WORST CLASS OF MINERS' HOUSES IN ANTHRACITE REGION

The newly arrived immigrants usually occupy these dwellings. The kitchen is on the left

TYPICAL ROW OF COMPANY HOUSES IN AN ANTHRACITE VILLAGE

The fences are usually made by the miners themselves, to protect their gardens

the surface; the good is less apparent, buried deep in the grateful hearts of millions of men, who have been aroused by it to a new life and to higher and nobler aspirations.

Especially in a period like the present, when new recruits are flocking by the hundreds of thousands to the ranks of organized labor, it is wise and just to exercise a certain broad tolerance. The raw recruit, more zealous than understanding, commits errors and excesses impossible after a few years of membership in the trade union. There is a certain supercilious criticism and a certain intolerant haste of judgment toward the men who commit follies in the excess of their zeal for a noble cause. Far wiser in its judgment upon this matter was the United States Industrial Commission, which in its Report to the President, summarized the situation in the following weighty words: "Men," it said, "who have been accustomed to absolute submission in industry show the same faults when they first take up the burden of self-government as men who have been accustomed to absolute political submission. Only experience with democratic forms and methods can develop the good that is in democracy."

Trade unionism welcomes the criticism of sober-minded and wellintentioned persons of all classes. It will learn its lesson and will listen to the judgment of men who see its faults and point them out without malice and without exaggeration. It will not, however, be influenced by the swarm of hostile critics who openly or under the guise of a seeming friendship, assail its fundamental principles and impugn the motives of its most trusted leaders. The justification of trade unionism in the past has been its deeds in the past. Its future justification will be not any set form of promises or protestations, but the work which it will carry on through its millions of adherents.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE RIGHT TO THE MACHINE

Have Machines "Lessened the Day's Toil of any Human Being?" Trade Unions Favor Machinery. Its Advantages. Union Attitude Misrepresented. Former Attitude of Workingmen. Machine Riots. The Old Evils of Machinery. The Machineowning Class. Unemployment. Long Hours. The Loss of a Skilled Trade. Not Prohibition but Regulation. The Long Run and the Short Run. The Least Friction Possible. Differentials. The Right to the Machine. Time Work and Piece Work. How Trade Unions Introduce Machinery.

IN

N the year 1848 the famous political economist, John Stuart Mill, wrote as follows: "Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lessened the day's toil of any human being." These words, spoken not by a trade union leader, but by the most eminent economist of his day, may explain to some extent the instinctive hatred once felt by the workingmen for machinery. Since the days of Mill, however, there has taken place not only an improvement in the conditions under which machinery has been operated, not only an increase in the advantages and a decrease in the disadvantages arising from machinery, but also a gradual change in the whole attitude of the workman. Trade unions have been foremost in this change of opinion, and at the present time the great majority of labor organizations are desirous of promoting the introduction of machinery, although in such a way as to work the least possible injury to the wage earner and to confer upon him the greatest possible benefit.

Trade unionists recognize that machinery has enormously multiplied the productive power of the community. They realize that the work done at present in the United States could not, without the aid of machinery, be performed by three times the present population. They acknowledge that machinery has cheapened all manner of products and that the artisan can now purchase at a moderate price a variety of necessary, useful, and beau

tiful articles, wholly unattainable a century or even a generation ago. Finally, the trade unionists believe that machinery has not permanently deprived large masses of the population of the opportunity to work, and they recognize, amid the evils of machinery, great and enduring benefits.

Notwithstanding this attitude on the part of trade unions it has constantly been claimed by hostile critics that the unions are opposed to laborsaving machinery and endeavor, wherever possible, to prevent its introduction. This claim is false and erroneous, but it is none the less dangerous because with its falsity it contains a certain appearance of truth.

It is far easier to bear false witness and make reckless charges against trade unionism than to understand its real attitude. This attitude has been the result of an evolution taking place during a period of one hundred and fifty years. When machines were first introduced, men who were then not organized, not united into trade unions, struck blindly and instinctively at them, and there was violence, bloodshed, and arson. With the passing of each decade and with the steady growth of the power and intelligence of trade unionists, the former stupid opposition to machinery as such declined and diminished, until at the present time all but a small minority of workmen are converted to the view that machinery is a necessity, to which it is foolish and unwise, if not impossible, to offer permanent resistance.

It was about the year 1760 that the earlier machines were introduced with the result of herding former handworkers into the factories and large cities. The effect of these first inventions was intensified after 1785 by the application of steam power to the new machinery and the substitution of mechanical power for that of man. The invention of the locomotive and the steam railway and the newer applications of electricity, increased the field for machines. Eventually, not only were the products of industry made by machines, but these machines themselves were made by other machines.

Beneficent as machinery has upon the whole proved itself to be, there is no doubt that at first its effects were terrible. The despairing attempts of the old handworker to compete against the new machines, and the hun