Page images
PDF
EPUB

the economic development has been without a parallel in the history of all times and all peoples. The wheels of progress have revolved at an ever accelerating speed, and things have been accomplished with an instantaneous suddenness, which reminds one of the miraculous events of the "Arabian Nights." The country has grown from a few millions of farmers and fishermen living near the margin of existence to a great, wealthy nation of eighty millions. Machine has supplanted tool, improvement followed improvement, new methods displaced old, until the country has become almost choked with its prosperity and embarrassed with its riches.

In the meanwhile, however, we have been so dazzled by our own achievements that we have failed to perceive the other side of the shield. For this vast prosperity we have paid a large price. We have been carried along upon a wave of materialism and have too largely made the dollar the unit of success, both personal and national. We would judge everything upon the basis of cheapness, upon our ability, in other words, to compete for foreign markets. In no other country has life been so lightly regarded, has the workingman been so mercilessly exposed to violent death or to grievous injury. In no other country is there less organized compensation for those who are killed or maimed, for those who are sacrificed and slaughtered that others may grow rich. The country which spent billions of dollars for the pensioning of its soldiers, which at another time wiped out at once other billions of dollars of human property, has disregarded almost utterly the claims of the men, women, and children who have died that our industrial supremacy might be maintained. In no other country are the laws against the exploitation of women and children so lax, so absurdly inadequate, so cruelly ineffective as in the United States. In no country does the workingman age so rapidly, nowhere is he cast aside with so light a heart and with so little compassion. Trade unionism should not put a brake upon the progress of the community, Lut should endeavor to render it more rapid. At the same time its mission should be to mitigate the evils which have flown from the unregulated condition of industry and the indiscriminate and heedless pursuit of purely materialistic aims.

CHAPTER XLVIII

THE IDEALS OF ORGANIZED LABOR

The Ideals of Trade Unionism. The Ideals of Anti-Unionists. Feudal Lords and "Loyalty." The Father of his Workmen. Paternalism versus Fraternalism. The Ideal of Free Collective Contract. The Ideal of Better Conditions and Better Men. Trade Unionism and "Wage Slavery." Trade Unionism and the Wage Contract. Contentment versus Progress. What Unionism Stands for.

THE average man, whether or not he belong to a labor organization, has

at the bottom of his nature a certain more or less distinct aspiration for a more or less exalted thing. There can be no combination, association, or union of men without common ideals; for without ideals there is lacking the internal bond that carries men along despite the temptation to pursue selfish aims. No one can understand trade unionism unless he has some conception of its fundamental ideals.

It will be easier to comprehend these ideals of trade unionism if we consider for a moment the ideals of men opposed to it. The conception of many people, although they are fewer now than a generation or two ago, is that the employer is a man of a different class, a different race, one may almost say, a different species from his workmen. In the eyes of these people the ideal state of affairs is one in which the beneficent employer is surrounded and served by throngs of faithful servants called wage earners, loyal to his interests, protected by him, and grateful for the bounties which he in his goodness and at his sole discretion bestows upon them. Employers frequently speak as though two or three dollars a day were enough for a workingman, although they themselves may be spending twenty or fifty or a hundred dollars a day. These employers talk of the "loyalty" of some of their men and of the “disloyalty" of others, thus assuming that the wage earner is bound to his employer by ties of personal allegiance, instead of by a con

tractual relation, supposedly based upon the interest of both parties. There is something feudal in the manner in which the great lords of industry occasionally speak of disloyal employees on strike. They seem to believe that they possess what is almost a property right in the services of the men engaged by them. They are more incensed at a competitor who takes away from them the services of a valued employee by offering him a higher wage, than is the striker at the competition of a non-union man. They speak as though they were conferring a benefit upon a man by letting him work for them, but they would consider the world topsy-turvy if the workman should for a moment assert that, in accepting work, he was conferring an even greater advantage upon them.

This feudal theory of a high-born or high-placed employer "giving work" to his loyal employees finds its best expression in the attitude of the employers who seek to be fathers to their workmen. Many well-meaning and philanthropic employers have done admirable service in providing their employees with reasonable or sometimes excellent accommodations, with comforts, with small privileges, with opportunities to improve their minds, and with many other advantages. Trade unionists, whatever their attitude toward employers in general, must hail with pleasure any manifestation of this spirit or any act of generosity or justice upon the part of well-meaning employers. The ideal of trade unionism, however, is not a state of affairs in which the employer is a father to his workmen. The time has gone by for any wholesale reversion to this plan. Every day the employer is being separated further and further from his workmen, and personal supervision and personal interest in the welfare of employees are becoming less possible. As soon as the generous employer capitalizes his establishment or sells out to the trust, the day of favors and benefits is practically over. While trade unionists do not oppose, but actually favor, such welfare work, if not intended to undermine the union and destroy the independence of the workers, they fail to find in it even a temporary solution of the labor problem. It would not be possible to re-introduce the paternalism of the past, and, even if possible, it would not be desirable, since the

ability to confer favors brings with it also the opportunity to vent spite or to discriminate.

Trade unionism does not stand for paternalism of the employer, but for a broad, all-inclusive, self-forgetting fraternalism of all workers. It does not stand for the "loyalty" of the worker to his employer, but for a fair reciprocal contract between these two parties. It does not stand for the recognition of a difference in species between employer and workman, or for a spirit of blind, silent content on the part of the employee, but it insists upon the substantial equality of all men and upon the right of the workers to secure all that they can by fair and reasonable methods. Finally, it does not accept the doctrine of the employer who in giving work to a man assumes that he is conferring a benefit upon him, any more than it stands for the opposite doctrine, that the acceptance of work confers a favor upon the employer. The ideal of trade unionism is not that of a superior class conferring favors upon an inferior, not one of "loyalty" on the one side and generosity upon the other, but the ideal of two separate, strong, self-respecting and mutually respecting parties, freely contracting with each other, and with no limitation upon this right of perfect and absolute freedom of contract, save that which a community in its wisdom may determine to be necessary for its own protection.

In the ideals of trade unionism, the freedom of contract between associated workmen and associated employers, equal in position and in opportunity and power to make agreements, is but a means or a step to a higher and better ideal. The true and final ideal of trade unionism is the elevation and the material and moral improvement of the workingman. Trade unionism is essentially optimistic. It realizes the progress which has been made and bases its hope of future advance upon past improvement. Trade unionists do not adopt the logic of their opponents, that, because conditions are better than formerly, the workingmen should be satisfied, but consider the progress already made as the best and fullest justification for continued efforts to improve conditions. Neither does trade unionism accept the theory of a certain section of socialists, who believe that condi

tions must grow worse before they can grow better. If conditions were first to grow worse, the power of the workingmen to better themselves would ultimately decrease, and they would be so depressed and degraded that they could not utilize or improve any concessions made to them. The theory of the trade unionist is that things must improve a little in order to improve a great deal, and that every advance in the condition of the workingmen is an earnest of still further advance in the future.

Trade unionism is not based upon a necessary opposition to the socalled "wage slavery" of the present time. By the phrase "wage slavery" is usually meant a condition of practical enslavement, brought about, not by legal, but by economic subjection, a slavery enforced, not by the lash, but by pangs of hunger. The trade unionist recognizes that in certain sections of the country and in certain industries, the wage earners, especially women and children, are in a condition so debased and degraded, and are so subject to oppression and exploitation, that it practically amounts to slavery. Where such wage slavery exists, however, trade unionism is opposed to the slavery as such, and not to the wages as such. Trade unionism is not irrevocably committed to the maintenance of the wage system, nor is it irrevocably committed to its abolition. It demands the constant improvement of the condition of the workingmen, if possible, by the maintenance of the present wage system, if not possible, by its ultimate abolition.

The history of trade unionism in the past seems to indicate that by the aid of the State and by the concerted efforts of workingmen, a vast and wide-spread amelioration of their condition can take place under the present system of wages. No limit, however, should be set to the aspirations of the workingmen, nor to the demands for higher wages and better condi- ' tions of work which they may ultimately make. At any given moment in the history of society, there is a limit set to the remuneration of labor by the amount of its production and by other causes. But with the gradual growth in the productivity of society, there should be a gradual, even a rapid, increase in the rate of wages. The skilled workingmen of to-day carn wages undreamed of fifty years ago, and, doubtless, fifty years hence

« PreviousContinue »