays, to live in small and unsanitary quarters, and is nothing short of criminal.19

He advocated that through the state, humane employment standards"should be exacted and systematically and rigidly enforced".20

Fitzpatrick's views on these employer practices reflected critique of 'laissez-faire' capitalism mounted by the mainstream, non-leftist, currents in the Christian social gospel and Progressive movements of the time. This reform thought represented a break with the conservative views of the late 19th century, which had justified the predatory behavior of the "captains of industry" by appeal to the social-darwinist doctrine of the "survival of the fittest" as applied to human affairs. 21 The new reform thought advocated greater cooperation among the classes for the common good of the society, and saw the need for an expanded role for the state in the regulation of economic life. In their critique, the reformers deplored many of the exploitative practices of owners of business and industry, but these as 'excesses' which were amenable to correction, and not indicative of an inherent tendency of the capitalist economic system. 22