Part 6 (2/2)
_The Relation of Wages to Political Conditions._
The wages scale pivots on the strike. The employer's order for a reduction is his strike; to be effective, a reserve of the unemployed must be at his command. The wage-worker's demand for an increase is his strike; to be effective it must be backed up by the indispensableness of his services to the employer. Accordingly as the worker forces up the scale of wages, he is the more free, independent, and gainer of his product. To show the most direct way to the conditions in which workers may command steady work and raise their wages, this book is written. For the wages question equitably settled, the foundation for every remaining social reform is laid.
To-day, in the United States, in scores, nay, hundreds, of industrial communities the wage-working cla.s.s is in the majority. The wage-workers commonly believe, what is true, that they are the victims of injustice.
As yet, however, no project for restoring their rights has been successful. All the radical means suggested have been beyond their reach. But in so far as a single community may exercise equal rights and self-government, through these means it may approximate to just social arrangements.
Any American city of 50,000 inhabitants may be taken as ill.u.s.trative of all American industrial communities. In such a city, the economical and political conditions are typical. The immediate commercial interests of the buyers of labor, the employers, are opposed to those of the sellers of labor, the employed. To control the price of labor, each of these parties in the labor market resorts to whatever measures it finds within command. The employers in many branches of industry actually, and employers in general tacitly, combine against the labor organizations.
On the wage-workers' side, these organizations are the sole means, except a few well-nigh futile laws, yet developed to raise wages and shorten the work day. In case of a strike, the employers, to a.s.sist the police in intimidating the strikers, may engage a force of armed so-called detectives. Simply, perhaps, for inviting non-unionists to cease work, the strikers are subject to imprisonment. Trial for conspiracy may follow arrest, the judges allied by cla.s.s interests with the employers. The newspapers, careful not to offend advertisers, and looking to the well-to-do for the ma.s.s of their readers, may be inclined to exert an influence against the strikers. The solidarity of the wage-workers incomplete, even many of these may regard the fate of the strikers with indifference. In such situation, a strike of the wage-workers may be made to appear to all except those closely concerned as an a.s.sault on the bulwarks of society.
But what are the bulwarks of society directly arrayed against striking wage-workers? They are a ring of employers, a ring of officials enforcing cla.s.s law made by compliant representatives at the bidding of shrewd employers, and a ring of public sentiment makers--largely professional men whose hopes lie with wealthy patrons. Behind these outer barriers, and seldom affected by even widespread strikes, lies the citadel in which dwell the monopolists.
Such, in outline, are the intermingled political and economic conditions common to all American industrial centres. But above every other fact, one salient fact appears: On the wage-workers falls the burthen of cla.s.s law. On what, then, depends the wiping out of such law? Certainly on nothing else so much as on the force of the wage-workers themselves. To deprive their opponents of unjust legal advantages, and to invest themselves with just rights of which they have been deprived, is a task, outside their labor organizations, to be accomplished mainly by the wage-workers. It is their task as citizens--their political task. With direct legislation and local self-government, it is, in considerable degree, a feasible, even an easy, task. The labor organizations might supply the framework for a political party, as was done in New York city in 1886. Then, as was the case in that campaign, when the labor party polled 68,000 votes, even non-unionists might throw in the reinforcement of their otherwise hurtful strength. Success once in sight, the organized wage-workers would surely find citizens of other cla.s.ses helping to swell their vote. And in the straightforward politics of direct legislation, the labor leaders who command the respect of their fellows might, without danger to their character and influence, go boldly to the front.
_The Wage-Workers as a Political Majority._
Suppose that as far as possible our industrial city of 50,000 inhabitants should exercise self-government with direct legislation.
Various cla.s.ses seeking to reform common abuses, certain general reforms would immediately ensue. If the city should do what the Swiss have done, it would speedily rid its administration of unnecessary office-holders, reduce the salaries of its higher officials, and rescind outstanding franchise privileges. If the munic.i.p.ality should have power to determine its own methods of taxation, as is now in some respects the case in Ma.s.sachusetts towns, and toward which end a movement has begun in New York, it would probably imitate the Swiss in progressively taxing the higher-priced real estate, inheritances, and incomes. If the wage-workers, a majority in a direct vote, should demand in all public work the short hour day, they would get it, perhaps, as in the Rockland town meeting, without question. Further, the wage-workers might vote anti-Pinkerton ordinances, compel during strikes the neutrality of the police, and place judges from their own ranks in at least the local courts. These tasks partly under way, a change in prevailing social ideas would pa.s.s over the community. The press, echo, not of the widest spread sentiments, but of controlling public opinion, would open its columns to the wage-working cla.s.s come to power. And, as is ever so when the wage-workers are aggressive and probably may be dominant, the social question would burn.
_The Entire Span of Equal Rights._
The social question uppermost, the wage-workers--now in political ascendency, and bent on getting the full product of their labor--would seek further to improve their vantage ground. Sooner or later they would inevitably make issue of the most urgent, the most persistent, economic evil, local as well as general, the inequality of rights in the land.
They would affirm that, were the land of the community in use suitable to the general needs, the unemployed would find work and the total of production be largely increased. They would point to the vacant lots in and about the city, held on speculation, commonly in American cities covering a greater area than the land improved, and denounce so unjust a system of land tenure. They could demonstrate that the price of the land represented for the most part but the power of the owners to wring from the producers of the city, merely for s.p.a.ce on which to live and work, a considerable portion of their product. They could with reason declare that the withholding from use of the vacant land of the locality was the main cause of local poverty. And they would demand that legal advantages in the local vacant lands should forthwith cease.
In bringing to an end the local land monopoly, however, justice could be done the landholders. Unquestionably the fairest measure to them, and at the same time the most direct method of giving to city producers, if not free access to land, the next practicable thing to it, would be for the munic.i.p.ality to convert a part of the local vacant land into public property, and to open it in suitable plots to such citizens as should become occupiers. Sufficient land for this purpose might be acquired through eminent domain. The purchase money could be forthcoming from several sources--from progressive taxation in the direct forms already mentioned, from the city's income from franchises, and from the savings over the wastes of administration under present methods.
From the standpoint of equal rights there need be no difficulty in meeting the arguments certain to be brought against this proposed course--such sophistical arguments as that it is not the business of a government to take property from some citizens to give to others. If the unemployed, propertyless wage-worker has a right to live, he has the right to sustain life. To sustain life independently of other men's permission, access to natural resources is essential. This primary right being denied the wage-workers as a cla.s.s, any or all of whom, if unemployed, might soon be propertyless, they might in justice proceed to enforce it. To enforce it by means involving so little friction as those here proposed ought to win, not opposition, but approval.
Equal rights once conceded as just, this reasoning cannot be refuted.
Discussed in economic literature since before the day of Adam Smith, it has withstood every form of a.s.sault. If it has not been acted on in the Old World, it is because the wage-workers there, ignorant and in general deprived of the right to vote, have been helpless; and if not in the New, because, first, until within recent years the free western lands, attracting the unemployed and helping to maintain wages, in a measure gave labor access to nature, and, secondly, since the practical exhaustion of the free public domain the industrial wage-workers have not perceived how, through politics, to carry out their convictions on the land question.
Our reasoning is further strengthened by law and custom in state and nation. In nearly every state, the const.i.tution declares that the original and ultimate owners.h.i.+p of the land lies with all its people; and hence the method of administering the land is at all times an open public question. As to the nation at large, its settled policy and long-continued custom support the principle that all citizens have inalienable rights in the land. Instead of selling the national domain in quant.i.ties to suit purchasers, the government has held it open free to agricultural laborers, literally millions of men being thus given access to the soil. Moreover, in thirty-seven of the forty-four states, execution for debt cannot entirely deprive a man of his homestead, the value exempt in many of the states being thousands of dollars. Thus the general welfare has dictated the building up and the securing of a home for every laboring citizen.
In line, then, with established American principles is the proposition for munic.i.p.al lands. And if munic.i.p.alities have extended to capitalists privileges of many kinds, even granting them gratis sites for manufactories, and for terms of years exempting such real estate from taxation, why not accord to the wage-workers at least their primary natural rights? If any property be exempted from taxation, why not the homesite below a certain fixed value? And if, for the public benefit, munic.i.p.alities provide parks, museums, and libraries, why not give each producer a homesite--a footing on the earth? He who has not this is deprived of the first right to do that by which he must live, namely, labor.
_Effects of Munic.i.p.al Land._
A city public domain, open to citizen occupiers under just stipulations, would in several directions have far-reaching results.
Should this domain be occupied by, say, one thousand families of a population of 50,000, an immediate result, affecting the whole city, would be a fall in rents. In fact, the mere existence of the public domain, with a probability that his tenants would remove to it, might cause a landlord to reduce his rents. Besides, the value of all land, in the city and about it, held on speculation, would fall. Save in instances of particular advantage, the price of unimproved residence lots would gravitate toward the cost, all things considered, of residence lots in the public domain. This, for these reasons: The corner in land would be broken. Home builders would pay a private owner no more for a lot than the cost of a similar one in the public area. As houses went up on the public domain, the chances of landholders to sell to builders would be diminished. Sellers of land, besides competing with the public land, would then compete with increased activity with one another. Finally, just taxation of their land, valueless as a speculation, would oblige landowners to sell it or to put it to good use.
Even should the growth of the city be rapid, the value of land in private hands could in general advance but little, if at all. With the actual demands of an increased population, the public domain might from time to time be enlarged; but not, it may reasonably be a.s.sumed, at a rate that would give rise to an upward tendency of prices in the face of the above-mentioned factors contributing to a downward tendency.
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