Part 38 (1/2)

This view also meets that of the unions in most countries. The President of the American Federation, Mr. Gompers, understands this thoroughly and quotes with approval the action taken recently by the labor unions in Sweden, Hungary, and Italy, which demand the enforcement of this policy of absolute ”neutrality.” Formerly the federation of the unions of Sweden, for example, agreed to use their efforts to have the local unions become a part of the local organization of the Social Democratic Party. These words providing for this policy were struck out of the const.i.tution by the Convention of 1909, which at the same time adopted (by a considerable majority) a resolution that ”by this decision it was not intended to break up the unity and solidarity of labor's forces, for the convention considers the Social Democratic Party as the natural expression of the political ambitions of the Swedish workers.” A similar relation prevails in nearly every country of the Continent.

The Secretary of the German Federation (who is its highest officer)--a man who is at the same time an active Socialist,--has defined accurately the relation between the two organizations in that country. He says that the unions cannot accomplish their purposes without securing political representation ”through a Party that is active in legislative bodies.”

This is also the view now of the British unions, which in overwhelming majority support the Labor Party. And they do this for the same purposes mentioned by Legien: to protect the working people from excessive exploitation, to enact into law the advantages already won by the unions, and so to smooth the way for better labor conditions. Similarly, the American Federation of Labor secures representation on legislative bodies, and hesitates to form a national Labor Party, not on principle, but only because American conditions do not in most localities promise that it would be effective.

Mr. Mitch.e.l.l expresses the position of the American Federation when he says that the ”wage earners should in proportion to their strength secure the nomination and the election of a number of representatives to the governing bodies of city, State, and nation,” but that ”a third Labor Party is not for the present desirable, because it would not obtain a majority and could not therefore force its will upon the community at large.” The European Socialists would perhaps not understand the political principle of our governmental system, which requires a plurality in the State or nation in order to obtain immediate results. For in this country the more important branches of the government are the executive and judges, and these, unlike the legislatures, cannot as a rule be divided, and therefore give no opportunity for the representation of minorities, and are necessarily elected by State or national pluralities and usually by majorities. In the monarchical countries of the Continent either such officials are not elected, or their powers are circ.u.mscribed, and even England lies in this respect halfway between those countries and the United States. What Mr. Mitch.e.l.l says is in so far true; it would certainly require a large number of elections before a party beginning on the basis of a minority of representatives in Congress or the legislatures could win enough control over the executive and judges to ”force its will upon the community at large.” Mr. Mitch.e.l.l and the other leaders of the Federation are, it is seen, unwilling to undertake a campaign so long and arduous, and, since they have no means of attracting the votes of any but wage-earning voters, so doubtful as to its outcome.

Mr. Mitch.e.l.l says that the workingmen in a separate party could not even secure a respectable minority of the legislators. The numerical strength of the Unions in proportion to the _voting_ population is scarcely greater than it was when he wrote (1903), and what he said then holds true as ever to-day.

Mr. Gompers has also stated that labor would not be able to secure more than twenty-five or fifty Congressmen by independent political action. This is undoubtedly true, and we may take it for granted, therefore, that, unless the unions most unexpectedly increase their strength, there will be no national or even State-wide Trade Union or Labor Party in this country, though the San Francisco example of a city Labor party may be repeated now and then, and State organizations of the Socialist Party, which enjoy a large measure of autonomy, may occasionally, without changing their present names, reduce themselves to mere trade-union parties in the narrow sense of the term. President Gompers has claimed that 80 per cent of the voting members of the American Federation of Labor followed his advice in the election of 1908, which was, in nearly every case, to vote the Democratic ticket. There were not over 2,000,000 members of the Federation at this time, and of these (allowing for women, minors, and non-voting foreigners) there were not more than 1,500,000 voters. About 60 per cent of this number have always voted Democratic, so that if Mr. Gompers's claim were conceded it would mean a change of no more than 300,000 votes. It is true that such a number of voters could effect the election or defeat of a great many Democrats or Republican Congressmen, but, as Mr. Gompers says, it could only elect a score or two of Independents, a number which, as the example of Populism has shown, would be impotent under our political system. Moreover, as such a Congressional group would be situated politically not in the middle, but at one of the extremes, _it could never hold the balance of power in this or any other country_ until it became _a majority_.

Mr. Mitch.e.l.l is careful to qualify his opposition to the third party (or Labor Party) idea. He writes: ”I wish it to be understood that this refers only to the immediate policy of the unions. One cannot see what the future of the dominant parties in the United States will be, and should it come to pa.s.s that the two great American political parties oppose labor legislation, as they now favor it, it would be the imperative duty of unionists to form a third party in order to secure some measure of reform.”[241] Certainly both parties are becoming more and more willing to grant ”some measure” of labor reform, so that Mr.

Mitch.e.l.l is unlikely to change his present position.

Whether the unions form a separate party or not, is to them a matter not of principle, but of ways and means, of time and place. Where they are very weak politically they seek only to have their representatives in other parties; where they are stronger they may form a party of their own to cooperate with the other parties and secure a share in government; where they are strongest they will seek to gain control over a party that plays for higher stakes, brings to the unions the support of other elements, and remains in opposition until it can secure undivided control over government, _e.g._ the Socialist Party. Whether the unions operate through all parties or a Labor Party or a Socialist Party, is of secondary importance also to Socialists; what is of consequence is the character of the unions, and the effect of their political policy on the unions themselves. In all three cases the principles of the unions may be at bottom the same, and in any of the three cases they may be ready to use the Socialist Party for the sole purpose of securing a modest improvement of their wages--even obstructing other Party activities--as some of the German union leaders have done. They may also use a Labor Party for the same purpose--as in Great Britain. Or they may develop a political program without really favoring any political party or having any distinctive political aim--as in the United States.

The labor unions, even the most conservative, have always and everywhere had some kind of a political program. They have naturally favored the right to organize, to strike and boycott, free speech and a free press.

They have demanded universal suffrage, democratic const.i.tutions, and other measures to increase the political power of their members. They have favored all economic reform policies of which working people got a share, even if a disproportionately small one, and all forms of taxation that lightened their burdens.[242] And, finally, they have usually centered their attacks on the most powerful of their enemies, whether Emperor, Church, army, landlords, or large capitalists.

In economic and political reform, the American unions, like those of other countries, support all progressive measures, including the whole ”State Socialist” program. As to political machinery, they favor, of course, every proposal that can remove const.i.tutional checks and give the majority control over the government, such as the easy amendment of const.i.tutions and the right to recall judges and all other officials by majority vote. Like the Socialists, they welcome the ”State Socialist”

labor program, government insurance for workingmen against old age, sickness, accidents, and unemployment, a legal eight-hour day, a legal minimum wage, industrial education, the prohibition of child labor, etc.

The unions and the parties they use also join in the effort of the small capitalist investors and borrowers, consumers and producers, to control the large interests--the central feature of the ”State Socialist”

policy. But the conservative unions do not stop with such progressive, if non-Socialist, measures; they take up the cause of the smaller capitalists also _as compet.i.tors_. The recent attack of the Federation of Labor on the ”Steel Trust” is an example. The presidents of the majority of the more important unions, who signed this doc.u.ment, became the partisans not only of small capitalists who buy from the trust, sell to it, or invest in its securities, but also of the unsuccessful compet.i.tors that these combinations are eliminating. The Federation here spoke of ”the American inst.i.tution of unrestricted production,” which can mean nothing less than unrestricted compet.i.tion, and condemned the ”Steel Trust” because it controls production, whereas the regulation or control of production is precisely the most essential thing to be desired in a progressive industrial society--a control, of course, to be turned as soon as possible to the benefit of all the people.

The Federation's attack was not only economically reactionary, but it was practically disloyal to millions of employees. It applies against the ”trust,” which happens to be unpopular, arguments which apply even more strongly to compet.i.tive business. The trust, it said, corrupts legislative bodies and is responsible for the high tariff. As if all these practices had not begun before the ”trusts” came into being, as if the a.s.sociated manufacturers are not even more strenuous advocates of all the tariffs--which are life and death matters to them--than the ”trusts,” which might very well get along without them. Finally, the Federation accuses the ”Steel Trust” of an especially oppressive policy towards its working people, apparently forgetting its arch enemy, the manufacturer's a.s.sociation. It is notorious, moreover, that the smallest employers, such as the owners of sweat shops, nearly always on the verge of bankruptcy and sometimes on the verge of starvation themselves, are harder on their labor than the industrial combinations, and that in compet.i.tive establishments, like textile mills, the periods when employers are forced to close down altogether are far more frequent, making the average wages the year round far below those paid by any of the trusts. The merest glance at the statistics of the United States census will be sufficient evidence to prove this. For not only are weekly wages lower in the textile mills and several other industries than they are in the steel corporation, but also employment year in and year out is much more irregular. Here we see the unions adopting the politics of the small capitalists, not only on its constructive or ”State Socialist” side, but also in its _reactionary_ tendency, now being rapidly outgrown, of trying to restore compet.i.tion, and actually working against their own best interests for this purpose.

A writer in the _Federationist_ demands ”a reduction of railway charges, express rates, telegraph rates, telephone rates,” and a radical change in the great industrial corporations such as the Steel Trust, which is to be subjected to thorough regulation.

Swollen fortunes are to be broken up, together with the power of the monopolists, of ”the gamblers in the necessities of life, etc.”[243] In this writer's opinion (Mr. s.h.i.+bley), the monopolists are the chief cause of high prices and the only important anti-social group, and all the other cla.s.ses of society have a common interest with the wage earners. But business interests, manufacturers, the owners of large farms, and employers in lines where compet.i.tion still prevails, would also, with the fewest exceptions, take sides against the working people in any great labor conflict--as the history of every modern country for the past fifty years has shown. It is not ”Big Business” or ”The Interests,”

but business in general, not monopolistic employers, but the whole employing cla.s.s, against which the unions have contended and always must contend--on the economic as well as the political field. Mr.

Gompers and his a.s.sociates, like Mr. Bryan and Senator La Follette, demand that the people shall rule, but they all depend upon the hundreds of thousands of business men as allies, who, if opposed to government by monopolies, are still more opposed to government by their employees or by the consumers of their products, and are certain to fight any political movement of which they are a predominating part.

The American Federation of Labor, and the majority of the labor unions comprising it, are thus seen to have a political program scarcely distinguishable from that of the radical wing of either of the large parties,--for it seeks little if any more than to join in with the general movement against monopolists and large capitalists in a conflict that can never be won or lost, since the leaders in the movement are themselves indirectly and at the bottom a part of the capitalist cla.s.s.

The President of the American Federation views this partly reactionary and partly ”State Socialist” program as being directed against ”capitalism.” ”The votes of courageous and honest citizens in all civilized lands,” says Mr. Gompers, ”are cutting away the capitalistic powers' privilege to lay tribute on the producers. Capitalism, as a surviving form of feudalism,--the power to deprive the laborer of his product,--gives signs of expiring.”[244] Democratic reform and improvement in economic conditions are apparently taken by Mr. Gompers as a sign that capitalism is expiring and that society is progressing satisfactorily to the wage earners. Although the const.i.tution of the Federation says that the world-wide ”struggle between the capitalist and the laborer” is a struggle between ”oppressors and oppressed,” Mr.

Gompers gives the outside world to understand that the unions have no inevitable struggle before them, but are as interested in industrial peace as are the employers. He has expressed his interpretation of the purpose of the Federation in the single word ”more.” He sees progress and asks a share for the unionists as each forward step is taken. He does not ask that labor's share be increased in proportion to the progress made--to say nothing of asking that this share should be made disproportionately large in order gradually to make the distribution of income more equal. A capitalism inspired by a more enlightened selfishness might, without any ultimate loss, grant all the Federation's present demands, political as well as economic. Therefore, Mr. Gompers, quite logically, does not see any necessity for an aggressive att.i.tude.

”Labor unions,” says Mr. John Mitch.e.l.l, who takes a similar view, ”are _for_ workmen, but _against_ no one. They are not hostile to employers, not inimical to the interests of the general public. They are for a cla.s.s, because that cla.s.s exists and has cla.s.s interests, but the unions did not create and do not perpetuate the cla.s.s or its interests and do not seek to evoke a cla.s.s conflict.”[245] Here it is recognized that the working cla.s.s exists as a cla.s.s and has interests of its own. But, if, as Mr. Mitch.e.l.l adds, the unions do not wish to perpetuate this cla.s.s or its interests, then surely they must see to it, as far as they are able, that members of this cla.s.s have equal industrial opportunities with other citizens, and that its children should at least be no longer compelled to remain members of a cla.s.s from which, as he expressly acknowledges, there is at present no escape.

Both Mr. Gompers and Mr. Mitch.e.l.l have gone to the defense of the leading anti-Socialist organization in this country, Civic Federation--and nothing could draw in stronger colors than do their arguments the complete conflict of the Gompers-Mitch.e.l.l labor union policy to that of the Socialists. Mr. Gompers defends the Federation as worthy of labor's respect on the ground that many of its most active capitalist members have shown a sustained sincerity, ”always having in mind the rights and interests of labor,” which is the very ant.i.thesis to the Socialist claim that n.o.body will always have in mind the rights and the interests of labor, except the laborers--and least of all those who buy labor themselves, or are intimately a.s.sociated with those who buy labor.

Mr. Mitch.e.l.l says that through the Civic Federation many employers have become convinced that their antagonism to unions was based on prejudice, and have withdrawn their opposition to the organization of the men in their plants. No doubt this is strictly true. It shows that the unions had been presented to the employers as being profitable to them. This, Socialists would readily admit, might be the case with some labor organizations as they have been shaped by leaders like Mr. Mitch.e.l.l and conferences like those of the Civic Federation. To Socialists organizations that create this impression of harmony of interests do exactly what is most dangerous for the workers--that is, they make them less conscious and a.s.sertive of their own interests.

The Civic Federation, composed in large part of prominent capitalists and conservatives, endeavors to allay the discontent of labor by intimate a.s.sociation with the officers of the unions. Socialists have long recognized the tendency of trade-union leaders to be persuaded by such methods to the capitalist view. Eight years ago at Dresden, August Bebel had already seen this danger, for he placed in the same cla.s.s with the academic ”revisionists” those former proletarians who had been raised into higher positions and were lost to the working cla.s.ses through ”intercourse with people of the contrary tendency.” It is this cla.s.s of leaders, according to the Socialists, which, up to the present, has dominated the trade unions of Great Britain and the United States and occasionally of other countries.

No Socialist has been more persistent in directing working-cla.s.s opinion against all such ”leaders” than Mr. Debs, who does not mince matters in this direction. ”The American Federation of Labor,” he writes, ”has numbers, but the capitalist cla.s.s do not fear the American Federation of Labor; quite the contrary. There is something wrong with that form of unionism whose leaders are the lieutenants of capitalism; something is wrong with that form of unionism that forms an alliance with such a capitalist combination as the Civic Federation, whose sole purpose is to chloroform the working cla.s.s while the capitalist cla.s.s go through their pockets.... The old form of trade unionism no longer meets the demands of the working cla.s.s. The old trade union has not only fulfilled its mission and outlived its usefulness, but is now positively reactionary, and is maintained, not in the interest of the workers who support it, but in the interest of the capitalist cla.s.s who exploit the workers who support it.”

In a recent speech Mr. Debs related at length the Socialist view as to how, in his opinion, this misleading of labor leaders comes about:--