Cornell University Library 
 
 HD 8072.S65 
 
 The industrial conflict; a series of chap 
 
 3 1924 002 724 361 
 
SU5 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 NEW YORK STATE SCHOOL 
 
 OF 
 
 INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR 
 
 RELATIONS 
 
 AT 
 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
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/cu31924002724361 
 
THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
The 
 
 Industrial Conflict 
 
 A SERIES OF CHAPTERS ON 
 PRESENT-DAY CONDITIONS 
 
 BY 
 
 DR. SAMUEL G. SMITH 
 
 Ml 
 
 Department of Sociology, 
 
 UPjy yp.px ■■"'"' " ■ 
 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh 
 PvTp 
 
Copyright, 190T, by 
 FLEMING H. EEVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York : 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue 
 Toronto: 25 Richmond St., W. 
 London : 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh : 100 Princes Street 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 i 
 
 THE PROBLEM STATED 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Real Conflict Between Employer and Em- 
 ployed.^ — Letters from Labour Leaders and 
 Large Employers of Labour. — Mutual Interest 
 in Large and Cheap Production. — Conflict Aris- 
 ing from Distribution of Product 7 
 
 II 
 
 LETTERS FROM LABOUR LEADERS 
 
 Preliminary Statement. — National Leaders. 
 
 Local Leaders 15 
 
 III 
 
 PRIMARY DEMANDS OF LABOUR 
 
 Liberty of Organisation. — Shorter Hours. — 
 
 Larger Wages. — The Closed Shop 60 
 
 IV 
 SECONDARY DEMANDS OF LABOUR 
 Unorganised Labour. — Woman and Labour. 
 Public Sanitation. — The Personal Touch. — 
 Child Labour Problem. — The Industrial Democ- 
 racy 83 
 
 V 
 
 LETTERS FROM EMPLOYERS 
 
 Preliminary Statement. — Importance of the 
 
 Writers.— Business Interests Uppermost 100 
 
 PROPERTY OF LIBRARY 
 
 NEW YORK STATE SPHOOL 
 INDUSTRIAL AUO LABOR RELATIONS 
 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 VI 
 PRIMARY DEMANDS OF EMPLOYERS 
 The Point of View. — Nature of Credit. — Su- 
 perintendence. — Assaults on Persons and Prop- 
 erty. — Violation of Contracts 133 
 
 VII 
 SECONDARY DEMANDS OP EMPLOYERS 
 Labour Leaders. — The Sympathetic Strike. — 
 Discipline in the Labour Union. — Effort for Mo- 
 nopoly. — Loyalty to the Business. — The Labour 
 Press 153 
 
 VIII 
 THREE PARTIES IN INTEREST 
 Employers, Employed, Public. — The Eco- 
 nomic Battle. — The Common Interest in Pro- 
 duction. — Fallacy of Limited Production. — Joy 
 and Integrity. — The Rich and Flexible World.. 172 
 
 IX 
 THE IMPROVED MAN 
 Social and Industrial Education. — New In- 
 dustrial Ventures. — Increase of Wages as Capi- 
 tal. — Economic Value of Virtues.i — Resources of 
 Religion 186 
 
 X 
 
 WOULD SOCIALISM DO? 
 Idealistic Socialism, Political Socialism, and 
 Economic Socialism. — Exploitation of the Work- 
 ingman. — State Ownership of Means of Produc- 
 tion. — Functions of the State. — Socialism 
 Ineffective. — Attack upon the Family. — Attack 
 upon the Nation 201 
 
THE PKOBLEM STATED 
 
 Real Conflict between Employer and Em- 
 ployed — Letters from Labour Leaders and 
 Large Employers of Labour — Mutual Interest 
 In Large and Cheap Production — Conflict 
 Arising from Distribution of Product. 
 
 Foe more than a hundred years writers in various 
 countries have been discussing questions of labour, 
 production, and distribution; but there still re- 
 mains something to be said. What is needed is a 
 statement in clear English of the essential facts and 
 fundamental principles involved, in the relations 
 of employer and employed. We are in the midst 
 of a time of great upheaval. Any day there may 
 be actual conflict in particular trades, and every 
 day there is potential conflict in all the trades. 
 The literature of the subject may be divided into 
 two general classes. One group of discussions, the 
 more scientific in form and the more difficult of 
 comprehension, considers how matters would go on 
 if the actual working world were such a place as 
 the theoretical economic world in which the writer 
 lives. The other group of discussions takes a 
 
8 THE INDTTSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 brief either for the employer or the employed, and 
 with much noise and fury seeks to win a partisan 
 verdict. This study differs from all that has been 
 written upon the question, in that it is not based 
 upon a theoretic, but a real world, and, instead of 
 seeking to serve some theory, endeavours to show 
 the actual grounds upon which the whole subject 
 rests, and, rejecting both matters of method and 
 incidental questions, to set in a clear light the 
 issues involved. 
 
 It will be shown that there is a real conflict 
 between employer and employed of a permanent 
 nature. If this be true, it follows that the ques- 
 
 | tions involved cannot be settled by gentle senti- 
 ments or brotherly advice. These relations are a 
 
 I part of that universal struggle for existence which, 
 though blackened by many a shadow and scarred 
 by many a defeat, has yet worked out the good 
 and the glory of human life. All higher forms 
 of social organisation have been the resultant of 
 struggle. In government, these struggles lead to- 
 ward democracy; in religion, they conduct toward 
 freedom; and in economics, they are to result in 
 the emancipation of the working classes. 
 
 It is perfectly futile to seek to quiet the con- 
 tending parties by assuring them that there i3 
 
THE PROBLEM STATED 9 
 
 no ground for any strife, and that in reality the 
 interests of master and man are precisely identical. 
 The nature of the conflict may be briefly stated. 
 It is summed up in the question, " Who shall have 
 the surplus result of labour after interest and rent, 
 superintendence and the maintenance of working- 
 men have been provided?" Such surplus exists. 
 This is manifest by the increasing wealth of the 
 world, and may be easily reinforced by study of 
 the statistics of any civilised nation, but particu- 
 larly results of labour in the United States, Great 
 Britain, and Germany. This surplus has always 
 been claimed as a right by the employers. It is 
 the denial of this right upon the part of organised 
 workingmen that makes the conflict. 
 
 A partial recognition of the claims of working- 
 men is sometimes made in what is known as profit 
 sharing, but so long as profit sharing means the 
 distribution of such a part of the profits as the 
 employer sees fit to give as a gratuity to the men 
 working under him, it differs in no respect from 
 any other charity, except that it denies the most 
 important item in all charity work, namely, that 
 giving depends not upon deserts, but upon needs. 
 
 In order that my discussion might have a real 
 character, I determined at the outset to secure the 
 
10 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 co-operation of representative men in its prep- 
 aration. Letters were sent to the most important 
 labour leaders in the United States, asking them to 
 state briefly but definitely what it is the working- 
 men want. Similar letters were sent to the largest 
 employers of labour in the country, asking them 
 to state, in view of the disturbances in the labour 
 world, what the employers want. A sufficient 
 number of answers was received to make the letters 
 a valid basis for the present state of opinion in 
 the economic world. These letters are printed in 
 this study, and furnish the basis of the discus- 
 sion. Anyone who will take the trouble to read 
 two or three times over the answers of each of the 
 classes, will find growing upon him composite 
 photographs of the minds of the employers and 
 the employed at the present time. He will be 
 surprised at the greater scope of the letters from 
 the workingmen, and the greater vigour in their 
 style. This composite workingman has the larger 
 outlook upon life. The composite employer is 
 more urbane, more perplexed, and really feels him- 
 self aggrieved by the present situation. He evi- 
 dently feels, however, that the conflict is transitory, 
 and that he will soon be victor. The writers of 
 these letters were promised that their names should 
 
THE PROBLEM STATED 11 
 
 not be used when their letters were published, in 
 order to secure them from annoyance, but chiefly 
 in order to secure from them a perfectly frank 
 statement of facts. The discussion is limited by 
 the fact that the letters from the labour people 
 were all from those who are connected with labour 
 organisations. The discussion itself will show 
 why this has been done. The employers are them- 
 selves quite as well organised as the workingmen, 
 and their organisations seem to the employers of 
 labour very important. In the current printers'; 
 strike the men of a certain shop went to the em- 
 ployer and said: "If you will resign from your 
 union, we will resign from ours, and we think 
 with such a man as you are we can get along," but 
 the employer declined to resign from his union. 
 This is a very significant fact, and throws a flood 
 of light upon the situation. 
 
 I have steadily adhered to the opinion that what 
 is needed is to lay bare primary facts rather than 
 to discuss temporary methods. Methods must 
 change with changing economic situations, and 
 with the advance in social capacity, but so long as 
 the wage system lasts there are certain primary 
 facts which will not change, and with these the 
 chief interest in the discussion must lie. In the 
 
12 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 May, 1906, number of the Annals of the American 
 Academy, Mr. Beverly Smith, Secretary of the 
 Employing Lithographers' National League, pre- 
 sented an article on the mutual government plan 
 of preventing industrial conflicts. It was a nicely 
 worked out scheme for voluntary arbitration, and 
 certainly promised well. Mr. Beverly Smith evi- 
 dently thought that if it were imitated in the other 
 trades, industrial peace would be near at hand. 
 Within three months from the time that the article 
 appeared, the lithographers' strike was an accom- 
 plished fact. Nice schemes, that sound well and 
 are really very reasonable, are easily torn up by 
 the conflicting passions of men, which are by no 
 means reasonable, and yet which constitute the 
 strongest force in human history. 
 
 The following, it seems to me, are the most im- 
 portant facts revealed by present-day study of the 
 labour question: 
 
 1. There is a mutual interest between the work- 
 ingman and his employer. That mutual interest 
 consists in securing the largest and cheapest 
 production of useful commodities. Whatever 
 methods of combination either of capital or labour, 
 whatever location of plant or methods of produc- 
 tion lend themselves to economic production, are 
 
THE PEOBLEM STATED IS 
 
 in the long run sure of adoption. Large and 
 cheap production gives the largest surplus after 
 interest and rent, superintendence and mainte- 
 nance are paid. 
 
 2. The adverse interest of employer and em- 
 ployed is in the distribution of the product arising 
 from their mutual industrial co-operation. This 
 struggle for the spoils of labour is precisely the 
 same question as the struggle between tribes and 
 nations, and the struggle within tribes and nations 
 of king and priest, ruler and ruled, and of the 
 various social classes and social interests. 
 
 3. The adverse interest between employer and 
 employed results necessarily in conflict. All 
 forms of social organisation are the recorded 
 group judgment of the result of struggle. New 
 social institutions arise as the result of new 
 struggles. They are victories made lawful. The 
 social interest in this conflict is very great. That 
 social interest is sufficient to insist that the con- 
 flict must take place under rules. It seems appar- 
 ent that the organisations, both of employers and 
 of employed, are in the interests of lawful combat. 
 
 4. In the last analysis, labour conflicts must be 
 carried on under rules formulated by the State. 
 The State, as the most authoritative organ of 
 
U THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 social life, must be depended upon to secure jus- 
 tice to all parties. In primitive savagery private 
 vengeance was the sole check upon crime. When 
 organised society became strong, it became the 
 arbiter of private disputes. It is not a necessary 
 deduction from this principle that compulsory 
 arbitration is the only or the proper method to be 
 pursued. Compulsory arbitration has grave diffi- 
 culties which are not to be here discussed. It may, 
 however, be said that quasi-public corporations, 
 such as railroads, may well be placed under restric- 
 tions not applicable to private corporations. The 
 method of control, and the extent of control, may 
 well vary according to varying conditions. The 
 essential principle is that both employers and em- 
 ployed, corporations and private interests, must 
 alike bow to the majesty of the State, which rep- 
 resents the final social and moral judgments of 
 the entire people. I am not without hope that 
 the discussion which follows will throw some light 
 upon the primary facts and principles involved in 
 current economic conditions. 
 
n 
 
 LETTEES FROM LABOUR LEADERS 
 
 Preliminary Statement — National Leaders — 
 Local Leaders. 
 
 The following letters from leaders of labour in 
 various parts of the country are offered not for their 
 Btrength of argument or their fulness of discus- 
 sion, but as the testimony of witnesses who are quite 
 competent to state certain facts which are very 
 much needed in order to arrive at sound conclu- 
 sions. The unsigned letters are, from some points 
 of view, even more important than those which are 
 signed. The writers have immunity from any 
 possible criticism either by their associates in the 
 labour ranks or by their employers. There is no 
 stimulus to pride which might seek the production 
 of letters well worth reading. The immediate, 
 and, I may be allowed to say, the unpremeditated 
 character of the letters, while a possible source of 
 criticism from some points of view, precisely adds 
 to their value for the purposes of this discussion. 
 The things that lie upon the surface of the mind, 
 
 15 
 
16 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 the mental resultant of years of experience, and, 
 oftentimes, conflict, are precisely those issues which 
 we wish defined. It is not the labour grievance 
 that may be dug up by the man who takes time to 
 think, but that thing of which he is readiest to 
 speak, and which he can most quickly formulate, 
 which gives us the best material. It is the quick 
 answer to the unexpected question that the lawyer 
 finds to be the very pearl of price in testimony in 
 the court room. Some of the letters might have 
 been amended to give them better literary form, 
 but it has seemed wiser to present the statements 
 substantially as they came from the hands of the 
 writers. A few unimportant sentences have been 
 omitted, but otherwise the statements represent 
 correctly the present mind of the writers. 
 
 Another thing which adds value to these wit- 
 nesses is that they represent different parts of the 
 country, and, most of all, they represent different 
 positions in the ranks of labour. It is not the 
 voice of the national leaders alone that is heard, 
 but men of importance in local fields speak, and 
 three or four of no importance at all except to 
 themselves and their families and a narrow circle 
 of friends. But these last are as important as the 
 others, because they reveal the point of view of the 
 
LETTEES FROM LABOUR LEADERS 17 
 
 inconspicuous man. The answers cover a very 
 wide range of topics. They make many demands, 
 and yet it will be seen that, with one or two ex- 
 ceptions, the letter writers are at substantial accord 
 with one another. This is a very significant fact. 
 It shows that the ranks of labour must not be re- 
 garded as a disorganised mob, if they have not 
 become a thoroughly well-disciplined army. They 
 are not without important points of intellectual 
 agreement, if they have not yet come to that full 
 self-consciousness that belongs to those who know 
 their strength and are certain of the way in which 
 they intend to use it. There is one limitation in 
 these letters that is very significant, and that is 
 the absence of self-examination and self-criticism. 
 A single writer indicates that workingmen have 
 not yet developed to its fullest extent the sense of 
 need for organisation. This writer is as the voice 
 of one crying in the wilderness to those outside 
 the ranks to come into the fold of organised 
 labour. Perhaps, however, it is only fair to add 
 that the form of the question propounded and the 
 use to be made of the answers, did not indicate 
 the line of reflection which would have produced 
 suggestions as to the need of development, breadth, 
 culture, character, and capacity, in order to secure 
 
18 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 the results required. The one suggestion in re- 
 gard to social reorganisation is one that looks to- 
 ward a socialistic form of the State, and aside from 
 reference to the tenement-house question, there is 
 almost no discussion of the immediate thing that 
 might be done through organised society to benefit 
 the working classes. For the most part, the letters 
 show a sense of aloofness that is very marked. The 
 forces of labour are regarded as standing over 
 against the forces of capital, and as outside the 
 range of sympathy and interest that belong to the 
 general social group. The silences of the letters 
 will be almost as significant to the thoughtful 
 reader as the things that are demanded, but these 
 silences are founded upon limitations of economic 
 theory and a lack of perception of the solidarity of 
 human interests, which is quite as noticeable in the 
 letters from the employers as in those from the 
 workingmen. 
 
 MR. SAMUEL GOMPERS, 
 President The American Federation of Labour. 
 
 "What does Labour want? It wants the earth 
 and the fulness thereof. There is nothing too 
 precious, there is nothing too beautiful, too lofty, 
 too ennobling, unless it is within the scope and 
 
LETTERS FROM LABOUR LEADERS 19 
 
 comprehension of Labour's aspiration and wants. 
 To be more specific, the expressed demands of 
 labour are: First and foremost, a_red]iction_of 
 the hours_of _labour to eight h ours to-day-^^fewer 
 to-morrow. Steam power has been applied on a 
 most extensive scale. The improvement of tools, 
 the consequent division of labour, the force of 
 electricity is now applied to an enormous extent. 
 . . . The tendency is to employ the machines con- 
 tinuously (the worker has been made part of the 
 machine) , and the direction has been in the line of 
 endeavouring to make the wealth producers work 
 longer hours. 
 
 " In every city and town throughout this broad 
 land of plenty, gaunt figures, hungry men and 
 women with blanched faces, and children having 
 the marks of premature age and emaciated condi- 
 tions indelibly impressed upon their countenances, 
 stalk through the streets and highways. 
 
 " We demand a reduction of the hours of labour, ( 
 which would give a due share of work and wages 
 to the reserve army of labour, and eliminate many j 
 of the worst abuses of the industrial system. 
 
 " Labour demands and insists upon the right to 
 organise for self and mutual protection. 
 
 "The toilers want the abrogation of all laws 
 
20 THE INDTTSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 discriminating against them in the exercise of 
 those functions which make our organisations, in 
 the economic struggle, a factor and not a farce. 
 We demand equality before the law in fact as well 
 as in theory. 
 
 "And by no means the least demand of the 
 Trade Unions is for adequate wages. The Trade 
 Union, taking normal conditions as its point of 
 view, regards the workingman as the producer of 
 the wealth of the world, and demands that wages, 
 as long as the wage system may last, shall be suf- 
 ficient to enable him to support his family in a 
 manner consistent with existing civilisation, and 
 all that is required for maintaining and improving 
 physical and mental health and the self-respect 
 of human beings. 
 
 " Eender our lives, while working, safe and 
 healthful as modern science demonstrates it is 
 possible. Save our children in their infancy from 
 being forced into the maelstrom of wage slavery. 
 See to it that they are not dwarfed in body and 
 mind, or brought to a premature death by early 
 drudgery. Give them the sunshine of the school 
 and playground, instead of the factory, the mine, 
 and the workshop. 
 
 " We want more school houses and less jails ; 
 
LBTTEKS FROM LABOUR LEADERS 21 
 
 more- books and less arsenals ; more learning and 
 less vice; more constant work and less crime; 
 more leisure and less greed. These are the de- 
 mands made by the labourer upon modern society, 
 and in their consideration is involved the fate of 
 civilisation." 
 
 WILLIAM D. HUBER, 
 
 President The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and 
 Joiners. 
 
 " Your note of the 21st in which you ask for a 
 ' brief ' on ' What the workingmen want/ is re- 
 ceived, and it affords me a great pleasure to assist 
 you with my little mite, which I hope will be ac- 
 ceptable to you. 
 
 "To begin, I say to you in all sincerity and 
 candour that the workingmen want the eight- 
 hour day. Not because it will give them more 
 opportunity and time to spend in gin mills and 
 grog shops, but for the simple reason that it gives 
 the younger generation growing up a better op- 
 portunity to educate themselves, and thus assume 
 the duties of honourable American citizenship. 
 
 " The organised workingmen want the closed 
 shop. The only commodity we have to sell is our 
 
22 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 labour, and I think we have the right to say to 
 whom that labour shall be sold, how it shall be 
 sold, and in selling, who shall be our competitors 
 and who shall be our co-workers. 
 
 " We want law and order ; we want our federal, 
 state and local statutes enforced; but in times of 
 peace we don't want, neither will we stand for, 
 ' government by injunction.' 
 
 " We want the elimination of child slavery, one 
 of the greatest commercial evils that ever black- 
 ened the name of our fair republic. To think of 
 tots not in their ' teens ' working and slaving from 
 ten to twelve hours a day, in the offices and fac- 
 tories, the mills and shops, making themselves 
 prematurely old men and women, being thrown 
 into contact with older heads who, sometimes, I 
 am sorry to say, are not choice in their language ! 
 This bodes ill for the rising generation, and it is 
 enough to make the blood boil in the veins of any 
 American to see these little children dragging 
 themselves wearily homeward when their tasks are 
 completed. 
 
 " And yet we hear many ' captains of industry ' 
 say that ' commercial industries, the growth of the 
 country, has made necessary the employment of 
 children on certain work,' and that it is due to 
 
LETTERS EEOM LABOUR LEADERS 23 
 
 conditions over which they have no control. If 
 such be the case — if Mammon, greed, avarice, are 
 to be predominating influences in this country, if 
 the aristocrats are going to sacrifice the children 
 of the republic for the benefit of their class, that 
 they may buy a few more automobiles, take a few 
 more trips to the old country, send their children 
 to colleges, educate them to hate the masses, in- 
 stead of teaching them to extend the helping hand 
 to their less fortunate brethren, then, if the above 
 is going to be permitted to obtain, I for one 
 would sanction and endorse ' race suicide ' ; I 
 don't believe we should bring children into this 
 world and confront them with abject slavery, as is 
 now the rule. 
 
 " Our Saviour said, ' Suffer little children to 
 come unto me,' but how can we expect the human 
 slaves to take an interest in the spiritual world 
 when they are kept at the drudgery in the places 
 mentioned before for six days in the week. 
 
 " Happily, however, these conditions are being 
 looked into, fought against, and the elimination of 
 them is being championed, not only by the trade 
 unionists, the thinking people, the people believ- 
 ing in a square deal, but last, and by no means 
 least, the ministers, who are rendering valiant 
 
24 THE INDUSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 service in this respect, and I am only too pleased 
 to assist you in any way you may ask." 
 
 JOHN MITCHELL 
 President The United Mine Workers of America. 
 
 " Immigration should be restricted for the pro- 
 tection of American labour as it is to-day. The 
 men who are now employed in our mines and 
 factories should be safeguarded against the new 
 arrivals who are willing to step into their places 
 for lower wages. This seems to be one of the 
 important reasons for a reform in this branch of 
 our national policy. 
 
 " I believe that the educational qualification for 
 the admission of the immigrant should be raised. 
 He should be able to read and write his native 
 language reasonably well. Such a restriction 
 would give us a better class of immigrants than 
 we get now, and a class less likely to swell the 
 ranks of too cheap labour. 
 
 " Besides demanding the educational qualifica- 
 tion, we ought to require of these immigrants that 
 they bring enough to transport them to whatever 
 section of the country offers the greatest advan- 
 tages to them." 
 
LETTEES EROM LABOUR LEADERS 25 
 
 W. S. STONE, 
 Grand Chief Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. 
 
 " What the workingmen want more than any- 
 thing else at present is shorter hours and com- 
 pensation commensurate with the services they 
 perform. Under our high pressure of living, men 
 wear out much quicker than they used to, and in 
 order to provide for the years when they can earn 
 nothing, it is necessary for them to receive suf- 
 ficient to enable them to live in a respectable way 
 and still put something away for a rainy day. 
 Under the long hours which they now put in, it 
 leaves them no margin of time for reading or the 
 cultivation of the mind, and there is more in life 
 than just eating and sleeping and working. There 
 also needs to be developed a general sympathy 
 between the employer and the employed. In this 
 age of the world man is considered nothing more 
 than a machine. He is not looked upon as a 
 brother. We realise that there must always be 
 those that toil with the hands and those that toil 
 with the brain. One cannot get along without the 
 other, but this labour should be co-operative, and 
 kindly feeling should exist between the two, in- 
 stead of which we have division and strife, the 
 
26 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 one oppressing and the other resenting. What we 
 need most of all, in all classes, is a higher type of 
 individual development, and in order to get this, 
 both sides must concede something." 
 
 CORNELIUS GUINEY, 
 
 Editor The Minnesota Union Advocate. 
 
 "You ask me to state my understanding of 
 what workingmen want. I will confine myself to 
 a few of the most immediate and most essential of 
 those demands which the present generation of 
 union workingmen and women expect to see real- 
 ised in their own time. 
 
 "They want nothing which is not theirs by 
 right of natural law. Nor do they want anything 
 that they cannot command through unity of ac- 
 tion among them. A more reasonable proportion 
 than they have ever yet received of the wealth 
 created by their labour and skill is a prime de- 
 mand of the modern working man and woman. 
 What that proportion is can best be indicated by 
 the shameful disproportion now existing between 
 what they get and what the exploiters of their 
 labour get. 
 
 " As a prime requirement of this they want to be 
 
LETTERS FEOM LABOUR LEADERS 27 
 
 secure in their right under the prevailing indus- 
 trial system, to bargain for the sale of their labour 
 on the collective principle. This want is funda- 
 mental; and with it goes the right to strike in 
 enforcement of their existing demands. 
 
 " They want to prevent the members of the 
 judicial bench, most of whom are the representa- 
 tives of the other party to contracts of employ- 
 ment, to keep their hands off. They want, 
 therefore, to take from all judges the power to 
 use the writ of injunction in the interest of the 
 other contracting party — a practice on the part 
 of the American judiciary which has long since 
 become and still remains a public scandal and a 
 crime. 
 
 " Working men and women will never be placed 
 on an equality with their employers in bargaining 
 for their services until the dread of want from 
 enforced temporary idleness is removed. When 
 they have reached this point, which can be reached 
 through the existence of wholly adequate reserve 
 funds in the treasuries of their respective organ- 
 isations, and when they have once demonstrated 
 to corrupt professional politicians and plunder- 
 ing corporations — the principal employers of such 
 politicians — that they can use the ballot success- 
 
28 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 fully in support of their demands, the right of 
 collective bargaining will no longer be disputed. 
 And the recognition of many other of their pal- 
 pable rights, now contemptuously denied them, 
 will then follow in short order. 
 
 " Industrial society to-day is conducted pretty 
 much as the hunt for food is carried on by preda- 
 tory wild beasts. Animal cunning and brute force 
 are at a premium in each. 
 
 " The present generation of working men and 
 women want to change the existing dog-eat-dog 
 system for another humane enough at least to 
 embody the principle of live-and-let-live. Through- 
 out the ages they have been the under and the 
 eaten dog ; and, since the scuffle must continue on 
 the same lines at least during their lives, they 
 want to be able to engage in it in the future, if 
 possible, with some chance of coming out of it 
 with a whole hide. 
 
 " Working men and women have had dinned 
 into them from the beginning the sacredness of 
 the duty of the individual toward society. They 
 have got to thinking lately that the duty of 
 society toward the individual ought to be no less 
 sacred. Many of them think that society owes 
 some other duty toward its producing members 
 
LETTEES FROM LABOUR LEADERS 29 
 
 than merely the one of punishing them when they 
 violate the law and protecting them against crimes 
 of violence. They are beginning to see that when 
 a man has exhausted his physical and mental re- 
 sources for the general betterment, society owes 
 him some reward besides the degrading shelter of 
 the poorhouse. 
 
 "And so they want American society to make 
 early and adequate provision for old-age pensions, 
 as has long since been done by nations which are 
 not given to boasting of either their freedom or 
 their prosperity. 
 
 " Neither working men nor women any longer 
 take the teachings of the ministers, the politicians, 
 or the authors as seriously as they were once 
 taken. They want such teachings in the future 
 to lay as much stress on humanity and men's 
 worldly happiness as they did in the past on God 
 and their eternal happiness, or on their duty as 
 law-abiding citizens. 
 
 " The men and women for whom organised la- 
 bour now speaks — and they include productive 
 workers in all the mechanical callings outside as 
 well as within the unions — have done the drudgery 
 of the world in the past. They are still doing it, 
 and, in most cases, doing it without having 
 
30 THE INDUSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 awarded to them enough to buy adequate food, 
 clothing, and shelter. Union workingmen want to 
 remedy this, if they can, or at least to work some 
 amelioration of it. It is not unreasonable for 
 them to want, as they do want, that the children 
 of the poor shall at least be as well provided for 
 in physical comforts as are the dumb beasts of the 
 rich. 
 
 " Social and economic changes will be needed 
 to secure even such paltry wants as these. But 
 these changes are coming. Workingmen not only 
 want to see them come, but they are setting them- 
 selves seriously to the task of making them come. 
 And, when they have come, you and I may still 
 be living to see brought into the lives of the work- 
 ingmen whose wants you inquire about, more of 
 love and leisure, and less of dirt and .drudgery 
 than are found there to-day. Intelligence, con- 
 tentment, happiness can be expected then to pre- 
 vail among them, at least in some increased degree, 
 where now their physical environments throw them 
 back on the fiendish devices which society main- 
 tains at their very hands to make and keep them 
 diseased, ignorant, impoverished, and discon- 
 tented." 
 
LETTERS FEOM LABOUR LEADERS 31 
 
 " The labouring man wants an eight-hour day, 
 so that he may be enabled to have a leisure hour 
 with his family; that he may prepare his children 
 for the work that is before them; that he may 
 educate himself, and be active in politics; that he 
 may think for himself instead of being the tool 
 of a scoundrel. Education of the toiler will bring 
 him and his family into closer relation to the 
 house of God. 
 
 " I believe the foundation of the nation, and 
 labour as a part, is the home, and what we can 
 make it. The tenement and the congested con- 
 dition of the abodes of its working people in our 
 cities should be eliminated to a certain extent by 
 building homes on its outskirts — better homes than 
 he can possibly have in the tenement. 
 
 " Nothing comes nearer to my ideal than a 
 home surrounded by a little of nature, a garden- 
 spot, a blade of grass, and an opportunity to ob- 
 serve the Sabbath in a fitting manner— to study 
 the teaching of Christ, feeling that you are filling 
 your place in the world to the fullest measure, 
 and are not a mere unit of production, a mere 
 machine with a close relation to the serf. 
 
 " A child whose playground is the street becomes 
 associated with the evil side of the humdrum 
 
32 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 existence of to-day to such an extent that it be- 
 comes callous to evil, and readily steps into the 
 path of evildoers. 
 
 "The toiler wants child-labour laws enforced 
 in all States of the Union to prevent the child 
 from being made a slave of corporate greed that 
 borders on the condition of the black chattel of 
 the sixties, for the toiler of the present generation 
 feels a responsibility for the men and women who 
 are to replace him under the standard of labour 
 in the next generation. 
 
 " The labouring class wants a fair share of that 
 which they help to produce, that they may live and 
 better their conditions; they want government 
 control of public utilities, leaving fuel, light, and 
 food out of the hands of monopoly. 
 
 " The labouring class wants postal savings 
 banks under the direct control of Uncle Sam, 
 where a deposit, however small, may be made, that 
 they may feel that their savings are not going to 
 be the means by which unscrupulous scoundrels 
 may promote their own extravagance and dissi- 
 pation. 
 
 " The labouring class of to-day, whose last re- 
 sort is strike, wants strikes and their attendant 
 bitterness replaced by a Board of Arbitration, 
 
LETTEES FKOM LABOUR LEADEES 33 
 
 who shall arbitrate the differences of the employer 
 and employed by a fair and impartial decision. 
 This would also tend to create within the labourer 
 a spirit of pride in his Government and in the 
 laws of the land instead of the contempt he 
 must necessarily have for the court-made laws 
 so frequently applied by the Federal Court. 
 Laws are made by men so as to be unmade by 
 them to grant special privileges to the employing 
 class. State Employment Bureaus are among the 
 labourers' wants. 
 
 " In passing, I will say that a majority of our 
 labouring classes realise the evils attendant upon 
 the free rein given the saloon-keepers, and the 
 menace they are to the progress of the toiler, 
 because we know that a person whose mind is 
 bemuddled with liquor is an easier victim of him 
 who would incite riot and disorder, for Labour 
 recognises Law, and wants Law, but not law ap- 
 plied under a special privilege system." 
 
 "In answer to your question, 'What do the 
 workingmen want ? ' I will say for one thing, a 
 change in the economic conditions whereby an 
 overproduction of food will not cause the pro- 
 ducer of that food to be threatened with hunger; 
 
34 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 or an overproduction of wool and cotton will not 
 make it necessary for the worker to dress shab- 
 bily. 
 
 "Th'ey want the establishment of conditions 
 whereby a man who is willing to work will never 
 lack an opportunity, and whereby he will receive 
 as a reward for his labour the equivalent of what 
 he produces. They want the natural resources to 
 be held as public domain and developed as needed. 
 
 " They want not to be compelled to compete 
 with the machine and the dollar as well as with 
 each other. 
 
 " They want the privilege of working without 
 paying tribute to some arrogant master who im- 
 agines he has a divine right to fence up a part of 
 the public domain and call it his own, as in the 
 case of the mining and lumbering industries, 
 notably. 
 
 " They want peace between nations, between 
 races, and between men, for they believe that war 
 is wholesale murder, and is generally planned and 
 caused by some private interests of the money 
 power, and is for someone's gain and aggrandise- 
 ment. 
 
 " They want the liberty and equality which our 
 forefathers fought for in 1776. 
 
LETTEES FEOM LABOUR LEADERS 35 
 
 " They want emancipation from the rule of the 
 master, as did the black man want emancipation 
 in 1861. 
 
 " In short, the working people want a co-opera- 
 tive commonwealth — socialism, if you please/ ^ 
 
 " It may be envy, or it may be ambition, or 
 possibly the native intelligence of the workman 
 which leads him to believe that he can do better 
 in the future than in the past. Like others, he 
 measures his worth by a money standard, and he 
 is continually reminded of the lowness of his stand- 
 ard. As a means to an end he has found that 
 concerted action is better than individual action. 
 He has discovered also that the shortest way is 
 not always the surest road. 
 
 " The old-time workman worked 12 to 16 hours 
 without a murmur. His labour was varied in 
 character. He was not kept wholly at one detail 
 of work. Haste was unknown, and was not re- 
 quired of him. The introduction of machinery 
 altered his position. The scope of his work was 
 limited. It limited him. It worked incessantly; 
 he must needs do the same. It must have his con- 
 stant care. He became in a measure like the 
 machine he tended — an automaton. The greater 
 
36 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 use of machinery handicapped the labourer even 
 though it multiplied the demand for the product 
 of labour. 
 
 " The workman had to become a specialist, and 
 felt that he ought to share proportionately the 
 profits of the increased labour required of him. 
 In time he discovered that long hours lessened 
 opportunities of labour for others, and with true 
 socialistic instinct, which by nature we all pos- 
 sess, unless perverted, he combined to shorten 
 hours of labour, to help a brother-labourer pro- 
 vide bread for his household. In a word, the 
 labourer of to-day wants work, he wants money 
 for his work, he wants his fellow-labourer to have 
 work, and all want a reasonable amount of leisure 
 for educational purposes, for recreation and gen- 
 eral profit. He also wants to labour in congenial, 
 sanitary conditions, and no longer to be consid- 
 ered a slave for the enrichment of a few already 
 too rich captains of industry." 
 
 " In answering your question, ' What do work- 
 ingmen want ? ' I reply, ' Justice.' They feel that 
 they do not receive now that which rightfully be- 
 longs to them — that all wealth is the product of 
 labour (physical and mental), and that no man 
 
LETTEES FROM LABOUR LEADERS 37 
 
 has the right to one cent he does not earn, except 
 as charity; that the producing power of man has 
 so increased by the invention of machinery, and 
 the skill of man, that the average man now pro- 
 duces six times more in a day's work than his 
 grandfather did. That his grandfather used to 
 receive, even under rent laws, one-half of what he 
 produced. That now he receives only one-fifth. 
 " Or, to put it in another form : The average man 
 earns $2448 per year (U. S. Reports), and only 
 I receives $452 in return. Again, when he sees the 
 lextraTOg^ntdisglay_ of wealth upon thenart of 
 jhisemployer, and compares this with his own hard 
 •struggle for existence, it makes him discontented. 
 Now, while wages have increased about 15 per 
 cent, in the last ten years, living has increased 
 over 30 per cent., and therefore his condition has 
 not improved, and being a student, more or less, 
 of the economical conditions, his eyes are being 
 opened. So in the midst of the greatest prosper- 
 ity, we witness a spirit of great discontent. He 
 contends that his hours should be reduced to eight, 
 because of the strenuous life he has to live. Ten 
 hours over a machine, or on a locomotiye,_or any 
 othe r such work, makes a nervous wreck of him 
 in a few years, and if he does not break down 
 
38 THE INDUSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 .before he is forty, his employer will dismiss him 
 
 I as too old. So he sees for self -protection his hours 
 
 'must be reduced, and thus save his life. He also 
 
 sees that there is no need for such long hours in 
 
 a land of such wealth, and with this view I am in 
 
 full accord. 
 
 " A more comprehensive view, I believe, could 
 be secured under the heading, ' Labour and Or- 
 ganisation, and Why?' In the past it has been 
 our experience that orators who have taken this 
 subject, generally compared labourers in the United 
 States with those of other countries, thus convey- 
 ing to the public a feeling that the labour of our 
 country is already overpaid, and ought to be satis- 
 fied with conditions as they exist in this country 
 to-day. 
 
 " Another method of comparison which should 
 be condemned, is a condition existing in European 
 countries, where women as well as men are com- 
 pelled to enter the fields of manual labour in order 
 to secure a livelihood — a sort of limited slavery. 
 The above conditions exist chiefly among the Ger- 
 manic and Slavonic races, where men are consid- 
 ered monarchs of the home. I, as a descendant 
 of the German peoples, and living among a la- 
 bouring element, often hear of the conditions in 
 
LETTEES FROM LABOUR LEADEES 39 
 
 the ' Fater Lant,' and the boasting of some ig- 
 noramus condemning the mothers of our country 
 because they will not leave their homes and babes 
 to work with the men. Not only this is mentioned, 
 but they go further, telling how they were com- 
 pelled to work from sunrise to sunset when mere 
 mites of children. Then why should we wonder 
 that ignorance and inability are so prevalent 
 among the masses? 
 
 "True it is that in the United States condi- 
 tions are not quite like those I have mentioned, 
 but it is also true that the hoarding of wealth of 
 the nation by a few is tending to bring about con- 
 ditions like these, or worse. 
 
 " Statisticians estimate the wealth of our coun- 
 try thus : 
 
 There is in the United States land worth 
 
 Money amounting to 
 
 Other resources 
 
 " Then, taking figures so collected and dividing 
 same by number of inhabitants, ascertain the 
 wealth of each citizen, forgetting the fact that 
 the great bulk of our wealth is in the hands of 
 few. 
 
40 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 " Then you ask me, ' What do the workingmen 
 want?' 
 
 "We will consider for an illustration a work- 
 ingman receiving as a wage forty dollars per 
 month. Out of this he must support a family, 
 rarely under five members, pay rent, at the least 
 from $16 to $20; eatables, $15 to $20; clothes, 
 doctor's bills, and many sundry expenses neces- 
 sary to maintain life — all from this small sum. 
 Perhaps you ask, ' How can this be accomplished ? ' 
 The answer is, ' It cannot.' 
 
 " How then can he make ends meet? He must 
 either steal, or leave some things unpaid, or put 
 his children to work at the time when they should 
 be in school preparing for a better life than their 
 parents have lived, or resort to the most shameful 
 of all and send the mother to work, when we well 
 know she is needed to take care of the home. 
 
 " What the workingmen want is enlightenment 
 enough — the opportunity to acquire enlightenment 
 necessary to unite and act as one. Then Labour 
 will awake fully and realise its latent power, ceas- 
 ing to patiently accept the lashes of capitalisation 
 like a trained animal. 
 
 "Now for some light upon the mechanical or 
 skilled labourers, who constitute the middle classes. 
 
LETTERS FROM LABOUR LEADERS 41 
 
 I will endeavour to illustrate by mentioning some 
 facts which the press always fails to present. In 
 the strike of the electricians this past spring very 
 few people realised the actual conditions. A line- 
 man must devote not less than three years to 
 learning his trade. Then the employer thinks it 
 usury to pay him $2.75 per day. Now then, coni 
 sider that this man has a family. He is in mo- 
 mentary danger of his life while at work. Then, 
 too, he earns only enough for a meagre living. 
 Some day, most unexpectedly, he is killed. What 
 then has his family to protect them? Absolutely 
 nothing. He cannot take out insurance, because 
 insurance companies refuse to accept a man so 
 employed. There are a few fraternal orders which 
 do accept him, but he must pay additional hazard 
 premiums, making it impossible for such a person 
 to pay for protection for his little ones and family. 
 Again, he is not earning enough to save anything 
 for the future. Yet people say, and most believe, 
 it was unfair to ask for a small increase in this 
 man's pay. The time is at hand when capital will 
 enslave the workingman, or Labour will show its 
 strength, and separate capital from capitalist. 
 
 " Will Labour cease slumbering and bring to 
 the surface for use its hidden strength, or continue 
 
42 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 to remain the horse of ages, accepting hoarded 
 wealth's lash without a murmur? 
 
 " If my language were not so limited, I might 
 go on citing the various oppressions that the well- 
 organised employers are subjecting the bone and 
 sinew of our country to. 
 
 " I would like to call attention to the ' Bill of 
 Grievances ' presented by Congressman Towne, in 
 behalf of Labour, at the last session of that honour- 
 able body. 
 
 "Believing that you can, by reference to the 
 above mentioned document, secure valuable ma- 
 terial for the subject mentioned, ' What the work- 
 ingmen want.' " 
 
 " I have always and at all times tried to the 
 best of my ability to elevate my fellow-workman 
 to a position whereby he might know his rights 
 as a citizen, and his rights to live in this grand 
 and great republic, and to receive a fair share of 
 the products of his labour. The wants of the work- 
 ing man and woman are many, and too numerous 
 for me to state, yet there are a few I would 
 like to call your attention to: One is the female 
 clerks in the department stores, who are continu- 
 ally on their feet from the time they go to work 
 in the morning until the stores close at night, 
 
LETTERS FROM LABOUR LEADERS 43 
 
 and, as I have been informed, they do not receive 
 compensation enough to clothe and support them- 
 selves properly, and this in a Christian com- 
 munity. Their wants should be called to the 
 attention of the public and to the minds of our 
 charitable and public-spirited citizens. 
 
 " Another is our unskilled or common work- 
 man, who has no one to advocate his rights. His 
 lot is a hard one, and his hours long. While some 
 people tell us that it requires no brains to do com- 
 mon labour, nevertheless the labouring man is 
 human, and his requirements should be looked 
 after, and his position in life elevated. 
 
 " The last one is the factory girl. Her welfare 
 deserves the goodwill of a fair-minded public, and 
 her surroundings should be made more pleasant, 
 for factory life at its best is unpleasant. 
 
 " Organised and skilled labour is in a fair way 
 to bring about a better understanding between the 
 employer and employed. Some say the pulpit is 
 not the place for politics — it is only for the word 
 of God. That may be, but to my mind there are 
 no men better fitted and more qualified to ele- 
 vate the working people than the ministers of the 
 gospel. If we cannot go to our ministers to be in- 
 structed in the brotherhood of man — that brother- 
 hood that our Saviour taught to His apostles, and 
 
44 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 to all that He came in contact with while preaching 
 his doctrines on this earth, then to whom shall we 
 go? The American people love fair play, they 
 love the man who is independent and courageous, 
 because this man personifies the spirit which has 
 made this nation great." 
 
 " Eeplying to yours of the 26th ult., I give 
 below a few of the things a labouring man wants : 
 
 " 1. A just proportion of the wealth he pro- 
 duces. 
 
 "2. An equal standing with capital before the 
 courts of the land. 
 
 " 3. A system of taxation, national and State, 
 which will remove a portion of the burden from 
 the shoulders of producer and place it upon cap- 
 ital. 
 
 " 4. An eight-hour day, in order that he may 
 have time for self-improvement and healthful 
 recreation. 
 
 " 5. The right of organisation for mutual pro- 
 tection. 
 
 " 6. The protection of women and children in 
 all the avenues of labour." 
 
 " You request me to give in a definite, compact, 
 
LETTERS FROM LABOUR LEADERS 45 
 
 and direct way, what changes I think should be 
 made in the present relations between employer 
 and employed to give the workingmen what they 
 ought to have. 
 
 " First, he should have (what he has not now) 
 a fair profit on his investment (his labour), his 
 only capital. 
 
 " Second, he should be made to feel that above 
 all he is a man, a necessity to the prosperity of his 
 employer, not a machine to be carted to one side 
 as soon as, in the smallest degree, his physical 
 strength deteriorates. 
 
 " Third, he has a right to expect, but cannot 
 demand, that his services will command remu- 
 neration enough to place his life companion and 
 himself beyond want after a certain . age— say 
 fifty — without in the meantime depriving himself 
 of the actual necessities and a few of the luxuries 
 of life. 
 
 " Fourth, he should be able to educate his chil- 
 dren until such time as they are in a position to 
 earn their own living. 
 
 " Fifth, he should receive such compensation as 
 will enable him in time to amass enough to own 
 his home, and that without injury to the health 
 of his family or himself. 
 
46 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 "Sixth, let the employer divide a certain per 
 cent, of profit (if any) annually among faithful 
 employees. If he does this, when losses occur, if 
 he will confer with them, he will at least get 
 sympathy, if not a reduction in wages, until 
 profits are again secured, when, if he is honest, 
 he will reimburse them for sacrifices made. 
 
 " Seventh, the workingmen want employers to be 
 christian seven days in the week instead of one, 
 to do unto others as they would have others do 
 unto them, to carry their Christianity into their 
 everyday life. 
 
 " Eighth, if employers would evince more in- 
 terest in the temporal welfare of employees, if 
 they would greet them with a cordial handshake, 
 a ' Good-morning, Bill,' would visit their homes, 
 inquire as to their financial condition as well as 
 their spiritual, treat them as equals, in the sight 
 of God at least, the question of strikes, boycotts, 
 etc., would settle itself in a short time; there would 
 be cosmos where now there is industrial chaos, the 
 age of miracles would again be with us. God 
 would indeed reign." 
 
 In order to place before the reader the full 
 demands of labour at a glance, a summary has 
 
LETTEES FEOM LABOUR LEADEES 47 
 
 been made of the principal points contained in 
 the letters. They do not include everything con- 
 tained in all the labour platforms of various kinds 
 in recent years, but I think they may be regarded 
 as substantially filling the requirements of a com- 
 plete program. The insistent demands are for 
 shorter hours, larger wages, and the closed shop. 
 The other demands are not so numerously nor so 
 energetically supported. 
 
 THE LETTERS CONDENSED 
 
 1. The workingman wants shorter hours. The 
 introduction of machinery has required him to 
 work faster, and so he wishes shorter hours, and 
 feels that he ought to share proportionately the 
 profits of the increased labour required of him. 
 
 2. He wants an eight-hour day. Ten hours on 
 a machine or locomotive makes a nervous wreck of 
 him in a few years. For his protection his hours 
 must be reduced. He needs time for self-improve- 
 ment and healthful recreation. 
 
 3. The public should insist that the female 
 clerks in the department stores receive more com- 
 pensation. The unskilled workman has no one to 
 advocate his rights, and he, also, should be as- 
 
48 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 sisted. The welfare of the factory girl deserves 
 the goodwill of a fair-minded public. These need 
 more help than organised and skilled labour. 
 
 4. Organised workmen want the " closed shop." 
 "We want law and order, but we do not want 
 government by injunction." 
 
 5. " We want the elimination of child labour." 
 
 6. Labour demands the right to organise for 
 self and mutual protection. He needs enlighten- 
 ment enough to unite. 
 
 7. A system of taxation, national and State, 
 which will remove the burden from the shoulders 
 of the producer and place it upon capital. 
 
 8. The protection of women and children in all 
 the avenues of labour. 
 
 9. The workman should be made to feel that he 
 is a man, and not a machine. If employers would 
 evince more interest in the welfare of employees, 
 and treat them as equals in the sight of God at 
 least, there would be cosmos where now there is 
 industrial chaos. 
 
 10. The workmen want employers to be Chris- 
 tians seven days in a week, and to carry their 
 Christianity into their everyday lives. 
 
 11. Workmen demand sanitation and safety de- 
 vices in all shops and factories. There needs to be 
 
LETTEES FROM LABOUR LEADERS 49 
 
 developed general sympathy between employer and 
 employee; man is considered nothing more than a 
 machine. He is not looked upon as a brother. 
 
 12. The tenement and the congested conditions 
 of the homes of the workingmen should be im- 
 proved by building houses on the outskirts of 
 citie8. 
 
 13. Government control of public utilities, tak- 
 ing fuel, light, and food out of the hands of the 
 monopolists. 
 
 14. Postal Savings Banks under the direct con- 
 trol of the government. 
 
 15. A board of arbitration created by the State 
 to settle differences between employer and em- 
 ployee. 
 
 16. Immigration should be restricted for the 
 protection of American labour. 
 
 17. Conditions whereby a man who is willing 
 to work would never lack an opportunity. Nat- 
 ural resources held as public domain so that the 
 workman will not have to pay tribute to some 
 arrogant master, as in the case of the mining and 
 lumber industries. Emancipation from the rule 
 of the master, as did the black man in 1861. 
 
 18. They want peace, for war is generally caused 
 and planned by some interest of the money power. 
 
 PROPERTY OF LIBRARY 
 
 NEW YORK STATE fH»P0L 
 INDUSTRIAL m LABOR RELATIONS 
 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
CHAPTBE III 
 PRIMARY DEMANDS OP LABOUR 
 
 Liberty of Organisation — Shorter Hours 1 — 
 Larger Wages — The Closed Shop. 
 
 In discussing the demands of labour I have no 
 hope at all that what I shall say will be pleasing 
 to all the parties to the controversy. That there 
 is a controversy is, of course, substantial evidence 
 that there is no agreement between the parties, 
 and yet I am not without hope that in setting 
 forth the views of the wage earners on the one 
 hand, and of the employers on the other, clearly 
 and fairly, the exposition may serve to make the 
 nature of the disagreement understood, and to 
 contribute something toward an adjustment of the 
 difficulties. It would be foolish to deny that the 
 forces commonly known as capital and labour 
 stand over against each other, either in open an- 
 tagonism or in armed neutrality. It is sometimes 
 stated that the labour unions constitute not more 
 than twenty per cent, of the working population, 
 and on the other hand, the employing class con- 
 so 
 
PRIMARY DEMANDS OP LABOUR 51 
 
 stitutes a much smaller percentage, but meantime 
 the whole public is so inextricably united with 
 both classes that it shares in their practical de- 
 bates, and suffers tremendously from any economic 
 follies in which they may indulge. The general 
 public see in the conflict only the work of huge 
 mechanical forces; they see that capital is bul- 
 warked with power, and supported by statutes; 
 they see that labour has come to feel in a new way 
 its latent power, has a new-born sense of rights 
 which have hitherto been denied, and in the name 
 of the new industrial democracy is flinging ban- 
 ners to the breeze which may become the symbols 
 of revolution. But the forces are not mechanical, 
 and the conflict is not material. The battle is 
 waging between men whose intellects and hearts 
 are involved, whose social life has been begotten by 
 ten thousand successful struggles through un- 
 counted thousands of years, and this organic struc- 
 ture which we call society is not to perish by 
 reason of labour disputes, for it is the resultant 
 value of history, and it is too precious to the faith 
 and love of men. It is essential that we discover 
 the moral and social forces which are able to con- 
 trol, and the economic wisdom which is sufficient 
 to guide, in the present social emergency. In 
 
52 THE INDUSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 presenting the view of what workmen want, it is 
 quite natural that the workmen referred to should 
 be those who belong to organised labour, f or^or- 
 ganised labour js an accomplished fact. It is the 
 organic representative of the bone and sinew of 
 the nation. Organisation has come to stay. It 
 has a rightjto stay. Its voice must be heard,. _Xt„. 
 is the only form of labour that has any voice. 
 Apart from organisation, Labour is as dumb and 
 as weak to-day as when it cowered a trembling 
 slave beneath the lash of its master. 
 
 It is too late to recount the history of the 
 struggle for the right of free association. The 
 associations of workmen fought their way by the 
 tools of revolution to peaceable recognition. There 
 was no other course to be pursued in England, 
 when the power to legislate was wholly in the 
 hands of the classes. The growth of labour unions 
 is parallel with the growth of the modernjmdus- 
 trial system. With the introduction of steam and 
 machinery" the household industry" and the small 
 shop were manifestly doomed. With the develop- 
 ment of large groups of men engaged in common 
 service, and the loss of the old intimate contact 
 between the employer and employed, a new state 
 of affairs Was born. This new relation could 
 
PEIMAEY DEMANDS OF LABOUR 53 
 
 only be met by the sense of common conditions, 
 common needs, and common rights which must 
 of necessity come sooner or later to those engaged 
 in common toil. The organisation of capital 
 brought human flesh and blood face to face with 
 an arbitrary thing which was noji an entity at all 
 iirttselTr which was a creature created by the law, 
 and which seemed to have neither soul nor com- 
 passion. The evolution of property rights has 
 been very slow, and is, practically, the history of 
 the unfolding of juridic society. Over against 
 this evolution of thousands of years there stands 
 the two hundred years' development of the recog- 
 nised rights of wage earners, and it is only within 
 the last forty years that this development has been 
 largely significant. 
 
 It is sometimes said that labour unions would 
 be ajl_ right if_Jhey jrerejrell managed. It is ab- 
 surd to expect that a form of social and industrial 
 organisation which is recent in time, and which 
 is essentially new in function, should come into 
 being without many and gross mistakes. It is 
 asking too much. Political, religious, and eco- 
 nomic organisation, and every other form of human 
 association has come up through great tribulation, 
 and is the survival of uncounted blunders. The 
 
54 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 only thing to ask is whether the labour union has 
 promise of enough usefulness when it is developed 
 to atone for the cost of its development. The legal 
 battle for labour unions has been already fought 
 out. They have a right to exist. The ethical bat- 
 tle will yet be won when they will have the respect 
 of society because they will be found to serve so- 
 ciety well. 
 
 It is time to look at the matter a little more 
 concretely. A labour union may be defined as an 
 association of workmen joined together for eco- 
 nomic and social improvement. There are certain 
 and manifest uses of such associations, and they 
 have distinctly proved their value. 
 
 Of special significance, in the first place, is the 
 social value. The labour union makes the craft 
 the foundation of fellowship. It unites men of 
 various races; it overcomes differences of creed 
 and speech. It introduces a new and fundamental 
 principle of social organisation. Those who study 
 the structure of society from a scientific point of 
 view are well aware that the strength of every 
 social order depends upon the number and strength 
 of the social bonds. The most coherent social or- 
 ganisation that ever existed was the ancient city- 
 state, based upon one blood, one law, one land, one 
 
PEIMAEY DEMANDS OP LABOUE 55 
 
 religion, one speech, one government, one history, 
 one tradition. The American value of labour 
 unions is tremendous because our adverse social 
 elements are not sufficiently united in common in- 
 terests. The public school may be said to be the 
 greatest agency for the development of the Ameri- 
 can type out of the complex race elements, but 
 I should place as only second to the public school 
 the labour union. In some respects the labour 
 union is more efficient than the school, for while 
 the school creates an unconscious atmosphere, the 
 labour union furnishes men a motive for seeking 
 with intelligence to find a common ground of faith 
 and action. 
 
 The next value of the labour union is educa- 
 tional. The organisation itself stands for studies 
 on economic questions. The labour leaders are 
 students of these questions in a direct and special 
 way, but the rank and file are compelled to be, in- 
 cidentally, students, for they listen to all sorts of 
 discussions upon questions to which they are only 
 remotely related, and even though the economic 
 theory that is expounded is not always sound, the 
 same thing may be said of economic theory in 
 many another form. 
 
 Not alone are economic facts and principles 
 
56 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 made an object of inquiry, but the labour unions 
 afford an admirable school in the power of public 
 speech. They are the lyceums of the people. Here 
 among equals men of ability come to the front 
 and learn to express themselves with the sureness 
 and clearness that would often put to shame as- 
 sociations of employers. 
 
 But the labour organisation is a form of dis- 
 cipline, and this is increasingly true. It used to 
 be regarded as an engine of revolt, or an organisa- 
 tion of agitation, but nothing is finer than the 
 self-control of some of the labour leaders, and in- 
 creasingly the labour unions not only seek to pro- 
 mote wise reforms, but to suppress unwise or 
 untimely agitations. 
 
 Now, if the labour union had only social value 
 and educational value, it would doubtless receive 
 the endorsement of employers, and of the public 
 generally, but in addition it has manifested eco- 
 nomic value. By agitation and education, by per- 
 suasion and revolt, the labour unions have increased 
 wages in many branches of toil, and have largely 
 reduced the hours of labour. They have made bet- 
 ter the economic conditions of their members, and 
 they have done more; for, indirectly, they have 
 raised the wages of large numbers of people not 
 
PRIMARY DEMANDS OP LABOUR 57 
 
 connected with the unions. By increasing the 
 amount of wages they have increased the power 
 of consumption, and they have stimulated indus- 
 tries, and have assisted in developing commercial 
 activity. Mr. James Duncan asserts that in fifteen 
 years the 10,000 members of the Granite Cutters' 
 Union alone have secured an increase of more than 
 $32,000,000 in wages. 
 
 The labour unions have been useful in securing 
 protective legislation. Labour unions sometimes 
 claim that they have secured this legislation single- 
 handed and alone, but the wise leaders know that 
 they have been assisted, and sometimes preceded, 
 by thoughtful and philanthropic persons in no 
 way connected with labour unions. The fact re- 
 mains that the recent years coincident with the 
 development of the labour movement have also 
 been marked by the passage of new laws for the 
 protection of labour. The establishment of labour 
 bureaus by the various States furnishes the organ 
 for all kinds of investigation and the channel 
 through which wise suggestion for new legislation 
 may flow. Many of the investigations of labour 
 bureaus are not only full of practical utility, but 
 have a great deal of scientific value. Among the 
 laws which have been secured are those to protect 
 
58 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 women and children by denying to children under 
 certain ages the right to labour, and by limiting 
 the hours when women may labour, and excluding 
 them from certain dangerous and overtasking em- 
 ployment. The new legislation includes factory 
 inspection to see that these laws are enforced, 
 that sanitary conditions prevail, and to make fur- 
 ther suggestions of needed improvements. The 
 doctrine of employer's liability for injuries re- 
 ceived in work has been entirely recast, and has 
 compelled a federation of employers through in- 
 suring associations. These are only indications 
 of the broad field that has been covered. 
 
 It cannot be too strongly urged that labour 
 laws are not alone protection for the labourer, 
 but they are also protection for the generous em- 
 ployer against his stingy competitor. In the 
 struggle for existence, and in the freedom of 
 trade which follows open markets for the purchase 
 and sale of commodity and of labour, it is often 
 impossible for the employer to be as generous as 
 he is disposed to be, for he must meet the condi- 
 tions imposed by the common methods of the 
 trade in which he is engaged, both in his own 
 city and State and in the competing territory. 
 He is allowed to be as generous as he finds it 
 
PRIMAEY DEMANDS OF LABOUR 59 
 
 possible to be only if his unwilling competitor is 
 compelled to engage in business on the same terms. 
 These are some of the arguments in brief for the 
 usefulness of the labour union. In my judgment 
 they have not been and cannot be answered. 
 
 The workingmen, however, do not organise 
 themselves into unions for speculative reasons. 
 These would appeal to but few of them. The 
 union is for them an organ of self-interest. They 
 combine just as employers combine, for the sake 
 of more power. There are some things they say 
 they want, but there are some things they know 
 they want. The single workman could not make 
 the struggle, but many workmen united under 
 one will, and speaking with a single voice, hope to 
 be more successful. It is easy to gather from the 
 letters here presented those demands of labour 
 which may be called primary, because they are the 
 most fundamental to their interest, and because 
 they are the real and final cause for labour organ- 
 isation. 
 
 The workmen want shorter hours. Will it not 
 clarify the discussion to say that the workmen al- 
 ways want the shortest day's work and the largest 
 day's pay that they can obtain? Will it not also 
 equally assist the discussion to understand that the 
 
60 THE INDUSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 employer always wants the largest production at 
 the smallest expense ? It does not seem likely that 
 these two parties can come to any permanent 
 agreement without a good deal of change of 
 heart. The campaign for a shorter day's work 
 began something like a hundred years ago. At 
 that time men worked from twelve to sixteen hours 
 per day. The universal demand was that ten 
 hours constitute a day's toil. At that time I sup- 
 pose every labour leader and every philanthropist 
 engaged in the discussion would have said that ten 
 hours was the ultimate goal. " Shorten the day 
 to ten hours and we will be content." On the 
 other hand, employers and statesmen asserted, and 
 probably believed, that to reduce the day's work 
 to ten hours would be nothing less than ruin. So 
 great a friend of the rights of man as John Bright 
 uttered the most gloomy predictions as to the 
 effect upon the economical and social interests of 
 his country in case the reform should succeed. 
 That battle was fought, and we need not stop upon 
 the marches and countermarches, the fortifications 
 and mining, incident to the contest. A new cam- 
 paign has been in progress, waged with a good deal 
 of energy during the last ten or fifteen years, in 
 favour of eight hours as the normal day's work. 
 
PRIMARY DEMANDS OF LABOUR 61 
 
 Mr. Samuel Gompers shows us the nature of the 
 contest when he says, " Labour wants eight hours 
 to-day and fewer to-morrow." With such an an- 
 nounced program it is evident there can be no 
 such thing as a permanent adjustment. In clearly 
 recognising this state of affairs, it by no means 
 follows that there should be a demand for a per- 
 manent adjustment. The changing and develop- 
 ing civilisation by its very nature precludes the 
 final settlement of any practical question. New 
 machinery, new methods of production, new con- 
 ditions of labour change the problem. The single 
 feature of the increased speed of machines is con- 
 clusive for a shorter day provided the old speed 
 had the right relation to the length of the day's 
 work then current. 
 
 The whole discussion must be lifted, however, 
 to a higher plane than is possible by regarding 
 the workman merely as a producing animal. He 
 is one of the agents of production, but he is also 
 a man. He has latent within him the highest 
 possibilities of intellectual and social culture, of 
 intellectual and aesthetic pleasure. There are 
 within him all the elements of life. Must it again 
 be repeated that human life — the life of the work- 
 ingman also — consists not in the abundance of 
 
62 THE INDUSTBIAL CONFLICT 
 
 the things he may possess, nor is it wholly a meas- 
 ure of human capacity to say that a man working 
 so many hours can produce such commodity. The 
 production of commodity must always be regarded 
 as only an incident to life, an important incident, 
 no doubt, but real human production is not in 
 things visible. Eeal human production is in char- 
 acter, good taste, domestic affections, social ca- 
 pacity, and all those higher interests which 
 combine to make the man greater than the tool. 
 Believing that these interests are the serious part 
 of life, one must demand time for their cultiva- 
 tion. This is the essential argument for the 
 shorter day's work, but we must not be too ideal- 
 istic. It must frankly be said that in order to live 
 in this world the material things for sustaining 
 the animal life are a prime essential. The people 
 of each social group must produce enough to sat- 
 isfy the wants of the group, either through direct 
 consumption or by means of barter with the mem- 
 bers of other groups. 
 
 Another element that enters into the discussion 
 is the undoubted fact that with the advance of 
 civilisation, and the development of wants on the 
 part of individuals, the amount of commodity re- 
 quired for consumption will steadily increase. A 
 
PEIMAEY DEMANDS OP LABOUE 63 
 
 highly complex social order and an increasingly 
 compact social group requires more commodity. 
 The discussion, therefore, at present cannot at- 
 tempt to solve the question for all time. It must 
 only consider the present conditions and the pres- 
 ent demand. The workingmen say that they want 
 an eight-hour day. It is not enough to say that 
 the eight-hour day is of advantage to the particular 
 men who demand it, but the question must be 
 studied in a broad way by considering its effect 
 upon society at large. 
 
 The workingmen have a powerful historic argu- 
 ment in their interest, since all the objections that 
 are now urged to the shorter day were urged two 
 generations ago against the ten-hour day. None 
 of these gloomy predictions were fulfilled. Pro- 
 duction has greatly increased. This is not due to 
 any one thing. It is not due alone to the conten- 
 tion that the normal man cannot work eleven or 
 tweleve hours a day and be as well able to work on 
 succeeding days — that the strain is an overtax 
 which secures its revenge upon the body of the 
 toiler, although there is abundance of proof that 
 in many occupations men are able to do more 
 work in ten hours than they could formerly do in 
 twelve hours, not counting the increase arising 
 
64 THE INDTTSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 from the use of machinery. The production of 
 machine-made machinery, and the great special- 
 isation and sub-division in mechanical occupations 
 are all elements of the problem, and no group of 
 men would argue that the hands of the clock be 
 turned back, and that we return to the conditions 
 of former generations. Whether the eight-hour 
 day would be as successful in production as the 
 ten-hour day, is a present question of debate. La- 
 bour leaders affirm, and with good show of reason, 
 that there is evidence that production will not 
 suffer by the change, but that the eight-hour day 
 will be even more successful from the point of 
 view of production than the former regime. A 
 recent work published in Belgium by Fromont 
 recites an industrial experience in the reduction 
 of the day's work from ten to eight hours in the 
 chemical factories of Engis. Under the former 
 system the men worked in shifts of twelve hours, 
 each putting in ten and one-half hours' actual toil, 
 with rest periods of an hour and a half. Under 
 the new system they work eight hours a day in 
 three shifts, each group putting in seven and one- 
 half hours of actual toil. After a very full ac- 
 count of the whole matter, he concludes that the 
 result was not only favourable to the workingmen, 
 
PRIMARY DEMANDS OF LABOUR 65 
 
 but was economically successful to the company, 
 and we have here an employer of labour publish- 
 ing a book showing the advantages to the business 
 world of the eight-hour day. The illustration is 
 of especial importance with respect to all those 
 establishments where the machinery is expensive, 
 and where it is said that to reduce the hours of 
 labour not alone means an added expense in wages, 
 but a large addition in interest because the plant 
 is idle so much longer. There are twenty-four 
 hours in the day; if the machinery should be kept 
 busy during the whole day it involves three shifts 
 of men instead of two. In this way the interest 
 cost is reduced very much more than the wages 
 are increased, and the men are so much better 
 fitted for their toil that the increased cost of 
 wages will not be great, if, indeed, it be not re- 
 duced to a vanishing point. 
 
 Of course the argument for great factories 
 will not cover many other occupations where 
 the pace is not set by the machine, but by 
 the workman himself, as, for example, in most of 
 the building trades. If there is a criticism of the 
 position of the workmen at any point, it is that 
 they insist too strongly upon a day of eight hours 
 for all occupations, instead of insisting upon a 
 
66 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 shorter day, and varying the length of the day 
 according to the class of occupation. I suppose 
 it to be susceptible of proof that eight hours' toil 
 in certain occupations is not only enough, but too 
 much. It is probably equally susceptible of proof 
 that there are occupations in which ten hours is 
 -not an excessive day's work, but the argument is 
 met by the shrewd manager of the interests of 
 labour when he says that it is impossible in the 
 present condition of affairs to enter upon such a 
 discussion; that in order to win a battle, all the 
 forces must be united; in order to unite all the 
 forces, there must be a common good to be secured 
 by every regiment in the fight. 
 
 But it would be easy for the advocate of the 
 shorter day to boldly challenge the foundations 
 of the arguments of those who support the present 
 system. He can truly say that production has 
 very vastly increased through the operation of a 
 number of causes. The question is, what shall be 
 done with the increase of productive capacity? 
 The argument for the simple life comes in here 
 with all its force. Of what avail is it to have 
 larger houses and smaller men? What profit is it 
 to have better clothes for the body and ragged gar- 
 ments on the soul? Why fill the stomach and 
 
PKIMARY DEMANDS OF LABOUE 67 
 
 leave the mind and imagination destitute of food ? 
 The argument is that increased capacity for pro- 
 duction ought at least to be shared between the 
 higher and the lower wants of man. You say, 
 " But these workmen do not care for what we are 
 pleased to call the higher wants; if they have 
 leisure, they will spend it in dissipation; if they 
 have more wages, it means more drink." The 
 argument proves too much. It proves that the 
 only way to save the working class is to work them 
 to the limit of exhaustion. The outcome of the 
 claim is that the higher nature is impossible to 
 the working class. That proves too much. The 
 very first requisite of development is more leisure. 
 Without question, increase of leisure has often 
 caused a temporary bad effect. Men released 
 from grinding toil with neither guidance nor 
 development have often gone wrong, but the fact 
 remains that the only hope of the world lies in 
 leisure from manual toil and the proper employ- 
 ment of that leisure. All experts are agreed that 
 one of the chief causes of drunkenness and every 
 other form of vice is toil too severe and too long 
 continued. The shorter day is the essential need 
 for temperance reform. When the adjustment of 
 production and business grants leisure, social re- 
 
68 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 sponsibility is by no means at an end. It is then 
 the duty of society to lure men and women toward 
 their higher interests by cheap music, free art gal- 
 leries, free libraries, popular lectures, and all other 
 forms of innocent diversion and wise stimulus in 
 right directions that can be devised. It is certain 
 that if the eight-hour day has not already come, 
 it will come to-morrow. The wealth-producing 
 power of the world goes steadily forward. The 
 shorter day is logical. The shorter day also in- 
 volves widespread social duties. 
 
 Another insistent demand of the workingman is 
 for higher wages. It is certain that all organised 
 labour has greatly benefited in the matter of wages 
 by the fact of organisation. The workingman de- 
 mands shorter hours, and at the same time wishes 
 more wages for the short day than he formerly 
 received for the long day. He does not under- 
 stand why it is that some men should have enor- 
 mous fortunes and live in unstinted luxury while 
 he is compelled to practise economy and self- 
 denial. He wishes to so readjust the industrial 
 organisation that the great fortunes of the few 
 will disappear because they have been equitably 
 distributed among the many. Some men have 
 palaces, yachts, automobiles, country parks, and 
 
PEIMARY DEMANDS OF LABOIJE 69 
 
 pleasure grounds while he lives in a tenement with 
 narrow outlook, and leads a still narrower life. 
 He has adopted the doctrine that labour is the 
 source of wealth, as preached by Adam Smith in 
 his " "Wealth of Nations," and he concludes that 
 if labour is the source of wealth, the labourer 
 should have the results of toil. Here again we 
 have a question that is not capable of definite and 
 precise solution. At this point, too, it is notice- 
 able that the labouring forces divide. While there 
 is practical unanimity on the question of an eight- 
 hour day, there is no uniform scale of wages that 
 it is proposed to enforce in the interests of all 
 classes of labour. Each craft makes its own scale, 
 yet it must not be denied that the wages of one 
 class affect powerfully the wages of another class, 
 not alone in those trades which are intimately 
 allied, but in general by the effect of that imita- 
 tion among men which demands that if the 
 standard of living is raised for one group of 
 workmen it must be raised also for another. The 
 question of wages is more difficult than almost any 
 other in connection with the labour problem, be- 
 cause the effect of increased wages does not seem 
 to be uniform in all occupations. The cost of 
 production is summed up in interest, superin- 
 
70 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 tendence, and wages under the present industrial 
 system. I assume that the present industrial sys- 
 tem will continue for a long time, and at least so 
 far as the present generation is concerned, the dis- 
 cussion of Utopian social organisation is not prac- 
 tical. Now, if wages be increased to the point 
 where they absorb all the margin of profit, they 
 must at least leave enough to pay for interest and 
 superintendence, for if these are not paid, the busi- 
 ness will become bankrupt and the wages will 
 cease. There is, therefore, a necessary limit to 
 wages in every occupation. The workman declares 
 that he does not receive his fair share ; that interest 
 rates are too high; that superintendence costs too 
 much; and that the profits of the business above 
 normal interest, wages, and superintendence al- 
 ways go to capital. There is another way that 
 wages can be increased, and practically it is the 
 only way in which they will be increased, and that 
 is by the increased price of the product. To put 
 it concretely, take the building trades: If wages 
 rise in the building trades, it is not the contractor 
 who pays them unless they rise suddenly after he 
 has made his contract, and then he has the future 
 for his revenge upon the public. If wages in the 
 building trades rise, it is an added item of cost, 
 
PEIMAEY DEMANDS OF LABOUE 71 
 
 and the people who build and own houses must 
 pay the increased amount. That means, in the 
 long run, that rents will rise, and most of the 
 workingmen pay rent. If the shoemakers secure 
 an increase of wages, it increases the price of 
 shoes; the workingmen wear shoes. The same 
 thing is true of every commodity. Increase the 
 cost of production at any point, and you increase 
 the price to the consumer. This opens the ques- 
 tion as to what real wages are. Eeal wages, of 
 course, cannot be measured in terms of money. 
 A man may have $4 per day under one set of con- 
 ditions, and $3 per day under another set of con- 
 ditions, and if the $3 per day has greater purchas- 
 ing power than the $4 per day, he receives the larg- 
 est wages when he has $3 per day. The situation 
 must be clearly recognised. If wages rise in a 
 particular craft and do not rise generally, that 
 craft will profit, but it is impossible on account of 
 the social solidarity of the industrial world that 
 wages should permanently rise in one craft and 
 not rise relatively in others. Increase of wages 
 means an increased cost of production, and the in- 
 creased cost of production must, in the. long run, 
 be paid by the consumer, or else production will 
 cease. 
 
72 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 It is better for society that there should be a 
 general distribution of wealth. It is in the en- 
 richment of human life every way that the work- 
 ingman should receive an adequate reward for his 
 toil, but it must be recognised that under the 
 present conditions there are natural limits to the 
 increase of wages. 
 
 These considerations, however, do not state with 
 any exactness the present nature of the problem. 
 The employer has been for generations in the habit 
 of fixing wages. He says to a man : " I will pay 
 so much per day," and the man may either take 
 the job or leave it. The labour unions purpose to 
 reverse all this. They say : " We will fix the 
 scale of wages. No man in our union shall work 
 for you at less than the minimum wage prescribed 
 by our rules." Wage earners propose to act in 
 groups, and to be free, as Mr. Guiney puts it, to 
 bargain for the sale of their labour on the collective 
 principle. 
 
 When the president of Yale University, some 
 years ago, proposed publicity as a remedy for cor- 
 porate evils, it was evident that the reception of 
 the remedy by the public was not based upon a full 
 conception of all its implications. Publicity is a 
 more far-reaching thing than most people suppose. 
 
PEIMARY DEMANDS OP LABOUR 73 
 
 Would it not be better for all parties concerned to 
 be perfectly frank in regard to the situation? 
 Should not the books of every corporation be open 
 to the inspection of properly constituted authori- 
 ties? There are not alone profits in conducting a 
 business, but there are also losses. Would it not 
 be better to take the representatives of labour into 
 the confidence of their respective firms about this 
 matter of profits and losses, so that they would 
 have a basis for determining the amount of the 
 wages that would be at least roughly mathe- 
 matical, instead of acting by the compulsive power 
 of organisation which may, of course, be carried to 
 such limits as to bring ruin upon the industrial 
 community? We are reaching a point in in dus- 
 trial life when the .rigid individualism of thejast 
 is sure to be dissolved. The employer says: 
 " This shop or facto ry is my business." The wage 
 earner says with an articulative voice that quite 
 startles those who have been in the habit of find- 
 ing him dumb : " I am a necessary part of this 
 business, and I propose to ...have a voice in its 
 affairs/' Meantime, the public at large has in- 
 terest in that business . also, for it is the public 
 which is the final cause for the existence of the 
 business, and, as a matter of fact, there are three 
 
74 THE INDUSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 parties that must ultimately be considered — the 
 employer, the employed, and the public. The 
 rigid individualism of which I have spoken rebels 
 at the idea of the workmen making a scale of 
 wages. The employer proposes to do that him- 
 self. He rebels still more at public authority to 
 disclose the nature of his business and the amount 
 of his profit or loss. He says such a method would 
 destroy competition, rob prudence and skill of 
 their natural rewards, and is really another name 
 for soclialism; but examination of national banks, 
 the publication of their statements, does not pre- 
 vent financial business going forward. It cer- 
 tainly does not make the bank clerks more insistent 
 and obtrusive than other classes of employees, and 
 it is regarded by the public as a highly useful 
 function of government. If labour continues to 
 show an increasing genius for organisation, and 
 does as much in that direction in the next twenty- 
 five years as in the past twenty-five years, there 
 will be nothing left for the employer to do for 
 his own protection but to appeal to his books. 
 There is a sense of justice deep in the hearts of 
 men, and interest and superintendence will con- 
 tinue to be paid. The employer will still have a 
 fair reward for his labour and his risks, nor will 
 
PEIMAEY DEMANDS OF LABOUK 75 
 
 he be compelled to bear the common loss himself. 
 If the workmen enjoy a rapid increase of wages in 
 times of prosperity, they must also suffer a reduc- 
 tion of wages in times of adversity. This intro- 
 duces a critical element into the problem. The 
 workingman is prepared to spend the surplus, but 
 he is not always prepared to bear the loss. The 
 employer may have credit enough to tide him over 
 six months or a year of bad business, but the work- 
 ingman, who is in the habit of consuming all or 
 nearly all of his wages, has little reserve. A re- 
 serve must be created, either through the funds of 
 the labour unions or, what will probably be better 
 still, through some system of sinking fund or in- 
 surance that will make the fat years feed the lean 
 years. 
 
 In order to enforce his demands for a shorter day 
 and a larger wage, the workingman wants the. closed 
 shop. This, of course, is one of the burning ques- 
 tions of the present hour in certain occupations, 
 and it has in it the elements of combustion for all 
 occupations in every time of struggle. The reason 
 the workingman wants the closed shop is not far 
 to seek. It gives him control of the situation. 
 If employers agree that no one shall be engaged to 
 work in any occupation who is not satisfactory to 
 
76 THE INDUSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 the labour unions, the labour unions can thus 
 dictate terms both of time and of money. This 
 seems intolerable to the employer, who says, " I 
 am not permitted to control my own business; the 
 rules for the management of my business are laid 
 down by people who have not put a dollar into it, 
 and they are prescribed by men who do not even 
 belong to my own working force." The constitu- 
 tion of the United States has been invoked in the 
 interests of freedom for the employer to engage 
 and for the non-union man to work on such terms 
 as they may mutually agree. The employer mag- 
 nanimously says, "I have no objection to the 
 labour union; it is an excellent thing very likely 
 for a man to belong to it, but I do not propose 
 to recognise union or non-union men in my busi- 
 ness. I certainly will not discriminate against the 
 union man, but neither will I discriminate against 
 anyone else. I will employ the man who can do 
 the work I want done, and I intend to be my own 
 judge of his fitness for the task." All this sounds 
 highly reasonable, and until one has thought about 
 it, it would seem as though there could be no argu- 
 ment upon the other side, and yet the labour union 
 is without doubt fighting for its life, when it de- 
 mands the closed shop. It is not simply a question 
 
PEIMAEY DEMANDS OF LABOUR 77 
 
 of whether an employer shall have liberty to em- 
 ploy whom he will; for the workingman it is a 
 question as to whether his labour union has any 
 reason longer to exist. Unless the labour union 
 includes the men engaged in the craft, or at least 
 so many of them as shall form a necessary part of 
 the labour without which the business cannot be 
 carried on, it is powerless. The attitude of the 
 labour union is perfectly defensible when it says : 
 " Jf you employ non-union men, we will not work 
 for you." The labour union involves a burden. 
 It takes some time and it costs some money. Un- 
 less it has practical advantages in business, it can 
 no longer exist. If the non-union man can get 
 along quite as well as the union man, and indeed 
 has a little more sympathy and interest with the 
 employer because he is a non-union man, the 
 unions must cease to exist. If the union ceases to 
 exist, labour is once again to be dealt with as in- 
 dividuals, who may be subdued one by one. Were 
 I in the ranks of organised labour, I should cer- 
 tainly do my very best to secure the closed shop, 
 nor would I be seduced by offers of a short day 
 or of higher wages to consent to the open shop, for 
 such is human nature that as soon as the open 
 shop is established as a recognised right of the em- 
 
78 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 ployer, it will also be seen to be a bulwark for the 
 employer, and an ally for his purpose if he desires 
 to be a tyrant. Nor does the closed shop give the 
 workingman the enormous advantage that is some- 
 times supposed. It only puts him in a position 
 to treat with the employer for the terms upon 
 which they shall labour together. A labour union 
 by extravagant demands may easily wreck a busi- 
 ness, but no labour union, however powerful, can 
 permanently secure either higher wages or a 
 shorter day's work than the business can afford 
 to give. 
 
 The doctrine of the closed shop is often car- 
 ried much further. The labour unions claim 
 the right to persuade those who are not union men 
 to refuse to work for an employer with whom they 
 • have a controversy. The right of public or 
 ! private discussion that is not seditious is certainly 
 Iguaranteed by free institutions. The labour 
 unions have the greatest interest in the world to 
 seek to make it impossible to carry on business 
 without them. They, therefore, have the right to 
 fuse every lawful means in their power to make it 
 impossible for men to be secured to fill their 
 places. The closed shop is as vital to organised 
 labour as it is repugnant to the feelings of the 
 (employer. 
 
PEIMAEY DEMANDS OP LABOUK 79 
 
 The union men understand perfectly well that 
 the closed shop is essential to all their plans and 
 hopes. If they are only to have the same rights 
 as men who are not organised, the very basis of 
 the organisation is destroyed. This fact is just as 
 well understood by the employers as it is by the 
 workingmen. Mr. J. Kirby, Jr., in an address 
 delivered before the National Association of Manu- 
 facturers at New Orleans in 1903, on the attitude 
 of associations of employers toward labour unions, 
 argues for the open shop in order to kill the unions, 
 and urges united action on the part of all em- 
 ployers of labour toward that end. He says : 
 
 " But what are we going to do about it? That 
 is the question which most concerns us all. Do 
 we have to submit to its dictations? Must we 
 bow our heads and hold up our hands in recogni- 
 tion of its dignity and might ? Must we surrender 
 our citizenship on the order of the business agent 
 or walking delegate of a labour union, and conduct 
 our business only in such manner as he may 
 choose to dictate? Would we, as a nation, toler- 
 ate such imposition from any other country? 
 
 " No, we would not. We would sacrifice our 
 lives and the lives of our sons, our time and our 
 money, in destroying or attempting to destroy an 
 
80 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 enemy who would dare to inflict upon us as a 
 nation the wrongs and oppressions which organ- 
 ised labour everywhere is daily heaping upon us as 
 individuals. Where, then, is the remedy, for 
 remedy must come from some source. My con- 
 clusions are that the only remedy will be found in 
 thorough, organisation of employers whose cardinal 
 principles shall be to protect and encourage the 
 wage earner in the exercise of his right to sell his 
 labour to whom he pleases, and at what price he 
 pleases, and to protect the industrious workman 
 in his. right to take advantage of the opportunities 
 which fall in his way, and which right he must 
 needs surrender the moment he is enrolled as a 
 member of a labour union." 
 
 It is easy to see that the issue is joined, and 
 that both parties to the controversy understand 
 perfectly well what they are talking about, and 
 whichever wins in this battle, wins the whole fight, 
 and can control the situation just so far as it is 
 subject to human action. It must be pointed out, 
 however, that this is always subordinate to the 
 economic structure of society taken as a whole. 
 
 It is urged that the closed shop is an injustice 
 to non-union labour. The fact is, this is a rough- 
 
PKIMARY DEMANDS OF LABOUR 81 
 
 and-tumble fight, and the tramp of the hosts can- 
 not be stopped by obstacles which appeal purely to 
 sentiment. It must be bluntly admitted that the 
 non-union man will suffer in case the unions suc- 
 ceed in their purpose. He will be kept out of em- 
 ployment; his only recourse will be to make terms 
 with the union on his side, just as the employer 
 will be compelled to treat with the union upon his 
 side. The victory for the union is quite as much 
 a victory against unorganised labour as it is 
 against the organisation of the employers. There 
 are just two points to be considered in mitigation 
 of the apparent damage done. The first is, that 
 if the union is not profitable to those who belong 
 to it, it must certainly fail; but if it is profitable 
 to its members, it will also be profitable to the non- 
 union men, and the doors are swinging open for 
 them to enter. If it be said that there are work- 
 ingmen who are so individualistic that they would 
 never consent to join a union, it must be replied 
 that such individualism, even if it be a virtue, 
 must wear its martyr's crown. In the organisa- 
 tion of society men cannot choose to stand alone 
 in order to enjoy the freedom of their solitude 
 and at the same time expect to have the advant- 
 ages that can only come from co-operation. It 
 
82 THE INDUSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 may further be added that the success of organised 
 labour will raise the condition of the workingman 
 to as high a point of comfort as can be secured 
 under the existing economic conditions. There 
 would seem to be no reasonable doubt that such a 
 state of affairs will be for the benefit of society as 
 a whole. It will enlarge the range of consump- 
 tion, it will multiply human wants, it will, there- 
 fore, increase production, and at the same time 
 create a larger demand for labour. In the long 
 run, it will be impossible for the organised sec- 
 tion of labour to succeed without at the same time 
 improving the conditions of all labour, though it 
 may freely be granted that that is not the purpose 
 of the men engaged in fashioning and guiding 
 organisation. 
 
IV 
 
 SECONDAKY DEMANDS OP LABOUE 
 
 Unorganised Labour — Woman and Labour — 
 Public Sanitation — The Personal Touch — Child 
 Labour Problem — The Industrial Democracy. 
 
 In one of the letters it is to be noted that a plea 
 is made in the interest of the unskilled workman 
 without a union, without an advocate, and without 
 defence. For manifest reasons, forms of labour 
 which require little or no preparation for a suc- 
 cessful toil cannot easily become organised labour. 
 This not alone applies to the ordinary hewer of 
 wood and drawer of water, the digger of ditches 
 and the performer of menial tasks, but certain 
 occupations which are regarded as desirable ones 
 are also difficult to organise. Clerks in stores, 
 workmen in wholesale houses, have shown scarcely 
 more skill or capacity for organisation than have 
 the day labourers. Women in factories and 
 women in domestic service have also shown little 
 capacity for labour organisation. It may seem 
 that indirectly the success of organised labour is 
 to the advantage of all, but practically this con- 
 
 83 
 
84 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 elusion is to be doubted. Where organised labour 
 receives a large compensation, it is natural that 
 the burden of production, always interested in 
 cheapness, should bear heavily upon that portion 
 of labour in any enterprise which is unorganised. 
 Eelatively, it may easily be shown that unorgan- 
 ised labour has suffered in the matter of compen- 
 sation. Those handicrafts which require com- 
 paratively little skill, such for example as house 
 painting or paper hanging, have never been as 
 successful in organising as those requiring greater 
 skill. The attitude of organised labour toward 
 those various classes is, on the whole, benevolent, 
 but it must not be overlooked that there is another 
 class of unorganised labour with which the labour 
 unions must, in the very nature of the case, wage 
 relentless war. That is with the men who are 
 skilled in some of the crafts which are largely or- 
 ganised, and who prefer to remain outside of the 
 union. It is obvious that the interests of these 
 two parties clash so completely that any mode of 
 life together is practically impossible. Finally, 
 the unions must either include all the workmen 
 of the craft who are permitted to work, or the 
 unions must be dissolved. This is as irrepressible 
 as the portentous conflict between the North and 
 
SECONDAEY DEMANDS OF LABOTTB 85 
 
 South fifty years ago. It seems very strange that 
 it is not universally recognised. 
 
 The problem of women in labour is by no means 
 a settled question. Many labour leaders believe 
 that the increasing presence of women in competi- 
 tion with men in the various industries has been 
 an evil to both sexes. The doctrine of the eco- 
 nomic freedom of woman and her right to en- 
 gage in any and every occupation is not a sex 
 question nor a social question, but it is a profound 
 economic question. In those countries where 
 women and children work with the least question 
 and with the most approval, the wages are reduced 
 to such a point that it requires the combined 
 labour of all the working members of the family 
 to support the family. The general effect of 
 woman in labour has been to lower wages among 
 men, and particularly in those employments that 
 are not affected by labour organisation, but it is 
 not possible in this place to give any adequate dis- 
 cussion of the question of women in labour, and 
 yet it is a question that must be discussed more 
 and more in time to come. 
 
 A number of laws have been passed in various 
 States to protect women. In some States they are 
 forbidden employment in certain difficult and 
 
86 THE INDTTSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 dangerous occupations. In a very few States there 
 are laws forbidding their employment in night 
 work. Women have shown little capacity for or- 
 ganisation, and they have very little protection. 
 It is not alone the interest of the individual woman 
 that is at stake, but it is the future of the nation 
 that is wrapped up in her future. Overworked 
 and underfed men constitute a menace, but over- 
 worked and underfed women are a moral peril 
 and a physical disaster. 
 
 The workingmen demand public sanitation and 
 better homes in the interests of the labouring class. 
 There has been a great awakening of the public 
 conscience in England and in Germany, and in 
 some parts of the United States, with reference 
 to the tenement-house question. This is a problem 
 that is not severely felt in the smaller towns. For 
 convenience the workingman must live near his 
 work. It is not easy, when the best efforts are 
 used, to make life sweet and gracious in the 
 neighbourhood of shops and factories. Park sys- 
 tems, sewers, the water supply and street cleaning, 
 are frequently carried on in cities largely in the 
 interests of the wealthier classes. There is prob- 
 ably not a city in the country where what is known 
 as the poorer quarters have anything like the 
 
SECONDABY DEMANDS OP LABOUK 87 
 
 attention of the municipal authorities that is 
 bestowed upon the neighbourhoods inhabited by the 
 well-to-do. This is partly because the people have 
 not been awakened as to their proper rights, and 
 it is partly because society has not been quickened 
 to see its manifest duties. A vigilant health de- 
 partment with ample power is the only safeguard 
 for the plain people. The death rate which is 
 averaged by cities as so many per thousand, is ter- 
 ribly unequal between the wards of the same city. 
 This, of course, is partly due to lack of knowledge 
 in the care of health, lack of wisdom in the choice 
 and preparation of foods, and to the ignorance of 
 the various means for the preservation of human 
 life, but there is a considerable part of the sickness 
 and mortality in tenement-house districts which is 
 directly chargeable upon the public. 
 
 There is a tone of bitterness in the statement 
 that workingmen " want employers to be chris- 
 tians seven days in the week, and to carry their 
 Christianity into their everyday lives." This bit- 
 terness is accented when employers who are known 
 to be severe, and sometimes penurious with their 
 workmen, are still greatly interested in educational 
 and philanthropic enterprises to which they give 
 large sums of money. There is something pathetic 
 
88 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 also in the demand on the part of workingmen for 
 the human touch. They ask for the kind heart, 
 the neighbourly recognition, the outstretched hand. 
 It may be frankly said that in all large enterprises 
 this is very difficult to give. Time was when most 
 production was carried on in very small groups of 
 men, one of whom was the employer, who laboured 
 side by side with the men to whom he paid wages. 
 Fraternal relations existed between these men 
 whose financial conditions were not very far apart, 
 but in the days of consolidation, of organisation, of 
 immense capital, of huge enterprises, where thou- 
 sands of men are employed under one manage- 
 ment, the old relations are no longer possible. 
 There are heads of departments who may know 
 casually the most of the men under their immediate 
 charge, but the great superintendents of labour 
 know only the heads of departments. It is through 
 them that they receive reports and gain their 
 knowledge of conditions. There is probably 
 scarcely any class of men who know so little about 
 the actual lives of the working class as the great 
 employers of labour. These men have their wives 
 and children; they have their little homes, and 
 they have the same loves, the same needs, the same 
 hopes and fears, as the great captains of industry, 
 
SECONDARY DEMANDS OP LABOUR 89 
 
 but to the captains of industry they are not per- 
 sonal existences at all. They know nothing of 
 the heartaches, the ambitions, the temptations of 
 the multitude of men who are a part of the great 
 mechanism which furnishes their power. Some 
 great enterprises have organised various social 
 schemes for the betterment of the employees. 
 Sometimes employers have been disappointed be- 
 cause these things have not been received in the 
 spirit in which they have been given. The work- 
 men are often suspicious. Like the Trojans, they 
 fear the Greeks bearing gifts. If the employers 
 have money to spare for the workmen, they prefer 
 to receive that extra money in the shape of in- 
 creased wages. They prefer to spend the money 
 themselves. There is scarcely anything that 
 American workmen dissent from so much as from 
 the various efforts to treat them as a proper object 
 of philanthropy. Over and over again the work- 
 man says, " What we want is justice." This does 
 not mean that he does not welcome every form of 
 assistance from the social body toward giving him 
 external conditions of life that are favourable for 
 the health of himself and his family. It does not 
 mean that he is not willing and eager to partake 
 in public bounties of education, museums, and art 
 
90 THE INDUSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 collections which are established freely for the en- 
 tire community. What he resents is such treat- 
 ment as seeks to establish a class position for him 
 and class favours from those who are supposed to 
 be above him. 
 
 One of the most insistent demands of labour is 
 for the protection of children. The first law for 
 the protection of children was passed in England 
 in 1802, and it would seem that the battle ought 
 to have been won by this time. In all the States 
 of the Union except three there are laws for the 
 protection of children. The laws vary very much, 
 but in substance they aim to secure an opportunity 
 for a common-school education for every child, 
 and to prevent his employment under fourteen 
 years of age. Many of the States forbid their em- 
 ployment at night work. Some people suppose 
 that the campaign on behalf of the children is over, 
 and that the battle is won. 
 
 Meantime, of the labourers employed in the 
 United States to-day two millions are children 
 under sixteen years of age. It is evident that if 
 these two millions of children were eliminated from 
 the labour supply there would not be a man fitted 
 for work who would not find his opportunity. 
 This is the grotesque thing that history will have 
 
SECONDARY DEMANDS OF LABOUR 91 
 
 to say about our generation : " These queer people 
 overworked those who were employed, and used 
 their little children to produce commodity for the 
 benefit of the social group, while an ever-continu- 
 ing multitude of those who might have worked 
 were left out of work on these two grounds." Our 
 generation revolts at piracy, at slavery, at duelling, 
 and other evils of the past, but the conditions of 
 child labour are so much worse than any or all 
 three of these evils combined that it seems re- 
 markable that public intelligence is so lacking and 
 public conscience so weak. Careful study of the 
 character and condition of many of the unem- 
 ployed, who seem unfit for employment, either by 
 lack of energy or lack of strength, reveals that a 
 considerable percentage of these derelicts on the 
 sea of life were those who were themselves over- 
 worked in childhood. Recently there have been 
 many studies in England of the degeneration of 
 the physical type. The Boer War revealed that 
 large numbers of those who offered for enlistment 
 did not meet the requirements of the physical 
 standard. It was actually necessary to reduce the 
 standard in the army to fill the ranks, and the de- 
 pleted physiques sent to Africa were not so much 
 the prey of Dutch bullets as they were of African 
 
92 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 disease. We may be instructed by the conditions 
 in England. During the last 150 years England 
 has been changed from an agricultural country to 
 a people largely living in cities. Farms have be- 
 come parks, and farm labourers and their descend- 
 ants, herded in tenement houses, live in the squalor 
 of city slums. The result has been that the de- 
 scendants of the sturdy men who made the 
 Anglo-Saxon name a glory the world around are 
 being reduced to the physical level of the Latin 
 races. America may well heed the lesson. One 
 hundred years ago three per cent, of our people 
 lived in cities; now thirty per cent, live in cities, 
 and to-morrow it will be sixty per cent. 
 
 One reason why many of our leaders do not feel 
 the importance of the problem of child labour is 
 because they themselves came from the farm where 
 they were accustomed to work as children, but they 
 had the free breezes of heaven, they had the gleam- 
 ing sunshine, and the singing of birds, and in the 
 variety of work, above all, they had the develop- 
 ment of personal initiative. Besides, there were 
 long periods of the year when work was practically 
 suspended, and after toil they had an abundance 
 of the joy of life. City labour is entirely different. 
 The child fastened to a machine by the daily 
 
SECONDAEY DEMANDS OP LABOUR 93 
 
 routine of his work is simply numbed into an 
 animate part of the business. His work calls for 
 no thought; his mind has no expansion; he toils 
 in physical weariness until another day comes to 
 make still further inroads upon the possible man. 
 Wicked as is the effect upon the boy, it is still 
 more alarming in the case of the girl. The possi- 
 ble wife and mother has the reserved vitality of 
 her womanhood stolen from her before that 
 womanhood has dawned. It is the pledge of de- 
 generation for the race in the next generation. 
 Notwithstanding the laws, in coal mines and in 
 cotton mills, North and South, the life blood of the 
 race is being offered upon the altars of greed. 
 Nor is it due alone to the rapacity of employers. 
 It is quite as much due to the ignorance and the 
 folly of parents. Where certificates are required 
 by law for the age and schooling of the child, 
 parents who wish their work and the pittance 
 which it brings deliberately falsify both the age 
 of the child and the time he has spent in school. 
 Children need to be protected from their own flesh 
 and blood. A large element in making of arti- 
 ficial flowers is that of children from four to 
 twelve years of age in the homes of working women. 
 I never look upon a woman's bonnet without won- 
 
94 THE INDUSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 dering what limp and tired child's fingers may 
 have helped to fashion that beauty. It is aston- 
 ishing how slow some of these reforms are. It 
 took twenty-five years in England to limit the 
 labour of a child of nine years to sixty-nine hours 
 a week. It will probably take twenty-five years 
 longer to win the campaign against child labour 
 in the United States. 
 
 Child labour is the enemy of personal and public 
 health. It prevents that degree of education that 
 will make the child available; it robs the child of 
 the opportunity for normal human development. 
 It adds a very small sum to the productive value 
 of present labour, at the fearful cost of bankrupt 
 human life and industrial incapacity in the next 
 generation. Many people who have conscience 
 about child labour in factories and are horrified 
 to hear that children sit in clouds of dust and pick 
 slate out of coal, think that street occupations of 
 various kind are all right. We are frequently re- 
 minded of some eminent business man who started 
 his life as a newsboy or bootblack. The physical 
 dangers of street occupations are not nearly so 
 great as those of the mine or the factory, but the 
 moral dangers are very much more alarming. In 
 cities where one-fourth of the children engaged 
 
SECONDARY DEMANDS OF LABOUR 95 
 
 in labour are in street occupations, two-thirds 
 of those children who are sent to the reform school 
 come from these ranks ; or, in other words, nearly 
 three times as many children are sent to the re- 
 form schools from the street service as are sent 
 from the factory service. The bright-eyed boy of 
 ten has learned on the street corner practically all 
 the wickedness that there is to know. Boys in the 
 messenger service are sent to all sorts of places of 
 infamy, and it is evident that the street boys need 
 protection more than any other class. 
 
 The final argument in behalf of child labour is 
 always the poor mother or sick father whom the 
 child may support if permitted to work. No one 
 believes in the self-support of the poor more than 
 I do, and no agency more than the associated 
 charities has emphasised that need, but look at the 
 question just as it is. If the family were hungry 
 the community would be tremendously shocked 
 and outraged to hear that they had killed one of 
 the tender children to supply food for the rest. 
 It is even more shocking, though we do not feel 
 it so, when the child is consumed, soul and body, 
 in doing work from which he should have been 
 saved because it prevents his development and 
 ruins his future. One child in a hundred may 
 
96 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 come through all these difficulties because he has 
 an exceptional constitution, or by happy circum- 
 stances develops an exceptional character, but the 
 success of these rare cases only emphasises the 
 common disasters which fall upon the rest. It 
 is a shame for society to shift the burden of char- 
 ity which it ought to bear in the case of the poor 
 widow with a family of children under sixteen 
 years of age, to the breaking backs of those poor 
 children to the ruin of their lives. 
 
 We have gone far enough on the road to wealth 
 and power to linger a little by the way and take 
 time for a more careful study of the whole sit- 
 uation. These workingmen may be often mistaken ; 
 they may be often wrong-headed, but they are still 
 fellowmen, and they are hungering for the human 
 touch. Any business that will cultivate the hu- 
 man relation, that will feel and exhibit real sym- 
 pathy with the men who are employed, and that 
 assumes a fair share of responsibility for the suc- 
 cess or failure of their whole scheme of life, will 
 go far toward securing a loyalty which is so much 
 desired and which is not easily found. The la- 
 bour giant is awakened. He has thrown off the 
 shackles of the past, and doubtless he has with 
 the shackles oftentimes broken lawful restraints. 
 
SECONDARY DEMANDS OF LABOUR 97 
 
 It is useless to seek to find by craft or convention 
 new shackles. The giant can never be bound 
 again. A working basis must be sought and dis- 
 covered on the terms of equity to all parties. The 
 employer wishes his workingmen to be sober, in- 
 dustrious, and faithful, but these qualities involve 
 self-control, and that is only the result of high 
 character. If employers want to see signs of soul 
 in the workingmen, it is not enough for them to 
 put their strength and their shrewdness into busi- 
 ness; they must put their heart into business as 
 well, nor must the employers be too anxious for 
 the success of their business; they must be even 
 more anxious for the success of society and the de- 
 velopment of a sane and well-ordered community, 
 and it will be found that not even justice is 
 enough; there must also be the spirit of fraternity. 
 It was once thought that a political democracy 
 would solve the evils of the world. For one hun- 
 dred years the American people laboured under 
 that delusion. It is now seen that a political 
 democracy that is not based upon justice and good- 
 faith may easily become another form of despot- 
 ism. We have done well in securing the struc- 
 ture of a government with political institutions 
 adapted to our common life, but this is not enough. 
 
98 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 Corporation lawyers boast that there can be no 
 laws made in the interests of the public which the 
 shrewd counsellor cannot circumvent by ingenuity 
 of new organisation and fresh applications of 
 power guided by craft. The industrial democracy 
 must supplement the political democracy. It can- 
 not be wholly done by written laws. Men in high 
 places must feel a high sense of responsibility. 
 The obligation of strength and of wisdom, the 
 obligation of wealth and of power, is measured 
 alone by their extent, nor must it be forgotten by 
 the great employers of labour, many of whom 
 boast that they themselves have come up from the 
 ranks, that conditions are very different to-day 
 from what they were forty years ago. This is not 
 the time nor the place to discuss the constituents 
 of great wealth, but it may be pointed out that the 
 natural resources in field and mine and forest have 
 largely been taken possession of by the few, with- 
 out money and without price. Other men have 
 grown great through franchises and privileges 
 which have given them borrowing power really 
 belonging not to them, but to the whole people. 
 The capital that was adequate for an independent 
 enterprise some years ago is wholly inadequate to- 
 day. Ordinary thrift has no such opportunity as 
 
SECONDAKY DEMANDS OF LABOUK 99 
 
 it once had. The times have changed. Because of 
 this some urge the claims of socialism. I am not 
 of that number. Socialism promises the glory of 
 mediocrity, the weakening of great effort, and the 
 arrest of human progress. It may be tried as an 
 experiment, but upon the ruins of that experiment 
 a new individualistic order will no doubt arise. It 
 would be wise to avoid this experiment, but it can 
 only be avoided by such economical and social con- 
 ditions as shall guarantee fair play to the average 
 man, and such a measure of the joy of life as shall 
 make him interested in social institutions. No 
 condition of social order can ever be stable unless 
 it is recognised by the large majority of the people 
 as the safeguard of their interests. If men are to 
 love the flag, it must float before their eyes as the 
 symbol of liberty and justice; if they are to be 
 loyal to the government, it must be because it 
 affords them adequate protection. The times are 
 full of solemn warning. The virtues of truthful- 
 ness and honesty have gone beyond ethics; they 
 are the part of common prudence. This is no time 
 for Nero to prepare to play his fiddle; the music 
 will die in the discordant wrath of an aroused 
 people. 
 
LETTEES FEOM EMPLOYEES 
 
 Preliminary Statement — Importance of the 
 Writers — Business Interests Uppermost. 
 
 All the letters from the employers of labour are 
 presented without signature. The writers, how- 
 ever, are quite as representative of their class as 
 are the writers of the labour letters. Three of 
 them are at the head of very large railway sys- 
 tems, five of them represent the largest manufac- 
 turing concerns of their kind in the country, and 
 the rest of them represent very important interests. 
 On looking into the matter when the letters were 
 received, I discovered that decidedly the majority 
 of these writers came up from the ranks of labour 
 themselves, and some of them from the lowest 
 ranks. The men who represent this class have, on 
 the whole, written letters with the least colour of 
 sympathy with workingmen. The problem seems 
 to lie in their minds thus : " If I have fought my 
 way up, other men can do the same if they are 
 willing to pay the price." These writers, equally 
 with the labour leaders, have given us their upper- 
 
 100 
 
LETTBES EEOM EMPLOYEES 101 
 
 most thoughts, and by that token for our purposes 
 they have given us their most valuable thoughts. 
 One chief thing to be noted is that the business 
 interests are practically the only interests which 
 the employers recognise. There is no evidence at 
 all that the social question, as a broad problem of 
 how the human family can live together upon the 
 best terms and for the best purposes, has been con- 
 sidered at all. There is not a word upon the 
 subject of better education; there is scarcely an 
 ethical note in the letters, if we except the objec- 
 tion to the use of brute force, and even that note is 
 not strictly ethical. On the other hand, there is 
 in several of the letters a definite note of open- 
 mindedness, as though the writers had a conviction 
 that the last word has not been spoken upon the 
 relation of employer and employed. It is obvious 
 that it is more to the interest of the employer even 
 than of the employed that the statements should 
 be unsigned, but the reader may be sure that these 
 writers are so representative that we have a picture 
 of the composite mind of the present-day employer. 
 
 THE LETTERS 
 " If we could pick the kind of work people we 
 would like, they would be in no respect different 
 
102 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 from those we have. It takes all kinds of people 
 to make a world, and it is the duty of the employer, 
 by proper selection and organisation, to utilise to 
 the best advantage the capacities and dispositions 
 of the people seeking employment from him. It 
 is his duty to pay wages varying according to the 
 productive ability of the individual, but sufficient 
 to afford the means of subsistence to the least 
 capable. It is his duty not only to deal fairly and 
 justly with his employees, but to promote their in- 
 terests to the best of his ability consistent with the 
 conditions governing the business. When the em- 
 ployer thus endeavours to handle his men, there 
 is nothing the matter with them, and he will find 
 that they respond with intelligence, loyalty, and 
 increased productive capacity." 
 
 " I cannot address myself as fully to the subject 
 as I would like, for it is one of very great impor- 
 tance, and one that has its rights and its wrongs. 
 However, from many years of experience in em- 
 ploying labour, I have had some interesting ex- 
 periences which have left indelible impressions 
 upon my mind. 
 
 " The relations between capital and labour, or, 
 more correctly, between the employer and the 
 
LETTEES FEOM EMPLOYEES 103 
 
 employed, are not what they should be. Each is 
 absolutely dependent upon the other, and their 
 relations should be amicable, and if possible har- 
 monious. That combinations of capital exist, and 
 that such combinations oftentimes are oppressive 
 to labour, cannot be denied; therefore, any fair- 
 minded person with a proper sense of justice will 
 not contend that it is not reasonable for labour to 
 combine for self-protection, and for its general 
 good. It is this spirit that has resulted in a mul- 
 tiplicity of labour unions throughout the length 
 and breadth of the land, and yet it must be de- 
 nied that such unions have, as a whole, resulted 
 in elevating the cause of labour. That the unions 
 have secured valuable concessions, oftentimes just 
 concessions, cannot be denied, and if these unions 
 were conducted properly and lawfully, there would 
 be little to criticise in them, but, unfortunately, 
 the great majority of them teach socialism and 
 anarchism. This is largely due to the false teach- 
 ings of their leaders, who foment discontent, and 
 who precipitate unjust and unreasonable strikes, 
 based on fancied grievances, oftentimes without 
 the faintest cause, and to carry their strikes to 
 victorious conclusions, commit unlawful acts of 
 riot, bloodshed, and murder. 
 
104 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 "The labour leaders must inaugurate labour 
 wars to demonstrate their personal necessity to 
 the organisations that support them. Without 
 contentions between the employers and their la- 
 bourers there would be no need of their services. 
 
 " If all of the labour unions were conducted on 
 the high moral and business methods of the 
 Brotherhood of Kailway Engineers, there would 
 be nothing to criticise. There is no class of labour 
 so exalted or so free from contentions with its 
 employers or so steadily employed as the railway 
 engineers of the United States, and this is ac- 
 counted for on the sound principle that while 
 thoroughly organised for self-protection, it is gov- 
 erned wisely and actuated by a due sense of right. 
 When the Locomotive Engineers make a demand, 
 it has a basis of justice, and it instantly commands 
 the respect of not only the employers, but of the 
 country at large, and it usually succeeds because it 
 should succeed. 
 
 " This country is engaged, under the leadership 
 of the peerless Roosevelt, in a crusade against 
 trusts and unlawful combinations to restrict trade, 
 and this is usually construed to mean certain great 
 corporations that have crushed out competition, 
 and have become absolute monopolists, and are, 
 
LBTTEES FROM EMPLOYERS 105 
 
 in a general way, robbing the people. Well, God 
 speed the day when all such unlawful combina- 
 tions shall be brought to a strict accounting, but 
 let us not lose sight of the fact that the greatest 
 evil of the day, and the greatest combinations in 
 restriction of trade and commerce, in a word, the 
 greatest of the great trusts of the country, is the 
 labour trust as fostered by the labour unions. 
 
 " The unions, with few exceptions, have not ex- 
 alted labour. They have secured concessions, some 
 of which were right, and some wrong, but there 
 has been a lack of justice as the basis of their 
 action, and much brutality in the enforcement. 
 
 " ' What I want ' is that the unions shall reor- 
 ganise on the general plan of the Brotherhood of 
 Locomotive Engineers; that they shall enforce their 
 just demands in a peaceful and law-abiding way; 
 that if necessary to secure rights denied them, they 
 be accorded the right to quit work in a body, but 
 that they shall cease their habit of attacking others 
 who are willing to accept the work which they have 
 abandoned, and that they shall also cease their 
 wanton destruction of the property of their em- 
 ployers who will not concede their demands. The 
 labouring people, notably members of unions, have 
 cultivated the idea that because their labour has, 
 
106 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 in a measure, helped to build up certain great en- 
 terprises, they have acquired by right an absolute 
 property interest in such concerns. This theory is 
 the rankest of socialism, bordering on anarchism. 
 They have no such property interest, and such wild 
 theories are the vagaries of 'a mind diseased.' 
 They are entitled to much consideration as old and 
 worthy employees, and any other consideration 
 which the employer may concede willingly, hut 
 nothing more. 
 
 " One of the greatest of existing evils, the result 
 of unionism and its arbitrary teachings, is that 
 men employed by the day or by the hour refuse to 
 do any act which may be demanded by the em- 
 ployer if it is not strictly of the nature of the 
 work for which he claims to be employed. If a 
 sheet-iron worker is employed, his labours must be 
 confined to that, no matter whether his master's 
 interests require that he temporarily help at some- 
 thing else or not. 
 
 "Under the union system a scale of wages is 
 adopted, generally based upon competency, but in- 
 competent men, knowing just enough of the work 
 to pass muster, are set to work under it at full 
 pay, and unless guilty of some misdemeanour, the 
 employer cannot dismiss them without bringing on 
 
LETTBES FEOM EMPLOYEES 107 
 
 a general strike. The whole union force is invoked 
 to compel the employer to keep undesirable and 
 incompetent men. This is absolutely dishonest. I 
 want the system corrected. 
 
 " In closing I may reiterate that what is wanted 
 by the employer is liberty to employ his labour in 
 the labour market without interference. Also the 
 further right to discharge any man for incompe- 
 tency, intemperance, or lack of fidelity to duty, and 
 the further right to employ union and non-union 
 labour at will, and without prejudice to his busi- 
 ness, and last, but not least, by any means, that 
 labour unions shall cease their unlawful acts in 
 the destruction of property and injury to persons 
 who seek their positions after they have relin- 
 quished them." 
 
 "What enlightened employers want to-day is 
 nothing more nor less than ' the square deal.' This 
 involves protection in their constitutional rights 
 to employ any person who is willing to work for 
 them on such terms and conditions and for such 
 periods of time as may be mutually agreeable, with- 
 out interference from third parties. It is opposed 
 to the labour union claims of special privileges 
 before the law, including the closed shop, the boy- 
 
108 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 cott, and the right (through immunity from legal 
 processes applicable to all other classes of society), 
 to coerce physically or otherwise non-union work- 
 men and employers of non-union workmen. 
 
 " The better class of employers also wish the 
 unrestricted opportunity to bind their workmen to 
 their own establishment by ties of mutual interests, 
 through fair and liberal treatment, and by extend- 
 ing, the old-fashioned inducements for skilful, 
 industrious, and faithful service. All this is dis- 
 tasteful to the union leaders. They are opposed 
 to individual concessions made by employers, and 
 would like to have workingmen dependent on union 
 methods for all their advancement. They are 
 most hostile to the natural condition of reciprocity 
 between the liberal employer and the fair-minded 
 employee. They much prefer the tyrannical, ex- 
 acting employer, as tending to force the workmen 
 into the union. A State factory inspector in one 
 of the Eastern States told me several years ago 
 that he had been surprised to find that the large 
 majority of employers were not only willing to 
 meet the requirements of the labour laws, but were 
 anxious to do what they could for the welfare of 
 their employees. All of this so-called ' betterment ' 
 work is obnoxious to the labour union. 
 
LBTTBES FEOM EMPLOYEES 109 
 
 "Labour unions in the past have rendered in- 
 calculable service in giving workmen for the first 
 time a voice in the industrial world. They are 
 now doing incalculable harm to society in conse- 
 quence of the new ideas and ambitions which have 
 been imported from Europe and developed of late 
 years. Many of the unions to-day are managed 
 and exploited by unscrupulous grafters, working 
 for their own selfish, personal ends. Their meth- 
 ods, too, often show total disregard of the rights of 
 others and of the decencies of life. The current 
 newspapers are full of examples of this, and nearly 
 everybody can supply illustrations from his own 
 personal experience. The many outrages com- 
 mitted on non-union men, including the most 
 brutal murders, are seldom denounced, or even 
 deplored in union circles. Even the universal 
 calamity in San Francisco has been to the unions 
 merely an opportunity to tighten their hold on the 
 body politic and squeeze the last drop of blood 
 from the public. San Francisco and Butte, Mon- 
 tana, are the two cities of the United States where 
 the labour unions have had an opportunity to 
 demonstrate the conditions which the union leaders 
 would like to establish throughout the country. 
 
 " The figure of speech which represents the rela- 
 
110 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 tion between labour and capital as one of warfare, 
 with all tbat is involved in that terrible word, has 
 done more than anything else to poison the thought 
 and embitter the feeling of the American people on 
 this subject, yet that simile is almost universally 
 used in the labour union publications. The desire 
 and purpose of the unions is toward the reduction 
 of all labour to the level of the least competent and 
 least fit, and the entire elimination of the time- 
 honoured motives of skill, industry, and thrift, 
 through which our civilisation has been built up. 
 " To bring the unions back to their proper rela- 
 tion to society they should be made amenable to 
 the laws and responsible for their actions. Their 
 development should be along the lines indicated 
 by Prof. Lawrence Laughlin in his article pub- 
 lished last year in Scribner's Magazine. Member- 
 ship in a union should be a guaranty of good 
 workmanship with no restriction of output. When 
 these reforms are accomplished, the unions will 
 still, on the American basis of the open shop, serve 
 their great purpose of protecting the workmen from 
 the exactions of unscrupulous employers. At the 
 same time, it will be possible for them to co-op- 
 erate with the great mass of well-meaning em- 
 ployers who desire to improve the conditions of 
 
LETTEES FEOM EMPLOYEES 111 
 
 labour in every practicable way. In general, I 
 believe that the benefits of invention, of concen- 
 tration, of improved methods of manufacture and 
 distribution, — all the blessings of prosperity, will 
 be largely diffused through the gradual shortening 
 of the hours of labour, and the gradual cheapening 
 of the products to the consumer." 
 
 " Workingmen, as a whole, in the United States, 
 are the most intelligent men in the world, and the 
 best used and best paid, and live better than any 
 other labouring people in the world. 
 
 " Speaking of them as organised labour only : 
 What they need where they are organised is to be 
 handled by wise, conservative, and honest men; if 
 they fill their offices with such men, they will have 
 very little trouble, but, I am sorry to say, they 
 do not, and are too often governed by irresponsible 
 men — men who have nothing at stake further than 
 to draw on the treasury of the different labour 
 organisations. Organised labour has done much 
 to bring better conditions to the labouring man, 
 which, in my opinion, would never have been 
 brought about had it not been for the labour or- 
 ganisations, and the way they have been handled; 
 they are entitled to a great deal of credit, but some 
 
112 THE INDUSTBIAL CONFLICT 
 
 of them are very badly handled, and there is a 
 great deal of improvement which will come about 
 in time. 
 
 " ' What do the Employers Want? ' They want 
 nothing but an honest day's work and fair treat- 
 ment from the workingmen. When they make 
 contracts, they want the workingman to carry out 
 his contract, which some organisations do not do. 
 The employer has paid, and is paying to-day, a 
 greater advance in the wages than has ever been 
 known in the lives of the workingmen, consequently 
 the workingman is better off to-day than ever be- 
 fore, and was never as uneasy as he is to-day. 
 
 " The floating population of labouring men, of 
 which this country has a great many, requires only 
 a small amount to live on; for instance, they take 
 $30 per month to pay their expenses. When they 
 are getting a dollar per day they will work full 
 time; as it is to-day, they are receiving $2 per day, 
 consequently they will work only one-half the 
 time; they loaf the balance, and disarrange all 
 kinds of business and spend their time in dissipa- 
 tion. It is a pleasure for the employer to treat all 
 his employees fairly, and see them prosper, if they 
 will only give an honest day's work in return and 
 not spend their time in idleness and dissipation." 
 
LETTEES FEOM EMPLOYEES 113 
 
 "Eeplying to your favour of the 28th ult., I 
 have to say that in a general way we have no fault 
 to find with the labour conditions as existing in 
 our works. We concede to our men the right to 
 have the privilege of selling their products at the 
 highest possible price. Our sole exception to the 
 union rules as applied to our business arises from 
 the fact that the men do not confine their efforts 
 to betterment of hours, wages, and working con- 
 ditions, but attempt to control other matters which 
 are really no concern of theirs. 
 
 " We ask for loyalty and interest in our concern, 
 industry and sobriety, and as we are generally 
 satisfied with the way these things are rendered us, 
 we are not in a position to pass any severe criti- 
 cism on existing conditions." 
 
 "I have no hesitation in saying to you that I 
 think it is just as fair for the labouring men to 
 organise and have their union as it is for the 
 capitalists, and a great many prominent employers 
 of labour think in a great many respects it is easier 
 to get along with the men, dealing with a com- 
 mittee of three or five, than dealing with each man 
 individually. In that way they fix up a scale of 
 wages for which the men are to work for a period 
 
114 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 of one to three years, and have very little trouble. 
 I believe the unions, on the whole, have been a 
 great benefit to the labouring men. On the other 
 hand, they hurt themselves very materially when 
 they violate their contract and go on sympathetic 
 strikes because some other union is in trouble. If 
 they do not keep their agreement, they have no 
 right to complain because their employers do not 
 keep theirs. 
 
 "There are certain underlying rules and prin- 
 ciples which they must live up to if they want 
 the sympathy and respect of right-thinking men. 
 When they make an agreement, they must stand 
 by it until it has expired, and when they go on a 
 strike, it should be a decent, orderly, respectable 
 and peaceful strike. This country will not tolerate 
 violence on the part of the men — they must obey 
 the law and respect the rights of others, and their 
 property, or they will never succeed. This pound- 
 ing a man because he does not join the union, in- 
 sulting his family, smashing in windows, and 
 actions of that kind, only hurt the labouring men's 
 union, and if persisted in, are going to be very 
 disastrous to their best interests, and cause the 
 loss of a great many lives. 
 
 " Another mistake that I think the labour unions 
 
LETTERS FROM EMPLOYERS 115 
 
 make is in allowing themselves to be manipulated 
 for political purposes. I think they will be much 
 stronger and carry much more weight if they do 
 not affiliate themselves with any political party, 
 nor approve of any particular ticket, nor get up 
 any particular party for themselves. They can 
 then endorse some particular candidate, and by 
 throwing their votes for him, accomplish much 
 more." 
 
 • • • • • 
 
 " My experience with labour troubles is that the 
 great majority of the men who organise and belong 
 to the unions have very little to say as to what 
 they want to do. I am certain men who belong 
 to labour unions attend meetings to a very small 
 extent. A few restless spirits attend the meetings 
 and legislate for the others, and the average man, 
 through negligence, indifference, or timidity, fails 
 to express his opinion. The result is that the ma- 
 jority's opinion is not expressed when a demand 
 is made and strikes occur. It is very seldom, 
 indeed, that the majority of organised labourers 
 desire to strike. I have had scores of men tell me 
 in times of strikes that it was never their intention 
 that there should be one, and many of them ex- 
 pressed themselves as not desiring to belong to the 
 
116 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 union, but they feel compelled to do so on account 
 of the pressure brought to bear upon them by 
 others. I think the labour organisations could do 
 very much to improve the conditions if greater 
 numbers would attend their meetings, and be al- 
 lowed to fairly express their wishes. The greatest 
 complaint I have is that a large majority allow 
 themselves to be led into foolish difficulties. The 
 above is one answer to your question, ' What do 
 the employers want?' 
 
 "Another thing employers want is to be abso- 
 lutely left without hindrance to carry on their 
 manufacturing plants to the best of their ability. 
 They cannot allow organised labour to say how 
 things shall be done, or who shall do them, or 
 how much shall be done in a day. An employer 
 must be allowed freedom to hire whomsoever he 
 sees fit, and there seems no reason why any man 
 should not be allowed to work for another man if 
 both parties agree. I often wish that the original 
 conditions between the employer and employee 
 could be absolutely re-established, and I think that 
 eventually they will. From my early recollections 
 of business (covering a period of thirty or forty 
 years), absolute freedom existed between employer 
 and employee, and it was always a matter of mutual 
 agreement between the two on what basis they 
 
LETTEES FROM EMPLOYERS 1H 
 
 should do business. I regret that in late years a 
 third party has undertaken to step in and en- 
 deavour to dictate the terms between employer and 
 employee. 
 
 " Another thing employers want is a proper in- 
 terpretation of our statute laws. In this State 
 the law distinctly forbids men to prevent other 
 men from working at a factory if they desire to do 
 so, and even goes so far as to forbid them to 
 threaten, coerce, or intimidate in any manner in 
 order to accomplish their purposes. Yet in every 
 strike that occurs there is intimidation and vio- 
 lence. Our Supreme Court has rendered decisions 
 that practically annul the law, and there is no 
 possible way for an employer to be relieved from 
 a crowd of striking employees forming at his gate 
 or shop door, abusing, threatening, and intimidat- 
 ing in every manner men who wish to work. A 
 lot of men can threaten and intimidate others from 
 working in my shop, but if I try to prevent a man 
 from getting employment in another shop, I am 
 guilty of blacklisting, and am liable for it. Our 
 judges are elected by the people, and my experience 
 is that they are incapable of properly executing 
 the laws we have, fearing they will lose the labour 
 vote at the next election. 
 \ " Within the last two months I have repeatedly 
 
118 THE INDUSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 had men arrested for committing violence, and 
 have proven the cases to the satisfaction of a jury, 
 but the judge on the bench, with the proof of un- 
 provoked slugging in front of him, allowed the 
 culprit to escape with a fine of $25. A term of 
 imprisonment would be the proper punishment for 
 such a crime. 
 
 " The items that I want as an employer are as 
 follows : 
 
 " 1. If men desire to unionise, let them carry 
 out their own wishes, and not be led by a few. 
 
 "2. Freedom of the employer to conduct his 
 business to the best of his ability. 
 
 " 3. A proper execution of our laws by our 
 judges, without fear of the labour vote." 
 
 " I think one of the most serious things con- 
 fronting our country to-day is the growing ten- 
 dency among all classes of labour to shift from 
 place to place, and to do as little work as possible, 
 instead of trying to do as much as they can to 
 advance the interests of whatever may be the wage- 
 paying power. 
 
 " I do not believe it is much of an exaggeration 
 to say that to-day the so-called labourer does not 
 accomplish in a working day nearly as much as 
 
LETTEES FROM EMPLOYERS 119 
 
 lie did ten years ago. With the enormous amount 
 of work confronting American labour, the constant 
 cry for less hours and higher pay is one of the 
 things that is going to check our advance and 
 progress. 
 
 " Ten hours is not too much for a healthy man 
 to work, and he ought to work hard and loyally 
 for those who provide the money to carry on the 
 business during those ten hours. The fact that 
 the apparent spirit of many workingmen is against 
 this idea is most unfortunate." 
 
 " As employers of labour, all we ask is the 
 privilege of employing whomever we wish, and at 
 such rates of wages as are reasonable and just, 
 according to conditions. We have been impor- 
 tuned to sign agreements whereunder we would 
 agree to employ none but union men. We have 
 never been ready to enter into arrangements of this 
 character against the vast number of honest work- 
 ingmen who do not belong to unions, who are 
 largely in the majority, and have been boycotted, 
 intimidated, dynamited, and burned out for fail- 
 ing to do so." 
 
 . ■ • • • 
 
 " It is many years since I was a workingman, 
 
120 THE INDUSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 and conditions have changed very much, but when 
 I was a workingman I worked for the best interests 
 of my employers, and did not spare my time nor 
 labour to further their interests, and soon became 
 an employer. Since that time conditions are 
 changed, and yet I believe that industry, honesty 
 of purpose, and doing all and more than you are 
 asked to do will have its reward. 
 
 "Your second question is answered by me 
 through my own experience, and may seem ego- 
 tistical, but what the employer wants is men who 
 will do their best, without considering remunera- 
 tion until their capacity and ability have been fully 
 proven. A man who only does as much as is nec- 
 essary to prevent his discharge, is of no real value. 
 One who is not willing to earn more than he gets 
 will never succeed beyond the ordinary, but it is 
 well known to all that first-class help is hard to 
 get, and that such help does get recognition by 
 employers. What an employer wants is results, 
 and if results are given, then wages are increased 
 accordingly. Many years of experience teach me 
 that faithful performance of duty brings a reward 
 in money, and also an ease of conscience that is 
 worth much more than money." 
 
 • • • ■ • 
 
 " In compliance with your request to specify 
 
LETTERS FROM EMPLOYERS 121 
 
 individual cases where I thought organised labour 
 had overstepped what might properly be termed 
 its just right, the following may be of interest: 
 
 " Several years ago the question of a new scale 
 arose with a daily newspaper. The question of 
 hours and wages was satisfactorily adjusted with- 
 out any considerable degree of friction. When it 
 came to the matter of conditions under which la- 
 bour should be performed, the clause read: 'And 
 all proper conveniences for health and comfort 
 shall be provided which shall be construed to mean 
 the furnishing of heat in winter, ice-water in sum- 
 mer, towels and soap. In addition, cuspidors shall 
 be furnished by the office for the use of tobacco- 
 chewers, and they shall be cleaned at the expense 
 of the office.' 
 
 " All except the latter clause was agreed to, and 
 that I declined to consider, stating that we were 
 willing to pay a premium on cleanliness, but not 
 on filth. It was only after three weeks of fruitless 
 discussion when it was announced that the union 
 would never secure that clause, even if it brought 
 an open office by refusal, that it was stricken out. 
 
 " That is one of the most arbitrary and unjusti- 
 fiable stands I ever heard of being taken, especially 
 by a body of men of such uniformly high intelli- 
 gence as the Typographical Union. 
 
122 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 " Another case in point is at present under dis- 
 cussion: We are the official printers for the city. 
 The council proceedings embody a part of the work 
 we are awarded. The law further calls for a cer- 
 tain number of copies of all ordinances and council 
 proceedings in book form. We do not do book- 
 printing, but the bids must cover everything called 
 for by the published call for bids. We made a 
 contract to turn over the metal to another firm 
 which bid in conjunction with us, they agreeing 
 to pay us a certain sum for the type, and to return 
 the metal to us after the printing. This office is 
 an open one, and Typographical Union is carrying 
 on a war against it. They notified us that any 
 attempt to deliver this type would result in a 
 strike at once. Our agreement provides for local 
 arbitration and appeal to national arbitration be- 
 fore such steps can be taken, but in the face of 
 this we were debarred from giving out the metal, 
 have submitted a list of fifty local men who would 
 have no individual interest in the decision, and 
 have had the entire list rejected, and a list made 
 up exclusively of union men submitted in its stead. 
 Realising that no progress could be made on the 
 line of arbitration, we suggested that all the work 
 needful in the composing room be done by us by 
 
LETTEES PEOM EMPLOYEES 123 
 
 printers in good standing in the union, and the 
 forms delivered to the pressroom of the other cor- 
 poration, which is also exclusively union. The 
 Typographical Union refused to accede to this re- 
 quest, and the matter rests in that state, after seven 
 months. In the meantime we are compelled to buy 
 new material which is not needed, lumber up all 
 our available space to carry three tons of set matter, 
 and no conclusion in sight. 
 
 " One short-sighted phase of union legislation, 
 to my mind, is this : When an exceptionally good 
 man holds a position, he has been paid in excess of 
 the scale provided for that position, but the pub- 
 lishers will not follow this course any further, as 
 the next scale meeting brings with it a demand 
 for the price which has been paid as a premium for 
 ability. In this way really good men are held down 
 to the scale, whereas, if no unfair advantage were 
 taken of paying the better men more than his fel- 
 lows, in many instances an increase would be paid. 
 
 " A business concern making an error must pay 
 for the same. Not so with a union man. Eegrets 
 are the limit, even though all the work has to be 
 done over again, or a penalty paid for the error, 
 by the paper. 
 
 " Union regulations call for ' priority ' in plac- 
 
124 THE INDTJSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 ing men in permanent positions, irrespective of 
 comparative merit. This compels foremen in 
 many cases to bar a man for incompetency who 
 would otherwise be given work as an extra, but 
 who was not considered eligible to be a reg- 
 ular. 
 
 " Discharges can only be made when a written 
 cause is assigned. That is the law, though it is 
 not very strictly lived up to. Verbal reasons are 
 not sufficient. 
 
 " If two institutions owned by the same concern 
 run the same advertisement and a matrix is fur- 
 nished, the men must be paid for setting that same 
 advertisement, even if it is thrown away the next 
 minute. Only in extra emergencies is this rule 
 waived, and the foreman and the father of the 
 chapel — as the resident delegate is called — shall 
 determine what constitutes emergency. 
 
 " The boast of the union that only skilled work- 
 men can become members is not based on fact. 
 There is no examination of any character, there is 
 no rule which applies to make one eligible for 
 membership in the Typographical Union. A stated 
 period of apprenticeship is served, at the end of 
 which time the apprentice becomes a journey- 
 man. 
 
LETTEKS FROM EMPLOYEES 125 
 
 " The good points about the union are many : 
 I was manager of a paper once where discipline 
 called for the discharge of the foreman. He was 
 extremely popular with the men, and his discharge 
 was the signal for all hands to quit. The executive 
 committee of the union got together a crew of men, 
 and themselves assisted until a permanent force 
 was secured, so that no embarrassment resulted 
 from the defection of the men. There was no 
 discipline imposed upon the members, however, as 
 it was conceded to be their privilege to quit when- 
 ever they saw fit. 
 
 "The union protects men from bilious fore- 
 men. A man's temper should not be sufficient 
 excuse for his taking the bread and butter out of 
 another man's mouth; it prevents imposition in 
 the matter of hours and petty annoyances; it pre- 
 vents a man from being called to work at unseemly 
 hours, on Sundays, and legal holidays, without 
 making the price so high that whims are prohibi- 
 tive. On the other hand, I have never known of 
 a union asking for increased pay on a holiday 
 when employed by newspapers. 
 
 "Unions are responsible for every bit of legis- 
 lation in the country which protects childhood, 
 and womanhood, life and limb. Their methods at 
 
126 THE INDUSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 times may seem high-handed, but it is a matter 
 of self-preservation to refuse to work with the man 
 who reaps all the benefits of their efforts and pays 
 nothing toward keeping up their organisation. As 
 a workman I should be a union man; as an em- 
 ployer, generally speaking, I believe the unions to 
 be needful, and if their efforts are restricted to the 
 disposal of their labour at the highest possible 
 price, to the securing of short hours and pleasant 
 environments, I'm with them. When they step 
 over these legitimate bounds, in nine cases out of 
 ten it is an individual with an aggressive per- 
 sonality who is to blame, not the laws and regula- 
 tions of the union." 
 
 "I beg to say that in my opinion the great 
 prosperity of the country and the consequent heavy 
 demand for labour, skilled and unskilled, has so 
 reduced the available supply that wages of all em- 
 ployees have been very largely increased. This 
 increase, and a reduction of the hours of labour, 
 is a natural and unpreventable consequence of the 
 conditions, and with these changes I believe rea- 
 sonable employers have no fault to find. What 
 they do feel to be wrong, however, is the tendency 
 
LETTEES FROM EMPLOYEES 127 
 
 of trades unions to insist upon the standardisation 
 of a day's work, and upon promotion being gov- 
 erned by seniority rather than by merit. The re- 
 sult of these two demands is to lower the efficiency 
 of the most capable man to the level of the lazy 
 and indifferent one, and to remove from the am- 
 bitious man the best incentive to effort. With a 
 standard day's work and a seniority rule in effect, 
 the average employee's aim is to get through the 
 day with as little exertion of mind and body as 
 practicable, and he is no longer a faithful servant, 
 but one who would rather see harm than good 
 come to his employer. 
 
 " The good the Church can do is for its 
 speakers to urge upon employers the right of 
 the worker to fair wages, reasonable hours of 
 work, and healthful conditions of employment, 
 and upon employees the giving to employers of 
 faithful and loyal service." 
 
 • • • i 
 
 "Briefly, what the employer wants is a fair 
 day's work for a fair day's pay. Experience has 
 taught him in many cases that this necessitates 
 the 'open shop,' for with the 'closed shop' the 
 management of the internal affairs of his work- 
 
128 THE IKDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 rooms is practically out of his hands and in the 
 hands not even of his own employees, but of an 
 organisation entirely outside and unfamiliar with 
 the conditions of his particular business. 
 
 "Whether or not the closed shop is necessary 
 or desirable in connection with very large enter- 
 prises, I do not undertake to say, but with what 
 some of our labour leaders have called ' the legiti- 
 mate employer/ i. e., the man who is conducting 
 his own business, and who can come into touch 
 with his employees, it ha3 no place, and the em- 
 ployers cannot and will not stand for it. If they 
 are obliged to do so temporarily in some eases, 
 they will chafe under it, and it will be but a short 
 time before the aroused spirit of independence 
 must make its continuance impossible. 
 
 " Please understand that by the ' open shop ' I 
 mean just exactly that. I am well aware that the 
 labour unionists claim that the ' open shop ' is and 
 must be a 'non-union shop.' This is absolutely 
 false unless the unions make it so by forbidding 
 their members to work in it. 
 
 " For years the majority of the printing offices 
 in Boston have been running as ' open shops,' and 
 after a strike in these offices more than two years 
 ago, each posted a notice as follows : 
 
LETTEKS FROM EMPLOYEES 129 
 
 THIS IS AN OPEN OFFICE 
 
 No discrimination is to be made between 
 union and non-union employees. It is one of 
 the terms of employment that no employee 
 shall refuse at any time to handle material 
 on the ground that it has been prepared by 
 union or non-union men, and that no em- 
 ployee shall subject any fellow-employee to 
 annoyance because he is a union or non- 
 union man. 
 
 " And all, to the best of my knowledge and belief, 
 actually lived up to it, with the result that when 
 the strike was called here last February, hardly a 
 man went out, notwithstanding the fact that many 
 of them had been union men until that time, and 
 I challenge anyone to show that wages and con- 
 ditions here have not compared more than favour- 
 ably with those in other cities where the union 
 ' closed shop ' prevailed. 
 
 " In common with, I think, a large proportion 
 of employers, I believe in organised labour. If it 
 is impossible for employers sometimes to concede 
 its demands, this does not necessarily mean lack 
 of sympathy, but rather, the better judgment of 
 the employers is against a move which in the long 
 run is likely to prove disastrous to both employers 
 and employees, as their interests are common to a 
 larger extent than is generally recognised." 
 
130 THE INDUSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 THE LETTERS CONDENSED 
 
 1. The employer wants liberty to employ his 
 labour in the labour market without interference, 
 and to employ union or non-union labour at will. 
 This means the "open shop." 
 
 2. He wants the right to discharge any man for 
 incompetence, intemperance, or lack of fidelity to 
 duty. 
 
 3. The labour unions should cease their unlawful 
 acts in the destruction of property of former em- 
 ployers, and injury to persons who seek their posi- 
 tions after they have relinquished them. 
 
 4. The rest of the labour unions should be con- 
 ducted on the high moral and business methods of 
 the Brotherhood of Eailway Engineers. 
 
 5. Employees when they make contracts should 
 carry out their contracts, which some organisa- 
 tions do not do. 
 
 6. Unions should confine their efforts to the bet- 
 terment of hours, wages, and working conditions, 
 and not attempt to control other matters. 
 
 7. Employers want loyalty and interest in the 
 business, industry and sobriety on the part of the 
 workingmen. 
 
 8. They object to sympathetic strikes. 
 
LBTTEES FROM EMPLOYERS 131 
 
 9. They want the rank and file of workingmen 
 to attend the meetings of the unions, and not al- 
 low them to be managed by a few restless spirits. 
 
 10. They object to the character of the labour 
 leaders, who are often grafters and restless spirits, 
 who make trouble simply to enhance their own 
 importance. 
 
 11. They want a proper execution of the laws 
 by the judges without fear of the labour vote. 
 
 12. The labourer does not accomplish in a work- 
 ing day as much as he did ten years ago. The 
 progress of the country, industrially, will be 
 checked by the constant cry for less hours and 
 higher pay. 
 
 13. The employer wants men who will do their 
 best without considering remuneration until their 
 capacity and ability have been proven. They want 
 men who are willing to earn more than they get 
 in order to secure results. If the employer has 
 results, he is perfectly willing to increase wages. 
 
 14. The better class of employers wish the un- 
 restricted opportunity to bind their workmen to 
 their own establishments by ties of mutual interest 
 through fair and liberal treatment, and by extend- 
 ing the old-fashioned inducements for skill, in- 
 dustry, and faithfulness. They wish to be able to 
 
132 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 make individual concessions to the most skilled 
 and faithful employees. 
 
 15. The figure of speech which represents the 
 relation between capital and labour as one of war- 
 fare has done more than anything else to poison 
 the thought and embitter the feelings of the 
 American people. That simile is almost universally 
 used in the publications of the labour unions. 
 
 16. The ideas, ambitions, and methods of the 
 unions are toward the reduction of all labour to 
 the level of the least competent and the least fit. 
 
 17. Membership in the union should be a guar- 
 anty of good workmanship with no restriction of 
 output. 
 
 18. Employers object to the standard day's 
 work; to the seniority rule, because it makes the 
 employee aim to get through the day with as little 
 exertion of mind and body as practicable. 
 
VI 
 
 PEIMAEY DEMANDS OF EMPLOYEES 
 
 The Point of View — Nature of Credit- 
 Superintendence — Assaults on Persons and 
 Property — Violation of Contracts. 
 
 One of the reasons for the difficulties in the la- 
 bour world is that the minds of employers and 
 employed do not work alike. They have wholly 
 different points of view. A characteristic oc- 
 cupation not only produces special circum- 
 stances in the outside life; it tends to create 
 a special type of mind. It is hard for the 
 Frenchman to understand the ethical point of view 
 of the Englishman; it is hard for the Englishman 
 to see that the Frenchman is not so much a sinner 
 as he is excessively frank. The Eoman Catholic 
 and the Protestant find it hard to do justice to 
 each other. Mental differences run through all 
 the world, and make most of its problems. There 
 are material difficulties in the labour problem, but 
 it cannot be insisted too strongly that many of 
 these difficulties are psychological. If, for example, 
 the workingman could get the point of view that 
 
 133 
 
134 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 in a large and real sense the employer, when he 
 is a superintendent of labour, is actually the serv- 
 ant of labour, instead of its master, that would 
 be a gain; if, on the other hand, the employer 
 could get the point of view that the collective body 
 of labour is as essential to his enterprise as he is 
 himself, it might ease his galled shoulder when he 
 pulls a heavy load. The final adjustment of la- 
 bour troubles must depend upon the successful 
 effort of each factor to realise the opposite point 
 of view. The surface antagonisms which depend 
 upon surface differences in manner, speech, and 
 mode of life must be resolved by the deeper uni- 
 ties of the recognition of essential fellowship. 
 That essential fellowship belongs not alone to toil, 
 but to the range of human wants, and to capacity 
 for this world and perhaps another world. The 
 workingman wants the sympathy of his employer; 
 he wants the human touch; but there are employ- 
 ers who are equally hungry for the sympathy of 
 the workingman; they would like to feel that he 
 also cares for their burdens and difficulties, and 
 that his joys and sorrows are related to the hap- 
 piness of those to whom he is related in the busi- 
 ness world. 
 The former discussion was opened with an argu- 
 
DEMANDS OP EMPLOYEES 135 
 
 ment to show the value of labour unions. In like 
 manner the present discussion would be unworthy 
 the great subject did it not seek to show clearly 
 the relation of the employer to successful produc- 
 tion. It is obvious that capital is very important 
 to most enterprises, and to some enterprises large 
 capital is indispensable. There are a variety of 
 ways in which this capital may be secured, and it 
 does not always belong to the employer. No 
 matter how much capital a man may have, the 
 economical management of nearly every business 
 depends upon credit. That is to say, at certain 
 times of the year more capital is required than at 
 others. There must be some arrangement by which 
 capital can increase and shrink. The successful 
 business has enough capital for needs at the mini- 
 mum, but must borrow at the times of the year 
 when the need of money is greater. Of course 
 this does not apply to the plant, but it does apply 
 to such matters as the purchase of raw material, 
 the carrying on of the enterprise while the finished 
 product is being put upon the market, and the pay- 
 ment of wages, and other expenses before collec- 
 tions are made. Credit will be seen to be impor- 
 tant to the successful business man, even though 
 he have adequate capital, for he cannot afford to 
 
136 THE INDUSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 overcapitalise any enterprise, and it is cheaper to 
 pay interest for a part of the year on the surplus 
 required than to have his own money lie idle a 
 part of the year. And many enterprises would be 
 impossible to employers upon the amount of capital 
 which they have, apart from the facts stated above. 
 They are men of energy and daring, and they are 
 able to carry on enterprises beyond their own 
 financial resources, and the basis upon which they 
 carry it on is credit. It may be argued that the 
 nature of the business and its probable success are 
 elements in this credit, but the important element 
 in the credit is the man himself. The banks do 
 not wish to take charge of any business to which 
 they lend money. They want their money back 
 again. For this they rely upon the character and 
 capacity of the man who is managing the business. 
 Successful production would be greatly crippled 
 without credit. If credit should vanish, the work- 
 ingman would immediately suffer. In times of 
 financial stress what happens is the disappearance 
 of credit; we all know how many other things hap- 
 pen besides. 
 
 But it is the value of the employer as superin- 
 tendent that needs to be emphasised and willingly 
 recognised. He must seek out the cheapest place 
 
DEMANDS OF EMPLOYEES 137 
 
 to buy the raw material; he must know the best 
 machines to turn that into the finished product; 
 he must have the capacity to finance the concern. 
 In large establishments these functions are distrib- 
 uted among several men, but they all come under 
 the one head of superintendence. The kind of 
 ability required for successful superintendence is 
 high class; manifestly, it must be well paid. No 
 matter how skilful the workmen are, they cannot 
 succeed unless these functions are successfully per- 
 formed. As a matter of fact, many a workman 
 has suffered by the incapacity of his employer, but, 
 on the other hand, the whole range of successful 
 production has for its initial element the ability 
 and worth of the employer of labour. I have 
 argued in favour of shorter hours for the work- 
 ingmen. I desire also to plead for shorter hours 
 on behalf of the employer. The employer has no 
 regular working day. The workingmen can lay 
 down their tools and forget their tasks, but the 
 employer, particularly in times of stress, walks 
 with his work, eats with his work, and sleeps with 
 his work, for it haunts him in his dreams, and in 
 times of danger and difficulty robs him of sleep 
 and keeps him working at such long hours as 
 amounts to slavery. I have often remonstrated 
 
138 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 with employers because of their cruelty to them- 
 selves. Their ambitions for success are often so 
 great that everything is sacrificed to them. They 
 are not only angry when workmen wish greater 
 wages, but they are impatient when any of the 
 higher interests of society demand their attention. 
 They become hard and selfish; they succeed, but 
 the price of the success is too great. Into the bar- 
 gain they have put the generous aspirations of 
 youth, social duties and obligations, domestic af- 
 fections and opportunities, the culture of the mind, 
 the uplift of the soul, and finally, the health of 
 the body, to win a success the value of which de- 
 pends upon the senses, but it is only won after the 
 senses are jaded, the body is crippled, and they are 
 ready to drop into untimely graves the victims of 
 remorseless struggle. A great employer and a 
 successful man once said to me, " Do you suppose 
 I would go again through all the terrible strain 
 that I have passed through in the last thirty years 
 even if I knew I should have as much money as 
 I have now? Do you think that the money is 
 worth it? " Frankly, I do not think the money is 
 worth it. The whole tone of the industrial or- 
 ganisation needs to be recast. The perspective of 
 human life needs to be set in a clearer light. The 
 
DEMANDS OF EMPLOYEES 139 
 
 task is not easy, for it is only those who really 
 know what man is in all the range of his Godlike 
 powers who are fitted to decide what life should 
 be. The new ethics will demand that a man 
 rightly love himself, for after all it is only the 
 man who knows his real duty to himself who can 
 rightly love his neighbour. The employer who is 
 willing to sacrifice every interest in life to the ac- 
 cumulation of property, who gives to it his own 
 body and his soul, will doubtless be very impatient 
 with respect to any demand of workingmen. 
 
 To the workingmen, however, it must be pointed 
 out that employers as a class, though they some- 
 times achieve wealth, often fail in its pursuit. It 
 is the very few who amass great wealth in legiti- 
 mate business. Those who amass wealth in ille- 
 gitimate ways must finally be attended to by the 
 criminal code, but the few who amass great wealth 
 in legitimate business must have extraordinary 
 capacity and make extraordinary sacrifices. They 
 may have a great show of material resources, but 
 the question still comes, as of old, what profit if 
 a man gain the world and lose his life? The 
 workingman must get a larger horizon. He also 
 must learn to look not alone upon his own things, 
 but also upon the things of another. He sees his 
 
140 THE INDUSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 employer come to the office perhaps after he has 
 been at work for an hour; the employer rides to 
 the work, the workman walks. The employer 
 would doubtless have a better digestion if he also 
 walked, but the employer is not having as easy a 
 time as the workingman supposes. He may not 
 work with his hands, but he works with tired brain 
 and tingling nerves. He does not carry a load 
 upon his back that men may see, and may not have 
 to brush dirt from his clothes, but often he is 
 carrying a load of responsibility under which his 
 mental faculties stagger. It is only because he 
 succeeds that the business succeeds. He is an 
 essential part of the enterprise. It is a mistake 
 to suppose that the production of wealth depends 
 solely upon manual labour; it cannot succeed 
 without manual labour, but neither can manual 
 labour succeed without wise superintendence. 
 
 There is a feeling upon the part of many em- 
 ployers that the unions make demands that are 
 trifling in their nature, and which often amount 
 to unwise exactions. They think, further, that 
 labour leaders often seek to interfere in the con- 
 duct of business in matters which are not directly 
 related to the interest of the workmen. Abundant 
 testimony can be furnished that unions go outside 
 
DEMANDS OF EMPLOYERS 141 
 
 of the matters of wages, hours, and sanitary con- 
 ditions. These seem to be the present legitimate 
 domain of mutual discussion, and it is necessary 
 for workingmen to have some regard to the rights 
 of superintendence. In the struggle for existence, 
 the man who is in charge of the business has found 
 his place. He may not be the best man, ideally, 
 for the place, but he is the best man the place has 
 or can have, for his interest in the business is in- 
 alienable. It is to the interest of the business, and 
 therefore to the interest of the workingman whose 
 wages must be paid from the business, that his 
 hands shall not be tied. If he has to spend a con- 
 siderable part of his time and energy in deciding 
 what he shall do to meet possible demands of the 
 workingmen with respect to matters outside of 
 their province, he does it at the expense of nerve 
 force and brain energy that it is better for all con- 
 cerned should be applied to the promotion of the 
 business. 
 
 The employers desire that unlawful acts in the 
 destruction of property and injury to persons 
 should cease. This is a question broader than the 
 interests of the two parties to the labour question. 
 It is not a question of the success of labour or the 
 success of capital. It is a question of the success 
 
142 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 of American institutions. There can be no per- 
 manent victories won by labour that are not won 
 under the form of law. I hold to the view that 
 the member of a union has a right to persuade 
 another man not to accept the job which he has 
 left, but he must not persuade him with a shot- 
 gun. He has a right to urge his fellow-workman 
 to join his union, but he must not urge him by 
 putting a stick of dynamite under his house. It 
 is not fair to hold organised labour responsible for 
 the acts of individuals, but it is fair to hold organ- 
 ised labour responsible for its attitude toward 
 those who commit unlawful acts. Organised 
 labour must purge itself from any suspicion of 
 violence to secure its ends, or organised labour 
 must suffer the consequences. It is as intolerable 
 to allow murder, arson, and riot in the alleged 
 friends of labour as it is in any other class. 
 Murder, arson, and riot are crimes which the whole 
 body of society is under obligations to resist with 
 all the force at its command. The man who hits 
 the non-union man over the head with a club is 
 not the friend of organised labour, but its enemy. 
 There are to be no victories in this country for 
 assassination. If the union differs from the em- 
 ployer of labour, it must not seek to convince him 
 
DEMANDS OF EMPLOYEES 143 
 
 by burning down his shop or warehouse. These 
 things are not said in the interests of the rights 
 of property; they are said in the interests of the 
 workingman himself. The weak and the poor are 
 only safe because greed and strength, power and 
 position are compelled to obey the laws. A law- 
 less condition of affairs means the success at last 
 of the army. The only way out of the breakdown 
 of lawful and orderly society is the military 
 despotism, but the military despotism means a re- 
 newal of serfdom. It is possible that as a result 
 of present conditions, inflamed passions, the un- 
 wisdom of leaders, our social institutions will be 
 dissolved, but it is not possible that anarchy 
 should remain as the permanent condition under 
 which men and women will live. The building 
 of a social order is the logical and necessary result 
 of human association. This is the lesson of all 
 human history. There is only one way for labour 
 unions to act in this matter, and that is to expel 
 from their ranks every man who is guilty of break- 
 ing any law. The labour unions are more inter- 
 ested in securing the conviction of those who 
 assault persons or destroy property than any other 
 class. With the preservation of the social order, 
 every interest of labour is bound up. All wise 
 
144 THE INDTTSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 leaders of labour thoroughly understand these 
 principles, and more and more labour will emerge 
 from this condition of probation into a condition 
 of security by following their guidance. If the 
 courts of law can be intimidated and threatened 
 by anonymous letters suggesting violence or re- 
 prisal at the polls, the same courts will be the prey 
 to the seductions of those who represent the money 
 power. The safe court is the untrammelled court. 
 Upon the purity of the courts the safety of society 
 depends. It has been the boast of the American 
 people for a hundred years that whatever faults 
 the young democracy might have, its courts were 
 secure, and in general that boast has always been 
 justified by the facts, and is to-day. 
 
 The workingman pleads for the sense of brother- 
 hood, and asks ror the human touch, and he does 
 well ; but the workingman must remember that the 
 employer is his brother; he must also remember 
 that the non-union man is his brother. In a free 
 country we do not beat out one another's brains for 
 difference of opinions. A non-union man may be 
 foolish, and I think he is foolish, but he must be 
 persuaded by the effective display of reasons for 
 joining the union; he must be shown that his in- 
 terests lie with the unions. This is a process of 
 
DEMANDS OP EMPLOYEES 145 
 
 education and not intimidation. It is neither wise 
 nor right for any representatives of labour to ap- 
 peal to force ; they must appeal to justice, and they 
 must strengthen their appeal by themselves being 
 just. Labour has come far. It has secured many 
 successes, but all the victories that labour has won 
 thus far are imperilled to-day by the doubt that 
 society has whether organised labour can be 
 trusted to use only peaceable means. If force is 
 to be resorted to on one side, there can be no ob- 
 jection to its being resorted to upon the other side. 
 Brute war becomes elemental, and in the storm 
 the values of a thousand years may perish. Let 
 us not be compelled to go back again to the days 
 of the beginning and deal afresh with Caesars and 
 with Napoleons, for after the earthquake that 
 shakes down institutions there comes the fire 
 which consumes the homes of the individuals. It 
 is better to debate and not to shoot. It is better 
 to convince the reason rather than to bruise the 
 flesh. 
 
 Seventy years ago, when a young man, Abraham 
 Lincoln, that far-sighted friend of man, uttered 
 these words : 
 
 " I know the American people are much attached 
 
146 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 to their government; I know they would suffer 
 much for its sake; I know they would endure evils 
 long and patiently before they would ever think 
 of exchanging it for another; yet notwithstanding 
 all this, if the laws be continually despised and 
 disregarded, if their rights to be secure in their 
 persons and property are held by no better tenure 
 than the caprice of a mob, the alienation of their 
 affections from the government is the natural con- 
 sequence; and to that, sooner or later, it must 
 come. Here then is one point at which danger 
 may be expected. 
 
 " The question recurs, How shall we fortify 
 against it? The answer is simple. Let every 
 American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher 
 to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Eevolu- 
 tion never to violate in the least particular the 
 laws of the country, and never to tolerate their 
 violation by others. As the patriots of 'seventy- 
 six did to the support of the constitution and laws, 
 let every American pledge his life, his property, 
 and his sacred honour. Let every man remember 
 that to violate the law is to trample on the blood 
 of his father, and to tear the charter of his own 
 and his children's liberty. Let reverence for the 
 laws be breathed by every American mother to the 
 
DEMANDS OP EMPLOYERS 147 
 
 lisping babe that prattles on her lap; let it be 
 taught in schools, in seminaries, in colleges; let it 
 be written in primers, spelling books and in 
 almanacs ; let it be preached from the pulpit, pro- 
 claimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts 
 of justice. And, in short, let it become the politi- 
 cal religion of the nation; and let the old and the 
 young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the 
 gay of all sexes and tongues and colours and con- 
 ditions sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars." 
 
 I have quoted these words years ago in another 
 connection. It still seems true that every viola- 
 tion of municipal law by municipal officers is a 
 social poison. It still seems true that even injus- 
 tice that is sanctioned by law were better borne in 
 a free country where the ballot is in every man's 
 hand, rather than that justice should be secured 
 by violence and fraud. The only argument for 
 free institutions that is unanswerable is that the 
 people may finally be depended upon to decide 
 questions upon sound ethical principles. Labour 
 and capital alike must depend upon the develop- 
 ment of the conscience in the electorate guided by 
 the voices of reason. Any cause that cannot wait 
 for these methods, whether it have the name of 
 
148 THE INDUSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 vested interests and associated capital upon the 
 one side, or whether it be in the name of the plain 
 people and of organised labour upon the other 
 side, must perish and ought to perish. 
 
 The duty to maintain order rests with the 
 legally constituted authorities. If the local au- 
 thorities are not sufficient, appeal must be made 
 to the State; if the State fails, recourse must be 
 had to the forces of the nation; if the nation fails, 
 we have anarchy. When authority fails, rough 
 justice may be meted out by the mob, but mob 
 rule is anarchy. 
 
 This doctrine is at once recognised until it is 
 practically applied. All men not swayed by pas- 
 sion will agree that it is better that the guilty 
 should sometimes escape than that private 
 vengeance should again sway the world. Private 
 preparations for the protection of property by 
 armed force under the control of private persons 
 or corporations, and at their expense, are pro- 
 vocative of trouble. Armed guards, Pinkerton 
 detectives, men loaned from the police of other 
 cities, or special deputies appointed by sheriffs by 
 the request and at the expense of employers of 
 labour, have probably caused more trouble than 
 they have prevented. At any rate, the principles 
 
DEMANDS OF EMPLOYERS 149 
 
 underlying their use are a part of the doctrine of 
 mob law under a new form. 
 
 It is the business of the State, as the authorita- 
 tive organ of society, to preserve order and to 
 punish crime at the expense of the public. Reg- 
 ularly constituted officers of the law have the 
 majesty of organised society behind them. They 
 will be obeyed when new or unusual organs of 
 order, though organised under cover of the law, 
 stir the passions and arouse the hate of men. 
 
 Order secured through the regular authorities 
 is the only form that has any promise of perma- 
 nence. An overpowering number of deputies may 
 quell trouble, but the fact that the deputies are 
 regarded as the servants of the corporations and 
 not the servants of the law, leaves behind it a 
 legacy of revenge that will find its way into new 
 forms of violence as soon as opportunity shall be 
 presented. Public officers, without interest or 
 passion, solely as the representatives of the authori- 
 tative justice of society, and paid wholly from 
 public funds, must be relied upon to preserve the 
 public order. 
 
 Employers ask that the labour unions, when they 
 make contracts, carry them out. This seems such 
 a plain business proposition that one would be 
 
150 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 surprised that such a request were made at all did 
 not the facts in a number of cases indicate that 
 there is reason for it. The whole business world 
 rests upon the doctrine of obligation of contracts. 
 A man agrees to do a certain act, provided his 
 fellow performs another act. Upon the presump- 
 tion that men will be faithful to their engage- 
 ments, capital is risked, enterprises are engaged 
 in, and the whole commercial world has its life and 
 activity. It is true that men in all walks of life 
 are to be found who will seek to evade their eon- 
 tracts and sometimes to break them. On this ac- 
 count it has been necessary to build up a body of 
 legislation and of judicial precedent for reprisals 
 if men will not keep their contracts. Not alone 
 does the betrayed person suffer, but social justice 
 says that the offender shall also be made to suffer. 
 The labour unions refuse to incorporate. Some 
 say that it is to avoid the penalties that might be 
 enforced for breaking contracts. Others say that 
 it is to avoid obligation for damages by members 
 of the union in carrying out the orders of the 
 union to strike. Whatever may be the legal ar- 
 rangements, and with these I have nothing to do, 
 it must be insisted that the moral obligation to keep 
 a contract rests both upon the individual man, 
 upon the union to which he belongs, and also upon 
 
DEMANDS OP EMPLOYEES 151 
 
 the directing national organisation. If men agree 
 for a certain wage to work so many hours per day, 
 or per week, for a term of years, no change of 
 circumstances, except the failure of the employer 
 to keep his word, will atone for breaking the 
 pledge. There are a sufficient number of cases 
 upon record to show that there is not the sense of 
 obligation among labour leaders that there should 
 be at this point. In the case of the Typographical 
 Union, described by one of my correspondents, 
 there is a distinct violation of the principles of 
 arbitration to which the union had definitely con- 
 sented. Another case is that of the recent lithog- 
 raphers' strike, as detailed by Mr. Prank Stecher. 
 He says that after the representatives of the em- 
 ployers and the workingmen had agreed with prac- 
 tical unanimity upon a contract, it was submitted 
 to the unions by referendum and rejected. They 
 ask, and I think not unreasonably, that the con- 
 ferrees who represented the union should have 
 power to bind the unions as a prerequisite to a 
 further conference. In the dispute between the 
 Lithographers' International Protective and Bene- 
 ficial Association, the employers offered to confer, 
 and if the conference failed, to submit the whole 
 matter to arbitration. This was refused, and a 
 strike for the eight-hour day was made without 
 
153 THE INDTTSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 giving an opportunity even for the question to 
 be submitted by referendum to the union. The 
 lithographers wanted an eight-hour day; it is 
 very likely that they were right in this contention, 
 but from the prima facie statement of the case it 
 is evident that they were wrong in their methods. 
 I have cited these two cases, not for the purpose of 
 passing judgment upon them, for I am not in pos- 
 session of all the facts, but in order to make clear 
 and definite the statement of certain principles. 
 Unions may refuse to agree to bind themselves to 
 accept a certain scale of wages for a certain def- 
 inite length of time. They may refuse to arbi- 
 trate in case of future disputes, but, having agreed 
 to the scale, or having agreed to arbitrate, they 
 have no right to break this agreement. The in- 
 tegrity of the unions is only one of the issues. It 
 is even more vital to the interests of the unions 
 that they should keep their contracts than it is to 
 the employers, for unless the unions can establish 
 confidence in their good faith among their own 
 members, they cannot exist. If the members of 
 the union see that the leaders of the union are 
 ready to betray the employers, the suspicion will 
 grow that the same leaders will, on occasion, be- 
 tray the unions. 
 
VII 
 
 SECONDAKY DEMANDS OP EMPLOYEES 
 
 Labour Leaders — The Sympathetic Strike — 
 Discipline in the Labour Union — Effort for 
 Monopoly — Loyalty to the Business — The La- 
 bour Press. 
 
 No position of responsibility in this country at 
 this time demands higher ability or more character 
 than the position of labour leader. There is a 
 feeling among many men connected with neither 
 side of the controversy that the unions have not 
 always been as careful as they might have been in 
 the selections of their local leaders. They have 
 chosen men who were bold, eager, and gifted with 
 the art of speech. They should have chosen men 
 who were resourceful, intelligent, patient, and 
 thoroughly honest. The charge that there are 
 sometimes grafters among labour leaders seems to 
 be abundantly proven, but it is no argument 
 against the cause of labour. We wish the unions 
 would be more careful in the choice of their lead- 
 ers, and crush out the grafters; we also wish the 
 
 153 
 
154 THE INDUSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 directors of banks would be more careful in the 
 selection of their officers, and see that no em- 
 bezzlers are found among them. Occasional 
 grafters among the labour leaders does not prove 
 the insincerity or unworthiness of the labour cause, 
 any more than the occasional defalcation of a bank 
 officer proves the general untrustworthiness of 
 financial institutions. It is not unnatural that 
 the rank and file of workingmen should leave a 
 great deal to their leaders without due considera- 
 tion, but the methods for the protection of the in- 
 terests of labour are precisely the same as the 
 methods which must be employed for the protec- 
 tion of American politics. It is only when the 
 whole citizenship becomes intelligently interested 
 in all great public questions, and engages actively 
 in the support of its convictions and in the selec- 
 tion of its leaders, that our political institutions 
 are safe. In like manner, the rank and file of 
 labour must take the trouble to inform themselves 
 on all the great issues, and must be actively en- 
 gaged in shaping policies and in securing safe and 
 wise leadership. 
 
 This leads directly to the question of the sym- 
 pathetic strike. It is stated that unions fre- 
 quently go out on strike when they have not the 
 
DEMANDS OF EMPLOYEES 155 
 
 slightest grievance of their own, simply because 
 they are ordered to strike. To condemn the sym- 
 pathetic strike without due consideration shows a 
 lack of appreciation of the conditions of the labour 
 movement. It is the solidarity of labour which 
 gives it its strength. If men in the labour unions 
 think they have a real grievance and find that they 
 cannot obtain consideration from their employers, 
 the last resort is to strike. If they strike, they 
 must use every means to win the battle, for what- 
 ever may be said about the use of terms, a strike, 
 even under the most peaceable conditions, is noth- 
 ing less than war. A sympathetic strike is the 
 loan of time and influence to other unions, to be 
 returned with interest in a time of need. If the 
 first battalion cannot win the fight, labour has 
 certainly a right to call up another battalion, and 
 by and by to call out the regiments and divisions 
 until the army is large enough and strong enough 
 to win the fight, but there is one distinct limita- 
 tion upon the right of the sympathetic strike: 
 No union that has made a contract for a definite 
 scale and for definite hours to run for a definite 
 number of years, has any right to go out on a 
 sympathetic strike during that time, any more 
 than it has a right to strike on its own account. 
 
156 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 The law of contract forbids it. Men must keep 
 their agreements; if they do not keep their agree- 
 ments, they cannot win the respect and confidence 
 of the general public, and, strong as the army of 
 labour is, particularly in certain crafts, it is by no 
 means so strong as organised society taken to- 
 gether, and at last it must bow to the virtue and 
 wisdom which have made business and industry 
 possible among civilised men. Labour must keep 
 its contracts. 
 
 The note of approval in one of the letters for the 
 Brotherhood of Eailway Engineers is nothing new 
 in the labour world. For years that organisation 
 has merited and received the esteem of the gen- 
 eral public. One writer describes their business 
 methods as being upon the highest plane, and asks 
 that other unions imitate them. This brother- 
 hood has not suffered on account of the dignity, 
 carefulness, and honour with which it has con- 
 ducted its affairs, nor will any other union suffer 
 from the same virtues. 
 
 I have insisted upon patience as one of the nec- 
 essary virtues of the workingman, and so it is. It 
 is unfair to employers to propose a sudden revolu- 
 tion in their relations to their workmen. They 
 may have made contracts involving large sums of 
 
DEMANDS OP EMPLOYEES 157 
 
 money, and based upon a certain amount of output 
 which they have reason to expect, and a certain 
 wage price for this commodity. By some sudden 
 readjustment, the output may be impossible, the 
 wage price may be greatly increased, and the em- 
 ployer suffers large losses. The damage is not 
 damage to the employer alone; it is a damage to 
 the business. If the workmen have a real share 
 in the ownership of the business, as they often 
 claim, by such methods and measures they cripple 
 their own resources and destroy their own future. 
 I have spoken of organised labour as a means of 
 discipline. It has frequently proved so in the 
 restraint of hot-headed leaders of local unions, and 
 in the settlement of strikes deemed to be untimely 
 and unwise, but the function of the labour unions 
 as an organ of discipline must be largely extended 
 if labour is to reach the place of power which it 
 seeks. The matter of the scale of wages, it is as- 
 serted by the employer, brings the skilful workman 
 down to the level of the least competent and the 
 least fit. This, of course, is denied by the repre- 
 sentatives of labour. They say that they fix the 
 lowest wages, and that it is perfectly within the 
 power of the employer to give individual mem- 
 bers of the union a higher scale if he wishes. But 
 
158 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 when the scale has been the subject of controversy 
 and the general scale has fixed the price for a 
 day's work beyond what has hitherto been paid, 
 it is evident that the minimum scale of the labour 
 union will be the maximum scale that the em- 
 ployer will grant. Moreover, when the employers 
 have picked out individuals among their workmen 
 whom they regard as specially worthy of con- 
 fidence, and have granted them wages at a higher 
 rate, the unions very often, upon the discovery 
 of the fact, seek to make that higher price once 
 more the average scale. It would seem that steps 
 forward must be taken in the direction of dis- 
 cipline. The working out of the details of this 
 matter must, of course, be left to the unions them- 
 selves, but as an indication of what is meant, it 
 may be suggested that definite tests of fitness 
 should be made for every man who wishes to be- 
 come a member of the union. No man should be 
 accepted as a workman entitled to receive the wage 
 scale unless he passes the test. The mere fact 
 that he has served the time of an apprentice is not 
 enough, and this matter is especially important in 
 those occupations that demand the most skill. It 
 is a question whether the unions should not make 
 some classification of workmen. I know that the 
 
DEMANDS OF EMPLOYEES 159 
 
 answer to this suggestion will be that such a meas- 
 ure would destroy the equality which is so desirable 
 in the union. But when there is no real equality 
 of service, a false equality of reward cannot be 
 based upon sound economic principles. Discrim- 
 inations made by the unions themselves would 
 be a pledge of effort upon the part of their work- 
 ingmen to gain entrance to the first rank. It 
 seems to me that it would provide a desirable 
 stimulus for the improvement of all grades of 
 work. 
 
 The standard day's work has been carried to 
 a much further extent in some countries than 
 in others, and in some parts of our country than 
 in others. The standard day's work which says 
 that a man, no matter what his capacity or will- 
 ingness, can only perform so much labour in a day 
 or he is put under the ban, is distinctly the enemy 
 of the shorter day. Society is interested in abun- 
 dant production. The short day's work should be 
 the rapid day's work. What is gained in time 
 should be made up in vigour. If the time should 
 ever come when the general body of workingmen 
 think more of their wages than they do of their 
 work, it would be just as bad for the workingmen 
 as it would be for anybody else. Some people 
 
160 THE INDUSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 think that time has come now. If the unions pro- 
 pose to assume control of the labour element in 
 production, and to treat with employers upon all 
 essential differences, leaving to employers the 
 management of the plant, the purchase of the 
 raw material, and the sale of the output, the labour 
 unions must measure up to the responsibility of 
 the position. In the long run it cannot be done 
 by force, either the force of numbers or by special 
 legislation, or in any other way that does not prove 
 that labour can best manage itself. No organ 
 could be devised that has in it such capacity for 
 usefulness in this direction as the labour unions. 
 They are next to the problem. They have over- 
 seers at every point; they know men's habits and 
 their conditions of life. Such a view of the sub- 
 ject is self-government in the highest degree. 
 With a union taking such a view of its position 
 and responsibility, the employer would never ask 
 for the right to discharge men for intemperance, 
 incompetence, or lack of fidelity to duty ; the union 
 would see to that. They would see that the soli- 
 darity of labour must mean the solidarity of skill, 
 of capacity, of character, and of service, and in 
 the long run men will refuse to bear the burdens 
 that are put upon them by the mistakes of their 
 
DEMANDS OF EMPLOYEES 161 
 
 associates. The first duty, it seems to me, of the 
 labour unions is to take themselves seriously as 
 an organ of discipline. 
 
 I do not pretend to work out the details of such 
 a classification, but content myself with laying 
 down what seems to me a sound principle of 
 action. 
 
 The application of this principle would pre- 
 serve the solidarity of action for which the union 
 stands, and which is, without question, essential to 
 the improvement of labour conditions, and at the 
 same time it would secure that elasticity in the 
 supply of labour which is of the utmost conse- 
 quence to the success of production. One of my 
 correspondents speaks of wishing to bind their 
 workmen to their own establishment by the ties of 
 mutual interest through fair and liberal treat- 
 ment, and by extending the old-fashioned induce- 
 ments for skill, industry, and faithfulness. The 
 employer wishes to make individual concessions to 
 the most skilful and faithful employees. It is 
 certain that in reality the workingmen are just as 
 much interested in the skill and capacity of labour 
 as the employers can possibly be. The wage fund 
 comes out of the result of production. The larger 
 the production, the easier it is to secure an advance 
 
162 THE INDUSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 in wages. If special service may secure special 
 reward, the stimulus for character and conduct is 
 provided. In England I was given the details of 
 a contract for building where the contractor 
 brought over American mechanics. The Amer- 
 ican mechanics did not work long hours, but they 
 did faithful work during the hours when they were 
 supposed to be employed. The result was the 
 building was constructed with such rapidity as to 
 astonish Englishmen, where the building trades 
 had established a standard day's work which no 
 member of the union was supposed to surpass. It 
 is not an edifying spectacle to see a workman 
 considering whether he is doing too much. He 
 should only be careful not to do too little, so as 
 to preserve his own self-respect, as well as to 
 secure the respect of his employer. The doctrine 
 of restricted output is unsound economically. 
 There is no danger in the present generation of so 
 much being accomplished that it will be a disaster 
 to those who do the work. There is no need of 
 restricting the day's work in the building trade 
 until there are too many houses, and that will not 
 be until an adequate roof is placed over every 
 man, woman, and child. When that is accom- 
 plished, let us hope that we shall be able to turn 
 
DEMANDS OF EMPLOYEES 163 
 
 the attention of the building trades to structures 
 for the public welfare. 
 
 Nor is it an edifying spectacle to see the day's 
 work so carefully measured that a man will drop 
 his hammer when the clock strikes, in the midst of 
 driving a nail, or leave a board only half sawed. 
 These things are not in the interest of labour at 
 all. The same principle holds with regard to the 
 effort to limit the number of men engaged in 
 gainful occupations. It applies to the doctrine of 
 restriction of immigration in the interest of the 
 workingmen who are already here. I am in con- 
 siderable doubt even as to an educational qualifica- 
 tion for immigration. The main point is that the 
 immigrant shall be sound physically, and have 
 race capacity for incorporation in the homogeneous 
 American nation. The economical value of im- 
 migrants is by no means based upon literary 
 qualifications. Some object to the immigrant 
 from Latin countries, but the Italian immigrants, 
 who are low in the scale of literary qualifications, 
 prove successful economically beyond some other 
 race elements in our population. It will be time 
 to talk about too much immigration and too much 
 labour when all our vacant lands are tilled, when 
 there are no more new railroads to construct, no 
 
164 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 bridges to build, no cities to found, no ships needed 
 upon the seas, and no willing hands required to 
 furnish freight for the railroads, cargoes for the 
 ships, and satisfaction for the bodies and minds 
 of men. 
 
 A part of the economical confusion into 
 which men fall in considering such questions as 
 those related to production, is the implied belief 
 in the stationary character of business and society. 
 It was this lack of wisdom that led English work- 
 ingmen to join in riots when machines took the 
 place of hand labour. The machine was there 
 anyway; they would destroy it. Events have 
 proven that the workingmen were clearly wrong. 
 The machine was not their enemy, but their 
 friend. Every added power of production has 
 ministered to the consciousness of need, and has 
 led to greater complexity in the demand for 
 labour. There never can be too much labour, and 
 the labour market can never be really glutted. 
 This follows because human wants are capable of 
 indefinite expansion, while the amount of produc- 
 tion is always relatively limited. The work of 
 hand and brain can never keep up to the pace set 
 by the easy emergence of new desires and the 
 happy product of human imagination. A char- 
 
DEMANDS OF EMPLOYEES 165 
 
 acteristic of the last twenty-five years is the large 
 number of new occupations that have been thrown 
 open, and the new methods of production. The 
 seeming glut of the market is not because too 
 many things have been produced, but because the 
 right things have not been produced, and because, 
 owing to the lack of commercial ability, they have 
 not been speedily and properly distributed. 
 
 The doctrine of overproduction will not bear 
 a single moment's close scrutiny. The man who 
 has something to sell may have too much of a 
 commodity to secure the price that he desires. 
 There may be too much production of a par- 
 ticular kind, in comparison with other forms 
 of production. These inequalities in a free 
 labour world, left to themselves, will soon be 
 righted. New enterprises and new men will take 
 up the place of scarcity, and men leaving business 
 will drop out from the place of plenty, until the 
 balance is restored. It is impossible in a finite 
 world to so manage matters that every individual 
 business or work shall be successful, and every 
 individual producer shall always have what he is 
 really entitled to. The best that can be done is to 
 secure such a state as shall bring the greatest suc- 
 cess to society as a whole, and the least injustice 
 
166 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 to any individual. When new machines are put 
 into any line of business it undoubtedly brings 
 discomfort, and often great hardship, to individ- 
 uals. These men suffer vicariously. It is always 
 for the good of society that production shall be 
 made as cheap and as plenty as possible. When 
 a large amount of social sympathy is developed, 
 special provision will be made for men who tem- 
 porarily suffer by new methods of production, but 
 that condition of affairs is yet to come; but the 
 effort to limit production in the interests of labour 
 that labour may have more to do to-morrow, or in 
 the interests of the employer, that he may secure 
 higher prices for his product, is not in the category 
 of incidental evil. It is radically wrong. Monop- 
 oly in the market or monopoly in labour can never 
 have more than a partial and temporary success, 
 and it is destined to be the source of perma- 
 nent and widespread disaster. Very few men are 
 to be found who would say that they had all the 
 commodity they desire. Those who are the richest 
 and best placed, can usually quicken some new de- 
 sire. The only way to satisfy opulent desires is 
 by abundant human production. 
 
 The employers want loyalty and interest in the 
 business. They think that the employment which 
 
DEMANDS OF EMPLOYEES 167 
 
 furnishes support for the workingman, food and 
 shelter for his family, ought to be an object, not 
 of hate, but of affection. When right relations 
 are established between employer and employed, 
 interest and loyalty should follow. Workmen in 
 the business should be as anxious for the success 
 of that business as any university is for the success 
 of its football team. They should be ready to 
 cheer on the fainting, and as tenderly to care for 
 the wounded in the industrial scrimmage. This 
 loyalty and interest can be had when the employers 
 recognise the proper demands of the workingmen 
 and are ready to treat labour as an element of 
 importance in the business. 
 
 It is not difficult to state the principle upon 
 which the relative importance of labour and capital 
 in any business depends. Where the machinery 
 is cheap and the number of labourers required is 
 large, labour is more important; when the ma- 
 chinery is expensive and the number of labourers 
 required is small, capital is the more important 
 element. In other words, the relative importance 
 of the two factors will depend upon the relation 
 between interest and wages, as measured by the 
 normal value of money, and the normal value of 
 labour in the markets of the world. 
 
168 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 The new attitude of labour asserts the right to 
 be considered as a partner in the conduct of the 
 business. Partnership can only be carried on by 
 conference, concession, and adjustment, and in case 
 of difficulty which the parties cannot settle, arbi- 
 tration. But it is intolerable to suppose that where 
 there is a partnership between superintendence and 
 labour, the superintendent must bear the burdens 
 and carry the enterprise to success, while labour 
 assumes a piratical attitude and says, " I will do as 
 little work as possible, and loot the concern of all 
 its profits in the name of wages." Every man who 
 is willing to share the fortunes of the business by 
 being upon its payroll, ought to feel bound in 
 honour to exert himself by the quality of his work 
 and by the extent of his influence to make that 
 business a success. It is the duty of the employer 
 to pay as large wages as the results of the business 
 will allow, after a fair return for interest and 
 superintendence. On the other hand, it is equally 
 the duty of labour to make the paying of wages as 
 light a burden as possible, by doing everything 
 that lies in its power to make the business suc- 
 cessful. 
 
 Once again it needs to be stated at this point, 
 the interest of the employer and the employed can 
 
DEMANDS OP EMPLOYEES 169 
 
 be reconciled. Some years ago it was shown by an 
 investigation of the textile factories in America, 
 England, and Germany that while America paid 
 the highest wages, England the next, and Germany 
 the lowest, the labour cost per yard was lowest in 
 America, second in England, and highest in Ger- 
 many. In other words, the factories which paid 
 the highest wages had the best results. Up to a 
 certain point this will always be true, because 
 higher wages mean a higher standard of living ; 
 that is, better food, better clothing, better homes, 
 better care in sickness, and these mean that the 
 labourer becomes a better man. It is to the in- 
 terest of the employer every way to see that the 
 people who are associated with him have brought 
 to bear upon them every influence to make them 
 the best people possible. On the other hand, It is 
 the duty of wage earners, both by the measure of 
 the actual day's work and by that more indefinable 
 spirit of faithfulness^ to make the superintendent 
 feel that they are entirely dependable, that they 
 are his friends, and that though other men fail 
 him, his own associates will prove his support. 
 
 The press that represents the labour movement 
 is frequently indicted for the inflammatory char- 
 acter of its articles. They represent every man 
 
170 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 who has money as being a constitutional oppres- 
 sor. They decline to see in success anything but 
 the triumph of cunning and greed. They sneer 
 at the churches, and all the institutions which con- 
 serve the moral life of the community. There is 
 too much truth in these statements. It sometimes 
 seems a competition in lurid rhetoric rather than 
 any full and honest discussion. If the evil were 
 confined to the use of the simile of war when war 
 really does exist, the complaint would not have suf- 
 ficient foundation; unfortunately the evil goes far 
 beyond the use of that figure of speech. On the 
 other hand, the periodicals which represent various 
 associations of employers and organisations of 
 capital are no less to be blamed for their in- 
 cendiary language. I have before me a copy of 
 the Square Deal, a monthly published by the 
 Citizens' Industrial Association of America, for 
 October, 1906. In its editorial columns it has 
 an article upon the " Labour Trust Anarchist," in 
 which it deliberately falsifies an address by Mr. 
 Bonaparte, Secretary of the Navy, given at Chau- 
 tauqua. The secretary is represented as advocat- 
 ing the passing of laws inflicting the death penalty 
 on anarchists who take life, and whipping and 
 imprisonment for less serious offences. It then 
 
DEMANDS OP EMPLOYEES 171 
 
 goes on to say : " Mr. Gompers is an anarchist, 
 and so are many of his fellows. He is a self-con- 
 fessed anarchist," and the article strongly inti- 
 mates that he is the man who ought to be publicly 
 whipped and imprisoned, closing with these words : 
 " If Mr. Gompers' words are not the utterances 
 of a true anarchist, then there are no anarchists; 
 they are more; they are treasonable." This is a 
 sample of the kind of literature which it is sup- 
 posed will be effective in awakening the conscience 
 of the American people to overthrow the labour 
 trust. Much may be forgiven to the irresponsi- 
 ble man of little education whose passions are 
 easily inflamed, but a company of men who are 
 supposed to represent not alone the business inter- 
 ests, but the highest social position and culture, 
 must be judged in quite another way. Noblesse 
 oblige! 
 
 This whole discussion must move from the do- 
 main of heat and smoke out into the quiet coun- 
 try of light and wisdom. Labour unions must 
 cease to intimidate those who differ from them 
 upon important questions, but capitalists must 
 cease their threats and their reprisals, their quiet 
 social and business boycotts, which are among the 
 most offensive incidents of our present social life. 
 
VIII 
 THREE PARTIES IN INTEREST 
 
 Employers, Employed, Public — The Eco- 
 nomic Battle — The Common Interest in Produc- 
 tion—Fallacy of Limited Production — Joy and 
 Integrity — The Rich and Flexible World. 
 
 There are three parties to the problem of labour, 
 and any solution that is to be either wise or satis- 
 factory must consider the interests of the three. 
 The parties are the employer, the employed, and 
 the public. 
 
 The most conspicuous difficulty in coming to 
 any agreement is in securing the recognition on all 
 sides of the real relation of each of these parties. 
 The employer cannot get along without labourers. 
 He may have the best machinery, the finest plant, 
 abundant raw material, and waiting markets, but 
 if there are no willing hands to help him, not a 
 wheel will turn, the raw material will perish in 
 waiting, and the public will suffer from a sense 
 of need. The workingmen need the employer. 
 They may have good health, abundant skill, and a 
 desire to toil, but if there are no tools and no raw 
 
 172 
 
THREE PARTIES IN INTEREST 173 
 
 material, there can be no employment. Some- 
 where and somehow there must be secured a supply 
 of stored-up labour. Labour must have been suc- 
 cessful beyond the point of the daily needs in order 
 that surplus wealth may become capital. 
 
 But though employer and employed come to an 
 understanding and the best machinery and the best 
 men turn out the best product, the wheels must 
 soon cease to hum and the tools to do their work 
 if there is no waiting public ready to consume the 
 finished product. And the public has a real right 
 to express itself upon any controversies between 
 employer and workingmen which make the prod- 
 uct scarce or dear that the public desires to use. 
 
 A national labour leader in a recent address ex- 
 pressed himself thus : " I think that the man who 
 builds a house ought to live in it, and the one who 
 weaves a beautiful garment ought to wear the gar- 
 ment." This doctrine, without modification or ex- 
 planation, was stated as the essence of the whole 
 question. It is not too much to say that more 
 economic falsehood could scarcely have been put in 
 the same limited space. If the house or the gar- 
 ment constituted the sole want of the worker, and 
 he owned the raw material, no one could question 
 the soundness of the utterance, but since the man 
 
174 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 who builds a house needs food and drink, clothing 
 and books, and all the appliances of civilised life, 
 without which the house is of no value at all, he 
 must build not one house but several houses in 
 order to be entitled to one of his own. In like 
 manner, the weaver of the beautiful garment can 
 only have other needs supplied which are more 
 imperative, when he is willing to part with the 
 beautiful garment in barter to satisfy the other 
 wants. 
 
 There is a point of view from which it would 
 seem as if the interests of the three parties are 
 always at war. The employer wishes the highest 
 price for his product ; he wishes to pay the smallest 
 wages, and to buy his raw material at the lowest 
 price. The labourer wishes the shortest and easiest 
 day's work with the highest wages. The public 
 wishes to buy the best goods at the lowest prices. 
 Now, if the economic emphasis is placed upon any 
 one of these apparently conflicting interests, no 
 solution can be reached. It is necessary to resolve 
 these differences in a higher unity, if such a thing 
 can be found. The student must, therefore, seek 
 to find some point of view from which the interests 
 of the three parties may be seen to be identical. 
 The employer desires large products; manifestly 
 
THEEE PARTIES IN INTEREST 175 
 
 the only way that he can secure large products is 
 by successful production. He must economise at 
 every point, make every stroke of work count. His 
 plant must be located at such a place that he can 
 secure the raw material as cheaply as possible. He 
 must also be able to find his market near his fac- 
 tory. If the market be far, the raw material must 
 certainly be near. If the raw material be far, he 
 must find his compensation in near and eager 
 markets. Successful production is the source of 
 wealth. The labourer wishes higher wages; he 
 cannot have higher wages than the business can 
 afford. In order to secure higher wages he must 
 have good machinery, wise superintendence, and he 
 must be himself a willing and efficient worker. 
 All the need of raw material and market which be- 
 longs to the employer belongs also to him. As 
 there can be no large profits without successful 
 production, so there can be permanently no large 
 wages without successful production. The first 
 and greatest interest of every workingman is to 
 make the business in which he is engaged as suc- 
 cessful as it is possible to make it. The public 
 wants its goods at the cheapest prices, but goods 
 that are scarce and expensive in the making must 
 be expensive to the public. At the last there can 
 
176 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 be no reduction in prices without increased effi- 
 ciency in production. It seems plain that there 
 is a common unity for these three interests. That 
 unity is found in the successful labour which is 
 able alone to furnish large products, high wages, 
 and cheap goods. The division of the spoils must 
 be a cause of debate, and questions of profits, wages, 
 and prices must be adjusted by agreement and by 
 the working of those laws upon which the whole 
 structure of society rests ; but there can be no con- 
 flict over spoils which do not exist, and no one of 
 the parties can win at any point in the conflict 
 until his successful labour has secured its abundant 
 reward. 
 
 This indicates very clearly the nature of the 
 labour battle. It is not a question of principles 
 or of methods, but it is a question of the division of 
 the spoils. The employer and employed have a 
 mutual interest in making the profits as large as 
 possible. It is only when the profits are to be 
 divided that the class interest becomes evident. 
 One other matter must be set forth in order to put 
 before us all the elements of the problem; that is, 
 to clear up the incoherence of thought with ref- 
 erence to the nature of production. Whatever 
 labour satisfies a normal human want is produc- 
 
THKEE PARTIES IN INTEREST 197 
 
 tion, and whatever services are required in the sat- 
 isfaction of that want, from the first use of the raw 
 material until the finished product is placed in the 
 hands of those who are to use it, is a part of the 
 labour production. The production of the most 
 commonplace articles of use is a very complicated 
 affair. It is not alone the cooper who has made 
 the water pail, for it took a hundred years for the 
 raw material to grow in the forest. Then those 
 who opened the iron mine to get material for the 
 hoops, and those who built the sawmill, and those 
 who constructed the railways that brought the raw 
 material and took away the product, and those who 
 managed the banks that furnished credit, the dray- 
 man upon the street, the clerk in the store, and the 
 young man who sets the water pail down in some- 
 one's kitchen where it has been ordered, have each 
 some part in the task of producing the water pail, 
 and must each be paid for his services. It is quite 
 evident that there can be no exact mathematical 
 calculation for deciding just what each one's share 
 of the product is. It would cost more to figure out 
 by an elaborate system of bookkeeping each one of 
 the elements of cost involved than the whole trans- 
 action could pay for. So it will always happen 
 that the particular elements in production cannot 
 
178 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 be specifically recognised and rewarded in partic- 
 ular transactions. Rough and substantial justice 
 is the best that anyone can hope for. On division 
 of the profits the parties may always differ, but the 
 thing upon which they cannot be allowed to differ 
 is in the production of profits. All unnecessary 
 labour must be eliminated to reduce the cost, and 
 the labour thus set free can be employed elsewhere. 
 This is the key to the labour problem. The unity 
 of interests for all parties is in the securing the 
 largest production possible, and the labour conflict 
 is found alone in the distribution to each producer 
 of his fair share of the result. 
 
 It must be noted, therefore, that if this state- 
 ment of fact is correct, the combination of employ- 
 ers that would limit the output of any special line 
 of product in the interests of a scarcity which will 
 secure higher prices, is acting, not normally, but 
 artificially. Such a combination is not only an 
 enemy of the general public, but it is a form 
 of economic suicide. Again, any organisation of 
 workingmen that deliberately decides to be less 
 efficient in labour than they might be, is not alone 
 at war with the interests of the business of which 
 they form a part, but is at war with the interests 
 of the workingman himself. There is no doubt 
 
THREE PARTIES IN INTEREST 179 
 
 that such combinations of manufacturers or of 
 workingmen may temporarily secure some advan- 
 tage, but in the long run the advantage will turn to 
 disaster. It is a game that at last all can play at. 
 If, therefore, one line of production is limited in 
 order to make profits for either capital or labour, 
 and it seems successful, another line of business 
 will imitate the perilous example, then another, and 
 then another, until the whole organisation of the 
 industrial world will be consumed with the idea to 
 secure scarcity in order to secure plenty. Now 
 scarcity is the enemy of plenty, and will at last 
 secure its revenges. The principle upon which a 
 limited production or a limited amount of labour 
 is successful is precisely the same principle on 
 which the thief is successful; if he is not caught, 
 he enjoys something which he has not earned. 
 Only a little earnest thought upon the real nature 
 of labour and its rewards is necessary to see the 
 utter fallacy of limited production. Suppose the 
 farmers should band together and say, " Hence- 
 forth we will only raise eight bushels of wheat to 
 the acre, and we will adopt methods of agriculture 
 that will be certain to keep the crops down to that 
 point; by so doing we shall have high prices for 
 wheat." A few years' higher prices for wheat 
 
180 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 might ensue, but the final result would be that 
 starving workingmen, denied bread at normal 
 prices, would be unable to furnish the farmer either 
 the machinery or the clothes or the houses of which 
 he would stand in need, and if the price of flour 
 goes up permanently, the price of meat goes up also, 
 and with these, increased prices of hats and shoes 
 must inevitably follow. Eeal wealth is the result 
 of real production. All else is accidental, is 
 jugglery, and sometimes is nothing better than 
 stealing. Prosperity cannot be built upon acci- 
 dents, success cannot come by sorcery, and plenty 
 is not a gift of thieves. 
 
 It must be noted, also, that each one of these 
 three classes is not fixed, but is constantly chang- 
 ing. Every workingman is also an employer. He 
 is an employer of labour for the production of 
 every commodity which he uses except those articles 
 which are made by his own hands. A carpenter 
 employs the farmer, the shoemaker, the tailor. 
 The banker is an employer of labour no less than 
 the manufacturer, though he may not superintend 
 the labourer that works for him. Because, there- 
 fore, there is no such thing as a rigid division 
 between these three classes, there can be no perma- 
 nent separation of their interests. Economic tricks 
 
THREE PARTIES IN INTEREST 181 
 
 may produce short-sighted successes at the expense 
 of the rest of the community, but at last only those 
 successes in which the entiTe community can have 
 a chance of participation will be found to be per- 
 manent. There is a larger social solidarity in fact 
 than there is in the human consciousness. This is 
 one of the conquests we are slowly making. There 
 is need of a new sense of human fellowship, based 
 not merely upon sentiment, but recognised as the 
 true interpretation of all that is real in human life. 
 It will be easy for those who have achieved this 
 mental attitude to understand that it is good for 
 each member of the community to have every other 
 member of the community successful, and this fact 
 runs through the whole range of business. The 
 defeat of any considerable part of a community is 
 a limitation upon the markets of those who are suc- 
 cessful. Those who do not produce cannot barter. 
 Those who do not produce enough to satisfy the 
 primary wants must be supported by all the rest. 
 Individual success can only be great where the in- 
 dividual partakes of the success of the community. 
 Concede to great captains of industry all the ability 
 which they think they have; they can be neither 
 rich nor great except in a wealth-producing com- 
 munity. Mr. Rockefeller would have had no scope 
 
182 THE INDTTSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 for his genius in Syria, and Mr. Harriman would 
 have found unexpected obstacles if his sphere of 
 operations had happened to be in Turkey. These 
 men may have made too much. That is quite 
 another part of the subject, but the possibility of 
 any success for any man is, at the last, the willing- 
 ness to share that success with his neighbour. 
 
 Successful labour is not a thing of the hands or 
 of the mind alone. There are other essential ele- 
 ments. A sullen crew of workmen, with a brute 
 for a superintendent, cannot accomplish the tasks 
 that the same men are capable of when led by a 
 cheery and courageous man whose power awakens 
 confidence and whose good nature is a contagion. 
 The man who makes his employees feel that the 
 work upon which they are engaged is his business, 
 and that their interests are limited to the day's 
 wage for the day's work, cannot at the last have 
 such results as the man who inspires his employees 
 with a sense of comradeship and makes them feel 
 that it is their business as well as his. For its 
 economic value we need to recover the joy of 
 labour. Integrity upon the part of the employer 
 is a source of efficiency upon the part of the work- 
 ingman. If the carpenter and the mason and the 
 plumber know that the contractor would scorn to 
 
THEEE PAETIES IN INTEEEST 183 
 
 add to his profits by a concealed crime in poor con- 
 struction, they also will be stimulated to a sense 
 of honour in their individual work. If they see 
 him willing to take an advantage gained by being 
 dishonest, they will be ready to shirk a reasonable 
 task by becoming contemptible. Truth in the in- 
 ward parts is not alone an asset in character; it is 
 an asset in labour. Society, by the most stringent 
 laws and the most careful inspection, is bound to 
 protect the individual against every form of eco- 
 nomic falsehood. The grocer shall not be allowed 
 to lie about his goods, nor the dry goods merchant 
 about his goods. We must come back to the old- 
 fashioned faith in the old-fashioned righteousness, 
 for righteousness is not a thing of books and 
 creeds ; it is a thing of houses and stores and shops 
 and factories. It is a gospel written not alone in 
 forms of worship and words of faith, but it is a 
 gospel written in the economic interests of man- 
 kind. 
 
 A further fallacy which underlies much of the 
 debate on questions of work and wages is to be 
 charged to the utterly false view of the nature of 
 human society. Each man thinks he must secure 
 his share of what has already been produced or 
 what may be produced under present conditions of 
 
184 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 industrial organisation. This view must be ex- 
 changed for the dynamic view of social and indus- 
 trial life. We are not living in a settled order. 
 There has never been a settled order in any age. 
 We are on the march. This old earth of ours has 
 been yielding new surprises in the discovery of 
 news forms of matter and new applications of 
 force. The wealth that we have already taken 
 possession of is probably only a tithe of the wealth 
 yet to be discovered. The great improvements in 
 processes of labour are prophetic of still mightier 
 changes. We are living in a world that is capable 
 of untold industrial expansion. What we need is a 
 little more imagination. The food for the imagi- 
 nation can be easily supplied by a contemplation 
 of history. The rise of the workingman would 
 never have been possible in spite of all his labour 
 unions, and all his efforts, if it had not been funda- 
 mentally based upon vast social and economic prog- 
 ress. The problems of human life are, at the 
 last, one problem. No solution can be reached for 
 the industrial world which is not reached also for 
 every other human interest. The city of God 
 lieth four square. It is only by the harmonious 
 development of human powers and by the full em- 
 ployment of all possible human activities that 
 
THEBE PARTIES IN INTEREST 185 
 
 man may at last grow rich, and life become sweet 
 and gracious; and at this task of conquering the 
 world and enriching the social order, every man, 
 whatever his lot and place, must work. He is a 
 member of a great organic life; in its victory he 
 shares; in its defeat he is doomed. With imagi- 
 nation kindled, affection awakened, and intelligence 
 illumined, there will be born vast and common 
 ambitions in which all men may share. 
 
IX 
 
 THE IMPEOVED MAN 
 
 Social and Industrial Education — New In- 
 dustrial Ventures — Increase of Wages as Capi- 
 tal — Economic Value of Virtues — Resources 
 of Religion. 
 
 For higher efficiency the first need is an improved 
 man. The world has been such a splendid place 
 to live in that economical and mechanical oppor- 
 tunities have always been unfolded just as soon as 
 men have grown to them. In fact, that fine prod- 
 uct of social evolution, the self-conscious and self- 
 governed man, is precisely the most difficult to 
 obtain. We can discover new minerals easier than 
 we can implant new virtues; we can make new 
 machines with less effort than we can enthrone 
 noble motives. Social and economic difficulties 
 will all vanish before the advancing steps of the 
 kingly man. 
 
 Now, the most primary and the most efficient 
 agent in developing the new man is found in the 
 social forces of education. The function of edu- 
 cation has very largely been taken over by the 
 
 186 
 
THE IMPEOVED MAN 187 
 
 state, and in this respect no doubt society has done 
 well, for the state is the most authoritative and the 
 noblest expression of social power. The trouble 
 with our education is that we do not thus far take 
 its task seriously. This matter of education is 
 the necessary completion of the war against child 
 labour. It is idle to release the child from the 
 drudgery of the factory to let loose upon him the 
 savagery of the street. Each generation, splendidly 
 free from the faults of the generation gone before, 
 born plastic and as fresh from the hand of God 
 as the first Adam, has a right to the very best that 
 society can do. Education mu3t have a thoroughly 
 useful foundation. Here the art of life must be 
 fully explained. It is not enough to quicken the 
 memory and train the judgment; it is required 
 that the new child life should be related to every- 
 thing that is best in the corporate life. It is the 
 view of education as the process of moulding the 
 child so that its best development may be reached 
 and its greatest social efficiency be secured, that 
 furnishes the basis for a practical adjustment. 
 The girls must be taught how to sew and cook, 
 how to buy and use, and how to become mistress 
 of the whole range of domestic life. This educa- 
 tion must be thorough, and it must be universal. 
 
188 THE INDUSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 The state must allow no child to escape from its 
 benevolent despotism. The boy must be taught to 
 use hand and eye, and to express himself in the 
 world's work, as well as to learn the great thoughts 
 of the great dead. Industrial training must bulk 
 larger in the plans of the state. It may not be 
 either proper or necessary that crafts of any par- 
 ticular kind should be taught in schools, but it is 
 necessary that the boy should be developed along 
 the line of craftsmanship. This is the more neces- 
 sary on account of the nature of the modern work- 
 shop. The efficiency of industries has come 
 through division of labour and the specialisation of 
 particular occupations. Efficient work is now very 
 often confined to very narrow limits. These limits 
 lead to no general skill, nor do they give any large 
 cultural results to the workmen. There is no pres- 
 sure upon him for adaptation, and there is no 
 opportunity for initiative. A man may run a 
 machine that drills holes or cuts wire for forty 
 years and be no further developed than he was when 
 he began the process. To avoid and overcome the 
 limitations of the machine is one of the necessities 
 of modern life. This can only be done by a 
 breadth of elementary training that will enable a 
 craftsman to pass easily from one occupation to 
 
THE IMPROVED MAN 189 
 
 the other should circumstances require. But that 
 is not enough. The best things of life are not ex- 
 pensive. What they require is good taste and the 
 development of mind and heart. The love and ap- 
 preciation of beauty cannot be bought for gold or 
 treasure, but it may be had on its own terms by 
 those in the humblest walks in life. While I 
 would have an industrial foundation underneath 
 education, that must by no means be its superstruc- 
 ture. Upon the material foundation there must 
 be erected that nobler edifice which shall minister 
 to the higher mental and spiritual needs of the 
 man, and this kind of education should be made 
 the common inheritance of every child in the re- 
 public. With a view of education at once so prac- 
 tical and so ideal, we shall develop a race which 
 will be able to compete in the workshops and 
 markets of the world for its full share of the in- 
 dustrial prizes, but at the same time it will develop 
 a citizenship that will appreciate not alone the 
 benefits of free institutions, though these are of 
 value, but even more, the benefits of noble institu- 
 tions, for it must be seen at last that the final test 
 of organised society is in its ministry to the ful- 
 ness of possible human life. 
 
 I shall be told that the development of a new race 
 
190 THE IKDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 is a social process so complex and requiring so much 
 time, so much patience, and involving so much ex- 
 pense that it does not meet the demands of this 
 insistent problem. What is wanted is some ade- 
 quate cure for all our industrial maladies, that can 
 be applied at once with satisfactory results to all 
 parties. Neither side to the conflict has shown in 
 the letters the slightest appreciation of the need of 
 a better and larger man, or any conception of the 
 agencies that must conspire to produce him. The 
 interpretation of history is found in the measure 
 of social capacity, which has been applied in the 
 world's work from generation to generation. The 
 growth of social capacity changed hordes into 
 tribes, and tribes into nations. It bound social 
 groups together by a larger and yet larger number 
 of social interests, and as these groups became more 
 complex they became at the same time more stable 
 and capable of larger enterprises covering wider 
 areas. Social capacity has been a thing in which 
 the multitudes have only partly shared. Gifted 
 individuals, highly organised special classes, have 
 been the organs of its exercise. So a Greek 
 phalanx or a Eoman legion exhibited to ancient 
 barbarians the soldierly power of a compact mass 
 of men moved by one purpose. The new social 
 
THE IMPROVED MAN 191 
 
 democracy must base itself upon the organising 
 power of the multitude by expansion of capabilities, 
 by new definiteness, and wider systems of interest. 
 By such education as shall bring self-realisation 
 the democracy must first win its power, and then 
 it will be able to use it. There is one human les- 
 son written large in many ways and in various 
 languages. It is, perhaps, the supremest lesson of 
 human experience, namely: New institutions do 
 not make new men, but new men always fashion for 
 themselves new institutions. Jesus understood 
 this great law of human history, for when He pro- 
 posed a new kingdom of God among men He be- 
 gan to say unto them, "Repent ye." Therefore, 
 the kingdom of God was reserved for a new breed 
 of men. 
 
 Such a new race of men will doubtless be pre- 
 pared for new industrial ventures and higher social 
 opportunities. It needs to be said explicitly that 
 the great problems that confront us are not ma- 
 terial ; they are found in the limitations of human 
 capacity. I am by no means content with the 
 present forms of industrial organisation, but there 
 is only one way to improve them, and that is to 
 develop a better race of men. Whenever the work- 
 ingman becomes tired of working for other people, 
 
192 THE INDUSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 he may work for himself if he has the ability to 
 do so. The great want of the workingman to-day 
 is not less organisation, but more organisation. It 
 is not to sink back from labour unions to weak and 
 sterile individualism, but to regard the labour 
 unions as only a stepping-stone to more powerful 
 forms of co-operation. Great fortunes are achieved 
 by men who have the capacity to secure the earn- 
 ings of a great many other men in order to invest 
 them in individual enterprises. This is the func- 
 tion filled by the banks and other organs of credit. 
 They gather up the savings of the people and lend 
 them to those who carry on large enterprises. If 
 the people had sufficient capacity, they would carry 
 on their own enterprises and use their own money. 
 The greatest enterprises are easily possible to work- 
 ingmen if they can undertake to carry them on 
 instead of finding fault with present conditions and 
 seeking only to get a larger share of present pro- 
 duction. It is for them to say how soon they will 
 reorganise industrial society and take the profits 
 for themselves. You ask me where they will get 
 capital for these large enterprises, and I reply 
 they already have margin enough of wealth if they 
 would only make it the foundation of capital. 
 Mr. James Duncan, National Secretary of the 
 
THE IMPROVED MAN 193 
 
 Granite Cutters' Union, declares that in fifteen 
 years his 10,000 working people secured a total 
 increase in wages amounting to $33,000,000. Now 
 $33,000,000 would buy a great many granite quar- 
 ries. Have the granite cutters bought the quarries ? 
 and if not, why not? What have they done with 
 the surplus of wages ? It is stated that during the 
 month of September, 1906, something like $100,- 
 000,000 has been added to the annual wages of 
 the railroad employees of the country. What will 
 be done with the additional $100,000,000? It is 
 stated that members of one craft are now en- 
 gaged in giving 10 per cent, of their wages, and 
 have been doing so for more than a year, in order 
 to support a strike. This indicates a splendid re- 
 serve power, but suppose the two million working- 
 men who are affiliated with labour unions in 
 America should each give 10 per cent, of his wages 
 for a year to a common fund for new industrial 
 enterprises founded by workingmen, managed by 
 workingmen, and the profits of which should 
 all go to workingmen? The result of such 
 a movement in the course of twenty-five years 
 would be beyond any ordinary mathematical 
 computation. Why will they not engage in these 
 colossal undertakings? It is because such under- 
 
194 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 takings require the largest capacity for manage- 
 ment, the wisest virtue for self-control, and a 
 developed sympathy and subordination that makes 
 perfect co-operation possible. What is done with 
 the surplus earnings that workingmen from time 
 to time have secured? It is replied that these 
 extra wages are needed for more comfort, better 
 houses, more abundant food, more of the joys of 
 life, such as the employers themselves have, but it 
 must be remembered that it was precisely because 
 many of their employers were willing to deny them- 
 selves extra comforts, to work early and late, and 
 to save to the very verge of parsimony that they 
 were able to lay the foundations of their fortunes. 
 Such far-sightedness and such self-control furnish 
 the best lines of cleavage among men. In England, 
 in three years of plenty in the seventies, wages were 
 increased annually $200,000,000. That made 
 $600,000,000 for the three years, but $600,000,000 
 was just the amount of gold in circulation in Great 
 Britain at that time. Did the workingmen by a 
 common impulse, fired by a great ambition, save 
 this $200,000,000 a year? Did they change the 
 savings into gold? Did they control the banks 
 and dictate terms to financiers ? Did they throttle 
 the money changers of Lombard Street and 
 
THE IMPKOVED MAN 195 
 
 Threadneedle Street? By no means. If these 
 things had been done, the past thirty years would 
 have seen a new England, and the whole world 
 would have been filled with the songs of the great 
 achievements that had at last been wrought by the 
 working classes. They would have superannuated 
 the aristocracy; they would have swept out age- 
 worn traditions and institutions; they would have 
 come into their own empire. The working people 
 of England earned $200,000,000 extra per annum, 
 and the sad companion fact is that the drink bill 
 of England during each of those three years in- 
 creased just $200,000,000. All the increase of that 
 bill did not come from the working classes, but 
 enough of it came from those classes to leave the 
 argument still sound that what is wanted is not so 
 much better opportunity as the capacity to make 
 wiser use of such opportunities as men have. In the 
 United States we spend about $1,200,000,000 a 
 year in drink. This discussion is not in the inter- 
 ests of the temperance cause; this is an economic 
 discussion. I am not arguing that men shall be- 
 come total abstainers, but I simply put this 
 question : Would it not be worth while for the work- 
 ingmen of America to take from that drink bill, 
 say, $250,000,000 a year and put it into an indus- 
 
196 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 trial fund for the building up of factories and the 
 development of industrial enterprises owned by 
 workingmen, managed by workingmen, and the 
 profits of -which should be received by workingmen ? 
 
 The first need of the workingman, therefore, is 
 an increase of working capital, because that means 
 increased demand for labour. Institutions man- 
 aged by labour and in its interests would set the 
 standard for wages and for services. As soon as 
 workingmen can own their own plants to any con- 
 siderable degree the rates of interest will fall, 
 because it will mean that labour has become more 
 important than tools. It may be replied that the 
 history of co-operation on the whole is not very 
 encouraging. Of course there have been highly 
 successful examples in commercial enterprises, and 
 occasional successes in manufactures, but on the 
 whole, labour which has been directed rather than 
 self-directed has usually proved the most success- 
 ful. Very well; whatever is most successful is for 
 the interests of all the parties to the economic 
 transaction, but just as soon as the workingmen 
 have the social capacity, they can accomplish the 
 social results. 
 
 This brings us to another doctrine of tremendous 
 force, and that is the doctrine of the economic 
 
THE IMPEOVED MAN 197 
 
 value of the virtues. This splendid dream of co- 
 operation can only become possible when there is 
 widely diffused intelligence, but there must also be 
 a widely diffused virtue. Great responsibilities re- 
 quire great wisdom, but great trusts demand a 
 high sense of honour. The business man who owns 
 his own business may be depended upon to use his 
 self-interest as a safeguard to that business, but 
 the business man who manages a business for his 
 fellowmen and in their interest as well as his own, 
 can only be relied upon when self-interest has been 
 reinforced by a very high sense of honour. Con- 
 fidence is not alone the basis of credit; it is the 
 final element without which social organisation 
 becomes impossible. The new race of men will 
 make a new world. The world is rich enough; it 
 will bear sufficient harvests to provide for the mul- 
 tiplied race for at least a thousand years to come 
 by present methods. It has enough material for 
 all kinds of commodities required by our present 
 civilisation. It will doubtless make visible the 
 glorious dreams of greater men and women in a 
 greater day yet to be born. The ordinary relations 
 between man and man, as at present defined in 
 laws and guaranteed by society, have been worked 
 out through thousands of years of struggle and 
 
198 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 pain. These primary institutions doubtless rep- 
 resent the highest results of human wisdom. What 
 is wanted is a little better kind of man to take 
 advantage of this good world and achieve for him- 
 self the noble destiny which is the final justification 
 of all corporate human effort. 
 
 Whence shall we gather strength for conscience, 
 capacity for self-control, a deeper sense of brother- 
 hood, and a larger view of life? These great in- 
 terests belong to a special department of our human 
 inheritance, which we describe by the name of 
 religion. Above the kingdom of man there rules 
 the kingdom of God. Deeper than all human laws 
 are those divine laws founded upon divine justice. 
 It is only when men have consented to obey God 
 that they can be trusted to serve their fellows. It 
 is only when the feeble human years stand out 
 against the great background of eternity that hu- 
 man life grows great. Jesus of Nazareth, the 
 peasant-prophet, companion, and brother of work- 
 ingmen, proclaims the kingdom of God as the only 
 solution of social problems. Religion is the com- 
 mon interest of all men. It preserves the sanctity 
 of the home ; it provides for right relations between 
 parents and children. It furnishes honour for 
 business and security for the state. 
 
THE IMPEOVED MAN 199 
 
 Railroad officials are anxious that their men 
 should be sober and industrious, but they are not 
 so anxious but that the greed for gain permits 
 them to debauch both their employees and the com- 
 munity by Sunday excursions, which have neither. 
 a sound economic basis nor any social excuse. A 
 street railway company whose largest asset is in 
 the good order and good faith of the community 
 has no hesitation in demoralising men by employ- 
 ing them to work on Sunday to dig tunnels and 
 lay railway tracks. Employers are anxious that 
 their workpeople should be sound in character, and 
 faithful in their service, but they set them the 
 example of playing golf and riding automobiles 
 at the time of church service. Workingmen are 
 anxious that ministers and churches should be in- 
 terested in their interests and should dare to say 
 brave words in their behalf, but when the sound 
 of the brave words has died upon the air they turn 
 their backs upon the churches until some other 
 favourable opportunity comes to advance their 
 economic interests. They desert the altars of re- 
 ligion for the cheap pleasures of theatres or de- 
 basing summer resorts. The great prizes of life 
 are not cheap; men must be willing to pay the 
 price. They cannot have the virtues which religion, 
 
200 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 and religion alone, is able to nourish unless they 
 will give their hearts, their thoughts, their love, 
 their life, to God, the father of us all. The doctrine 
 of the brotherhood of man is a beautiful dream, 
 but it remains forever the baseless fabric of a 
 dream unless it is founded upon that deepest of 
 all realities, the fatherhood of God. To better our 
 social condition we need close thought, careful 
 study, a diligent application of the best methods, 
 but at the last, without faith in the eternal founda- 
 tions, without reverent recognition of the moral 
 law, without a great throne to which human hearts 
 and lives are accountable, there can be no final 
 adjustment of social difficulties, and all earthly 
 wisdom is but as sounding brass and clanging 
 cymbals. 
 
WOULD SOCIALISM DO? 
 
 Idealistic Socialism, Political Socialism, and 
 Economic Socialism — Exploitation of the Work- 
 ingman — State Ownership of Means of Pro- 
 duction — Functions of the State — Socialism 
 Ineffective! — Attack upon the Family — Attack 
 upon the Nation. 
 
 Eveey proposed change in the social or economic 
 order may well base itself on the general proposi- 
 tion that this world is not so good a place as it 
 ought to be. There is altogether too much poverty, 
 ignorance, and crime; there are too many children 
 who are maimed from the cradle in body and soul ; 
 there are too many lives which are cheated of de- 
 velopment, and too many men and women evidently 
 intended for happiness and usefulness who are cut 
 off in the midst of their days. Sensitive souls who 
 feel these truths are ready for almost any program 
 which promises the enrichment of human life. 
 There is no doubt about the present evils, nor does 
 it very much relieve the situation to say that the 
 evils are less now than ever before in the world's 
 201 
 
202 THE INDTJSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 history. This may be true, but it does not satisfy 
 those who think that the working out of a better 
 world through struggle and pain is altogether too 
 slow a process for those who would see the world 
 righted in their own time. 
 
 Anarchists and socialists are at one in the 
 sketch of general conditions, but they differ as to 
 the remedy. Bakunine represents anarchism when 
 he says tersely, "The best governments are the 
 worst." This Eussian nihilist voices the opinion 
 of those who believe that by a dissolution of the 
 political order all ancient privileges would be de- 
 stroyed, and on the ruins of the old order voluntary 
 co-operation would furnish all the social bonds 
 needed to secure the perfect life. 
 
 The trouble about understanding socialism is 
 that every professed leader has the liberty of de- 
 fining his creed to suit himself, but there are 
 at least three distinct kinds of socialism, ideal- 
 istic socialism, political socialism, and economic 
 socialism. 
 
 Prom the days of Plato down to the present 
 philosophers have dreamed of a perfect social 
 order, and practical saints have made an effort to 
 realise it. Sir Thomas More in the name of his 
 haDpY island has furnished an adiective which de- 
 
WOULD SOCIALISM DO? 203 
 
 scribes the ideal commonwealth, but which also is 
 used to characterise every impossible plan of social 
 amelioration. Sir Thomas discovered Utopia. 
 This idealistic socialism, which in its modern form 
 is the child of the French revolution, characterised 
 the English and French theories of the last century. 
 This form of socialism, however, which proposed 
 an equality of wealth and communism in distribu- 
 tion, is practically without any serious support in 
 our generation. It is thus picturesquely disposed 
 of by Eobert Blatchf ord, the English radical : 
 
 " Socialism is not a wild dream of a happy land 
 where the apples will drop off the trees into our 
 open mouths, the fish come out of the rivers and 
 fry themselves for dinner, and the looms turn out 
 ready-made suits of velvet with golden buttons 
 without the trouble of coaling the engine. Neither 
 is it the dream of a nation of stained-glass angels 
 who never say damn, who always love their 
 neighbours better than themselves, and who never 
 need to work unless they wish to." 
 
 The second form of socialism, the organisation of 
 a political party, differs in its program according 
 to the country in which it exists, but it has one 
 
204 THE INDTJSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 characteristic in every country: It is distinctly 
 opportunist. That is, it proposes to take up any 
 question of the hour in which there is the line of 
 least resistance toward success. In Germany it 
 will oppose pensions for workingmen because that 
 is a support to the present system of competition, 
 and in England it will seek to abolish the House 
 of Lords. It will assail privilege and laws for the 
 protection of property at every possible point; it 
 will make the burdens of capital as heavy as they 
 can be made, and will embarrass as far as possible 
 the administration of existing institutions. 
 
 Economic socialism has for its leading exponent 
 Karl Marx, who, in his " Capital," which has been 
 called " The Bible of Socialism," presents the doc- 
 trine in full form. The theories of Karl Marx 
 were logical in that they carried to resistless con- 
 clusions the doctrine of the wage fund presented by 
 English economists, and developed by Lassalle as 
 the " iron law of wages." Briefly, the doctrine is 
 that the wage fund cannot be increased under a 
 competitive system beyond the point of the bare 
 maintenance of the labourer and his family. Both 
 Eiecardo and Malthus furnish some foundation for 
 this doctrine. The doctrine of Malthus in the 
 " Principle of Population " would lead us to believe 
 
WOULD SOCIALISM DO? 205 
 
 that the workingman's family would increase faster 
 than it could be economically possible for his wages 
 to increase, and consequently bare maintenance is a 
 necessity from the vital point of view, as the teach- 
 ing of Eiecardo would lead us to believe it to be 
 from the economic point of view. Of course, the 
 doctrine of Malthus, if fully expounded, would be 
 even more crushing against socialism than almost 
 any other theory. But economic socialism teaches 
 that the labourer is cheated of the due rewards of 
 toil. At this point all socialists will agree with 
 Prudhon that " property is theft." In a recent 
 number of the Century Magazine, Professor F. H. 
 Giddings intimates that the crucial question of the 
 whole subject is whether or not the workingman 
 is exploited. Karl Marx and all his economic fol- 
 lowers would assert that he is, meaning by exploi- 
 tation that the workingman has wages to maintain 
 him at the lowest possible standard of living and 
 that the large surplus value arising from his la- 
 bour goes to the employer. Adam Smith is quoted 
 by Morrison Davidson, perhaps the ablest socialist 
 writer in recent years, as furnishing the true 
 economic basis when he says, " The product of 
 labour is the natural recompense or wages of la- 
 bour," Mr. Davidson wishing his readers to under- 
 
206 THE INDTJSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 stand by this that the total result of a day's work, 
 without regard to interest or superintendence, 
 ought to be the property of the man who works 
 with his hands. 
 
 How does economic socialism propose to 
 secure its ends? The principal means of pro- 
 duction and distribution must become the prop- 
 erty of the state. This includes lands, mines, 
 railways, workshops, and factories. The power of 
 money is to be destroyed in some way or other, 
 either by abolishing money entirely and filling its 
 functions by other means or certainly by abolish- 
 ing that iniquitous thing, interest on money, for 
 it is interest that enables the idle rich to live upon 
 the labour of the working poor. Mr. Spargo, an 
 American writer, in his recent work on Socialism, 
 proposes that private production shall be allowed 
 in certain industries not specified, together with 
 co-operative production, and finally production and 
 exchange by the state. Mr. Spargo proposes to 
 preserve competition, notwithstanding that is the 
 bane of all socialists. Evidently he fears to trust 
 the state to carry on all the work, and wishes to 
 safeguard the new state by allowing competition 
 between three forms of production. Most modern 
 socialistic writers are very vague in discussing the 
 
WOULD SOCIALISM DO? 207 
 
 structure and the function of the socialistic state. 
 It is time enough to settle what that state shall be 
 when the majority of electors shall be content to 
 accept the doctrine that the workingman is ex- 
 ploited and the cure for the exploitation is in the 
 ownership by the state of the means of production, 
 including land. 
 
 Economic socialism is modern socialism in the 
 form in which it is attracting the attention and 
 support of a large number of persons in all civil- 
 ised countries. It rejects the doctrine of early 
 communism in regard to the distribution of wealth, 
 "to each according to his need," and substitutes 
 for it the later doctrine, " to each according to his 
 labour." Under this theory, in the new state men 
 will decide the length of their day's work, and 
 some socialists hope they will also decide the nature 
 of their tasks. It is proposed to have a time-book 
 system instead of a money system. A man goes 
 and works, it may be four hours, it may be six, at 
 same task and at the close of his work in his time 
 book the superintendent or foreman gives him 
 credit for the amount of labour done. Commodi- 
 ties are marked at so much labour rather than so 
 much money. When the workman desires an 
 article from the public stores, he is charged in 
 
208 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 his time book the amount of labour which the 
 article is supposed to represent. Disagreeable 
 tasks and unpleasant trades are to be maintained 
 by giving a higher time credit for the same length 
 of labour than in the more pleasant occupations. 
 Under this beautiful system it is supposed that a 
 man may be able to retire on full pay at forty-five, 
 or fifty at the latest, and spend the rest of his 
 life in the gentle occupation of philosopher or 
 statesman. 
 
 It is precisely with modern economic socialism 
 that the modern labour union has its controversy. 
 The American Federation of Labour has always 
 voted down socialism by a large majority in its 
 national meetings. It seems to have done so rather 
 by instinct than by any clearly defined and fully 
 stated philosophy of the subject, but the labour 
 unions have essentially a conflict with the theory 
 of socialism. The labour unions assert equally 
 with the socialist or the anarchist, that for the 
 most part in human history the production of 
 wealth has been accompanied by the exploitation 
 of the workingman. The wage system supplants 
 the slavery system because, on the whole, it is 
 more profitable to the employer, but the labour 
 unions recognise the importance of the captains of 
 
WOULD SOCIALISM DO? 209 
 
 industry, and instead of being used by these cap- 
 tains, propose to make them their servants. The 
 labour unions propose by combination and by 
 the sale of collective labour to prevent in the 
 future the exploitation of the workingman. They 
 propose to preserve whatever is valuable in the 
 present social order, and to secure adequate re- 
 wards. They deny that socialism is the only 
 method and doubt if it is even a possible method 
 by which their wrongs may be righted. The labour 
 unions not only hold this theory, but they have 
 abundantly proved the soundness of their position 
 by their recent history. So far from the working- 
 man being universally exploited there are thou- 
 sands of them who are now receiving probably as 
 high wages as the production in their respective 
 crafts will permit. The captains of industry should 
 see that at this point the labour unions are a 
 valuable ally. Wages in any line cannot be any 
 greater than the average success in those lines of 
 industry will allow. The captain of industry is a 
 man, however, who by reason of his force and wis- 
 dom is able to secure more than the average success, 
 and therefore the greatest possible conflict of labour 
 unions in the matter of wages and hours will al- 
 ways leave the real captains of industry in a safe 
 
210 THE INDUSTRIAL CONFLICT 
 
 position. No thoughful person can have either 
 sympathy or patience with the use of socialism as 
 a bugbear by the great modern pirates of finance. 
 It may as well be bluntly said that modern society 
 will at last prevent one brute hand from finding 
 its way into the pockets of the multitude that the 
 owner of the hand may possess uncounted wealth 
 while the multitude suffer incredible distress. Not 
 all the army of the defeated, not all the poor 
 scholars and dreamers, nor all the revolutionary 
 politicians and demagogues taken together, preach 
 half so effectively the doctrine of socialism as that 
 doctrine is propagated by these pirates themselves. 
 If ever socialism comes, it will come because a 
 few men are strong enough to defeat the claims 
 of social justice prescribed and enforced by the 
 state. 
 
 The quest of first importance in the study of 
 this subject is to discover what is the true function 
 of the state. The history of institutions shows 
 that it is by no means a closed question. In primi- 
 tive savagery the state itself was vague in form 
 and in function and only took on special leader- 
 ship in times of special emergency. When the 
 primitive social group must fight or would migrate 
 it must have a leader. Private disputes were left 
 
WOULD SOCIALISM DO? 211 
 
 to private individuals; the existence of property 
 was so rudimentary as to neither ask for nor 
 deserve the care of the whole group, but as Loria, 
 in " The Economic Foundations of Society," and 
 other modern writers have shown, the development 
 of property has been the organising cause of the 
 development of social institutions. It is here that 
 it seems to me the weakness of the socialistic argu- 
 ment is most manifest. The primary savage with 
 only the rudiments of property was naturally an 
 anarchist. All institutions were practically forms 
 of voluntary co-operation. When land had no 
 scarcity value because the world was large and men 
 were few, the co-operative labour value of the group 
 led to public ownership of land and a greater or 
 less degree of socialism. As society became dis- 
 tinctly organised and more highly developed, as 
 social groups became larger and their interests 
 more complex, the evolution led naturally and 
 directly to individual ownership. By the processes 
 of the past and by the general law of evolution we 
 may expect that this individualism will pass into 
 higher unities, but only in so far as the individual- 
 ism itself is definite and coherent. With the de- 
 velopment of property the state itself has taken 
 on more numerous functions, and found for itself 
 
212 THE INDUSTEIAL CONFLICT 
 
 new duties. The changes of function between local 
 government and general government have been 
 particularly marked. The municipality used to 
 make treaties, coin money, and even declare war, 
 but it had no sewer system, no public streets, no 
 adequate fire protection, and, in short, did almost 
 none of the business now carried on by the modern 
 city. Local government has been robbed of many 
 of its functions to enrich the general government, 
 but meantime local government has discovered for 
 itself new duties. Both local and national govern- 
 ments care for sanitation, the public order, and the 
 public welfare in a larger and more definite way 
 than the ancient states. It is probable that we 
 have by no means reached the limit in the develop- 
 ment of the state. It has assumed the right to 
 regulate the church and the family, and has be- 
 come the supreme institution of modern times. 
 Whatever can best be done by the whole people 
 together must at last be done through the state. 
 But here again it must be remembered that power 
 alone is not sufficient for the performance of du- 
 ties. It requires self-consciousness as well as 
 power. Public honour is as essential in carrying 
 on the functions of government as private honour 
 is essential in the relations between individuals. 
 
WOULD SOCIALISM DO? 213 
 
 Let any country beware of increasing the functions 
 of government beyond the moral capacity of its 
 people. 
 
 The functions of the state must always be open 
 to discussion and to readjustment, but of one func- 
 tion there can be no question. It is the first duty 
 of the modern state to secure justice in the rela- 
 tions of its citizens. It must curb the strong and 
 protect the weak. It must secure private rights, 
 but it must not allow private rights to infringe 
 upon the common good. The management of busi- 
 ness through corporations is, it seems to me, too 
 well established and too valuable to be given up, 
 and those large organisations which are sometimes 
 called " trust corporations " will stay as a per- 
 manent organ of economic life if they are found 
 economical; whether the machine be made of iron 
 or is simply a form of human association, that 
 machine which does the work with the least labour 
 and the best results will at last be used. To em- 
 barrass effective production is both unnecessary and 
 unwise. But trust corporations must be supervised 
 by the state, and with the new developments and 
 new complexities in the modern industrial world, 
 there are new functions for the state which must 
 be honestly accepted and thoroughly performed. 
 
214 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 The state can serve neither individual nor class 
 except incidentally. It is the duty of the state to 
 serve the whole people and to secure justice for all 
 its citizens. 
 
 I am opposed to socialism precisely because I do 
 not think it can remedy the evils which we all 
 recognise. The vagueness of the socialistic state 
 is not an accident. It is because no theory of such 
 a state can be worked out that will be satisfactory. 
 Socialist writers tell us that under the new order 
 men may choose their occupations and the length 
 of their day's work. It must be plain that no 
 great industries can be maintained in any such 
 fashion. The success of any modern factory de- 
 pends upon the due proportion of workers in the 
 different departments. It is one vast machine. 
 Each part must be in its place and each factor must 
 perform its service systematically with all the rest. 
 Under socialism, where the state possesses the 
 means of production, some authority must decide 
 what work shall be done, by whom it shall be done, 
 and how it shall be done. Unless there is such an 
 authority, it is chaos. There are only two ways in 
 which leadership can be exercised: one, by the 
 state itself through organised bureaus. This would 
 promise the development of a caste system the 
 
WOULD SOCIALISM DO? 215 
 
 worst the world has ever known. Anyone who has 
 studied the development of bureaus in such gov- 
 ernments as are especially dependent upon them, 
 for example in France, will have data for deciding 
 what would happen in case these bureaus were 
 multiplied and extended to cover the whole life of 
 the people. If the management is not vested in 
 the state, it must be vested in the group of workers 
 in any department. That would promise manage- 
 ment by the general average of intelligence, and 
 honesty without the spur and prudence of self- 
 interest. It is easy to be seen that such an average 
 would not rise to the highest wisdom, and conse- 
 quently production, instead of being increased, 
 would be checked. 
 
 But economic socialism does not promise to pre- 
 serve the methods by which the industrial world 
 has always been enriched. That method is special 
 reward for special service. There can be no doubt 
 that our own country, both in the State and in the 
 nation, has been very reckless in giving up the 
 ownership of its natural resources, and yet, on the 
 other hand, there can be no question that labour 
 has been stimulated by this policy, and the indus- 
 trial community vastly enriched. We fasten our 
 eyes upon the successes, but we do not remember 
 
216 THE INDTJSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 the failures. Take the department of mining, for 
 example. The one prospector who makes a rich 
 discovery and maybe gains fabulous wealth, we 
 know and envy, but the thousands of prospectors 
 who find nothing but disappointment and broken 
 hopes are easily forgotten. There are plenty of 
 people in the mining districts of this country who 
 will tell you that more money has been lost than 
 has been made in developing mining properties. 
 We fasten our eyes upon the one successful man 
 who by some fortunate invention has gained large 
 wealth; we forget the ten thousand experimenters 
 who, hoping against hope, have failed of any com- 
 mercial success. Socialism might do fairly well 
 as a form of organisation for a state of society 
 that hopes for no progress ; but that progress which 
 depends upon the development of individual 
 strength and capacity, the concentration of indi- 
 vidual energy and the best achievements of in- 
 dividual sacrifice, must promise special rewards for 
 special service. Socialism, therefore, will not right 
 the wrongs which we recognise, because it does not 
 promise to make production cheaper and more 
 abundant. Nor does it promise to furnish incentive 
 to the individual that will stimulate all his powers 
 and provide for social and industrial progress. 
 
WOULD SOCIALISM DO? 217 
 
 Socialism rests upon the evolution, however, of 
 the relation of the individual to institutions. It 
 proceeds upon the assumption that perfect institu- 
 tions will make perfect men. The whole history 
 of the world is an argument for the contrary thesis. 
 The wiser and better men are, the nobler will be 
 their institutions, and social groups have always 
 had not only as good institutions as they deserved, 
 but they have had from the beginning institutions 
 which have served them better than better institu- 
 tions could have done. 
 
 The kingdom of God in politics, in economics, in 
 morals, and in religion depends at last upon the 
 repentance and regeneration of the individual. 
 Noble men may always be trusted to live nobly. 
 Through its faith in institutions socialism ignores 
 the value and necessity of educational and ethical 
 processes. 
 
 Socialism makes an assault upon the family. I 
 do not pause to quote the numerous utterances of 
 socialists upon the relations of the sexes. Morrison 
 Davidson declares that in the new state the chil- 
 dren will belong primarily to the mother. I do not 
 charge upon socialists what many have — that their 
 doctrine is essentially immoral. The ground upon 
 which socialism must be regarded as an attack upon 
 
218 THE INDUSTKIAL CONFLICT 
 
 the family is manifestly economic. Under the 
 doctrine of private property the home is the eco- 
 nomic unit of society. This has developed monog- 
 amy as the marriage form, and it has steadily 
 developed the economic protection of women and 
 children. State ownership substitutes group prop- 
 erty for family property. The greatest incentive 
 the individual man has for industry and thrift is 
 the care of his own family. When the care of the 
 family no longer devolves upon him in the same 
 sense, to that extent his incentives are weakened; 
 and if it be true, as socialists themselves usually 
 affirm, that the foundations of society are economic, 
 then it will follow that if the economic foundations 
 of the family are dissolved, the family itself will be 
 destroyed. We have heard far too much already 
 of the economic equality of the sexes, and far too 
 little of the vast importance of the monogamic 
 family as the greatest culture conquest in human 
 history. 
 
 Finally, socialism is an assault upon the nation. 
 It is essentially anti-patriotic. It asserts its kin- 
 ship with all men in a communion of sympathies 
 which is world-wide. Those people who love every- 
 body in such an effusive manner that they love no 
 one better than another, in reality never love at all. 
 
WOULD SOCIALISM DO? 219 
 
 Home, friends, country, are not words alone. They 
 are means of self-expression and of self-develop- 
 ment. It is by the privacy of home against home 
 that the security of the personal life is assured. It 
 is the men who love their own country best who 
 may be trusted to admire most what is good in 
 every other country, and to seek to incorporate it 
 in their own institutions; it is those who appreci- 
 ate the value of definite and personal kinship who 
 can be trusted to sympathise most keenly with the 
 brotherhood that is world-wide. 
 
 THE END 
 
Cornell University Library 
 HD 8072.S65 
 
 The Industrial conflict; a sarles of chap 
 
 B 1924 002 724 3g1 
 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 GAYLOMD 
 
 
 
 rniNiro inula. 
 
PROflTRTY OF LISftARY LIT) 
 
 INDUSTRI L km LAiiOR RELATIONS * ^ 
 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY S(p5"