It is not the English WORKINGMAN who has been beaten. The
English workmen did not sell the English mercantile navy to J.P.
Morgan. English capitalists did that.
Get this in your heads, you who talk against unions. Morgan and his fellow American capitalists have formed themselves into financial UNIONS, which we call trusts. And they have beaten the English capitalist, who did not know enough to take lessons from his workman and form unions of his own.
The American FINANCIAL union, not the English LABOR union, has beaten England in the race for industrial supremacy.
Union is strength everywhere and forever. The remaining strength of England is in her labor unions, which give men time to think, food to grow on, and give real men to the nation. You say that powerful unions kill nations.
Why is not China a great industrial power?
She has vast fortunes and no unions. Li Hung Chang was richer than Morgan, and could cut off the head of any striker. His coolies got five cents a day and worked fourteen hours—is THAT your ideal system? ——
Last of all (and we apologize for this unforgivably long editorial), let us discuss the question of foreign labor. The capitalist complains that the Hungarian, "the brutal, ignorant foreigner," makes much of the trouble, and "wants as much as an American."
Loud is this cry against the foreign laborer. And the ignorant, know-nothing American workman joins in the cry only too willingly.
Who brings in those foreign laborers by the shipload, Mr.
Mineowner?
Who rounds up cargoes of Slavs on the other side and brings them here to cut the wages and the living of the native-born?
Who shrieks dolefully, Mr. Miner, when the Slav shows that he is a MAN brave and willing to prove worthy of freedom by joining the army of union labor?
The Slav and the Hungarian ARE HERE, and their children will be here when we are dead.
Which is better, to underpay them, treat them like cattle, fill them with just hatred of unjust discrimination, or give them a chance to be men?
Shall their children grow up ignorant mine slaves? Or shall they go to that factory of honest citizenship—the public school—to be improved as we have all been improved, whether we came originally from Hungary, Ireland, England, France, Russia, or elsewhere?
The struggle of the strikers, like all great struggles, is sometimes unjust. It has not always the wisest or the most unselfish leaders.
But it is an effort to improve the AVERAGE CONDITION OF
HUMANITY. Help that effort.
"LIMITING THE AMOUNT OF A DAY'S WORK" THERE'S A GOOD DEAL OF NONSENSE TALKED ON THIS SUBJECT
An honest, well-meaning clergyman talked the other day on labor unions, and wandered out of his depth. As a rule, clergymen, having studied the teachings of Christ, are aware that they ought to be on the side of the workingman. Hence the strongest supporters of the union are found among the clergy.
The mistake of the clergyman whom we mention is discussed here, because it is often made by well-meaning, but narrow-minded, citizens.
He spoke of "the custom union labor has of limiting a day's work
AND OTHER DISHONEST PRACTICES."
By limiting a day's work, the reverend gentleman referred to the rule existing in certain unions regulating the maximum day's labor.
That rule does exist, and sometimes undoubtedly—labor union men not being angels or cherubim—the rule may be pushed to extremes.
But on the whole the rule is necessary, and it works for good.
We shall tell this clergyman and other citizens one special reason for limiting the day's work.
The contractors want to make all the money they can. When the unions forced them into recognition of certain hours of labor as constituting a day's work, THAT was looked upon as a dishonest practice. It was felt in the old days that a workman should be only too glad to get out of bed at daybreak and work until dark. Now even the stupidest and most selfish have come to recognize limited hours as a feature of American industry. And the enlightened gladly admit that the well-paid, well-rested, independent worker usually does more in his eight or nine hours than he used to do in his twelve or fourteen.
After the inauguration of the limited-hour day the contractors invented what is known as a "rusher."
The "rusher" is a young workman, in his prime, marvellously quick in his work as compared with the ordinary, good, capable workman.
On a job of bricklaying, carpentering, or other work, it was customary for the shrewd contractor to hire one or more "rushers." Nominally the "rusher" was paid regular union wages. But secretly the contractor paid him double wages, or more than double wages. The "rusher" worked at high pressure hour after hour, day after day. The others could not possibly have kept up with him had he worked his fastest. But his instructions were to keep just a little ahead, that the others might struggle and do their best to keep even in their task, in order not to lose their work for apparent idleness. Thus the "rusher," a man of unusual skill, getting double wages, went along well within his forces, while the others were working themselves to death in order to keep up and not lose their jobs.
The limitation of the day's output is based originally on the desire to squelch this "rusher" idea, or to put the quietus on the very young and able workman anxious to curry favor with his "boss" by making the pace too hot for the men working beside him.
——
Our friend, the clergyman, and many others say that it is dishonest to limit the day's output. But is it dishonest? What is the difference between limiting the DAY'S output and limiting a YEAR'S output?
In the middle of the Summer the clergyman says, "I have worked enough; I ought to go to Europe," and he goes.
The bricklayer does not criticise the clergyman for limiting his YEAR'S output to forty sermons. He does not say to him, "You are ABLE to preach fifty-two sermons a year. If you preach only forty, you are dishonest and rob your parishioners."
What business is it of the clergyman's if the bricklayers, among themselves, decide that it is better for them in the long run to set only a given number of brick per day?
The trouble with some clergymen and many others is that they forget one important thing—namely, THAT THE WORKINGMEN NOW HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY.
When it comes to a question of laying brick, it is no longer the squire or the local clergyman who decides what shall be done. The BRICKLAYER DECIDES WHAT SHALL BE DONE.
And when it comes to carpenter work, the CARPENTER decides what shall constitute a day's work.
In olden times the clergymen, the lawyers, the rich, the lucky class in general, decided for THEMSELVES what THEY should do, and then they decided for their so-called inferiors what those INFERIORS should do.
Our prosperous class are having a very painful time indeed getting into their minds the fact that such a thing as the right of the majority REALLY EXISTS. And they find it very hard indeed to believe that the doctrine of human equality is to be taken seriously in matters of business.
Labor unions are performing an important educational function when they drive into the heads of these would-be superiors the fact that this nation is becoming actually a republic in which the workingmen shall decide for themselves questions affecting themselves, and in which they shall no longer be guided by the whims or financial interests of would-be "superiors."
CATCHING A RED-HOT BOLT
Men were working on the roof of a Pennsylvania ferryhouse, overhanging the North River on the Jersey side.
The passengers on one of the big ferryboats watched with admiration the work of the fearless young mechanics.
The men stood on a board not more than a foot wide. They had nothing to hold to. Sixty feet below them was a mass of rough piles. A misstep would have meant death.
One of the men, standing perfectly at ease on his narrow ledge, swung a heavy sledge-hammer, while the other held in place the bolt to be driven home in the iron-work. ——
The work on that bolt was finished, and one of the young men, a wiry giant over six feet tall, picked up in his arms a small wooden keg which stood on the board beside him. It was a keg such as nails are packed in. About forty feet away from the bridge, up among the iron beams, a smith was at work heating the bolts red-hot.
This smith saw the young man on the narrow board holding the wooden keg in his arms. He knew that another bolt was needed.
The bolt, white-hot, was seized with a pair of tongs, thrown violently through the air, sending off a shower of white sparks as it went.
As the white bolt shot toward the metal worker, he held out the wooden keg in a matter-of-fact way, caught the bolt, picked it out of the keg with a pair of pincers, and soon the heavy sledge- hammer was at work driving the metal, still white-hot, into the hole. ——
Passengers who make their living in a less exciting way watched with great excitement as one after another of these heavy red-hot bolts came flying through the air, each in its turn caught by the mechanic standing on the narrow board.
If the bolt had struck or burned him, he must almost inevitably have fallen. He must have fallen had he made a misstep reaching out the wooden keg to catch the flying iron.
Among those who watched him were very prosperous men come in from the seaside on the flying express, bound for Wall Street. These men were sorry when their boat pulled out, so deeply interested were they in the skill and courage of the mechanics working so high up on so narrow a footing.
If their opinion had been asked then and there they would have said that no reasonable rate of pay would be too high for such mechanics, and that eight hours of work catching red-hot bolts and driving them home, on a narrow plank sixty feet in the air, ought to be considered a fair day's work.
We trust that if these men read in the future that the structural iron-workers or the house-smiths are striking for a little more pay and for eight hours' work they will remember those men working on the ferryhouse, and remember that all of these iron-workers, like all miners, and many others, earn their bread at the risk of their lives.
We hope that those who watched the red-hot bolts flying through the air will remember their sensations when they hear of a strike among those men, and not say, as they usually do:
"The impudence of union labor must be suppressed. The men are lazy; that's what's the matter with them. It is all nonsense to talk about working eight hours. Union labor, if it keeps on, will ruin this country's commercial supremacy." ——
The trouble with human beings is that their lives are widely separated and sympathy is killed by ignorance.
The banker does not see, therefore cannot appreciate, the courage of the man working on an iron beam at the top of a steel frame 300 feet in the air.
The mechanic cannot understand, and therefore cannot appreciate, the worry, the mental stress of the money man, who must make ends meet, pay bills, arrange mortgages, find tenants and settle his union troubles at the same time.
Better acquaintance with each other is what human beings need.
It would be well if more very rich men had seen that young mechanic catching his red-hot bolts.
It would be well if more young mechanics who like their beefsteak and onions could see John D. Rockefeller sipping his glass of milk and seltzer (his whole dinner), or know what Rockefeller feels when he lies awake half the night. He has found pretty well-paid employment for a hundred thousand men who sleep soundly while he tosses and turns and feels the weight of a ton on his chest.
THE TRUSTS AND THE UNION— HOW DO THEY DIFFER?
A letter signed "Several Democrats from St. Paul" reads, in part, as follows:
"In order to convert several rank Republicans it is necessary that we should be able to explain the difference between a trust and a labor union. Will you kindly, through your columns, make a clear explanation of this distinction? Our opponents holdthat both trusts and unions are combinations, which appears to be true, but there is apparently a weak point in our ability to definitely show the difference, and we beg that you explain it." ——
Trusts and unions are both combinations, beyond question. But a pronounced difference distinguishes them, and we shall endeavor to make it clear.
You see a horse after a hard day's work grazing in a swampy meadow. He has done his duty and is getting what he can in return.
On the horse's flank you may see a leach sucking blood.
The LEACH is the trust.
The HORSE is the labor UNION.
Possibly you have read "Sindbad the Sailor," with its story of the Old Alan of the Sea. The Old Man of the Sea rode round on the sailor's back squeezing his neck with his tightly twisted legs.
The OLD MAN is the TRUST.
The SAILOR is the labor UNION. ——
In Chicago two combinations are fighting. One is a combination of citizens—the Citizens' Union. The other is a combination of public robbers—the Gas Trust. Each combination is trying to get what it wants. Surely you can see the difference between the two combinations.
The citizens are striving in a purely legitimate way to obtain their RIGHTS.
Similarly, Labor Unions, when soundly organized, are striving properly and legitimately to obtain their RIGHTS.
Gas Trusts and other Trusts endeavor improperly and illegitimately to obtain what does not belong to them. ——
In old times, on the high seas, there were two classes of vessels. The great majority were honest vessels of commerce, doing good to the world, while striving, of course, to benefit their crews and owners.
Those honest SHIPS were the Labor UNIONS. On the same waters there sailed other ships—fast, daring—manned by unscrupulous, although able, men.
Those were the pirate ships.
The TRUSTS compared to Labor UNIONS are the pirate ships compared to honest ships of commerce.
FRANCE HAS LEARNED HER LESSON
The employes on the Paris underground railroad had a strike and have settled their strike.
The terms of the settlement amaze the outside world. The terms are especially amazing to the American—and well they may be.
The employes of the underground railroad in Paris are GOVERNMENT employes.
Their strike inconvenienced the public, and even the radical
French people were annoyed with the strikers.
In other European countries and in this country, as the news reports very truly say, the strike of those Government employes would have been dealt with very summarily. Three engines of civilization would have been brought into play effectively.
"First the police, second the cavalry, third Gatling guns." ——
But the police, the cavalry and guns were tried on the French people long ago, and that little matter was fought out and settled. The men who govern France know that at a certain stage in the proceedings a courageous people will not stand Gatling guns, cavalry or police. They have found out in France that the way to deal with striking workmen is just the way the Government official would like to be dealt with himself if he were a striking workman instead of a well-paid public officer.
The striking men complained that their day's work was too long and their pay too small. The pay was increased and the day shortened—which was perfectly right.
Each employe is now allowed one day off in seven, and ten days' vacation every year with full pay—which is perfectly right.
The young men employed on the road are compelled to do twenty days' work in the army each year. Their wages are paid while they are doing this compulsory military work—which is perfectly right.
If a man is ill through no fault or vice of his own he gets his pay as long as he is ill up to three hundred and sixty-five days, and the company in whose service he has become ill pays his doctor's bill, his drug store bill and any extra expenses involved—which is perfectly just and fair.
No striker is to be dismissed because of having taken part in the strike. A benefit fund is provided for the employes of this Government enterprise—and the company pays the membership subscription to the benefit fund with NO DEDUCTION FROM THE WORKMEN'S PAY.
The above seems a horrible narrative to the energetic American exploiter of labor.
It would have seemed very stupid, in fact quite incomprehensible, to the French Government at any time before the Revolution.
But the Revolution taught France and some other people that a nation, like any other structure, is insecure when its foundation is agitated. The foundation of a nation is the enormous mass of working people, and that foundation the French have learned to respect and treat well.
We shall learn as much here some day. Let us hope we shall learn it more peaceably than the French did.
UNION MEN AS SLAVE OWNERS WHAT PLANS HAS THE FIVE-DOLLAR-A-DAY MAN MADE TO HELP HIS POORER FELLOW-CREATURES?
Every addition within reason to wages, every reasonable reduction of working hours, must help the whole nation. Working human beings have been looked upon through the ages as slaves, either on an actual slave-owning basis or on an insufficient wage basis—which is about the same thing. Each recognition of the worker's rights moves us a little farther from slave days. Every time a new class earns decent treatment by hard fighting we see increased the number of those who may properly be called men.
The blind employer asks: "Shall men be allowed to fix their own wages?"
OF COURSE they shall. And until they do fix their own wages they are not men at all. The ox does not fix his hours of labor or the quantity of his corn. But the man does. The man controlled like an ox is nearer an ox than a man.
We delight in the efforts of unions. We are advocates of every movement that tends to divide among a still larger class the good things of the world.
But this newspaper is no mere labor union organ. We care more for the welfare of the humblest, non-organized, underpaid, underfed citizen than for the finest, most highly paid, most intelligent mechanic.
The man who is least well off needs our help most. He needs, above all men, some practical PROOF that he lives where men are equal. He should be the object of earnest thought on the part of the five-dollar-a-day man.
It is the five-dollar-a-day man, the able mechanic, whom we address to-day: ——
Many of your thoughts and words, Mr. Five-Dollar Man, are devoted to plutocrats. You are not free from envy. You consider, and with perfect justice, that you do not—even with your five dollars—get your share of the world's good things.
But, for a change to-day, will you look DOWN instead of UP? You work hard at five dollars per day "to fatten in comfort the happy millionaire employer." All right; admitted.
But did you ever think who works hard to fatten YOU?
Did it ever occur to you that you are a plutocrat, and a very numerous and decided plutocrat? Do you ever wonder what you will answer when the time comes for those whom you underpay to demand eight hours and fair wages of YOU?
You keep a servant girl to help your wife. Does she work eight hours a day? No; she works about fourteen, and hears a good deal of grumbling because she does not do better. Does she get union wages? No; she gets about thirty cents a day. Does she get double pay on holidays? Can she put on any substitute if she chooses to wander off for two or three days a week?
The woman who works to make your life comfortable works just as many hours as you can make her work, and she gets just as little pay as you can get her to take. Is that all right? ——
And the servant girl is not the only one. Some farmer's hand works to raise the wheat, the potatoes that you eat. What is he paid? What are his hours? Fifty cents a day, twelve or fourteen hours of work. And your bootmaker in the factory, and the sweat-shop slave who makes your coat, and the long list of other poor devils who work for about one-tenth of your salary. Do you know why you are comparatively well off? Simply because the man for whom YOU work pays you ten times as much as you pay the men and women who work for YOU.
You pay indirectly? True. But what difference does that make? You are well-to-do because you purchase without question the product of men who are really slaves. You have brains, and by combination have FORCED your employer to treat you decently. Yes, and you deserve credit. But you are not fundamentally superior to the other men around you. What are you going to do when they demand treatment as good as yours? What are you going to reply when they class you with the other plutocrats?
You enjoy the work of only ten or twenty underpaid men—that is so. But you are in the same class with the plutocrat who enjoys the profit on the work of ten or twenty thousand men.
Utter disregard of others—where it does not affect your own wages—is your rule, and you know it. What better joke is there than the joke about the union label? How many hats on your rack have union labels in them? How many of you can swear no sweatshop ever saw your clothes? How many of you would apologize for not offering your friend a "union-made" cigar?
It is the nature of man to think earnestly of only one thing at a time. If one pursuit really engrosses his attention he has little time to think of anything else. In the hard struggle for a living the workingman has little time for any thought save for his OWN wage, his OWN stomach, his OWN welfare.
As union men you will continue to struggle for your five dollars a day—restricting apprentices, that others may be shut out from your field; opposing changes threatening you, however beneficial they may be generally.
But as individuals you must THINK. You study, and, being free from the grind of real poverty, you should be less hardened than the unfortunate, and inclined to feel for others.
You have made a good fight against the slavery that used to oppress you. In England you destroyed mills, endured shooting and hanging. All over the world, by hard fighting and wise voting, you have established the fact that the top class of mechanics must no longer be treated as cattle.
Now, what are you going to do for the others who are still cattle? You have demanded in the name of holy justice that others help you. In the same name, what do you propose to do for those still oppressed? Will you use your big voting power for the millions who are still at the bottom?
Will you combine for the benefit of the vast army as you have combined for your OWN benefit?
Or will you wait—as did the employers—to be FORCED into decency? Will you free your own collection of underpaid, overworked slaves, or wait for them to organize and beat you into decency, as your representatives did with your oppressors long ago?
Take a look downward once in a while. Study those below you. Glance over your own little collection of "wage slaves" in your kitchen and wherever your money is spent.
There is a problem there for you when you shall have finished hurrahing for your own eight hours.
AGAIN THE LIMITED DAY'S WORK WISELY HANDLED, IT MEANS EMANCIPATION FROM INDUSTRIAL SLAVERY.
We refer again to the much discussed rule in labor unions limiting the amount of work that a man shall do in a day. As a matter of fact, in many unions no such rule exists. In some it does exist, and MUST exist.
There is nothing in the notion that limiting the day's work will diminish the excellence of American workmen. On the contrary, the BEST work is done slowly and carefully. The WORST work is done at high speed.
That very aristocratic financier who denounces the regulations as to a day's output will say to the man who is doing something FOR HIM, "Take your time; I want this done very carefully."
Why should not EVERYBODY'S work be done carefully?
But it is not merely careful work that is involved in the regulating of the day's work. The welfare of the nation and of the nation's future is involved.
Go with the man who denounces labor unions for limiting the amount of work that a good American mechanic should do in one day, to the stable in which that man keeps his fine horses. You can easily bring about this dialogue:
"That mare in the box stall is a beautiful horse. Is she fast?"
Rich Owner—"Yes, very fast. I value her more highly than any horse I have. "
"How many miles do you drive her every day?"
"Oh, I don't drive her EVERY day. I drive her one day, and have her jogged quietly the next. When I do drive her, I jog her for two or three miles to warm her up, then speed her a mile or two, and then take her home. She covers perhaps six or seven miles in an entire day's work."
"But you COULD drive her twenty-five miles, couldn't you, and drive her as far as that EVERY day?"
"Oh, yes, I COULD, of course, if I was only thinking of using her up and getting all I could out of her now. But, you see, I mean to use her for a brood-mare; I expect to get some splendid colts from her, and I don't want to wear out her vitality. I might get a little more fun or a little more work out of her just now, BUT I WOULD LOSE IN THE LONG RUN." ——
Now, gentlemen, the labor union rule limiting a day's work simply considers the workingman as that imaginary rich person considers his beautiful horse.
And the feeling of the labor unions should be shared by the entire country.
The highly skilled American mechanic is one of the chief assets of this country; the intelligent, scientific, up-to-date American farmer is another highly important asset. These two classes of citizens ARE THE UNITED STATES. Between them they are more important than all the rest of the nation put together.
AND YET THEY ARE NOT AS IMPORTANT AS THEIR CHILDREN.
The workingman of to-day is the father of the future.
The trouble with us is that the employer, unlike the owner of the fine horses, has no interest in that workingman's future or in his future family.
He employs and treats the workingman as the casual heartless customer would treat that fine horse if it were rented by the day at a livery stable.
There is much to be said, no doubt, on the side of harassed employers, many of whom are fair-minded men, and many of whom are put to unjust annoyance by some of the labor unions' mistakes.
But, first of all, the employer must realize the RIGHTS and the EQUALITY of his workmen. And as a patriotic citizen he must realize that the welfare of the future is in the health and vitality of parents to-day.
By limiting the amount of work which they do in one day our mechanics enable themselves to preserve some of their vitality for mental work, for educating talks with their children. THEY GIVE TO THEIR CHILDREN THE VITALITY WHICH THE SWEATSHOP SLAVE CAN NEVER GIVE.
What are our laws against sweatshops but laws acknowledging the justice of regulating the amount of the day's work?
And why do we refuse to permit unions to do for themselves what we do on a sentimental, philanthropic, haphazard basis, through our "sweatshop laws," for the miserable, unorganized workers of the slums?
TO THE MERCHANTS PLEASE LISTEN PATIENTLY TO A DISCUSSION OF THE LABOR UNION FROM YOUR POINT OF VIEW.
We invite the merchants to consider the question of unions and of high wages from THEIR OWN point of view.
If we err in our statements or conclusions we shall be glad to print replies and criticisms from responsible merchants over their own signatures.
This we maintain: THAT IN PROMOTING THE WELFARE AND INCREASING
THE WAGES OF THE GREAT BODY OF WORKINGMEN, WE PROMOTE THE WELFARE
AND INCREASE THE PROSPERITY OF ALL LEGITIMATE MERCHANTS AND
BUSINESS MEN.
The unions make mistakes. The employers make mistakes. The unions are often unreasonable. The employers are unreasonable sometimes.
No doubt in America the workingman is more exacting and more highly paid than anywhere else.
But in America, also, the merchant is more quickly and numerously successful than anywhere else. ——
As a subject for our text to-day we shall take the street-car lines—surface, underground or elevated—of any great American city.
The success of every street-car system is made BY ALL THE INHABITANTS OF THE CITY. Every woman who brings a baby into the world in a great city adds so much value to the stock of that city's street railroads. She increases the gross income of that railroad by about three dollars and sixty-five cents a year with each child to which she gives birth.
Therefore the street railroad should properly serve the public that gives the road its value.
Next in importance to the traveling public come the human beings that work on the street railroad—the conductors, motormen, gatemen, gripmen, engineers, etc.
This newspaper fights constantly to improve within reason the pay and the hours of work of the street railroad employes.
This we do for the sake of the employes themselves, and for no other reason. We demand better pay for the men that they may lead decent American lives, feeding and clothing their wives and children, and educating their children properly. We demand short hours for them, that they may live part of the twenty-four hours WITH their families, knowing their own children and bringing a little pleasure and companionship into the lives of their patient wives.
We are proud of the fact that we have helped in a small way to increase the prosperity and happiness of many tens of thousands of honest families, that we have increased the OPPORTUNITIES of many thousands of children.
We want the merchants to remember that, while we have thus striven to protect those masses of the people whom we represent and whose ADVOCATE we are, we have also advanced enormously, although without premeditation, the fortune and quick success of every capable and legitimate merchant.
Who owns the stock in the street railroads? A few individuals—a Widener, an Elkins, a Yerkes, a Whitney, or some other energetic private individual.
One street railroad system, let us say, employs ten thousand men.
They struggle to add one dollar per day to their pay. We help them with moral support and publicity, and they succeed. TEN THOUSAND FAMILIES have each ONE DOLLAR a day more to spend, or ten thousand dollars a day in all.
What becomes of that ten thousand dollars added daily to the living-money of ten thousand families?
EVERY DOLLAR OF IT GOES INTO THE HANDS OF THE MERCHANT, THE LANDLORD, OR THE SAVINGS BANK.
If the men had not got that increase in wages, what would have become of that ten thousand dollars daily, or $3,650,000 A YEAR?
Would it have gone to the merchants of the great cities? Would it have gone to build up thousands of comfortable little homes in all the suburbs of the great towns? Would it have enabled thousands of American boys and girls to stay in school instead of going in their infancy to the mills and factories?
No!
If that money were not distributed among the people in the shape of good American wages for good American work, it would go to build big race tracks, where thieves and gamblers are manufactured. It would go to buying foolish bogus antiquities that no man needs. It would go to building ridiculous and uncalled-for palaces where human mushrooms without a sense of humor imitate in their idleness the active types of the past. ——
When this newspaper adds to the payroll of a great corporation, it adds to the happiness of a great many families; and therein lie its pride and its excuse for being. And at the same time this increase in the payroll of the Trust or the monopolizer of public privileges means an increase in the income, the prosperity, the legitimate reward of the enterprising merchant, builder and general business man.
We do not lack criticism from well-meaning friends who conduct great stores or other business enterprises. We appreciate all criticisms and suggestions. We offer a suggestion in return:
Let the builder who dislikes unions GO TO CHINA and build his apartment houses. He will find patient workmen at ten cents a day. He will find laws that suppress the unions, and laws that suppress the newspaper which takes the side of the poor.
He will find a non-union Utopia.
But he will not find tenants for his buildings, because in a land where men don't get high wages they can't pay high rents, and when the few Li Hung Changs have built their palaces the building boom is over.
Let the great merchant who deplores unions start a DEPARTMENT
STORE IN CHINA.
He will never see a walking delegate; he will never be bothered by the dark cloud of unionism.
He will find a perfect heaven in the way of low wages.
BUT HE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SELL GOODS.
His department store will dwindle into a store for selling rice, and while his velvets, silks, hats and muslins moulder he will get very sick of a hundred million women who don't spend forty cents in a year.
In the land where men are not well paid THEY CAN'T SPEND MONEY.
The best friend of the American merchant, builder, lawyer, doctor, property owner, banker and general business man is the individual or the newspaper that helps the people to get high wages, AND THUS GIVES THEM MONEY TO SPEND.
WHAT ABOUT THE CHINESE, KIND SIR?
A prosperous and old New York merchant assures a conference of workingmen that England's great strikes have caused that country to lose its leadership in exports of machinery.
If England's wonderful system of trades unionism has hurt its exports of machinery, if abundance of very cheap slave labor means great industrial superiority, we beg to ask this question:
WHY IS NOT CHINA THE GREAT EXPORTING COUNTRY OF THE WORLD?
There are scores of millions of men in China glad to work for a few pennies per day.
There are no labor unions in China, and in some districts the employer can have his workmen beheaded for demanding an increase of pay. If the venerable old New York merchant is right, China ought to be certainly a marvellously successful country industrially.
As a matter of fact, China is dead, and there is no better proof of her complete deadness than the fact that among all her millions of coolies there is not enough spirit for the formation of a labor union.
The energy of the British workman established England's industrial greatness and fought for and won the great trades-union system which the workmen of this country are developing so ably. ——
Suppose it were true that trades unionism, with its higher wages and shorter hours, decreases exports—what of it?
Is it not more important to have ten million workmen well paid, with reasonable leisure and decent lives, than to have a handful of iron masters and coal-mine owners piling up millions of pounds and producing sons like the famous "Jubilee Juggins"?
Wouldn't it be better for China if her several hundred millions of citizens were well paid, well fed and well educated, even though Li Hung Chang and the other prosperous viceroys should all be paid a little less money, and own fewer square miles of rice fields and tea plants? ——
In Huxley's admirable biography, written by his son, you may read of a 'longshoreman who, thanks to reasonably short hours of work and a little leisure, took up the study of scientific subjects.
He was aided by Huxley, who lent him a microscope, and ultimately this common 'longshoreman's researches were of real value to the scientific world.
Isn't it well to have a trades-union system which curbs the avariciousness of employers and gives workmen a chance to develop the best that is in them?
Isn't it better for England to have that 'longshoreman develop into a scientist than to let some man who employs him make an extra shilling a day out of his labor, even though it should add a little to the exports of England? ——
A country's greatness depends on the quality of the men that live in the country, not on goods manufactured to sell to outside nations.
Rome was doing little exporting when she ruled the world.
She was breeding men, independent and brave, who could bring the products of the world to her.
She did not need to worry about exports, nor does any other country need to worry about them.
The thing to worry about is the condition of your citizens, the education of children, the decent treatment of women, the equality of laws.
Other things take care of themselves.
150 AGAINST 150,000—WE FAVOR THE 150,000
It should not take long to convince a man fit to live in a republic that public welfare demands the support of Union Labor.
No better proof of that could be asked than a spectacle presented in Chicago.
ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY contractors have practically locked out ONE
HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND men.
The contractors want bigger profits—to be got through underpaying and overworking their employes.
The men want better pay and shorter hours. ——
Leave out sentiment if you choose. Ignore the fact that on one side the few who enjoy everything are industriously squeezing the many who have little enjoyment.
Look at things purely from the standpoint of benefit to the nation and the nation's future.
If the hundred and fifty win, they will have a little more money.
Their wives and daughters will dress a little more grotesquely.
Their families will be able to go abroad oftener and stay longer.
Their heirs will be able to make more complete idiots of themselves—and that is all. Personally we should like to see all contractors' families prosperous—all American families prosperous. No man's wife or daughter can be too happy to suit us, provided things more important be not neglected. ——
If Union Labor wins, ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND families will be able to lead at least decent American workingmen's lives.
ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND wives will be able to dress their children comfortably and to dress themselves respectably.
ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND families of children will be brought up more nearly as American children ought to be.
Which is more important:
THE WELFARE OF 150 CONTRACTORS' FAMILIES? (They will have enough anyhow.)
Or THE WELFARE OF 150,000 WORKINGMEN'S FAMILIES? (They will have only a decent living at best.)
Perhaps you have drifted away from the early American idea, and refuse to admit that one family is as good as another. It may seem anarchistic to suggest that the workingman's wife, who acts as wife, mother, cook, washwoman, nurse and housekeeper, is as good as the lady who has less to attend to.
But admitting—which we don't—that one hundred and fifty contractors' families are more important than one hundred and fifty workingmen's families, surely all will agree that ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND of the alleged inferiors ought to offset the 150 alleged superiors. ——
If the contractors win, the Paris dressmakers will be richer, and a few families will have a little added to what they do not really need.
If the workingmen win, the future of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children will be made brighter, and the citizenship of the future made stronger by men better fed, better clothed and better educated. ——
This newspaper hopes for labor union victory and means to help it along, BECAUSE THE PUBLIC WELFARE DEMANDS IT.
TO-DAY'S WORLD-STRUGGLE
Far off in the distance shines the goal of present human ambition.
It is a shining, golden light. Toward that light the millions struggle, trampling each other, sacrificing everything in the harsh fight for the dollar.
Here and there a preacher thunders, here and there a philosopher proses against the money struggle. But they might as well whisper at the brink of Niagara. And often the preacher changes his thundering when a RICH church calls him, often the philosopher grasps the first chance to forget philosophy in Wall Street.
The men admired to-day are the men who have made millions—some are admired because they find excitement in giving the millions away, others because they silently pile more millions upon the others already gained.
"Society," the class devoted to pleasure, consists now, in
America, of those who have much money.
Literary success depends upon the money which the writer accumulates.
The man talked about is he who has SOLD a hundred thousand books.
The rich boy at school is followed by toadies. In college he learns contempt for human nature from the sycophancy of others.
"Representatives" of the People may be found dogging the footsteps of those who need to buy laws, or to steal the people's rights. ——
It is a fierce and remorseless climb up the steep road to wealth.
There are many corpses, many crimes, many broken hearts, haggard faces and bitter disappointments on that road.
The man with the "Good-money-making idea" struggles on with it over the bodies of suicides and of those who have fallen in despair.
At the bottom of the road the murderer plies his trade with knife or poison—to make money. And the murderer who has tried for MUCH money calls forth special interest and special privileges, special new trials, special newspaper headings.
At the top of the road to wealth, another, more intelligent class, work with equally remorseless energy. They murder no individual. But they rob entire classes of society.
They tax others to fatten their pockets—they add to the cost of food that children eat—they coin human life into cash—smoothly and nicely, using law-makers as tools. Envy and admiration are theirs—such admiration as the retail murderer can never earn. ——
The struggle for money is the struggle of THE WHOLE WORLD to-day.
And of the money-making movement, as of ALL WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENTS, there is a side that is good and necessary.
Divine wisdom guides the world, and the human race, working out its destiny in seeming blindness, is not allowed to wander from the track of actual progress.
The money-making mania is one phase of human advancement.
This is the age of industrial progress. Money is simply the means of perfecting industry. It is human labor condensed and put into compact, transferable shape.
The man with the hundred millions can build the great railroad across the continent. There is no more important work now than the building of that road.
The man with the thousand millions can control the great oil trust and a dozen other trusts. He taxes the people—but his hundreds of millions do an important and necessary work.
It is well for us all that such a man has sacrificed health, digestion, happiness and all idea of self-indulgence to the accumulation of a vast industrial army of dollars.
The scramble for money, looked at without understanding, is a horrid sight. But horrid also is the sight of a battle that frees slaves.
When the battle of money shall end, the score will be on the right side of humanity's ledger.
A few forgotten billionaires will have struggled and died. Some millions of men will have died disappointed.
But industry will have been brought to perfection. Universities, libraries and other benefactions will abound, pleading for recognition of the money-making dyspeptics. Human ingenuity will have contrived some means for freeing men's minds from the dread of destitution.
The money struggle will have ended and humanity will be much better off, much further advanced—as it is at the end of all great and painful struggles.
WHITE-RABBIT MILLIONAIRES AND OTHER THINGS
The most wonderful thing in America is—what do you think? It is the absolute nullity of the man of many millions. It is the vapid colorlessness, the dull inactivity, the total lack of imagination among men whose power is unlimited. What possibilities are spread out before the man who by signing his name could set to work in any direction a million of his fellow men! The world stands ready to obey his orders; every law says that he shall have whatever he demands. Any conception born in his brain can become reality as soon as conceived. But there is no conception there.
These comments are written, not to scold, or complain, or suggest, but simply to express wonder.
What man of millions does anything that a white rabbit does not do?
One man—of a hundred millions at least—has become recently very conspicuous among his golden fellows.
How?
By undertaking a scheme to irrigate the desert of Sahara and give millions of fertile acres to humanity?
No.
By calling together, at his expense, the ablest thinkers of the world to discuss and to solve, if possible, the social questions that so deeply concern the millionaire's future?
No.
By seeking, through study and experiment, to abolish child-labor, to promote public education, to encourage science art or American inventiveness?
No.
This millionaire, much discussed because of his piquant originality, has put on a dress coat with two pointed tails behind, and, geared in a white shirt front and white tie, with silk socks highly colored and patent leather shoes, this splendid American product has led a cotillon and has led a cakewalk.
Grand, splendid, magnificent, inspiring, isn't it?
What lop-eared, mild-eyed rabbit dancing in a clover field with a full paunch need fear comparison with this man of millions?
Old Jacques Coeur, of France, giving his fleets to his country—there was a man of millions and imagination combined. But his kind has died out, and in his place we have a herd of overfed, sleek, timorous, hopping white rabbits, hoarding their piles of gold, shivering at the mention of change or innovation, asking only for peaceful possession, as free from thought as the fat oyster in his bed.
What wonderful things, what useful things, what dangerous things could these all-powerful men do?
What could they not do? They DO nothing.
NO HAPPINESS SAVE IN MENTAL AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY.
Bresci, who murdered the Italian King, is sentenced to solitary confinement for life. While you read this he sits on a narrow plank in a cell not much bigger than a sleeping-car section.
If you talk to any friend about Bresci—and especially if you mention the subject to any young man inclined to be idle—call attention to this point. You can amplify what must be presented briefly here.
Bresci's imprisonment is torture—why?
Because it sentences him to DO NOTHING.
Every man put on this earth is put here for a purpose. He is put here to work, to struggle, to interest himself in his fellows, to share the pleasures and disappointments of others. The wise laws ruling the universe fill us with a DESIRE to do that which we were meant to do. It is intended that we should be active here, and, therefore, although we often fail to realize it, our happiness lies in activity.
Bresci is to be tortured beyond the power of imagination because he will be forbidden to follow nature's law. He will be forbidden to fulfill man's destiny here. His brain, his muscles, his sentiments must lie idle until death or insanity shall come to relieve him. ——
Bresci will live on bread and water—but it is not the bread and water that will make his life worse than death. He could be happy on such simple fare if his mind had work to do. Many a man has done his good work and enjoyed life's greatest pleasures while suffering mere hunger or poor fare.
Many men would be happier if they could see Bresci, the murderer, forced into that idleness which is sometimes ignorantly desired.
In his prison Bresci is protected from the sun and the rain and the cold. He can sleep as many hours as he likes. No duns can trouble him. He pays no rent. There is absolutely nothing that he MUST do. But there is absolutely nothing that he CAN do.
The saddest slave in Morocco toiling under the heaviest load would win Bresci's gratitude if only he would let Bresci carry that load.
The most desperate man, harassed by cares of all kinds, would seem blissfully happy in Bresci's eyes, for he has at least full play for his sentiments, for his activities. ——
To punish Ravaillac's attack on the life of the French King, long ago, they tried ingenious devices. They broke him on the wheel. They tortured him slowly. Finally they poured melted lead into his stomach through his navel. It was a hard death.
But they did not punish Ravaillac as severely as Bresci is to be punished.
The minutes, the hours, the weeks, months and years will drag along.
Idleness, idleness, idleness. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
No human smile or voice to measure time.
Sleep, bread and water; sleep, bread and water.
Gradually madness will come and bring relief.
Be glad that you are active, you who work willingly.
And you young man who rebel against labor and long for the chance to do nothing, study Bresci's case and take up your load gladly.
The decree condemning us to earn our bread in the sweat of our brow was merciful, not stern. For that same power which sentences all to work also causes happiness to be found in work alone.
THE OWNER OF A GOLDEN MOUNTAIN
An old man sits at the end of his life, with money piled up on all sides of him. Years ago he was working hard. All his ability was strained to the utmost pushing back those who strove to pass him on the road up the golden mountain.
He enjoyed the conflict, he enjoyed the sight of beaten rivals. His delight was in work, in ACQUISITION. His growing surplus added new zest to his life. He pitied "the poor fool" who wasted time at anything save money-making.
But he is at the top of the heap of money now. He looks about, and none compete with him. A few strugglers—too far away to be heard—strive for a little of his useless accumulation. Legal sharpers struggle and get a little, and in return keep away those who try to climb up near him.
The interest has gone out of life. Where he used to see competitors, he now sees only old memories. The old associates have gone—it is even too late to help them—and he will soon go, too.
He looks out over the land, and sees, when it is too late, all that he has missed while he thought he was doing the thing most important.
He has made a hundred millions of dollars, but not one human friend.
He can hire almost any man to do anything. But there is not enough money in the world to hire any one to miss him sincerely when he is gone.
Such a man as this—an actual individual, with wealth far exceeding one hundred millions—has insured his life for half a million. To those who asked "why" he replied: "I want some insurance company to be sorry when I die. No one else will be sorry." Possibly he thought he was joking. But there was truth in what he said.
The man who piles up money builds a solid wall that shuts out the world from him. Sycophants climb over the wall—but their flattery and fawning grow tiresome. Old age and cessation of strong feeling cause the mind to see clearly—and hypocrisy no longer deceives in the old, pleasant way.
The most depressing fact in the old man's life is the hopelessness of trying to change. His mind has worked so long in one direction that it can no longer work in any other. He would like, perhaps, to begin now and live as others live, but he cannot do it.
There are men whose great wealth is earned WITH PART OF THEIR ABILITY, leaving them force and strength for other things. Such a man was Peter Cooper.
But the man most frequently seen in America is the man who accumulates money for money's sake. His is a sad heart when he looks over the past and ahead into the short future.
If he has children, he has hardly known them—and HIS MONEY has separated them from each other.
When his son was a little child the rich man made himself think that he was piling up the money for that boy. What became of that boy?
Ask the Keeley Cure, the public gambling houses, Monte Carlo, the divorce court—and the other "resources" of the sons of the very rich.
Thousands envy him, and he knows it. But there is little in being envied when old age makes a lonely life unbearable, and when the next striking event in his career will be a funeral.
There are hundreds of thousands of men with their thoughts fixed absolutely on money making. They hate what threatens money. They love those who sympathize with money. They live, work, vote, talk, marry and cheat their friends for money.
If they fail—as most of them do—they die unhappy. If they succeed, money cheats THEM, and for all their devotion gives them nothing.
"For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"
The man wastes his soul who devotes its forces only to accumulating wealth.
THE HUMAN WEEDS IN PRISON
How shall we approach a prison to see it fairly and to study it intelligently?
Let us imagine ourselves visitors from a world outside of this.
Far off in infinite space there is a small whirling planet—our earth.
Little creatures move about this planet, chained to it by the force of gravity. But they MOVE as they choose, and they call themselves FREE.
There are millions of free square miles, and hundreds of millions of free human beings.
But there just below us is the prison at Auburn. There the human beings are not free. There suffer those who for any reason have violated the established rules of the little globe that supports them.
They have not even the freedom of the little patch of soil fenced in for them. They cannot walk, speak, sit down, lie down, or stand up as they please.
They have broken some of the rules established for the protection of all. They have misused their freedom, and in punishment their freedom is taken away from them.
They live in small cells, in a very big prison.
Gray stone, iron bars, striped suits, enforced silence, enforced work, enforced regularity of life—all these punish most keenly those whose first crime was lack of self-control and lack of regularity. ——
In every prison and in every prisoner there are lessons for each of us. You will not waste time to-day if you walk through this great Auburn prison and think of the men there think why they came there, think how they could have been saved, think what will gradually empty prisons and make them unnecessary.
A man with one arm opens the first iron gate—his mutilated body foreshadows the mutilated minds and souls within.
Before the door of the prison there are bright flowers—the name of the prison itself stands out in brightly colored blossoms to prove the gardener's ability and strange sense of the appropriate. Many of the causes that bring men there are written out in just such bright colors—when first seen—and many a prisoner must have thought of that as he passed through the iron door.
A party of six or seven go through the prison with you.
There is a woman of middle age, stout and cheerful, in a bright purple dress. There are two children, a moon-faced man, a tall, thin man, and others whom you do not notice.
Carelessly they look at a nervous woman sitting in the reception room talking to a convict. They take no interest in her, no interest in the convict. To you the prison guide says:
"She comes here to see him as often as the rules allow. She's his wife. She's been coming for seven years. I tell you, women get the hard end of it in this world."
Women do indeed get the hard end of it. There are twelve hundred men in that prison—and every one of them has caused some woman to suffer. And every one has broken the heart of one other woman—his mother.
Through a narrow door you travel with your fellow-visitors.
At every step you marvel at the curious indifference of average humanity to the one interesting thing—their fellow-man.
There are shown to you piles upon piles of loaves of bread—fresh and brown. The guide says: "We bake every day. Nine hundred loaves a day."
The stout woman in purple sighs with amazement, the children gape, the man with the round face has an anxious look—he seems to be a taxpayer.
But not one looks at or thinks of the convict who turns quickly away to hide a thin, white face. To you the guide says: "He's a forger. You can see he's sensitive about being here. Some of them never seem to get used to it." ——
The stout woman in purple is delighted with the enormous copper vats for making the convicts' coffee. She is charmed with the great iron pots for boiling soup.
But you will be more interested in these facts:
There is a great chapel—BUT NO CONVICT IS COMPELLED TO ATTEND.
There is a huge wash room—fitted with showers for the hardy, with porcelain tubs for the old and crippled—AND EVERY MAN IS COMPELLED TO TAKE HIS BATH.
How much of progress, how much that is hopeful for humanity, is told in those words!
Religious services are optional—no more compulsion of man's soul or of his belief.
Bathing IS COMPULSORY. Truly, we progress, and the prison rules prove it.
There were showers in every prison and in every insane asylum one hundred years ago—but those showers were used only to torture the criminal or the lunatic. He was doused with cold water until senseless.
There were chapels in the old-time prisons, and all were forced to accept and profess such views as the majority or the ruler chose to profess.
That prison at Auburn is a monument to humanity's sorrows and weaknesses. But it tells in every department of human decency and of a constant striving by those who are fortunate to help others.
In the prison yard a squad of convicts are marching. The lock-step is there no longer. Prison reform has ended that. The convict is no longer forced into a gait which stamps him ever after.
There are electric lights in the hundreds of cells—and there is absolute cleanliness throughout the vast structure. No hotel is cleaner, if any be as clean.
The convicts get their letters twice a week. They have pictures in their cells—and they may have musical instruments if they wish; and many a man, beside his narrow plank bed, has a strip of rag carpet made at home. Their lives are horrible—for confinement kills men's souls; and one has said who knew prison life:
"It is only what is GOOD in man
That wastes and withers there;
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
And the Warder is Despair." ——
While you go through the prison you see the things mentioned—electric lights, clean halls, bathing apparatus, and the rest. But you STUDY the human beings working at their fixed tasks, or moving about in their dismal, heavy suits of stripes.
Just as many kinds of faces as you see in a city street you see in that prison—but there you see more than elsewhere the failures, the human weeds.
But at least there is a striving to make things better. Society no longer willingly tortures its failures. It controls, punishes, but does not hate them. There are no beatings, no tortures, no close-cropped heads, even, for the convict may grow his hair as he chooses.
Every man who knows no trade is taught one. There is a feeling of moral responsibility to the criminal, and a desire at least to make him NO WORSE.
The prisoners are divided into two classes: those whose faces and skulls tell of evil birth and predestined failure, and those who are simply like others—average men, victims of chance, of temptation, of ability ill-balanced, of ignorance, of drink, or even of accident.
In one great room the convicts are weaving—working at hand looms. The work is desperately hard. Both hands and both feet are going constantly. Human power is used, that the greatest amount of labor and least competition with the outside working world may be simultaneously achieved.
At one loom sits a poor creature, a dismal human failure. His forehead is half an inch high and a bony ridge-telling of unfortunate prenatal influence—runs high along the top of his head. His small eyes are close together. His exaggerated chin protrudes; only a cunning look directed now and then toward the watchful warden tells that any thinking goes on in that miserable being. His best place, perhaps, is there. He is protected against himself, and society has no other way of taking care of him.
Near him sits a young boy in his teens. His face is intelligent; he is not a born criminal. He is above the average in intelligence, and in him there are all possibilities of success and usefulness.
A boyish piece of criminal foolishness brought him there—and he must now spend years degenerating into real criminality under the influences around him.