Cornell University Library 
 
 HD8072.G47 
 
 The labor question. 
 
 lotion 
 
 3 1924 002 663 346 
 
 WASHINGTON GLADDEN 
 
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Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924002663346 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 BY 
 
 WASHINGTON GLADDEN 
 
 THE PILGRIM PRESS 
 
 BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 
 
Copyright, ion 
 By Washington Gladden 
 
 THE ■ PLIMPTON • PRESS 
 
 [WD-O] 
 NORWOOD • MASS ■ TT ■ S • A 
 
 
*Q 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I The Case Against the Labor 
 
 Union i 
 
 II The Reason for the Unions . . 41 
 
 III Industry and Democracy ... 75 
 
 IV Cross-lights AND Counter-claims 115 
 
 V The Church and the Labor 
 
 Question 147 
 
 PROPERTY OF LIBRARY 
 
 NEW YORK STATE SCHOOL 
 
 \nmmm. m laboh relations 
 
 37026 
 
THE CASE AGAINST THE 
 LABOR UNION 
 
I 
 
 THE CASE AGAINST THE 
 LABOR UNION 
 
 NO sweeping statements can 
 be justly made about exist- 
 ing relations between em- 
 ployers and employed. In many cases 
 they are all that they ought to be. 
 Among employers of labor there are 
 tens of thousands of just-minded, 
 honorable men and women who gov- 
 ern themselves in all their dealings 
 with those who work for them by 
 the Golden Rule; and among wage- 
 workers there are hundreds of thou- 
 sands of honest and faithful men 
 and women who render cheerful and 
 efficient service to those who employ 
 them. We hear much complaint of 
 [3] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 exasperating conditions in domestic 
 service, but if the story were told 
 of all the tender and beautiful friend- 
 ships between families and their house- 
 hold helpers, it would be a cheering 
 relation. And it is still true, I be- 
 lieve, that where the number of em- 
 ployees is such that the employer is 
 brought into personal contact with all 
 of them, the relations are, in the great 
 majority of cases, amicable and just. 
 The old sweet humanities have not 
 lost their force, and where they have 
 a chance they assert themselves with 
 power. And there are not a few large 
 industrial establishments in which the 
 rights of the people who work with 
 their hands are thoroughly respected. 
 But the typical employer of today 
 (the only employer known to most 
 working men) is not a human being, 
 but a great corporation ; and the typical 
 [4] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 employee (the only employee known 
 to most employers) is a unit of labor 
 force, which may be numbered rather 
 than named; and the only relation 
 between the two is that of the "cash 
 nexus," which is represented by the 
 current wage. I am aware that there 
 are cases in which some effort is made 
 to clothe this economic skeleton with 
 flesh and blood — to restore some sem- 
 blance of a personal quality to this 
 relation between employer and em- 
 ployee — and such attempts are highly 
 commendable; but they do not count 
 for much against the depersonalizing 
 tendencies of the large system of 
 industry. All the important indus- 
 tries except agriculture are carried on 
 in great establishments, employing hun- 
 dreds, or thousands, or tens of thou- 
 sands of laborers ; capital is massed in 
 great corporations, and the ownership 
 [Si 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 of it is widely distributed among in- 
 vestors who have no knowledge what- 
 ever of the people whom their money 
 is employing. These stockholders are 
 the real employers. The directors 
 and superintendents and general man- 
 agers are simply their agents; and 
 the real employers, as a rule, know 
 nothing and care little about the wel- 
 fare of the people who do the work. 
 They have just one interest in the 
 business, which is that the dividends on 
 the stock shall be maintained without 
 reduction; increased, if possible; and 
 paid on the appointed day. We all 
 know how it is. I am a stockholder, 
 in a small way, in one or two industries, 
 and it scarcely occurs to me to look 
 after the welfare of the hired laborers 
 who are doing the work of these 
 industries. I do not know at all what 
 wages they are getting, and I do not 
 [6] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 know much about the conditions under 
 which they are doing their work. 
 Perhaps I ought to know, but 1 do 
 not. And I suppose that a large 
 majority of all the holders of industrial 
 securities are no more conscientious or 
 watchful of the interests of the people 
 of whom they are the responsible 
 employers than I am. When such is 
 the foundation of our industrial system, 
 it is hardly a matter of wonder that the 
 element of human interest and personal 
 friendship should gradually disappear 
 from the relation between employer and 
 employee. 
 
 Another fact has some significance. 
 Twenty-five years ago there was much 
 inquiry among employers about indus- 
 trial partnership, or profit-sharing, as 
 it was rather unhappily named. I had 
 written something about it, and I used 
 to get letters from employers very fre- 
 [7] 
 
 4 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 quently asking about the working of 
 such plans. These methods are not 
 much talked about in these days. The 
 impulse to associate the men with the 
 masters seems to have spent its force. 
 The lessening importance of this fea- 
 ture in the industries of the present 
 day is an indication of the growing 
 ahenation of the two classes. " 
 
 This condition of estrangement — 
 this growing hostility between the 
 wage-workers and their employers — 
 is the serious fact with which the 
 country is confronted. The fact may 
 be questioned, but those who have 
 been familiar for thirty years with the 
 drift of public feeling can have no 
 doubt about it. The relations between 
 the men who work for wages and the 
 men who pay wages are distinctly less 
 friendly than they were twenty years 
 ago. 
 
 [8] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 Who is to blame for this? Each 
 class blames the other; probably they 
 are both to blame. There are not 
 many quarrels in which the fault is 
 all on one side. Let me see if I can 
 state the case as it lies in the mind 
 of the average employer. There are 
 many employers below the average, 
 intellectually and morally, whom I do 
 not hope to convince; there are some 
 quite above the average who do not 
 need to be convinced ; I am not trying 
 to represent either of these classes, but 
 rather that large majority whose opin- 
 ions and practises tend to prevail in 
 the employing class. ' 
 
 In the judgment of these gentlemen, 
 the trouble in our industries is largely 
 due to trade-unions. It is the mis- 
 conduct of the trade-unions that is 
 the cause of all this alienation and 
 hostility which now prevails in the in- 
 [9] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 dustrial world. Many of these gentle- 
 men sa,y that they are not opposed to 
 trade-unions ; that they believe in them 
 when properly constituted and man- 
 aged. What they mean by this we shall 
 see in another article. Others frankly 
 declare that trade-unionism in all its 
 moods and tenses is an unmitigated 
 evil ; that the only hope for the country 
 is in its extermination. I have lately 
 heard employers who, on all other 
 subjects, are as kind-hearted and fair- 
 minded as any men I know, saying 
 that, rather than permit any kind of 
 trade-union to get a footing in their 
 works, they would close their factories 
 and go out of business. What all 
 these gentlemen chiefly lay emphasis 
 upon is the misconduct of the unions, 
 many instances of which are specified. 
 The indictment is easily sustained. 
 It cannot be denied that in the at- 
 
 [lo] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 tempt to protect themselves against 
 oppression the unions have made many 
 rules and restrictions which are often 
 extremely vexatious to all who deal 
 with them. All our neighbors are 
 ready with tales of the annoyances 
 and injuries which they have suffered 
 by the enforcement of these petty 
 rules by trade-unions. A woman of 
 fine intelligence living in a country 
 village, not long ago rehearsed to me 
 her own experience with a gang of 
 men who were working on a drain 
 that ran from her house across her 
 lawn. The ditch had been dug and 
 the pipe nearly laid when their quitting 
 time came, at half past four in the 
 afternoon. A violent storm was ap- 
 proaching, and the ditch would be 
 flooded with water and great incon- 
 venience and expense would be caused 
 if the ditch were not filled in; and the 
 [ii] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 good woman begged these men to 
 
 throw back the dirt; but they sat 
 
 down on the bank and would not lift 
 
 a finger. She took up the shovel 
 
 herself and filled in a considerable part 
 
 of it, but they refused to come to her 
 
 relief. Conduct of this sort is not 
 
 rare on the part of trade-unionists, 
 
 and it has done much, not only to 
 
 exasperate employers, but to alienate 
 
 the good will of the community at 
 
 large. The kind of rules which are 
 
 often insisted upon, regulating the 
 
 cooperation of the trades, forbidding 
 
 a plasterer to drive a nail or a plumber 
 
 to do the simplest task which belongs 
 
 to a bricklayer, rigidly fixing the hours 
 
 of labor and making it a misdemeanor 
 
 for a workman to finish a job if fifteen 
 
 minutes of work remain at the closing 
 
 hour — all such petty restrictions are 
 
 a just cause of complaint. They re- 
 [12] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 quire men to act in outrageously dis- 
 obliging and unneighborly ways; they 
 are a training in ill nature and un- 
 friendliness. Cases frequently come 
 to my knowledge of the behavior of 
 union men acting under the niles of 
 their trade, by which intolerable incon- 
 venience is inflicted, not only upon 
 their employers, but upon customers 
 for whom the work is done. When I 
 hear such stories, I am able to under- 
 stand why it is that many employers 
 and many persons who do not belong 
 to the employing class are so bitterly 
 hostile to trade-unions. I do not 
 believe that these petty restrictions 
 are necessary to the success of organ- 
 ized labor. On the contrary, I believe 
 that they are a serious hindrance in 
 the way of its progress. The small 
 advantages which are secured by 
 means of them are more than neutral- 
 [13] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 ized by the ill will which they engender 
 in the breasts of those whose good 
 will the unions greatly need. 
 
 The opposition of the unions to 
 prison labor is another count in the 
 indictment. This rests upon a nar- 
 row view of advantage which helps to 
 discredit the unions. Here, again, a 
 small gain to a class is suffered to 
 outweigh a heavy loss to society. 
 The injury which prison labor could 
 inflict upon organized labor is incon- 
 siderable; the damage which would 
 be done to the prisoners by keeping 
 them in idleness is enormous. The 
 unions greatly injure their own cause 
 when they adopt a policy which 
 sacrifices the general welfare to their 
 own interest in a manner so flagrant. 
 The truth is not so clear to all minds 
 as it ought to be that the selfishness 
 of classes or organizations is not less 
 [14] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 unsocial than the selfishness of indi- 
 viduals. We can hardly censure the 
 unions very harshly for not having 
 learned this lesson, since the churches 
 have not as yet learned it. Churches 
 often act toward other churches in a 
 manner quite as heartless as do trade- 
 unions toward unorganized labor; 
 churches often wantonly sacrifice the 
 interests of the Kingdom of God to 
 their own sectarian advantage. Never- 
 theless, such conduct is reprehensible, 
 whether done under the lead of the 
 walking delegate or the denomina- 
 tional promoter, and those who prac- 
 tise it deservedly suffer the loss of 
 public favor. 1 
 
 It is often charged against the unions 
 that they cripple production by re- 
 stricting the output of industry through 
 deliberately reducing the speed of their 
 
 ' See Appendix I. 
 [is] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 labor and conspiring to make the job 
 last as long as possible. There are 
 those who believe that it is the con- 
 scious policy of all unionists to get 
 the largest possible wage and do the 
 least possible work in return for it. 
 I think it quite possible that there 
 are some working men who would re- 
 gard this as a legitimate policy, just 
 as there are not a few employers who 
 mean to give the laborer no more than 
 they must and to get out of him as 
 much work as they can. Undoubtedly 
 the notion has prevailed among work- 
 ing men that there exists a definite 
 amount of work to be done, and that 
 it is good policy for those who are 
 working by the hour to use up as 
 many hours as possible in the per- 
 formance of the work. That policy, 
 however, does not control all union- 
 ists. The more intelligent among them 
 
 [i6] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 are fully aware of its foolishness. 
 "To do too much work," says John 
 Mitchell, "is supposed, sometimes, to 
 be 'hogging it,' to be taking the bread 
 out of another man's mouth. This 
 may occasionally be more or less true, 
 although even in such cases the em- 
 ployer has rights which should be 
 respected and a man should do — as 
 he ordinarily does do — a fair day's 
 work for a fair day's wage. For the 
 whole of society, however, the theory 
 is not true. Within certain limits, the 
 more work done, the more remains to 
 be done. . . . The man who earns 
 large wages in a blacksmith's shop 
 creates a demand for labor when he 
 spends his wages in shoes, clothes, 
 furniture, or books; and a large pro- 
 duction tends to make these products 
 cheaper. To render work more ex- 
 pensive merely for the sake of restrict- 
 [i7l 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 ing output is to lessen the amount 
 of work that will be done, and it is 
 only by doing a fair day's work that 
 a fair day's wage can be permanently 
 maintained. The wages of working 
 men, sooner or later, fall with any 
 unreasonable restriction on the out- 
 put; and, what is of still more im- 
 portance, the habit of slowing up 
 work, permanently incapacitates the 
 workman for continued and intehse 
 effort." This extract shows that one 
 labor leader, at least, recognizes the 
 fatuity of do-lessness, and a fact 
 so patent is not likely to be long 
 concealed from the rank and file of 
 unionists. 1 
 
 In one respect the policy of restric- 
 tion is justifiable. In piece-work the 
 tendency is always toward an unjust 
 and oppressive reduction of wages. 
 
 ' See Appendix I. 
 [i8] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 The most rapid and skilful workers 
 set the pace, and the employer is 
 inclined to fix the price so that they 
 can make only a reasonable day's 
 wages. This brings the average work- 
 man's earnings down to a very low 
 figure. In such cases the protest 
 of the unions against speeding and 
 price-cutting is not unreasonable. 
 Some adjustments need to be made 
 by which men of exceptional skill 
 may get the advantage of their 
 superior ability without unfairly low- 
 ering the compensation of those who 
 are equally faithful, but somewhat 
 less expert. 
 
 It is, however, in connection with 
 the enforcement of their demands 
 for improved conditions by means of 
 strikes that the gravest charges are 
 brought against the unions. JThere 
 are those who deny the right of the 
 [19I 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 unions to use the weapon of the 
 strike; who assert that the resort to 
 this method of industrial warfare is 
 wholly unjustifiable, j The discussion 
 of this question must be deferred 
 until the following chapter. I must 
 ask my readers to let me assume that 
 this right belongs to organized labor. 
 Perhaps they may be willing to allow, 
 for the sake of the argument, that if 
 one man may decline to work for less 
 than a certain wage, of more than a 
 certain number of hours, several men 
 may unite in this refusal; and that it 
 is only by uniting with others that 
 any working man can secure considera- 
 tion of his claims. I do not, there- 
 fore, admit that their assertion of the 
 right to strike is any part of the case 
 against the unions. /At present I am 
 concerned with those concomitants of 
 strikes which are rightly held up to 
 
 [20] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 reprobation — the violence and bru- 
 tality, the coercion and vandalism, 
 which frequently attend industrial con- 
 flicts. 
 
 The existence of such conditions is 
 undeniable and deplorable, and the 
 greater part of the odium from which 
 unionism is suffering in the public 
 mind is due to these conditions. Work- 
 ing men who take the places which 
 the strikers have left are insulted, 
 beaten, sometimes killed ; the property 
 of the employer is destroyed; his 
 buildings are burned or blown up by 
 dynamite; his business is assailed by 
 criminal depredation. 
 f For all such deeds of lawlessness 
 )there is neither justification nor excuse. 
 \JPhey are utterly and brutally wrong; 
 they simply mark a reversion to bar- 
 barism. Men have a right to unite 
 in a demand for better industrial con- 
 [21] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 ditions and to unite in a refusal to 
 work unless those conditions are sup- 
 plied; they have a right to dissuade 
 other men from taking the places 
 which they have vacated, and to 
 use all the moral influence at their 
 command to this end; but when 
 they resort to coercion and violence 
 in enforcing this demand, they pass 
 beyond the limits of toleration and 
 become enemies of society. There is 
 no room in American civilization for 
 practises of this nature; and the unions 
 have no business on their hands more 
 urgent than that of putting an end 
 to coercion and violence in connection 
 with strikes, no matter at what cost 
 to themselves. They can never win 
 by these methods. They succeed only 
 in arraying against themselves the 
 bitter and determined opposition of 
 those classes in society without whose 
 
 [22] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 support they cannot hope to establish 
 their claim. ' 
 
 An intelligent observer called my 
 attention the other day to what he 
 believed to be a fact — that women 
 of the educated classes are almost 
 universally hostile to unionism. It 
 would not be true of college women; 
 of women in the upper social circles 
 it may be true. There may be other 
 explanations, but one reason for the 
 fact, if fact it be, may be the natural 
 revulsion of the ethical feeling of 
 women against these methods of bru- 
 tality. The unions can never hope 
 to win by methods which array against 
 them such elements of society. 
 
 It is not the enemies of unionism 
 
 who say this. The men who have the 
 
 best right to speak for unionism are 
 
 as clear and positive in their denuncia- 
 
 1 See Appendix I. 
 
 [23] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 tion of violence as could be desired. 
 Only a few days ago I heard a con- 
 spicuous public teacher say that the 
 prominent labor leaders had never dis- 
 countenanced violence. It is to be 
 feared that many of our public teachers 
 are not in the way of finding out what 
 is really said by labor leaders. Take 
 these words of John Mitchell: 
 
 "Above all and beyond all, the 
 leader entrusted with the conduct of 
 a strike must be alert and vigilant 
 in the prevention of violence. The 
 strikers must be made constantly 
 aware of the imperative necessity of 
 remaining peaceable. . . . Under no 
 circumstances should a strike be al- 
 lowed to degenerate into violence. . . . 
 A single act of violence, while it may 
 deter a strike-breaker or a score of 
 them, inflicts much greater and more 
 irreparable damage upon the party 
 [24] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 giving than upon the party receiv- 
 ing the blow. ... It is sometimes 
 claimed that no strike can be won 
 without the use of physical force. 
 I do not believe that this is true, but 
 if it is, it is better that the strike be 
 lost than that it succeed through 
 violence and the commission of out- 
 rages. The cause of unionism is not 
 lost through any strike or through any 
 number of strikes, and if it were true 
 that all strikes would fail if physi- 
 cal force could not be resorted to, 
 it would be better to demonstrate 
 that fact and to seek remedy in 
 other directions than to permit strikes 
 to degenerate into conflicts between 
 armed men. . . . The employers are 
 perfectly justified in condemning as 
 harshly as they desire the acts of any 
 striker or strikers who are guilty of 
 violence. I welcome the most sweep- 
 [25] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 ing denunciation of such acts, and 
 the widest pubHcity that may be 
 given to them by the press." 
 
 It would be easy to fill pages with 
 such testimony by men who have a 
 right to speak for unionism. That 
 the conduct of strikers sometimes falls 
 below this standard is undeniable. 
 The trade-union is one of many organi- 
 zations whose members often fail to 
 live up to their ideals. It is true that 
 members of trade-unions frequently 
 resort to coercion and violence, and 
 more often connive at it. When they 
 do, they violate the principles on 
 which unionism rests, and deserve the 
 reprobation of their neighbors. 
 
 Some of the acts which are com- 
 mitted in connection with strikes are 
 dastardly. The dynamiting of a street 
 car filled with passengers, or the ditch- 
 ing of a train-load of human beings, 
 [26] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 is the act of a savage. As Mr. Mitchell 
 urges, it is no palliation of such an 
 enormity to say that a strike is war, 
 since in all civilized warfare the attack 
 upon non-combatants is considered 
 infamous. 
 /^ I hope I have made it clear that the 
 / resort to violence is not an essential 
 I element in trade-unionism; that its 
 ^^ — Pleading representatives discountenance 
 and denounce it. Some of the great- 
 est and most successful strikes have 
 been attended by little violence. This 
 was true of the anthracite strike and 
 of the recent strike of the cloak- 
 makers in New York. In connection 
 with many strikes much violence has 
 occurred, and it is the common habit 
 of the newspapers and of a class of 
 social moralists to charge all this 
 upon the strikers. In the great ma- 
 jority of cases, however, the strikers 
 [27] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 have little or nothing to do with it. 
 Much of this lawlessness is the work 
 of disorderly and turbulent persons 
 who have no interest in the contest, 
 but who seize upon this opportunity 
 for indulging their destructive propen- 
 sities. During the recent street rail- 
 way strike in Columbus, Ohio, nearly 
 one thousand arrests, were made for 
 disorderly conduct, but of these not 
 more than five or six were of strik- 
 ing railway employees. All but one 
 of these five or six were arrested for 
 loitering, and were discharged when 
 it was shown that they were engaged 
 in peaceful picketing. One man was 
 under suspicion of having dynamited 
 a car in which were no passengers. 
 He is awaiting trial. Yet I suppose 
 that the vast majority of those who 
 read in the newspapers the highly 
 
 colored reports of the street car 
 [28] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 atrocities in Columbus were under 
 the impression that all this mischief 
 was done by the striking railway men. 
 That would be assumed by nine out 
 of ten editors or preachers who com- 
 mented on the news. This is one of 
 the ways in which the case against 
 unionism is made up. Public teachers 
 who mean to be just will exercise 
 some care in getting at the facts 
 before they hold unionists responsible 
 for all the mischief that is done in 
 connection with strikes. 
 
 It is true, however, that strikes are 
 frequently attended by a highly in- 
 flamed state of public opinion, espe- 
 cially among the working classes. This 
 was true of the late strike in Columbus. 
 The sections of our city inhabitated 
 by the working people were swept by 
 gusts of bitter and angry feeling. 
 It was not alone the hoodlums or the 
 [29I 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 criminals who were thus excited; the 
 entire body of respectable, industri- 
 ous working mechanics — men who 
 lived in their own houses — shared 
 in this indignation. Pastors of Prot- 
 estant churches located in these sec- 
 tions told me that their congregations 
 were practically unanimous in this ex- 
 pression of resentment. Undoubtedly 
 much of the disorderly conduct was 
 the product of this superheated feeling. 
 "Very true," says the social moralist; 
 "therefore the strikers, after all, are 
 to blame for the violence, for it is 
 they who stirred up all this angry 
 resentment." Just there I beg to 
 demur. It is a very superficial judg- 
 ment that sees no deeper than this. 
 Such an outbreak of public indignation 
 is due to no mere local irritation; it 
 is due in large part to resentments 
 that have become more or less chronic ; 
 [30] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 it is the expression of a discontent that 
 is deep-seated; it is the product of 
 causes which the social moraUst would 
 better try to understand. The classes 
 among whom this discontent prevails 
 are not, as a rule, "undesirable citi- 
 zens," nor are they the dupes of agi- 
 tators or the tools of "muck-rakers." 
 Very many of them are men to whom 
 the methods of modern financiering 
 are well known, and to Whom the 
 devious ways of public service pro- 
 moters are not altogether obscure. 
 They are not unaware of the burdens 
 they are bearing, and they know who 
 have bound them on their shoulders. 
 And they are sometimes able to see 
 in these labor struggles the working 
 of forces which tend to their further 
 oppression. Certain it is that the 
 burdens which special privilege entails 
 are mainly borne by these very classes. 
 [31] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 We underrate their intelligence when 
 we assume that they are not aware 
 of this, and we presume on their 
 forbearance when we ask them to 
 ignore it. The whole country is up 
 in arms against these abuses of special 
 privilege, and we can hardly wonder 
 if those who suffer most from them 
 sometimes manifest their resentment 
 in ungentle ways. 
 
 I agree with John Mitchell that all 
 this is no . justification of violence; 
 that force is no remedy; that every 
 act of brutality damages the doer 
 more than the victim; that there are 
 better weapons for such contests than 
 brickbats or bludgeons. I urged the 
 striking carmen in our late strike to 
 go out and patrol the lines and pre- 
 vent the stone-throwing. I believe 
 that if they had done it they might 
 have won their strike. But I was 
 [32] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 aware that in calling on them for 
 conduct so altruistic and magnani- 
 mous, I was setting before them an 
 ideal which few groups even of the 
 classes supposed to be superior could 
 be induced to consider. 
 
 All that I now wish to insist upon, 
 however, is that the strikers in any 
 given labor conflict are not to be held 
 wholly responsible for the superheated 
 social atmosphere which surrounds 
 them, and which produces the acts 
 of violence by which strikes are often 
 disfigured. For that dangerous social 
 condition the people who are so eager 
 to put down the violence with an 
 iron hand might often find themselves 
 pretty largely to blame. And in such 
 a disturbance the bystander is some- 
 times reminded of the story of the 
 wolf who was going to devour the 
 lamb because the lamb had roiled 
 [33] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 the water. I do not doubt that the 
 hot words of the strikers in such 
 cases often add fuel to the flame of 
 social discontent, and that the strike 
 is made the occasion of outbreaks of 
 disorder; my only contention is that 
 the deeper causes- of this angry feel- 
 ing must not be ignored. No strike in 
 these days is an isolated phenomenon 
 with a purely local cause; and no one 
 can rationally deal with it who does 
 not comprehend its relation to the 
 prevailing social unrest. 
 
 Two other counts in the indict- 
 ment against unionism must be treated 
 very briefly. The first is the sympa- 
 thetic strike. I am unable to join in 
 the unqualified condemnation of this 
 method of industrial warfare. The 
 act of a trade-union in supporting 
 an affiliated union in its struggle for 
 better conditions, when no advantage 
 [34] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 to itself can be hoped for as the re- 
 sult of its sacrifice, is certainly gener- 
 ous and heroic. The motive is not 
 unworthy. It may be doubted, how- 
 ever, whether it is wise as a general 
 rule for the workers in one union to 
 take up the quarrel of another union. 
 They may be supposed to know the 
 conditions of their own trade; it is 
 nearly impossible for them to know 
 equally well the conditions of other 
 trades, and they may be supporting 
 demands which are unjust and im- 
 practicable. Sometimes such a strike 
 involves the violation of a contract, 
 expressed or implied, with their own 
 employers; in such a case they are put- 
 ting generosity before justice, which is 
 bad morality. The bituminous coal 
 miners were right ^when they refused 
 to violate their trade agreement with 
 the operators by a sympathetic strike 
 [35] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 in support of the anthracite miners. 
 And Mr. Mitchell is teaching good 
 doctrine when he says: "There can 
 be no doubt that, upon the whole and 
 in the long run, the policy of striking 
 in sympathy should be discouraged." 
 
 The other case referred to is that 
 of the secondary boycott. It is quite 
 true, as the unionists point out, that 
 the boycott, in one form or another, is 
 in almost universal use. The with- 
 drawal of patronage from those whose 
 conduct, for one reason or another, 
 we disapprove, is not a thing unheard 
 of. It is by no means uncommon for 
 groups, professional or commercial, to 
 express their dislikes after this man- 
 ner. And there are few among us who 
 are in a position to throw stones at a 
 trade-union which refuses to patronize 
 an employer with whom it is in con- 
 troversy. The primary boycott is a 
 [36] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 weapon which may be greatly abused 
 and which a severe morality would 
 be slow to commend, but in existing 
 industrial conditions the unions cannot 
 be severely censured for using it. 
 
 The secondary boycott is quite an- 
 other story. The union may boycott 
 the employer with whom it is at war, 
 but when it proceeds to boycott all 
 who will not boycott him, it is carry- 
 ing its warfare beyond the limits of 
 toleration. "To boycott a street rail- 
 way which overworks its employees 
 and pays starvation wages is one 
 thing," says Mr. Mitchell; "to boy- 
 cott merchants who ride in the cars 
 is quite another thing, and to boycott 
 people who patronize the stores of the 
 merchants who ride in boycotted cars 
 is still another and a very different 
 thing." The dealer who can be co- 
 erced by such a threat is a man whose 
 [37] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 friendship is not worth much to the 
 union, and the enormous accumula- 
 tion of ill will in the community, which 
 such a practise always engenders, is a 
 heavy price to pay for such advan- 
 tages as it may secure. There is no 
 gainsaying that the frequent resort to 
 the secondary boycott is costing the 
 unions much in the loss of friends 
 whom they greatly need. 
 
 I have not mentioned all the charges 
 which are made against unionism, but 
 I have dealt, as I believe, with the 
 most serious of them. It has been 
 made to appear that unionism is sub- 
 ject to some serious abuses. I hope 
 that it has also appeared that these 
 abuses are not essential parts of the 
 system, and that they are not incur- 
 able. Neither the petty restrictions 
 upon work, nor the ban on prison 
 labor, nor the lessening of the output, 
 [38] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 nor the violence attendant upon labor 
 struggles, nor the sympathetic strike, 
 nor the secondary boycott can be 
 counted as a necessary feature of 
 unionism. All are perversions of its 
 true functions, excrescences which may 
 be purged away. No fair-minded man 
 will condemn unionism because of them 
 any more than he will denounce, be- 
 cause of their abuses, the Christian 
 Church or the democratic state. "It 
 would be a mistake," says that careful 
 philosopher. Professor Charles Horton 
 Cooley, "to regard these or any other 
 kinds of injustice as a part of the 
 essential policy of unions. They are 
 feeling their way in a human, fallible 
 manner, and their eventual policy will 
 be determined by what in the way of 
 class advancement they find by experi- 
 ence to be practicable. In so far as 
 they attempt things that are unjust, 
 [39] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 we may expect them, in the long run, 
 to fail, through the resistance of others 
 and through the awakening of their 
 own consciences. It is the part of 
 other people to check their excesses 
 and to cherish their benefits." ^ 
 
 ^ Social Organization, pp. 288-289 
 
 [40I 
 
II 
 
 THE REASON FOR THE UNIONS 
 
II 
 
 THE REASON FOR THE UNIONS 
 
 1HAVE already dealt with the abuses 
 of unionism. The exigencies of the 
 argument seemed to call for this or- 
 der of treatment, because most of those 
 whom I wish to convince are aware of 
 /nothing but the abuses of unionism. 
 / If they can be made to see that these 
 / abuses are not essential to the institu- 
 ! tion, they may be willing to give heed 
 V to the reasons for its existence. 
 
 It may be supposed that the presen- 
 tation of these reasons is a superfluous 
 work. Nearly every employer whom 
 you meet will tell you promptly, "I 
 believe in trade-unions." There is a 
 goodly number of those whose works 
 .[43] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 show that they do believe in them, and 
 who are seeking to enter into cordial 
 cooperation with them. Most em- 
 ployers, however, are apt to qualify 
 their confession of faith by some such 
 phrase as this: "When properly organ- 
 ized and managed." There seems to 
 be something wanting in such a con- 
 fession. Would a man say, "I believe 
 in the family, when properly consti- 
 tuted and conducted," or "I believe 
 in democracy, when properly organized 
 and managed".? This seems to imply 
 a reservation of our faith in the insti- 
 tution, if, in any case, fault can be 
 found with its practical administration. 
 Would it not be better to say concern- 
 \ing the family or concerning democracy: 
 'I believe in it, and I hold myself bound 
 
 \ to do my utmost to see that it is held 
 Jin honor and that it is properly con- 
 
 Cstituted and administered"? If such 
 [44] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 were the attitude of all employers to- 
 ward trade-unionism, we should soon 
 see a vast improvement in the indus- 
 trial situation. And I am quite sure 
 that there are many employers who are 
 now frankly antagonistic to the unions 
 who would take this more friendly atti- 
 tude toward them if they could clearly 
 see what are the real purposes of the 
 unions, and what disasters are involved 
 in the proposition to kill or cripple them.' 
 Most of those who say that they 
 believe in unions, "if properly con- 
 ducted," mean to confine their approval 
 to such unions as are purely social or 
 beneficial. Trade-unions generally em- 
 body some such features, but they are 
 not the central reasons for their exist- 
 ence. The Federal statute providing 
 for the incorporation of trade-unions 
 mentions these objects, but also speci- 
 
 * Appendix II. 
 l45] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 fies, as purposes of such organizations, 
 " the regulation of their wages and their 
 hours and conditions of labor, the pro- 
 tection of their individual rights in the 
 prosecution of their trade or trades." 
 The trade-union has always had insur- 
 ance features and social and educational 
 features, and these are the features 
 which the average employer is ready to 
 indorse; but the main purpose for 
 which they are organized is thus suc- 
 cinctly expressed by Mr. and Mrs. 
 Webb: "To provide a continuous asso- 
 ciation of wage-earners, for the purpose 
 of maintaining or improving the condi- 
 tions of their employment." This purpose 
 the average employer does not approve 
 of; when the union begins to exert its 
 power in regulating wages or hours or 
 conditions of labor, he thinks that it 
 is getting out of its sphere and becom- 
 ing a menace to the social wellbeing. 
 [46] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 Here, now, is the crux of the situa- 
 tion. This is the main function of the 
 trade-union — to organize and express 
 the will of its members in bargaining 
 about terms and conditions of labor. 
 For one who disputes this right, to say- 
 that he believes in trade-unions is much 
 like saying that he believes in watches 
 provided they have no mainsprings, or 
 in rivers so long as there is no water 
 in them. No one can intelligently say 
 that he approves of trade-unions unless 
 he approves of giving to the men who 
 are organized in them the right of deal- 
 ing, through their representatives, on 
 equal terms with their employers, con- 
 cerning the wages they shall receive, 
 the hours they shall labor, and the con- 
 ditions under which their work shall be 
 done. 
 
 There are employers who appear to 
 say that they are willing to permit 
 [47] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 trade-unions to negotiate about these 
 matters, provided the unions will pledge 
 themselves beforehand not to enforce 
 their demands by striking. It does not 
 appear, however, that these employers 
 propose to divest themselves of the 
 power to reduce wages, against the will 
 of the men, or to dismiss whom they 
 will without the consent of the union. 
 They expect to keep for themselves all 
 the power they now possess; all they 
 ask is that before entering upon the 
 struggle for the division of the joint 
 product of capital and labor, the repre- 
 sentatives of labor shall tie their own 
 hands behind their backs. The propo- 
 sition does not appear to be a very 
 chivalrous one; probably while human 
 nature remains as it is, and the com- 
 petitive regime continues to prevail, 
 it will not be widely accepted. 
 
 What, then, shall we say about this 
 [48] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 demand of the unions — that they shall ^ 
 have the right, collectively, through 
 their chosen representatives, to bargain 
 with their employers about wages and 
 conditions of labor? Is it a reasonable 
 demand? I think that it is eminently 
 reasonable and just; that no fair- 
 minded employer ought for one mo- 
 ment to question it. 
 
 Let us remind ourselves that we are 
 not dealing now with the old domestic 
 system of industry, in which there were 
 nearly as many men as masters, and 
 the cases were rare in which the capi- 
 talist employer did not personally know 
 all the people in his employ. Most of 
 our industrial maxims are drawn out of 
 that old regime, and have no applica- 
 tion to the present order. Let us re- 
 member that we are dealing now with 
 the large system of industry, in which 
 a single responsible employer represents 
 l49] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 hundreds or thousands of stockholders, 
 and deals with hundreds or thousands 
 of employees — a relation in which per- 
 sonal friendships and sympathies be- 
 tween employer and employee have 
 come to be a negligible quantity. Sup- 
 pose, now, that there is no organization 
 among the laborers, or none that has 
 any power to deal with questions of 
 wages or hours of labor. The competi- 
 tive regime is founded on the assump- 
 tion that prices will be fixed by "the 
 higgling of the market." How much 
 "higgling of the market" is likely to 
 take place between a single laborer and 
 such a corporation.? Let Sidney and 
 Beatrice Webb set forth the details of 
 the process. The case supposed is that 
 of a labor market in perfect equilibrium. 
 "We assume that there is only a 
 single situation vacant, and only one 
 candidate for it. When the workman 
 [so] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 applies for the post to the employer's 
 foreman, the two parties differ consid- 
 erably in strategic strength. There is 
 first the difference of alternative. If 
 the foreman, and the capitalist em- 
 ployer for whom he acts, fail to come 
 to terms with the workman, they may 
 be put to some inconvenience in arran- 
 ging the work of the establishment. 
 They may have to persuade the other 
 workmen to work harder or to work 
 overtime ; they may even be compelled 
 to leave a machine vacant, and thus 
 run the risk of some delay in the com- 
 pletion of an order. Even if the work- 
 man remains obdurate, the worst that 
 the capitalist suffers is a fractional de- 
 crease of the year's profit. Meanwhile 
 he and his foreman, with their wives 
 and families, find their housekeeping 
 quite unaffected ; they go on eating and 
 drinking, working and enjoying them- 
 [Si] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 selves, whether the bargain with the 
 individual workman has been made or 
 not. Very different is the case with 
 the wage-earner. If he refuses the 
 foreman's terms even for a day, he ir- 
 revocably loses his whole day's subsist- 
 ence. If he has absolutely no other 
 resources than his labor, hunger brings 
 him to his knees the very next morning. 
 Even if he has a little hoard, or a couple 
 of rooms full of furniture, he and his 
 family can only exist by the immediate 
 sacrifice of their cherished provision 
 against calamity, or the stripping of 
 their home. Sooner or later he must 
 come to terms, on pain of starvation or 
 the workhouse." 1 It is now universally 
 agreed, Professor Marshall tells us, 
 " that manual laborers as a class are at 
 a disadvantage in bargaining." The 
 
 ^Industrial Democracy, Part III, Chap. II. 
 The entire chapter is most illuminating. 
 [52] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 fact is so palpable that it is needless to 
 quote authorities. A single laborer has\ 
 no fighting chance in dealing with a \ 
 great corporation; he can only accept I 
 what is offered him. The consequence / 
 is his inevitable degradation. Profes- 
 sor Marshall points out that "the ef- 
 fects of the laborer's disadvantage in 
 bargaining are cumulative in two ways. 
 It lowers his wages, and, as we have 
 seen, this lowers his efficiency as a 
 worker, and thereby lowers the normal 
 value of his labor; and, in addition, it 
 lowers his efficiency as a bargainer, and 
 thus increases the chance that he will 
 sell his labor for less than its normal 
 value." 
 
 tinder the present system of large in- 
 dustry, with competition as the regula- 
 tive principle, unorganized labor is 
 always driven on the downward road. 
 This results, not only from the inequal- 
 [53] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 ity between the single laborer and the 
 great corporation, but also from the 
 competition between employers. For 
 the employer of humane and liberal 
 sentiment, who wishes to pay his work- 
 ing people the highest wages possible, 
 finds himself unable to compete with 
 the unscrupulous employer, who, by 
 forcing wages down, is able to produce 
 goods cheaper than the former can, and 
 thus to undersell him in the market and 
 get his business away from him. Mr. 
 John Graham Brooks quotes a retired 
 shoe manufacturer of wealth who said 
 of the trade-unions: "They make a 
 good many stupid mistakes, but an 
 organization strong enough to fight the 
 jmployer is a necessity to labor. Com- 
 petition so forces many of the best em- 
 ployers to copy the sharp tricks of the 
 worst employers in lowering wages, 
 "^that the trade-union must be equipped 
 [54] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 to fight against these reductions or for 
 a rise in wages when business is. more 
 prosperous." I 
 
 The fact that unorganized labor is 
 steadily forced downward toward star- 
 vation and misery is a fact which no 
 student of industrial conditions would 
 dream of denying. The history of the 
 industrial revolution by which the fac- 
 tory system supplanted the domestic 
 system of production is full of examples 
 of this process. Men who angrily de- 
 clare that there shall be no organization 
 of labor ought to read carefully the 
 industrial history of the second quarter 
 of the nineteenth century, when the 
 conditions which they consider ideal 
 were prevailing in the great industrial 
 centers. There were no unions in 
 England during the earlier part of this 
 period; laws of the most drastic char- 
 
 ^The Social Unrest, p 15. 
 [55] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 acter, which made it a criminal conspir- 
 acy for two or three working men to 
 consult together for the purpose of 
 securing shorter hours or better wages, 
 had effectually stamped out unionism. 
 For the employers it was a most pros- 
 perous period; wealth was increasing 
 by leaps and bounds, great fortunes 
 were being heaped up; but the chasm 
 between the employer and the em- 
 ployed was steadily widening, and the 
 condition of the working people was 
 becoming more and more deplorable. 
 "In the new cities," says Arnold Toyn- 
 bee, "the old warm attachments, born 
 of local contiguity and intercourse, 
 vanished in the fierce contest for wealth 
 among thousands who had never seen 
 each other's faces before. Between the 
 individual workmen and the capital- 
 ist who employed hundreds of ' hands ' 
 a wide gulf opened; the workman 
 [56] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 ceased to be the cherished dependent; 
 he became the hving tool of whom the 
 employer knew less than he did of his 
 steam-engine."' 
 
 Government reports of this period 
 show that children of five and six years 
 of age were frequently employed in 
 factories. Men and women stood at 
 their daily tasks from twelve to four- 
 teen and fifteen hours; a working day 
 of sixteen hours was not an unheard- 
 of thing. Even at that early day the 
 demand was loud for machines that 
 could be tended by women and chil- 
 dren; and their husbands and fathers 
 were driven out of the shops and com- 
 pelled to stand idle in the market-place. 
 "Nor was this unmeasured abuse of 
 child labor," says Mr. Hyndman, "con- 
 fined to the cotton, silk, or wool indus- 
 tries. It spread in every direction. 
 1 The Industrial Revolution, p. 190. 
 [57] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 The profit was so great that nothing 
 could stop its development. The re- 
 port of 1842 is crammed with state- 
 ments as to the fearful overwork of 
 girls and boys in iron and coal mines, 
 which doubtless had been going on 
 from the end of the eighteenth century. 
 Children, being small and handy, were 
 particularly convenient for small veins 
 of coal, and for pits where no great 
 amount of capital was embarked ; they 
 could get about where horses and mules 
 could not. Little girls were forced to 
 carry heavy buckets of coal up high 
 ladders, and little girls and boys, 
 instead of animals, dragged the coal- 
 bunkers. Women were constantly 
 employed underground at the filthi- 
 est tasks."* 
 Through all this period wages gravi- 
 
 ^ Historic Basis of Socialism in England, 
 p. 166. 
 
 [58] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 tated downward, and while the cost of 
 food increased, the family income was 
 steadily lowered. The Parliamentary 
 reports give us pictures of the life of 
 the people in all the great manufactur- 
 ing centers that leave nothing for the 
 imagination: "In the parishes of St. 
 John and St. Margaret there lived in 
 1840, according to the Journal of the 
 Statistical Society, 5,366 working men's 
 families in 5294 "dwellings' (if they 
 deserve the name!), men, women, and 
 children thrown together without dis- 
 tinction of age or sex, 26,830 persons 
 all told; and of these families three- 
 fourths possessed but one room. In 
 the aristocratic parish of St. George, 
 Hanover Square, there lived, according 
 to the same authority, 1465 working 
 men's families, nearly six thousand per- 
 sons, under similar conditions, and here, 
 too, more than two-thirds of the whole 
 [59] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 number crowded together at the rate of 
 one family in one room." 
 
 "The preacher of the old church at 
 Edinburgh, Dr. Lee, testified in 1836 
 before the Commission of Religious 
 Instruction that he had never seen such 
 misery in his parish, where the people 
 were without furniture, without every- 
 thing, two married couples often shar- 
 ing one room. In a single day he had 
 visited seven houses in which there was 
 not a bed; in some of them not even 
 a heap of straw. Old people of eighty 
 years sleep on the board floor; nearly 
 all slept in their day clothes. In one 
 cellar room he found two families from 
 a Scotch country district. Soon after 
 their removal to the city two of the 
 children had died, and a third was dying 
 at the time of his visit. Each family 
 had a filthy pile of straw lying in a 
 
 corner, and the cellar sheltered, besides 
 [60] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 the two families, a donkey, and was, 
 moreover, so dark that it was impossible 
 to distinguish one person from another 
 by day. Dr. Lee declared that it was 
 enough to make a heart of adamant 
 bleed to see such misery in a country 
 like Scotland." i 
 
 And these, be it remembered, were no 
 days of industrial depression in Great 
 Britain; they were flush times, boom- 
 ing times, when railways were building, 
 and great mills were springing up on 
 every hand, and hundreds of capitalist 
 employers were building up great for- 
 tunes. 
 
 Such is the irresistible tendency of 
 the large system of industry when labor 
 is unorganized. It is helpless to resist 
 the forces which press upon it from 
 every side and doom it to degradation. 
 
 1 The Condition of the Working Classes in 
 England in 1844, by Frederick Engels. 
 [61] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 Our own country has witnessed com- 
 paratively little of this tendency, be- 
 cause until recently there has been 
 abundance of cheap land to which the 
 workers could betake themselves, and 
 the physical development of a new 
 country has absorbed our surplus labor. 
 But even here the labor of women in 
 the cities has given us some hints of 
 the oppression to which unorganized 
 labor is exposed; and such conditions 
 as have lately been uncovered in Pitts- 
 burgh, where unionism has been practi- 
 cally exterminated, enable us to see 
 what kind of fate is in reserve for any 
 working class which fails to unite for 
 its own protection. 
 
 What other possible barrier can be 
 interposed between the working class 
 and these forces of selfishness that al- 
 ways tend to exploit and degrade them .? 
 Shall the power of the State be called 
 
 162 ] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 in to protect them? The State may 
 usefully interfere in behalf of children 
 and women, and in the interest of pub- 
 lic health, and for the safeguarding of 
 the life of the laborer, and in some other 
 ways; but so long as competition is 
 the regulative principle of industry, the 
 State can do very little to shield the 
 laboring man from the pressure on his 
 means of subsistence of the superin- 
 cumbent mass of consolidated capital. 
 Nor is it desirable that the State should 
 take any class of its citizens under its 
 special patronage. 
 
 It is often charged that the State has 
 extended special privileges to capital, 
 by which it has been able to exploit the 
 laboring class; and also that it has 
 failed to prevent illegal and oppressive 
 conduct on the part of the strong, by 
 which the weak have been plundered. 
 All such wrongs the State is bound to 
 [63] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 rectify; but when it has done all that 
 it ought to do in these directions, it will 
 still be possible for great combinations 
 of organized capital to take advantage 
 of unorganized labor and crowd it to 
 the wall, and there is nothing that the 
 State can do to prevent it. 
 
 It may be suggested that the senti- 
 ments of justice and humanity in the 
 hearts of the capitalists themselves will 
 prevent this oppression. Doubtless 
 there are among them men of good will 
 who would be moved by such considera- 
 tions ; but unfortunately, these are not 
 the people who set the pace in these 
 competitive struggles; and the unor- 
 ganized laborers, instead of enjoying 
 the protection of the best employers, 
 soon find themselves at the mercy of 
 the meanest. 
 
 But who wants to put them under 
 anybody's protection or at anybody's 
 I64] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 mercy? Who wants them to be cod- 
 dled by the State or cockered by their 
 employers? Are we going to put the 
 millions of working people on the list 
 of beneficiaries, and teach them to de- 
 pend for their existence on the bounty 
 of their employers ? These are Ameri- 
 can citizens ; they ought not to feel that 
 they are living on this soil by anybody's 
 sufferance; they ought not to be put, 
 by our industrial system, in a position 
 of vassalage, and they must not be. 
 They ought to be men who have rights, 
 and who "know their rights, and, know- 
 ing, dare maintain." We cannot afford 
 to have any other kind of citizens in 
 this country. Some way must be 
 found by which these men shall be- 
 come, not only politically, but indus- 
 trially free; by which they shall have 
 something themselves to say respect- 
 ing the terms and conditions of their 
 [65] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 employment; by which they shall be 
 assured that their standing in the com- 
 munity is not a matter of grace, but of 
 right. 
 
 It is one of the bitter complaints 
 against trade-unionists that they be- 
 come insolent and arrogant in the use 
 of their power. How much of that is 
 a reaction from the abject servility to 
 which anti-unionism tends to degrade 
 them ? I confess that nothing more dis- 
 quieting has lately come to my knowl- 
 edge than that state of mind in which 
 we sometimes find American working 
 men. In a late number of the Techni- 
 cal World Mr. P. Harvey Middleton 
 thus describes his interview with a 
 working man in the Carnegie works at 
 Homestead. It was on a Sunday morn- 
 ing, and the man was just out of the 
 mill. " He was asked if there had been 
 
 any reduction of Sunday work since 
 [66] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 the recent order about Sunday labor 
 
 had been issued. ' Reduction be ! ' 
 
 he ejaculated. 'Why, I haven't had a 
 Sunday off in five years.' Then he 
 suddenly became very serious, and, 
 looking fearfully around the car (the 
 steel workers have learned by bitter 
 experience that the spies of the corpo- 
 ration are everywhere), bent down — 
 he was over six feet — and whispered 
 in my ear: 'This morning I skipped 
 without saying a word to my boss. I 
 don't know what will happen, and I 
 have a wife and five kids at home. But 
 I think I might have at least one half 
 Sunday in five years, don't you ? ' This 
 last an almost pathetic appeal. Here 
 was an American citizen who had been 
 working twelve hours a day, seven days 
 (eighty-four hours) a week for five con- 
 secutive years. He was a laborer, and 
 the Steel Trust paid him for his endless 
 [67] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 toil sixteen and a half cents an hour. 
 He wanted to spend the Sunday with 
 his wife and children, but there was 
 very little doubt in my mind that when 
 he returned to work on Monday morn- 
 ing, he would be promptly discharged 
 for quitting work without permission 
 on the day of rest." 
 / However that might have been, the 
 / shameful fact is that an American man 
 1 should be afraid to complain of such 
 \ conditions lest he should lose his liveli- 
 \hood. So also during this year of 
 grace, in a town named Bethlehem(!), 
 three machinists who dared to petition 
 the manager of the steel works for 
 the elimination of Sunday work were 
 promptly discharged. As a conse- 
 quence of this drastic policy, generally 
 enforced where there are no unions, 
 working men hardly dare to express a 
 
 wish for better conditions. Mr. Robert 
 [68] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 A. Woods, a most sober student of 
 existing conditions, says that "the 
 Pittsburgh employers' point of view, 
 more than that of any other city in the 
 country, is hke that of England in the 
 early days of the factory system — 
 holding employees guilty of a sort of 
 impiety, and acting with sudden and 
 sure execution if they undertake to 
 enforce their claims in such way as 
 to embarrass the momentum of great 
 business administration." This is the 
 point of view which tends to prevail 
 where unionism is excluded, and sub- 
 mission to it must produce a servile 
 spirit in the laborer. 
 
 The street-car men in our Columbus 
 strike have told me of the fear of conse- 
 quences which oppressed them when, 
 before their union was organized, they 
 ventured to circulate a humble and 
 perfectly respectful petition for a slight 
 [69] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 increase of pay. That they had reason 
 for such fear was made manifest when 
 the company's inspectors warned them 
 that they would be sorry if they did any 
 such thing, and when those who were 
 instrumental in circulating the petition 
 were first reprimanded by the manager, 
 and then, one by one, discharged. 
 
 I do not think that a wise statesman- 
 ship will consent to see the masses 
 of American working men put in a 
 position like thjs. Some way must 
 be found by which they may keep 
 their liberty and preserve their man- 
 hood. 
 
 By organizing themselves into unions 
 they obtain and preserve this power. 
 I know no other way under the pres- 
 ent industrial system by which they 
 can obtain it. I have never heard 
 any other way suggested. 
 
 By this method they do maintain 
 [70] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 their freedom and prevent the degrada- 
 tion to which, without organization, 
 they are doomed. There is no question 
 that, in the well-weighed words of John 
 Mitchell, "trade-unionism has justified 
 its existence by good works and high 
 purposes. ... It has elevated the 
 standard of living of the American 
 workman and conferred upon him 
 higher wages and more leisure. It has 
 increased efficiency, diminished acci- 
 dents, averted disease, kept the children 
 at school, raised the moral tone of the 
 factories." Much of the legislation by 
 which the conditions of the laboring 
 classes have been improved is due to 
 the initiative of the unions. Beyond 
 all controversy, that frightful deteriora- 
 tion of the industrial classes which the 
 large system of industry set in deadly 
 operation has been arrested, and the lot 
 of the laboring man has been vastly 
 [71] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 improved during the last seventy-five 
 years. No such horrible living condi- 
 tions as those which I have described 
 above can be found today in the great 
 factory towns of Great Britain; even 
 "the submerged tenth" are living far 
 more decently now than the average 
 mechanic was living then. Even Pitts- 
 burgh, in all its misery, is a paradise 
 compared with Manchester and Glas- 
 gow in the third and fourth decades of 
 the nineteenth century. Many causes 
 have wrought together to produce this 
 improvement, but the students of social 
 science agree in their judgment that the 
 most efficient cause of that improve- 
 ment has been the organization of labor. 
 It has enabled the working people to 
 resist the pressure that would have 
 degraded them, and to demand and 
 secure a fairer share of the wealth which 
 their labor produces. 
 [72] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 It is true that not all working men 
 have been included in the unions, but 
 even those outside the organizations 
 have largely shared in the gains that 
 have been won by organized labor. 
 When, in an open shop, the union suc- 
 ceeds in getting better wages or shorter 
 hours, the non-union men get the bene- 
 fit of the rise. The unorganized trades, 
 like that of the sewing women, have, no 
 doubt, often been exploited by their 
 employers; but the general level of 
 wages is undoubtedly kept up by the 
 labor unions. 
 
 So great have been the benefits which 
 unionism has brought to the laboring 
 classes and to the community at large 
 -that a philosophic statesman like Pro- 
 fessor Thorold Rogers, of Oxford, de- 
 clared that if he had the making of the 
 laws he would exclude from the fran- 
 chise all workingmen who were not 
 [73] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 members of trade-unions. Certain it 
 is that the man who proposes to outlaw 
 or exterminate them assumes a heavy 
 responsibility. 
 
 [74] 
 
Ill 
 
 INDUSTRY AND DEMOCRACY 
 
Ill 
 
 INDUSTRY AND DEMOCRACY 
 
 WHAT is commonly called the 
 Labor Question is something 
 more than a problem of eco- 
 nomic organization; it deals with all 
 that is most fundamental in the life of 
 the commonwealth. It challenges the 
 postulates of our political science; the 
 answer to it involves the validity of 
 the principles laid down in the Declara- 
 tion of Independence and the perma- 
 nency of the Constitution of the United 
 States. To answer it in one way 
 means the surrender of popular govern- 
 ment; to answer it in another way 
 means the fulfilment and completion 
 
 of democracy. 
 
 [77I 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 The great fact of the age is Democ- 
 racy, the coronation of the common 
 man. For the past hundred years he 
 has been steadily coming to his own. 
 Not only in the republics, the United 
 States and France and Switzerland, 
 not only in free England and her 
 colonies, but in all the states described 
 as monarchical, the enfranchisement 
 of the common man has been going 
 forward. The emperor of Germany, 
 who declares that he rules by the 
 will of God, nevertheless is compelled 
 to ask the common man for the rev- 
 enues by which he rules ; even the czar 
 of Russia and the sultan of Turkey 
 have been compelled to stoop to him, 
 and the lords of political privilege 
 everywhere have discovered that there 
 is no stability for the throne that is 
 not "broad-based upon the people's 
 will." Popular government is every- 
 [78] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 where in the ascendant, and not only 
 is government of the people, by the 
 people, for the people, not going to 
 perish from the earth, it is going to 
 possess the earth, and that at no 
 distant day. Monarchical forms may 
 linger long, as in England, but the 
 democratic fact will prevail ever5^where 
 as it prevails there. 
 
 In our own country we have given, 
 in theory, the most unreserved ex- 
 pression to the principle of political 
 democracy; the principle is yet but 
 imperfectly worked out here, as every- 
 where, and we have much exacting 
 business upon our hands in completing 
 and developing our democratic insti- 
 tutions — work that will call for a 
 great deal of patience and toil and 
 self-denial ; but we believe, most of us, 
 in the principle; we have committed 
 ourselves to it, and we expect, by 
 [79] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 means of it, to unify the diverse 
 races now thronging upon this con- 
 tinent and to make of them a strong, 
 free, self-governing people. 
 
 But there is one department of our 
 life, and this the largest interest of 
 all, which has not been democratized. 
 Our industries are still largely on an 
 autocratic of feudalistic basis. We 
 have been trying to correlate a po- 
 litical democracy with an industrial 
 feudalism. They do not work well 
 together. I do not think that they 
 will endure together. They are antag- 
 onistic principles. The developnient 
 of the large system of industry accen- 
 tuates the antagonism. We may say 
 what Lincoln said of slavery and free- 
 dom; the country will become eventu- 
 ally all democratic or all feudalistic. 
 The working men will lose their politi- 
 cal liberty, or they will gain their in- 
 [80] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 dustrial liberty. I do not think that 
 they will lose their votes ; I think that 
 they will gain their right to have a 
 voice in determining what wages they 
 shall receive and under what conditions 
 they shall work. 
 
 Let me explain what I mean when 
 I say that the basis of our present 
 industry is feudalistic. I am speak- 
 ing, of course, of the large system of 
 industry under which the world's work 
 is now mainly done, and I am assum- 
 ing, also, that there is no organiza- 
 tion of the laborers, since that is the 
 condition which industrial feudalisni 
 holds up as the ideal and struggles 
 to establish. Under this system the 
 capitalist manager assumes the exclu- 
 sive right to fix the rate of wages, the 
 hours of labor, the conditions under 
 which the work is done. He cannot, 
 
 of course, discuss these matters with 
 I8i] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 each of his one thousand or ten thou- 
 sand workmen; there can, therefore, 
 be no semblance of a bargain in the 
 case; it is an ultimatum; the em- 
 ployer presents it, the working man 
 can take it or leave it. It would be 
 absurd for a single laborer to propose 
 to chaffer about wages or hours of 
 labor with the American Steel Corpo- 
 ration or the Pennsylvania Railroad 
 Company. Out of these circumstances 
 very naturally grows the assumption, 
 on the part of the employer, that the 
 right as well as the power to fix the 
 laborer's wages belongs exclusively to 
 him. When, therefore, any man or 
 any body of men proposes to have 
 something to say about it, he indig- 
 nantly resents this proposal; he calls 
 it interfering with his business. What 
 he says to them is precisely this: 
 
 "It is none of your business what 
 [82] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 wages you shall receive; it is my 
 business to tell you how much you 
 can have, and I cannot permit any 
 one to dictate to me about my busi- 
 ness." 
 
 Of course the employer would say 
 that the working man, or the group 
 of working men, to whom he presents 
 this ultimatum, can seek employment 
 elsewhere; but he would also say, if 
 he is morally consistent, that all other 
 employers ought to treat workmen in 
 the same way that he treats them; 
 and if all do, then the working man s 
 right to have something to say about 
 the wages he shall receive is practi- 
 cally denied. Under such a regimen 
 he becomes a beneficiary, a dependent; 
 reversing Sir Henry Maine's phrase, 
 he has gone back from contract to 
 status; he is not a free man; he has 
 sunk into servitude. This is what I 
 [83] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 mean when I say that the basis of 
 our present industry is feudalistic. 
 
 The working men found out, a 
 good while ago, that the only possible 
 way of preserving and enforcing their 
 right of contract in the sale of their 
 labor was by uniting together and 
 insisting on collective bargaining with 
 their employers. If the capitalist 
 manager's one thousand or ten thou- 
 sand employees unite in presenting 
 their demands, they may succeed in 
 getting some attention to them. By 
 union and organization they may keep 
 themselves from being reduced to a 
 position of dependence and servitude, 
 and may establish their right to a 
 share in the wealth created by their 
 labor and a voice in the distribution 
 of the product of industry. 
 
 This means, of course, the recogni- 
 tion of a partnership of the men in 
 [84] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 the business by which they earn their 
 livelihood ; their employer has invested 
 his money in it, and they have invested 
 their lives; they are entitled to such 
 recognition. When this right is recog- 
 nized, they are not any longer sub- 
 jects; they are fellow-citizens and 
 freemen; the common man has come 
 to his own in the industrial realm; 
 our democracy has completed itself. 
 
 Long ago we gave the common man 
 the right to take part in making the 
 laws of the State and the Nation and 
 in choosing the men who should ad- 
 minister those laws; we let him say 
 who shall be our presidents and our 
 governors and our judges; but we 
 have been afraid that it would never 
 do to let him have anything to say 
 about the wages he should receive or 
 the hours he should work. I do not 
 think that this fear is rational; at 
 [8s] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 any rate, the thing that he asks for 
 is his right, and we have got to give 
 him his right and teach him how to 
 use it. And since, under the present 
 industrial system, it is impossible for 
 him to assert and maintain this right 
 without organization, all who love jus- 
 tice and freedom ought to encourage 
 him to organize, and stand by him and 
 see that he gets the fruits of his organi- 
 zation. 
 /^ There is no other way, I repeat, 
 / under the pressure of the stupendous 
 \ combinations of capital, to rescue labor 
 I from degradation except by the firm 
 / organization of labor. There is no 
 salvation for our democracy under the 
 wage system but in this concerted 
 resistance of the wage-workers. That 
 they are prone to abuse their power 
 has been fully admitted, and we all 
 
 know how impossible are some of their 
 [86] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 methods, and how needful it some- 
 times is to resist and defeat their 
 aggressions. The acquisition of power 
 by those who have long been deprived 
 of it, is apt to be attended by out- 
 breaks of wilfulness and arrogance. 
 Patience and firmness will be needed 
 in dealing with such cases. But as 
 soon as we have made up our minds 
 to be just, it will be easier to be patient 
 and firm. We can stand up against 
 other people's wrongs much more suc- 
 cessfully when they know that we are 
 ready to concede] and maintain their 
 rights. I do not expect to see law- 
 lessness disappear from trade-unionism 
 so long as there is so strong a disposi- 
 tion among employers to insist on 
 making trade-unions outlaws. When 
 workmen's right to combine for the 
 protection of their interests is fully 
 and frankly conceded, we shall, I 
 [87] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 believe, soon see a great diminution 
 of violence. At any rate, we shall 
 then be in a position to deal with it, 
 if it appears, sternly and effectively. 
 
 I do not, however, indulge the expec- 
 tation that no mistakes will ever be 
 made and no wrongs committed by 
 working men after their right to com- 
 bine is fully recognized. They are 
 human, like the rest of us; and if 
 they sometimes act foolishly and self- 
 ishly, those of us who never make any 
 mistakes or do any mean things our- 
 selves will be warranted in stoning 
 them with stones. 
 
 The fact that they do sometimes 
 act unreasonably and even brutally 
 is constantly and passionately cited 
 as a reason why they should not be 
 permitted to combine. But I seem to 
 remember to have somewhere heard it 
 intimated that corporations have been 
 
 188] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 known to behave lawlessly and flagi- 
 tiously. Shall we therefore have no 
 corporations? If power is to be de- 
 nied to all [who abuse it, most of us 
 will have to go powerless for the rest 
 of our days. If those who have most 
 abused it are to be the first to be 
 deprived of it, then I say deliberately 
 that there are ten reasons for pro- 
 hibiting corporations where there is 
 one for prohibiting trade-unions. 
 
 The power that men need to make 
 them men must be given to them even 
 though they may sometimes abuse it. 
 That is the principle of democracy; 
 and the time has come when the 
 principle of democracy must be un- 
 reservedly accepted and unflinchingly 
 applied to the organization of our in- 
 dustries. The common man, the work- 
 ing man, must be a freeman. He 
 must not be required or permitted to 
 [89] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 occupy a dependent or servile position 
 in the industrial world. 
 
 It is well to get clearly before our 
 minds the issue which confronts us. 
 The question is whether we are ready 
 to see our democracy complete itself. 
 To that question the answer will not 
 be unanimous. We have among us 
 not a few lords of privilege who have 
 been practising feudalism long enough 
 to lose their faith in democracy. Men 
 who mount to affluence in a decade or 
 two are quite apt to acquire contempt 
 for those who earn their daily bread 
 by manual labor. Some of them have 
 sense enough to conceal it, but there 
 are many who blurt it out with no 
 misgiving. "Mr. Worldly Wiseman," 
 to whom Mr. Finley Dunne has intro- 
 duced us in his Interpreter' s House, 
 is not an imaginary type; his cyni- 
 cisms are but faithful reports of what 
 [90] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 may be heard anywhere in the rich 
 men's clubs and the smoking-rooms of 
 the American Uners. The people who 
 think that popular government is a 
 delusion, that our pubHc school sys- 
 tem is a curse, and that what we want 
 is an American House of Lords to 
 overawe and hold in check the insur- 
 gent democracy, may be met with 
 here and there in the resorts frequented 
 by the new rich. The funniest thing 
 for many a moon is the spectacle of 
 these people beating their breasts with 
 alarm lest Theodore Roosevelt should 
 make himself a king! 
 
 The existence of a considerable revolt 
 against democracy in our American 
 citizenship is a fact to be reckoned with. 
 It is not a matter of wonder. Many 
 of these people are living a life which 
 in all its features is at war with the 
 first principles of democracy. They 
 [91] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 could hardly be expected to maintain 
 their faith in a social theory which all 
 their practise flouts. 
 
 There are many others whose lives 
 are simpler, but who are beginning to 
 shrink from the burdens which de- 
 mocracy imposes. Most of us have 
 been inclined to assume that democ- 
 racy was a sort of automatic device; 
 given universal suffrage and free 
 schools, and the machinery would run 
 without much superintendence. It 
 begins to be evident that this is a 
 mistaken theory. Democracy is pre- 
 cisely the kind of government which 
 requires of its citizens the largest 
 amount of gratuitous service. We can 
 have the best government in the world 
 with such citizens as are now upon 
 our soil; but only when men of intel- 
 ligence and force face the responsi- 
 bilities of citizenship, and give time 
 [92] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 and toil and patience to the work of 
 training and guiding the voters. Good 
 government under any system is a 
 costly product, and under a democ- 
 racy the cost must be paid by the 
 entire body of competent citizens. It 
 is a war in which there is no discharge; 
 the vigilance which is the price of 
 liberty is not only eternal, it is uni- 
 versal. 
 
 Now, it is a melancholy fact that 
 a good many of our well-to-do and not 
 evil-minded citizens are getting tired 
 of the responsibilities of democracy; 
 they find that it is a strenuous busi- 
 ness, and they would fain be rid of 
 it. They would rather give their days 
 to gain and their nights to pleasure 
 than to shoulder the task of govern- 
 ing this republic. Some of them talk 
 very pessimistically about the future 
 of popular government, and even hint 
 [93] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 now and then at the beneficence of a 
 dictatorship. Such men are not likely 
 to welcome the suggestion of the ex- 
 tension of democracy to^ the indus- 
 trial realm. The existing feudalistic 
 regime suits them better. They do 
 not relish the task which would be 
 thrust upon them by the democratiza- 
 tion of our industries. They are right 
 in thinking that it is a difficult task. 
 Perhaps they deem it impossible. Be- 
 fore coming to that conclusion, how- 
 ever, it may be well for them to 
 consider a few of the alternatives. 
 
 There are some difficulties, I be- 
 lieve, in maintaining the feudalistic 
 regime. The employer who refuses 
 to recognize the right of his men to 
 have anything to say about wages or 
 hours of labor does not always have 
 an easy and quiet time of it. Troubles 
 of a pretty serious nature do arise, 
 [94] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 even under such management. Are 
 not the frictions and collisions and 
 losses of the autocratic regime quite 
 as injurious as any that would be 
 likely to arise under a more friendly 
 arrangement ? 
 
 The man who thinks it would be 
 difficult to lead his employees in the 
 peaceful paths of productive industry 
 may well consider whether it is any 
 easier to drive them. He may even 
 find it profitable to consult his own 
 experience in answering that question. 
 
 It is prudent, also, to remember 
 that we are dealing here with one of 
 those secular forces against which it 
 is futile to contend. If anything is 
 clearly written in the book of destiny, 
 so far as its pages have thus far been 
 turned over, it is that democracy is 
 going to complete itself. That proc- 
 ess has been moving steadily forward 
 [95] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 during the past century, and it is not 
 likely to be arrested. Feudalism has 
 made its last stand in the industrial 
 realm, but it is not probable that it 
 can hold that fortress. The prevalence 
 of the large system of industry will 
 not be suffered to degrade our wage- 
 workers to the condition of serfs. 
 There has never been a day when such 
 a result was less probable than it is 
 today. If the employing class should 
 put itself in opposition to this move- 
 ment for the emancipation of the 
 working class, the employing class 
 would cease to exist; the wage system 
 would be destroyed; industry would 
 be reorganized on a new basis. 
 
 It is well, therefore, for our captains 
 of industry to consider carefully what 
 may be involved in their refusal to 
 recognize or tolerate the only method 
 by which the working man can assert 
 [96] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 and maintain his rights. It is a peril- 
 ous thing, as history shows, to deny 
 the manhood of the common man. 
 Kingdoms and thrones have been 
 shaken by that refusal; the kingdom 
 of capitalism is by no means secure 
 against such an overturning. The 
 danger of the hour, as it appears to 
 me, is that our captains of industry 
 will array against themselves the 
 gathering might of resistless democracy 
 and be trampled in the dust. It 
 would be far better for them, and for 
 the common man, and for all the rest 
 of us, if they would keep the leader- 
 ship of industry. Leadership they can 
 have, if they have sense to claim it 
 and wit to exercise it — leadership, 
 but not lordship. Industrial democ- 
 racy wants leaders, but not autocrats; 
 and large rewards and precious — not 
 billions of dollars, but blessing and 
 [97] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 honor — are waiting for those who 
 have the vision and the courage for 
 this high service. 
 
 Industrial democracy means giving 
 the wage-workers, through collective 
 bargaining, a voice in the determina- 
 tion of their share in the joint product. 
 It does not mean the domination of 
 the business by the men and the sub- 
 jugation of the employer, though this 
 is the employer's apprehension, and 
 this is the notion that sometimes gets 
 into the working man's head. Mr. 
 Keir Hardie, M.P., for whom I have 
 great respect, spoke only the other 
 day of the prospect that the working 
 class was about to become the ruling 
 class. Pardon, Mr. Hardie, but in 
 democracy there are no ruHng classes. 
 We call no man master, not even 
 the walking delegate. And inverted 
 feudalism, with the common man on 
 [98] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 top, would be no whit better than the 
 old-fashioned sort with the common 
 man under foot. We will have neither 
 of them. You are not going to tyran- 
 nize over us, Mr. Keir Hardie, with 
 your labor organizations, and we do 
 not believe that you really want to 
 do any such thing. You are going to 
 stand by our side, with power in the 
 industrial realm to assert and main- 
 tain your rights as men, and with a 
 sense of justice in your breasts which 
 will enable you fully to recognize the 
 rights of your capitalist employer; 
 and we are going to work together, 
 all classes — men of capital, men of 
 organizing talent, men of skill, men 
 of brains, and men of brawn — to 
 build a real commonwealth. 
 
 So shall we realize our democracy. 
 It has never been anything more than 
 the skeleton of a democracy; so long 
 I99] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 as industry is feudalistic it cannot be. 
 But when the common man is emanci- 
 pated and called into partnership by 
 the captain of industry, we shall have 
 a real democracy. No superhuman 
 vision is needed to discern the fact 
 that the confusions and corruptions 
 of our political democracy are largely 
 due to the disorganizing influence of 
 this industrial feudalism, in constant 
 contact with it, and continually thrust- 
 ing its alien conceptions and ideals into 
 the political arena. When industry is 
 fairly democratized, it will be much 
 easier to reform our politics. 
 
 The relinquishment of autocratic 
 power is not apt to be a welcome 
 suggestion; the cases are few in which 
 it is surrendered without a deadly 
 struggle. But within the last genera- 
 tion we have seen the feudal rulers 
 of Japan resigning their power and 
 
 [loo] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 I ■ 
 
 entering heartily into the life of the 
 commonwealth, with great honor to 
 themselves and great profit to their 
 nation. It is not incredible that many 
 of our own captains of industry will dis- 
 cern the wisdom of a similar sacrifice. 
 Indeed, there are those among them 
 to whom this solution of the labor 
 problem seems altogether feasible. 
 
 The late William Henry Baldwin, Jr., 
 whose biography has been so admirably 
 written by Mr. John Graham Brooks,* 
 was a type of the class of employers 
 to whom the democratization of in- 
 dustry is the way of life and peace. 
 As a railway superintendent and presi- 
 dent he had large experience in dealing 
 with men, and all the positions taken 
 in this chapter were held by him with 
 the utmost firmness. In the book to 
 
 ^ An American Citizen. By J. G. Brooks. 
 Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. 
 
 [lOl] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 which I have referred, and which 
 ought to be read by every American 
 employer, these opinions of his are set 
 forth with great fulness. Speaking of 
 the extension of collective bargaining, 
 he says: "The advantages of this 
 system are very obvious in that it is 
 a system founded on an intelligent 
 treatment of each question at issue, 
 and encourages education, and, as far 
 as we can see today, is the most 
 advanced method and liable to pro- 
 duce the best results. Collective bar- 
 gaining and voluntary arbitration are 
 possible, however, only when the em- 
 ployer recognizes the right of the employed 
 to have a voice in the fixing oj wages 
 and terms of employment." 
 
 "In the spirit of fair play," says 
 Mr. Brooks, "he asks the simplest 
 question: 'If these billions of capital 
 
 have to be organized to protect them- 
 [102] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 selves against disputing rivalries, do 
 not the laborers working for these 
 organizations have the same need of 
 combination? Do they not need it 
 for the same reason? Is capital ex- 
 posed to cutthroat competition in any 
 greater degree than labor is exposed 
 to it? How can capital have the face 
 to ask for combination, in order to 
 free itself from a murderous competi- 
 tion, when labor suffers every whit as 
 much from the same cause?' I have 
 heard Baldwin," his biographer goes 
 on, "very eloquent on this subject. 
 The deepest thing in him was his 
 sense of justice. He felt it like an 
 insult that the more powerful party 
 should stoop to ask such odds against 
 the weaker and more defenseless 
 party." "'We men at the top,' says 
 Baldwin, 'must have combination, we 
 must have our representatives and 
 [103] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 "walking delegates." We have every- 
 thing that powerful organization can 
 ask, with the ablest lawyers to do our 
 bidding. Labor, to protect its rights 
 and standards, needs organization, at 
 least as much as we need it. For 
 capital to use its strength and skill 
 to take this weapon from the working 
 men and women is an outrage.'" 
 And again: "'I need, as an employer, 
 an organization among my employees, 
 because they know their needs better 
 than I can know them, and they are 
 therefore the safeguard upon which I 
 must depend in order to prevent me from 
 doing them an injustice.^ " 
 
 This is getting right at the nerve 
 of the whole matter. No wiser, braver, 
 saner words were ever spoken. The 
 labor question will be speedily settled 
 when such a spirit of justice and fair 
 
 play, such a recognition of the elemen- 
 [104] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 tal rights of manhood, gets possession 
 of the hearts of employers. Of the 
 habit of mind which cannot concede 
 so much as this, one can say nothing 
 better than that it is unsportsman- 
 Hke. We give even the wild creatures 
 a chance for their lives; and so long 
 as the industrial struggle continues, 
 the chivalrous employer will not insist 
 that his employees shall go into the 
 contest with their hands tied behind 
 them. 
 
 Beyond this question of personal 
 honor between employer and employee 
 is one that touches very deeply the 
 foundations of our social structure 
 "If capital refuses to labor what cap- 
 ital asks and takes for itself, what 
 are the final consequences of that 
 injustice? How, in the long run, is 
 labor to take this defeat of what it 
 believes to be its rights? Those cap- 
 [losl 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 italist managers, really hostile to the 
 unions, said to him in excuse that 
 the unions checked and hindered the 
 development of business prosperity. 
 Baldwin had his answer: 'Even if that 
 is true, it is better to get rich at a 
 somewhat slower pace than to make 
 millions of wage-earners lose faith in 
 your justice and fairness.'" 
 
 Is it too much to expect that our 
 captains of industry will give sober 
 heed to words like these, spoken by 
 one of their own number? 
 
 It is not, however, necessary to 
 assume that the democratization of 
 industry will prove any serious obstruc- 
 tion to the healthy growth of business. 
 If the trade-unions have often shown 
 themselves to be tyrannical and greedy, 
 we must remember that they have 
 been fighting, thus far, in an arena 
 where belligerent rights were denied 
 [io6] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 them ; it is not to be wondered at that 
 they have sometimes taken unfair ad- 
 vantages. When their rights are fully 
 recognized, better conduct may be 
 looked for. So long as they are treated 
 as enemies it is not logical to ask them 
 to behave as friends. 
 
 It would be interesting to study 
 the origins of those trade-unions which 
 have made trouble for employers. The 
 cases are not all alike, but in many 
 instances something like this has hap- 
 pened: some dissatisfaction on the 
 part of the men has shown itself, and 
 it becomes known to the employer 
 that steps are being taken for the 
 organization of a union. At once his 
 displeasure is manifested. He feels 
 that the action is hostile to his interest; 
 his entire attitude toward it is"^ un- 
 friendly from the start. It becomes 
 
 well understood among the men that 
 [107] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 those who join the union are exposing 
 themselves to the ill will of the 
 employer; that those who refuse to 
 join may expect his favor. Thus the 
 interests of the men are divided, and 
 the non-unionist contingent is fostered 
 by the manager as a force to check 
 and defeat the unionists in the event 
 of a struggle. Under such circum- 
 stances bad temper is generated on 
 both sides, and the relations of all 
 parties are badly strained. The man- 
 ager refuses to recognize the union; 
 that, he insists, would be an injustice 
 to the loyal men who have refused 
 to join it. If a union with such a 
 history should prove to be a dis- 
 turbing and refractory element in the 
 business, it would not be a miracle. 
 Suppose, now, that when the first 
 signs of an uprising among the men 
 appear, the employer, instead of treat- 
 
 [io8] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 ing it with suspicion or hostility, wel- 
 comes it. Suppose that he goes out 
 among the men and says to them, 
 what Baldwin would have said: "Cer- 
 tainly, men, you must organize. I 
 mean to treat you fairly, but I do 
 not want you to be dependent on my 
 favor; I insist that you shall have 
 the power to stand for your own 
 rights. And I want all the men in 
 this shop to join this union. No man 
 will curry favor with me by staying 
 out of it. I am going to be friends 
 with the union, and I expect the union 
 to be my friend. This is not my 
 business, not your business, it is our 
 business. I shall study your interest 
 and you will study mine; we will 
 consult together about it all the while; 
 I think we can make it go together. 
 If you ask me for what I cannot give, 
 
 I shall tell you so. And I hope you 
 [ 109 ] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 will learn to believe that I am telling 
 you the truth. I shall stand for my 
 rights if you are mean and unreason- 
 able, and you will stand for yours if 
 you think I am unjust, but if we must 
 fight we stand on the level and fight 
 fair. I hope that there will be no 
 fighting." 
 
 Now, it is possible that a group of 
 American working men could be found 
 who would make trouble for an em- 
 ployer who took that attitude and 
 consistently maintained it, but I do 
 not believe that there are many such 
 groups. It would be visionary to 
 expect that any method which man 
 could devise would wholly remove 
 friction and discontent, and a strong 
 and firm hand would often be needed 
 in carrying out such a purpose as this, 
 but one may confidently predict that 
 
 peace and prosperity are made nearer 
 [no] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 by this approach than on the Hnes of 
 industrial feudalism. * 
 
 It will be observed also that such a 
 line of policy eliminates the question 
 of the closed shop. If the employer 
 wishes all his employees to belong to 
 the union, and makes it clear that 
 union men are favored, the reason for 
 a closed shop practically disappears. 
 The employer's reason for an open 
 shop is his need of a force near at 
 hand to fight the union; when he 
 makes the union his ally instead of 
 his enemy, non-unionism becomes both 
 to him and to his men a negligible 
 quantity. 
 
 The man who takes up a purpose 
 of this kind, whether he is pro- 
 prietor or general manager, cannot 
 be guaranteed an easy job. It will 
 not be possible for him to turn it over 
 
 * Appendix III. 
 [ill] 
 
' THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 to subordinates; he will have to keep 
 close to it himself. It will call for 
 labor, for self-control, for faith in men, 
 for all the best qualities of mind and 
 heart. Neither in the State nor in 
 the factory will our democracy be 
 fulfilled wihout patient, heroic, self- 
 denying work. But the work will be 
 rewarding. Can any compensation be 
 higher or finer than that of the man 
 who wins, as Baldwin won, the loyal 
 aff^ection of scores or hundreds or 
 thousands of men; who helps them to 
 stand on their own feet and work out 
 their own fortunes; who makes them 
 see that the industry by which they 
 gain their livelihood is one in which 
 they have a real stake, so that they 
 are not merely dependents on it, but, 
 in a true sense, partners in it; who 
 sees growing up around him a com- 
 munity of friendly men with some 
 [112] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 sense of the dignities of manhood and 
 the responsibilities of citizenship ? No 
 vocation can be more sacred than this, 
 and no reward more satisfying. 
 
 I"3l 
 
IV 
 
 CROSS-LIGHTS AND COUNTER- 
 CLAIMS 
 
IV 
 
 CROSS-LIGHTS AND COUNTER- 
 CLAIMS 
 
 IN this chapter I wish to deal with a 
 variety of conflicting phases and 
 aspects of the labor question in 
 which partial notions are involved and 
 by which misleading judgments are 
 given currency. In any conflict of ideas 
 or policies the partisans on either side 
 are apt to discern with great clearness 
 the evil consequences which would fol- 
 low if the policy of their antagonists 
 were carried to extremes, and to assume 
 that this is what is likely to happen. 
 Neither party, however, is likely to 
 follow its own policies to extreme con- 
 clusions, or is willing to admit that 
 [117] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 such a thing is possible. Each party 
 sees the best possibiUties in its own 
 program and the worst in that of its 
 opponents. It would be well to re- 
 verse this method now and then; we 
 should get a better perspective. 
 
 The employers who are fighting the 
 unions have before their minds vivid 
 pictures of the confusion and ruin 
 which would ensue if the cause of union- 
 ism should prevail. If all the industries 
 were unionized, and if the worst prac- 
 tises of the unions should become uni- 
 versal, the injury to business, say the 
 employers, would be deadly. With 
 such powei; to enforce their demands, 
 the tyranny of the unions would 
 become intolerable. The capitalist 
 employer would lose all control of his 
 business; rules would be made which 
 would cripple production ; no manufac- 
 turer could be certain, if he made a 
 [ii8] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 contract, that he would be able to keep 
 it; profits would be so reduced by the 
 constantly rising rate of wages that 
 there would be no adequate reward for 
 business enterprise ; the value of costly 
 buildings and machinery would be con- 
 stantly depreciated; the cost of pro- 
 duction would be so enhanced that 
 prices would rise to a point at which 
 consumption would be curtailed, and 
 this, in turn, would check production ; 
 from industries under this ban capital 
 would be withdrawn as rapidly as pos- 
 sible, and the communities thus afflicted 
 would be depopulated. 
 
 This is a picture which the anti- 
 unionist is fond of drawing. It is 
 generally overdrawn; but it is well for 
 the unionist to take a good look at it. 
 There is in it enough verisimilitude to 
 give him food for serious thought. It 
 may suggest to him that if he should 
 [119] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 have his way about everything, he 
 might produce a condition of things in 
 which it would not be possible for him 
 to live. That is not a rare achieve- 
 ment. The ancient sport of killing the 
 goose that lays the golden egg has many 
 votaries in modern times. 
 
 There is no question but that unions 
 have sometimes carried their exactions 
 so far as to cripple industries and 
 paralyze the growth of communities. 
 Instances are constantly cited by anti- 
 unionists; I will not mention them, 
 but credible reports warrant the belief 
 that in several American communities 
 unionism has become a public injury; 
 by its greedy aggressions it has des- 
 troyed the enterprises it undertook to 
 regulate, and proved itself to be an 
 unsocial force. It is well for all union- 
 ists to keep these possibilities steadily 
 
 before their minds. 
 
 [120] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 There is another picture, however, 
 which inteUigent unionists are more in 
 the habit of contemplating. That is 
 the picture of the industrial community 
 in modern times from which unionism 
 has been forcibly excluded. We have 
 had glimpses of these conditions in a 
 previous article, and they are not re- 
 assuring. What happened in England 
 in the second quarter of the nineteenth 
 century is sure to happen an5rwhere, 
 under the large system of industry, if 
 the working classes fail to unite for 
 their own protection. Greed is as 
 merciless as the grave and as blind as 
 fate; it overrides and tramples on all 
 humane considerations; it makes the 
 bodies and souls of men its prey. The 
 fate of the working class, unorganized, 
 in contact with the great aggregations 
 of capital, is not an obscure augury. 
 The pressure of competition forces the 
 
 [I2l] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 labor market downward; the cost of 
 production must be reduced at every 
 point, and labor, unorganized, furnishes 
 the line of least resistance. Benevolent 
 wishes on the part of conscientious 
 individual employers count for little. 
 "What would -you do?" is the em- 
 ployer's confident demand. "What 
 right have I to raise wages ? Here are 
 hundreds of men knocking at my gates 
 who are willing to do my work for what 
 I am now paying, or even for less. 
 They need the work. Why should I 
 not give it to them? Is there any 
 better regulator of wages than the law 
 of supply and demand ? " Such reason- 
 ing steadily and fatally lessens the wage 
 and lengthens the working day, till you 
 find unorganized laborers even today, 
 in the biggest corporations that the 
 world has ever seen, working twelve 
 
 hours a day and seven days in a week 
 
 [122] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 for a compensation that barely keeps 
 body and soul together. 
 
 It is palpable, of course, that such a 
 policy must result in the deterioration 
 of the working force. The standard of 
 living goes down and the efficiency of 
 labor goes down with it, so that it is 
 not long before the low wages buy less 
 work than the high wages bought, and 
 the cost of production is greater than 
 it was with the well-paid labor. What 
 is more, the great mass of the consumers 
 are wage-workers, and when their com- 
 pensation is cut down, they have less 
 to spend and the demand for the prod- 
 ucts of labor is reduced and trade stag- 
 nates and orders fall off at the mills 
 and the factories and the wheels stop 
 and the starving laborers stand idle in 
 the market-place because no man will 
 hire them. 
 
 In communities as intelligent as ours 
 [123] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 such conditions breed discontent, which 
 bodes ill to the peace of the State. So 
 long as working men have reason to 
 believe that they may be able to main- 
 tain their rights by combination, they 
 are apt to give a wide berth to" revolu- 
 tionary agitators ; but when it becomes 
 evident that this resource is failing 
 them, the propagandists of a new order 
 find them accessible. I have heard 
 many bitter words spoken during the 
 last summer in my own city, not by 
 strikers, but by working men, who saw 
 in the concerted and determined efforts 
 made by the power-holding classes to 
 crush the strike, the evidence that no 
 resource was left to them but social 
 revolution. The strike was crushed in 
 October, and the Socialist vote in No- 
 vember was increased one thousand per 
 cent. 
 
 Now, this is the panorama on which 
 1 124] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 the employing classes may usefully 
 fasten their gaze. They can see very 
 distinctly what is likely to happen if 
 unionism prevails and the unsocial ten- 
 dencies of the unions are triumphant; 
 they do not, as a rule, give any careful 
 attention to the consequences which 
 are sure to flow from the triumph of 
 their own program. Indeed, they are 
 quite as blind to these issues as the 
 unions are to the industrial paralysis 
 which their own aggressions are threat- 
 ening. The feudalism which they seek 
 to establish would bring lean economic 
 returns; the path to prosperity is not 
 through the degradation of labor. Con- 
 sidering their own interests, their policy 
 is just as suicidal as that of the ag- 
 gressive labor unions. Nothing worse 
 could happen to them than to succeed 
 in their efforts to abolish the unions. 
 It would be a calamity to the State 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 if either of these contending policies 
 should win a complete victory. The 
 subjugation of labor by capital or of 
 capital by labor would mean, of course, 
 the downfall of the present industrial 
 order and an industrial revolution much 
 
 ^ 
 
 more sweeping than any that has yet 
 occurred in history. Such an over- 
 turning would be an unspeakable dis- 
 aster. That a healthy evolution will 
 carry us in the direction of the collec- 
 tive ownership of capital is altogether 
 probable; but precipitation into that 
 regime, with our present moral and 
 social outfit, would result in terrible 
 losses to civilization. It is, above all 
 things, needful that we make haste 
 slowly in that direction, and the kind of 
 industrial democracy which is furnished 
 by the frank recognition of organized 
 labor and friendly cooperation with it 
 
 affords to both classes just the kind of 
 [126] 
 
THE LABOR. QUESTION 
 
 education which is needed to prepare 
 us for those larger cooperations which 
 are, no doubt, in store for us. Along 
 that road we may go peacefully and 
 prosperously toward the industrial 
 commonwealth of the future. If that 
 road is blocked, the path leads over a 
 precipice. 
 
 What is needed, therefore, is a serious 
 consideration by each of these contend- 
 ing parties of the consequences which 
 are likely to follow from pushing its 
 own policy to extremes, and a resolute 
 purpose to guard against those excesses. 
 No unionist is in a position to demand 
 the recognition of his union till he has 
 pruned it of those harsh features which 
 naturally exasperate the employer; till 
 it has shown that it has no use for vio- 
 lence or lawlessness; that it does not 
 mean to embarrass production by petty 
 
 restrictions; that it intends to keep all 
 [127] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 its contracts to the letter, to main- 
 tain high standards of fideUty and 
 efficiency, and to give a fair day's 
 work for a fair day's wages. Unions 
 which maintain such a character as 
 this will find it less difficult to obtain 
 recognition. 
 
 On the other hand, no employer is 
 in a position to demand that his men 
 shall maintain this high standard of 
 industrial ethics so long as he denies to 
 them the primary right of uniting for 
 the protection of their own interests, 
 and insists on treating such unions as 
 outlaws and enemies. The injustice 
 of this act is so flagrant that he has no 
 right to complain of any misconduct on 
 the part of his men. And no gratuities 
 or benevolences that he may practise 
 toward them will atone for this denial 
 of their rights. When their rights are 
 
 fully recognized and he is ready to meet 
 [128] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 them on such a platform of equality 
 as collective bargaining provides, he 
 will find them much less disposed to 
 resort to those extreme measures of 
 which he now complains. 
 
 I come now to speak of one or two 
 matters which may seem of slight im- 
 portance, but which deserve some seri- 
 ous attention. 
 
 Not a little mischief is done by the 
 indulgence of undiscriminating and in- 
 temperate speech on both sides of this 
 controversy. The labor press often 
 makes use of very ungentle terms in 
 describing the acts and judging the 
 motives of the employing class. Some 
 of the employers deserve these hot 
 words, but not all of them; there are 
 many among them who are sincerely 
 desirous of finding a just solution of all 
 these problems. Sweeping denuncia- 
 tions of the capitalist class are not only 
 [129] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 unfair, they are highly impoHtic. They 
 tend to alienate friends whose support 
 would be valuable to the cause of 
 unionism. 
 
 On the other hand, I hear from men 
 whose intellectual opportunities should 
 have taught them more temperate 
 habits of speech, judgments upon the 
 entire laboring class which are astonish- 
 ingly unjust. One who knows the 
 working people of the United States — 
 those of foreign birth as well as those 
 who were born upon our soil — listens 
 with surprise and pain to what is said 
 about them by many who do not know 
 them at all. Certainly they are not 
 all saints or angels ; doubtless many of 
 them are not so wise or good as we 
 could wish them to be ; but the kind of 
 speech which we are accustomed to 
 hear about them is fearfully unjust. 
 I hear men talk as though there were 
 [130] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 no fidelity or honor or honesty among 
 American working men — as if they 
 were all shirks and malingerers and eye- 
 servants; as though they had no other 
 motive than to get the largest possible 
 stipend for the least possible service. 
 Especially true are these harsh judg- 
 ments assumed to be of trade-union- 
 ists ; of them it is not possible for some 
 Christian people to believe anything 
 good. 
 
 It is a pity that those who harbor 
 such hard feelings could not get better 
 acquainted with their neighbors. I 
 am sure that they would find among 
 these working people — even among 
 trade-unionists — a goodly number of 
 honest, faithful, fair-minded men and 
 women. It would be a sorry thing for 
 this Nation if the great mass of its citi- 
 zens were as lacking in the sound ele- 
 ments of character as many of these 
 [131] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 wholesale judgments assume that they 
 are. For my part, I do not find them 
 so. I believe that, take them all in all, 
 they are as trustworthy and reasonable 
 and honorable and kind-hearted as are 
 the more cultured and prosperous 
 classes. The hope of the Nation lies, 
 I believe, in the essential worthiness of 
 these wage-workers. Something is the 
 matter with the patriotism of the man 
 who maligns them. And the man who 
 can see but little good in them ought 
 not to have any dealings with them. 
 His intercourse with them can bring 
 nothing but harm to him and to them. 
 He is not fit for any responsible place 
 in the kingdom of industry, and will 
 not be until he gets a new heart. 
 
 Another subject on which there is 
 
 need of some revision of judgment is 
 
 the "walking delegate," or business 
 
 agent, as he is now generally named. 
 
 [132] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 The almost universal impression among 
 the employing classes seems to be that 
 these representatives of the unions are, 
 as a rule, depraved persons with crimi- 
 nal antecedents and none but sinister 
 purposes. This judgment is formed, 
 in most cases, on very slight acquaint- 
 ance. Again I must protest that I 
 have not found this judgment just. 
 
 There are historic instances of thor- 
 oughly bad men obtaining and holding 
 the leadership of labor unions. But 
 the same thing has been true of 
 churches, and the people sometimes 
 choose bad men to rule our cities and 
 to represent them in Congress. I am 
 not sure that the unions are not as suc- 
 cessful in the choice of leaders as are 
 the religious and the political organiza- 
 tions. In the great majority of cases 
 it will be found, I think, that the repre- 
 sentatives of the unions are clean, fair- 
 [133] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 minded, upright men. Nor is it true 
 that most labor disputes are due to 
 their instigation. Employers are apt 
 to charge all disaffection among their 
 employees to the influence of "walking 
 delegates," but this is by no means the 
 rule. The trouble generally begins 
 before any labor leader is called in, and 
 the influence of these leaders in the ad- 
 justment of such difficulties is apt to be 
 conservative. The worst strike I have 
 known in Ohio was voted by the men 
 against the strenuous protest of their 
 leader. Only the other day in Chicago 
 the business agent of the garment- 
 makers arranged a settlement with the 
 employers which the union itself vio- 
 lently repudiated, driving their agent 
 from the hall. The habitual refusal of 
 employers to have any dealings with 
 accredited representatives of the unions 
 is not only unjust, it is extremely 
 [134] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 unwise. Those employers who have 
 received these representatives and have 
 entered into amicable relations with 
 them have generally found them intelli- 
 gent and reasonable. One employer in 
 Ohio, after spending half a million dol- 
 lars in fighting against the recognition 
 of the union, changed his mind and 
 entered into a labor agreement with 
 the union through its representatives. 
 After two or three years of this experi- 
 ence he told me that everything was 
 going well at the mine. " In fact," he 
 said, "it is far easier dealing with an 
 intelligent and responsible man than 
 with a mob." If employers generally 
 could get rid of some of their supersti- 
 tions about "walking delegates" and 
 could meet them man-fashion, they 
 might often find it greatly to their 
 advantage. 
 The question of the open or closed 
 [i3Sl 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 shop is one around which just now the 
 battle rages. As was said in a previous 
 chapter, this question is practically 
 eliminated by the determination of the 
 employer to give full recognition to the 
 union and to let it be known that he 
 desires all his workmen to belong to it. 
 Under such conditions it is not probable 
 that enough men would remain outside 
 to cause any trouble. If it is the em- 
 ployer's policy, not to fight the union, 
 but to establish living and cooperative 
 relations with it, he will have no more 
 use for non-unionists than the union 
 itself has, and it is not likely that 
 non-unionism would thrive in that at- 
 mosphere. If the contention of these 
 chapters is valid, this is the only atti- 
 tude toward the union which can be 
 taken by a right-minded employer, and 
 it effectually disposes of the question of 
 the closed shop. If, on the other hand, 
 1 136] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 the employer wishes to maintain an 
 unfriendly attitude toward the union, 
 and to put as many obstacles as he can 
 in the way of the organization of his 
 men, of course he will stand for the open 
 shop and use his influence to keep the 
 non-union contingent as large as possi- 
 ble, that he may have a strong force at 
 hand to fight the union when a strike 
 occurs. This creates a situation which 
 is nearly impossible, and justifies the 
 men in demanding a closed shop. 
 
 I see no reason why the kind of 
 agreement entered into last Septem- 
 ber between the Manufacturers' Asso- 
 ciation of New York and the Garment 
 Workers' Unions of that city might not 
 be widely adopted. After a definite 
 fixing of the hours of work and the 
 rates of compensation in all the shops 
 concerned, this agreement follows: 
 
 "Each member of the Manufacturers 
 [137I 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 [Association] is to maintain a union 
 shop; a 'union shop' being understood 
 to refer to a shop where union standards 
 as to working conditions, hours of labor, 
 and rates of wages as herein provided 
 prevail, and where, when hiring help, 
 union men are preferred ; it being recog- 
 nized that, since there are differences in 
 degrees of skill among those employed 
 in the trade, employers shall have free- 
 dom of selection as between one union 
 man and another, and shall not be con- 
 fined to any list, nor bound to follow 
 any prescribed agreement whatever. 
 It is further understood that all exist- 
 ing agreements and obligations of the 
 employer, including those to present 
 employees, shall be respected; the 
 Manufacturers, however, declare their 
 belief in the union, and that all who desire 
 its benefits should share in its burdens." 
 This seems a most liberal and reason- 
 [138] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 able contract, fair and honorable alike 
 to employers and employed. What 
 the employers say, in the phrases itali- 
 cized above, is a notable confession of 
 faith and a cogent statement of indus- 
 trial morals. When all employers are 
 ready to put their hands to such a 
 declaration, the labor question will be 
 well advanced toward a solution. 
 
 If what these employers say is true, 
 it must be admitted that the non- 
 unionist is not left in an exalted posi- 
 tion. There has been a tendency in 
 certain quarters to make him a hero, 
 but, if the reasoning of these articles 
 is sound, this is rather more than is due 
 him. He is one who insists on enjoy- 
 ing the benefits of labor organization 
 without sharing its burdens. That is 
 something less than heroic. 
 
 My own mind is clear upon the 
 proposition that if I were a wage- 
 [139] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 worker in any trade I should feel 
 under obligation to join the trade- 
 union. It is so entirely-' plain to me 
 that the freedom of the working class 
 can be maintained in these days only 
 by firm organization that I could not 
 get the consent of my conscience to 
 stay outside the union. And I am 
 equally sure that I could not feel any 
 very enthusiastic admiration for men 
 of my own trade who refused to join 
 the union and did what they could to 
 defeat its purposes. I trust that I 
 should be able to refrain from apply- 
 ing to them opprobrious epithets and 
 from assailing them with brickbats, 
 but I should not be able to hold them 
 in high honor. 
 
 One of the strongest of recent writers 
 on political science, Mr. Herbert Croly, 
 bears this testimony: 
 
 "The labor unions deserve to be 
 [140] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 favored because they are the most 
 effective machinery which has as yet 
 been forged for the economic and social 
 amelioration of the laboring class. 
 They have helped to raise the standard 
 of living, to mitigate the rigors of com- 
 petition among individual laborers, and 
 in this way to secure for labor a larger 
 share of the industrial product. A 
 democratic government has little or 
 less reason to interfere on behalf of the 
 non-union laborer than it has to inter- 
 fere on behalf of the small producer. 
 As a type the non-union laborer is a 
 species of industrial derelict. He is the 
 laborer who has gone astray, and who, 
 either from apathy, unintelligence, in- 
 competence, or some immediately press- 
 ing need, prefers his own individual 
 interest to the joint interests of himself 
 and his fellow-laborers. . . . From any 
 comprehensive point of view, union, 
 [141] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 and not non-union, labor represents 
 the independence of the laborer, be- 
 cause, under existing circumstances, 
 such independence must be brought by 
 association." ' 
 
 , The joint agreement between the 
 garment workers and their employers, 
 from which I have already quoted, 
 contains also a definite provision for the 
 arbitration of all differences arising 
 between the two parties, who bind 
 themselves to abide by the decision of 
 the arbitrators; also stipulating that if 
 any dispute shall arise, "the parties to 
 this protocol agree that there shall be 
 no strike or lockout concerning such 
 matters in controversy until full oppor- 
 tunity shall have been given for the 
 submission of such matters to said 
 Board of Arbitration, and, in the event 
 
 * The Promise of American Life, pp. 387- 
 388. 
 
 [ 142 ] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 of a determination of such controversies 
 by said Board of Arbitration, only in 
 the event of a failure to accede to the 
 determination of said Board." All 
 disputes are to be arbitrated and a 
 Board of Arbitration appointed; no 
 strikes nor lockouts are to be allowed 
 until the decision has been rendered, 
 and then only in case one of the par- 
 ties breaks its contract and refuses to 
 abide by the decision. 
 
 Is not such a provision for the peace- 
 ful settlement of disputes possible in 
 any industry? Is any man's dignity 
 or honor compromised by entering into 
 such a compact? Would it not save 
 both for capital and for labor millions 
 of dollars every year, and put an 
 end to the industrial warfare which 
 embitters our lives and threatens our 
 liberties ? 
 
 The civilized world is rapidly coming 
 [143] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 to the conviction that all international 
 disputes may, and must, be settled by 
 arbitration. In view of that fact, it 
 seems absurd to contend that there are 
 any industrial disputes which cannot 
 be settled in the same way. The 
 demand is loud from a long-suflfering 
 community that industrial war shall 
 cease. The day is near when the com- 
 batant in this arena who has "nothing 
 to arbitrate" will be recognized as an 
 enemy of society. 
 
 Especially true is this of labor dis- 
 putes in public service companies. It 
 is about time that the managers of such 
 companies were made to understand 
 that the people do not put franchises 
 into their hands to be used as weapons 
 of war. In all these industries in which 
 the State or the city is a partner, the 
 State or the city is bound to keep 
 the peace. No franchise ought to be 
 [144] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 granted to a public service company 
 which does not contain explicit and 
 stringent provisions requiring the sub- 
 mission to arbitration of all disputes 
 arising between the managers and the 
 men. It ought to be made a misde- 
 meanor for the men to strike until the 
 question has been fully arbitrated ; and 
 the refusal of the company to arbitrate 
 or to abide by the decision of the arbi- 
 trators ought to result in the forfeiture 
 of its charter. 1 
 
 This raises the serious question as to 
 the regulation by the State or the Na- 
 tion of industrial organizations. We 
 are undertaking, in some rather dras- 
 tic ways, to regulate corporations; 
 there seems to be equal reason why we 
 should take trade-unions in hand and, 
 while giving them explicit recognition, 
 establish certain definite principles to 
 
 1 See Appendix IV. 
 [i4S] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 which, in their organization and opera- 
 tion, they must conform. It seems 
 inconceivable that an interest so vast 
 as this, affecting the pubHc welfare in 
 so many ways, should be allowed to 
 shape its own policies and choose its 
 own ends with no efficient direction by 
 the commonwealth. I am not clear 
 about the incorporation of the unions, 
 but I am sure that the Nation must find 
 some way of defining their powers and 
 privileges, and giving them a rightful 
 and honorable place in the National 
 life. Precisely how this is to be done 
 I will not undertake, at the present 
 moment, to point out. I am only sure 
 that our lawmakers have some very 
 important constructive work to do in 
 the organization of our industries, and 
 that they cannot get about it too soon.' 
 
 * See The Promise of American Life, Jpy 
 Herbert Croly, Chapter XII. 
 [146] 
 
.V 
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE LABOR 
 QUESTION 
 
V 
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE LABOR 
 QUESTION 
 
 WHAT business has the Church 
 with the Labor Question? 
 Is it not an economic ques- 
 tion? What right has the Church to 
 meddle with matters purely secular? 
 Why does she not confine herself to 
 spiritual interests, and find her func- 
 tion in inspiring men with right concep- 
 tions and pure motives, leaving them 
 to make their own application of the 
 principles she teaches to the affairs 
 of life? Is there not danger that the 
 Church will make grave mistakes if 
 she undertakes to deal with these 
 difficult problems of modern industrial 
 [149] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 organization? Would it not be better 
 for the Church to adhere to her own 
 proper function of saving souls and 
 comforting sorrows and fitting men 
 for heaven? Do we want these dis- 
 turbing questions of the labor market 
 brought into the sanctuary? Must it 
 not have a tendency to irritate many 
 hearers and drive them away from the 
 churches ? 
 
 Questions of this tenor are often 
 heard, even in this generation; and 
 the attitude of mind which these ques- 
 tions imply is the prevailing attitude 
 in a great many of our more influential 
 churches. It seems, therefore, to be 
 necessary, at the close of the first 
 decade of the twentieth century, to 
 give some heed to such scruples. 
 
 It ought not to be necessary to 
 say that they arise out of a concep- 
 tion of human life which is not any 
 [ISO] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 longer entertained by thoughtful men 
 
 — namely, that it is divided into 
 two non-communicating hemispheres 
 
 — the sacred and the secular; religion 
 being an interest by itself, with motives, 
 principles, and laws of its own, and 
 the rest of life being under the control 
 of ideas and forces with which religion 
 has nothing to do. Some such con- 
 ception as this prevailed in evangel- 
 ical circles fifty years ago; when Mr. 
 Beecher began to preach the doctrine 
 that all life is sacred, the idea came with 
 a shock to most "professors of religion." 
 Of course this notion was taught with 
 varying emphasis; there were many 
 to whom the close correspondence be- 
 tween faith and conduct was evident, 
 but the tendency to keep morals and 
 religion in separate compartments was 
 very strong within the memory of some 
 who are now alive. The recently pub- 
 
 [iSi] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 lished confessions of Uncle Daniel 
 Drew refresh our memory with forms 
 of speech which were once familiar, 
 and set before us a habit of thought 
 about religion which was prevalent not 
 very long ago. When Uncle Daniel 
 tells us about the way he spent his 
 Sundays during his exile in Jersey City 
 when he was engaged in one of the 
 colossal robberies by which he won 
 distinction — how he needed in those 
 exciting days the comfort which only 
 the sanctuary could give, and how he 
 felt that he, as the "only Christian" 
 among those bold buccaneers, must 
 set them a good example by piously 
 attending church — we get a vivid 
 illustration of the state of mind to 
 which I have referred. And when, a 
 little later in the story, the same 
 eminent saint mentions a sermon, 
 which he had lately heard, on making 
 
 [IS2] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 the Lord a partner in your business, 
 and deplores the fact that we have so 
 much of that kind of preaching now- 
 adays, we discern the same mental 
 attitude as that which finds expres- 
 sion in the questions we are considering. 
 Briefly, then, we may say that the 
 labor question is in part an economic 
 question^ and that all economic questions 
 are fundamentally religious questions; 
 that there are no purely spiritual 
 interests, since the spiritual forces all 
 incarnate themselves in the facts of 
 every-day life, and can only be known 
 as they are there manifested; that 
 there is indeed danger that the Church 
 will make mistakes in dealing with 
 such questions, but that the greatest 
 of all her mistakes is in ignoring them; 
 that there are no souls that more need 
 saving than the souls that are getting 
 entangled in the materialisms that 
 [iS3] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 undervalue manhood; and that there 
 are no people who need moral guidance 
 more than those who are grappling 
 with the manifold phases of the labor 
 question. That some of them resent 
 the truth about this matter is a sad 
 fact, but that is not a good reason for 
 suppressing the truth; and there must 
 be many among them who are ready 
 to know the truth and from whom it 
 would be a crime to conceal it. While, 
 therefore, the preacher knows that to 
 some of his hearers the truth, no matter 
 how wisely and kindly spoken, will be 
 "a savor of death unto death," it is 
 his business to tell the truth for the 
 sake of those to whom it will be "a 
 savor of life unto life."i. 
 
 It is sometimes said that the Church 
 cannot deal in any explicit and con- 
 crete fashion with these labor prob- 
 
 See Appendix V. 
 [154] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 lems; that the utmost she can do is 
 to enunciate ethical principles; that 
 she must not venture to apply them. 
 But if Scriptural examples are of any 
 validity, it is clear that Amos and 
 Hosea and Micah and Isaiah and Jere- 
 miah knew how to apply principles 
 to concrete cases. All these Hebrew 
 prophets deal in the most direct and 
 explicit manner with the social injus- 
 tices then prevailing. They did not 
 content themselves with enunciating 
 ethical principles, they made the appli- 
 cation in the most pungent fashion. 
 "Forasmuch therefore," cries Amos, 
 "as your treading is upon the poor, 
 and ye take from him burdens of wheat: 
 ye have built houses of hewn stone, 
 but ye shall not dwell in them; ye 
 have planted pleasant vineyards, but 
 ye shall not drink wine of them. For 
 I know your manifold transgressions 
 [iSSl 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 and your mighty sins : they afflict the 
 just, they take a bribe, and they turn 
 aside the poor in the gate from their 
 right." "Woe unto them," echoes 
 Micah, " that devise iniquity, and work 
 evil upon their beds! when the morn- 
 ing is Hght, they practise it, because 
 it is in the power of their hand. And 
 they covet fields, and take them by 
 violence; and houses, and take them 
 away: so they oppress a man and his 
 house, even a man and his heritage." 
 It is hardly too much to say that 
 the burden of these Hebrew prophets 
 was the social inequality of their 
 time, and that it was in their struggle 
 against the oppression of the weak 
 by the strong that they came to their 
 clear consciousness of a righteous God. 
 Doubtless these were disturbing mes- 
 sages ; doubtless many of the well-to-do 
 were alienated from the Church by 
 [156] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 this trenchant testimony; but it was 
 spoken, nevertheless, and it remains 
 to the world an imperishable legacy. 
 
 Much of Christ's preaching on social 
 topics has no lack of definiteness, and 
 the concluding chapters of most of the 
 Epistles would be suggestive reading 
 for those who think that the Church 
 must avoid the application of Christian 
 principles to actual human conditions. 
 James, the brother of our Lord, may 
 be supposed to be familiar with our 
 Lord's point of view. His words recall 
 the old prophets : " Go to, ye rich, weep 
 and howl for your miseries that are 
 coming upon you. Your riches are cor- 
 rupted, and your garments are moth- 
 eaten. Your gold and silver are rusted ; 
 and their rust shall be for a testimony 
 against you, and shall eat your flesh as 
 fire. Ye have laid up your treasure in 
 the last days. Behold, the hire of the 
 [iS7] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 laborers who have mowed your fields, 
 which is by you kept back by fraud, 
 crieth out: and the cries of them that 
 reaped have entered into the ears of the 
 Lord of Sabaoth. Ye have lived deli- 
 cately on the earth, and taken your 
 pleasure; ye have nourished your 
 hearts in a day of slaughter. Ye have 
 condemned, ye have killed the righteous 
 one: he doth not resist you." If we 
 faithfully expound the Scripture, we 
 shall surely be compelled to do a good 
 deal of preaching of a very direct and 
 concrete sort on the labor question. 
 
 It will be admitted that the chief 
 interest of the Church is in character. 
 Its business in the world is primarily 
 the production of good character, the 
 building up of sound, clean, upright, 
 neighborly men. In this commercial 
 age such character is mainly made 
 or lost in the pursuits of industry. 
 [158] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 Whether a business man becomes a 
 good man or not, depends mainly on 
 the way in which he manages his busi- 
 ness. He may be a good husband and 
 father, charitable to the poor, and a 
 devout church member, but if in his 
 business he is greedy, hard-hearted, 
 unjust, and tyrannical, the core of his 
 character is bad. In the prevailing in- 
 terest of his life his conduct is defective 
 and it makes him essentially a bad man. 
 Now the Church has in her membership 
 hundreds of thousands of men whose 
 characters are being formed by their 
 business practises. She owes to these 
 men the instruction and the moral 
 guidance by which they may be saved 
 from the fatal losses of manhood to 
 which they are exposed, and established 
 in virtue and honor. She must not say 
 that she has no knowledge of these 
 questions. She has no right to be 
 [159] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 ignorant concerning practises that are 
 blunting the consciences and destroying 
 the souls of millions of her own mem- 
 bers. In truth, this ignorance is 
 largely feigned. The ethical principles 
 involved in all these transactions are 
 clear, and there is no more danger of 
 error in dealing with them than is in- 
 volved in any attempt to apply the 
 principles of morality to the conduct of 
 life. Always there is need of caution, 
 of discretion, of just and balanced 
 treatment of such problems, but this 
 is not a reason why they should be 
 ignored. Even bungling attempts to 
 help rhen into the right way — if they 
 are only honest and sincere — are far 
 less dangerous than a cowardly avoid- 
 ance. When the Church in the person 
 of the priest and the Levite passed by 
 the wounded man on the Jericho road, 
 
 it may have pleaded that it was not 
 [i6o] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 expert in caring for such cases. The 
 Church can better afford to make many- 
 mistakes in enforcing the Christian law 
 of industrial relations than to give the 
 impression that the Christian law has 
 nothing to do with industrial relations. 
 In fact, it has everything to do with 
 them, and the Church is not dealing 
 fairly with a great multitude of its own 
 members when it fails to show them 
 just how the Christian law does apply 
 to those relations with their fellow- 
 men in which, more than in any other 
 portion of their lives, the great values 
 of character are gained or lost. 
 
 Beyond all this, the Church may 
 well recognize some responsibility for 
 the moral condition of the millions of 
 the working people — many of whom 
 are outside her membership. Her ac- 
 cess to them is not, unhappily, so direct 
 as to the employing class, but she must 
 [i6i] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 not, therefore, ignore their moral need. 
 And it is perhaps no less true of the 
 working people than of their employers 
 that their characters are profoundly 
 affected by the manner in which they 
 deal with what we call the Labor 
 Question. I do not doubt that in the 
 struggles and sacrifices of this conflict 
 some precious gains of character are 
 made; men and women learn to prefer 
 the common good to individual gain 
 and to bear one another's burdens. 
 For all this we ought to be thankful. 
 But no one can pass through a severe 
 labor struggle without becoming pain- 
 fully aware that the combatants on 
 both sides are suffering vast moral 
 injuries. War is hell, industrial war 
 not less than international war; and 
 because it is war among neighbors, the 
 enmity engendered is apt to be more 
 
 fierce and violent than that which we 
 [162] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 feel toward a foreign foe. And often 
 we find whole populations swept with 
 hot blasts of anger, and men and women 
 who are ordinarily kindly and humane 
 cherishing the bitterest antipathies 
 and pouring out the most terrible exe- 
 crations against their fellow citizens. 
 Nothing more ominous can be con- 
 ceived than such a social inflammation. 
 Out of it naturally spring violence 
 and lawlessness; but even if these are 
 restrained, the seething of such passions 
 bodes ill to the peace and health of 
 industrial society. Populations which 
 have been through such an experience 
 are seriously unfitted by it for good 
 citizenship. 
 
 It is possible that some churches may 
 not care much about this. They may 
 say that they do not recognize social 
 responsibilities. Even such churches 
 cannot, however, deny that the moral 
 [163] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 welfare of these millions of working 
 men ought to be a matter of concern 
 to them. And can it be doubted that 
 the moral well-being of great multi- 
 tudes is seriously impaired by the 
 engendering of passions and hatreds 
 in these labor wars? Good church 
 members have confessed to me during 
 the past few months that they were 
 conscious of losing their hold on all the 
 supports of religion; that there was so 
 much bitterness in their hearts that 
 they did not want to go to church, and 
 that it was hard for them to pray. 
 With those who owned no allegiance to 
 the Church the case was probably no 
 better. Is not the Church concerned 
 with the fact that conditions exist 
 under which great masses of the people 
 round about it are getting into this 
 state of mind ? 
 
 Let us admit that the main business 
 [164] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 of the Church is saving souls. I am 
 ready to agree to this if it is understood 
 that souls are just people, men and 
 women. But give the phrase any 
 meaning you will, and is it not plain 
 that the Church will find it hard work 
 to save souls that are inflamed and 
 embittered by these labor contests, 
 especially when there is among them 
 a widespread resentment against the 
 Church, growing out of a belief that 
 its sympathies are with their antago- 
 nists? Is the Church likely to make 
 much headway with its evangelistic 
 work in populations thus affected? Is 
 it not clear that something must be 
 done to remove these misapprehensions 
 and allay these resentments, before 
 anything effectual can be done in the 
 way of "saving souls"? 
 
 How shall the Church go to work to 
 get these people into a better temper? 
 [i6s] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 Surely that must be one of her urgent 
 tasks. It will not be wise for her to 
 begin by reproving the resentments 
 of the working people and counseling 
 submission. It will not do for her to 
 assume that these uprisings on their 
 part are mainly due to moral depravity. 
 It will be necessary for her to show 
 that she is aware of the fact that under- 
 neath all these surface eruptions of 
 selfishness and passion there are fun- 
 damental questions of social justice; 
 and that she is able to deal with these 
 questions intelligently and fairly. It 
 is not of much use to preach peace to 
 insurgent laborers so long as they are 
 in doubt as to whether you are willing 
 that they should have justice. 
 
 The most cheering sign that has yet 
 appeared in our sky of an improved 
 attitude of the Church upon this ques- 
 tion is the "Declaration of Principles" 
 [i66] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 unanimously adopted by the Federal 
 Council of the Churches of Christ in 
 America — an organization represent- 
 ing seventeen millions of Protestant 
 church members: 
 
 "We deem it the duty of all Chris- 
 tian people to concern themselves di- 
 rectly with certain practical industrial 
 problems. To us it seems that the 
 churches must stand — 
 
 "For equal rights and complete jus- 
 tice to all men in all stations of life. 
 
 "For the right of all men to the op- 
 portunity for self-maintenance, a right 
 ever to be strongly safeguarded against 
 encroachments of every kind. 
 
 "For the right of workers to some 
 protection against the hardships often 
 resulting from the swift crises of indus- 
 trial change. 
 
 "For the principle of conciliation 
 and arbitration in industrial disputes. 
 [167] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 "For the protection of the worker 
 from dangerous machinery, occupa- 
 tional disease, injuries, and mor- 
 ahty. 
 
 " For the abolition of child labor. 
 
 "For such regulations of the con- 
 dition of toil for women as shall safe- 
 guard the physical and moral health 
 of the community. 
 
 "For the suppression of the 'sweat- 
 ing system.' 
 
 "For the gradual and reasonable re- 
 duction of the hours of labor to the 
 lowest practicable point and for that 
 degree of leisure for all which is a con- 
 dition of the highest human life. 
 
 "For the release from employment 
 one day in seven. 
 
 "For a living wage as a minimum 
 
 in every industry and for the highest 
 
 wage that each industry can afford. 
 
 "For the most equitable division of 
 I168] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 the products of industry that can ulti- 
 mately be devised. 
 
 "For the suitable provision for the 
 old age of the workers and for those 
 incapacitated by injury. 
 
 "For the abatement of poverty. 
 
 "To the toilers of America and to 
 those who by organized effort are seek- 
 ing to lift the crushing burdens of the 
 poor, and to reduce the hardships and 
 uphold the dignity of labor, this Council 
 sends the greeting of human brother- 
 hood and the pledge of sympathy and 
 of help in a cause which belongs to all 
 who follow Christ." 
 
 This is by far the most significant 
 expression that organized religion has 
 made in this country with respect to 
 the labor question. It seems to answer 
 explicitly and authoritatively all the 
 questions which were raised at the 
 beginning of this article. Several of 
 [169] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 the denominations in their national 
 bodies have reaffirmed this declaration. 
 If the churches will stand together on 
 this platform and enforce its principles 
 by the teaching of their pulpits, the 
 labor question will soon be in a fair 
 way of solution. 
 
 Assuming the duty of the Church to 
 deal with this question honestly and 
 courageously, one or two further sug- 
 gestions may be ventured. 
 
 Upon one outstanding fact the 
 Church ought to fix its attention. In 
 this great realm of labor, the realm in 
 which the largest part of human energy 
 is expended, the tendency is strong to 
 make the economic fact the paramount 
 fact, to keep human interests subor- 
 dinate. The dollar is the principal 
 thing; the man is a secondary con- 
 sideration. If a man throws himself 
 
 into the stream of ordinary business, 
 [170] 
 
T HE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 adopts its maxims, and accepts its 
 ideals, will he not find himself un- 
 consciously and inevitably exalting 
 economic success above character or 
 manhood ? 
 
 If these things are so, if such is the 
 drift of the modern industrialism, then, 
 it seems to me, that the Christian 
 Church has a very definite task upon 
 its hands, which is nothing less than the 
 moralization of the industrial regime. 
 For if there is any meaning in the ethics 
 of the Christ for which the Church is 
 supposed to stand, the industrial order 
 which holds the dollar higher than the 
 man is not Christian but pagan; there 
 is no paganism in Asia or Africa in more 
 deadly hostility to the Kingdom of the 
 Christ; and the first business of the 
 Church is to storm it and subdue it and 
 revolutionize it, in the name and by the 
 power of the Christ. This may seem 
 [171] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 a large order, but the church which has 
 any comprehension of its mission will 
 not dare to attempt anything less. 
 Certainly the Church may expect to 
 make its members believe the truth that 
 Mammon is not the supreme deity, and 
 that a man's life consisteth not in the 
 abundance of the things which he pos- 
 sesses. And as soon as the Church 
 succeeds in making its own members 
 believe that these things are so, it will 
 not be long before the rest of the world 
 will begin to believe them. And when 
 the world begins to see that the man is 
 worth more than the dollar, the central 
 difficulty in the labor problem will be 
 overcome; the economic fact will take 
 its place below the human fact; our in- 
 dustries will be organized primarily in 
 the interests of men, and the long- 
 standing quarrel between capital and 
 
 labor will be at an end. 
 [172] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 Another large obligation of the 
 Church to the laboring class arises 
 out of the need to which reference 
 was made in a preceding chapter of 
 the completion of our democracy. But 
 what, it will be asked, has the Church 
 to do with the fulfilment of our democ- 
 racy? The Church has nearly every- 
 thing to do with it. 
 
 Where did we get our democracy? 
 What is the basis of democracy? It 
 is the fact of brotherhood. The truth 
 of the divine fatherhood and the hu- 
 man brotherhood, which are the cen- 
 tral truths of religion as taught by 
 Jesus Christ, are the germinal truths 
 of democracy. Whether it could grow 
 out of any other principle we may not 
 know; as a matter of fact, it never 
 has. Outside of Christendom there 
 have been no democracies. 
 
 In the American State, as we saw in 
 [173] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 a former chapter, democracy lies at the 
 foundation. Our American national 
 life is based on brotherhood. The 
 ethics of Christianity are incorporated 
 into our political structure. The only 
 part of our life in which the Christian 
 law of brotherhood is yet in large 
 measure repudiated is the industrial 
 organization. This is the last of the 
 great kingdoms of this world which 
 does not bow the knee to Christ. 
 It must be conquered by him and 
 ruled by his law. That is the busi- 
 ness which the Christian Church has 
 now upon her hands. The Christian 
 Church is here in the world to be the 
 champion of brotherhood. She has 
 no other message to speak to men con- 
 cerning their relations one to another. 
 "Sirs, ye are brethren," is her word to 
 contending classes ; and among brothers 
 there are no masters and no slaves. 
 [174] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 That is a truth with which she has no 
 right to palter, and the hour has come 
 when she must speak it with authority. 
 If any one should say that the 
 Church is not called to teach politics 
 or sociology, the answer is that she 
 is certainly called to teach human 
 brotherhood, and to resist and oppose 
 with all the strength vouchsafed her, 
 every institution or custom or device 
 of men which minimizes or makes 
 void the fact of brotherhood. She is 
 at least entitled to offer the prayer 
 that her Lord has taught her, and to 
 make her teaching and her life to 
 conform to it. When she opens her 
 mouth to say "Our Father who art 
 in heaven," she must remember that 
 that petition is for every one that is 
 born of woman, and she must under- 
 stand what it implies. When she says 
 "Hallowed be thy name," she must 
 li7S] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 not forget that the name thus made 
 sacred is the name of the Father. 
 When she says "Thy kingdom come," 
 she must remember that the kingdom 
 for which she prays is the kingdom of 
 the Father — the kingdom in which 
 none are subjects, but all are brothers. 
 That is certainly her message. She 
 has made emperors and kings and 
 Kaisers understand it; now, she has 
 a bigger task on hand, to make Mam- 
 mon understand it. It will cost her 
 something to do this; she will lose 
 friends; but she has some friends that 
 she can afford to lose that she may 
 win the friendship of the poor of this 
 world who are rich in faith and heirs 
 of the kingdom which God has pre- 
 pared for them that love him. And 
 it is time for her to face the "Dark 
 Tower," "blind as the fool's heart," 
 
 garrisoned by greed and injustice, and 
 [176] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 to set the slug-horn to her lips and 
 blow: "The day of the common man 
 has come. Christ has redeemed him; 
 the nations of the earth have enfran- 
 chised him ; it is time for you, captains 
 of industry, to make him free of your 
 domain. All he asks is to be clothed 
 with the rights of a man. That you 
 dare not deny him. That, in the name 
 of Christ our Master, we claim for 
 him; and we will never be silent until, 
 in the whole kingdom of industry, that 
 claim is conceded and that right is 
 guaranteed." 
 
 And when she has thus delivered her 
 soul by such fidelity to the employers, 
 she ought to have a faithful word for 
 the working men in their organizations. 
 Would it not be something like this: 
 
 "The Church has been tardy, 
 brother men, in her recognition of her 
 obligation to speak the truth with 
 [177] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 respect to this great matter which so 
 much concerns you, but she has found 
 her voice. Listen and judge. She 
 would be faithless if she did not claim 
 for you the rights of freemen, and the 
 power to maintain for yourselves these 
 rights in the kingdom of industry; 
 but she would be false if she did not 
 tell you that this enfranchisement 
 in the industrial realm carries with 
 it heavy responsibilities. Democracy 
 means brotherhood; and when you 
 set up your industrial democracy you 
 must not forget that it means that 
 you must act brotherly, not only to 
 the members of your union, but also 
 and equally to your employer. He is 
 your brother, and every loyalty that 
 you owe to the union you owe also to 
 him, not only as individuals, but also 
 as an organization. 
 "A trade-union can behave greedily 
 [178] 
 
THE LABOR QUESTION 
 
 treacherously, unjustly; and men in 
 crowds are often tempted to do things 
 that no single man of them would 
 consent to for an instant. You must 
 learn, every man of you, to stand on 
 your own feet, and stand in all your 
 dealings with your employer for the 
 things that are right and fair and 
 honorable between man and man. 
 Otherwise your industrial enfranchise- 
 ment is a sham and will bring a curse. 
 The industrial democracy holds in it 
 the promise and potency of a pros- 
 perous and happy nation; it holds 
 also in it the possibilities of pande- 
 monium — confusion and strife and 
 misery. We mean that you shall be 
 free. We pray you, as if God were 
 speaking by us, to use your freedom 
 soberly and righteously — never for 
 the profit of a class, always for the 
 common good." 
 
 [179] 
 
APPENDIXES 
 
APPENDIX I 
 THE CASE AGAINST THE UNIONS 
 
 IN letters and newspaper comments 
 which have come into my hands while 
 these chapters have been appearing in 
 The Outlook, a few points have been 
 raised which I wish to consider. Let me 
 first thank the many kind readers who 
 have written to express their approval of 
 the positions taken. Some of the most 
 cordial expressions have come from em- 
 ployers of labor, and some of the most 
 censorious from those who claim to be 
 working men. One letter, signed "A Work- 
 ingman," thus expostulates: 
 
 "In your case against the labor unions 
 I find you very small indeed, for you are 
 taking up the case of the rich against the 
 poor. For Christ's sake let the poor alone. 
 They have trouble enough. ... It seems 
 to me you do not need the money, or are 
 you doing it for the money.? You, as a 
 [183] 
 
APPENDIXES 
 
 preacher of the gospel, should follow Christ, 
 and he was kind to the poor." It is prob- 
 able that this reader, like many others, 
 had contented himself with reading the 
 title of the article. It is because there 
 are too many unionists of this type that 
 we have so much trouble with the unions. 
 
 From a letter I take these questions: 
 "Why does violence cease instantly that 
 a strike is called off by union authorities, if 
 such action is almost solely, as you suggest, 
 perpetrated by outsiders, the lawless ele- 
 ment, without connivance of or instiga- 
 tion by union men? If such acts can 
 be promptly stopped, why can they not 
 be prevented, if opposition to them is 
 genuine? 
 
 "If the quotation from John Mitchell 
 condemning violence and murder is more 
 than a recognition that they are harmful 
 to the cause and impolitic, why do not 
 unions that he controls aid in bringing to 
 justice and trial members whom they know 
 perpetrate such acts ? 
 
 "Is it not true that union men know 
 themselves to be safe, as far as fellow 
 members are concerned, no matter what 
 [184] 
 
APPENDIXES 
 
 acts of violence they commit against a 
 non-union man or a 'scab'? Then, is 
 not every one of them particeps criminis? 
 When union officials honestly do what they 
 claim to the world to do in the repression 
 of violence, then these acts will almost 
 disappear." 
 
 It is undoubtedly true that the violence 
 in all such cases i? perpetrated largely 
 by those who are in sympathy with the 
 strikers, though not a few of the rioters 
 are people who are fond of disorder, and 
 who make the strike an opportunity of 
 lawlessness. When the strike is called off, 
 their excuse is removed. 
 
 But there is no doubt that union men 
 are quite too tolerant of such disorder, and 
 that by refusing to take vigorous measures 
 to prevent it, they often incur a fearful I 
 responsibility. Here is the weak point in 
 their case. Many of them are too willing 
 that bloody and desperate deeds should 
 be done in their interest. Many of them 
 have too much faith in carnal warfare and 
 too little in reason and patience and good 
 will. Yet I should be far from believing 
 that "every one of them" is consciously 
 [185] 
 
APPENDIXES 
 
 or intentionally a partaker in these crimes 
 of violence; nor is the sincerity of John 
 Mitchell and those of like mind to be im- 
 pugned because their followers sometimes 
 trample on their counsels. A good many 
 pastors find theiir church members con- 
 stantly flouting the truth they try to 
 teach and doing things for which they 
 do not wish to be held responsible. It is 
 not always quite clear that in such cases 
 a minister ought to resign his charge; he 
 may hope that by patience and fidelity he 
 can bring these offenders to a better mind. 
 The same rule applies to labor leaders. 
 
 I quite agree with my correspondent, 
 however, in saying that union officials 
 could put an end to most of this violence 
 if they were determined to do it; and the 
 fact that it is not done is a heavy count 
 against them. And it must be admitted 
 that the attitude of the labor leaders in 
 the recent cases of the accused dynamiters 
 leaves much to be desired. Organized labor 
 cannot stand in an equivocal position 
 before crimes of this nature. Somebody 
 has committed each one of these dastardly 
 crimes, and no people in this country have 
 [i86] 
 
APPENDIXES 
 
 so much interest in getting the miscreants 
 detected and punished as the leaders of 
 organized labor. 
 
 With respect to the petty and puerile 
 restrictions upon work, here is the testi- 
 mony of a journalist: 
 
 " In the course of the holiday advertising 
 rush one of the evening papers found it- 
 self receiving more business than could 
 be accommodated in its composing room, 
 which was then somewhat limited in 
 equipment, and the matrix of a full-page 
 advertisement was secured from the morn- 
 ing paper in which it had appeared that 
 morning, payment for same being duly 
 made to the proprietor of the morning 
 paper. This advertisement appeared in 
 the evening edition, the only additional 
 labor involved being the casting of a plate 
 from the matrix. Happening in the office 
 the next morning, which was Sunday, I 
 found a couple of advertisement setters 
 busy in the composing room, an unusual 
 thing for that office. Investigation showed 
 that these two printers were at work on 
 the advertisement which had appeared the 
 evening before. This was set up in the 
 [187] 
 
APPENDIXES 
 
 regular way, proofs taken and read, cor- 
 rections made, and everything put in 
 readiness for the stereotyping room, after 
 which the page was torn down and the 
 type distributed. It seems that a ruling 
 of the Typographical Union makes such a 
 procedure necessary whenever there is an 
 interchange of matrices among offices, the 
 object naturally being to secure the maxi- 
 mum of work. Here was a case where two 
 of the best compositors in the office spent 
 the better part of Sunday, probably at 
 time-and-a-half, in producing an article 
 which was absolutely worthless, merely 
 because of an arbitrary union regulation. 
 To me it seems a practise with less excuse 
 than the limitation of a workman's daily 
 output." 
 
 There ought to be statesmanship enough 
 in a union as intelligent as the Typo- 
 graphical Union to put an end to this sort 
 of thing. The slight economic advantage 
 which the union secures by such a rule is 
 offset, ten times over, by the disgust and 
 ill will which such a measure is bound to 
 excite, not only in the employers, but in all 
 just-minded people. 
 
 [188] 
 
APPENDIXES 
 
 The following letter from the editor of 
 The International Molders' Journal will 
 help to correct any wrong impression which 
 is made by the statement in the text. It 
 is printed in full: 
 
 "Cincinnati, March 17, 191 1. 
 
 "I have just finished reading your first 
 article on the case against the labor union 
 and have already secured the permission 
 of The Outlook to reproduce your most 
 recent article on trade-unions in that 
 publication. 
 
 "I have read both articles with much 
 pleasure and satisfaction, for they indicate 
 a comprehensive and unbiased view of the 
 problems which we loosely term ' the labor 
 question. ' 
 
 "I was, however, surprised and disap- 
 pointed with the reference which you make 
 on page 467 of the March issue of The 
 Outlook relative to the trade-union atti- 
 tude towards prison labor. Let me say 
 in a candid, also in a most friendly spirit, 
 that you have utterly failed to convey 
 the true attitude of the trade-union to- 
 wards prison labor. As an executive offi- 
 [189] 
 
APPENDIXES 
 
 cer of the International Molders' Union 
 for twelve years and as one who has fre- 
 quently appeared before the committees 
 of legislative bodies on contract convict 
 labor bills, I should be in a position to know 
 what the trade-union attitude is. Let me 
 state it briefly. 
 
 "I do not know of a single intelligent 
 trade-unionist or trade-union official who 
 favors abolishing convict labor. The op- 
 position of the trade-union movement is 
 directed towards the kind of labor which 
 the convict performs, and the method 
 through which this labor enters into direct 
 and most injurious competition with that 
 of the workman. 
 
 "Our opposition is against the contract 
 convict labor system through which the 
 labor of the convict is made to result in 
 profit to the contractor, the convict's wel- 
 fare and reformation being a secondary 
 and frequently negligible factor, the prime 
 motive being that of any practical business 
 man — the making of money, with this 
 advantage that the convict can be driven 
 to a physical limit which is impossible in 
 the case of free labor. 
 
 [190] 
 
APPENDIXES 
 
 In the shirt making industry, shoe ma- 
 king industry, saddlery, and several others, 
 convict labor has ruined the industry for 
 the free workers. In my own trade the 
 hollow ware made by contract convict 
 labor has driven the hollow ware business 
 entirely out of the foundries all over the 
 country. I am not beyond the mark when 
 I inform you that there are not in this 
 country to-day one hundred molders en- 
 gaged in making cast-iron kettles, spiders, 
 and other cast-iron kitchen hollow ware. 
 Let me give you an illustration. 
 
 "With other trade-unionists in this state 
 I was active in endeavoring to have a new 
 penitentiary built in Columbus by con- 
 victs. If this is done, it will throw out of 
 employment the free labor which would 
 be employed if the labor was not done by 
 convicts. Here, then, are a number of 
 brick layers, masons, etc. who would be 
 prevented from securing work on a new 
 penitentiary. 
 
 "This, however, is not a serious matter 
 and is one against which we can make no 
 objection. Let us assume that the con- 
 tract convict labor system still obtained 
 [191] 
 
APPENDIXES 
 
 in Ohio and, instead of the convicts being 
 contracted to hardware, hollow ware, and 
 other prison labor contract manufacturers, 
 they were contracted to building contract- 
 ors and used in the city of Columbus to 
 erect buildings: they would then present 
 an entirely different form of competition 
 with free labor, and the contractor, paying 
 the state from ^.75 to $1.00 a day for the 
 convict labor, would speedily force con- 
 tractors employing free labor to meet this 
 competition or go out of business. The 
 result of employing convicts in the erection 
 of buildings in Ohio under the direction of 
 contract convict contractors would not 
 only throw a certain number of building 
 trade workmen out of employment, but, 
 in addition and of far greater importance, 
 would force a reduction in wages on all 
 of the free workmen in the building trades. 
 "I have never yet seen a statement em- 
 anating from the rank and file of the offi- 
 cers of the trade-unions advocating idleness 
 for convicts. On the other hand, I do know 
 that they are lending their influence to 
 have the convict placed at such occupations 
 as road making, farming, etc., which would 
 [192] 
 
APPENDIXES 
 
 enable the convict to redeem himself if he 
 so desired and nature had not cursed him 
 too heavily with moral deformity at his 
 birth to make this impossible. 
 
 "Deeply appreciative of the interest 
 which you have taken in the workman's 
 efforts to improve his standard of living, I 
 remain, 
 
 "Respectfully yours, 
 
 "John P. Frey, 
 "Editor." 
 
 [193] 
 
APPENDIX II 
 THE REASON FOR THE UNIONS 
 
 SOME complaint has been made of my 
 representation of the attitude of the 
 average employer toward unionism. No 
 sweeping statements are made in the text; 
 I have asserted that there is "a goodly 
 number" of employers "whose works show 
 that they do believe in the unions, and 
 who are seeking to enter into cordial co- 
 operation with them." I have, however, 
 expressed the opinioh that "most em- 
 ployers" qualify their faith in unionism by 
 statements which imply that the unions in 
 which they believe are not those which 
 assert the right of the me;i to have a voice 
 in the determination of wages and condi- 
 tions of labor. Just what proportion of 
 American employers frankly concede to 
 the unions this right of collective bargain- 
 ing it would be impossible to say; my own 
 impression, derived from pretty large ac- 
 I194] 
 
APPENDIXES 
 
 quaintance and observation, is that it is 
 not large, and that it is not, at present, 
 increasing. The unions are, indeed, toler- 
 ated in many industries, but the majority 
 of employers who tolerate them would 
 abolish them if they could. This attitude 
 is due, in large part, to the abuses which 
 we have considered in the previous chapter, 
 and also to the fact that employers, as a 
 class, have not carefully considered what 
 would be the consequence of abolishing 
 the unions. I am far from believing that 
 the majority of employers intend such 
 consequences as are here depicted; if they 
 clearly saw what their policy must result 
 in, most of them would be ready to 
 reconsider. 
 
 Most of the employers who say that 
 they believe in the unions are firm in their 
 maintenance of the open shop, and it is 
 difficult to regard the non-union element 
 in an open shop in any other light than as 
 an ally of the employer in his resistance to 
 unionism. 
 
 Many of the employers who tolerate 
 unions refuse to recognize them. They 
 will consult zvith their men on any question 
 [i9S] 
 
APPENDIXES 
 
 concerning the interests of the men, but 
 they will have no dealings with representa- 
 tives of the unions. Such employers are, 
 of course, opposed to the arbitration of 
 industrial disputes. They "have nothing 
 to arbitrate." 
 
 Now, as has been said, I know of no way 
 of finding out how large a proportion of 
 the employers of labor maintain this un- 
 friendly attitude toward the unions. That 
 there is "a goodly number" of those who 
 are ready to enter into cordial and coopera- 
 tive relations with them I have admitted. 
 I wish that that number might increase, 
 and I am persuaded that many employers 
 who now antagonize them would change 
 their minds if they would look a little 
 farther ahead. This is what, in this 
 chapter, I have been trying to enable 
 them to do. 
 
 With those who have written to express 
 the opinion that the number of employers 
 who are ready to cooperate with organized 
 labor is larger than my estimate I should 
 be glad to agree. In such a spirit of 
 friendly cooperation is our hope of peace 
 and welfare. But I confess that the pros- 
 [196] 
 
APPENDIXES 
 
 pect of such an amicable adjustment of 
 this great dispute is not so bright as I could 
 wish. Sometimes it looks as though the 
 chasm which divides the two classes were 
 growing too wide and too deep to be bridged 
 or filled up, and that nothing could avert 
 the struggle in which the existing indus- 
 trial order must be overthrown. It is in 
 the sincere belief that such an industrial 
 revolution, in the present state of public 
 intelligence, would be disastrous to the 
 commonwealth, that these pages have 
 been written. 
 
 [197] 
 
APPENDIX III 
 
 Industry and democracy 
 
 THE practical difficulty of such a situ- 
 ation as that which is imagined in 
 the text, where the employer frankly pro- 
 poses recognition of the union and co- 
 operation with it, arises from the action 
 of national organizations of labor. The 
 national body sometimes undertakes to en- 
 force, by a strike, demands which the local 
 union would not be inclined to make, and 
 the cooperation between the employer and 
 the local union is ruptured by the inter- 
 ference of the national organization. This 
 is possible, however, largely because the 
 relations between the employers and the 
 local unions are, in most cases, distant or 
 unfriendly. If these relations were, in 
 the great majority of cases, amicable and 
 satisfactory, the power of the national 
 organization to disturb them would be 
 greatly reduced. And nothing is more to 
 [198] 
 
APPENDIXES 
 
 be desired, in the interest both of em- 
 ployer and of employed, than that the 
 local bond be made so strong that outside 
 influences cannot easily disturb it. Just 
 as home-rule is the best policy in muni- 
 cipal government, and the self-governing 
 forces of the local community ought to be 
 strengthened in every practicable way, so 
 the effort of the intelligent employer should 
 be to keep himself in such relations with 
 the labor organizations, that the most of 
 the questions arising shall be settled at 
 home. 
 
 [199] 
 
APPENDIX IV 
 
 CROSS-LIGHTS AND COUNTER- 
 CLAIMS 
 
 WHAT about labor organizations 
 among government employees? 
 What are their rights and obligations? 
 Should they become affiliated with the 
 American Federation of Organized Labor 
 and subject to its control? Have they a 
 right to strike for higher wages and better 
 conditions of service? These questions 
 have already arisen in some of the depart- 
 ments at Washington, and it is highly 
 important that they be promptly and 
 thoroughly discussed and definitely settled. 
 For my own part, I can see no justifica- 
 tion for any organization of government 
 employees for ordinary trade-union pur- 
 poses. It may be lawful to organize 
 mutual benefit societies among the gov- 
 ernment employees, but not associations 
 whose purpose it is to enforce their de- 
 [ 200] 
 
APPENDIXES 
 
 mands by striking. A strike, to make 
 the best of it, is a species of warfare; and 
 it would be a political absurdity to grant 
 the right of government employees to 
 organize for warfare against the govern- 
 ment. The Constitution defines treason 
 as levying war against the United States, 
 and any association of men which proposes 
 by force to resist, or by combination to 
 interrupt the operation of the laws, incurs 
 the condemnation of that just provision. 
 The right of the organized employees of 
 any private person or corporation to strike 
 for improved conditions arises out of the 
 fact that the employed have no other 
 way of enforcing their claim. There is a 
 dispute between employer and employed 
 about wages or hours of work; there is 
 no tribunal to which it can be referred; 
 the employer refuses arbitration; the only 
 remedy of the employed Is to refuse to 
 work, and thus to interrupt, so far as possi- 
 ble, the industrial operation, and cause such 
 a reduction in the profits of the employer 
 that he shall be forced to accede to their 
 demand. The scale of wages against 
 which the men are striking is one which 
 [201] 
 
APPENDIXES 
 
 they have no voice in fixing; it is an ulti- 
 matum offered to them which they can 
 take or leave; they exercise their right in 
 unitedly refusing to take it. 
 
 But the case of the government employee 
 is radically different from the case of the 
 employee of a private person or corpora- 
 tion. In the first place the government 
 employee is a citizen; he is himself a re- 
 sponsible member of the government; he 
 has had, or ought to have had, a voice 
 in fixing the terms and conditions under 
 which he is working; if they are not satis- 
 factory he has the privilege and the power 
 of joining with his other fellow citizens in 
 making them satisfactory. There is, in 
 his case, an existing tribunal to which the 
 whole matter can be referred, and that is 
 the will of the people. To that tribunal 
 let him make his appeal, and submit to its 
 decision. It may take time to secure the 
 popular action by which his conditions 
 will be improved, but he has no right to 
 seek redress in any other way. A strike 
 of government employees is the attempt 
 of a class of citizens to interrupt, in their 
 own interest, the operations of the govern- 
 [ 202] 
 
APPENDIXES 
 
 ment, upon which the comfort and welfare 
 of the whole people depend. No class of 
 citizens can reasonably claim the right to 
 do any such thing. 
 
 When the French employees on the 
 government railways undertook to enforce 
 their demands by striking, Premier Briand, 
 a Socialist, promptly "called the men to 
 the colors." It was a sharp reminder that 
 patriotic men in the employ of the nation 
 cannot form any combinations of their own 
 to resist the national authority. That 
 savors of mutiny. 
 
 One reason why some of us are ready to 
 have all the public service industries pass 
 under the control of the government is 
 our wish to have them placed upon a basis 
 where industrial war will be impossible. 
 If the right to strike is to be asserted by 
 combinations of government employees, 
 that advantage will be lost, and the last 
 state of our industrial conflict will be worse 
 than the first. 
 
 Such being the case, it is, of course, 
 highly improper for associations of govern- 
 ment employees to affiliate with the Ameri- 
 can Federation of Labor or any other 
 [203] 
 
APPENDIXES 
 
 organization which undertakes to deter- 
 mine for them the terms and conditions 
 under which they must perform their ser- 
 vice. They might as well put themselves 
 under the protection of Canada or Mexico. 
 
 [204] 
 
APPENDIX V 
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE LABOR 
 QUESTION 
 
 IN some of the letters from employers 
 the question has been raised, with some 
 acerbity, as to the right of a minister of 
 the gospel to have any opinion, or publicly 
 to express any opinion, upon the Labor 
 Question. "It would be impertinent for 
 us," these objectors say, for substance, 
 "to volunteer any suggestions about your 
 professional work, and it is . equally im- 
 pertinent for you to offer counsels to us 
 about the management of our business." 
 
 I think that a little discrimination is 
 needed just here. With respect to some 
 parts of my professional work it would 
 not, probably, be modest for my friends, 
 the captains of industry, to venture on 
 criticisms. Upon the authorship of the 
 Pentateuch or the interpretation of the 
 Athanasian Creed they might naturally 
 [205] 
 
APPENDIXES 
 
 hesitate to differ with me. But there are 
 a great many matters of which it is my 
 business to speak, with respect to which 
 they might, with entire propriety, chal- 
 lenge my teaching. If I should inculcate 
 the doctrine that children should not be 
 required to obey their parents, but should 
 be permitted to do as they please in all 
 things; or if I should tell servants that 
 they might justifiably steal from their 
 masters if they would only put their plun- 
 der into the contribution box, my friends, 
 the captains of industry, would have a 
 perfect right publicly to find fault with 
 my professional work, and try to bring 
 me to a better mind. There are certain 
 very important part's of my professional 
 work as a Christian teacher, on which all 
 intelligent men have a right to form and 
 express opinions. 
 
 Similarly there are many parts of the 
 work of a captain of industry, on which it 
 would be absurd for me to offer any sug- 
 gestions. I know nothing at all about the 
 manufacture of automobiles, or the pro- 
 duction of woolen cloth, or the marketing 
 of coal, or the management of credits; and 
 [ 206 ] 
 
APPENDIXES 
 
 it would be a grotesque impertinence for 
 me to try to tell any business man how to 
 manage these parts of his business. I 
 have not attempted any such thing. 
 
 But there are certain human relation- 
 ships which these captains of industry sus- 
 tain to the men in their employ about 
 which I have some knowledge. It is a 
 large part of my business to find out how 
 human beings can live together peaceably, 
 usefully, and prosperously. The teachings 
 of Jesus Christ, which it is my professional 
 business to understand and enforce, are 
 largely concerned with this very' thing. 
 The principles of this teaching apply as 
 directly to industrial society as to any 
 other form of human association. It is 
 my business to make this application. If 
 I failed to do so, I should be unfaithful to 
 my commission. This is all that I have 
 ever undertaken to do. And when, in 
 doing so, I am admonished that I am 
 intruding into interests with which I have 
 no concern, I must plead not guilty to 
 the accusation. 
 
 It is open to any one to say that the 
 principles of Christianity do not furnish 
 [207] 
 
APPENDIXES 
 
 the true and adequate rule of human con- 
 duct; that it is impossible to apply them 
 to the relations of men in economic society. 
 One who thinks so is, of course, justified 
 in objecting to the teachings of this book. 
 A man may believe with Nietzsche that the 
 religion of good will is a pestilent distem- 
 per; that the ideal man is hard-hearted, 
 unscrupulous, merciless. To those who 
 hold any opinion akin to this, the entire 
 argument of this book would appear to 
 be, not only futile, but mischievous. It 
 has been assumed, however, in all this 
 argument, that the principles of our Chris- 
 tian civilization are valid principles; that 
 Christ's summary of the moral law is a 
 true and adequate statement of the funda- 
 mental human obligation. It is also as- 
 sumed that it is the business of the 
 Christian Church to apply this law to all 
 human relations; and that the Christian 
 minister has no choice about making this 
 application to industrial society as to other 
 forms of society. 
 
 Industrial society has a technical and 
 mechanical side, with which the Christian 
 minister has nothing to do; but it has also 
 [208] 
 
APPENDIXES 
 
 a human side with which he has everything 
 to do. The one supreme question about 
 industrial society is the question what kind 
 of men it is producing, both in the shop 
 and in the counting room; and what kind 
 of social relations it is cultivating between 
 employers and employed. If the classes 
 brought together in industrial society are 
 all becoming better, happier, stronger, 
 more hopeful, more contented, and if the 
 spirit of friendship and cooperation is bind- 
 ing them together more and more closely, 
 the Christian Church may feel that she is 
 fulfilling her function; but if conditions in 
 all respects the reverse of this are appear- 
 ing, it will be well for her to look well to 
 her ways and see wherein she is failing of 
 her duty. 
 
 [209I 
 
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 The labor question, 
 
 3 1924 002 663 346 
 
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