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 FORD HALL NOON LECTURES 
 
 THE LABOR MOVEMENT
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
 ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 
 
 LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 
 
 TORONTO
 
 THE 
 
 LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 FROM THE STANDPOINT OF 
 RELIGIOUS VALUES 
 
 BY 
 HARRY F. WARD 
 
 Professor of Social Service, Boston University School of Theology 
 Secretary, The Methodist Federation for Social Service 
 
 The verbatim stenographic report of a series of 
 
 noon day lectures 
 
 delivered at 
 
 Ford Hall, Boston, 1915, 
 
 together with the questions and answers of the 
 
 Forum period following each lecture 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1919 
 
 A.II rights reserved
 
 COPTRIGHT, 1917 
 
 By the iLiCMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published, May, 1917. 
 
 VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY 
 
 eiNQHAHTOM AND Nt« YOU!
 
 HD 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 A School of Theology and the I. W. W. sitting 
 together to discuss the labour problem! Can 
 any conference more strange to our modern 
 thinking be imagined! But could any confer- 
 ence more essentially logical be conceived ! The 
 bringing together, however, of these various 
 groups into one harmonious student body was 
 the function of a third idea in action, the Ford 
 Hall Open Forum. 
 
 Ford Hall stands for free discussion of ques- 
 tions carrying a distinctive ethical message. It is 
 in a large way a church for community religion. 
 Within its walls every religious, racial and 
 political element in the community have come 
 together seeking for a faith common to all. 
 Therefore, when the Boston University School of 
 Theology sought for a place fit and proper for the 
 exercise of the hospitality it contemplated, the 
 platform of Ford Hall with its associations of the 
 Open Forum was the natural place to seek. 
 
 The lectures here reproduced were originally 
 presented by Dr. Ward to his students in the 
 University. They attracted so much attention 
 that a group of ministers asked to have them 
 
 V
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 repeated. Thereupon the School of Theology 
 issued a general invitation to all to attend the 
 course. It stated the aim of the course to be to 
 present the broad, essential facts concerning the 
 constituent groups of the labour movement in 
 the United States, and discuss its main demands 
 from the standpoint of religious values. 
 
 The Boston Baptist Social Union gladly opened 
 Ford Hall to the meetings, and men of all classes 
 and creeds, of all ranks, standards and opinions, 
 gathered to listen to an official representative of 
 a School of Theology expound the labour move- 
 ment. Ministers and laymen, employers and 
 employees sat together and asked questions at 
 the close of the addresses. The lectures met 
 with a warm reception. The resolutions pre- 
 sented by the I. W. W. at their close may be taken 
 as fairly illustrative of the feeling of the think- 
 ing public toward the addresses. It is In re- 
 sponse to a very general request for their publi- 
 cation that this volume is presented to the public. 
 The text is from a verbatim stenographic report, 
 with no changes whatever. 
 
 I was privileged to preside at these lectures 
 and to conduct the question period. I feel that 
 this task was indeed an honour, and I regard it 
 as an equal privilege as editor to present this 
 volume to the larger public. 
 
 William Horton Foster.
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Can an interpreter of modern industry come 
 out of a theological seminary? An intelligent 
 twentieth century citizen would no more expect 
 it than did the average man of Jesus' time sup- 
 pose that any good thing could come out of Naz- 
 areth. But I ought to have taken it for granted 
 after my long acquaintance with such seminary 
 professors as Rauschenbusch, Fagnani, Mathews, 
 Hall, Vedder, Ryan and Rowe. Still I was 
 amazed when I witnessed the work of Prof. 
 Harry Ward in this remarkable course of lec- 
 tures. His range of knowledge, breadth of 
 vision, depth of sympathy, unruffled equanimity, 
 splendid poise, and remarkable powers of ready 
 and accurate speech simply overwhelm me. 
 That I myself was not bewitched nor hypnotised 
 was attested by the extraordinary response of 
 the entire audience that filled Ford Hall, day 
 after day. It was a conglomerate crowd of min- 
 isters, business and professional men, Socialists, 
 Labor Unionists and I. W. W.'s that made up 
 that audience. They all seemed to feel very 
 much as I did, and yet the labour problem was
 
 viu INTRODUCTION 
 
 handled from A to Z without hesitation, no side- 
 stepping and unequivocally. 
 
 And this extraordinarily unique situation was 
 intensified by the fact that the lecturer was not 
 essaying an adventure on his own hook and at 
 his own risk, but was speaking as the representa- 
 tive of the Theological School of Boston Univer- 
 sity in a hall freely given for the purpose by a 
 great lay organisation, the Boston Baptist Social 
 Union. And, to cap the climax, the National In- 
 dustrial Union of Textile Workers of the I. W. 
 W. fraternity drafted resolutions expressing 
 their appreciation of the whole enterprise and 
 especially of Professor Ward. I doubt if the 
 like of this has ever been known before. And re- 
 member that the audience had the right to ask 
 questions after each address and no vague, un- 
 certain or unsatisfactory statement could pass 
 unchallenged. 
 
 No small measure of the success of this im- 
 mensely significant enterprise was due to Mr. 
 William Horton Foster, who not only presided 
 throughout with great skill, but who also had 
 much to do with initiating and carrying forward 
 the whole idea. In fact, it was an outgrowth, in 
 some ways, of his work as Secretary of the Ford 
 Hall Foundation, an organisation given up to 
 promoting the Open Forum Movement. 
 
 George W. Coleman.
 
 Feb. 25, 1915. 
 
 In behalf of the I. W. "W. Propaganda League of 
 Boston we wish to express our sincere thanks to the 
 Baptist Social Union, also to the Boston University 
 School of Theology and particularly to Prof. Ward for 
 making it possible to present to the people of Boston 
 the most vital social problem of the day, namely, the 
 Labor Movement. 
 
 We wish to compliment Prof. Ward for the unbi- 
 ased, unprejudiced, and able manner in which he pre- 
 sented the controversy between capital and labor and 
 its causes. 
 
 The viewpoint taken by Prof. Ward coupled with 
 his remarkable exposition of the case of labor, we feel 
 will meet with the general approval of the organiza- 
 tion and its members. 
 
 It has ever been the policy of the I. W. W. and its 
 members to regard the conflict between the classes in 
 society from the viewpoint of the worker, and we be- 
 lieve that Prof. Ward in his course of lectures on the 
 labor movement has presented labor's Cause in such a 
 clear and analytical manner, that one would be led to 
 believe that he had acquired his extensive knowledge 
 of the Labor Movement from actual experience in 
 Industry. 
 
 We sincerely hope that the course of lectures just 
 completed will be published and given as wide a cir- 
 culation as possible. 
 
 Committee : 
 
 Signed 
 
 Adolph Lessig, 
 Nathan Herman, 
 Guy Curtis, 
 _JoHN J. Fraser.
 
 THE LABOR MOVEMENT
 
 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 I. TRADE UNIONS 
 
 The labour movement is one of the great social 
 forces that are making the modern world. It is 
 the effort of the wage earners to secure their full 
 share in the gains of our industrial civilisation ; 
 to secure also their full share in the control of 
 that civilisation. In its present form it has 
 three groupings, the trade unions, the socialists, 
 and the syndicalists. In this country the pre- 
 dominant labour organisation is the trade 
 union — which groups the workers according to 
 the craft which they follow, around the tools that 
 they use. These trade unions are centralised in 
 the American Federation of Labor which has ex- 
 isted about thirty -three years and comprises now 
 about two million members, with about half a 
 million other organised workers who are not 
 affiliated, the principal element in that group be- 
 ing the Railroad Brotherhoods. 
 
 The actual strength of the trade union move- 
 ment is much greater than its numbered mem- 
 bership, because a large proportion of the indus- 
 
 3
 
 4 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 trial workers who are not in its membership still 
 follow its lead. That means that the American 
 Federation of Labor has in it about 18 per cent, 
 of those available for membership, because it 
 operates in only two of the broad divisions of the 
 gainfully employed in this country. We have 
 something over twenty-nine million gainfully 
 employed in this country, in five groups. In 
 those two groups where the American Federation 
 of Labor operates we have a little over twelve 
 million people. Now that membership is gath- 
 ered by means of organisers who endeavour to 
 persuade first the workers to join the unions. 
 Where the trades are organised under the union 
 label they endeavour to get the employers to 
 adopt the unions, and to persuade the workers to 
 use union made goods. Of course the latter 
 method is confined to certain trades or goods 
 which are consumed by industrial wage earners. 
 That membership is gathered without distinc- 
 tion of sex, creed or colour, although there is 
 about the same discrimination against women 
 that there is in the world at large. It reflects 
 pretty accurately the general social situation. 
 For example, the Ladies' Garment Workers' 
 Union, which is the largest women's union, is of- 
 ficered practically entirely by men. There has 
 been a great increase in the last five years in the 
 organisation of women, due largely to the activ-
 
 TRADE UNIONS 5 
 
 ity of the Women's Trade Union League, and of 
 course a changing sentiment within labour 
 circles concerning the activity of women in 
 labour affairs. 
 
 The government of the trade union is a differ- 
 entiated matter. You have your central Amer- 
 ican Federation of Labor with its national oflflces, 
 sustained by a per capita tax. You have your 
 city and state federations. These deal with mat- 
 ters of general interest and general policy. The 
 real governmental power is in the national and 
 international unions, one hundred and eleven of 
 them, which compose the American Federation 
 of Labor. They really govern the labour world. 
 They have in them some twenty thousand local 
 labour unions. In addition there are some six 
 hundred and forty which have a charter directly 
 from the American Federation of Labor, either 
 because there is no international union in that 
 trade or because the local workers are not nu- 
 merous enough to be organised according to 
 trades. 
 
 The American Federation of Labor cannot 
 technically be held responsible for the acts of the 
 international unions. There is a certain degree 
 of moral responsibility, but it would be almost 
 as unfair to hold the American Federation of 
 Labor responsible for the McNamara crimes as 
 it would be to hold the United States responsible
 
 6 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 for the recent lynchings in Georgia. The local 
 unions have very little democratic power; for 
 power is centralised, to an extraordinary degree 
 almost, in the international unions. They have 
 the power of excommunication (and they do ex- 
 communicate) and the punishment is, of course, 
 that the places of strikers can be filled if need be 
 by the international union itself, and there is 
 really where its power of control lies and is 
 centred. 
 
 In so far as the general policy of trade unions 
 is concerned, — their relation to public welfare, — 
 whatever may be the defects in this country the 
 social gains that have come to us from them are 
 considerable. They have stood first of all for 
 the protection of the workers, the protection of 
 their lives, of their moral and intellectual wel- 
 fare. They have been a school of democracy. 
 Their influence over the immigrant group in 
 training them for American life can scarcely be 
 over-estimated. They promote the self-expres- 
 sion of labour as opposed on the one hand to phil- 
 anthropy and on the other hand to legislation. 
 They democratically develop workers themselves 
 to pursue the path of their own development. 
 
 COLLECTIVE BARGAINING 
 
 Consider some of the outstanding policies 
 which have generally prevailed. The funda-
 
 TRADE UNIONS 7 
 
 mental policy is collective bargaining. The 
 basic contention of the American Federation of 
 Labor is that there must be and is a partnership 
 between capital and labour, that their mutual 
 dependence one upon another creates a joint 
 moral obligation, that they must work together 
 and that their partnership must be realised 
 through collective bargaining, through the power 
 of labour to sell its labour and to agree to the 
 terms under which it shall work in joint capacity 
 through its chosen representatives. There is an 
 economic necessity here. Under the concen- 
 trated conditions of modern industry, labour of 
 course develops side by side a similar concentra- 
 tion and the two groups ( if business is to be done 
 according to the basis of to-day, economically 
 speaking) must work together. There must be 
 joint action on the part of these two groups. To 
 attempt to enforce the right of capital to deal 
 to-day with the individual labourer is just about 
 as reasonable as to ask labour (or for labour to 
 assert the right or the demand) to deal with indi- 
 vidual stockholders of an enterprise. Of course 
 we have been recently told on the stand in this 
 country by the men responsible for some of the 
 largest industries that the individual stockhold- 
 ers had no responsibility whatever for labour 
 conditions. 
 
 There is not only an economic necessity but an
 
 6 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 ethical necessity liere. Labour is not free to-day 
 unless it can bargain jointly. That is perfectly 
 obvious. It is under the compulsion of hunger 
 and of necessity. It does not own its tools; it 
 does not own its resources; it does not own the 
 things necessary for its work in the large and 
 highly organised industries to-day, and ethically 
 labour is neither free nor in the attitude or con- 
 dition of justice unless it has the right to bargain 
 collectively and jointly. Now that is generally 
 conceded. I suppose it has more opposition in 
 these United States than in any other civilised 
 country, and that is one of the anomalies of our 
 situation, that a country which has developed the 
 representative principle in government is yet un- 
 der the influence of a belated individualism and 
 largely attempts to deny that principle in indus- 
 try. And yet the days are changing. The 
 principle of collective bargaining will largely be 
 admitted to-day (perhaps by the majority), al- 
 though some folks are still living in the 
 eighteenth century and others still live in Col- 
 orado. But generally that principle is con- 
 ceded. 
 
 It was a remarkable exhibition on the stand be- 
 fore the Industrial Commission to see the men 
 who have the largest financial interests in this 
 country one after another admitting this princi- 
 ple, and then one after the other testifying that
 
 TRADE UNIONS 9 
 
 there had been no attempt in the industries 
 which they control to work out the principle and 
 to apply it. Now if you admit the right of 
 labour to bargain collectively and then refuse to 
 have any dealings whatsoever with the collective 
 organisation of labour you are giving labour a 
 loaf of bread which turns out to be made of stone. 
 Of course the collective bargaining may turn out 
 to be autocracy on the one side. There has al- 
 ways been the possibility of oligarchy when you 
 have attempted to organise a republic but that 
 has never held our hand from attempting to 
 carry through further democratic organisation. 
 Men have to face danger and perils as the price 
 or risk of progress. But in this day and age to 
 refuse to enter into any collective bargaining 
 with labour, to admit the principle but decline to 
 work out the form of it, is simply to leave the 
 whole industrial world in chaos, and to drive it 
 into a condition of anarchy, of guerilla warfare, 
 which is absolutely unsupportable in our modern 
 civilisation. 
 
 THE CLOSED SHOP 
 
 Then comes the policy of the closed shop and 
 those who object to collective bargaining object 
 to it because it leads to the closed shop. Now 
 there are different kinds of a closed shop. 
 One is the shop that is closed to organised
 
 10 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 labour, and that passes before the unsuspecting 
 public under the guise of an open shop. It is 
 largely promoted by a group of men in this 
 country who are interested in maintaining a 
 shop that is absolutely closed against organised 
 labour. There may be such a thing as an " open 
 shop " but as an experienced economist and in- 
 dustrial observer said to me not long ago, " I am 
 still looking for one." They do occur, of course, 
 here and there, non-union and union men work- 
 ing side by side. The tendency is, however, to 
 work one way or the other, to become either a 
 non-union shop or a union shop. 
 
 Now the terms non-union and closed shop are 
 not necessarily identical. There are two kinds 
 of closed shop, one is the shop where whoever 
 comes in is required to join a union, and the 
 other where no man is taken unless he is a union 
 man. For all practical purposes they are identi- 
 cal and may be so considered. The fundamental 
 thing about the closed shop in judging it is that 
 it is a war measure. It is not a policy of organ- 
 ised labour nearly as much in Europe as in this 
 country. It is not written in trade agreement 
 contracts in England as in this country. What 
 is the reason? It is in the different attitude of 
 the employer and the courts in England. 
 Labour has been driven in this country by the 
 opposition of employers, by industrial militarism
 
 TRADE UNIONS 11 
 
 and by the ancient attitude of courts to insist 
 more upon the closed shop than it does in Eng- 
 land, and the recent decision of the United States 
 Supreme Court making constitutional laws by 
 which the employer may discharge men for be- 
 longing to a union will have a tendency to ac- 
 centuate both the fighting spirit and the fighting 
 method. We shall hear more of the closed shop 
 because of that decision. 
 
 The closed shop must be judged on two 
 grounds, one economic and the other ethical. 
 Does it lead to economic efficiency? You will 
 have many manufacturers fight it on the grounds 
 of inefficiency, asserting that it is absolutely 
 inefficient from the standpoint of production. 
 Now in the long run this issue will be settled in 
 the field of efficiency but it will not be settled 
 simply in the field of efficiency from the stand- 
 point of the employer alone, not efficiency in pro- 
 duction alone; it will be efficiency from the 
 standpoint of social welfare, whether the total 
 human results are more or less under that sys- 
 tem than under any other. 
 
 When you come to the ethical ground, it is 
 the question of the degree of compulsion which 
 is exercised to secure the closed shop. We feel 
 instinctively and naturally, we Americans, that 
 a man has the right to control his labour as he 
 pleases. We do not always see the anarchical
 
 13 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 implication of that right. We do not always see 
 how we have had to limit that right in govern- 
 ment and how it will increasingly have to be lim- 
 ited in industry. But you must remember if you 
 are going to argue that an individual man has 
 the right to sell his labour on his own terms, to 
 work for whom he pleases and as he pleases, 
 then by the same token other men have the right 
 to decline to work with him, and if they exer- 
 cise that right that simply means the right of 
 a certain kind of closed shop. On the other 
 side you have compulsion exercised because the 
 man who declines to accept union standards is 
 lowering the standards of living for the whole 
 group and you have compulsion w^orking on both 
 sides. When that compulsion becomes actually 
 coercion you have an entirely different situation, 
 and while on pure grounds of social welfare it 
 will be and may be increasingly necessary to ex- 
 ercise coercion (we are doing it all the time 
 through our labour legislation), the principles of 
 ethics and sound government insist that this right 
 is a right which belongs to the community as a 
 whole. It belongs to the majority and it does 
 not belong to any single group in the community. 
 The closed shop without the element of coercion, 
 brought about by moral suasion which has no 
 coercion in it, may be of the highest ethical value 
 to the whole community.
 
 TRADE UNIONS IS 
 
 Then there is the preferential shop, where the 
 right of any man to work is recognised but where 
 the preference is given to the union man as 
 long as his character and efficiency is of equal 
 grade with the other man (on the ground that 
 the union is bearing the burden, is paying the 
 bills for improving labour conditions) where he 
 is given a preference in employment and where, 
 when it comes to discharge, he is given a prefer- 
 ence and retained. In other words the right of 
 any individual to seek employment is recognised, 
 but if he is a non-union man he can only get 
 the first preference by showing himself to have 
 better efficiency and better character than the 
 union man. Usually you get out of the prefer- 
 ential shop the union shop because all the peo- 
 ple who are there are union people. It naturally 
 works out in that way. It has come about by 
 a perfectly natural, ethical j)rocess because the 
 union has been raising its standards and furnish- 
 ing the best possible workmen. You have what 
 is practically a closed shop without any of the 
 coercion measures. 
 
 INDUSTRIAL DISPUTES 
 
 What about industrial disputes? The aver- 
 age picture that has until recently prevailed of 
 the agent of the union (he used to be the walk- 
 ing delegate), the business agent, is that he was
 
 14 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 a nuisance in the community who stirred up 
 trouble, an undesirable citizen because it was his 
 chief task to foment strikes. That is a popular 
 picture that has prevailed of the union organizer 
 until quite recently. Now what are the facts? 
 The facts are to-day that the chief business of the 
 successful business agent of the union is to pre- 
 vent strikes instead of to promote them, because 
 labour has learned all too bitterly the cost of war 
 methods, and the strike, of course, is a war 
 method that belongs to the Stone Age. To-day 
 organised labour is much more interested in pre- 
 venting strikes than it is in calling them. For 
 example, in 1913 organised labour in this coun- 
 try settled over three thousand disputes without 
 strikes, secured improved conditions in over 
 three thousand cases without strikes. Organ- 
 ised labour called in that year less than one 
 thousand strikes, and of all the strikes in this 
 country in that year organised labor had to do 
 with between fifty-five and seventy per cent. Or- 
 ganised labour is not to be held entirely respon- 
 sible for all the strikes. Carroll D. Wright has 
 said that 75 per cent, were occasioned because of 
 the refusal of employers to arbitrate. In every 
 country in the world except England, and 
 possibly Australia and New Zealand, in the last 
 five years there has been an increase of labour 
 difficulties, of industrial disputes, an increase
 
 TRADE UNIONS 15 
 
 in strikes. This condition has not obtained in 
 England because of the fact to which I referred 
 some time ago, because the principle of collective 
 bargaining and the rights of organised labour are 
 recognised more by English employers and Eng- 
 lish courts, because organised labour is stronger 
 there, because it has secured a greater oppor- 
 tunity of political expression, and where it is 
 stronger you have fewer strikes. Also we have 
 had a tendency to increasingly bitter and violent 
 strikes in this country in the last few years, but 
 it is interesting to note that they occurred in in- 
 dustries that are not organised. Some of the bit- 
 terest outbreaks in recent years in this country 
 have been because the conditions were unbear- 
 able. That was true in Lawrence. Now by the 
 same token conditions that have obtained in some 
 of the mining centres in this country have led to 
 action on the part of the local workers against 
 the desires and wishes and policy of the national 
 organisation, an action that was detrimental 
 because it was badly planned and came at the 
 wrong time. Conditions had become unbearable 
 and drove the workers to action. 
 
 INDUSTRIAL DISPUTES 
 
 How are they going to settle disputes? By ar- 
 bitration and conciliation? We have organised 
 a number of state boards of arbitration which
 
 16 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 are of very little use. They furnish an orna- 
 mental decoration on the statute book, an orna- 
 mental (or otherwise) oflflce for certain political 
 attaches, but they have not proved themselves 
 of very much value, partly for the reason that 
 they have usually come into the conflict too late. 
 You do not stand much chance of arbitrating a 
 difficulty when a man has got his fighting blood 
 up and is bound to win. That is one reason why 
 arbitration boards, that are really political 
 boards, fail. 
 
 The same thing is true of unofficial arbitration 
 boards because more and more the disputes in 
 industry become technical, have technical points. 
 If they are to be arbitrated it must be by men 
 of technical knowledge, not politicians or benev- 
 olent minded men from the general public. The 
 tendency of labour is toward arbitration but an 
 arbitration which has a technical knowledge of 
 the situation, to permanent trade boards in var- 
 ious industries. In the Garment Workers' trade 
 there has been successful development toward 
 that end. The last garment workers' strike in 
 Chicago was occasioned first because of the low 
 wages, and second, the continual unjust exac- 
 tions of the local foreman. Then there was no 
 opportunity for collective bargaining, no measure 
 by which workers could get their complaints 
 before the real owners and managers of the in-
 
 TRADE UNIONS 17 
 
 dustry. Finally in one of the shops of the west 
 side two or three girls went down to the oflflce 
 and after getting by the different employees they 
 finally got into the sanctum sanctorum of the 
 big man himself. He listened very patiently to 
 their grievances and told them it must be 
 remedied, and be remedied by the foreman con- 
 cerned. Then he telephoned to the foreman that 
 these things must be changed. But it was too 
 late. Those girls were afraid to face the little 
 petty tyrant who had been the occasion of their 
 going to see the big man, and on the way back 
 the strike started that affected afterwards one 
 hundred thousand people. Now when the man- 
 agers of that industry were told that these 
 workers wanted an opportunity for collective 
 bargaining they said it could not be done, that 
 one simply could not devise any measure for 
 permanent joint management in this trade. But 
 inside of six months such a measure was devised 
 which not only settled that strike but settled 
 every other diflflculty that arose in that garment 
 workers' trade thereafter. And these same 
 owners to-day are on record that they do not see 
 how they ever got along without a permanent 
 trade board to settle such disputes. 
 
 Of course there is the use of the Erdmann Act 
 in transportation, but this was used only once in 
 the first few years of its existence. Since 1908 it
 
 18 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 has been used sixty times. When you once estab- 
 lish a railroad wage rate it extends over a whole 
 system and it is absolutely maintained. All men 
 are hired on that basis and that is one reason 
 why that kind of arbitration is particularly suc- 
 cessful in that industry. But when you come 
 down to other industries that deal directly with 
 the making of goods, the only real way out of 
 continued disputes is to have a joint trade board 
 on which the workers are adequately represented 
 which can deal with grievances as they arise and 
 before they reach the fighting stage. It is prac- 
 tically not an arbitration board but a conciliation 
 board, a board of justice, the expression again of 
 the democratic principle of collective bargaining. 
 It is the first expression of it in the industrial 
 world. 
 
 The public is tremendously interested in 
 getting peace in industry but if the public wants 
 to avoid industrial disputes then the public must 
 care more for justice (very much more) than 
 it cares for peace. And the emphasis must be 
 put not on developing arbitration boards to try 
 to settle wars after they have started, but on 
 securing such proper conditions in industry as 
 will remove the causes of war. If the public had 
 been interested in seeing that the labour laws in 
 Colorado were kept and that conditions were 
 right in the Calumet mines the x)ublic would not
 
 TRADE UNIONS 19 
 
 have had to worry itself so much about the situ- 
 ation that later developed, and until we, the third 
 party to this situation, care a great deal more 
 than we now care about securing proper and just 
 conditions in industry we shall continually have 
 to bear the burdens of recurrent industrial dis- 
 putes. 
 
 LIMITATION OF OUTPUT 
 
 The charge is made that the trade union 
 cripples the efficiency of individuals and limits 
 total production. But we must remember that 
 this charge lies also against capital, for capital 
 limits production, shuts down to hold up prices, 
 closes out factories altogether to maintain a 
 monopoly, and has even been known to destroy 
 goods in order to hold up prices. The trouble 
 is that as long as men are running industry for 
 profit and other men are working for profit each 
 group is going to endeavour at times to limit out- 
 put in order to hold its own self-interest; your 
 charge here, your fundamental unethical condi- 
 tion, inheres not in either group but in the very 
 nature of the present organisation of industry. 
 Now labour limits production by limiting the 
 hours of work and objecting to the use of 
 machines. It advances again the contention 
 that these are necessary defence measures, that 
 it must defend the employee against destruction
 
 so THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 from overwork and low wages. And the facts 
 justify labour's contention. There are only 
 three defences of labour against the pace-maker, 
 against the speeding-up process, against a mis- 
 guided efficiency that is seeking only short times 
 results in immediate production and is not prop- 
 erly aware of the dangerous long times results 
 in the lives of the worker. One is the good will 
 of the human employer; the second, protective 
 legislation; and the third, labour's own organ- 
 ised power and its own measures. The life of the 
 worker must not be used up in the mere making 
 of goods. That is a secondary thing. It must 
 be made subordinate to the protection and devel- 
 opment of the life of the worker out of which 
 society itself exists. The sin of limiting produc- 
 tion (if there be a sin), inheres in both sides. 
 It is unethical to destroy both a man and his 
 work and it is unethical to require of a man less 
 than his best work. It is destructive of the very 
 soul of a man that he should put into his work 
 something less than the best, for a man only 
 grows at his work unto the full stature of man- 
 hood as he puts the very best that is in him into 
 the work that he is trying to do. Now when 
 you come to limit a man's work, whether or not 
 it will be morally destructive of the man depends 
 upon the motive for which it is limited. If it is 
 limited for social needs, to protect the group
 
 TRADE UNIONS SI 
 
 from destruction, it is ethical rather than unethi- 
 cal. The trouble is, of course, that when men 
 are taught that production must be limited (indi- 
 vidual production for the good of the whole, as 
 a necessary defence measure) that develops 
 shirking and loafing. It is simply one evidence 
 again of the moral degeneracy that follows after 
 a war and war measures. As long as you have 
 got a warfare here between the making of i^rofits 
 and the protection of the workers you are bound 
 to have some moral degeneration follow that 
 warfare on the side of both of the participants. 
 
 And what about the effects on society as a 
 whole? We are living under a system of pro- 
 duction that has been blindly carried forward. 
 I go into one community and find thousands out 
 of work and in another community find factories 
 working night and day. What we have here is 
 simply an absolutely blind and unintelligent 
 system of production. Over-production under 
 that system means unemployment and low wages 
 and it means burdens thrown upon the whole 
 community. Of course if we had the practical 
 knowledge and ethical sense to organise industry 
 co-ordinately, to satisfy our needs, we would not 
 have over-production and limitation of output. 
 But until that day comes labour must protect 
 itself, and in doing that it is to a certain extent 
 protecting the whole community from the results
 
 22 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 of the blind process whicli simply drives on until 
 it destroys both the ethical sense and the physical 
 power of the worker. 
 
 / What we have to do in the present situation 
 is to strike a mean between the killing of time 
 
 , and the killing of men, between the loafing of 
 
 ' labour and the driving of capital. And while 
 we are attempting to find that mean, we have also 
 got to move on to that better day when we shall 
 organise production intelligently and ethically, 
 
 j that day when 
 
 " No one shall work for money, 
 And no one shall work for fame, 
 But each for the joy of working," . . . 
 
 Towards the coming of that great day 
 organised labour is a potent force. When that 
 day comes we shall not need trade unions and 
 their policy, but until it does come w^e need them 
 very badly.
 
 TRADE UNIONS 
 
 Q. The speaker spoke about the interest of the 
 third party, the public, in strikes. Inasmuch as 
 the public is divided up into about 10 per cent, 
 capitalists and 90 per cent, workers, is it not a 
 mistake to si)eak about the public as a third 
 party? 
 
 A. The classification is not quite correct. 
 You have five groups of the gainfully employed 
 which comprise practically your public, but even 
 some of your capitalists are workers. In these 
 groups of the gainfully employed the largest 
 single group is the agricultural workers, about 
 eleven millions, and then you have got your pro- 
 fessional workers, and then you have got your 
 domestic workers, so that what you have in your 
 industrial disputes to-day is only about twelve 
 million, about 7 per cent, of the public. 
 
 Q. Does the speaker believe that the principle 
 of the American Federation of Labor, the 
 division of interest between capital and labour, 
 is an economic fallacy? 
 
 A. I will endeavour to answer that question 
 to-morrow. 
 
 Q. Did not the act of the McNamaras prove 
 the inefficiency of the trade union to cope with 
 the ever increasing power of the capitalist? 
 
 A. I think it proved rather the barbarity of 
 the attitude of a certain group of capitalists in
 
 S4> THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 this country towards the efforts of labour to 
 find a way out. It was an act of desperation; 
 it was the rat in the corner. It did to a certain 
 extent show that the trade union had its limit, 
 but that was only a part of the proof. 
 
 Q. In a year's time the labour agent handles 
 seventy-five disputes but no strike occurs, and at 
 the end of the year's time he can show that his 
 five hundred men are earning |500 more. Do 
 you know of any better method than that of the 
 labour agent to settle disputes? 
 
 A. This is the best method under the present 
 system of production if it is incorporated in the 
 trade agreement but it depends a good deal on 
 the personality of the business agent. 
 
 Q. Do you justify the closed shop on the 
 ground of efficiency or on the ground of ethics? 
 
 A. In regard to efficiency I think the predom- 
 inant testimony of the manufacturers themselves 
 in the highly organised trades proves that it is 
 more efficient; otherwise I am quite sure they 
 would not go into the agreement and under the 
 present system it is more profitable to them. On 
 ethical gi'ounds when you are dealing with the 
 closed shop under coercive methods it is not ethi- 
 cal. No war methods are ethical. But when 
 you get a shop which is practically a closed shop, 
 where there are all union men working but where 
 the door has not been shut by an arbitrary act
 
 TRADE UNIONS 05 
 
 of coercion, where the shop is practically closed 
 but it does not deny the right of employment to 
 any man, you have a highly ethical situation. 
 
 Q. Do you prefer the preferential shop? 
 
 A. In certain situations. 
 
 Q. Is there any tendency on the part of organ- 
 ised labour to organise men without trades? 
 
 A. The lecture on Thursday will answer that. 
 
 Q. Do you think that industrial democracy 
 will precede or follow political democracy? 
 
 A. The demand for industrial democracy rises 
 out of the realisation of the right of political 
 democracy. 
 
 Q. What is the use of giving workers indus- 
 trial democracy if they have not political democ- 
 racy? 
 
 A. They are mutually independent but develop 
 side by side. I do not think that question is 
 practically before us. We now have a certain 
 amount of political democracy. 
 
 Q. What is the objection to the Compulsory 
 Arbitration Act? 
 
 A. The objection of labour to the Compulsory 
 Arbitration Act, and also to the Canadian one, 
 which requires publicity and notification for 
 thirty days, and prohibits a strike or lockout 
 during that time, is that they apply unequally to 
 capital and labour; that capital can avoid the 
 consequences of such a law and its actual restric-
 
 36 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 tions which labour cannot do. It cannot call a 
 strike and labour is placed at a disadvantage 
 because capital can practically shut down and 
 discharge men. Labour finds itself beaten under 
 the enforcement of that act. 
 
 Q. Take an employer that puts in a new 
 machine and the man that runs the machine is 
 paid |1.50 a day where the man that did the work 
 before was j)aid |4.50. Do you think he is justi- 
 fied in putting in a machine that can only 
 cheapen the cost of labour without adding to the 
 efficiency of men or bettering the work? 
 
 A. Under the ethics of our present profit mak- 
 ing system, of course, he is justified. Socially 
 speaking, for it is a social responsibility that we 
 can't lay on an individual person, we can't allow 
 that thing to be done. 
 
 Q. What good does it do to strike? Since 
 1906 wages have gone up but necessities have 
 gone up too. 
 
 A. Quite true, but if you had not had the 
 efforts of unions you would have a greater dis- 
 parity. 
 
 Q. Of what benefit is it to the employer to 
 employ union labour, and how does the labour 
 union prove that union labour is of benefit to the 
 employer? 
 
 A. In this city I know of one case where the 
 agent of a certain union showed employers in a
 
 TRADE UNIONS 27 
 
 certain trade that they were making for their 
 own destruction by the employment of men im- 
 properly qualified to do the w^ork, and were 
 inaugurating a cut-throat competition. That is 
 only one case.
 
 II. SOCIALISM 
 
 We are considering to-day simply one aspect of 
 Socialism, taking it merely as the political ex- 
 pression of the labour movement, the attempt on 
 the part of the working class to achieve their 
 industrial ideals through political action. For 
 Socialism claims to be, of course, the working 
 class programme in the political field. The first 
 question is. To what extent is this claim justi- 
 fied? Is Socialism really the programme of the 
 working class? The Communist Manifesto, 
 which was the declaration of independence of the 
 Socialist state, uttered the thrilling slogan, 
 " Workers of the World, unite. You have noth- 
 ing to lose but your chains." The appeal then 
 came from outside the producing group. To 
 what extent has it been answered by the working 
 class? 
 
 V^ORKING CLASS PROGRAM 
 
 It is a definite attempt to create a working- 
 class consciousness, to develop self-realisation 
 and self-expression on the part of the producers. 
 
 But the Socialist should not be allowed to 
 suffer under the imputation of attempting to
 
 SOCIALISM 09 
 
 create class hatred. No intelligent Socialist 
 endeavours to stir up class hatred. Of course 
 the doctrine of class consciousness preached by 
 ignorant men unfamiliar with Socialist philoso- 
 phy may, and undoubtedly does, have a result 
 neither intended nor desired by the makers of 
 the Socialist programme. There is, however, 
 more danger of class hatred and class opposition 
 being stirred up by those who would put the 
 whole blame for social conditions upon individ- 
 ual malefactors, for if that doctrine ever gets 
 hold of the working class of this or any other 
 country the tendency will be to reach these indi- 
 vidual malefactors and the class to which they 
 belong with punishment. 
 
 The real object of developing class conscious- 
 ness, the real object of the intelligent leaders of 
 the Socialist movement, is to secure the abolition 
 of all classes, to get the working class to be so 
 conscious of the disabilities under which they 
 suffer through the class division of society that 
 they will not only redeem themselves but redeem 
 society forever from any such condition. To 
 what extent has there developed a genuine work- 
 ing class, that is, a self-conscious working class? 
 It is impossible to make an ecopomic grouping 
 here. That attempt of early Socialism has of 
 necessity been abandoned. There is no such 
 rapid division of society into capitalist and pro-
 
 30 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 letariat as early Socialism foretold. There is no 
 such abolition, economically speaking, of the 
 middle class as was forecast by early Socialists. 
 
 Economic groups, that is divisions according 
 to income, tend more and more to merge. The 
 wage earner becomes through the investment of 
 his saving (the higher class of wage earner) 
 more or less of a small capitalist. It is impos- 
 sible to divide the working class from the capi- 
 talist class to-day simply on the grounds of pure 
 income and economic self-interest. The working 
 class to-day instead of being simply an economic 
 group is an ethical and psychological group. It 
 is a group that thinks in certain terms and has 
 certain ideals rather than a group which has a 
 certain amount of income, rather than a group 
 which is a wage earning group as opposed to a 
 capitalist, investing group entirely. 
 
 The leading Socialists are telling us that the 
 working class is all those who live entirely by 
 their own labour, and then they face the eco- 
 nomic fact that I have just referred to, that many 
 who live entirely by their own labour are never- 
 theless investing some of their surplus funds 
 against the future. And so they say the working 
 class to-day is all those who live entirely or 
 principally by their own labour. But that does 
 not appear to be an adequate standard of classi- 
 fication.
 
 SOCIALISM 31 
 
 What about the folks who find themselves 
 under our inheritance system living entirely off 
 the labour of others and who yet come to see that 
 that is unethical, who find themselves in a posi- 
 tion that they wish to disown and yet if they 
 should abandon that position and come down 
 into the economic producing group they would 
 increase competition and tend to make condi- 
 tions harder for the group below. They reject 
 the principle under which they are living but are 
 yet endeavouring to the best of their ability so 
 to shape their conduct as to change the whole 
 situation. Now there are only a few of these 
 people but they belong with the working class. 
 They believe in the working class ideals and they 
 endeavour to live by them. And so we ought to 
 say that the working class to-day are those who 
 believe in so organising life that all shall produce 
 for the good of society, that none shall take 
 anything which they do not create, in value that 
 is, of course. 
 
 To what extent has the working class ideal 
 captured the labour movement in this country? 
 Of course, there has been a mistaken warfare 
 back and forth between the leaders of the trade 
 union movement and certain of the Socialists, 
 which warfare did not exist, and does not exist, 
 in Europe to any such extent as here. The 
 Socialist movement has had to face the folly of
 
 32 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 some of its defects and has had the bitter oppo- 
 sition of most of the leaders of the trade union 
 movement in this country. The result is that 
 the Socialist group in the American Federation 
 of Labor has been able in the last few years to 
 show about one- third of the total vote, and 
 there they stand. But that does not represent 
 their strength in the labour movement of this 
 country. You have other evidences within the 
 labour movement. They have affected it very 
 seriously and have modified the attitude of the 
 trade union leaders in this country toward polit- 
 ical action. Early trade unions in this country 
 absolutely disclaimed political action. Under 
 the impetus of the Socialist movement this posi- 
 tion has been abandoned and the American Fed- 
 eration of Labor now takes a political attitude. 
 They will support those men who stand for their 
 programme politically, and they will at times 
 oppose those who do not stand for it. They will, 
 of course, support trade union men for public 
 office. The evidence of a still further develop- 
 ment is the fact that the Washington Federa- 
 tion of Labor (that is the State of Washington 
 on the Pacific Coast) has come out absolutely 
 in favour not only of candidates who will stand 
 for the platform of the labour union but for 
 working class candidates. 
 
 There are other evidences of the extent to
 
 SOCIALISM 88 
 
 which the Socialist movement Is spreading 
 through the American labour movement. The 
 fact is that within the American Federation of 
 Labor you can find evidences of working class 
 action in the industrial field on the part of those 
 who disavow the political movement. Both in 
 the Chicago and San Francisco labour bodies 
 there have been notable and historic discussions 
 over w^hich took priority in the case of industrial 
 disputes, labour's obligations to labour or 
 labour's obligations to capital; that is, in the 
 event of a strike in a certain trade should the 
 allied trades keep their contracts with capital or 
 should they break them, holding more sacred and 
 prior their obligations to fellow labourers. It 
 is interesting to note in that discussion and fight 
 that prominent Socialist leaders, men of national 
 weight and standing, opposed violation of con- 
 tract, opposed w^orking class action in the indus- 
 trial field to the disregard of its obligation to 
 capital ; while, on the other hand, men who advo- 
 cated this policy were men who were bitter oppo- 
 nents of the Socialist political programme and 
 action. 
 
 The Socialist movement purposes in its polit- 
 ical action first to realise the immediate demands 
 of the trade union movement. It purposes to 
 secure them by legislation, as being a quicker 
 and a more general process, as being a process
 
 Si THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 which will achieve the results over a larger terri- 
 tory in quicker time and will secure support to 
 that end from the capitalist group. In that 
 endeavour, the Socialists point out the fact that 
 other allied forces can be enlisted. They are 
 seeking abolition of child labour, the protection 
 of women in industry, and proper liberty of 
 action for organised labour under the law, — the 
 immediate things which organised labour is itself 
 fighting for. It may be interesting to note that 
 the American Federation of Labor at its last 
 session took a distinctly reactionary step in this 
 matter and opposed the endeavour to secure the 
 eight hour day by legislation. 
 
 Of course the attempt at political action does 
 enlist other allied forces. For example, the Fed- 
 erated Council of Churches in this country, rep- 
 resenting some thirty denominations, of seven- 
 teen million people, are on record as being will- 
 ing to support legislative measures embodying 
 these just demands of labour for proper protec- 
 tion and relief from over-work; and by the same 
 token, the organised social workers in this coun- 
 try are on record to the same effect, so that you 
 have these groups that can be allied along with 
 the labour group to secure legislation for its 
 immediate advance. 
 
 The Socialist political programme goes very 
 much further than that. It is not content to
 
 SOCIALISM 35 
 
 accept these measures for the immediate im- 
 provement of labour as a compromise. They are 
 to be simply steps to far more significant 
 measures, for Socialism demands not only the 
 improvement of improper industrial conditions 
 but the reconstruction of the whole industrial 
 system around a totally different principle. It 
 requires the abolition of the private ownership 
 of the means of production and distribution 
 through collective ownership and through demo- 
 cratic management. It requires the abolition of 
 the wage system and the process by which the 
 surplus value created by the worker is automat- 
 ically appropriated by the capitalist group. It 
 requires the organisation of industry around the 
 principle of service instead of around the prin- 
 ciple of gain. It demands that goods shall be 
 made for use and not for profit. This is, of 
 course, not a change in the form of organisation 
 but in the very spirit and nature of the whole 
 industrial procedure, and it demands corre- 
 spondingly a similar change in the whole social 
 organisation. 
 
 Here you have a significant event in the 
 world's history. Here you have the attempt to 
 organise both industry and society around the 
 ideals of the worker instead of around the ideals 
 of the thinker and the fighter. Here you have 
 a group, which has never before expressed itself
 
 B6 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 in history, coming on to the stage of action, and 
 it is the group of greatest number, it is the group 
 of greatest power — when its power is once 
 developed and realised. Such a movement could 
 only be possible under democracy; such a pro- 
 gramme to realise such a hope could only be 
 realised, could only be expressed under a demo- 
 cratic system of government. But under that 
 system such expression is inevitable. For the 
 first time in history the manual worker, the in- 
 dustrial worker, has been given a stake in the 
 commonwealth, has been given place and oppor- 
 tunity in determining the government. For the 
 first time in history, that same worker has been 
 educated, has been taught to read, has been 
 taught to think; therefore, for the first time in 
 history his capacities for action have been de- 
 veloped, and now those capacities for action are 
 going to express themselves. Nothing can stop 
 that. The world is not going back from its gains 
 in democratic government and universal educa- 
 tion. And that being the case, it is inevitable 
 that this great group of power, which in past 
 ages has been simply the mud-sill over which 
 other folk walked to comfort and climbed to 
 power, which all through history has been at the 
 bottom of the social structure, shall now stand 
 upon its feet and take its appointed place in the 
 destinies of the race.
 
 SOCIALISM 3T 
 
 Now for those who believe in the ethics of 
 Christianity, it ought to be pointed out that one 
 of the great forces that have created both dem- 
 ocracy and popular education and have made this 
 movement for the development of the working 
 class possible has been the force of the principles 
 which are embodied in the teachings of Jesus. 
 In those teachings there sounded for the first 
 time in history, with a voice of universal author- 
 ity, and with absolute clearness the long-cher- 
 ished but long-unexpressed desires and hopes of 
 the workers of all the ages. There spoke a 
 worker, not a ruler, not an exploiter. There 
 spoke one w^ho worked with his hands and so 
 came close to the heart of the great bulk of the 
 human race, and also, in so doing, came close to 
 the very heart of the Eternal. 
 
 THE INDICTMENT OF CAPITALISM 
 
 To what extent does this programme which 
 the working class are forming — and remember 
 that it is in the making, it is not formed yet — 
 to what extent does this programme involve an 
 indictment of capitalism ; and the strongest part 
 of the Socialist propaganda in this country has 
 been its indictment of capitalism. It is not an 
 indictment of the capitalist; that needs to be 
 understood. That indictment needs to be made 
 sometimes but the Socialists are quite willing to
 
 38 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 leave that to the law as at present made and 
 administered. I think at times that the law 
 needs to get a little speeding up process in that 
 direction. I think, for example, that the men 
 who have recently been speculating in the hunger 
 of the race have put themselves beyond the pale 
 even of decent capitalist ethics. But the Social- 
 ist is not concerned with indicting individual 
 capitalists. He believes that they as much as 
 anyone else are victims of the system. His 
 indictment is against the whole system of indus- 
 try as organised on the capitalist basis. 
 
 First we want to understand that the Socialist 
 does not simply want to abolish individual own- 
 ership of the means of production and distribu- 
 tion of the sources of wealth. His contention is 
 not simply against individual ownership which, 
 of course, centres the resources upon which the 
 whole of life depends into a few hands. Against 
 such individualistic ownership you might put the 
 term collectivism, and you could have collectiv- 
 ism without Socialism. You might have a form 
 of state ownership which would abolish individ- 
 ual ownership of the means of production and 
 distribution but which would be nothing else but 
 state capitalism. Not a little of the state Social- 
 ism of Europe is nothing other than state capi- 
 talism, both ownership and the capitalistic prin- 
 ciple being transferred to the state collectively.
 
 SOCIALISM 39 
 
 Something more is involved in capitalism than 
 individual ownership of the means of life. It is 
 the carrying on of industry for the mere piling 
 up of economic wealth, for the mere increase of 
 capital, the mere making of goods — for the sake 
 of having goods and getting profit out of them. 
 That is the fundamental sin in the capitalist 
 organisation of industry. The development of 
 human life, the great, vital interests of human 
 welfare are made secondary to the production of 
 goods. The increase of capital is the goal of the 
 system. 
 
 Now what indictment does Socialism bring 
 against such a system of the carrying on of in- 
 dustry, the making of goods for the sake of 
 profit and increase of wealth rather than that 
 goods should serve human life and develop the 
 highest values of human life? And Socialism is 
 not alone in its indictment of capital. If you 
 will read what Professor Brooks Adams, of this 
 city, says in his "Theory of Social Revolutions," 
 you will find as severe an indictment of the 
 efficiency of the capitalist system of industry as 
 could have been penned. If you will read " Be- 
 tween Eras " by Professor Small of the Univer- 
 sity of Chicago, you will find a most scathing 
 moral indictment of capitalism, and both of these 
 come from non-socialist sources. The burden of 
 their testimony is, that while cajjitalism has ful-
 
 40 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 filled a necessary part in human development, 
 and while its contribution to the human race has 
 been extremely significant, while we are all in- 
 debted to it for many things, it has now become 
 an outworn process, inadequate to meet the needs 
 of the present; that it is like one of its old 
 machines that needs to be put in the scrap heap, 
 to give place to a more intelligent and more 
 efficient method of doing the world's work. 
 
 Now it would be well for us, big capitalists and 
 small capitalists, middle-class, professional men 
 and workers, if we could look at that testimony 
 dispassionately, considering it as an indictment 
 of a system and not of persons; if we could 
 separate the personal element and face that 
 situation on economic and ethical grounds, on 
 the basis of industrial and social efficiency. 
 For that is the part of the indictment, that the 
 capitalist system no longer fulfils its own cher- 
 ished ideal of efficiency; that it is no longer 
 adequate to do the work of the world properly; 
 that under its competitive organisation we are 
 securing a break-down both in the process of 
 production and the process of distribution; that 
 production is not adequately handled to meet the 
 needs of the world to-day; that we have contin- 
 ued cycles of prosperity and depression, of over- 
 production and under-production, of good times 
 and hard times, of panics with all that they infer
 
 SOCIALISM 41 
 
 in unemployment and uncertainty, even to the 
 capitalist group. 
 
 The evidence for that of course lies with 
 economists, but the man in the street can see how 
 the system jDractically breaks down, especially 
 if he be a man who travels about the country. 
 He will find in one place an abundance of goods, 
 in another place a scarcity, in one place over- 
 employment and in another under-employment. 
 He will find the produce of the fields and 
 orchards rotting on the ground and being thrown 
 into the sea at the ports in some sections, and in 
 other places he will find folks going hungry and 
 still others finding their incomes pressing ever 
 closer on the high cost of living. He will see 
 the enormous waste involved in the present 
 anarchistic method of distribution. 
 
 Some one with a brain for figures and an im- 
 agination has computed that the total waste of 
 our present method of doing industry and busi- 
 ness amounts to six thousand dollars a year for 
 every family in the United States. That may be 
 rather high but there is enough waste going on 
 to relieve all the hardship of the w^orld. In the 
 face of a surplus production of food stuffs taking 
 the world over, in spite of the fact that we have 
 produced one and a half times more food than 
 will feed the world in comfort, we have whole 
 races living on the verge of starvation. That is
 
 42 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 an indication that our present method of produc- 
 tion and distribution is no longer adequate, that 
 it is not measuring up to the present intellectual 
 progress of the race. For the fact that we real- 
 ise the inefficiency shows that we have sufficient 
 intellectual capacity now to meet the situation. 
 To-day by social knowledge socially acquired and 
 social labour socially exercised, we conquer 
 nature, in both the products of the soil and in 
 disease, and still millions starve and die. To- 
 day by social knowledge socially acquired and 
 socially exercised we avert the disasters of the 
 waters and the disasters of contagion and still 
 we have our thousands stalking up and down our 
 streets in unemployment. If you need any more 
 testimony than mine and that of thousands of 
 others concerning the inefficiency of the capital- 
 istic system of industry to meet the needs of this 
 modern world, take the testimony of one of its 
 own high priests. Certainly the head of the steel 
 trust in this country is entitled to speak with 
 respect on this question and the most significant 
 thing I have seen in the American press in the 
 last few years was Mr. Gary's admission when 
 he faced the situation of unemployment in New 
 York as chairman of the committee there, that 
 the whole unemployment situation in this coun- 
 try was an evidence of bad management. It is 
 a social gain to have that admission.
 
 SOCIALISM 43 
 
 But when you come to face the moral situation, 
 the question is more significant still. There are 
 both economists and industrial leaders who tell 
 us that the present inefficiency of the capitalistic 
 system is not due to any inherent defect, but sim- 
 ply due to some minor mal-adjustments, that the 
 machine can still be cranked up and made to run 
 to meet the needs of the race. That will depend 
 upon whether there is any fundamental moral 
 quality lacking, for you need something more 
 than efficiency and science to meet the needs of 
 this modern world. You cannpt organise the 
 business of the world to-day to meet the demands 
 of the intellect and the consciousness of the 
 modern world unless you have certain moral 
 qualities in your system to begin with. And the 
 severest indictment against the capitalistic 
 system is on moral grounds. We must all admit 
 that certain moral qualities have been developed 
 and strengthened in the business and industrial 
 world by the capitalist methods of management, 
 that we have developed in certain aspects mutual 
 faith and trust and dependency. We have de- 
 veloped a certain amount of reliance upon men's 
 words, of co-operation up to a certain point but 
 over against that you have to put other factors. 
 You have to put the revelations that have been 
 made in court after court and to commission 
 after commission in the last twenty-five years of
 
 44 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 the extreme corruption in the order of the present 
 business world, due to all kinds of graft, due to 
 the drive of the profit motive, so that men who 
 would be perfectly honest man to man, whose 
 word man to man would be as good as their bond 
 any day (and that is a social gain due to capi- 
 talism), men of whom that could be said, would 
 yet corrupt their fellow men and plunder the 
 common people remorselessly. Evidences of the 
 corruption of departments of the United States 
 government, evidences of an organised plan 
 subtly to control Congress and the courts, evi- 
 dence of wholesale attempts to disrupt the labour 
 movement by bribery and corruption — these 
 are not charges but proven facts that lie at the 
 door of capitalism to-day. 
 
 And after that, its reckless waste of human 
 life; and after its reckless waste of human life 
 in the making of goods, its reckless destruction 
 of the moral nature of man, its exhaustion of the 
 spiritual energies of whole groups of men by 
 industry carried to the point of fatigue, by in- 
 dustry failing to furnish even the proper means 
 for physical nourishment and so leaving life 
 depleted and almost helpless! You have only 
 to read the testimony of the investigators in 
 Pittsburgh and other steel towns to see what the 
 most perfect capitalistic machine has done in the
 
 SOCIALISM 46 
 
 waste of the physical and moral resources of 
 whole groups of the population. 
 
 After that tale has been told there lies the 
 other story, and that is the tale of the stirring of 
 the spirit of hatred and bitterness and passion 
 and resentment that comes as men become aware 
 of this process. And you simply have all the 
 hate and hell of war transferred from militarism 
 over into the industrial system as long as it is 
 run by capital alone for the gains that chiefly 
 come to capital. And that is the end of the 
 story, because when you have capitalism in its 
 finest form, when it is honest and pure and good 
 it still leaves an unanswerable moral question in 
 the consciousness of those same good people. 
 Read what Small puts into the lips of the college 
 girl who finds herself inheriting a great fortune 
 but cannot understand what moral right she has 
 to it and how she shall use it to meet the question 
 of injustice that lies in her mind. That question 
 lies at the very heart of the system and is being 
 faced to-day by folks who are beyond reproach in 
 the circles of capitalism. 
 
 And for that question capitalism itself has no 
 answer. I took up my morning paper and I read 
 that after the management of the New Haven 
 Railroad has looted New England to the limit, 
 because the loot has been distributed into inno-
 
 46 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 cent hands, nothing can be done. The Commis- 
 sion says nothing can be done concerning it and 
 the papers say nothing can be done because they 
 approach it with the capitalistic mind. But 
 when you approach it from the mind which does 
 not insist upon the maintenance of the capital- 
 istic system of industry you ask why the people 
 who have got the major part of the loot — who 
 have got the money that innocent investors paid 
 to them — you ask why they cannot be reached 
 and the unholy tribute returned back to the pub- 
 lic again. Of course if New England is going to 
 contribute perpetually a tax upon the life and 
 labour of its people to the estates of great finan- 
 ciers, why nothing can be done. And then to 
 justify such a system men blasphemously have 
 talked about some of the most sacred teachings 
 of the Christian religion, being quite willing that 
 others should bear the burden for their sins 
 perpetually. 
 
 COLLECTIVE OWNERSHIP 
 
 Now to remedy this condition Socialism pro- 
 poses collective ownership. The later Socialists 
 admit that there are many forms of industry 
 which must still remain in private hands for a 
 long time to come. If you ask what it means 
 that the people should collectively own and 
 administer those things upon which the people
 
 SOCIALISM 47 
 
 depend, they will tell you it means taking over 
 immediately the means of transportation and 
 communication aud then some of the great 
 monopolies. They are willing to leave the rest 
 to natural and lawful social development. They 
 insist that we face a great world-wide movement 
 here that never reverses itself, that we continue 
 to extend our collective administration all over 
 the country, to the taking over of the Alaskan 
 railways and mines. The point is not to worry 
 about where to stop but to seize upon the next 
 step, according to your modern philosopher- 
 Socialist. 
 
 Is that a panacea? Will it do what Socialism 
 wants done? Will it restore to the people the 
 whole product of their labour? Will not simple 
 collectivism be merely another form of capital- 
 ism, with labour required to produce the un- 
 earned increment for those who hold the underly- 
 ing securities? Will it relieve the moral aspect 
 of the situation or are we face to face here with 
 something that is deeper than any form of indus- 
 trial organisation, that lies rather in human 
 nature than in any principle of social organisa- 
 tion? Are we face to face here with something 
 which cannot be met by any change in the social 
 organisation? You might have state capitalism, 
 or even the absolute co-operative ownership of 
 the means of life with all the results of the com-
 
 48 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 mon labour accruing to the people, and if the 
 motive was simply production of goods your 
 moral distress would be just the same as now, be- 
 cause your fundamental principle would not have 
 been changed. The fundamental evil is taking 
 and using and producing goods for the mere sake 
 of material gain and material pleasure, and 
 unless you can eliminate that you simply face 
 moral disaster under any system that the world 
 can devise. Organise collectively and co-oper- 
 atively and you put the balance on the side of 
 labour's ideal, but you do not automatically 
 secure it. You simply put the weight on the side 
 of man's idealism, on the side of his spiritual 
 nature. You cannot automatically produce the 
 great ideals men have longed for through all the 
 ages. 
 
 In addition to collective ownership you need 
 two other things. The first is, a spiritual con- 
 ception — an idealistic conception — of prop- 
 erty, so that property shall be seen to be sacred, 
 not because somebody happens to own it and 
 their right must be protected, but because on the 
 one hand it embodies the great energies of man 
 and the great energies of the Divine which have 
 gone into its production, and because on the 
 other hand it can contribute to the highest 
 development of man and be made the servant of 
 his spiritual capacities. Along with that you
 
 SOCIALISM 49 
 
 must have the spirit and ideal of service so that 
 men will bend their necks beneath the yoke of 
 toil, the common burden of the world's work, 
 neither for their own honour nor comfort, but 
 will perform their due part in the work of the 
 world as servants of the common good. Without 
 that spirit of service, without that devotion to 
 the ideal which belongs to the artists and to the 
 prophets and to the martyrs, and which now 
 becomes the sacred right and the divine heritage 
 of the common toilers, without that your co- 
 operative commonwealth will be a vain delusion. 
 But with that your co-operative commonwealth 
 is identical with the Kingdom of God which 
 Jesus taught.
 
 60 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 Q. In the interim of the socialistic ideal what 
 would the speaker do if he were left a million 
 dollars? 
 
 A. I would try to rid myself of the incum- 
 brance as quickly as possible, but I would do it, 
 as one of our American millionaires said, to the 
 best of my judgment to destroy the system under 
 which it was made. 
 
 Q. In what way does the programme of 
 modern Socialism differ from the Marxian pro- 
 gramme? 
 
 A. The modern Socialist is much more of a 
 philosopher than Marx was. Taking him in the 
 group he is not so much of a materialist or fatal- 
 ist. He believes much more than Marx did in 
 the conscious working out of the social goal. 
 
 Q. You said you must separate the personal 
 question from the impersonal one. How can 
 there be a moral question involved if the per- 
 sonal element is not predominant? 
 
 A. There are group moral questions in which 
 persons are involved for which no person is or 
 can be alone responsible. He is responsible for 
 his part toward the changing of any system that 
 he regards as unethical, and that is as far as his 
 responsibility goes, and you cannot hold him for 
 not breaking away from a condition he cannot 
 control.
 
 SOCIALISM 51 
 
 Q. Why do not those who claim to be sympa- 
 thetic to Socialism and support it with their 
 money come out plainly and say they are Social- 
 ists? 
 
 A. I should think that if there is any truth 
 in the phrase, " Money talks," that is what they 
 are doing. 
 
 Q. Is not such an industry as the Ford a good 
 illustration of absolute co-operation along So- 
 cialist lines? 
 
 A. I shall deal with the question of profit 
 sharing in a later lecture. 
 
 Q. The claim is made that Socialism only ap- 
 peals to manual labour and not to intellectual. 
 Is this so? 
 
 A. While regretting the fact, I have not yet 
 found any way of getting intelligence into the 
 heads of some people. It simply cannot be done. 
 Socialism has never made that distinction which 
 some of its opponents have put into its mouth. 
 It recognises the contribution of all groups of 
 active workers toward social progress. 
 
 Q. Why is it that Christianity is monopolised 
 by capitalists, at least, very few churches oppose 
 the capitalistic system. 
 
 A. Because the significance of Jesus' teach- 
 ing on property was obscured for a great pro- 
 portion of Christians by Roman and Grecian 
 influences in the early development of Christian-
 
 52 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 ity and turned into theological and doctrinal 
 channels. It is getting out of them now. 
 
 Q. Is only manual labour recognised by the So- 
 cialist? 
 
 A. The Socialist recognises all kinds of labour 
 that contributes to social progress and social de- 
 velopment. 
 
 Q. Have the arguments against Socialism 
 based upon religion any foundation? 
 
 A. There have been individual Socialists who 
 were very bitter antagonists of organised reli- 
 gion. Aside from that these attacks have no 
 logical and no ethical basis. 
 
 Q. Does Socialism tend to destroy the family? 
 
 A. That is another of those ancient lies that 
 still linger. The only basis for it is that some in- 
 dividual Socialists have been opposed to the fam- 
 ily in its present form, but Socialism as a whole 
 makes for the purification and freedom of the 
 family. 
 
 Q. Under Socialism would not social service 
 be more efficient and more in keeping than under 
 the present system of capitalism? 
 
 A. One of the greatest crimes and charges that 
 lie at the door of the present industrial system 
 is that it makes men worse than they naturally 
 would be because they are compelled to produce 
 dividends.
 
 SOCIALISM 53 
 
 Q. If the Socialists would have the govern- 
 ment take over the means of transportation and 
 communication what becomes of the other work- 
 ers? 
 
 A. I expect they would want to get their turn 
 as soon as they could. 
 
 Q. How can you reconcile the doctrine of eco- 
 nomic determinism and freedom of the will? 
 
 A. Because it shows man where to apply his 
 spiritual powers, namely, to the transformation 
 of the economic system. 
 
 Q. In view of the inefficiency now going on in 
 some public departments how can you assure us 
 that greater efficiency will result from Social- 
 ism? 
 
 A. We shall have to stand some inefficiency. 
 That is part of the price of progress. I would 
 rather have some kinds of inefficiency than oth- 
 ers, and I would rather have my mail a little 
 late and know that no mail carrier is working 
 over time. As we gain in social capacity ineffi- 
 ciency disapjjears. 
 
 Q. Instead of taking over only the means of 
 transportation and communication would not it 
 be just as easy to take over everything? In other 
 words would it not be just as easy to take a whole 
 loaf as half? 
 
 A. It is just as easy to stand for a great deal
 
 54, THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 more, but the point is you can practically pro- 
 ceed only in one way, and that is gain your social 
 efficiency as you go along. 
 
 Q. Will you give the names of one or two of 
 the best books on the subject of labour? 
 
 A. "American Trade Unions," by Marot ; "His- 
 tory and Problems of Organised Labor," by Carle- 
 ton, a sympathetic study from the outside. 
 
 Q. Will you please give the names of some 
 books on Socialism? 
 
 A. " History of Socialism," the revised edition ; 
 " Facts of Socialism," by Hughan, and the 
 " Spiritual Significance of Socialism," by Spargo.
 
 III. SYNDICALISM 
 
 The latest development in the labour movement 
 is Syndicalism. It comes from France, that su- 
 preme mother of revolutions. In France it ap- 
 pears to have spent its force. It is still strong 
 in the other Latin countries of Europe, perhaps 
 because of the temperament of the people and 
 perhaps because of the backward state of indus- 
 try in those countries. The name originally 
 meant nothing more than trade unionism, but 
 recently, in the last twenty years, it has come 
 to mean revolutionary unionism. One of its So- 
 cialist critics says that it comprises Socialist 
 philososphy, united with anarchistic ideals and 
 trade union weapons. 
 
 Syndicalism proposes to solidify the workers 
 by industries, and to use all the weapons of 
 trade unions to the utmost to accomplish an end 
 which trade unions do not seek to accomplish — 
 the transformation of the present industrial sys- 
 tem and also of the present organisation of so- 
 ciety. So far it agrees with socialism. But it 
 parts company with socialism because it dis- 
 trusts and disavows political methods, and will 
 have nothing to do with the political state, pro- 
 
 55
 
 66 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 posing to act purely in the economic field and to 
 accomplish an industrial in the place of a po- 
 litical state. 
 
 It has developed a philosophy. On the prac- 
 tical side it is the refuge of those who have be- 
 come disappointed and disillusioned, both in the 
 Trade Union Movement and in the Socialist 
 party. But it has gathered around it in Eu- 
 rope, a group of intellectuals who have expressed 
 its point of view in a philosophy — the philoso- 
 phy of pure intuition — claiming not a little 
 support from Bergson, and teaching the work- 
 ing class to distrust the intellectuals, believing 
 that the intuitions and desires of the workers 
 themselves will lead to a much more effective pro- 
 gramme than the plans of the theories of the 
 thinkers. It claims, in the mouth of this group 
 of philosophers, to be something more than a 
 philosophy, to be a religion, because of the ex- 
 tent to which it masses together large numbers 
 of men behind the ideal of a better and a higher 
 life, and unites them behind that ideal with a 
 passion for service to the extent of sacrifice. 
 
 INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM 
 
 Now before considering the American form of 
 Syndicalism, it ought to be noted that there is 
 a tendency in that direction inside the Ameri- 
 can Federation of Labor in this country. That
 
 SYNDICALISM 67 
 
 tendency goes under the head of Industrial Un- 
 ionism, which is the organisation of the workers 
 around the product instead of around the tool, 
 following not craft lines but following the di- 
 visions which cai^ital has made in the modern 
 industrial process. To organise the workers by 
 the industry instead of by the trade or the craft, 
 would oppose to the concentration of capital the 
 concentration of labour. It would avoid the 
 weakening effect of jurisdictional disputes, which 
 leaves labour fighting against itself in certain in- 
 dustries in times of strike, which not only dis- 
 gusts the general public but which also weakens 
 craft unionism. In some trades, there are rival 
 organisations, each claiming to dominate the 
 workers. 
 
 Industrial Unionism, however, has not always 
 succeeded in avoiding jurisdictional disputes. 
 Indeed, it has developed quite a few in organised 
 labour. The two great groups organised indus- 
 trially are the miners and the brewery workers. 
 One of the latest jurisdictional fights arose out 
 of the fact that owing to the success of the pro- 
 hibition movement some of the breweries have 
 gone into the business of producing mineral 
 waters, and the brewery workers' union claimed 
 jurisdiction over the men driving the mineral 
 water wagons. This claim led to a conflict with 
 the union of another trade, and incidentally
 
 58 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 raised the question. " When is a brewery not a 
 brewery? " 
 
 Besides, these industrial unions have an 
 anarchistic tendency in the labour world because 
 they have a frankly revolutionary aim and pur- 
 pose; that is, they are not content to modify the 
 existing system, but propose to transform it, — 
 of course by political means, not by weapons and 
 violence. That is very clear, both with the 
 brewery workers and the miners. The preamble 
 to the Constitution of the United Mine Workers 
 sets forth that their goal is to secure for the 
 workers the full social value of their product. 
 
 While they have this tendency, however, the 
 industrial unions part company with the Syndi- 
 calists because they trust to political means. 
 They are allied with the socialist group rather 
 than with the group of the industrial workers 
 organised for direct industrial action. 
 
 This group of industrial unionists has ex- 
 tended itself, and has influenced labour in other 
 directions. In order to meet the demand the 
 A. F. of L. has created departments, with the 
 effort to amalgamate groups of trades. Concen- 
 tration of trades has developed within those 
 departments — in the metal trades it has pro- 
 ceeded to a very marked degree. There have 
 been efforts made also in the direction of feder- 
 ation of unions, a most noted example being in
 
 SYNDICALISM 69 
 
 the railroad workers, where we have a federation 
 of all mechanical workers to meet the federation 
 of the lines themselves. It has also been pro- 
 posed and sanctioned that there should be a 
 federation of federations so as to meet the con- 
 centrated management of the railroads with the 
 concentrated organisation of all the workers. 
 This was attempted once before in this country, 
 in 1894. 
 
 These tendencies within the American Feder- 
 ation of Labor all indicate that the type of labour 
 union for the future will be the industrial type. 
 There are two great forces working in that direc- 
 tion; one, the improvement of machinery which 
 makes labour increasingly automatic and wipes 
 out the old craftsman and therefore removes the 
 necessity for the craft union ; the other being the 
 increased concentration of capital, and of the 
 management of industry, which forces increasing 
 solidarity of labour. 
 
 THE I. w. W. 
 
 The American expression of Syndicalism is the 
 I. W. W., that feared, hated, misunderstood, mis- 
 represented, and outlawed organisation. It is 
 the stormy petrel of the American labour move- 
 ment. Wherever there is any kind of a fight to 
 be waged in behalf of the folks at the bottom, the 
 I. W. W. is more than willing to wage it. When-
 
 60 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 ever there are heads to be broken, its heads are 
 cheerfully and gallantly offered. It has to en- 
 dure to-day the same kind of obliquy, the same 
 misrepresentation that attended trade unionism 
 in its early days, and socialism in its beginning. 
 
 There is evidence beyond the shadow of a doubt 
 that Syndicalism in Europe was started by the 
 group of militant anarchists in France, who 
 were persecuted by the police and mercilessly 
 hunted down, they attempted in vain to estab- 
 lish relations with the socialist groups. Finding 
 there was no possibility of opening up again that 
 long warfare which had been waging in Europe 
 between socialists and anarchists, they turned to 
 the trade unions for refuge. They went into 
 them and captured a section of them with their 
 policies and their programme. In comparison 
 with that, in this country the most militant and 
 successful leader of the I. W. W. came out of that 
 early strike in Colorado, 1903-4, when certain 
 corporations appropriated for their own use both 
 the civil and the military powers of the State, 
 when their agents over-ruled the courts by force, 
 and publicly consigned the Constitution to hell. 
 
 There are a lot of people interested in this 
 country in repressing the I. W. W. They 
 ought to note this fact, that the growth of 
 the I. W. W. proceeds in direct ratio to the policy 
 of repression. Whenever trade union organisa-
 
 SYNDICALISM 61 
 
 tion is denied by capital, the next move of labour 
 is to seek political expression. Whenever trade 
 union activity is limited there you will find 
 socialism increasing its vote. Where political 
 activity is not entered into, where it is checked 
 or repressed, or wherever working folks are not 
 naturalised, there you find industrial activity 
 growing by leaps and bounds. Those folks who 
 are trying to hold back the flood of discontent, 
 might well remember what has happened in the 
 past to those who attempted to do that thing by 
 the mere policy of repression. They might, as 
 they look around them, remember also what 
 happens to people who try to sit too long on a 
 safety valve. 
 
 The I. W. W. claims a membership of 120,000 
 members; it had a paid-up membership in 1913 
 of about 30,000. It proposes to organise the 
 workers into one big union with certain national 
 departments; operating in three fields at 
 present, — textile workers, forest and lumber 
 workers, marine and transportation workers. 
 It has about ninety-five local unions scattered 
 around, including farm workers and construc- 
 tion hands. It operates in the unskilled immi- 
 grant group at the bottom, and in the group of 
 nomads created by the abnormal conditions of 
 our seasonal trades. Besides this, it is the Cave 
 of Adullam of the modern working world, to
 
 63 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 which gather all those who find themselves out- 
 cast and many of those who believe themselves 
 outlawed. It is the mouthpiece of discontent. 
 It gathers to itself naturally the most radical 
 among the Socialists. It has practically cap- 
 tured what was formerly the high-brow Socialist 
 magazine of this country, if not for its organisa- 
 tion, at least for a pretty broad part of its poli- 
 cies and its programme. 
 
 The I. W. W. has a four-fold fight on its hands 
 and whatever may be thought of the nature of its 
 cause, the gallantry of its struggle against odds 
 is worthy of a moment's admiration. Not con- 
 tent with finding itself arrayed against the or- 
 ganised forces of the community, not content 
 with finding itself arrayed against the law, the 
 pulpit aud the press, it has forced a fight in the 
 ranks of labour itself. For in the beginning it 
 flung down the gauntlet before both the American 
 Federation of Labor and the Socialist Party. 
 That three-cornered warfare is being waged with 
 bitterness and vituperation and with such epi- 
 thets and invectives as would do credit even to 
 theological disputes. 
 
 It ought to be said in passing, however, that 
 the strength of the I. W. W. cannot be deter- 
 mined by its membership. It operates, you 
 notice, among a group of workers many of whom 
 do not stay in one place very long and do not
 
 SYNDICALISM 63 
 
 receive very much of au income and therefore do 
 not always keep their cards properly paid up. 
 Its strength may be more properly determined by 
 the number of enemies it has made, and its 
 strength will be determined in the long run not 
 by the numbers it gathers together or the organ- 
 ising value of its ideals, but by the contribution 
 it will leave upon the labour movement of the 
 world in change of form and modification of 
 policy. 
 
 The I. W. W. started out to challenge the craft 
 union of this countiy. In Europe that chal- 
 lenge was not so direct. There Syndicalism 
 started out under the old craft union but 
 changed it. Here in America it proclaimed that 
 craft organisation spelled for the worker divi- 
 sion, defeat, and degeneration. Here it was a 
 direct warfare. The preamble to the constitu- 
 tion of the I. W. W. points out three defects in 
 the kind of union promoted by the American 
 Federation of Labor : ( 1 ) , that it does not offer 
 effective resistance to the solidarity of capital ; 
 (2), it weakens labour by internal warfare be- 
 cause often in the ordinary strike and always 
 in the jurisdictional strike labour finds itself 
 fighting against itself; (3), it teaches the 
 worker that the interest of the worker and the 
 capitalist are identical and so leads the worker 
 into submission.
 
 64 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 To remedy the first two defects the I. W. W. 
 propose to solidify all labour. They propose to 
 hold the workers together by industries accord- 
 ing to the product turned out and the work done. 
 They propose to unite these groups in various 
 industries in one big union with low fees to 
 which all shall be welcome. And this great note 
 of solidarity is the dominant note with which 
 the industrial union proposes to replace the craft 
 union. Here we have a note that needs to be 
 heard. It is distinctly a voice for the group 
 that is down below the skilled craft organisation 
 with its benefits, down below the possibility of 
 political action. The I. W. W. is the friend and 
 the champion of the unskilled immigrant, the 
 outcast and the outlaw, and if it has done noth- 
 ing else it is at least performing a valuable social 
 service in making the rest of us see the needs 
 and conditions of this group at the bottom. In 
 becoming the mouthpiece for them, that they 
 may let the world know the conditions under 
 which they work and live, obviously the only 
 answer which any intelligent and just com- 
 munity can make to an attempt to repress the 
 voice from the bottom, is to insist that that voice 
 must be heard no matter what the terms of its 
 speech, because only so can we find out what the 
 facts are and what action to take in order to 
 meet injustice if it exists.
 
 SYNDICALISM 65 
 
 Of course the ideal of solidarity is one of the 
 great moving ideals of the race, one of the ideals 
 which becomes a great force in the driving up- 
 ward and onward of humanity, and I must con- 
 fess that in the presence of that ideal I feel some- 
 thing of admiration of those folks at the bottom 
 who, in the face of all the forces that are driving 
 them apart, still would come together and hold 
 up before the world one of the greatest ideals 
 that the human mind has ever conceived. Those 
 of us here who have been schooled at the feet of 
 the Carpenter will recognise at once that this 
 ideal of the solidarity of the human race is our 
 ideal, and that some practical expression must 
 be found for it, not merely in sentiment, not 
 merely in emotion, but in the actual working 
 world. I must confess to being moved at one lit- 
 tle thing that occurred out here at the Lawrence 
 strike beyond anything else that happened there. 
 It was the group of immigrant women of many 
 diverse nationalities, sitting around the common 
 table to peel the potatoes for the common meal, 
 and singing, in their varied tongues, as they did 
 this necessary work, the great hymn of the work- 
 ing class of the world, with that chorus : 
 
 " 'Tis the last great conflict. 
 
 Let each stand in his place, 
 The Industrial Union 
 
 (or the Brotherhood in the Workers, or
 
 66 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 the Brotherhood of men — some of the 
 diflEerent phrases for it) 
 The Brotherhood of the Workers, 
 Shall be the human race." 
 
 Whatever the defects of the organisation, when 
 it can take the people of narrow, contracted, igno- 
 rant lives, lift them up out of that narrowness, 
 and that sordidness, lift them up, put them in 
 touch with the great world of all humanity, and 
 give them a vision and an ideal like that, it is 
 performing a service to society that needs to be 
 done. 
 
 Now when you come to the other part of the 
 propaganda of the I. W. W. you have something 
 very different. It stands out in clear distinction 
 from the American Federation of Labor by its 
 insistence of warfare between the worker and the 
 employer. Its declaration of independence is a 
 declaration of war. The preamble to its consti- 
 tution says the working class and the employing 
 class have nothing in common. There can be 
 no peace as long as hunger and cold are found 
 among the people. A few classes have all the 
 good things of life. Between these two classes 
 struggle must go on until the workers organise 
 as a class, take possession of the machinery of 
 production and abolish the wage system. It 
 proposes to make war upon the enemy wherever 
 and whenever he may be found. It will strike
 
 SYNDICALISM 67 
 
 whenever it can to advantage, and go back to 
 work and strike again, whenever by striking it 
 will gain anything for the working class. It 
 will write no contracts with the employer be- 
 cause contracts at best mean a compromise and 
 a form of truce, and it believes in unending war- 
 fare by all possible methods except the method of 
 open violence. It declares that it will harass 
 the employer by all possible means in its power 
 in order to make gains for labour. Here, of 
 course, you have the tactics of militarism, and 
 the tactics of militarism always involve the 
 ethics of militarism ; and both the tactics and the 
 ethics of militarism involve as serious conse- 
 quences for those who use them as for those 
 against whom they are employed. 
 
 This frankly revolutionary note in the I. W. 
 W. propaganda that distinguishes it both from 
 trade unionism and from Socialism, is based 
 upon two propositions which are not absolutely 
 sound. One is the proposition that all wealth 
 belongs to the workers; because they made it. 
 That of course depends upon how large is your 
 definition of the worker. What we have here is a 
 popular teaching of Marx' famous doctrine, that 
 capital contributes nothing to the production of 
 new goods, simply passes over its own exchange 
 value. But the fallacy that lurks there, and is 
 now being propagated all over this country, is the
 
 68 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 failure to observe the difference between capital 
 and the capitalists. The capitalist when he par- 
 ticipates in the process of production, does con- 
 tribute something to it. And therefore the 
 wealth created in the world is not all created by- 
 folks working for wages. If you are going to 
 predicate your tactics on the basis of fallacies, 
 your tactics of course, will be fundamentally un- 
 just. 
 
 The next fundamental fallacy here, or half- 
 truth, is in the i^roposition that the working class 
 and the employing class have nothing in com- 
 mon. It may be quite true that there is an eco- 
 nomic fallacy underlying the proposition of the 
 trade union that there is an identity of interest 
 between the employing class and the employed, 
 but it does not follow that they have nothing in 
 common. There is a clear failure here to dis- 
 tinguish between the employer as an individual 
 and the employer as a social institution in the 
 capitalist system. If you are talking imper- 
 sonally about employers, about capitalists as a 
 social institution, it is of course a sound economic 
 idea that there is absolute antagonism of interest 
 between that impersonal employing group and 
 the wage earning group, because one's economic 
 interest is to increase goods and profit and to 
 reduce labour cost, and the other's economic 
 interest is to push up labour cost by every means
 
 SYNDICALISM 69 
 
 in its power, and you have a fundamental conflict 
 there. But when you are talking about individ- 
 ual employers and individual wage earners they 
 have a great many things in common. 
 
 They have not an ultimate common interest 
 but they have a very large common interest in 
 the present order of things. They have the 
 common interest to make the present order of 
 things as socially efficient as it can be made, 
 pending a time when it can be changed. I do 
 not concede that there is any absolute conflict 
 of ideas here. I believe it is practically sound 
 that the present order of things can be made as 
 socially efficient as possible without relinquish- 
 ing any desire to make a fundamental change 
 in the existing order of things. It appears to be 
 a social hope of honest men, men socially minded, 
 to make the present machinery do the best work 
 it is capable of doing while they are getting 
 ready to make new machinery to take its place. 
 Both the employer and employed have this in 
 common, — both are suffering from a common 
 imperfect system; both are suffering from the 
 same evil. When any group of men of either 
 section recognise that fact and are willing in all 
 sincerity to take hold and try to remove the 
 common evil, there is at once a common interest 
 between that group of employers and employed, 
 enduring so long as they work together for the
 
 70 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 time when the present economic antagonism will 
 be removed. This antagonism is a fact pressing 
 hard upon all of us. We are all suffering from 
 it in every walk of life — not simply the capital- 
 ist and the labourer, but the intelligent work- 
 ers. And the day of redemption for us, the day 
 of release, will be postponed by any propaganda 
 making for hatred between man and man. The 
 full answer to a declaration of war against indi- 
 viduals is the increase of class warfare. It 
 must also be remembered that war is never 
 stopped when one or the other side wins an abso- 
 lute victory. This is not a victory, for nothing 
 was ever settled in that way yet. It will have to 
 be waged all over again. 
 
 The only possible w^ay to find a day of release 
 from the common evils that are oppressing all of 
 us is to get the most of us together in the common 
 cause, to get the great mass of workers and the 
 more prominent members of society to join hands 
 to remove the common imperfect system and the 
 common immorality in our social organisation. 
 
 DIRECT ACTION 
 
 Labour's tactics in this Syndicalist warfare, 
 in which it differs from Socialism, is " direct 
 action.'' Here it breaks with Socialism; it says 
 nothing of political action ; it will have nothing 
 to do with legislation. This it declares to be a
 
 SYNDICALISM 71 
 
 delusion; it leaves the worker distracted — he 
 doesn't act. It wants direct action on his part 
 in the economic field, instead of action through 
 political means. Political action is diplomacy; 
 direct action is war. 
 
 The term " direct action" can be applied 
 legitimately to labour action in the industrial 
 and economic field as against political action. 
 As a matter of fact it comes to mean the radical 
 tactics employed by the Syndicalists in Europe 
 and the Industrial Workers of the World in this 
 country. Those tactics may be summarised 
 thus : 
 
 (1) General Strike. 
 
 (2) Sabotage. 
 
 The General Strike is advocated to bring 
 about a condition in which society being par- 
 alysed, the industrial workers will have to come 
 to its rescue. In preparation for the general 
 strike all sorts of small strikes can be encour- 
 aged, and while the general strike does not in- 
 volve violence, some syndicalist leaders have 
 thought that it may be a good thiug to advocate 
 violence in the small strikes. What we have 
 here is the re-appearance of an old ideal that has 
 been seen time and time again in the labouring 
 and industrial world. The waitings of Syndi- 
 calists in Europe indicate that the general strike
 
 72 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 is not so mucli a practical thing as a " myth." 
 Sovel, the French leader, declares that there are 
 from time to time certain pert ideas and ideals, 
 or " myths " which are sources of social progress. 
 When you come to actual development these 
 myths have no full realisation in practical action. 
 They do their work in firing the passions of men. 
 The trouble is that this sort of idea is likely to 
 remain but a myth when you come to try it out. 
 In the first place no general strike on the part of 
 the industrial workers would paralyse industry. 
 There is something more to be reckoned with 
 than the manufacturing process. There is the 
 great farming process from which food must 
 come; there is the great credit system on which 
 the modern w^orld depends. The general strike 
 must include the whole to be successful. 
 
 If it can be accomplished without violence, 
 which is an extremely unlikely thing, you would 
 simply have transferred the ownership of indus- 
 trial property from one class to another. You 
 would not have settled the fundamental root of 
 the difficulty, which is the social institution of 
 property. That is the root of the whole indus- 
 trial question, and that cannot be settled by one 
 group. It can only be settled by a com- 
 mon agreement on the part of the people as a 
 whole.
 
 SYNDICALISM 73 
 
 SABOTAGE 
 
 Sabotage means the carrying out of " direct 
 action " by interference with the industrial pro- 
 cess. It comes from a French word meaning 
 work clumsily done. The first appearance of it 
 in a general policy was following a strike in 
 Scotland, where some dock labourers struck for 
 shorter hours and higher wages. The strike was 
 defeated by the introduction of farm labourers 
 as strike breakers. After the men went back to 
 work in their old places the leaders got them 
 together and said : " You can do your work as 
 poorly as those fellows who took your places." 
 They went back to work to shirk their jobs and 
 in a little while they got their increased pay on 
 condition of doing better work. 
 
 The primary form of sabotage is this : instead 
 of giving a good piece of work for a poor day's 
 pay, its advocates said, "We will give a poor 
 day's work in return for a poor day's pay." The 
 French have resolved this into a philosophy of 
 sabotage, with such refinements as are typical of 
 the French mind. They have developed many 
 curious forms of sabotage : carrying out literally 
 the multitude of orders on a railroad and so con- 
 fusing traffic; changing the labels on freight; the 
 strike of the open mouth, — by telling customers 
 the actual facts about the goods they are about
 
 74 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 to purchase, and last of all, the Malthusian 
 strike to limit the birthrate and lessen the supply 
 of industrial workers. In this country the advo- 
 cates of sabotage state that it means any inter- 
 ference with industry with the purpose of limit- 
 ing output, or injuring the employer for the 
 benefit of the worker, provided no other means 
 are available. Violence is not countenanced 
 or taught by advocates of sabotage. They 
 are more interested in getting ready the minds 
 of the workers in preparation of the general 
 strike than in the actual process of industry. 
 They recognise it is a dangerous weapon to use, 
 dangerous in more ways than one. Socialists 
 have disavowed it. In this country they have 
 adopted a resolution that any member teaching 
 sabotage or any form of crime as a means for 
 the emancipation of the working class, shall be 
 expelled. This has been adopted not on grounds 
 of the consequences to capital, but on grounds of 
 the consequences to labour, because the history of 
 labour shows that the use of that weapon — and 
 it is an old weapon — being double-edged, hurts 
 labour just as much as it does capital; that it 
 brings distrust, breaks down morality, breaks 
 down solidarity, and comes even to be used 
 within labour circles for personal and factional 
 ends. It is on these grounds that the Socialist 
 groups have disavowed it. The most prominent
 
 SYNDICALISM 75 
 
 American Syndicalist was recently recalled from 
 membership in the Socialist National Committee 
 for advocating sabotage. 
 
 Some Syndicalist leaders attempt to establish 
 the ethical validity of sabotage. They are not 
 restrained by the ethics that cling around private 
 property for its protection. You remember that 
 there was some sabotage in Boston Harbor some 
 time ago and the ethical question depends on 
 whose ox is being gored. The thesis is that when 
 the industrial worker does an act which may be 
 destructive for the sake of the social good, it is 
 not necessarily harmful. That is your old 
 familiar doctrine that the end justifies the 
 means; it is the old familiar doctrine of doing 
 evil that good may come of it, and history has 
 proved that those who use a means which they 
 question to accomplish an end, in the long run 
 defeat their own end and absolutely destroy their 
 own capacity for reaching that end. 
 
 Syndicalism gives us this gain. It attempts 
 to put before us the great ideal of solidarity and 
 shows us the necessity for it. It says that a 
 state in which political bureaucracy was set over 
 industry would be intolerable and insufferable, 
 and it does rightly call our attention to the 
 necessity of some simpler form of social organ- 
 isation and control in the industrial field. But 
 in its tactics it defeats itself and it seeks what is
 
 76 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 impossible in social progress, a short cut to an 
 ideal which all just men will recognise as one 
 of the great and desirable ideals of the race. 
 
 If men are going to do what Syndicalism says 
 it is doing, or wants to do, — prepare workers in 
 the industrial field to be able to take their part 
 in the development of the race, prepare the new 
 society (and even the Socialists admit that much 
 education remains to be done before wide- 
 spread collectivism is possible) then what they 
 have to do is not to teach warfare, not to develop 
 anarchistic methods which will disturb the labour 
 process ; what they have to do is to develop social 
 efficiency on the part of the group at the bottom 
 of society, and that is a task which the whole 
 community must face in answer to this challenge 
 from the industrial group at the bottom.
 
 SYNDICALISM 77 
 
 Q. Is the solidarity ideal of the I. W. W. a pro- 
 duct of necessity or of free choice? 
 
 A. It is a combination of both. The concen- 
 tration of modern industry and the organisation 
 of the skilled workers, have both been pressing 
 upon the group at the bottom ; but it is more than 
 that, it is the stirring up of au ideal in human 
 history. This is one of the modern expressions 
 of it. 
 
 Q. What method might be used in the case of 
 the industrial organisation to get results in re- 
 gard to individual efficiency of the worker which 
 is not now set them by trade unions? 
 
 A. In my observation of many forms of work, 
 the most effective procedure to secure the largest 
 amount of efficiency on the part of the individual 
 worker, is to enable him to get the results of his 
 work. 
 
 Q. Does not philosophic anarchism seek to 
 develop the individual, physically, morally, spir- 
 itually and mentally? 
 
 A. That is undoubtedly its purpose and its 
 plan. The question remains whether its end can 
 be accomplished without a very large degree of 
 community action to the same end. 
 
 Q. What is the difference between the Chicago 
 branch of the I. W. W. and the Detroit faction? 
 
 A. The Detroit faction believes in more con-
 
 78 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 servative methods and in political action while 
 the Chicago faction believes in radical methods 
 in the industrial field. Of coufse the Detroit 
 faction is the much smaller group. 
 
 Q. If open warfare or sabotage is not accept- 
 able to Christian ethics what would you advocate 
 for the unskilled worker who belongs to the I. 
 W. W. if he did not get enough wages? What 
 would you advise him to do? 
 
 A. I do not see that he betters his position 
 materially by sabotage. I do not see that he is 
 able effectively to strike while on the job; his 
 only weapon that is effective now is that of the 
 actual strike. 
 
 Q. Are not the Syndicalists and the industrial 
 trade unionists all members of one group? 
 
 A. There are many different groups. There 
 are some trade unionists who will co-operate, 
 there are others who will not, and the tendency 
 in this country just now is toward dissension. 
 
 Q. Is the doctrine of sabotage ethically justi- 
 fiable? 
 
 A. I think I answered that question in the last 
 of my speech. No action is ethically justifiable 
 which results in a larger social injury. And 
 taking the whole social effects of sabotage upon 
 the world as well as upon the employer it is in- 
 jurious. And it is unethical because of this.
 
 SYNDICALISM 79 
 
 Q. Dare we trust this outlawed class who con- 
 stitute the I. W. W. very largely? 
 
 A. The question of danger is that their passiv- 
 ity may merge to popular passion. That is the 
 underlying danger in the fact that you can't 
 achieve results by passivity alone. You have 
 two alternatives; that is to attempt to do it by 
 force and the other is to go through a long course 
 of patient education of the community. 
 
 Q. Were not many strikes won by the use of 
 sabotage in the United States? 
 
 A. That depends upon what you mean by the 
 term. They are not included in the term as 
 Syndicalists use it, to mean not collective action 
 but rather individual action for collective needs. 
 
 Q. How far would the advocates of present 
 sabotage under the present system be justified 
 by the action of those who for principle threw 
 the tea in Boston Harbor? 
 
 A. If they follow the same principles they 
 would lead to the same results. Whether they 
 would be justified is an open question.
 
 IV. THE DEMAND FOR LEISURE 
 
 One of the first demands of labour is tlie demand 
 for release from excessive toil. This becomes 
 also the demand for leisure, and upon the satis- 
 faction of that demand depends the possibility of 
 labour being able to attain its own ideals. The 
 programme of the Socialist or of the Syndicalist, 
 in fact any programme for the development of 
 the welfare of the group of toil, depends upon a 
 certain amount of training, and preparation 
 which can only be secured upon the basis of 
 leisure. 
 
 Now labour has made some gains in the direc- 
 tion of securing its primary demand : " a fair 
 day's work for a fair day's pay." In the early 
 part of the last century, the average working 
 day in English-speaking countries was fourteen 
 hours. In the middle of the last century the 
 average working day in this country was twelve 
 hours. As late as 18G0 people were working in 
 the cotton mills of Massachusetts for a 13 
 hour day and a 78 hour week. To-day the aver- 
 age working day in English-speaking countries 
 is about ten hours, and the greatest part of that 
 
 80
 
 THE DEMAND FOR LEISURE 81 
 
 gain has come in the last twenty-five years. In 
 Boston the first eight-hour league in this country 
 was organised. In Massachusetts was estab- 
 lished the first Bureau of Labor Statistics to give 
 the public the facts, without which this fight for 
 relief from excessive toil could not be success- 
 fully waged. The United States Government 
 began to reduce its working day before the 
 middle of the last century, cutting down first to 
 ten hours in its industrial establishments, and 
 then to eight, and that which is good for the 
 Government ought to be good for private indus- 
 try. But I suppose it is one of the vices of 
 democracy, that we will achieve certain social 
 gains in government employment in order to get 
 the support of labour and will refrain from 
 enforcing those gains in private industry in 
 order not to alienate the employing interests. 
 
 We have in the matter of women's labour made 
 still further gains. In the case of both women 
 and minors we have reduced the working day 
 from fourteen and sixteen hours (which it was 
 in the beginning of the last century), to ten and 
 eight. Most child labour laws now in the pro- 
 gressive States refuse to permit the employment 
 of children between fourteen and eighteen years 
 for more than eight hours, and two or three 
 States have eight-hour laws regarding the labour 
 of women. The United States Supreme Court
 
 8S THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 has upheld the ten-hour law for women and is 
 now considering the eight-hour law. 
 
 We have also made some progress in eliminat- 
 ing the seven-day week. There has been a united 
 demand on the part of labour, on the part of 
 intelligent politicians, and on the part of the 
 united churches of this country to secure the 
 relief of labour from the seven-day week. The 
 demand is made on the simple basis of the 
 necessity of the rest day, on the principle that 
 the man is more sacred even than any day, and 
 that to the man must be secured the right of 
 rest. When labour becomes fully aware of the 
 necessity for the weekly rest day and will join 
 with its full force with the allied groups in mak- 
 ing that demand, we shall secure it, in every 
 State in this Union. It is an indication again 
 of the backwardness of our social organisation 
 that only at this late day we should be enforcing 
 a demand for a weekly rest day. 
 
 There are probably almost 20 per cent, of the 
 workers of this country who are working where 
 the twelve-hour day still obtains. That percent- 
 age covers of course a great many skilled trades 
 where the eight-hour day has been secured by 
 organisation and it therefore leaves a great many 
 trades and industries where the twelve-hour day 
 is still running. The steel trade is the greatest 
 offender in this respect. United States Steel
 
 THE DEMAND FOR LEISURE 83 
 
 insists that less than 30 per cent, of its men are 
 working a twelve-hour day, but that is not a 
 fair computation for the reason that it covers 
 all the men in the employ of the steel trust. 
 When you limit the inquiry, as it should be 
 limited, to the men working in those branches 
 of the trade in which the twelve-hour shift is 
 practiced, for example the blast-furnaces, you 
 have between fifty and sixty per cent, that are 
 working the twelve-hour day. In spite of the 
 fact that the steel manufacturers of Great 
 Britain and Germany have gone over to the eight- 
 hour day and have been more proficient in pro- 
 duction as a result, the Iron and Steel Institute 
 of this country refuses to abolish the twelve-hour 
 shift. 
 
 In this country the gains in reducing the hours 
 of labour have been secured in the face of the 
 opposition of the employers who have stead- 
 fastly, for the most part, opposed both organised 
 labour in its attempt for shorter hours and have 
 fought short hour legislation through their 
 lobbies. And it is the power of organised labour 
 that has called attention to the necessity for 
 short hour legislation. It was the bookbinders 
 of England who first proposed the ten-hour law ; 
 it was the ship caulkers of the United States, 
 back in 1806, who produced the first ten-hour 
 law here; it was organised labour in Australia
 
 84 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 that formed the first Eight Hour League ; and it 
 was only when the Women's Trade Union League 
 became an active force in making legislation that 
 we were able to procure legislation for women 
 and children. The great initiating force in 
 shortening the working day has been the organ- 
 ised labour of this country. 
 
 THE RESULTS OF FATIGUE 
 
 The essence of the first demand in this field of 
 the shorter work-day is that labour should be pro- 
 tected from the results of fatigue. When you 
 are trying to set the length of the working day 
 by law, for the defence not simply of the working 
 group industrially but for the defence of society, 
 the principle that enters in is the principle that 
 labour must not be worked beyond the point of 
 fatigue. That is the position on which the 
 United States Supreme Court upholds short day 
 legislation for women. On the basis of evidence 
 showing the physical effects of fatigue, the court 
 held that the public good demands that women 
 should not be worked beyond the point of fatigue, 
 that being presumably the limit of the defensive 
 power of the State. 
 
 When you take the human animal out of his 
 natural outdoor environment and put him to 
 work within four walls, you are creating a se- 
 rious disturbance in his constitution. You are
 
 THE DEMAND FOR LEISURE 85 
 
 not simply taking him out of his fresh air envi- 
 ronment ; you are putting him into a factory and 
 exposing him to a strain of noise and speed. 
 You are requiring the human body, both its 
 muscular and nervous system, to speed up be- 
 yond its natural rhythm, beyond the natural 
 tempo of its movements, to keep up with the 
 rhythm of the machine, and the result of that is 
 a serious derangement, both physical and nerv- 
 ous. 
 
 The first results are seen in the records of 
 accidents, for from 70 to 90 per cent, of our in- 
 dustrial accidents occur after the hour of three 
 o'clock in the afternoon, and the larger propor- 
 tion of these occur in the last hour of the working 
 day. It is the tenth hour of the working day 
 that is the deadly hour in the factory, because 
 then nature's safety defences have been broken 
 through, because the worker has passed the point 
 of fatigue. 
 
 Perhaps the most conclusive report on health 
 ever shown to the world is the report of our Com- 
 mittee of One Hundred on National Vitality, 
 now a United States document, and it makes this 
 statement : " The present w^orking day, from a 
 physical standpoint, is altogether too long, and 
 keeps the majority of women or men in a con- 
 tinual state of over -fatigue." Now the patholo- 
 gists tell us to-day that there is a definite poison
 
 86 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 set up in the human system by over-work. They 
 name it " the toxin of fatigue." When the mus- 
 cular or nervous energy has been worked to the 
 point of fatigue the body no longer carries off the 
 poisonous secretions; they remain in the system, 
 and besides having their own toxic effect they 
 render the body more liable to the attacks of dis- 
 ease, they W'Caken its resistance power to the 
 germs that lie in wait for all of us. And that is 
 the great reason for the high mortality rate of 
 the wage earning group, from contagious disease, 
 and from that group of diseases known as 
 " misery " diseases. It is because their resist- 
 ance power has been lowered. 
 
 One of the most striking studies to show the 
 injustice of our industrial systems is to take the 
 mortality maps of our various cities and then 
 to find out the district in which that mortality 
 is massed. When you know the cities you will 
 find in every case that those mortality maps 
 show the death rate to be the most in the dis- 
 tricts where the lowest paid groups of industrial 
 workers live. That is, the death rate is highest 
 in groups that are paid the least and worked the 
 hardest, where life is lived at the lowest level and 
 where it has the smallest chance of resisting the 
 attacks upon it. And the effects are shown not 
 only in the mortality rate but also in the effect 
 upon birth, not simply upon the birth rate, al-
 
 THE DEMAND FOR LEISURE 87 
 
 though that is lowered in the outstanding indus- 
 trial centres, but it is shown in the lowering of 
 vitality at birth. When you bring into the world 
 children whose parents have been weakened to 
 the point of exhaustion, physically and nerv- 
 ously, through years of fatigue accompanied by 
 the lack of adequate nourishment or proper 
 housing and fresh air, those children come into 
 the world without an adequate physical fighting 
 chance. We talk sometimes, in our careless, 
 flippant way, about folks who are " born tired." 
 There is a scientific truth in that very phrase. 
 There are children born of exhausted, under- 
 nourished parents, who are literally at birth too 
 tired ever to have a fair fighting chance. They 
 can't be efficient either industrially, intellec- 
 tually, or morally. They have not the energy; 
 they have not the vitality ; and, furthermore, we 
 take no pains to see that they get a chance to 
 make up that defect. Those children are placed 
 in the worst kind of environment, in the lowest 
 sections of our cities. And then we talk about 
 the wastrels and derelicts in the gutters of our 
 cities and wonder at the cause ! From the stand- 
 point even merely of profitable business on the 
 present basis, what greater stupidity could there 
 be than to weaken people to the point of exhaus- 
 tion and then produce a still weaker generation 
 the next time? What agriculturist would pur-
 
 88 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 sue such a stupid policy in trying to procure his 
 draft animals? He knows better. We know 
 better, too, only we have not yet got the con- 
 science to apply our knowledge in the way we 
 ought. 
 
 It was because of this fact of the lessening of 
 vitality, by fatigue that the United States 
 Supreme Court made its decision concerning the 
 ten-hour law for women. You will remember 
 what part Boston had in that by presenting the 
 brains and the heart which made that thing pos- 
 sible, as a gift, to the working classes of this 
 country; and it was because the brains of Mr. 
 Brandeis and that woman who worked with Mm 
 in putting before the Supreme Court such a mass 
 of medical evidence gathered from the whole 
 world to show conclusively the effects of fatigue 
 in weakening the next generation, that the 
 Supreme Court wrote a new principle into the 
 law: that the health of the nation is more im- 
 portant than the goods that can be produced by 
 overworked labour. In the near future, when 
 we can get the same mass of facts presented to 
 the same courts concerning the labour of men, 
 the nation will, by that time, have made up its 
 mind that it can no more afford to have weak, 
 unhealthy fathers than it can have weak un- 
 healthy mothers. 
 
 The results of fatigue appear not merely in the
 
 THE DEMAND FOR LEISURE 89 
 
 physical world ; they appear also in the economic 
 realm. Labour carried to the point of fatigue 
 means economic loss. That Report on National 
 Vitality astonished the nation by showing that 
 we were wasting an enormous amount of money, 
 computed simply from the potential earnings of 
 those dying from preventable diseases in this 
 country. Then it showed that the economic 
 waste from undue fatigue was much greater 
 than that from the great preventable diseases; 
 that the number of people who suffer from par- 
 tial disability due to fatigue constitutes the great 
 majority of the population. So we have here a 
 great social evil from which the whole popula- 
 tion is suffering but from which the industrial 
 section is suffering more than any other group 
 in the population. 
 
 Now besides the directly traceable economic 
 loss which comes from the inefficiency in produc- 
 tion of those who are worked to the point of 
 fatigue, there is also the indirect economic loss 
 that the long working day brings. It involves a 
 low wage, and that means a low standard of liv- 
 ing, and that means a small measure of consump- 
 tion and that means that the economic capacity 
 of the country is constantly reduced. The old 
 saw is perfectly correct that said : 
 
 " Whether you work by the piece or the day, 
 Decreasing the hour increases the pay."
 
 90 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 I Indirectly, of course, this is true, not only for 
 ithe wage-earning population affected but for the 
 whole of society. Because when you decrease 
 the working day, you raise the standard of living 
 and increase the demands of the wage earning 
 group, — you therefore make the demand for 
 more production, more men are employed, and 
 again you raise the standard of living. It is 
 economically profitable to employers to reduce 
 the working day and increase the standard of 
 living for the working group. The short hour 
 day has proved this even under the present sys- 
 tem; it has been demonstrated again and again. 
 In 1881 a report of the Massachusetts Bureau 
 of Statistics declared that in the Atlantic States 
 the reduction of the working day from eleven 
 to ten hours had produced an increase and not 
 a decrease, economically. In many places the 
 eight-hour day has also proved economically 
 more profitable. One of the best outstanding 
 cases is that of the United States Government, 
 based upon two battleships built in 1894 
 from the same plans. One was built in the Gov- 
 ernment shipyards at eight hours a day ; one was 
 built by private contract at ten hours a day ; and 
 when they got through the Government-built 
 ship, on the eight hour day proposition, showed 
 conclusively that the average work per man per
 
 THE DEMAND FOR LEISURE 91 
 
 hour was over 25 per cent, more than on the ten 
 hour day privately built ship. 
 
 Over in England in the iron and steel trade is 
 another remarkable illustration. There organ- 
 ised labour and capital worked together to dem- 
 onstrate the increased efficiency due to shorter 
 hours. Organised labour agreed that it would 
 have to reduce gradually by small groups of men, 
 so as to make the change without undue derange- 
 ment of the industry and that those who were 
 getting the higher wage would have to pay a 
 bonus to those w^ho would have to get a lower 
 wage until it could be demonstrated that the 
 experiment was profitable. The result was that 
 in a very short time the whole change was ef- 
 fected and that bonus didn't have to be paid be- 
 cause it was proved that the change resulted in 
 increase of production. 
 
 Now of course there is a limit to the increase 
 of production because by shortening the work- 
 day, although you can speed up the men in many 
 industries, in some machine industries you can't 
 speed up the machines. In some industries it is 
 economically profitable to run on the eight hour 
 rather than on the nine or the ten or the twelve 
 hour basis. Where it is not, where the effect of 
 reducing hours is to reduce the profits, it raises 
 the fundamental question of the reward of the
 
 92 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 capitalists and its relations to the community 
 good. When that question is raised the only 
 answer of the community must be that the reduc- 
 tion of the working day cannot be determined by 
 the question of profits, but simply and solely by 
 the question of social welfare. The question is 
 to whom does this matter of profits fundamen- 
 tally refer? Are we to consider here the 
 economic values simply in terms of the good of 
 one group that happens in the course of social 
 development now to have possession of industry, 
 or are we to consider economic values in terms 
 of the good of the whole community? If we 
 decide the latter, the next question is, if we are to 
 consider simply whether the short day is profit- 
 able to the whole community economically speak- 
 ing, or whether its profit is to be considered in 
 terms of the net results to human life. And the 
 new economy, corresponding to the quickened 
 sense of human justice — the new economy that 
 is just getting itself written in' the text-books — 
 insists that the only final economic standard is 
 that of human values and not the production of 
 goods. 
 
 I picked up my morning paper this morning 
 and I found an editorial on tlie question of in- 
 dustrial conservation — the results of a study of 
 a professor in a great university concerning the 
 effects of scientific management — and I find it
 
 THE DEMAND FOR LEISURE 93 
 
 classified under three heads: complete success, 
 partial success and failure. The standard of 
 success is whether there has been an increased 
 profit and an increased wage — " business three 
 times what it was before " — " |18,000 saved in 
 six years," with no attempt to determine the off- 
 set in the way of deteriorated health. The 
 modern political economy is not satisfied with 
 such a test as that. We want to know not 
 simply whether there is more profits and more 
 wages, but what are the long-time results to 
 human life, what are the results in the end to the 
 worker and to society; and not merely whether 
 or not he has shown any sickness in the first year 
 of this efficiency scheme but what is the result 
 over a period of years to his nervous system and 
 his moral and mental nature. That is what we 
 want to know before we are going to pass judg- 
 ment on the value of this thing. The question is 
 not answere'd by showing increased efficiency in 
 production, or no immediate depreciation in 
 health; it is only answered when you trace the 
 results of the fatigue engendered by this effi- 
 ciency process, back over a period of years, in its 
 individual and moral results. CAnd so, finally, 
 we are going to settle this question of fatigue and 
 speeding up, and efficiency, by its moral and 
 social results. What are they? 
 
 Go through the twelve hour communities and
 
 94 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 find out! Let tlie scientists tell you from their 
 Report on Vitality. They declare that fatigue 
 starts a vicious circle, involving drunkenness and 
 other excesses. Let another scientist speak: 
 " The first school of man's family life is a closed 
 book against the man who only comes home dead 
 tired at night." Go through the twelve hour 
 communities in this country and you will find 
 confirmation of this statement. You will find 
 there increased consumption of alcohol, with a 
 lower degradation of human life; you will find 
 1 there also the most brutal forms of vice existing 
 as a natural result of reducing human nature to 
 the brute state. The mental and moral and 
 social results, in the broadest sense, of fatigue, 
 / are simply disastrous to society. This is in- 
 vcreasingly clear in the case of the labour of girls 
 and women ; there it is particularly clear. When 
 you face the great fact that the armies of vice are 
 recruited preponderantly (almost universally) 
 from the wage earning group, you are facing one 
 of the moral effects of fatigue. The relation of 
 improper conditions of labour for girls and 
 women to vice is not simply a relation between 
 low wages with monotonous life and easy money 
 with excitement — no such bald choice is thrown 
 up as that (except in a very few cases) to the 
 working women of this country. What happens 
 is this ; the slow breaking down of nature's moral
 
 THE DEMAND FOR LEISURE 95 
 
 safety devices by the long process of fatigue. 
 Then, as the great majority of testimony from 
 the places of vice proves, then life itself becomes 
 the betrayer because nature has been reduced to 
 the point of exhaustion almost, through a period 
 of over-work and monotonous occupation. 
 
 When moral disaster does not occur whether 
 in manhood or womanhood, as the effect of 
 fatigue, you still have other serious moral re- 
 sults. You have life reduced almost to the brute 
 level, you have life that is simply one round of 
 toil, with then perhaps some corresponding ex- 
 citement to atone for the monotony of its dead 
 level, but with no response to the stimulus for the 
 development of the higher nature. In the twelve 
 hour communities the low level of life is the 
 worst fact that the social observer has to face — 
 the fact that life has no power of reaching up 
 because its energies are so exhausted, that it has 
 no capacity to climb because it has been kept 
 down by the dead pressure of fatigue. 
 
 THE RESULTS OF LEISURE 
 
 If the first duty is to rescue the group at the 
 bottom from the pressure of fatigue, the next 
 duty is to secure for the industrial group the 
 results of leisure. If the industrial group must 
 be protected from the results of fatigue it must 
 have access to the results of leisure; and the
 
 96 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 results of leisure are culture. All your super- 
 structure of civilisation depends upon a certain 
 degree of leisure and if men are to be educated 
 they must be released from exhausting toil, they 
 must be released from continued application to 
 the work of producing the necessities of life if 
 they are to have any chance to climb up to the 
 heights of culture. You may define culture in 
 any sense you please. You may have the Greek 
 ideal of culture of the body. What chance has a 
 man worked to the point of fatigue to follow that 
 ideal whether he sits over a desk or works with 
 a pick in the street; in either occupation what 
 chance has he? You may tell him that his body 
 needs a bath every morning to allow it to 
 breathe; you may tell him that his muscles need 
 exercise ; is he going to get it ? Has he the time 
 and the strength? And you may build your 
 gymnasiums and your swimming pools, and they 
 are of no benefit, as long as he is worked to the 
 point of exhaustion. You have physical mal- 
 adjustment instead of physical development. 
 
 You tell men that there are opportunities for 
 mental culture. No man who is speeded up for 
 ten hours a day has got time or energ}^ enough 
 left over from the bread and butter business of 
 life to make that struggle, to go through that 
 process of discipline. Here stands a Hebrew 
 beside a machine in the sweat of New York, and
 
 THE DEMAND FOR LEISURE 97 
 
 he says : " If I am hungry in New York some- 
 one will give me a crust, and if I am thirsty some- 
 one will give me a drink, but now my soul is 
 thirsty for knowledge and my mind is starving 
 for learning, and who will give it to me?" He 
 says : " Men tell me to go to night school. 
 Have they ever tried it after working ten hours 
 a day at a machine?" You can extend your 
 night school system as much as you please, boast 
 as you may about our free educational system, if 
 people have not time to take advantage of it, it 
 is all a bitter mockery to them. As the Colorado 
 steel worker said : " Andy can build a library 
 but it's no good to build it here. We twelve 
 hour men have no time or strength to read his 
 books." 
 
 Here comes Professor Steiner, who has come up 
 from it all and he says : " The end of the day, 
 when the work was over, proved to be the hardest 
 period of my experience. I went to sleep at once 
 when the strain was over, I was just like the 
 cattle." We treat them like cattle and then call 
 them cattle. He was then working in the steel 
 mill in Pittsburgh ten hours a day. He says: 
 " The worst feature is the day's complete ex- 
 haustion which follows long hours with its numb- 
 ness and the dullness that grips into a man's 
 soul. At the end of a ten hour day in the steel 
 mill, if I had been offered anything except a good
 
 98 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 supper and bed, I would not have accepted it, 
 altliougli I was hungry for the other things." 
 
 Now it is harder to climb out than it was 
 twenty years ago when Professor Steiner 
 climbed. 
 
 This same thing is true about the development 
 of the spiritual life. If a man is going to have 
 a chance to develop his spirit, if he is to hold high 
 converse with the great and lofty ones of the past, 
 to invite his soul into fellowship with the Eter- 
 nal, to throw his passionate spirit into the great 
 struggle for brotherhood and justice, he must 
 have time and strength to do these things. 
 
 The cultured class is the leisure class; and if 
 we are going to have culture throughout the 
 whole of our society, we must have leisure 
 throughout the whole of society. And remember 
 this also : a leisure class is never a truly cultured 
 class, for the cultured class is a working class 
 too. God didn't make some folks all muscle and 
 others all brain. He didn't make some all hands 
 and others all mind. He put them together, 
 and the divorce of so-called culture and produc- 
 tive work has been one of the fatal fallacies of 
 civilisation. We have to put culture into the 
 very heart of the industrial process and let a man 
 in the making of things find the development of 
 his mind; let him there, as he does the work of 
 the world, find all the beauty and all the art,
 
 THE DEMAND FOR LEISURE 99 
 
 and all the music and all the joy; let him there 
 put his soul into fellowship with the eternal, 
 give his spirit into bonds of brotherhood with his 
 fellowmen. That will be true culture — that 
 the human race may develop its soul while work- 
 ing out things. 
 
 THE RIGHT TO LIVE 
 
 Thus we see that the demand for leisure is the 
 demand for life itself. It is the demand for the 
 results of leisure, the attainment of all true cul- 
 ture. Somebody stops to ask : " How will he use 
 it? " That question is not before the house. 
 There is a previous question there that must be 
 answered first. When you have given men their 
 rights you can begin to talk about how they 
 should use them and not before. And I would 
 like to ask what class has the right to raise that 
 question to the labour group? Is it the idle 
 rich? Watch their clubs and their drawing 
 rooms and their New Year's feasts in the restau- 
 rants. Is it the business men? I read the other 
 day in a local paper that an official of this State 
 had to send an officer of the law to follow him to 
 a banquet of the business men to which he had 
 been invited, because it was so indecent. Is it 
 the intellectual group? I go to the high -brow 
 club only to get poisoned with the same foul air 
 that I find in the labour hall. Is it the college
 
 100 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 group? Watch their athletics conducted on the 
 same commercialised, gladiatoral plan that made 
 a Roman holiday. It does not lie in the mouth 
 of any group in this country to raise that ques- 
 tion about the labour group. As a matter of 
 fact, every time the labour group has secured 
 leisure it has used it for its social development. 
 Of course there will be individuals who will 
 abuse liberty, but the net result of liberty has 
 been this : wherever the eight hour day exists it 
 has been used for the intellectual and moral de- 
 velopment of the worker. There is no justifica- 
 tion for the charge that indirectly the reduction 
 of hours and the raising of the living standard is 
 strengthening the organised forces of iniquity. 
 To-day when you want support for a moral 
 proposition, when the churches want support in 
 a temperance fight, the labour leaders supply it. 
 I have just learned to-day that the strongest sup- 
 port for a certain proposition in the fight against 
 alcohol is from the leaders of the labour group. 
 They are coming to understand how to use their 
 time, how to use it for the development of their 
 own capacities in order that they may climb to 
 their proper place. 
 
 The demand for leisure is the demand for life 
 itself. We have been expanding life. It is a 
 bigger world we live in — new horizons in gov- 
 ernment, in industry, new horizons in thought,
 
 THE DEMAND FOR LEISURE 101 
 
 everywhere. And in that expanding world you 
 have put the industrial worker into a smaller 
 world and a smaller environment. For your 
 automatic machine worker is not as big a man 
 as the old craftsman that preceded him. And 
 when that automatic man is worked to the point 
 of exhaustion he is still smaller; yet in this 
 bigger world you need larger men. So it is not 
 his loss alone ; it is a menace to society to suffer 
 that man to become smaller. He becomes a prey 
 to the pressure of special interests on both sides 
 of this social question; he becomes the easy tool 
 of political demagogues ; he becomes the dupe of 
 priestcraft, of quackery in religion. And the 
 world needs that man because he is the man who 
 makes the group that is going to control the 
 world to-morrow. The world needs that man to 
 have the biggest development and environment 
 that can be accorded to him. The democracy of 
 the Carj)enter of Nazareth demands that. You 
 read the Scripture and you can't see why the 
 banker should go home at three or four o'clock 
 and the labourer should stay in the mills until 
 six o'clock. There is no justice to it. The 
 men who do the harder, longer, and more dan- 
 gerous work are the ones who need more recrea- 
 tion and more chance for the release from the 
 effects of that toil. The teachings of the Car- 
 penter demand that we drive out of the world
 
 102 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 forever and ever the idea that one class of people 
 are to do all the diflflcult, dangerous and monot- 
 onous work. 
 
 We cannot have a Brahmin class of culture in 
 our land with special privilege in leisure and a 
 monopoly of intellectual service. 
 
 The rule of the world to-morrow is to go to 
 brains, and brains must be developed if we are 
 to have a universal and permanent democracy in 
 the w^orld. The teachings of Jesus demand 
 this — that there shall be no group of special 
 privilege in society, that the innermost worth of 
 the downmost man shall be developed to the ut- 
 termost point. It demands a brotherhood of la- 
 bour and toil where all the people share in the 
 dangers and difficulties of the hard work of the 
 world, and a brotherhood of leisure where all the 
 people share equally in all the opportunities of 
 culture and development.
 
 THE DEMAND FOR LEISURE 103 
 
 Q. Is not the rate of progress of the present 
 time more important than its direction? 
 
 A. I think that the direction is established, 
 and I agree with the question that the main task 
 now is to accelerate the rate of progress in that 
 direction. 
 
 Q. Is there any group of disciples who are fol- 
 lowing the rules laid down by the Carpenter of 
 Nazareth ? 
 
 A. I know many groups, I meet them in all 
 walks of life ; some in the employing group, some 
 in the trade union group, some in the socialist 
 group, some in the syndicalist group, some in the 
 privileged class, who are genuinely trying, as best 
 they can, to follow and carry out that teaching. 
 
 Q. Does not the capitalist foresee the ultimate 
 break-down of labour and so refuses to hire men 
 after forty years of age, getting all the labour he 
 can out of men between sixteen and thirty? 
 
 A. That is getting to be the general rule in 
 large industry, and scientific management in- 
 creases the proportion. 
 
 Q. Should not the employed class try to work 
 out their own salvation and organize themselves 
 for mutual protection instead of worrying about 
 a job? 
 
 A. That would be one of the best things they 
 could do.
 
 104 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 Q. Which is preferable, the gi'oup of thinkers 
 who strive for more liberty leaving economic 
 questions to take care of themselves, or the group 
 who strive for economic gains leaving leisure to 
 take care of itself? 
 
 A. Hitch them up and drive them double. 
 
 Q. Does not the cultured class have to work? 
 Do you advise your theological students when 
 they get a parish to get out and work? 
 
 A. I think I made it clear that no class can be 
 truly cultured that separates itself from the 
 actual work of the world. We shall never get 
 the higher type of culture until we join mental 
 work with actual production. We are trying to 
 do it with our theological students as nearly as 
 possible. 
 
 Q. How about the short time as applied to the 
 farmer? Doesn't it hurt the smaller one un- 
 duly? 
 
 A. No, if we get rid of the concentrated con- 
 trol of the transportation of farm products the 
 small farmer has a good chance. 
 
 Q. What is the title of the report of the Com- 
 mittee of One Hundred? 
 
 A. Keport on National Vitality. 
 
 Q. If the eight hour life is economically 
 proved sound why isn't it adopted by all manu- 
 facturers?
 
 THE DEMAND FOR LEISURE 105 
 
 A. I heard a man say the other day that you 
 can't legislate for blame fools. 
 
 Q. If a man goes to work at four o'clock, works 
 until twelve o'clock, then has half an hour for 
 lunch, goes back to w^ork at tw^elve-thirty, and 
 works until eight-thirty, is that an eight hour 
 law? And if it occurs on Saturday does that 
 make for leisure? And if the last hour of that 
 period goes over into Sunday does it assist 
 Christianity ? 
 
 A. That is nothing but pure pagan slavery and 
 if you will tell us where it is carried on in this 
 city we wdll try to have it stopped. 
 
 Q. It is carried on in the United States Gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 A. There has been a demand afoot recently 
 regarding the postal carriers ; an attempt to over- 
 work them and evade the law. That attempt has 
 been checked. That is not the kind of eight hour 
 law I would stand for. 
 
 Q. Is not the farmer that w^orks from ten to 
 twelve hours a day out in the open air abun- 
 dantly able to perform that work, because he is 
 doing it for himself? 
 
 A. That depends upon the kind of man he Is. 
 If he wants to live in the largest sense of the 
 word he had better get through his day's work 
 in less time than that.
 
 106 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 Q. I would like to liave the speaker's definition 
 of leisure. 
 
 A. I was using the term to-day of course in the 
 sense of sufficient release from the necessary 
 economic work of life in order to develop the 
 higher side of human nature. 
 
 Q. I meant " culture." 
 
 A. I will leave that to the newspapers. 
 
 Q. Doesn't the speeding up process of machin- 
 ery bring about a condition where the eight hours 
 under such circumstances is worse than the ten 
 hours under ordinary circumstances? 
 
 A. The eight hour law is no good until you put 
 into the legislation something about speed as well 
 as time.
 
 V. THE DEMAND FOR INCOME 
 
 THE SOCIAL SURPLUS, ITS DISTRIBUTION 
 
 The first demand of labour is for a fair day's 
 work and for a fair day's pay. That demand 
 enlarges, as the labour movement expands, into 
 a demand for leisure following the demand for a 
 release from the long day, and also into a demand 
 for income following the demand for release from 
 starvation wages. These two demands belong 
 together and, of course, the demand of labour for 
 income is only one expression of the universal 
 demand. We sometimes forget that; because 
 labor's demand for income comes to us a little 
 more directly and sometimes a little more 
 harshly than the demand of other groups. We 
 all must remember that the demand of the agri- 
 cultural group, of the capitalist group and of the 
 professional group is not different from the de- 
 mand of the industrial, wage earning group. 
 The wizard of finance, he milks us tenderly. 
 But labour's voice is harsh and his hand is rough. 
 Your great capitalist puts his finger skilfully 
 into your pocket and takes out what he wants by 
 fractions, in the cost of food or the price of trans- 
 portation, and if you don't exactly bless him for 
 
 107
 
 108 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 it, at least you rather admire him for it. But 
 when the mechanical wage earner comes along, it 
 seems as though he were saying, " Hands-up," 
 because what he wants has come out in a bigger 
 sum, and directly. We shall not approach this 
 question fairly until we realise, as Kennedy tried 
 to teach the folks of England in " The Servant 
 in the House," that the man who cleans the 
 drains has just as much right to the best of life 
 as the man who makes sermons or poems. I 
 suppose, in this land of democracy, we should 
 now all concede that the plumber has a right to 
 live like a gentleman — only, of course, we don't 
 want him to act like a pirate, when he can use his 
 power. 
 
 This demand for income is like the demand for 
 leisure. It is an expression of the fundamental 
 right to live and not merely to exist. For life in 
 its highest form, the life of culture and develop- 
 ment, rests equally upon the possession of suf- 
 ficient leisure to develop it and sufficient income 
 to maintain it. 
 
 RELATION OF INCOME TO LIFE 
 
 Income bears this direct relation to life — the 
 lack of it means that life is weakened, diminished 
 and distorted and finally becomes degenerate. 
 The difference between a low and high order of 
 civilisation may not be, as some witty cynic has
 
 THE DEMAND FOR INCOME 109 
 
 said, " the difference between a piece of bread and 
 a piece of beefsteak/' but there is a fundamental 
 difference, nevertheless, between the results of 
 adequate nourishment and the results of under- 
 nourishment. As the world is learning to-day, 
 that if you want armies to fight it is as important 
 to feed them properly as to give them ammuni- 
 tion, so we must learn that if we want the wage 
 earners to fight for us, to do the work of the 
 world properly, they will have to be fed poperly. 
 
 Under-nourishment or lack of proper nourish- 
 ment and of physical fitness leads you in a 
 vicious circle. It makes for inefficiency, which 
 leads to disease. That results in a still lower 
 income, and so around and around you go in that 
 vicious circle until finally you have a group that 
 is so far below the normal standard both physi- 
 cally, mentally and morally, that it is, in fact, 
 a degenerate group. You can find that group in 
 a greater or less degree in every one of your in- 
 dustrial cities as the result of the continuance 
 of that vicious circle of under-nourishment, dis- 
 ease and inefficiency. 
 
 On the other hand, the presence of sufficient 
 income and nourishment is absolutely necessary, 
 of course, to the higher life. Would folks get 
 educated? Books cost money. Would folks 
 develop the spiritual side of life, the things upon 
 which man's spiritual nature feeds? It requires
 
 110 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 income to provide them. The folks who haven't 
 got the income have to face a more serious hunger 
 than the hunger for bread; it is the hunger for 
 beauty, it is the hunger for knowledge, it is the 
 hunger for spiritual satisfaction and growth. 
 And that is the real force that is to-day driving 
 the industrial wage-earning group to demand 
 more income. 
 
 They see the higher life and want to have an 
 American standard of living really brought to 
 them. We think with some justice that we have 
 a somewhat higher average of efflciency here than 
 elsewhere, but that efficiency depends upon that 
 standard of living and that standard of living 
 depends upon a certain expenditure. It means 
 higher tastes, it means an increased demand for 
 the wherewithal to satisfy those tastes and that 
 standard. And folks ask : " Where is this thing 
 going to stop? " as if they conceive of the wage 
 earner standing continually, like Oliver Twist, 
 holding his bowl out and always asking for more. 
 Now in the name of all that is just where should 
 it stop short of the satisfaction of this demand? 
 
 I remember a conference that we had in 
 Chicago regarding welfare work in factories and 
 I remember one labourer getting up and saying: 
 " Now, we are very glad to know that some of 
 you people have proposed to put bathing privi- 
 leges in the factories and give us a chance to clean
 
 THE DEMAND FOR INCOME 111 
 
 up before we go home ; we all want to look decent, 
 but there is something else we want. We want 
 bathtubs in our homes and we are going to have 
 them, too." I remember another man saying; 
 " Where is this thing going to stop ? Why, the 
 next thing they will want is pianos in their 
 homes." And he called himself an American 
 and a Christian ! Now to him, whose chief goal 
 in life had been the making of money, not the 
 serving of his fellowmen — they go together 
 sometimes, but not often or always — to him, the 
 bathtub and the piano might be luxuries, but to 
 the modern American Christian this and a great 
 many other things are simply necessities, neces- 
 sities of the higher life. And as long as you are 
 teaching higher standards of living in the public 
 schools and as long as you are showing the re- 
 sults of this higher standard of living, you may 
 depend upon it that just so long the demand of 
 the industrial wage-earning class is being in- 
 creased by all of the natural, normal processes of 
 our American civilisation. And that demand 
 will not stop. You can't compare the condition 
 of folks here to what they had in the old country. 
 You can't compare the condition of folks here 
 with what men had in similar places forty and 
 fifty years ago. The only sound basis of com- 
 parison is with the average living standard which 
 they see around them on the one hand, and on the
 
 112 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 other hand with the actual amount of their pro- 
 duction, as they are coming increasingly to see 
 it to-day. These are the comparisons that have 
 to be made, and in so far as Christian ethics is 
 concerned, the whole impact of Christianity is to 
 increase that demand and not to lessen it. 
 
 A man stood up in a meeting that I attended 
 in another city concerning w^elfare w^ork and he 
 said — he was a machinist in a factory : " I 
 want something more than welfare work in the 
 factory." He said : " I have got two boys in 
 my home and I don't want them to go through 
 the mill." His voice broke. " I want to put 
 them through the college up here on the hill. I 
 want a chance to do my welfare work in my own 
 family in my own way." 
 
 I got a letter last week from a man in a town 
 where I had been speaking. He was a foreman. 
 He said that he had never lost his sympathy with 
 the folks who were not earning as much wages 
 as he was. And, said he : "I have never been 
 able to realise my ideal, which I believe is the 
 right of every wage earner, and that is to put 
 my children through college." Now, you say: 
 " If that ideal is to be satisfied, who is going to 
 do the rough and hard work of the world? " If 
 you are attempting to satisfy the righteous ideals 
 of mankind, you will find a way to settle that — 
 and some more practical questions also.
 
 THE DEMAND FOR INCOME 113 
 
 There is no group in a community that is built 
 around the democratic principle that can assume 
 the right to higher education for its children and 
 deny that right to any other group in the com- 
 munity. In so far as Christian ethics are con- 
 cerned, we stand for the expanded life for all, 
 not for the limited, constricted, ascetic life. It 
 is the life more abundant that the Carpenter 
 talks about; not simply life everlasting in the 
 world to come, but the hundred-fold more abun- 
 dant life in this present world. Just as we have 
 proclaimed the right of every human soul to that 
 eternal life, so must we proclaim the right of 
 every human soul to the more abundant life in 
 this present world and so must we support all of 
 the forces which will help to realise that great 
 ideal. 
 
 But some practical man says: "How can it 
 be done? There seem to be such limits to human 
 life and economic results that the Almighty 
 Himself has put an eternal sanction on the 
 division of folks into classes with their limita- 
 tions." Modern economic science is offering 
 cold comfort to folks who take refuge in that kind 
 of a theory, because it is but a theory. We have 
 to-day a great social surplus that has been 
 built up by the improvement of scientific knowl- 
 edge, methods of industrial organisation and 
 agricultural production. For the first time in
 
 114 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 human history, the human race is now living on 
 a surplus instead of on a deficit basis. In the 
 long generations of the past, races were strug- 
 gling to get food sufficient to afford a proper 
 basis for the existence of human life, but that 
 condition no longer exists. Here is a great 
 social surplus built up, being produced in a 
 greater amount than will satisfy the hunger of 
 the whole human race. Here are being piled up 
 not only the necessities but also the luxuries of 
 life. We see the evidence of that social surplus 
 all around us. Here in the past few weeks man 
 after man has gone on the stand before the Com- 
 mission on Industrial Relations and told how 
 they have been giving their scores and their 
 hundreds of millions away. They have been dis- 
 tributing this social surplus which has been 
 built up by the combined efforts and favours of 
 many people together, and by a combination of 
 circumstances and the pressure of the social 
 environment. Now labour stands looking at 
 that immense social surplus. And labour stands 
 also looking at the place where it is going; sees 
 it going for health in China (as labour's voice 
 has recently said), for pensions to university 
 professors, and for the feeding of birds; while 
 at the same time the labour that has helped to 
 make that surplus in these very industries is not
 
 THE DEMAND FOR INCOME 115 
 
 able to properly nourish and adequately educate 
 its own children. 
 
 Therefore we face a question that is absolutely 
 different from the question of the reward of the 
 individual worker. We face the question of the 
 distribution by groups of this great social sur- 
 plus ; we face the fact that at present it is being 
 distributed on no basis of justice whatever and 
 that the results of this unjust distribution are 
 socially detrimental both at the top and at the 
 bottom of society. The figures have been so often 
 repeated that they have become trite: the fact 
 that 10 per cent, of our people in this country 
 own 90 per cent, of the wealth and that the other 
 90 per cent, have incomes which would scarcely 
 make spending money for the 10 per cent.; the 
 fact that the amount produced — the market 
 value of the amount produced by the average in- 
 dustrial wage earner, according to the United 
 States Census figures, is just about three times 
 the amount of the average industrial wage 
 earner's income in this country. When the wage- 
 earning group gets educated to that fact, they 
 are going to ask how this thing has been juggled 
 and even under the present system, with capital 
 requiring its rights and management requiring 
 its rights, labour is going to stop the magicians 
 who have been shifting this three-fold shell and
 
 116 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 is going to find out under which shell its partic- 
 ular pea has been concealed. 
 
 You have another fundamental fact concern- 
 ing the distribution of the fruits of industry and 
 that is the relation of the wages of the industrial 
 group to the cost of living. The fact is, that the 
 cost of high living, or the high cost of living, 
 whichever way you wish to put it, is pressing 
 harder upon the industrial wage-earning group, 
 perhaps, than upon the professional group and 
 the lower section of the middle class group. We 
 have no adequate figures in this counti'y to make 
 a perfectly exact statement, but such figures as 
 we have tend to indicate that at least 75 per cent, 
 of the male workers north of the Mason and 
 Dixon line are to-day getting less than a living 
 wage, when you compute the living wage for 
 the average family of five (that is, a man and 
 wife and three children), on the basis of mere 
 necessities. For example, 75 per cent, of the 
 workers north of the Mason and Dixon line are 
 getting less than |600 a year. All our standard 
 of living figures indicate that the actual cost of 
 subsistence — mere physical necessities — for 
 the average family is from |400 to |600 a year 
 according to the section of the country, and that 
 the cost of an adequate living, that is, providing 
 something for recreation, something for sickness,
 
 THE DEMAND FOR INCOME 117 
 
 something for old age, is somewhere between 
 $750 and $1,000 according to the section of 
 the country and the city concerned. Now just 
 broad facts like that indicate the fundamental 
 inequity of our present distribution of the joint 
 product of our common work process, and indi- 
 cate something more, — that we have not yet 
 attempted to divide that product, generally 
 speaking, on a basis of justice. 
 
 The facts are undeniable: that prices rise 
 before wages and always fall after wages have 
 fallen, and ever the income of the wage-earning 
 group is pressed down toward the line of sub- 
 sistence. If it is pressed up at all, it is pressed 
 up usually only by the efforts of the workers 
 themselves through their own organisations. 
 And the question that is raised here concerning 
 the right of the wage earners to share in the fruits 
 of our civilisation, to share more largely in the 
 material basis for the higher life, is a question 
 that must be answered simply and solely by the 
 standard of justice. No amount of philan- 
 thropy, no amount of benevolent paternalism, no 
 amount of welfare work, will either satisfy or 
 evade that question. It is a question that cannot 
 be downed in the world as long as we have a con- 
 science created by the ethics taught by Jesus. 
 
 When we come to answer that question, there
 
 118 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 are one or two methods that are being tried to 
 remove or lessen the inequity. Organisation has 
 pushed wages up through collective bargaining 
 and has secured a higher standard of living for 
 certain of its own members. In addition to that 
 a defence has been put up for some of the help- 
 less creatures at the bottom of the labour group 
 by the legislative provision of a minimum wage. 
 That has not been extended very far in this coun- 
 try yet. I think only seven States have it and in 
 two of those the attempt is only to make public 
 the effect of the inadequacy of the wage and to 
 depend upon the pressure of public opinion to 
 bring about a beneficial result. The principle 
 enacted by law, — the method may be worked out 
 in different ways, — has resulted in some marked 
 gains for the group at the bottom of industry. 
 In this country we are attempting to apply it 
 simply to the working girls and helpless working 
 women, the working girls and women who have 
 to live on an income of five, and six, and eight 
 dollars per week. One of these working girls 
 said : " If I spend more than seven cents for a 
 lunch I think I am extravagant." Another said : 
 " If I should spend thirty cents for a dinner, I 
 don't know what would happen, and," said she, 
 " I am tired to death of living on these twenty 
 cent dinners." When I see men at the other end 
 of society spending their two, three, four and
 
 THE DEMAND FOR INCOME 119 
 
 five dollars for a dinner, I realise that we have a 
 fundamental task here, imperative to the Chris- 
 tian conscience, to adjust these differences. 
 
 That will be conceded pretty generally now by 
 the intelligent and humane management of in- 
 dustry. I remember a man at the head of one 
 of the great steel corporations of this country 
 who was objecting very seriously to some of the 
 proposals made for the betterment of the con- 
 dition of the workingman. He said : " You are 
 going to utterly disorganise the present condi- 
 tions in the industrial world." But after a while 
 he made this significant admission : " I am will- 
 ing to admit, however, that there is altogether too 
 much difference between the life of the president 
 of our corporation and the man who works in the 
 mill and mine for us." If that admission be 
 made, it shows an imperative necessity for some 
 sort of a change, and demands that we procure 
 measures which will lessen that difference. 
 While some employers of labour were at a meet- 
 ing of an investigating commission stating that 
 the working girl could live perfectly adequately 
 on eight dollars per week, the executor of an 
 estate was at the same time making application 
 to a court for an increase in the income of the 
 girl for whom it was held. He said that |12,000 
 was not an adequate income for her and he re- 
 quested that it be raised by |8,000. The kind
 
 120 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 court raised the income from |12,000 to |20,000 
 a year. As long as you have some girls of six- 
 teen years who must have |20,000 a year to live 
 on, you must have thousands of others who have 
 got to get along on eight dollars a week. Some- 
 thing must be done to bring relief from this 
 obvious injustice. 
 
 A defensive minimum wage measure has been 
 put around the group down at the bottom. The 
 principle is the thing which must be considered. 
 The principle, as given in the words of the an- 
 cient Book, is that the husbandman must be the 
 first partaker of the fruits. Other rights that 
 come in there must come in after that principle 
 has been recognised and worked out. The first 
 charge upon industry, from the standpoint of 
 Christian ethics, is the adequate support of all 
 those who are engaged in that industry. All 
 other charges whatsoever come secondary to that. 
 Now instead of conceding that principle, we are 
 engaged in this country in disputing about the 
 methods of applying it without regard to the 
 cold facts. The facts are clear here and in Eng- 
 land. They show that so far a defensive mini- 
 mum wage law has raised the income of the 
 lowest group in each industry, where it has been 
 applied. In Australia and New Zealand the 
 facts are still clearer, with a minimum wage 
 established not by legislation but in each partic-
 
 THE DEMAND FOR INCOME 121 
 
 ular industry by a wage board composed of 
 workers and employers. That minimum wage 
 so established has not only proved an adequate 
 defence for the underfed, overworked group at 
 the bottom but has resulted in a great uniform 
 improvement for the w^age-earning class and has 
 also resulted profitably to the employer. 
 
 These facts cannot be gainsaid, and therefore 
 in this country we must come to realise imme- 
 diately that the industry which pays less than a 
 living wage is a parasitic industry, socially un- 
 desirable, which the community cannot afford to 
 maintain. It matters not whether the cause of 
 that industry's paying less than a living wage 
 is the greed of the management or the inefficiency 
 of the management, and it is one or the other, as 
 your investigation in Massachusetts, by your 
 Minimum Wage Commission shows. Whatever 
 the cause, the community cannot afford to main- 
 tain a greedy management or an absolutely 
 inefficient management. The social results of 
 the lack of a living wage, the results in disease, 
 the results in inefficiency, the results in delin- 
 quency — all burdens which the community has 
 to carry — these social results are so great that 
 the community is justified in saying to individ- 
 uals : " We cannot permit you to manufac- 
 ture such results as this along with your prof- 
 its."
 
 132 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 PROFIT SHARING 
 
 The next step is the step of profit sharing. 
 That is being increasingly tried in this country. 
 It was remarkable to notice the unanimity with 
 which the great industrial managers and the 
 financial magnates testified to the Industrial 
 Commission that profit-sharing was desirable 
 and workable and the next step. The value of 
 profit-sharing depends upon the kind of profit- 
 sharing. There is one kind that has proved 
 absolutely unsuccessful, and it deserved to fail. 
 It is not profit-sharing. It is one of the 
 smoothest confidence games ever put over on an 
 unsuspicious public, and that is the profit- 
 sharing which is nothing more or less than a 
 bonus for increased production. If more capital 
 is put into an industry, the charge on that capi- 
 tal is taken out before the profits are deter- 
 mined; if more management is put into it, the 
 charge for that increased management is also 
 taken out before profits are distributed. But not 
 so with labour. The result is that without any 
 increased charge for capital and with no in- 
 creased charge for management, the management 
 says : " If you will be kind enough to produce a 
 certain amount more than you have been pro- 
 ducing, we will be good enough to give you a 
 certain part of it." All that is made is made
 
 THE DEMAND FOR INCOME 123 
 
 absolutely by the workers and capital simply 
 appropriates what it can of that and gives the 
 rest of it as a bonus to the workers. Of course, 
 that type of profit-sharing does not work out. It 
 does not relieve the friction of the industrial 
 procedure. It is often a deliberate attempt to 
 take the workers away from the beneficial results 
 of organisation and self-expression and to set up 
 a substitute for organisation on the part of the 
 workers. Concerning that attempt something 
 severer needs to be said, for it is socially harm- 
 ful. It involves certain results to society in fric- 
 tion, in the denial of the natural self-develop- 
 ment of the industrial group which are danger- 
 ous to our social progress. 
 
 But there is a type of profit-sharing which is 
 eminently just and which has the proper spirit 
 and method. That is the type of profit-sharing 
 which approaches the whole situation not to get 
 further profits by giving bonuses, but with a 
 desire really to do justice, with a desire really to 
 find out what labour has been contributing to 
 the product which it has not been getting. And 
 whenever any management in this country has 
 put up a plan of profit-sharing with an attempt 
 to do justice to co-workers, the results have been 
 highly desirable, both for the individual industry 
 and for society as a whole. It must involve not 
 only an attempt to do justice and an attempt to
 
 124 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 discover what labour really produces; it must 
 involve also the democratic spirit — the willing- 
 ness to consult and co-operate with the wage 
 earning group and give it a voice in the control 
 of terms of labour. In your own city in one of 
 your great stores, we have a genuine attempt 
 toward a just and democratic profit-sharing plan. 
 All such attempts as that are steps toward the 
 ultimate goal. They are steps in a sound and 
 healthful social progress and all who contribute 
 to them deserve the thanks of society. 
 
 IS THE WAGE SYSTEM FINAL? 
 
 But is that final? Are we able to ameliorate 
 the injustices of the present system by profit- 
 sharing, by minimum wage laws for the group at 
 the bottom, and collective bargaining on the part 
 of organised labour? Is the wage system final? 
 Is it the last thing in the division of the product 
 of industry? Well, we might remember in pass- 
 ing that there are few things that are final. The 
 trouble with most folks is that they seem to think 
 that the condition of life in which they happen 
 to have been born and have grown up is eternal. 
 The wage system is the essential feature in the 
 capitalistic method of production and distribu- 
 tion. But the capitalistic method is only a tem- 
 porary phase of the world's industrial progress. 
 And the wage system has this about it, — that it
 
 THE DEMAND FOR INCOME 125 
 
 does not harmonise with our present democratic 
 development. By it, the members of the employ- 
 ing group determine arbitrarily their share of 
 the joint product. This power is limited, of 
 course, as labour gets the power to express itself. 
 It is limited also by legislation. But in the main 
 the central feature of the present wage system is 
 that the employer can say how much his reward 
 shall be within certain economic and industrial 
 limits. It leaves that power there, and on the 
 other hand he can also say very largely what the 
 reward of those who work with him shall be. 
 This is one reason why the wage system is stand- 
 ing out to-day as inefficient and is admitted to be 
 so by some of the large industrial managements 
 in this country, and that is the reason for profit- 
 sharing. The inefficiency lies essentially here, 
 that the wage earner is not working for himself 
 primarily but for somebody else. He does not 
 know how much he is working for somebody 
 else. The fact that he is working for somebody 
 else is resulting in profit and gain, and he does 
 not know to what extent, and that stings his 
 sense of injustice. A man will work for others 
 with more zeal than he will work for himself if 
 he is working freely and voluntarily in the ser- 
 vice of common good, but when he is working 
 for some very limited group, for some few indi- 
 viduals all the time, that very fact is working in
 
 126 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 a manner more or less effectively to make him an 
 inefficient worker. 
 
 Then the wage system is being challenged also 
 because it is unscientific. Our economists are 
 telling us that it is not a scientific method of 
 determining the product of labour. There are 
 more than fourteen different wage theories 
 travelling around. Did you ever try to deter- 
 mine what made wages? Did you ever go into a 
 community to determine why unskilled labour 
 was getting |1.50 a day? The only answer I have 
 ever gotten in my attempts to discover this was 
 that somebody, years ago, hired some unskilled 
 labour and on a rough estimate he started to pay 
 $1.50 a day for that unskilled labour. That 
 wage was adjusted to the necessities of that time. 
 But because the labourer got |1.50 a day then, 
 he is still getting it and he tries to live on it. 
 Cases like that show why our present wage 
 system is absolutely unscientific. This one case 
 is an example of the fact that the wage system 
 is very largely a gamble. It is a gamble both on 
 the side of profit and of wages. The fact that 
 it is a gamble makes many a capitalist go broke 
 and leads many a worker into sorrow. It is 
 more than a mere unscientific system because you 
 are gambling with human life and that is some- 
 thing which an ethical people cannot allow when 
 it is not necessary. The intelligence of the scien-
 
 THE DEMAND FOR INCOME 127 
 
 tific world refuses any longer to support an un- 
 scientific system and demands that we shall 
 combine our powers of co-ordination. We will 
 no longer send our ships out to sea and take a 
 blind chance that the waters will be kind and 
 bring the ship safely back into port ; we first find 
 out what science has to say about the weather. 
 So we must not send our workers into the indus- 
 trial world to receive what the blind laws of 
 supply and demand shall bring them. The in- 
 telligence of the modern world must bring itself 
 to this task. It is shocked by the idea that 
 labour is a commodity to be bought and sold in 
 the open market just the same as any other 
 material, to be bought at the lowest price and 
 sold at the highest. The contention of labour and 
 the fundamental contention of the Carpenter is 
 that life is never a commodity, that life is never 
 a thing to be bought and sold. The conscience 
 of mankind in answer to that teaching has for- 
 ever swept out of the world chattel slavery and 
 sometime it is going to sweep out of the world 
 wage slavery. For when men must work under 
 conditions to which they do not consent, when 
 they must . work under conditions which they 
 abhor, that fact is a fact of slavery. When they 
 are driven by necessity and hunger and by the 
 organisation of life to work under conditions to 
 which they do not consent and when those condi-
 
 128 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 tions might be removed and changed by a more 
 intelligent organisation of the industrial system, 
 that fact is a fact which cannot be consented to 
 by the conscience that has been trained in the 
 school of Jesus. 
 
 There is something else here, in the wage 
 system; there is a wrong relationship between 
 the two parties concerned. They are trying to 
 buy and sell labour, and the best you can do with 
 collective bargaining is to put the two parties on 
 a nearly equal basis of strength down behind the 
 same table to determine the terms of the bargain. 
 The result is either an armed truce, perhaps to 
 the detriment of the rest of the community, or 
 it is worked out on the same basis that all trade 
 is carried on and the party who is the most 
 skilled is the party which will take the advan- 
 tage. " To the victor belong the spoils." It 
 is a battle principle, and the ethics that Jesus 
 taught insists that this is a wrong relationship 
 between man and man. One whose eyes have 
 been opened can never believe that the only ulti- 
 mate settlement of this question is that two 
 groups should sit around a table and see which is 
 the stronger in driving the better bargain. The 
 ethics of Jesus insists that men should sit down 
 not as antagonists, not as bargain drivers, but as 
 brothers, co-workers in the joint work of the 
 world. When you put men into that funda-
 
 THE DEMAND FOR INCOME 129 
 
 mental relationsliip, then they seek to do justice 
 to each other and not to take advantage of 
 each other. And the demand of Christian ethics 
 is that ultimately all parties to the industrial 
 process should be put in this relationship of 
 trying to determine, not how each may take 
 advantage of the other, but how best they all 
 together may serve the common good, and be 
 rewarded according to their service.
 
 130 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 Q. Is it possible to make any arrangement 
 whereby capital can possibly receive an interest 
 return generally of even two cents on the dollar? 
 
 A. Practically that thing is being done all the 
 time. Ethically, it is impossible. 
 
 Q. Ought one to patronise Five and Ten Cent 
 Stores in view of the wages paid their clerks? 
 
 A. No man can be the guardian of another 
 man's conscience, but anybody who has the kind 
 of a conscience I have been talking about ought 
 to keep away from all stores that are paying 
 starvation wages. 
 
 Q. If a man now earning |9 a week, with a 
 family, should come to you for advice, this man 
 being interested in social betterment, what would 
 you advise him to do? 
 
 A. I do not know anything that man can do 
 except, on the one hand, to endeavour to increase 
 his individual economic efficiency so that he may 
 try and get a larger wage under the present 
 system; and, on the other hand, to put all his 
 power into the collective efforts of his fellow- 
 workers to improve the general conditions. 
 
 Q. Have not we too much education? 
 Oughtn't we to have more intelligence and com- 
 mon-sense? 
 
 A. What we need is more common-sense edu- 
 cation.
 
 THE DEMAND FOR INCOME 131 
 
 Q. Would not the coming of the Millennium 
 be hastened if your lectures were used as a text- 
 book, with all references to the Bible cut out? 
 
 A. Well, I got the inspiration for my lectures 
 out of the Bible. 
 
 Q. Would it be advisable to merge the House 
 and Senate into one legislative body and take 
 away their income and use that income for the 
 relief of the unemployed? 
 
 A. I think we could even extend that proposi- 
 tion and do without the services of a great many 
 more of our so-called legislators for a while. 
 
 Q. Is the money system and the wage system 
 synonymous? What substitution would you 
 give for money? 
 
 A. They are not synonymous. Of course, I 
 am in this fortunate position, that I do not have 
 to suggest practical plans, but I have to inculcate 
 principles and I leave the difficult parts of the 
 job to somebody else, and I think the most prac- 
 tical suggestion I have seen in a long while in 
 that direction is in a pamphlet, " The Mechanics 
 of Socialism," which you can secure at the head- 
 quarters of the Boston Fabian Club.
 
 VI. VIOLENCE AND ITS CAUSES 
 
 ANARCHISM OF VARIOUS KINDS 
 
 The strongest criticism that is levied against the 
 labour movement by those who are not in touch 
 with it concerns its use of violence. It is con- 
 demned in the sacred name of law and order, and 
 law and order are, of course, fundamental to any 
 organised community. Usually the criticisms of 
 labour concerning its violence rest on two mis- 
 conceptions. There still lingers in the minds of 
 many people the mistaken notion that anarchism 
 and socialism are, if not identical, at least con- 
 nected. In the early days of the labour move- 
 ment in Europe it was composed of a number of 
 disconnected groups, and the policy was there- 
 fore more or less chaotic. Among those groups 
 there was the group of Terrorists who promoted 
 the propaganda of the deed, and strange to say 
 they achieved most success in Spain and in 
 this country. But very soon two groups very 
 different in tactics and philosophy crystallised 
 and the struggle went on between them for the 
 control of the labour movement. These groups 
 were the anarchists and the Marxian socialists. 
 
 132
 
 VIOLENCE AND ITS CAUSES 133 
 
 A renewal of that conflict is carried out in the 
 recent development of syndicalism in Europe. 
 Again the same battle has been fought ; again the 
 victory has been with the socialist tactics, and 
 the anarchist group in Europe are losing their 
 latest battle. 
 
 Another misconception that prevails Is that 
 organised labour is a sponsor of violence, attempt- 
 ing to accomplish its ends by the use of physical 
 force, particularly in its coercion of the non- 
 union man. That is not the policy of the trade 
 union movement of any country. All reputable 
 leaders of the trade union movement not only 
 disavow violence for public consumption, but 
 sincerely and strongly oppose it within the 
 labour movement. That this is an honest judg- 
 ment may be seen from the fact that violence 
 decreases with the spread of labour organisa- 
 tions. There is much less violence now than in 
 the early days of the labour movement. There 
 has always been more violence connected with 
 spontaneous strikes of unorganised workers than 
 with the strikes conducted by labour organisa- 
 tions. In those countries where trade union 
 organisations have grown to the largest strength, 
 where they are recognised by the employers and 
 by the courts, there is the least violence. In 
 Australia and New Zealand where the belief in 
 collective bargaining is very strong you find
 
 134 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 scarcely a trace of violence. In this country you 
 will find violence strongest where trade unions 
 are weakest; and in those trades where trade 
 unions are the oldest, where they have the most 
 power, you will find, generally speaking, the least 
 violence. You can take the coal mines: In 
 those States where the operators recognise the 
 rights of collective bargaining, you have a long 
 history of the peaceful conduct of the coal mining 
 industry, both to the advantage of the operators 
 and the States. 
 
 Now, notwithstanding all this, violence does 
 occur in the labour movement, and violence is 
 sometimes abvocated by local labour leaders. 
 Where you have a policy of desperation owing to 
 the break-down of organisation in a trade, where 
 you have the desperate fighting of the rat in the 
 corner, there you will find violence, as in the 
 McNamara case. Aside from that exceptional 
 case I know of no instance in the American 
 labour movement when violence has been propa- 
 gated by national union leaders. It is some- 
 times fostered by local trade union leaders. 
 
 There are some reasons why we have more 
 sporadic violence in the United States than in 
 other countries aside from the question of the 
 individualistic nature of our government. One 
 reason for that is the American spirit. We are 
 law-makers and law-breakers beyond any other
 
 VIOLENCE AND ITS CAUSES 135 
 
 people on the face of the earth. As Kipling said 
 when writing of the American spirit, first we 
 make the law we flout, and then we flout the law 
 we make. There is no one of us but what is 
 breaking continually more or less the statutes 
 that we know nothing about which are on our 
 statute books, and that breeds a disrespect and 
 even a contempt for the law. It goes further 
 than that. We have the anarchist attitude of 
 the officials who are sworn to enforce the laws 
 and who do not enforce them but who continually 
 before the eyes of the whole people violate their 
 oath of office. It is not very long, is it, since in 
 Boston a high official advocated, concerning the 
 utterances of a man with whom he did not agree, 
 that he should be run out of town? Now beside 
 the anarchy of officials of the law, which is, of 
 course, the very disruption of the State, labour is 
 educated also into disrespect for the law by the 
 attitude of capital toward the law. Labour sees 
 capital making the law, and as labour goes more 
 and more into political action it finds the capital- 
 ist lobbies at the legislature and sees how they 
 work. It even has seen the National Manufac- 
 turers' Association operating at Washington, and 
 the whole public has had opportunity to trace 
 the reaching out of that influence over the very 
 courts themselves. Capital is continually teach- 
 ing labour to have little respect for the law.
 
 136 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 When capital does not control the making of the 
 law, it hires its expensive attorneys to find means 
 to evade the law. 
 
 I am offering neither defence nor apology, but 
 I am showing reasons, and if you want to stop 
 violence in the labour movement and if you want 
 to establish respect for the law the first step is 
 to make capital keep the law; and, in my judg- 
 ment, if you can make capital keep the law, the 
 amount of trouble you will have from labour will 
 be negligible. 
 
 Now there are other more general reasons 
 lying back of this situation. You can trace the 
 development of violence in the world-wide labour 
 movement according to a certain definite law. It 
 proceeds in proportion to the tyranny of govern- 
 ments, in proportion to the opposition of employ- 
 ers to labour movements, and in proportion also 
 to the ignorance, helplessness and desperation of 
 the workers. There is a law that birds and 
 animals throw out certain defensive weapons in 
 response to certain needs of protection. And in 
 the same way if we trace the world-wide develop- 
 ment of the labour movement do we find these 
 weapons of defence being thrown out in response 
 to certain needs of protection. And the weapon 
 of defence becomes before long the weapon of 
 offence and aggression. The fundamental rea- 
 son for what violence there is in the labour move-
 
 VIOLENCE AND ITS CAUSES 137 
 
 ment is because industry is yet organised on tlie 
 war basis. All your local outbreaks are simply 
 the outcome of the war spirit that lies at the cen- 
 tre. As Lincoln said concerning the situation 
 before the Civil War, "there is an irreconcilable 
 antagonism at the heart of it." 
 
 THE STRIKE AND THE " SCAB " 
 
 Now what about the local violence of the labour 
 movement? What about the violence of strike 
 conflicts? And it ought to be recognised of 
 course, in passing, that no struggle for human 
 rights has ever been won in history without vio- 
 lence. That, again, is no apology, no defence, no 
 justification. It is the statement of a fact, and 
 along with that goes this other fact, that the 
 rights for which labour is struggling are just as 
 fundamental as any of the great civil rights for 
 which men have struggled in the past and that 
 so far that struggle for industrial justice and 
 freedom has been accompanied by less violence 
 than has the strife for political justice and civil 
 freedom. 
 
 There is, first, the violence against property, 
 and second, the violence against person. The 
 violence against property in a strike is of two 
 kinds. It is that which is emotional, the mere 
 outburst of passion and of mob spirit, that occurs 
 when there has been an adequate reason of in jus-
 
 138 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 tice to stir the mob spirit. Such a thing as 
 occurred here at Lawrence when the men opened 
 their pay envelopes and found without note or 
 warning that their wages had been cut. Such 
 violence as occurred at a later stage in that strike, 
 when the people who were trying to break the 
 strike saw they could not make any headway 
 against the peaceful picketing of the strikers, and 
 as they marched around the building singing 
 their songs they turned a stream of icy water 
 from the hose upon them on that cold winter's 
 day and thus created the violence which gave 
 them an excuse for bringing the militia to protect 
 their property. A similar development of vio- 
 lence you find in Colorado when there was vio- 
 lence against the property of the mine owners 
 after Ludlow and not before, after the miners 
 had been wrought up to a pitch of frenzied hos- 
 tility by the death of their women and their chil- 
 dren and the destruction of their tent colonies. 
 
 You also find some violence that is incited to- 
 day, that is not emotional, but is produced by 
 an educational process — produced by foolish 
 speeches, speeches that often perhaps are not in- 
 tended to produce that result. The syndicalist 
 teaches a sabotage, which is to put the machine 
 out of commission but must not destroy it. But 
 the average worker on a low wage is not accus- 
 tomed to philosophic statements; he is easily
 
 VIOLENCE AND ITS CAUSES 139 
 
 incited to destroy tlie macliine after such teaching 
 as that, and so you get a result that was not in- 
 tended by the speaker but which is the natural re- 
 sult of teaching doctrines which have a philo- 
 sophic subtlety not to be comprehended by the 
 peoi^le of the street. Then you have another kind 
 of violence that is incited by capital, the destruc- 
 tion of property that is done for the sake of put- 
 ting the blame upon the workers. There was dy- 
 namite planted in Lawrence for this purpose, and 
 also in Los Angeles after the blowing up of the 
 Times Building. I have myself in the last few 
 weeks received positive first-hand evidence con- 
 cerning one of the historic occasions in the labour 
 movements of this country when property was de- 
 stroyed, and in this instance life was taken with 
 it. I have it right from men who paid to have it 
 done that this violence was committed to have 
 something to put over upon the labour organisa- 
 tions before the courts. There is a regular busi- 
 ness also of furnishing spies to become members 
 of labour organisations. I have first-hand knowl- 
 edge of that, too, and I have had the honour of be- 
 ing reported upon by the spies that are main- 
 tained in certain industrial corporations. You 
 have the testimony before the Industrial Commis- 
 sion, men admitting that they hired private detec- 
 tives and paid them to work in their plants in or- 
 der that they might spy on their fellow-workers.
 
 140 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 Many of the deeds of violence in American labour 
 struggles were done by those secret agents, and we 
 need to understand their part in making bloody 
 history. Nobody knows how large a part of the 
 destruction charged to labour organisation should 
 be charged to these spies. As for this whole spy 
 business in American industry, I want here to 
 record my deliberate conviction that those men 
 who cannot manage industry without the use 
 of spies have thereby proved their moral and in- 
 dustrial unfitness to manage industry. 
 
 Then, there is the violence against person that 
 accompanies the strike. There are two kinds of 
 this violence, the emotional outbreak of the mob 
 and the deliberate policy of the educational com- 
 mission to discourage the non-union man or the 
 strike-breaker. Of course there is no such revul- 
 sion against the use of a little physical force on 
 the part of the men who are close to the funda- 
 mentals of life as there is in the refined and edu- 
 cated group. That needs to be taken into 
 account. Labour uses a great deal of physical 
 violence within its own family. Men who live 
 close to the fundamentals of life, who pursue 
 hazardous occupations, find that life counts but 
 little, that capital and state care little about their 
 lives. And you must remember that the refined 
 and cultivated group perform their violence just 
 as effectively, but in other ways. A labour man
 
 VIOLENCE AND ITS CAUSES 141 
 
 wlio does not want you to take his job may dis- 
 courage you with fist, or the brick-bat, or a piece 
 of lead-pipe ; but the capitalist who wants to take 
 away your job comes up behind and slugs you 
 over the head with a million dollars, but he slugs 
 you just as effectively. You may get over the 
 headache of the man who slugs you in the head, 
 but your family will be a long time getting over 
 the injury inflicted by the capitalist. Both sides 
 here cannot see the other fellow fairly for the 
 beam that is in their own eye. But some of us 
 who are standing in an impartial attitude must 
 see the thing as it is and must recognise that the 
 violence of labour, open and brutal, and the vio- 
 lence of capital, subtle and refined, are one and 
 the same thing, that both alike are fundamentally 
 wrong and that both can have no permanent part 
 in a democratic industrial community. 
 
 Of course you know of the violence of the mob 
 spirit, when the mob chases the scab, and that is 
 not anything separate from the general mob 
 spirit. It does not matter what men chase, 
 whether it is a rabbit or a man, if once they get 
 started to chase anything they lose everything 
 except mad passion. In labour struggles that 
 mad passion belongs not simply to labour but 
 to the whole community. You will find that the 
 hatred of the scab extends far beyond the limits 
 of the trade organisation. To the whole labour
 
 142 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 group that man is a traitor. From their stand- 
 point they view him just the same as the trade 
 organisation views the price cutter or the pro- 
 fessional organisation (doctors, lawyers, minis- 
 ters, etc.) regards the man who violates the rules 
 of that profession. He is not simply a grafter 
 from their point of view, but he is also a traitor, 
 and a traitor in war-time. When war is in the 
 atmosphere passion rises, and when you get war 
 in an industrial community you get all the fever 
 and passion of men rising to their height against 
 this man who is a traitor in war-time. There is 
 a group that is paid to break strikes, that expects 
 to do it by fighting. And the whole community, 
 the very children of the community, will join, in 
 the spirit of persecution, against these traitors. 
 
 But back of all that, is of course the spirit of 
 coercion, and the ethics of labour justify coercion 
 toward the undemocratic anarchistic individual, 
 insists that social welfare as well as the good of 
 the labour group justifies coercion toward him. 
 The reasoning is sound and the ethics are correct, 
 only when that is extended to the whole commun- 
 ity, when the majority in the community are con- 
 vinced of the right to use coercion toward any 
 individuals who are promoting a socially harmful 
 policy. That right of coercion does not exist in 
 any minority in the community. It must first 
 convince a majority. You have to deal with it in
 
 VIOLENCE AND ITS CAUSES 143 
 
 the whole industrial situation. You have coer- 
 cion exerted against labour as well as on the 
 behalf of labour, and if you are going to remove 
 the spirit of coercion from one side of the labour 
 question, you have to remove it from the other. 
 
 THE " GUNMEN " 
 
 Another great cause of violence in the organ- 
 ised labour movement, especially in recent dis- 
 putes, is the employment of the gunmen osten- 
 sibly for protecting property, but really for the 
 purpose of prolonging strikes. These gunmen 
 are the death-ravens of the industrial battlefield. 
 They have been used in Colorado and West Vir- 
 ginia and New Jersey. But they found New 
 Jersey different from Colorado and now they are 
 in jail to answer for their apparently unprovoked 
 attack on unarmed workers. The immediate 
 cause of the extreme violence of recent labour dis- 
 putes has been the brutality of these gunmen. 
 From the history of these situations I have found 
 that the first serious acts of violence were com- 
 mitted by those men and led to corresponding 
 acts of violence on the part of the labour group, 
 against whom those first acts had been com- 
 mitted. It was back in the 60's when this traffic 
 began when Pinkerton started his famous detec- 
 tive agency, and now there are a number of them, 
 several hundreds of them, I think, about the coun-
 
 144 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 try, principally engaged in furnishing spies and 
 guards and strike-breakers to industrial corpor- 
 ations. One detective agency offers to furnish 
 unlimited forces for |5 a day, with transporta- 
 tion. This great business amounts to the supply- 
 ing of private feudal armies to capital. It is a 
 reversion to the old feudalistic policy when the 
 barons had their private retainers. It was as late 
 as 1826 that England finally replaced the private 
 forces of the aristocracy with the civic and state 
 police, and now here in this country we have re- 
 verted to that feudalistic system. 
 
 What is the history and character of the men? 
 One of the greatest detectives of England is on 
 record after investigating the thing in this coun- 
 try as saying that 90 per cent, of these agencies 
 are fraudulent. William J. Burns, who ought to 
 know, says that as a class these agencies are the 
 biggest lot of blackmailing thieves that ever went 
 unwept to justice. Other testimony is on record 
 by men who know concerning the character of the 
 people who are enlisted in these private armies 
 (and I have some first-hand knowledge of my own 
 on that fact also) , that they are for the most part 
 ex-convicts, criminals, and denizens of the slums, 
 with a sprinkling, since the business has devel- 
 oped into warfare on a general scale, of soldiers 
 of fortune, ex-soldiers who fight anywhere under 
 any flag for the sake of adventure. Their busi-
 
 VIOLENCE AND ITS CAUSES 145 
 
 ness is to commit assaults and even to kill union 
 men. They are hired to protect property but 
 they are used to break the strike, and that is what 
 they sell themselves for. In Colorado and in 
 West Virginia they planned attacks on the labour 
 forces on the same scale as modern warfare. 
 They even have been known time and time again 
 to commit widespread violence in order on the 
 one hand to maintain their own profitable job 
 and on the other hand to discredit the strikers. 
 This is true concerning the Colorado strikes and 
 the railroad strikes of the 90's. In one case, at 
 least, the testimony is clear that the violence was 
 committed by the agents of these private detec- 
 tive agencies, who even went so far as to identify 
 themselves by a certain sign so that when the 
 militia came into action they would not suffer, 
 but the strikers. I am talking history now and 
 nobody's opinions. 
 
 " This reprehensible system is responsible for 
 much of the ill-feeling and the bad blood dis- 
 played by the working class," says the Pennsyl- 
 vania State Commission after the first outbreak 
 occasioned by such agencies in the Homestead 
 strike of 1892. Commission after commission and 
 judge after judge have so expressed themselves 
 in this country, yet that business still goes on and 
 even extends itself, and the only shadow of excuse 
 for it is, that property must be protected. In
 
 146 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 every other civilised State the protection of prop- 
 erty is kept in the hands of the State and not in 
 the hands of private forces maintained by private 
 individuals. There is no safety for any of us if 
 that system is allowed to continue. It is an in- 
 disputable spot of shame and disgrace upon 
 American industrial history, and it is high time 
 and more than time that this interstate com- 
 merce in crime and death be absolutely and for- 
 ever prohibited in this country. 
 
 THE MILITIA 
 
 But you say that then the militia must come 
 in and the attitude of the workers towards the 
 militia is no different than the attitude towards 
 the gunmen. In Colorado when the militia first 
 came in the strikers went to meet them with a 
 brass band, thinking that the militia would pro- 
 tect them from the brutality and criminality of 
 the gunmen. Later their attitude changed en- 
 tirely toward the militia. Faith in the militia is 
 not simply destroyed, but the militia is becoming 
 to be hated in the labour movement, because la- 
 bour believes (and the records show), that in 
 most cases the militia has been used not impar- 
 tially to enforce the laws of the State but on the 
 side of capital to break the strike. The testimony 
 of a militia man who served out at Lawrence 
 (and it is on record), is to the effect that they
 
 VIOLENCE AND ITS CAUSES 147 
 
 went out there to protect property and to serve 
 one side. He said : "It was so understood ; we 
 accepted favours from one side and never a word 
 was said to us concerning the rights of the other 
 side." That is almost inevitable when you re- 
 member the social and official associations of the 
 officers of the militia with the group of employ- 
 ers. It takes a good man to save himself from 
 being influenced by his friends. And with the 
 best will in the world the militia usually drifts 
 into the service of one side. In Colorado it even 
 went so far as to enlist in the militia the gunmen 
 who were being paid by the private operators. 
 
 If that danger can be avoided, yet we still have 
 this peril, the peril of martial law, which has be- 
 come a bitter fact in this country. It began in 
 Colorado in 1903. The state officials informed 
 the operators that they could have the services of 
 the militia if they would pay the expenses. 
 
 The militia should be used to establish law and 
 order if the need is there, but to put state troops 
 at the services of one party to a conflict if they 
 will pay the bill is another matter. The consti- 
 tution of Colorado says that the military power 
 must always be subordinate to the civil power. 
 Out there this military force refused to obey the 
 laws of the State. They denied the right of 
 habeas corpus. They denied the right of free 
 speech, and they made a mine manager official
 
 148 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 censor for the State of Colorado in that section at 
 that time. Since then we have had martial law 
 declared by military officers in Colorado and in 
 West Virginia without any regard as to whether 
 the facts justified martial law, for martial law 
 under our constitution is only justified when the 
 civil power is inoperative. But in each case they 
 put martial law into operation arbitrarily and all 
 the fundamental rights of American citizens, the 
 rights for which blood has been shed in the past, 
 were denied by military officers. You had men 
 thrown into jail under sentence by military 
 tribunals. You had other men thrown into jail 
 without any charge of any kind brought against 
 them and held in jail for months. Judge Cullen 
 of the New York Supreme Court has said that if 
 this process was to continue there was not a 
 single right granted to the citizens of this country 
 which they could enjoy and use. We are facing 
 here the possibility of the very breakdown of the 
 republic. If you are to have militarism express- 
 ing itself at the centre of our industrial commun- 
 ities, you have no guarantee for the future of 
 your republic. 
 
 You ought to remember that sooner or later 
 labour is going to have the controlling voice in 
 the commonwealth, and I ask you this. What is 
 going to happen in that day if labour has been 
 taught by a process of military dictatorship that
 
 VIOLENCE AND ITS CAUSES 149 
 
 the constitutional rights of citizens can be super- 
 seded by arbitrary authority? You say prop- 
 erty must be protected by the State. It must be. 
 Property must be protected. But there is not a 
 case where I have not found that the destruction 
 of property was preceded by something vastly 
 more significant, the destruction of life. The de- 
 struction of human life in the industrial world 
 has been the occasion for the destruction of prop- 
 erty. And is the state to maintain a brutal 
 armed force, for the sake of men who have no re- 
 gard for the vital human fabric of the State? 
 
 When the State considers that its first duty, 
 more fundamental even than the protection of 
 property, is the protection of human life, it will 
 not have to concern itself with the protection of 
 property, for that will take care of itself. And 
 the State that will develop itself constructively to 
 protect and develop human life will not have to 
 adopt repressive measures for the protection of 
 property. That is the way out of the situation, 
 and it is the only way out. In the last analysis 
 neither the State nor industry can rest upon the 
 constraint of force, and the attempt to use force 
 by either side in the industrial struggle is a con- 
 fession that justice and reason have not been 
 tried, or will not avail. In the last analysis both 
 industry and the State can rest on no other 
 ground than the ground of reason.
 
 150 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 Q. What do you think of Dr. Eliot's definition 
 of a strike-breaker? 
 
 A. I think that Dr. Eliot, like a good many 
 of the rest of us college professors, is talking 
 about something he does not understand very 
 well. 
 
 Q. Would not the Swiss military order be 
 worth having in this country? 
 
 A. Well, if you have got to have any that 
 would be perhaps the least objectionable. I do 
 not think you have to have any in this country. 
 
 Q. If the Socialist belief that property should 
 be enjoyed by its products is logical, why should 
 not the machine which is destroying life be de- 
 stroyed? 
 
 A. Both to-day and the other day I thought I 
 made myself clear. If a machine is destroying 
 folks that is not a reason for destroying the 
 machine, but that is a reason for stopping the de- 
 struction of the machine and harnessing it up 
 to social welfare. 
 
 Q. Can labour unions themselves offset the 
 results of the acts of strike-breakers by them- 
 selves organising a force? 
 
 A. I was in a manufacturing town last year 
 where during a strike twenty union men were 
 held responsible for order and for the protection
 
 VIOLENCE AND ITS CAUSES 151 
 
 of property. There was no violence or destruc- 
 tion of property in that town. 
 
 Q. Can the speaker give us any information as 
 to the influence of women as evidenced in Colo- 
 rado? 
 
 A. They did one thing. They compelled the 
 putting of the situation up to Washington and 
 the bringing in of the Federal troops to replace 
 both the gunmen and the state police. 
 
 Q. What part have the newspapers played in 
 these industrial controversies? 
 
 A. In several outstanding instances they have 
 misled the public by reports that were untrue and 
 by reports that were biassed and only half true, 
 and the reason for that, of course, is the associa- 
 tion of the news gathering agency locally with 
 the employing groups. The news comes to the 
 reporter from that side with which he is asso- 
 ciated, and that is the side he turns out. 
 
 Q. In view of the fact that a scab is himself a 
 worker and supports himself and family, is it 
 fair for the union to hold the scab as it does? 
 
 A. If a man is consciously and deliberately 
 putting his own self-interest, his own little com- 
 fort up above the good of a whole group or a 
 whole class, he is a traitor to the common good. 
 It is not a question of his being a traitor to the 
 union.
 
 152 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 Q. If the law and the constitution are being 
 used to destroy the rights of labour, why do you 
 say that labour should regard the law and con- 
 stitution? 
 
 A. My statement was that the danger was that 
 labour should come to disregard constitutional 
 rights. Law can be used to defend labour. It 
 can be used to defend the destruction of labour, 
 but of course the fundamental rights of any group 
 can only be worked out by itself. 
 
 Q. I wonder if professors even think or remem- 
 ber that their good salaries are often, and gener- 
 ally come very largely, from the hand-labour of 
 business men and manufacturers? I could show 
 you that manufacturers have a hard time, with 
 taxes increasing annually, and all kinds of 
 troubles. Men do not do as much in eight hours 
 as in nine. They always do the vei*y least possi- 
 ble and have no mercy on their employers. No 
 fool manufacturer can make both ends meet. 
 They require brains, real brains. Investigate a 
 little and you will know more than you now do. 
 
 A. If we were inclined to forget that first fact, 
 we should be constantly reminded of it, and we 
 are. But we remember this fact also. We re- 
 member that the money that supports us comes 
 not only from the managers of industry, but from 
 the workers in industry. And we remember 
 therefore that we are under obligations to both
 
 VIOLENCE AND ITS CAUSES 153 
 
 of them, and God helping us will discharge that 
 obligation to both of them to the best of our 
 ability. I do have plenty of sympathy with the 
 manufacturers. They have demands of labour 
 on one side of them and the control of capital 
 with its demands on the other side of them, and 
 if we have any message for anybody we have a 
 message for them, that they shall use all the 
 powers they have in joining with labour in trans- 
 forming matters. In regard to men doing the 
 least possible and having no mercy on their em- 
 ployers, of course that man has investigated just 
 his own business. He has not gone far enough. 
 I have learned this to be a fundamental rule of 
 life, whether it is in teaching or preaching or in 
 industry, you get back from men the same atti- 
 tude with which you face them. If you try to 
 skin them, they will try to skin you, and if you 
 try to treat them with justice and appreciation, 
 they will respond in the same spirit to you.
 
 VII. LABOR AND THE LAW 
 
 This is not a technical discussion. It is simply 
 an attempt to present broadly the case of labour 
 against the law, from the standpoint of an obser- 
 ver who will be impartial if he can and who is 
 entirely unversed in the subtlety of legal techni- 
 calities. 
 
 Labour's first contact with the law is usually 
 at the business end of a policeman's club. It 
 concerns the right to picket. The usual instruc- 
 tions to pickets are that they shall proceed 
 singly, or in pairs, with their hands in their 
 pockets, shall keep moving and shall use nothing 
 but speech. Well, the best of instructions are 
 not always carried out, and while peaceful pick- 
 eting is recognised by the courts and laws of a 
 good many cities and states, picketing does, of 
 course, often lead to disturbance, and that is 
 where the law may properly step in. But in 
 determining where the disturbance begins you 
 have to look for it inside the zone of discretionary 
 enforcement of the law at the hands of officials. 
 Oftentimes the right of peaceful picketing is 
 denied and violence is provoked by the police. 
 In the city of Paterson in 1913 the local papers 
 
 154
 
 LABOR AND THE LAW 155 
 
 which were bitterly opposed to both the strike 
 and its leaders, admitted and even claimed with 
 pride that there had been less violence in that 
 strike than in any strike of its size in the history 
 of this country. Yet there were during that 
 strike 1200 arrests and 300 punishments for 
 picketing, which led a more or less conservative 
 New York journal to liken that prosecuting attor- 
 ney and district judge to Jeffreys and his famous 
 hanging sheriff. 
 
 Now there are other groups interested in the 
 arbitrary and unconstitutional exercise of police 
 power. Those groups interested in moral reform 
 constantly come against that obstacle, and it 
 would be well for both them and labour if they 
 would join forces and resist with equal vehe- 
 mence the unconstitutional exercise of police 
 authority. When the police in Chicago found 
 that by mistake they had Miss Starr in jail for no 
 crime at all but peaceful picketing they were in 
 great haste to let her go. They found they had 
 burned their fingers. But she would not be let 
 go. And if the same treatment that is accorded 
 to labour for peaceful picketing were accorded 
 to people in what is sometimes erroneously sup- 
 posed to be the higher walks of society, we should 
 have a good many more disturbances than we 
 now have. 
 
 When labour appears in court it faces the same
 
 156 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 arbitrary use of prerogatire, in this case exer- 
 cised by the judiciary. It faces the injunction; 
 it faces the right of the judge to make the law, 
 interpret the law and determine the punishment 
 — the right which has been taken from the exec- 
 utive and legal departments of the government 
 and which cannot be allowed to remain in the 
 judiciary branch of the government. Does any- 
 body believe for a moment that a jury of their 
 peers, fairly drawn, would have sentenced 
 Gompers and Mitchell to jail for publishing that 
 " We don't patronise " list? And when one con- 
 siders from what class of society judges come — 
 with no imputation of their sincerity — when one 
 considers that practically their whole associa- 
 tions have been with one side of this labour con- 
 troversy, what justice can you have when an 
 injunction prerogative with the power to punish 
 is left in the hands of the judge in labour cases? 
 It may be legal etiquette to write injunctions in 
 the office of the attorney for the plaintiff, but 
 when that is done in labour cases the outcome 
 works a great injustice for labour. The funda- 
 mental principles of the English law, according 
 to an authority of this city, is that the judge is 
 simply the voice of the jury — (that is, in certain 
 groups of cases) — that it is not his province to 
 take out of the hands of the jury the fundamental 
 disposition of the accused, and the attempt to
 
 LABOR AND THE LAW 157 
 
 assume that right is contrary to the development 
 of English Civil and Criminal Procedure. That 
 attempt must be strongly resisted by all lovers 
 of liberty. The fundamental principle of the 
 right to be tried by a jury of one's peers where 
 one's life or liberty is held in peril through vio- 
 lation of the law is a right w^hich every other 
 group, as much as labour, is interested in de- 
 fending. 
 
 When labour comes into court before a jury the 
 trouble is it does not very often face a jury of its 
 peers. Packed juries do exist. The attorney- 
 general of the last administration made accusa- 
 tion to the President concerning the activities of 
 one of those private detective agencies in influenc- 
 ing juries. Even where juries are honestly 
 drawn, with the present class struggle and class 
 conflict you do not always get a jury of your 
 peers. That phrase had a distinct meaning when 
 it originated in feudal times. Would a baron 
 submit to trial by a jury of serfs? See what 
 happened in the French Revolution when the 
 class that had long been subjected to class punish- 
 ment got control of the courts and laws in their 
 own hands. And those people who are interested 
 now in days of class conflict and class struggle 
 in administering the law from the standpoint of 
 class interest might stop to remember what will 
 happen, if that policy be persisted in, when cap-
 
 158 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 ital comes into court to be accused by a labour 
 district attorney, to be tried by a labour judge, 
 and sentenced by a labour jury. 
 
 THE BOYCOTT 
 
 Labour has a controversy with the law over the 
 question of the boycott. Now the boycott is an 
 ancient weajDon. It was used in this country, in 
 this State, by the Sons and Daughters of Liberty 
 against British goods. It has been used by em- 
 ployers against union labour. It has been used 
 by trade associations against members who cut 
 prices. I have even known it to be advocated 
 against preachers. I have in my possession a 
 copy of a letter by the secretary of one of the 
 state manufacturers' associations in this country 
 which calls upon its members to cease supporting 
 preachers who talk against the interests of that 
 association. There is the positive boycott, the 
 boycott that is turned around and used the other 
 way, the consumers' label and the union label 
 which constrains its members to trade with one 
 another. The boycott in the sense of its use by 
 labour though usually means either a simple ab- 
 stention from dealing with another member, and 
 the endeavour to persuade others so to abstain. 
 That is the primary boycott and it is usually held 
 legal by our courts unless it involves violence. 
 Then there is the secondary boycott which endeav-
 
 LABOR AND THE LAW 159 
 
 ours to induce others to abstain from dealings 
 with certain parties by using coercive or intim- 
 idating measures, and that has usually been held 
 illegal, although the Supreme Court of California 
 declines to make any distinction between the 
 primary and the secondary boycott unless the 
 element of coercion comes in. England and Ger- 
 many have long recognised the boycott as a legal 
 privilege of trade unions. In this country the 
 ground of action against the boycott as voiced 
 by the United States Supreme Court in its 
 decisions against the boycott, that is, such a boy- 
 cott as was used in the Danbury Hatters' case, 
 is that it publishes certain facts, to the detriment 
 of the property or the good name of another per- 
 son, and therefore the courts have held that the 
 right of free speech and free press ought to be 
 abridged. In one notorious case the dissenting 
 judge voiced this opinion : He said, " The court 
 has no such power " — that is, to abridge free 
 speech and free press in order to protect property 
 rights. — " It is a fact that practically all of the 
 encroachment upon the rights of property up to 
 date have been made by the courts themselves, 
 the sworn defenders of the Constitution." And 
 when we remember that no government has ever 
 long survived the denial of the right of free 
 speech and free press, if there is any of the spirit 
 of '76 left in this country there will be some other
 
 160 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 people ready to go to jail along with labour in 
 defence of those fundamental rights. 
 
 You have a social question here as well as one 
 that concerns the interests of labour. Suppose 
 the facts which ought to be printed and spoken 
 are facts which the public must know? Suppose 
 they are facts concerning the adulteration of food 
 or fabric? Suppose they are facts concerning 
 the destruction of the very fabric of society, the 
 injury of the life of the workers? Must not the 
 public know those facts? Is not such knowledge 
 superior to any injury which might accrue to the 
 property or reputation of those who have been 
 doing this to the injury of the commonwealth? 
 And those who care for a safe and sound social 
 progress will defend here the right of publication 
 in the proper manner of all facts which are 
 socially necessary to be known. 
 
 It has been found in England and Germany 
 that the use of the boycott has diminished with 
 its legalising. The same result would surely 
 follow in this country. If it be not legalised, it 
 will be used secretly in a much more dangerous 
 fashion, even as the black-list is used. The black- 
 list is permitted by law even more than the boy- 
 cott, and yet the black-list is used more fre- 
 quently in this country than the boycott is used. 
 The white-list can be used just as effectively. 
 Labour recognises the possibilities of the unjust
 
 LABOR AND THE LAW 161 
 
 use of the boycott in righting injustice, and its 
 leaders have spoken against its unjust use. 
 There have been few cases in recent industrial 
 uses where it has been used for any other reason 
 than to right injustice. In one case where a per- 
 son was boycotted the trade of the person 
 attacked was increased rather than diminished 
 by the unjust and unfair use of the boycott. The 
 abuse of the boycott can be met and suppressed 
 under the existing criminal law. And if it be 
 legalised in a proper manner it will result in a 
 much better type of industrial struggle than will 
 prevail under its suppression. 
 
 CONSPIRACY 
 
 The boycott like many other labor measures is 
 sometimes proceeded against on the ground of 
 conspiracy, and here again is labour's contro- 
 versy with the law. The common law against 
 conspiracy was used in England originally 
 against all labour organisations. They were 
 held to be unlawful, but in 1875 England legal- 
 ised trade unions and took them out from under 
 the conspiracy laws. But in this country we 
 have still persisted in the doctrine that an act 
 which is lawful when performed by one individ- 
 ual becomes unlawful when performed by a group 
 acting in a concerted manner. Several States 
 have modified the common law conspiracy doc-
 
 162 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 trine in relation to labour organisations. Yet 
 when two States have by statute declared that 
 offences not indictable singly are not indictable 
 when done in concert, there have been recent 
 attempts to extend the law of conspiracy. It has 
 been so extended in the recent decision in the 
 Danbury Hatters' case notwithstanding the fact 
 that the records at Washington show that it was 
 the purpose of those who drew that law that it 
 should not apply to labour organisations. In 
 West Virginia and in Colorado indictments have 
 been drawn against the officers of the United 
 Miners for conspiracy in restraint of trade. But 
 the most daring attempt to extend the law of 
 conspiracy to labour is in a recent case in Texas 
 where some I. W. W. men were tried on a con- 
 spiracy charge because o-f a riot which grew out 
 of some speeches which some of them had made 
 while others had not been present at the meetings. 
 The prosecuting attorney took the ground that 
 the law of conspiracy held a man responsible for 
 acts done by an organisation to which he be- 
 longed even though he was not present when they 
 were done, and even though they were contrary to 
 the expressed purpose of the organisation for 
 which he had joined it. A part of labour's case 
 against the court is that justice sometimes de- 
 pends upon whether you have money to defend 
 you or not. Those men Avho were tried in that
 
 LABOR AND THE LAW 163 
 
 case had no money for a lawyer and so the prose- 
 cuting attorney got by with his charge and they 
 were given, I think, fifteen or eighteen years each. 
 But when the next group came into the court 
 their fellow-workers had provided for a lawyer. 
 Those men went to jail for three and six months. 
 Now the legal mind will have hard work to 
 convince the common-sense mind that things 
 which are right when done singly are wrong when 
 done collectively. That is simply an outworn 
 theory of a purely feudalistic period of civilisa- 
 tion. To-day group action, collective action, is 
 compulsory, and the question which has been 
 raised by one of our labour journals concerning 
 the recent attempt to extend the law of conspir- 
 acy needs to be answered. " What about the con- 
 spiracy of those who thus conspire to use the law 
 of conspiracy?" Those who are trying to limit 
 collective action, to administer the laws of earlier 
 and simpler days so as to check and hinder proper 
 action for the improvement of social conditions, 
 are not simply conspiring to persecute and 
 oppress labour, they are interfering with the 
 proper development of social progress. And the 
 peril of their course is that if approved and per- 
 sisted in by those who have their hands upon the 
 laws and the courts, it leaves as the only avail- 
 able method to remove the obstruction, the unde- 
 sirable method of physical force.
 
 164 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 FREEDOM OF CONTRACT 
 
 Labour's next controversy with tlie law con- 
 cerns the ancient doctrine of freedom of contract, 
 and that is, of course, the chief bar to the enforce- 
 ment of labour legislation. The doctrine of free- 
 dom of contract has been used to nullify labour 
 laws in State after State. It has been used to 
 nullify laws prohibiting company stores. It has 
 been used to throw out laws protecting the health 
 of women from over-labour. On that ground a 
 law prohibiting the night work of women, which 
 has been prohibited in Europe for years, was de- 
 clared unconstitutional in New York State. It 
 has been used to declare unconstitutional laws 
 for the health of the workers, " safety -first laws," 
 and also employers' liability laws. All these 
 have been checked in this country, hindered and 
 held back by this doctrine of freedom of con- 
 tract. In the State of Illinois, regarding the 
 second ten-hour law there, two working women 
 came into court to indicate that the law forbid- 
 ding them to work more than ten hours was un- 
 constitutional. One testified that she had 
 worked for a certain firm, which of course really 
 brought the suit, for thirty-two years, and after 
 thirty-two years of labour (and she was the most 
 efficient worker in the room), she could not earn 
 enough to support herself and sister without
 
 LABOR AND THE LAW 165 
 
 working more than ten hours a day. Freedom of 
 contract might be constitutional if it simply 
 meant freedom to destroy one's self, but freedom, 
 in the doing of that, to destroy a whole labour 
 group is impossible. There is now a case before 
 the Supreme Court of the United States trying to 
 declare unconstitutional the minimum wage law 
 in the State of Oregon on the doctrine of freedom 
 of contract, and the plaintiffs advance the novel 
 statement that low wages have nothing whatever 
 to do with health and morals. 
 
 This doctrine of freedom of contract is written 
 into our Constitution, but the Constitution of the 
 United States was written at a time when the 
 whole civilised world was reacting against feud- 
 alism, when the swing of the pendulum had car- 
 ried both law and philosophy to the most absurd 
 extreme of individualism, when even preachers 
 were holding that it was too bad that children 
 should be destroyed in the factories, but that all 
 you could do was to pray the good God to take 
 them out of life as quickly as possible. And in 
 addition to the reaction of Europe against the 
 constraint of feudalism we had the pioneer spirit 
 here reacting against the suppressions of the 
 Colonial period. At that time in this country, 
 and at the very time when industrialism was 
 forcing Europe away from the laissez faire phil- 
 osophy, at that time freedom of contract was
 
 166 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 rigidly written into constitutional form liere. 
 But what was then a philosoj)hic doctrine is ab- 
 solutely contrary now to economic fact. There 
 is no freedom of contract to-day for the individ- 
 ual worker in those industries which are highly 
 capitalised and concentrated. Freedom of con- 
 tract is purely a legal fiction to-day. As Mrs. 
 Eobins says, " Every one, except judges and 
 lawyers, knows that freedom of contract can exist 
 only between parties on an economic equality." 
 As long as you have economic inequality, you 
 have economic restraint. Economic restraint is 
 a fact, and it is more powerful to-day in certain 
 groups of society than any other kind of re- 
 straint. Now you can lessen that economic re- 
 straint by legal restraint, and when you lessen 
 economic restraint by legal restraint instead of 
 interfering with freedom of contract you are giv- 
 ing a direct expression of freedom of contract and 
 individual liberty. It is shown both in matters 
 of short hour legislation and liability legislation, 
 in the doctrine of the interference of the police 
 power for social welfare that freedom of contract 
 is thoroughly established now in the courts. 
 Economic restraint received its death blow with 
 the United States Supreme Court decision con- 
 cerning the ten hour law in Oregon, and since 
 then we have had decision of state courts on short 
 hour legislation, which simply shot that old doc-
 
 LABOR AND THE LAW 167 
 
 trine so full of holes that nobody but a corpora- 
 tion lawyer can recognise it. It must be recog- 
 nised that freedom of contract, individual liberty, 
 is subordinate to social welfare and that only by 
 so subordinating it can you attain the highest de- 
 gree of individual freedom and liberty. 
 
 PROPERTY RIGHTS VS. HUMAN RIGHTS 
 
 The question of freedom of contract bridges 
 into still another question, and that is the ques- 
 tion of the whole legal status of j)roperty, the 
 comparative status before the law of human 
 rights and property rights. Labour's funda- 
 mental case against the law is not so much with 
 the administration and interpretation of the law 
 as it is with the law itself. We may have to deal 
 with ancient judges still holding to outworn phil- 
 osophy, but that is not the significant situation. 
 We may have to deal with judge-made laws at 
 the hands of judges whose whole association and 
 whose whole sympathies have been with the capi- 
 talist and the employing group rather than with 
 the labour group, and who notwithstanding all 
 their sincerity and honesty are nevertheless in- 
 fluenced by their associations and their sympa- 
 thies as well as by their ignorance of the facts of 
 the situation. But we have something more 
 fundamental still. There is a different status be- 
 fore the court in most cases for property than for
 
 168 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 human rights. That appears over and over 
 again. As one of our legal authorities has said, 
 " the legal attitude toward pressure exerted by 
 business corporations for familiar ends of ac- 
 quisition is very different from that toward press- 
 ure exerted by the union for the novel end of a 
 standard of living." 
 
 So far the courts have held the right of free 
 speech as less important than property rights. 
 In other words, the life of the worker who is try- 
 ing to protect himself by publishing certain facts 
 counts for less with the court than the right of 
 property to protect itself. The extreme of that, 
 of course, was the decision in New York render- 
 ing unconstitutional the workmen's compensa- 
 tion law on the ground that it was taking away 
 the property of the employer without due process 
 of law. The Constitution says that no man's life, 
 liberty, or property shall be destroyed without 
 due process of law, and yet in all the decisions of 
 the courts there is no instance where that clause 
 in the Constitution has been invoked to protect 
 the life and liberty of the worker. Take that sit- 
 uation, which is simply a survival of feudalistic 
 times, where the governor can himself call out the 
 troops and declare a state of military law. Do 
 you know where that most vital, that most su- 
 preme of all powers, do you know a case where
 
 LABOR AND THE LAW 169 
 
 that has been used to protect the life and liberty 
 of the workers? It has been used sometimes, as 
 it must be used, to protect property. There have 
 been cases where the life and liberty of the work- 
 ers has been just as vitally injured as ever the 
 property of the employers was and that supreme 
 authority has never been used to protect it. 
 
 Come down to a concrete case and you get the 
 same thing in more outstanding form. Here is a 
 man over in New York who wrecks a business and 
 along with it wrecks the savings of his employes, 
 and he gets what — a fine, was it not? Here is 
 a man in California who steals a dollar and he 
 has gone to jail for five years for it. Now it isn't 
 any use inveighing against the judge of the court, 
 it is something fundamentally wrong with the 
 law here that we have to deal with. It is the very 
 conception of the law itself. Here are some 
 workers out in a Western State who deported 
 some people whom they thought undesirable citi- 
 zens, and they have gone to jail for kidnapping. 
 But there are cases right here where employers 
 have deported by physical force labour leaders 
 whom they considered undesirable citizens, but 
 they have not been found guilty of kidnapping 
 and I have not seen the legal process invoked to 
 that end. The United States government used 
 all the power at its command (as it properly
 
 170 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 should have used it), in hunting down everybody 
 concerned with that conspiracy of violence that 
 was concocted at Indianapolis in the Structural 
 Iron Workers' Union and the packed juries of 
 Colorado ( the evidence is before the commission, 
 it is not my word you have to take for it, that 
 there were packed juries in Colorado just the 
 same as the packed grand jury of Calumet) have 
 been indicting labour leader after labour leader 
 for violence and conspiracy and so discrediting 
 them before the whole public, but I have not seen 
 the machinery of the law, either state or Federal, 
 called into action to hunt down and trace out 
 those who planned the conspiracy of violence and 
 assault upon the miners of Colorado. 
 
 This fundamental difference before the law is 
 responsible almost entirely for labour's attitude 
 toward the law, and the peril of the situation is 
 that the attitude increasingly becomes one of dis- 
 trust and hostility. In a Western state an I. W. 
 W. leader was before the court for contempt, on 
 the charge that on the street he had made a 
 speech and said, " To hell with the court and the 
 judge." He came into court and the judge asked 
 him if he wanted a lawyer. He said, " No, it 
 would not be any use. You will do what you 
 want to, anyway." At the end of the procedure 
 the judge asked him, "Have you anything to 
 say? " He said, " Yes, I have one thing to say.
 
 LABOR AND THE LAW 171 
 
 Judge, I did not saj on the street, ' To hell with 
 the court ! ' The police testimony was all there 
 was and the policeman lied, but," he said, " before 
 you sentence me I want to stand up and say here 
 before the press. To hell with such a court ! " 
 
 Now the peril of that goes far. That spells 
 menace for the future, and it is not, I repeat, the 
 case of individual judges or individual courts, it 
 is the case of the status of property as compared 
 with life and labour before the court. It is the 
 proposition that a great part of our law has been 
 written to protect the property of the strong, who 
 got it by force originally, whose only original 
 title was that of force, and who have been strong 
 enough to write the law to protect that property. 
 That is why the ex-chancellor of England, one of 
 the best legal minds in the world, said a thing 
 which sounds most extreme to Europe. He said, 
 " If I had my way I would hang all those respon- 
 sible for the robbery of the property of other 
 nations in the present war." He does not say 
 a word about what he would do for those respon- 
 sible for taking the millions of lives in this 
 present war. It is your fundamental proposi- 
 tion there that has to be changed. 
 
 Now that status is going to be changed by one 
 method or another, for the simple reason that the 
 world is now coming to believe in a different 
 philosophy of life. It has been believing that
 
 170 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 property was worth more than human rights, but 
 it is learning now that humanity must ever stand 
 supreme above property. It is coming to a 
 philosophy of human values and human rights 
 that was not taught by those who dress in purple 
 and live in kings' houses, not by those who court 
 the favours of emperors and have the privileges 
 of the rich, but the philosophy that was taught 
 by one who worked with His hands. And the 
 world that is coming to believe in that philosophy 
 is going to change its law and its custom until 
 the battle between the man and the dollar is won 
 in favour of the man. The law which is more 
 tender to property interest than to human rights 
 is a reflection of an aristocratic state, a state of 
 class privilege. It is a reflection, moreover, of 
 the militaristic mind of that state which holds 
 the great common crowd of folk subordinate to 
 the group of luxury. But now we are creating a 
 different kind of state, a state that never will 
 enthrone a superior class in comfort and luxury 
 with an inferior class at the bottom, a state that 
 is organising its whole force and its whole life 
 for the development of all its people on terms of 
 equal opportunity. In such a state law will have 
 this for its supreme function — it will be the ex- 
 pression of the will of the people to restrain those 
 who would injure or destroy the vital property of
 
 LABOR AND THE LAW 173 
 
 the state — the lives and welfare of the people 
 who make the state and all its property, and 
 without whom neither the state nor property has 
 any meaning or existence.
 
 174 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 Q. Is not highly paid labour wages taken from 
 the unskilled and unorganised labourer? 
 
 A. Only in part. It comes from a number of 
 other sources, too. 
 
 Q. Does not the recall of judges and the recall 
 of decisions follow logically from your statement 
 of to-day? 
 
 A. It does. In a democracy the supreme 
 power must always be the will of the people. 
 
 Q. Does not the hope of labour's future depend 
 upon the fact that they are developing a litera- 
 ture of their own? 
 
 A. It does very largely. The fact that labour 
 is learning to think indicates that it is gaining 
 capacity for action, but labour's literature must 
 not be isolated from the currents of the world's 
 intellectual life. 
 
 Q. Does not, in the last analysis, the police 
 power of the State rest upon the working man 
 inasmuch as it is the power of the people? 
 
 A. The police power of the State is, of course, 
 the power of the majority, and if the working 
 man is the majority, that is his power. 
 
 Q. If a workingman is called to serve upon a 
 jury, should not he look at the case from the 
 standpoint of the working class alone? 
 
 A. That is just the kind of dose you have been 
 getting from the capitalist, and it won't do you
 
 LABOR AND THE LAW 175 
 
 any good to turn that dose around. Look at 
 everything from the standpoint of the widest 
 social interest. 
 
 Q. The Constitution is a class document, and 
 being a class document must it not be necessarily 
 thrown overboard so far as economic law is con- 
 cerned? 
 
 A. The Constitution was to a certain extent a 
 class document, and it becomes more and more so 
 as class distinctions deepen, and so far as what 
 shall be done with it is concerned, I think the 
 world will not stop because we tear a parchment 
 more or less. 
 
 Q. Do you still advise us to obey the law, or 
 are we to join with the man who said, " To hell 
 with the law "? 
 
 A. It is a very different thing to take a gen- 
 eral attitude toward all law and all courts and to 
 refuse to obey an unjust court and an unjust law. 
 I would never advise any man to obey any law or 
 any court which he believed to be unjust. 
 
 Q. Is it not true that if you have recall of 
 judges it will be the recall of the majority, and 
 that there is danger in the fact that sometimes 
 majorities are in the wrong? 
 
 A. We are always in danger as long as we are 
 alive. The danger of the majority is offset in 
 this way, that the minority can always become a 
 majority.
 
 176 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 Q. Is it not true that in labour cases Massa- 
 chusetts decisions are superior in many ways to 
 those of many other States? 
 
 A. I am not a lawyer and cannot speak with 
 authority. However, I believe that the laws and 
 the courts of Massachusetts have been, on the 
 whole, more fair to labour than those of any other 
 State. 
 
 Q. Is it not true that many of the justices of 
 the Supreme Court of Massachusetts rose from 
 the labour class? 
 
 A. Of that fact I have no knowledge, but in 
 determining the sympathies of the person, that is, 
 determining his attitude towards a class ques- 
 tion, it is a matter not of income nor birth al- 
 ways; it is a matter of one's psychological and 
 ethical point of view that determines the thing. 
 
 Q. Has the Governor of this State or any other 
 State the moral right to summon the militia to 
 protect property? 
 
 A. He has that right. 
 
 Q. I would ask the lecturer if he desired to 
 give the impression that he was opposed to giving 
 such a prerogative to the Governor of the State 
 of Massachusetts? 
 
 A. I am opposed in a democracy, which is the 
 only kind of government I believe in, to give such 
 an authority to any individual.
 
 LABOR AND THE LAW 177 
 
 Q. To whom would he give that right in case 
 of absolute necessity? 
 
 A. I would have that right determined by a 
 majority of the community where the conditions 
 exist.
 
 VIII. DEMOCRACY AND INDUSTRY 
 
 There are plenty of people who think there is 
 no need to have a commission to discover the 
 causes of industrial unrest. They are quite sure 
 that they know them. There are some folks who 
 take refuge in the comfortable belief that indus- 
 trial unrest is a manufactured product, turned 
 out by a grouj) of agitators. Unfortunately for 
 that theory, industrial unrest appears usually 
 ahead of the arrival of the agitator. The so- 
 called agitator is really an effect and not a cause. 
 Various types of labour organisations may con- 
 tribute to industrial unrest, but they themselves 
 are simply evidences and expressions of it. It 
 is a thing that is social as well as industrial. 
 You can find it existing in China and in Japan 
 just as it does in England and in the United 
 States, and if you think you can stop it by sup- 
 pressing the agitators, you will find that even 
 though you could smash every trade union, sweep 
 the Socialist party out of the political field and 
 consign all the I. W. W. speakers to darkest dun- 
 geons, your industrial unrest would still persist 
 with the same degree of spirit and force that it 
 now persists. 
 
 178
 
 DEMOCRACY AND INDUSTRY 179 
 
 There are some other folks who think that in- 
 dustrial unrest is nothing more or less than the 
 struggle of the group that is deprived of this 
 world's goods to secure more comforts and some 
 luxury. They believe, therefore, that industrial 
 unrest can be assuaged by an increase of wages 
 or an improvement of working conditions. Now 
 while, of course, the first and fundamental de- 
 mand of labour is for its due and just share in 
 the material gain of civilisation, it is something 
 more than that. It is a desire for self-expression. 
 It is a desire to share not simply in the gains of 
 civilisation, but in the control of civilisation. 
 You can satisfy the desire for material gains and 
 you will not by so doing stop industrial unrest. 
 For what you are facing here is not the rumbling 
 of individual stomachs which are hungry. It is 
 the stirring of the soul of the race. And those 
 who have been dealing so long with columns of 
 figures that they have forgotten what the soul of 
 man is like had better take heed of the fact that 
 it is the soul of man and not his stomach that is 
 stirring in this labour movement. 
 
 When you see a widespread unrest in any 
 period of human history instead of looking for 
 particular causes you had better get down un- 
 derneath the surface and see what is moving there 
 to make the eruptions. At any time of wide- 
 spread social unrest in human history you will
 
 180 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 always find underneatli the surface the stirring 
 of some great idea, of some supreme ideal that is 
 coming to birth. The ideal that is stirring behind 
 the industrial and social unrest of our age — and 
 you cannot determine its cause adequately by 
 treating it merely as industrial unrest — the 
 ideal that is stirring down there is the ideal of 
 democracy. It is that ideal of life which is the 
 great contribution to history of that little and 
 peculiar people that used to live in that little 
 strip of land that runs up and down one side of 
 the Mediterranean but who have since become 
 citizens of the world, and have carried that idea 
 and that ideal to the utmost corners of the earth. 
 It is the idea which has always lain unexpressed 
 in the mind of men. It is the ideal which has al- 
 ways been nurtured down at the bottom of the 
 human race and which has found its clearest and 
 its loftiest expression in the mouth of the Work- 
 ing Man of Galilee. For what is stirring here 
 is his great teaching of the uttermost worth of 
 the downmost man, — the truth that every life 
 must count as one and no life must count as more 
 than one. But that fundamental principle of the 
 absolute and eternal worth of every individual 
 personality is not democracy. If that be all you 
 take out of the lips of the Carpenter in order to 
 organise around it your political and industrial 
 life, you have nothing whatever but individual-
 
 DEMOCRACY AND INDUSTRY 181 
 
 ism. If that is all you take, it will lead you, of 
 course, into philosophic anarchism. But Jesus 
 taught that the uttermost worth of that down- 
 most man could only be realised as life was or- 
 ganised in brotherhood for that purpose. Here 
 is the fundamental principle of democracy, that 
 life must be organised in brotherhood for the 
 purpose of realising the eternal worth that be- 
 longs to eveiy individual soul. 
 
 That principle has been slowly making its way 
 in human history and it has been destroying all 
 despotisms — despotisms of state and of church. 
 It has made impossible feudal aristocracies along 
 with despotic empires. It is making impossible 
 all priestly hierarchies howsoever organised and 
 in whatsoever terms concealed. Now that prin- 
 ciple comes to make its way in the industrial 
 world. That principle which has been express- 
 ing itself so vitally and powerfully in the state 
 and in religion is now confronted by, an industrial 
 system that is organised on the same principle as 
 the old aristocratic, despotic, militaristic state; 
 namely, the principle of the right of the strong to 
 rule and to use the weak to their advantage. 
 And that is something more than a feudal work- 
 shop. It means not simply a feudal workshop 
 but an autocratic administration and organisa- 
 tion of finance. It means that your whole indus- 
 trial system from the labour of the handworker
 
 182 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 to the control of the common capital upon which 
 life depends is in despotic hands. Industry is 
 suffering just as much from boss rule in the con- 
 trol of its financial system as it is from the 
 despotic control of the worker in the workshop. 
 What you have here is the absolute enthrone- 
 ment of the despotic principle in industrial life 
 and the whole stirring of industrial unrest is the 
 rebellion of the democratic spirit against that 
 despotic organisation of industry. In so far as 
 it is the expression of the w^orking men in the 
 labour movement, it is the voice of their determ- 
 ination to be captains of their own souls and 
 masters of their own fates. It is the expression 
 of their determination that no other man or 
 group of men shall control or limit their lives. 
 They have found themselves to count in the pres- 
 ent industrial scheme of things quite often as 
 nothing more or less than a thing that is bought 
 and sold in the marketplace. They have found 
 themselves counted simply as a number on a 
 payroll, or reckoned merely as an item in a cost 
 sheet, and now they are expressing their voice 
 and their will in the great determination that 
 every worker shall find the expression of his per- 
 sonality in the place where he works. Men who 
 have come to take place and part in the common- 
 wealth, who have come to feel that they do count
 
 DEMOCRACY AND INDUSTRY 183 
 
 as one in the life of the state, are going here- 
 after to count as one in the industrial world. 
 
 INDUSTRIAL DESPOTISM AND ITS RESULTS 
 
 Is there such a fact as industrial despotism in 
 the United States? Can it be that in this land 
 of freedom and liberty, in this country that has 
 not simply shouted but shrieked democracy in 
 the face and the ears of all the world, that here 
 despotism still lingers? You have on record the 
 determined opposition of those in control of some 
 of our greatest industries to any organisation of 
 labour whatsoever, and if that be not the funda- 
 mental expression of the despotic principle, what 
 is it? You have in the steel industry the record 
 in sworn testimony before a commission that men 
 have been discharged for forming any kind of 
 organisation lest it should become a trade union. 
 You have the record of men discharged for going 
 as a committee to ask for such a thing as relief 
 from seven day work. You have the record be- 
 fore the Industrial Commission of the men who 
 control the coal industry of Colorado refusing 
 even the principle of a grievance committee, re- 
 fusing even that elemental expression of the 
 democratic principle, asserting in the face of 
 modern democracy the absolute prerogative of 
 despotic ownership and despotic control. You
 
 184 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 have your whole movement of the National Manu- 
 facturers' Association, with its promoters pro- 
 claiming their intention to rescue the country 
 from bad unions and bad leadership and to es- 
 tablish the fundamental principle of liberty in 
 the open shop, organising time after time a closed 
 shop against the workers. Then you have a good 
 many common people repeating the same foolish 
 cry, that the principle of trade unions is all right 
 but the trouble is that it has such bad leadership. 
 Now I want to ask if the people who use that 
 logic are willing to apply it to capitalism? Be- 
 cause what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the 
 gander, and if the whole principle of trade union- 
 ism is wrong because it has some bad men for its 
 leaders sometimes, then by the same token there 
 is plenty of evidence to prove that the whole sys- 
 tem of capitalism is wrong for the same rea- 
 son. 
 
 You have something more than the opposition 
 to labour organisations as the expression of the 
 despotic principle in industry. You have the 
 successful attempt to control the whole life of the 
 worker, to control his whole social necessities. 
 You have seen established private baronies, 
 feudal baronies within the state. That they are 
 sometimes benevolent baronies does not for the 
 moment affect the issue. The issue is, that here 
 you have the expression of the despotic principle.
 
 DEMOCRACY AND INDUSTRY 185 
 
 As one old Finnish striker put it out in Calumet 
 last year. He said : 
 
 " It is this way, I work for the company, and 
 my wife she must buy at the company store. My 
 kid he must go to the company school, and my girl 
 if she want a book she must go the company 
 library. If I want me a bath I must go to the 
 company bath house, and if my kid gets sick he 
 must go to the comi)any doctor. Now I go on 
 strike. I get into a row. The company sheriff 
 arrests me and they put me in the company jail. 
 They take me to court and the judge, he is a 
 pretty good fellow, he say ^ You are alright. You 
 can go,' but the company what do they do? They 
 say, ' We have not got him yet, but never mind, we 
 fix him, we get his damn head pretty soon.' Now 
 I'm getting old. Pretty quick I die. And when 
 I die I want to go to heaven. I hope so. But if 
 the company own heaven I want to go to hell 
 right quick." 
 
 Out in Colorado it was something worse than 
 that. It was not simply the attempt to benevol- 
 ently control the life of the workers, but it was 
 the actual control of all the civil and legal rights 
 of the workers. There are coal camps out there 
 where the very road into the camp, the very high- 
 way, is the property of the coal companies and 
 no man comes and goes on that highway except 
 at their will ; where they own the schoolhouse and
 
 186 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 the church, the store and the saloon, — every 
 facility for the life of the worker ; where the only 
 civil official in the camp is the paid employe of 
 the corporation — he is both judge, jury and exe- 
 cutor — and where anybody who does not meet 
 with their approval is told to go down the canyon, 
 and if they do not choose to go down the canyon 
 they get beaten up or shot. Now that is all on 
 record, in sworn testimony. It is a fact that we 
 have had set up here in this United States ab- 
 solute despotic control of industry. What is the 
 reason that this despotic principle still lingers 
 in the industrial world? It is the desperate at- 
 tempt of some to cling to rights and privileges 
 which the reason and conscience of mankind have 
 decided do not belong to any one group of peo- 
 ple, and labour in resisting such despotism is 
 fighting not simply its own battle but it is fight- 
 ing the battle for all of us. It is fighting the bat- 
 tle for the common liberties and the common free- 
 dom of all the people. For the attempt to retain 
 despotic control and absolute prerogative and 
 privilege goes out far beyond the control of the 
 terms and conditions of labour. Those who 
 maintain it see clearly that if labour pushes 
 its power much farther in the way of securing ma- 
 terial gains, it comes to the point where those 
 material gains can only be secured at the cost of 
 some diminution of profit. It is the clinging to
 
 DEMOCRACY AND INDUSTRY 187 
 
 that special privilege, the despotic right of one 
 group to individually determine what shall be 
 its share of the common product of toil that is 
 behind this repression of the organisation of la- 
 bour. If the greater attempt to extend that same 
 despotic control over the common interests of 
 life, over the resources upon which all of us de- 
 pend can succeed (and how near it comes to being 
 done in this country there is evidence in plenty), 
 if that can be done, the group that can do it in 
 their taxing power upon the common wealth of 
 the world, in their indirect control of the life and 
 liberties of the people, have a power undreamed of 
 by the empire makers of the past. 
 
 The necessity is upon those who care anything 
 for the principle of democracy to see clearly that 
 in resisting despotic power in the workshop, la- 
 bour is fighting a battle of freedom for the whole 
 commonwealth. And if some of you think that 
 those who sj^eak and write on these questions are 
 inclined to unduly favour the side of labour, you 
 must remember this, that we are speaking im- 
 personally, — if we can. We are speaking as Lin- 
 coln spoke, and you remember his words. He 
 said : " If it comes to a question between capital 
 and labour, labour must take priority, because la- 
 bour precedes capital and there is no capital with- 
 out it." 
 
 Now Lincoln was not talking in personal terms
 
 188 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 about groups of capitalists and groups of labour- 
 ers. He was talking impersonally about two 
 great social principles, about two great social 
 forces, and the only sound public policy by which 
 democracy can be maintained is that policy that 
 Lincoln there enunciated, with prophetic insight 
 at that time. In standing upon that ground we 
 are resisting of course the divine rights of capi- 
 tal, which have been claimed, for despotism al- 
 ways claims divine rights. And it needs them, 
 too. " Me and God " is always the voice of the 
 despot. But he will need something more than 
 that before he can make headway against the 
 worldwide ground-swell of the incoming tide of 
 democracy, whether he be in government or indus- 
 try. The divine right of capital, you know, has 
 been publicly proclaimed in the United States. 
 They do it in more refined language in these days. 
 They have learned better. But it was publicly 
 proclaimed. We were told, that the Almighty in 
 his great wisdom had selected these men of su- 
 perior intelligence and superior character as the 
 guardians of the destinies of the rest. Well, if 
 God did that He is blinder than justice is usually 
 painted. The capitalistic mind expresses itself 
 in more delicate and subtle terms these days. It 
 does not offend so grossly the conscience and the 
 reason of democracy, and let me say that not all 
 capitalists have the capitalistic mind by a long
 
 DEMOCRACY AND INDUSTRY 189 
 
 way and not all industrial managers have it. 
 Somebody raised a question here yesterday as to 
 whether some of the judges of Massachusetts had 
 not come up from below. From my experience 
 of industrial managers who have come up from 
 below some of the hardest and most brutal oppres- 
 sers of their fellowmen are those who came up 
 from the bottom. And so when I speak of the 
 capitalistic mind, I speak again impersonally. 
 Its full fruitage is both arrogant and blasphe- 
 mous in its claims of superior intelligence and 
 knowledge and of its special privilege of alliance 
 with the Almighty. When you get it in its worst 
 form it says that workers are beasts of a different 
 order, and it says the teachers and the preachers 
 are silly dreamers who ought to be pushed out of 
 the way of the practical men who know how the 
 world ought to be run. 
 
 Against that capitalistic mind, which is the 
 stupidity of despotism, the world must and will 
 make its headway into the land of reason and 
 Justice and brotherhood. What are the results 
 of despotism in this country, industrially speak- 
 ing? What are the fair fruits of industrial des- 
 potism? Serfdom, first of all. The weak and 
 the dependent fall into a condition of servility. 
 I go sometimes to industrial plants in industrial 
 communities where men are afraid to talk be- 
 cause the shadow of fear hangs over them. And
 
 190 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 where yon have that you have also corruption. 
 There is where you have your spies, sometimes 
 holding office in labour organisations, and where 
 you have that at the bottom, clear up to the top 
 you can find the poison of graft and corruption. 
 Despotism never has been able to maintain itself 
 in the world except by spies and corruptors. 
 Then among the strong you get rebellion. Among 
 the strong you get the only answer that inde- 
 pendent men can make to despotism and espion- 
 age, and of course you get the spirit of revolu- 
 tion. You have always had it as the answer to 
 despotism in all history, and if you want the real 
 reason for such an outrage as the McNamara in- 
 cident you have it as the last weapon against des- 
 potism. And if you want the fundamental rea- 
 son for Colorado, it is because the mine owners of 
 Colorado absolutely denied the principle of de- 
 mocracy. 
 
 There are many contributing causes, on both 
 sides, to the labour conflict, but the fundamental 
 cause of the conflict is the denial of one of the 
 inherent rights of mankind. And when you have 
 that, what do you have? You do not have simply 
 the hell of open warfare, but you have the hellish 
 poison of hate brewing and coursing through the 
 veins of the group at the bottom until you have 
 an iron wedge driven through your community 
 life, with men and women on both sides of it who
 
 DEMOCRACY AND INDUSTRY 191 
 
 have lost reason and faith and fraternity and who 
 face each other with hatred and suspicion. How 
 long will it be before Belgium forgets, and how 
 long will it be before the workers forget Ludlow? 
 Worse than all the brutal outrage of the conflict 
 is the poison of hate that is left to run its way 
 through generations yet to come. After that 
 reckoning, you get on the other side inefficiency 
 and finally degeneracy, for that is the price of 
 despotism. Those who wield it perish by it. It 
 destroys them. I go through those industries 
 that have become despotic close corporations, and 
 if that is what you call efficiency, then the less 
 we have of it the better. What about the workers 
 in what is perhaps the most despotically organ- 
 ised industry in this country? What about the 
 large group of workers that are working twelve 
 hours a day, and what about the social result of 
 that in the body politic? What about the type 
 of life that you find in those twelve hour com- 
 munities? You will find that it is losing a large 
 part of its productive efficiency. Because of the 
 fact that it blocks the avenue of approach from 
 the bottom, it is making a dead level at the top 
 and you are getting a mediocrity of management. 
 Along with that you have the fact of friction in 
 the industrial world because you have it split and 
 divided there with suspicion and hatred. You 
 can get efficiency out of despotism in a militaris-
 
 193 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 tic organisation of life, but in a democratic coun- 
 try with a democratic people wbo rebel against 
 despotic autocracy it is the most inefficient type 
 of management possible. The result is that you 
 get from such inefficiency in management corres- 
 ponding inefficiency in life. Will you take that 
 steel industry again, will you read the history of 
 the steel families, and then will you tell me 
 whether that type of industrial management has 
 benefited the people w^ho used it? There is an- 
 other evil. The spirit of despotism at the top 
 breeds an answering despotism at the bottom. 
 It takes the kindly, simple democratic spirit of 
 the plain humble folk at the bottom and trans- 
 forms that into the hellish likeness of its " bet- 
 ters." The answer to the despotic claim of capi- 
 tal, " This is ours. We own it and we will run 
 it/' is the despotic answer of labour. And that 
 is the worst result that can come from it, for 
 labour wants to remember that it cannot find the 
 day of redemption by seeking power for itself. 
 It is its own worst enemy in that process. The 
 same demoralising and degenerating results 
 which have followed despotism at the top will 
 follow it when exercised at the bottom, and if 
 labour would save its own soul and save the rest 
 of us it must cling at any cost to the fundamental 
 democratic principle. In the day of its power it
 
 DEMOCRACY AND INDUSTRY 193 
 
 must organise life not simply for the working 
 class but for all the children of men. 
 
 Mankind will have democracy. It will not see 
 the fruits that it has gained in the state de- 
 stroyed. It will not see the industrial despots 
 control the state for their own ends, and religious 
 freedom destroyed by the subtle control of intel- 
 lectual processes by the militaristic powers of 
 capital. We have got government of the people 
 and for the people, and the essential industrial 
 needs of the people shall yet be controlled by the 
 people and for the people. 
 
 METHODS OF INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY 
 
 The methods are first the democratic control of 
 the local workshop, and for the best form of that 
 you can take the old town meeting fashion of 
 absolute publicity of everything for everybody 
 concerned. The people who are opposing trade 
 unions have laid upon them the respousibility of 
 offering something better, and until they do their 
 sincerity is naturally in question. The next step 
 after the democratic control of the workshop is 
 the extension of that principle through the co- 
 operative organisation of the local workshop. 
 We have several in this country but co-operation 
 develops slowly. We have only got democracy 
 in the government after a long and slow pro-
 
 194 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 cess of education. The school house open and 
 free was the first thing, and the next thing was 
 the chance to gain experience through expression 
 of political powers. And we shall only get in- 
 dustrial democracy after a long and slow process. 
 The first step will be through the actual control 
 of workshops by the workers. The more all the 
 workers continually and persistently take part 
 in it the better is its contribution towards de- 
 mocracy. The development of democracy in in- 
 dustry will result in the elective control of in- 
 dustry. It is not going to be possible to stop 
 industrial democracy simply with joint agree- 
 ments between two armed forces facing each 
 other. That may be nothing but a truce between 
 two despotisms from which the rest of the com- 
 munity may have to suffer, such as a possible 
 truce between those two controlling groups in 
 Colorado. The only way you are going to stop 
 that industrial anarchy out there ultimately is for 
 the people to take hold of those coal mines and 
 operate them for themselves. We are going to 
 pass through a period of state socialism. Every 
 civilised nation is tending in that direction, and 
 experience and knowledge and co-operative power 
 is growing among us. When the nations of the 
 world come into the full consciousness of what 
 can be done collectively in destruction, they are 
 going to do the same thing that has been done in
 
 DEMOCRACY AND INDUSTRY 195 
 
 war-time over in Europe for the construction of 
 a sound basis for everyday life. The chief func- 
 tions of the state now are repressive, but slowly 
 and surely we are going to remove the thiugs that 
 needed pressure. The two chief costs of the state 
 to-day are war and crime, militarism and degen- 
 eracy. Both of those are socially preventable 
 and mankind is beginning to resolve that they 
 shall be prevented. Then you will have no need 
 for many of the present functions of the state. 
 The state is going to consist in the co-operative 
 action of all the people to carry on the necessary 
 business of life and to develop the cultural aspects 
 of life. That is going to be the type of state in 
 the future. 
 
 The dream of the later Syndicalists is some- 
 thing more than a dream, it is a forecast of the 
 process of social evolution. Absolute industrial 
 and social democracy is the complete summation 
 both of the ideals of the race and the social prog- 
 ress of the race. And if this appears so far in 
 the future that it seems to be enveloped in the 
 mist, I say to you look back first into the past 
 and see how far we have travelled. What a step 
 is there between our present power of collective 
 action in the modern state and the power of the 
 nomadic clan. When you go back of that a still 
 further step how far is it back to when the cave 
 man slept with a cudgel at his side? And if we
 
 196 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 have gained so much in collective power how 
 much more shall we not gain in the future? How 
 far have we journeyed since Jesus confronted 
 Caesar and the principle of democracy took final 
 issue with the principle of autocracy — and in 
 that day, mind you, the family as well as the state 
 was established on that despotic principle. The 
 road that we have to go to reach the end of our 
 dreams is shorter than the road that mankind has 
 travelled. And what is more, in the past they 
 plodded their weary way in darkness, but to-day 
 the road — its course at least — lies plain before 
 us and the tools for its making are here ready to 
 our hand. " O ye of little faith and dull of 
 heart ! " The men who are making the world of 
 to-morrow are the men who, both in the ranks of 
 capital and of labour, are seeking for the demo- 
 cratic method in industry. They are the path- 
 makers. They are the trail-blazers. Those who 
 put their feet on those first faint trails of indus- 
 trial democracy are helping to make the great 
 highways over which the millions of the future 
 shall walk into the land of justice and righteous- 
 ness, and that only will be the land of plenty.
 
 DEMOCRACY AND INDUSTRY 197 
 
 Q. In view of the conditions against them, can 
 the working class be blamed for wasting their 
 lives by drink and foolish living? 
 
 A. I hold it to be not only the duty of the 
 workingman and woman but of every other good 
 citizen of the Brotherhood of Man that they shall 
 make their lives the fittest possible lives that all 
 their energies may be thrown into this great 
 struggle. 
 
 Q. You have based your addresses on the 
 ethics of the Carpenter, do the preachers who are 
 shouting for Billy Sunday base their position on 
 the ethics of the Carpenter? 
 
 A. Every man can speak only for himself, and 
 I have no intention of passing judgment on any 
 other man, but I want to express one of the deep- 
 est convictions of my life, that the only effective 
 way to get the great working class of this coun- 
 try to personally follow the Carpenter is to fol- 
 low him in the fight for social justice. 
 
 Q. Would you advise the support of the So- 
 cialist party as it is to-day in carrying out your 
 ideals as set forth in this course of lectures? 
 
 A. I have seen so many things in the past 
 about the alliance between church and state and 
 its results that I must insist that that is a ques- 
 tion which belongs only to the conscience of 
 every individual man.
 
 198 THE LABOR MOVEMENT 
 
 Q. Should we have more schools? 
 
 A. What we need is not the education simply 
 of men's minds, what we need is the education of 
 all the capacities of men for the fullest possible 
 kind of life. That is the kind of education we 
 need. 
 
 Q. Does the American working man lack co- 
 operation? Is that the reason? 
 
 A. It is, because owing to our late economic 
 development here the spirit of individualism 
 lingers stronger here than it does in Europe. 
 
 Q. I Avould ask the lecturer if during this 
 course of lectures he is speaking as a teacher of 
 ethics or as a socialist? 
 
 A. I am speaking merely as a teacher of ethics. 
 
 Q. Do you think that the trade unions stand 
 in the way of democracy? 
 
 A. There are some aspects of the union that 
 do stand in the way of democracy, but no work- 
 ing man of to-day ought to forget that the long 
 battle of trade unionism for industrial democ- 
 racy is entitled to the respect of every working 
 man in so far as it stands for democracy. 
 
 Q. After all the unions have done for the work- 
 ers how can you say they do not stand for de- 
 mocracy ? 
 
 A. The speaker misquoted me. I said there 
 were some aspects of the trade union that were
 
 DEMOCRACY AND INDUSTRY 199 
 
 opposed to democracy, but that it stood funda- 
 mentally for the principles of democracy. 
 
 Q. Do you not think you have overdrawn the 
 case in favour of the worker and against the 
 capitalist? 
 
 A. My answer would be the statement that I 
 made in the course of the address, that I was 
 talking not in personal terms but in impersonal 
 terms. Of course, in the individual cases there 
 is something different to be said on both sides. 
 
 Q. Would these ethical ideals you have advo- 
 cated be obtained more quickly by an internal 
 revolution of the individual or the external revo- 
 lution against industry? 
 
 A. Those are two things which cannot be sep- 
 arated. Society is an organic thing and indi- 
 viduals are organically related to it. 
 
 Q. Do you think that there would be a de- 
 crease of violence in Boston if the police would 
 take away guns and police clubs from the police? 
 
 A. If the policeman realised that he was a 
 social servant we should have a great deal less 
 disturbance on our streets. 
 
 Q. Would it not be possible for all people with 
 the democratic idea to work in unison without 
 action by the government? 
 
 A. When the people get together they are the 
 government.
 
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