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[The Twentieth Annual Convention of the Officials of Labor Bureaus of America was held at Concord, New Hampshire, July 12-16, 1904. The delegates present represented the District of Columbia (United States Bureau of Labor and the Bureau of the Census), Connecticut, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Ontario, Canada. The paper which follows was prepared and delivered by William Jewett Tucker, D.D., LL.D., President of Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire. At the closing session of the Convention, one of a series of resolutions was the following:

Resolved, That we thank President William J. Tucker, D.D., of Dartmouth College, for his epoch-marking address on the consanguinity of Labor and Education — natural and invincible allies in the conflict with capital that has no higher aim than profit. We believe that the labor question will be solved by a tripartite alliance between the college man, the educated workingman, and the educated employer. Educated labor, educated capital, and he whose education is his capital, will combine against mere commercialism and will win a substantial and lasting victory. We enlist in the cause, and to show our appreciation and endorsement of President Tucker's advanced views, agree at the earliest opportunity to publish his address in full in the official publications issued by the departments which we represent at this Convention.]

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What I have to say is in the nature of some reflections upon the "mind" of the wage earner-an expression which I borrow from the opening sentence of the recent work by John Mitchell on Organized Labor: "The average wage earner has made up his mind that he must remain a wage earner. I would not take this generalization in any unqualified way. The author has himself qualified it by the use of the word "average." But when reduced to its lowest terms it is, I think, the most serious statement which has been made of late concerning the social life of the country, for it purports to be the statement of a mental fact. If Mr. Mitchell had said that in his opinion the conditions affecting the wage earner were becoming fixed conditions, that would have been a statement of grave import, but quite different from the one made. Here is an interpretation of the mind of the wage earner, from one well qualified to give an interpretation of it, to the effect that the average wage earner has reached a state of mind in which he accepts the fixity of his

"Organized Labor: its Problems, Purposes, and Ideals and the Present and Future of American Wage Earners," by John Mitchell, page IX.

condition. Having reached this state of mind the best thing which can be done is to organize the wage earner into a system through which he may gain the greatest advantage possible within his accepted limitations. I am not disposed to take issue with the conclusion of the argument (I am a firm believer in trade unions), but I do not like the major premise of the argument. I should be sorry to believe that it was altogether true. And in so far as it is true, in so far, that is, as we are confronted by this mental fact, I believe that we should address ourselves to it quite as definitely as to the physical facts which enter into the labor problem.

If the average wage earner has made up his mind that he must remain a wage earner," we have a new type of solidarity, new at least to this country. No other man amongst us has made up his mind to accept his condition. The majority of men are accepting the conditions of their daily work, but it is not an enforced acceptance. This is true of the great body of people engaged in farming, in mercantile pursuits, and in most of the underpaid professional employments. In the social order one of two things must be present to create solidarity — pride or a grievance. An aristocracy of birth is welded together by pride. It perpetuates itself through the increasing pride of each new generation. An aristocracy is an inheritance not of wealth, for some "families" are very poor, but of an assured state of mind. An aristocrat does not have to make up his mind, it has been made up for him. An aristocracy is in this respect entirely different from a plutocracy. A plutocracy is at any given time merely an aggregation of wealth. People are struggling to get into it and are continually falling out of it. There is no mental repose in a plutocracy. It is a restless, struggling, disintegrating mass. It has no inherent solidarity.

Next to pride, the chief source of solidarity is a grievance. The solidarity may be transient or permanent. It lasts as long as the sense of grievance lasts. Sometimes the sense of grievance is worn out; then you have to invent some other term than solidarity to express the deplorable condition into which a mass of people may fall. But whenever the sense of dissatisfaction is widespread and permanent, it deepens into a grievance which creates solidarity. The human element involved is at work to intensify and perpetuate itself.

Now when it is said that "the average wage earner has made up his mind that he must remain a wage earner," the saying assumes unwillingness on his part, the sense of necessity; and therefore a grievance which, as it is communicated from man to man, creates a solidarity. If you can eliminate the grievance, you break up the solidarity. The wage earner then becomes, like the farmer, the trader, the schoolmaster, a man of a given occupation. The fact of the great number of wage earners signifies nothing in a social sense, unless they are bound together by a grievance, unless they have made up their mind to some conclusion which separates them from the community at large or the body politic.

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We have come, it seems to me, to the most advanced question concerning "labor," as we find ourselves in the presence of this great mental fact which Mr. Mitchell asserts. What can be done to so affect mind of the wage earner" that it will not work toward that kind of solidarity which will be of injury to him and to society?

It is, of course, entirely obvious that a greater freedom of mind on the part of the wage earner may be expected to follow the betterment of his condition. This betterment of condition is the one and final object of the trade union. I doubt if one-half of that which the trade union has gained for the wage earner could have been gained in any other way. I doubt if one-quarter of the gain would have been reached in any other way. Trade unionism is the business method of effecting the betterment of the wage earner under the highly organized conditions of the modern industrial world.

But trade unionism at its best must do its work within two clear limitations. In the first place, every advance which it tries to make in behalf of the wage earner as such finds a natural limit. The principle of exclusiveness, of separate advantage, is a limited principle. At a given point, now here, now there, it is sure to react upon itself, or to be turned back. Organization meets opposing organization. Public interests become involved. Moral issues are raised. The co-operating sympathy of men which can always be counted upon in any fair appeal to it, turns at once to rebuke and restraint if it is abused. The wage earner in a democracy will never be allowed to get far beyond the average man through any exclusive advantages which he may attempt through organization.

In the second place, trade unionism can deal with the wage earner only as a wage earner, and he is more than a wage earner. There comes a time when he cannot be satisfied with wages. The betterment of his condition creates wants beyond those which it satisfies. The growing mind of the wage earner, like anybody's growing mind, seeks to widen its environment. It wants contact with other kinds of minds. When once it becomes aware of its provincialism it tries to escape from it a fact which is clearly attested in the broadening social and political relations of the stronger labor leaders.

But while I believe that trade unionism is the business method of enlarging the mind of the wage earner through the betterment of his condition, I think that the time has come for the use, or adaptation of other means which may give it freedom and expansion.

One means of preventing a narrow and exclusive solidarity of wage earners is greater identification on their part with the community through the acquisition of local property. Mobility is, in the earlier stages of the development of the wage earner, the source of his strength. He can easily change to his interest. No advantage can be taken of his fixity. He can put himself, without loss, into the open market. He can avail himself at

once of the highest market price, provided his change of place does not affect injuriously his fellow workers in the union, an exception of growing concern.

But in the more advanced stages of labor the wage earner gains the privilege of localizing himself, and in so doing he takes a long step in the direction of full and free citizenship. A good deposit in a savings bank adds to his social value, but that value is greatly enhanced by exchanging it for a good house.

I am aware that in advocating the acquisition of local property I touch upon the large and as yet undetermined question of the decentralization of labor. If the great cities are to be the home of the industries then this idea can be realized in only a partial degree through suburban homes. But if the industries are to seek out or establish smaller centres then the wage earner has the opportunity to become more distinctly and more conspicuously a citizen.

Another means of giving freedom and expansion to the wage earning population in place of a narrow and exclusive solidarity is by giving to it ready access to the higher education. There is no reason why the former experience of the New England farmer and the present experience of the Western farmer should not be repeated in the family of the intelligent wage earner. The sons of the New England farmer who were sent to college identified their families with the State and church, and with all public interests.

They lifted the family horizon. I have said that this experience may be repeated in the families of the wage earner. It is being repeated. Let me give you an illustration with which I am familiar. The students at Dartmouth are divided about as follows, according to the occupation of their fathers: Forty per cent are the sons of business men, twenty-five per cent of professional men, fifteen per cent of farmers; of the remaining thirty per cent, more than half are the sons of wage earners. The per cent from the shops now equals that from the farm. I have no doubt that this proportion will hold in most of our Eastern colleges and universities. The home of the wage earner is becoming a recruiting ground for the higher education, which no college can afford to overlook. As Professor Marshall, the English economist, has said, "Since the manual labor classes are four or five times as numerous as all other classes put together, it is not unlikely that more than half of the best natural genius that is born into the country belongs to them." And from this statement he goes on to draw the conclusion that "there is no extravagance more prejudicial to the growth of the national wealth than that wasteful negligence which allows genius which happens to be born of lowly parentage to expend itself in lowly work." So much for the necessity of fresh, virile, and self-supporting stock to the higher education, if it is to discharge its obligation to society.

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