Part 16 (1/2)

[93] A Protestant interdenominational organization of influence, which investigated the strike and issued a report.

[94] The union had not been formally ”recognized” at any time.

[95] Coppage _v._ Kansas, 236 U.S. (1915).

[96] Hitchman Coal and c.o.ke Co. _v._ Mitch.e.l.l et al, 245 U.S. 229 (1917).

[97] Duplex Printing Press Co. _v._ Deering, 41 Sup. Ct. 172 (1921).

[98] Montana allows the ”unfair list” and California allows all boycotts.

[99] American Steel Foundries of Granite City, Illinois, _v._ Tri-City Central Trades' Council, 42 Sup. Ct. 72 (1921).

[100] Truax et al. _v._ Corrigan, 42 Sup. Ct. 124 (1921).

PART III

CONCLUSIONS AND INFERENCES

CHAPTER 12

AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION

To interpret the labor movement means to offer a theory of the struggle between labor and capital in our present society. According to Karl Marx, the founder of modern socialism, the efficient cause in all the cla.s.s struggles of history has been technical progress. Progress in the mode of making a living or the growth of ”productive forces,” says Marx, causes the coming up of new cla.s.ses and stimulates in each and all cla.s.ses a desire to use their power for a maximum cla.s.s advantage.

Referring to the struggle between the cla.s.s of wage earners and the cla.s.s of employers, Marx brings out that modern machine technique has concentrated the social means of production under the owners.h.i.+p of the capitalist, who thus became absolute master. The laborer indeed remains a free man to dispose of his labor as he wishes, but, having lost possession of the means of production, which he had as a master-workman during the preceding handicraft stage of industry, his freedom is only an illusion and his bargaining power is no greater than if he were a slave.

But capitalism, Marx goes on to say, while it debases the worker, at the same time produces the conditions of his ultimate elevation. Capitalism with its starvation wages and misery makes the workers conscious of their common interests as an exploited cla.s.s, concentrates them in a limited number of industrial districts, and forces them to organize for a struggle against the exploiters. The struggle is for the complete displacement of the capitalists both in government and industry by the revolutionary labor cla.s.s. Moreover, capitalism itself renders effective although unintended aid to its enemies by developing the following three tendencies: First, we have the tendency towards the concentration of capital and wealth in the hands of a few of the largest capitalists, which reduces the number of the natural supporters of capitalism.

Second, we observe a tendency towards a steady depression of wages and a growing misery of the wage-earning cla.s.s, which keeps revolutionary ardor alive. And lastly, the inevitable and frequent economic crises under capitalism disorganize it and hasten it on towards destruction.

The last and gravest capitalistic industrial crisis will coincide with the social revolution which will bring capitalism to an end. The wage-earning cla.s.s must under no condition permit itself to be diverted from its revolutionary program into futile attempts to ”patch-up”

capitalism. The labor struggle must be for the abolition of capitalism.

American wage earners have steadily disappointed several generations of Marxians by their refusal to accept the Marxian theory of social development and the Marxian revolutionary goal. In fact, in their thinking, most American wage earners do not start with any general theory of industrial society, but approach the subject as bargainers, desiring to strike the best wage bargain possible. They also have a conception of what the bargain ought to yield them by way of real income, measured in terms of their customary standard of living, in terms of security for the future, and in terms of freedom in the shop or ”self-determination.” What impresses them is not so much the fact that the employer owns the employment opportunities but that he possesses a high degree of bargaining advantage over them. Viewing the situation as bargainers, they are forced to give their best attention to the menaces they encounter as bargainers, namely, to the compet.i.tive menaces; for on these the employer's own advantage as a bargainer rests. Their impulse is therefore not to suppress the employer, but to suppress those compet.i.tive menaces, be they convict labor, foreign labor, ”green” or untrained workers working on machines, and so forth. To do so they feel they must organize into a union and engage in a ”cla.s.s struggle” against the employer.

It is the employer's purpose to bring in ever lower and lower levels in compet.i.tion among laborers and depress wages; it is the purpose of the union to eliminate those lower levels and to make them stay eliminated.

That brings the union men face to face with the whole matter of industrial control. They have no a.s.surance that the employer will not get the best of them in bargaining unless they themselves possess enough control over the shop and the trade to check him. Hence they will strive for the ”recognition” of the union by the employer or the a.s.sociated employers as an acknowledged part of the government of the shop and the trade. It is essential to note that in struggling for recognition, labor is struggling not for something absolute, as would be a struggle for a complete dispossession of the employer, but for the sort of an end that admits of relative differences and gradations. Industrial control may be divided in varying proportions,[101] reflecting at any one time the relative ratio of bargaining power of the contesting sides. It is labor's aim to continue increasing its bargaining power and with it its share of industrial control, just as it is the employer's aim to maintain a _status quo_ or better. Although this presupposes a continuous struggle, it is not a revolutionary but an ”opportunist”

struggle.

Once we accept the view that a broadly conceived aim to control compet.i.tive menaces is the key to the conduct of organized labor in America, light is thrown on the causes of the American industrial cla.s.s struggles. In place of looking for these causes, with the Marxians, in the domain of technique and production, we shall look for them on the market, where all developments which affect labor as a bargainer and compet.i.tor, of which technical change is one, are sooner or later bound to register themselves. It will then become possible to account for the long stretch of industrial cla.s.s struggle in America prior to the factory system, while industry continued on the basis of the handicraft method of production. Also we shall be able to render to ourselves a clearer account of the changes, with time, in the intensity of the struggle, which, were we to follow the Marxian theory, would appear hopelessly irregular.

We shall take for an ill.u.s.tration the shoe industry.[102] The ease with which shoes can be transported long distances, due to the relatively high money value contained in small bulk, rendered the shoe industry more sensitive to changes in marketing than other industries. Indeed we may say that the shoe industry epitomized the general economic evolution of the country.[103]

We observe no industrial cla.s.s struggle during Colonial times when the market remained purely local and the work was custom-order work. The journeyman found his standard of life protected along with the master's own through the latter's ability to strike a favorable bargain with the consumer. This was done by laying stress upon the quality of the work.

It was mainly for this reason that during the custom-order stage of industry the journeymen seldom if ever raised a protest because the regulation of the craft, be it through a guild or through an informal organization, lay wholly in the hands of the masters. Moreover, the typical journeyman expected in a few years to set up with an apprentice or two in business for himself--so there was a reasonable harmony of interests.

A change came when improvements in transportation, the highway and later the ca.n.a.l, had widened the area of compet.i.tion among masters. As a first step, the master began to produce commodities in advance of the demand, laying up a stock of goods for the retail trade. The result was that his bargaining capacity over the consumer was lessened and so prices eventually had to be reduced, and with them also wages. The next step was even more serious. Having succeeded in his retail business, the master began to covet a still larger market,--the wholesale market.

However, the compet.i.tion in this wider market was much keener than it had been in the custom-order or even in the retail market. It was inevitable that both prices and wages should suffer in the process. The master, of course, could recoup himself by lowering the quality of the product, but when he did that he lost a telling argument in bargaining with the consumer or the retail merchant. Another result of this new way of conducting the business was that an increased amount of capital was now required for continuous operation, both in raw material and in credits extended to distant buyers.

The next phase in the evolution of the market rendered the separation of the journeymen into a cla.s.s by themselves even sharper as well as more permanent. The market had grown to such dimensions that only a specialist in marketing and credit could succeed in business, namely, the ”merchant-capitalist.” The latter now interposed himself permanently between ”producer” and consumer and by his control of the market a.s.sumed a commanding position. The merchant-capitalist ran his business upon the principle of a large turn-over and a small profit per unit of product, which, of course, made his income highly speculative. He was accordingly interested primarily in low production and labor costs. To depress the wage levels he tapped new and cheaper sources of labor supply, in prison labor, low wage country-town labor, woman and child labor; and set them up as compet.i.tive menaces to the workers in the trade. The merchant-capitalist system forced still another disadvantage upon the wage earner by splitting up crafts into separate operations and tapping lower levels of skill. In the merchant-capitalist period we find the ”team work” and ”task” system. The ”team” was composed of several workers: a highly skilled journeyman was in charge, but the other members possessed varying degrees of skill down to the practically unskilled ”finisher.” The team was generally paid a lump wage, which was divided by an understanding among the members. With all that the merchant-capitalist took no appreciable part in the productive process.