LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. Deceived JAN 16 1893 , 189'- ^Accessions No. *>0~&~f>~G .... Class No. : THE POLITICS OF LABOR. PHILLIPS THOMPSON. or THE UNIVERSITY NEW YORK AND CHICAGO : BELFORD, CLARKE & Co., PUBLISHERS. 1887. COPYRIGHT. BELFOIID, CLARKE & Co. 1887. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTORY 5 II. THK UPPER AXD THE NETHER MILLSTONE 21 III. THE NEW POLITICAL ECONOMY 51 IV. REVOLUTION OR EVOLUTION 72 V. LABOR AND GOVERNMENT 91 VI. STEPPING-STONES 112 VII. STUMBLING-BLOCKS 142 VIII. THE SOLIDARITY OF LABOR 174 IX. THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED 193 I dreamed in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth, I dreamed that was the new City of Friends, Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love it led the rest, It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of that city, And in all their looks and words. WALT. WHITMAN. THE POLITICS OF LABOR. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail ? EMERSON. " THE Labor question," as it is called for want of a better name, is simply the question as to whether America shall in the future be a free democratic land, with equal rights and opportunities, as far as may be, for every citizen or a country where the many are ruled, as in Europe, by the privileged few. It is no new question, but a new phase of a very old one. ? The rights of Labor are the rights of Man. Within the last generation a danger to American liberty has mani- fested itself in the power of wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, and the disposition to use that power oppressively and arbitrarily for the further aggrandizement of its possessors and the virtual enslavement of the mass. Apart from this conscious voluntary action on the part of the great money and railroad kings, the natural result of the increase of population under our existing social system is to intensify the pressure of competition, to make opportunities less equal, and to widen the chasm between rich and poor. America is no longer the land of promise for the down- trodden of the Old World. The old-time boast that cer- tain prosperity and success awaited every honest, industri- ous, and thrifty man who, dissatisfied with the cramping and 6 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. hopeless conditions of European life, made his home upon our shores, has been sadly falsified by the experience of recent years. We have become habituated to the idea of a chronic pauperism a permanently outcast class, once imagined to be an impossibility on the free soil of America. And, which is perhaps the most ominous sign of all, there has been a gradual degeneracy of public opinion, partly owing to European influ- ences, partly to the social changes which are taking place ; so that these things are not regarded as utterly antagonistic to the spirit of democratic institutions and inconsistent with and in the end fatal to liberty itself. Because this danger comes from a new direction, because it is closely associated with undertakings such as the great rail- way and telegraph enterprises and the development of our manufactures and commerce, which have built up the mate- rial prosperity of the country as a whole, the public have been blind to its real significance. Under the influence of democratic traditions and the memories of the revolutionary struggle, the vigilance of those who jealously sought to guard American liberty from assault was directed without rather than within. Monarchy, aristocracy, the influence of foreign gold, the intrigues of European statesmen, jealous of the phenom- enal growth of the giant republic, have been not unnatural objects of suspicion, while the process of sapping free institu- tions by striking at their tap-root the independence and self- hood of the citizen was going on rapidly without objection or protest save from an uninfluential few. Economic formulas and political rules of action inherited from an age the require- ments of which were widely different from those of our time, are largely responsible for this slowness to recognize indus- trial evils as coming within the sphere of legislative ameliora- tion. The maxim that " the best government is that which governs least " was excellent when population was sparse and scattered, when land was to be had for the asking, and men's wants were simple and for the most part supplied by themselves or their immediate neighbors. It is a mislead- ing anachronism in these days of steam and electricity, of com- THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 7 plicated and clashing interests, of vast wealth and abject poverty, of giant corporations and swollen city populations, dependent for their very existence on the working of the so- cial mechanism of exchange and transportation. The framers of the American constitution were wise in their day. It is no discredit to their memory to say that they were not omnis. cient, and that by no possible exercise of human sagacity could they have foreseen the revolution in industry and commerce which has since taken place, or provided against the social abuses and dangers accompanying it. Fidelity to their teach- ing and example demands not the blind perpetuation of an outgrown system because they adopted it as best suited to the needs of their time, but rather that the questions of to-day should be dealt with in their spirit resolutely faced and grappled with as they would have faced and grappled with them. When Oliver Cromwell was at the height of his power as Protector of the Commonwealth of England, an anonymous pamphlet appeared under the title of "Killing no Murder"*/ which struck terror even into that strong sagacious soul by its menacing invective. " Shall we, " asked the writer, " who would not suffer the lion to invade us, tamely stand and be devoured by the wolf ? " That is the question which now confronts the people of the American continent. Will the nation that defied kingly tyranny and overthrew the slaveholding aristocracy, tamely submit to see their institutions perverted, their blood-bought freedom destroyed, and a system .of the meanest and most hateful class-supremacy established upon its ruins ? To all human appearance we are on the verge of a great crisis. Political freedom cannot long co-exist with industrial serfdom. The new wine of Democracy cannot be put into the old bottles of social inequality and caste privilege with- out disaster. The industrial revolution has already begun. Though the issues as yet are far from being clearly defined, or the lines which will finally divide the contestants in the coming struggle 8 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. drawn with any degree of precision, Labor has had its Bleed- ing Kansas and its Harper's Ferry many times over in the armed conflicts between the desperate and starving working- men and the mercenary cohorts of capitalism, which are now of such frequent recurrence that they attract but little attention. It has its Lloyd Garrisons and Wendell Phillipses of the press and platform, whose pleading for justice and exposition of right, however forcibly and eloquently urged, are as contemptu- ously pooh-poohed by the sleek and shallow optimists, and the wealthy and well-to-do classes who create public opinion, as were the protests of their predecessors against chattel slavery. /And latterly the question has taken on a new phase by the appearance, in the forum of public discussion, of a numerous and influential class of professed sympathizers with Labor, who preach compromise and conciliation who propose palliatives, mutual concessions, and the alleviation of the symptoms of the social malady. Actuated no doubt by the best motives, but ludicrously ignorant of the real causes of poverty and suffering among the wage-workers, they propound such maxims as " Labor and Capital allies, not enemies," " Prop- erty has its duties as well as its rights, " and urge employers to treat their working-people justly, to refrain from taking advantage of the iron law of competition, to keep up the rate of wages and " make work " in slack times rather than dis- charge their employes advice as utterly futile, even though it were followed, to permanently abate the evils of a bad system, as the kindly treatment of slaves by many of their masters was to justify negro slavery. The very form in which these" conciliatory teachings are epitomized shows how far we have unconsciously drifted from genuine Democracy. " Capital " property is spoken of as a distinct force and factor in social organization a sort of dis- tinct estate of the realm as they would say in England, with a status of its own apart from the great body of the common- wealth. Dead, inert matter, supposed to endow its owner with other rights, duties, and prerogatives than those attaching to him as a man and a citizen ! THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 9 Change the phrase and the undemocratic character of the assumption that property or capital, as such, ought to be re- garded as a distinct interest apart from, if not superior to, labor will be at mace apparent. / " Rank has its duties as well as its rights."/*' Aristocracy and labor allies, not enemies." The complete incongruity of the idea with the fundamental principles of Democracy strikes one at the first glance. Such an utterance would excite the strongest opposition as a reac- tionary sentiment entirely at variance with the spirit of free institutions. /Y et what is " capital," when the word is used in the sense above implied, but the aristocracy of money ? /No ! Property has neither rights nor duties ! Labor and capital are not and ought not to be " allies " ; because capital is merely the thing created by labor; the instrument which should be under its control, not the force to direct it. It is necessary, in order to have a clear understanding of the proper relations between labor and capital, to discriminate between capital as an instrument and capitalism as a force. Many of the arguments by which the existing industrial system is supported are simply a play upon words, "capital" being used in a double sense. Primarily it signifies those accu- mulations of the product of labor used for further production. Factory buildings, machinery, iron ore, raw cotton, seed wheat, threshing machines, these are all forms of capital as well as the money in the bank which the employer draws to pay his workingmen their wages. No one doubts the value or, practi- cally speaking, the necessity of capital, in these and like forms, to industrial progress. But " capital," as the term is ordi- narily used in politico-economical discussion, implies a great deal more than this. When men speak of the rights of capital, the conflict between capital and labor, etc., they refer to the power which the possession or control of capital gives to a small minority of the community of regulating how much labor shall receive of what it produces to the special interest of the accumulator of labor products in the result of further productive industry. They quibble on the word capital, sometimes using it in the material and strictly correct sense 10 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. when they wish to prove how helpless labor is without it, and on the admitted necessity of capital as an instrument and a creation, basing their argument for the necessity of capital as a controlling force and a creator. Capital, properly so called, is a beneficent auxiliary to Labor in the work of production. Capitalism, or the control by means, firstly, of monopolizing resources and, secondly, of com- petition among workers, which the possessors of capital ex- ercise over the distribution of products and the general regu- lation of industry, is a wrong, a usurpation, and a growing menace to popular freedom. Labor is just as much interested in the maintenance of cap- italism, that is to say, the supremacy of capital, as the slave was in the perpetuation of the slave power. A large class of superficial observers, who, as long as it was possible, ignored the prevalent feeling of dissatisfaction among the working people, now seek to belittle it. They do not be- lieve that any crisis is approaching that the deep-seated un- rest of those upon whom the competitive system presses hardly has any special significance. "It has always been so," they tell us. " It is the old story as old as human society itself. It is natural that as America takes on more and more the condition of older countries, the volume of poverty should increase and its cry be more loudly raised. But there is no reason to suppose that the labor movement will lead to any other result than the chronic agitations among the working classes of the Old World. All old countries have their pe- riods of social disquietude and upheaval. We must expect these phenomena, but they do not necessarily imply an indus- trial revolution." The study of history is frequently misleading. Those who attempt to " unlock the future's portal with the past's blood- rusted key," and to reason by analogies drawn from history, are apt to leave out of account the factors of the problem which are of later growth, to overlook the changed conditions which render the parallel incomplete and deceptive. The result of the present agitation cannot be inferred from the familiar ex- THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 11 am pies of the uprisings headed by Jack Cade and Wat Tyler, the peasants' war in Germany, the Jacquerie, or the French Revolution. The book-learned ignorance of those who have read a great deal more than they have thought, which assumes that, because in the past labor agitations and popular upheavals have not secured any permanent, satisfactory adjustment of the question, no such adjustment is possible, loses sight of three important respects in which modern and especially American social unrest is unlike all historical examples. 1. The discontent of our day is an educated discontent. Owing to universal free education, the American working-man has at all events the rudiments of a common-school education. He reads the newspaper even if he reads nothing else, and brings a shrewd, keen-witted intelligence to bear upon every fact or opinion which has any direct relation to his position and live- lihood. The wonderful enterprise and ever-broadening scope of the modern press enlarge the circle of his ideas and sym- pathies. He learns something of the great truth of the mutual dependence on each other of the different forms of industry and the workings of the mechanism of exchange and transit. He begins to understand that the " Labor question " is not simply a difference between himself and his employer as to the amount which he ought to receive as wages, but that there are a hundred other considerations entering into the subject, apart from his employer's ability or willingness to comply with his demands or his own power to enforce them by combination. If he be an intelligent, thoughtful man he is able to trace the various causes of social and industrial evils, to know the why and the wherefore of the growing inequalities which exist. He knows how he is robbed and by whom. The coal-miners of western Pennsylvania, for instance, receive wages according to a sliding-scale based upon the selling price of the coal at Pitts- burg. Every miner consequently studies the market reports and watches intently the fluctuations of price, not only at the trade center, but at remoter points, as the barometer which in- dicates the rise or fall of his scanty wages. This is a training in itself more valuable than the theoretical teaching of half a 12 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. dozen professors of political economy. He understands how his position is affected by the relation between demand and supply. He knows almost to a cent just what proportion of the price paid by the consumer comes to him as wages and what goes into the pockets of mine operators, railroad com- panies, and wholesale and retail dealers, and can trace the ef- fect of rings and deals among these classes upon prices and wages. The cotton operative in Fall River or Lowell, who can hardly keep body and soul together on the miserable pit- tance received in that highly-protected, but most wretchedly paid, of American industries ; the street-railway conductor whose exhausting hours allow him barely time for the animal requirements of food and sleep ; though they are robbed are no longer robbed in the dark. The profits and the dividends of the wealthy corporations employing them are published in the newspapers. \ The wage-workers know that the reason why they are poor is because so large a share of their earnings goes to make others rich. The saving, industrious mechanic who has, by dint of hard toil and frugality, scraped together a few hundred dollars in the hope of becoming his own landlord, and finds that owing to the high price at which land is held the purchase is not within his means, sees the speculator grow prosperous by the system that keeps him poor. He reads year after year of the increase of rents, and is made familiar with the growth of what is really a landed aristocracy a class of enormously wealthy idlers whose resources are wrung from industry in the shape of a continuously increasing burden on the occupants of land. The American press gives a degree of publicity to the actions of prominent men, the doings of important corporations and syndicates, and the movements which influence legislation unknown in any other country. When a man becomes either sufficiently wealthy or sufficient- ly prominent in political or business affairs to attract general interest, his every movement is scrutinized by the watchful eye of the reporter or special correspondent, " set in a note- book, learned and conned by rote," and blazoned forth in the newspaper. If a millionaire makes a large investment, gives THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 13 a banquet, puts up a new mansion, or takes a journey, the in- satiable public demand full particulars, and his purposes are everywhere canvassed and criticized. If a syndicate or cap- italist enters the stock market, buys a mine or a cattle ranch, corners pork or petroleum, or makes a political deal at Washing- ton or Albany, the remorseless interviewer discloses the whole transaction. No important move in political, financial, or social affairs can now be made without becoming known to a nation of newspaper readers. Matters which in Europe would be done in a corner and never become known beyond a select circle, are the common topics of the readers of our one-cent journals. The tendency of this publicity is to throw light on the methods by which industry is defrauded, to educate the mass in a knowledge of the causes of poverty, and to suggest to thinking minds the adequate remedies. How different was the condition in this respect of the Euro- pean artisan or peasant, whose blind and desperate struggles against oppression are referred to as prototypes of the modern labor movement! Ignorant and untutored, his knowledge of the world was narrowed to his immedi- ate surroundings; whatever in the way of instruction he received inculcated content with his lot and submission to his superiors. Inequality of conditions he accepted as a matter of course a feature of a divinely ordained system under which kings and lords, priests and landowners, were born to rule and to enjoy the good things of life, while he was born to toil and endure "in that station of life to which it had pleased God to call him," as the Episcopal catechism has it. To him it seemed perfectly natural that society should be divided into classes and grades, and that the higher class should have a profusion of comforts and luxuries without anxiety or labor. He took his place uncomplain- ingly as an inferior. It was not inequality which he resented, but absolute privation. If the great truth that all men have equal rights dawned at intervals upon some bolder and more enlightened minds, it was but the dire physical necessities of the jnass w^ic!} gave their teachinj^s^jyemporary acceptance. 14 THE POLITICS OF LABOE. It was the cravings of hunger and the passion for revenge of men driven mad by oppression which steeled their hearts and nerved their arms ; not the clear, intelligent perception of the causes of their misery. 2. The American working-class possess political power, and are coming to the determination to use it in their own inter- ests. The means of an ample and absolute redress of every wrong is within their own hands. That they have not hitherto availed themselves of it to any extent is due to a variety of causes. Among the principal may be enumerated the strength of old party associations and lines of cleavage based upon past issues, the force of the laissez faire tradition, difference of opinion as to the course to be pursued, dependence upon political nostrums, palliatives, and trivial concessions by politicians to " capture the labor vote," and bribery and in- timidation exercised by employers. The old school of Democracy were apt to look upon the ballot as an end rather than a means, to imagine that all the social problems, if not solved,, were placed in the way of solution by manhood suf- frage. * We are only just beginning to realize that the fran- chise is, after all, merely an instrument and not intrinsi- cally a cure-all. Unless it be used honestly and intelligently its mere possession is not only no benefit but a positive detri- ment ; as it enables corrupt and self-seeking rulers to do in the name of the people actions which an irresponsible non- elective government might shrink from. Labor is just awakening to a dim consciousness of its politi- cal strength. Hitherto, like a shorn and blinded Samson, it has ground in the prison-house of partyism, the mock and sport of its despoilers. The time approaches when the aroused giant will put forth his long wasted energies and level to the dust the strongholds of oppression. 3. Never before in the world's history was there any parallel to the thoroughness of organization which now obtains among the laboring classes of America. The idea of the solidarity of Labor has taken firm root. The old trade unions, admir- able in their way as a step in advance, and temporarily useful THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 15 as a defence against acts of oppression on the part of in- dividual employers, though powerless to deal with the deep- seated and widespread causes of social disquiet, are rapidly- being superseded by or merged into more comprehensive organizations the order of the Knights of Labor, trades federations, central labor unions, and similar bodies. Their design is to weld labor into a compact mass, and to confront capitalism with the locked shields and levelled lances of a Pyrrhic phalanx instead of leaving the isolated bodies to be beaten in detail! ;Based on the principle that " an injury to one is the con- cern of all," this newer form of labor organization seeks to deal with the concentrated and organized power of capitalism by uniting those whose common interests and common rights are menaced by its encroachments. They are looking more and more to the ultimate causes of the subjection of labor, and less to the relations between the working-man and his im- mediate employer, which were all that the old trade unions took account of. The leaders and the more intelligent members of these bodies see very clearly that reformatory measures, to be effective, must be co-extensive with the wide-reaching agencies and influences which operate adversely to Labor- Realizing that the great productive, commercial, financial, and transportation interests are firmly linked and interlaced to- gether in a vast and complicated network closely allied with the controlling influences in politics, they understand that the struggles of small and isolated bands of workers against special local grievances are as futile as the resistance of a tribe of Indians to the advancing outposts of settlement. In either case a temporary victory may be won. But just as surely as the onward march of civilization, the immense slowly moving force behind the pioneer and the squatter, in the end drives out and exterminates the savage, so the capi- talistic system, despite an occasional repulse at the immediate point of contact, ultimately hems round, outflanks, and by in- direct and almost imperceptible advances weakens the power of resistance of the worker, and finally crushes him down to a lower standard of living. 16 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. The organization of labor on a large scale" foF protective purposes is the natural result of its more perfect organization industrially. When men of the same trade are massed to- gether by the thousand ; when single establishments have an army of employes under a minute and thorough system of discipline and organization, the circumstances are obviously more favorable to combination among working-men for their own interests than when shops and factories were small and widely scattered. The common interest is much more ap- parent ; the opportunities for intimate acquaintance, for inter- change of opinions, for frequent gathering and discussion are far greater. The whole matter is infinitely simplified. Com- bination among capitalists tends to abolish the last lingering belief that labor and capitalism have interests in common. When competition between employers had full swing there was a certain foundation for this idea. Whatever the points of disagreement between employers and men, each shop or factory, considered as a unit, had an esprit de corps. When one was trying to undersell the other or turn out goods more quickly to meet the demand, the spirit of rivalry between one set of employes and the other naturally militated to some extent against union among laborers. There was of course the ever-present discontent with an arrangement under which capital drew the lion's share of the product, but the com- munity of interest, as against the competing establishments, was a powerful counteracting influence. The employer's ever- ready argument, " How can I raise wages or shorten hours without placing myself at a disadvantage ? " was much more plausible and effective than it is at present, when " combina- tion, not competition" is the watchword among employers. Manufacturers combine to fix selling prices and limit produc- tion. Mining operators secure themselves against competition by regulating the output and the price. The great railroad interests, by means of pooling arrangements, amalgamations, and leases, are continually being concentrated in fewer hands. Everywhere the working-man sees going on around him the same process not merely of accumulating wealth, but the weld- THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 17 ing together, as with links of steel, of the forces of capital under the mastery of which the industrial system becomes an enor- mous machine. The organization and concentration of capital- ism thus gives the impulse, sets the example, and removes the obstacles to organization and concentration of labor. These considerations ought to convince every thoughtful student of the problem, that the labor question, as it now presents itself, has so little in common with past phases of popular discontent or outbreak, which may seem to present a superficial resemblance to it in some particulars, that history affords no clue to the probable issue. We are living in a transition period. The influences above enumerated as placing American working-men in a specially favorable position for securing their rights, have only begun to operate in the direction of social reconstruction in some of their phases they have been distinctly antagonistic. " Knowl- edge comes, but wisdom lingers." 'Education, for instance, while immensely increasing the power of the working-class for effective combination, if perverted by the inculcation of the untruths and half-truths of bourgeois political economy, is a hindrance rather than a help. Political power, if misdirected to the furtherance of the ends of partisans who are the tools of capitalism, is worse than wasted ; because, in the first place, it lends the authority of the popular vote to the usurpations of monopoly ; and secondly, because by raising false cries and ral- lying the people into opposing parties divided on trivial or ex- tinct issues, it diverts their attention from questions of para- mount importance. The comparison between the position of the American laborer as affected by education, the ballot, and or- ganization, and that of the toilers elsewhere and in other times, refers to the possibilities suggested by the possession of these powers not to the slight and temporary ameliorations of his condition hitherto secured by their means. To direct these forces aright to secure unity of aim and harmony in methods among all who realize the supreme ur- gency of the labor problem to indoctrinate the masses with large ancj. comprehensive views of the causes of industrial 2 1 8 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. evils and their remedies-4to substitute for a blind unreason- ing sense of personal wrong and the desire for individual ad- vancement the loftier conception of a system based on justice and equal rights to all to arouse the deadened intellects *and the torpid consciences of the comfortable class, drugged by the sophistries of a misleading political economy, appealing to their -selfish interests to regenerate the whole tone and temper of public opinion and bring it to bear upon the forces of capitalism in their thousandfold ramifications through every fiber of national life, to the end " that government of the people, by the people, and for the people may not perish from the earth " such is the task which confronts the Labor Re- formers of America such the object towards which the pres- ent writer hopes, in however small a degree, to contribute. \ Hitherto, from causes to which reference has been made, the labor struggle presents to the merely superficial observer a spectacle of wasted opportunities and unused powers of heroism and endurance misdirected of lavish expenditure for temporary and trivial objects of energy and self-sacrifice squandered in attempts to gain insignificant ameliorations of isolated advances at some few points, followed by gradual re- treat all along the line before the power of concentrated and organized wealth. What has been gained thus far is almost altogether in the way of preparation. In so far as the efforts hitherto made have been educational in their result, so far as they have effected the disciplining of the hosts of labor, so far as they have had a tendency to dissipate the prejudices and antagonisms of party, creed, and nationality which have stood in the way of union, they have been invaluable as a preliminary training for the final encounter on a broader scale. Whatever of apparent failure and defeat has attended the agi- tation was inevitable in view of the very nature of the con- flict, the obstacles to be encountered, and the forces ranged on the side of capitalism. If much has been learned, more has to be unlearned. \Olcl and deeply-rooted ideas of govern- ment and social organization are to be overthrown. Preju- dices tenaciously adhered to must be removed, False notions THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 19 as to the relations between labor and capitalism, the functions of the state and the rights of property, which have become part of the mental constitution of the race, have to be eradi- cated. ) And differences of opinion and antagonistic methods of action among those who are honestly striving according to their lights for the improvement of social conditions are to be reconciled, and whole-heartedness of purpose and steadiness of aim substituted for intermittent and badly directed enthu- siasm. A work of such magnitude is not to be accomplished by any one man or any generation of men. It must essentially be a work of slow and gradual accomplishment. It cannot be brought about by any ready-made scheme for the reconstruc- tion of society to be suddenly imposed upon men whose feel- ings, wishes, and ideals are not in harmony with it.! Instead of dogmatizing as to the ultimate form of social re-adjustment, the immediate thing to be done is to procure the acceptance of the principles which must underlie effective reform, and to indicate the general direction in which lies the path of prog- ress ; to educate the people up to a consciousness of their true interest and a knowledge of the powers within their grasp; to accept every plan which seems to have in it the promise of substantial good tentatively, and nothing as a finality, j ^Thought crystallizes slowly on great issues. In occupying ourselves too exclusively with ideals of the social regenera- tion of the future, it is possible to overlook the imme- diate practical issues which may be the stepping-stones to broader and more comprehensive reforms. Every Labor Re- former should be willing to aid in any movement which seems to be in the general line of advancement, whether it is ex- actly in accord with his pet theories or not. If it succeeds and the results prove favorable, he will have reason to change his opinion. If, on the contrary, it proves im- practicable or does not work beneficially, the experiment removes another stumbling-block and simplifies the problem. For instance, the failure of the so-called protective tariff 20 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. to protect labor plainly shows that not in that direction must the remedy for industrial evils be looked for. Had the experiment not been tried the labor movement might now be taking the form of an agitation for tariff protection. No great invention ever attained perfection at one bound. The history of all social or political systems is that of a series of experiments now in this direction, now in that. Here evolu- tion, there revolution, schemes for more perfect working brought to failure one after the other, until a partial success is obtained ; then another re-adjustment of conditions followed by a break-down from a defect in the mechanism. Then more amendments, more experiments, until, little by little, the system approaches perfection. A slow, a very slow, toilsome, uphill process. Is there cause for discouragement in the pros- pect ? Is not this the mode by which anything of great and permanent value of man's invention has been produced? How many hundred trials and experiments, how many ap- parent failures, how many improvements and alterations by one inventor after another were necessary before the steam- engine arrived at its present stage of perfection ? Think you a perfect social state is easier to create than a perfect steam- engine ? " It is with true opinions courageously uttered," said Goethe, " as with pawns first advanced on the chess-board, they may be beaten, but they have inaugurated a game which must be won." THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 21 CHAPTER II. THE UPPER AND THE NETHER MILLSTONE. See yonder poor o'erlabored wight, So abject, mean, and vile, Who begs a brother of the earth To give him leave to toil ; And see his lordly fellow-worm The poor petition spurn, Unmindful though a weeping wife And helpless offspring mourn. BURNS. ONE of the most formidable difficulties, in the way of clearness of thought, on the labor question, is the lack of appropriate terms in the English language to express the ideas suggested by new social and industrial developments. Reference has already been made to the double sense in which the word " capital" is customarily employed, and the confusion arising from the use of the same term to express the accumulated wealth used in production, and the powers, interests, and privileges claimed by its possessors. A like difficulty confronts us when we seek to characterize by a word or phrase the existing system, so as to convey at once the idea of fthe monopoly of resources by the few, and competition among the many for the means of livelihood. There is no word in the language which will answer. There is none even approaching the meaning sought to be expressed, and the writer has either to resort to a clumsy periphrasis, lacking in point and unavail- able for frequent repetition, or to confine himself to vague generalities of expression, such as "the existing industrial system," which call up no clear and tangible idea of its salient features. The word " monopoly " has of late been much in vogue, having been wrenched from its original meaning that of a privilege granted to a single individual in order to fill a gap in the language. But to speak of the monopoly system only conveys half the idea. Monopoly, of itself, 22 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. while an injustice and a wrong to the community by enriching a few individuals at the expense of the whole, would not nec- essarily produce the extreme deprivation and suffering to which large classes are now subject. It is monopoly in the broad sense of the word, combined with absolute and unre- stricted competition among the wage-earners, which causes this result. Monopoly above and competition below are the upper and nether millstones between which the toiler is crushed. That the social crime which condemns so large a proportion of the community to perpetual poverty should be like Dun- can's murder " a deed without a name " is very significant of the slight concern taken by the literary and educated classes in the social problem. Political economy pretends to have spoken the last word as regards the relations between labor and capitalism, yet its exponents have not even invented a term which in any way describes this process of grinding or crushing between the opposing forces of monopoly and com- petition. Probably the French word " exploitation " is the nearest approach to the crystallization of the idea in a single expression ; but it is used in too vague and general a sense to be available in any discussion requiring precision of state- ment. This lack of adequate phraselogy in which to set forth the evils of the existing system has given an immense advantage to its upholders. They are able to use language in a mislead- ing way, to play upon words and to twist ambiguous phrases so as to bear the significance required by their arguments. If it be urged, for instance, that " capital " is antagonistic to labor, straightway the hired apologist for capitalism proceeds to point out that but for capital the accumulated product of labor the toiler would be reduced to starvation, and to draw the inference that labor, in quarrelling with capital, is arraying itself against its best friend. The fallacy which un- derlies this intellectual thimblerigging is unperceived by many. Those who do perceive that there is a flaw in the reasoning somewhere are perhaps unable to meet it with THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 23 logical argument by showing the distinction between capital as a factor in production and capitalism as a controlling force. In like manner, where the evils of the competitive system are dwelt upon, the advocates of capitalism assume that competi- tion exists in full force between capitalists as well as between laborers, and ignore all other aspects of the problem than the relations between the worker and his employer. They leave out of the account altogether the pressure of the upper mill- stone. Obviously it is not only the amount of wages which have to be considered, but the purchasing power of those wages. '"While competition lessens the pay received by labor, mono- poly not merely decreases it to a still further extent, but les- sens its purchasing power as well. It oppresses the worker in countless ways both directly and indirectly. In the larger centres, land monopoly taxes him enormously over and above the value of the house accommodation he obtains. The price of his fuel is enhanced by a coal ring ; a series of extortionate and conscienceless middlemen, also stand between him and theWestern farmer railroad kings, elevator men, and produce- exchange gamblers put up the price of bread ]by their ex- actions, and oppress producer and consumer alike. On numberless articles of manufacture he is taxed far above their value by rings and combinations. But the pressure upon him as a purchaser and consumer does not stop here. Every class with whom he has business relations shifts its burdens imposed by monopoly onto his shoulders. The storekeeper includes rent, light, fuel, and personal outlay, all enhanced by monopoly, among the expenses to be met by his business, and fixes the prices of his goods accordingly. The fees of the professional classes are regulated on the same principle. All burdens imposed on society in general by the landowner and bondholder, the railroad monopolist and stock exchange sharper, the coal-mining syndicates and manufacturing rings, ultimately fall upon productive industry. Every dollar of the fortunes " made " but not earned, is finally paid by labor, simply because there is no other source from which it can possibly be 24 THE POLITICS OF LABOB. paid. But because the robbery is indirect, because the mon- opolists' first victim recoups himself from those with whom he has dealings, and the loss is passed on down the line until it finally falls upon the producer, men have been for long unable to trace the connection between the wealth of the millionaire and the poverty of the toiling masses ; to see that the one is the cause of the other. It is not so long since even those who had a heart- felt sympathy with the poor contented themselves with mor- alizing over the apparent injustice of a system under which some were superfluously wealthy, and others miserably poor. Thanks to the spread of enlightenment, we now know that a real injustice is involved, inasmuch as the poverty of the many is caused by the unearned, and therefore stolen, wealth of the few. The same process of shifting the burdens of monopoly down to the worker decreases the amount of wages as well as lessens their purchasing power. In so far as these bur- dens fall in the first instance upon the employer, he reckons them as part of the expenses of his business, which must be met out of its returns. Heavy ground-rents, increased prices of raw material, usury, extortionate freights, and the like must be provided for by lessening other expenses or increas- ing the gross receipts, and mean either decreased wages to employees or increased prices to the public perhaps partly the one and partly the other, according to the condition of the labor market. In either case the result as regards the working-class as a whole is practically the same. The tax imposed by monopoly is paid by the earnings of industry. Where else could the money come from to pay it ? Of all forms of monopoly, the most oppressive and the most insidious is that of private land-ownership. The most oppres- sive, because its exactions are vastly greater than those of all other forms combined, and because they constantly increase in a ratio proportioned to the necessities of the landless class the most insidious, because unlike others of recent growth, it is so deeply rooted in and firmly intwined with our insti- tutions, ideas, and economic system, that its injustice is not THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 25 generally recognized, and because the interests of the idlers whom it enriches by the labor of others are falsely identi- fied with those of a large and most important class of actual producers, wrongfully supposed to be concerned in its preser- vation. The great truth that the land belongs of right to the whole community, and that any claim on the part of an indi- vidual to more than a right of occupancy or cultivation on paying into the public treasury its yearly value is a robbery, has been so fully and clearly set forth by Henry George in words which have commanded the respectful attention of a class hitherto little disposed to attach importance to the utter- ances of Labor Reformers, that an elaborate presentation of this phase of the subject might seem superfluous. But the scope of this volume requires a thorough investigation of all those influences w r hich combine to depress the condition of labor before the direction in which a remedy is to be looked for can intelligently be considered. In the case of so promi- nent and widespread a cause of social disarrangement, some- thing niore than a mere reference is clearly called for, even though no new light be thrown on the subject. | In a new land, such as America, where a single generation witnesses the growth of crowded cities and populous states out of the sparsely settled wilderness, it is much more easy to trace the workings of an unjust social system than in old countries where institutions have been crystallized for cen- turies, so that in the eyes of many they seem part of the eter- nal order of things. But the insidious indirectness of the process and the lapse of time between the beginning and the culmination, brief though it is as compared with the slower operation of the same causes in Europe, have hitherto pre- vented a general recognition of the evil effects of land mon- opoly. If these effects, instead of being at first impercepti- ble, then slightly experienced, and so gradually and slowly growing with the growth of the community, were suddenly to be produced by a direct, concrete, overt act on the part of the exploiting class, every one would understand the essential injustice of the system. 26 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. Let us adopt a familiar form of illustration to make this clear. That clearness rather than originality is the object in view must be my apology for its triteness. Here is an uninhabited island in the Pacific Ocean. Unin- habited, but fertile ;. overgrown with luxuriant and spreading vegetation, swarming with game, and abounding in everything required for the support of man. One day a ship is stranded on the neighboring coral reefs, the breakers dash her in pieces, and the crew plunge wildly for the shore. Some are drowned, some meet their death by being thrown against the jagged rocks; and of the whole number a dozen manage to reach the shore in safety, but breathless and exhausted by their struggle for life. As soon as they have recovered sufficiently to real- ize their situation, they take the necessary measures for providing for the immediate future. Some of the ship's stores, some fragments of the wreck, are cast ashore. They manufacture rude implements of agriculture. They put up temporary houses. They gather fruit and dig roots, and set about cultivating the soil in primitive fashion. The island is amply large enough to support ten times their number, but our sailors have been brought up with orthodox ideas of polit- ical economy and cannot reconcile themselves to the " com- munistic" notion of holding the land in common, so it is duly divided up among them. Each man surrounds his patch with a rude fence, or blazes the trees as a line of demarcation, and the little community starts according to the most approved principles of modern civilization. So matters go on for a year or so. A rude plenty prevails in the colony. There is enough and to spare for all, and the worst evils of civilization are unknown. But one morning there is great excitement. A boat appears in the offing. Slowly it nears the shore. The mariners run down to the beach. The keel grates on the sand, and a few haggard, emaciated men step with difficulty ashore. They are the survivors of a boat-load who put off from a sinking vessel a week before in the hope of reaching land. Their comrades have all perished of starvation, and they are themselves at the last gasp. THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 27 Their immediate necessities are supplied and in a few days the new-comers regain their strength. So far provisions and shelter have been given them and no questions asked ; but after awhile the old settlers give unmistakable hints that their visitors have outstayed their welcome. Finally, one of them speaks out. " Say, boys ; don't you think you ought to shift for yourselves now ? ' He that won't work neither shall he eat,' as the Book says." " Just so, " says onfc of the later arrivals. " We were just thinking that we ought to scratch for our own living from this out. To-morrow we intend to put up a cabin on the bluff over there and go to work." " Well, if that ain't cool ! " ejaculates one of the early settlers. " That's my land ! You can't build on my land ! " ' Your land, eh ? It does not seem to be in use by anybody ; but if you have pre-empted it we won't quarrel about it. There's another location where the land shelves up from the beach, just past that rocky point there, will do us about as well." " Hold on though that's my lot ! " observes another of the first inhabitants. " Well, we wont dispute your claim. It's altogether likely we can find some other place to suit us. Anyhow we'll look around to-morrow for a location, and we won't ask you to do anything more for us." The old settlers look at each other in amaze at the igno- rance or audacity of the new arrivals. Finally, one of them explains. " You seem to be under a strange misapprehension. You can't settle anywhere upon our island. You have no right here at all. We as first comers have taken possession, and the land is regularly divided amongst us. We have an indefeasible title to it. Go off and find an island for yourselves." " But," says one of the new-comers, " we have as much right here as you. This island is large enough to support a hundred people. You have move land tha^-jtt^ : ; : ^p^sibly need, UITI7EESIT7 \\ >%, // 28 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. You have, it is true, divided it up ; but that is about all you have done. It is nearly all in a state of nature ; let us have at least a few acres." " If, " replies the spokesman of the land-grabbers, " you had studied even the rudiments of political economy, you would know that neither your necessities nor our superfluities have anything to do with the question. But you are no doubt socialists or anarchists, upon whom the principles of that sublime science would make no impression ; so we will not argue the matter further than to observe that we have not merely an unimpeachable title, but the necessary force to maintain it. We are two to one. We own this island and mean to keep it for ourselves. There lies your boat, under the circumstances we will not charge you for wharfage Go ! " " But where where ? We are a hundred leagues from anywhere, with neither chart nor compass nor provisions. It would be sailing to certain death ! " Meanwhile, one of the property-owners has been struck by a brilliant idea. He mentions it to the rest. They confer awhile, and the spokesman, advancing to the little group who are mournfully preparing for their departure, addresses them as follows : " As you don't seem to like the idea of leaving, we will allow you to stay here on certain conditions. You must dig our ground. You must sow and harvest our crops. You must put us up better houses than we at present occupy, cut us down fuel in the bush, catch us fish and game, in fact do all the hard, rough work that we have hitherto been obliged to do for ourselves. And you must acknowledge us as your natural superiors and always speak and act respectfully towards us, no matter how much we may abuse you. In return for which we will permit you to live here, and so long as you raise plenty of food for us we will allow you enough to live on ; but if you are lazy and do not produce sufficient to feed both us and yourselves, of course you must starve ; for, 4 He that will not work neither shall he eat, you know." * Pretty hard terms ! " says one of the unfortunates, THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 29 Hard ? Hard ! Why, man, we don't ask you to accept them. We believe in perfect freedom of contract. Those are our terms if you don't like them you can go anywhere else." Of course there was practically only one alternative ; so the second shipwrecked crew became the slaves of those who by accident had arrived a year or two before them, and raised their corn, chopped their wood, and caught their fish, while the proprietors of the soil loafed about in the shade of the palm trees in all the dignity of land-ownership. Did land monopoly in the outset assume this crude phase, its hardships would be obvious to all. Nobody could deny the injustice of a positive hard-and-fast law by which an indi- vidual or a society should take advantage of the necessities of those whom accident placed in their power, and enslave them as the condition of permitting them to exist. But be- cause these cruel results are of slow and gradual development, and are the outcome of social conditions instead of direct personal action, the abuses of the system have not been rec- ognized by the mass. The parallel is in no single respect overdrawn. The condition of the man without resources except his labor of muscle or brain, in a settled and organized community, is practically that of the shipwrecked sailor driven to choose between slavery and death. That he inhabits a crowded continent instead of an almost unpeopled island makes no appreciable difference. So long as all the resources of life for hundreds of miles around him are held in the clutch of monopoly, he is as completely cut off from availing himself of natural rights and opportunities as though surrounded by a waste of waters. But the illustration, though sufficiently apt as regards the working of monopoly alone, falls short of the reality resulting from monopoly with competition. Under this double pres- sure the man without resources sometimes has not even the alternative of wage-slavery. When the struggle for leave to work becomes intense, owing to the increase in the number \ 30 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. of would-be toilers without the means of self-employment, some are denied the privilege upon any terms, because those who control the avenues of labor have no use for their ser- vices. They become outcasts and vagrants, seek by crime the bread denied to honest labor, eke out a miserable existence on the alms of the charitable, or die of slow starvation, while all around them is abundance, and the lives of their fellows are a burden by hard monotonous overwork. In addition to the gradual development of the evils of land monopoly, the comparatively wide distribution of the unearned increment during its earlier stages is another cause why its injustice is not generally realized. While land is rising in value, a great many people are making money and many more mistakenly think they are, while the pressure upon the land- less class is only beginning to be slightly felt. As a matter of fact it is only those who hold land to sell or rent who are benefited by any increase in land values. Those who simply occupy land for their individual use, for cultivation, residence, or business purposes, are in no degree advan- taged by the rise. A man who has bought a house and lot in a growing town, for instance, for one thousand dollars, feels greatly elated when he learns that owing to the increase of population it has doubled its value. He fancies himself a thousand dollars richer than when he made the purchase. In one sense he is. He can sell out for a thousand dollars more than he paid. But if he means to continue a resident he must purchase or rent at the increased value, so that his unearned increment is no benefit. True, he may, by watch- ing his chances and exercising his judgment, invest his money to better advantage. But for the purposes of the present argu- ment we are not considering those changes of a speculative character made by owners of real estate, but the effect of a rise in value upon those who hold property for other than speculative purposes. Clearly the man who lives in a thou- sand dollar house and means to continue living in the same locality is really no richer for any purpose except that of speculation because after the lapse of some years, the house THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 31 meantime having grown visibly out of repair from age, the property is said to be worth two, five, or ten thousand dollars. Neither is the manufacturer or store-keeper, as a manufacturer or storekeeper, any the better off by reason of a similar rise in value of the land on which his place of business stands. He can sell out for more, that is all; but to continue his call- ing he would have to pay a price either in the form of pur- chase money or rent equivalent to his gain apart from the chances of a lucky speculation in exchanging a more for a less costly site. Nevertheless the adventitious increase in value deceives many people into supposing that they are really wealthier because the property which they hold and have all along held for a particular purpose, independent of its selling price, is nominally held at a higher figure. So far as the real value of the property for trade, occupation or ersidence is concerned they are in precisely the same condition as before the rise. And the change which enriches the land speculator or the individual property-owner who takes advant- age of the unearned increment to realize upon his land lays a heavy and always increasing burden upon the laboring class as a whole. Let us suppose that John Wilson, a blacksmith, settles in the small village of Boomington, which seems to afford a good opening for one of his craft. Land is still cheap though con- siderably advanced beyond farm prices, owing to the prospects of the community ; and John thinks himself fortunate in being able to secure a good-sized lot on the straggling main street for $100. He builds a shop and small house adjoining, and being an industrious and sober mechanic, soon finds himself in a fair way of business. The calculations of the villagers as to their future were well-founded. The place, owing to its natural advantages as a business center, rapidly increases in population. Shops and stores are springing up in all direc- tions. One day John Wilson is confronted by a demand for taxes greatly in excess of the amount lie had previously paid. He looks over the paper in surprise. " Why, you have valued my place at two thousand dollars. All I paid for the lot was $100 : and the buildings ain't worth rnore than $500. 32 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. " Ah, but you know we've bad a re-valuation. Your prop- erty is worth every cent of $2000. You wouldn't take that much for it, you know." " Come to think of it, I guess I would'nt," says John to himself; and he pays bis taxes with a reluctant grunt, chuck- ling inwardly, however, at his good fortune in having "made " at least fourteen hundred on land the value of which grew whether he was sleeping or working, in addition to the snug little sum saved from the proceeds of bis honest toil. But though his position as a land-owner is indisputably bettered by the growth of the place, as a blacksmith lie is no better off than before. Increased population has brought increased business, it is true ; but it has also brought increased com- petition. At first he had no competitors now there are half a dozen ; and though work is perhaps somewhat more plentiful, prices are decidedly lower, and, as we have just seen, his taxes are higher. Nevertheless John is vastly pleased with his foresight in the choice of a location, because he knows that whatever may become of his business, he has in his land an investment of steadily increasing value. Time goes on, and despite some fluctuations, Boomington continues its growth. The village has become a city. Property on the main street is too valuable for business purposes to be occupied as dwellings, and John Wilson is finally tempted to sell the portion of his lot on which his cottage stands for several thousand dollars. With a shrewd eye to the future, he buys a residence in the suburbs with a large area of vacant, land adjoining. The blacksmith business is no better than before, but John has now become a capitalist. He has several journeymen in place of the solitary apprentice of old. But. his interest in his trade is not the same. The profits he can make as a blacksmith are a small matter compared with the prospects of realizing a competence from the increase in the value of his land. The old blacksmith shop has a strangely incongruous aspect amid its surroundings of handsome stores and palatial blocks of business offices, and so one day John Wilson lays down his hammer and throws off his leather THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 33 apron forever. He has sold out the site to an enterprising merchant at a handsome figure. He can now take life easy. He is a " self-made man," and is never tired of boasting that he made every cent of his money by his honest industry. John has no sort of toleration for the complaints of labor. Talk to him of the uncertainty of employment and the prefc- sure of competition ; tell him that the tendency of land monoV poly is to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, and he will reply " All nonsense, sir. The whole trouble comes from the teaching of agitators and demagogues. Why, look at me ! I came here thirty years ago, with hardly a cent to my name, worked hard, grew up with the place, and to-day, sir, I'm worth thirty to forty thousand dollars. Any working-man who is sober and industrious can do the same.^5^ A short time since, Mr. Wilson received a visit from Tarn Judson, son of an old friend and former shop-mate, j The young fellow had taken to his father's trade, and learning of Wilson's prosperity had concluded that Boomington ought to be a good place in which to settle. He had a few hundred dollars, and furnished by his father with a note of introduc- tion to his old friend, came to ask his advice and assistance. I "Ah um" said Wilson. "Glad to do anything I can. But things are very different now, you know. Any number of good hands looking for work. You might get a job at; Coulter's place, perhaps, at nine dollars a week or so." "But I thought of starting on my own account. I have a few hundred dollars, and if I could buy a shop " " Buy a shop in Boomington for a few hundred dollars ! You must be crazy. It would cost a great deal more than that to buy the land. You might perhaps rent a place. But it's no use to start a one-horse establishment in these days of competition. Like everything else it requires capital. You'd better not risk your money in starting on your own account, but look out for a job. Are you married ? " Yes. I want to start housekeeping right away. I thought perhaps I could get a lot cheap, and then get a small house put up on time." 34 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. " Well, that is perhaps the best thing you can do ; but of course if you expect to buy cheap you will have to go some distance out. I think I have just the lot that will suit you for $500. It will be two or three miles from your work, but the street cars are handy. I did intend holding it for a further rise, but seeing you are Tom Judson's son I don't mind letting you have it for that, and its a bargain I assure you. If you have steady work and are saving and economical, you ought to be able to pay for the house in four or five rears." low the difference between the positions and opportunities of John Wilson and Tom Judson at the outset of their careers is due to land monopoly) The wealth of the former, though partly the earnings of his calling, was mainly the re- sult of his power as a land-owner to levy a tax on future in- dustry. His enrichment involved the poverty of future gen- erations of laborers by making the conditions of existence for them less endurable and diminishing their prospects of success in life. But the connection is lost sight of owing to the fact that the processes are not simultaneous that the pressure is not felt in its intensity in the earlier stages of the develop- ment and that when it does begin to be felt the victims themselves, owing to the complications of the system, may be in turn reaping or hoping to reap compensating advantages, at the expense of their successors. Tom Judson, for instance, while forced to recognize the, to him, melancholy fact that " things have changed " since the day that John Wilson came to Boomington with no more money than he had, and was able to become his own landlord and employer, does not clear- ly trace the connection between that change and the accumu- lation of wealth in the hands of Wilson and others through the ownership of land. And supposing he does see it, he is now himself a landowner. He may fairly hope before he dies to see the value of his five hundred dollar lot at least doubled or quadrupled by the further expansion of Booming- ton, and his supposed self-interest inclines him to believe that private land-ownership is rather a good thing. He overlooks THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 35 altogether the tax he pays to monopoly. His small but ob- vious and tangible interest as a landowner looms larger in his eyes than the detriment he suffers from the subtle, indi- rect, atmospheric pressure, so to speak, which crushes him as a worker and a consumer. Considering, then, that land monopoly in the earlier stages of a community's growth appears to be benefiting a great many people without injuring any one, and that the real ad- vantage is so widely distributed as to be shared by many laborers to an extent which often more than counterbalances the injury they sustain, and in many other cases appears to do so, it is not to be wondered at that the people have been slow to realize this great cause of industrial evils. But 1 before long there comes a time in the history of all populous centers when the immense majority of the people are deprived of all compensating advantages, either real or apparent ; when land has reached such a price as to be entirely beyond the reach of the wage-earner, and the results of mono- poly and competition are felt to their full extent. Labor pays in increased rents, increased prices, and diminished wages the tribute imposed years before by those who " made money " from the augmented value of the land. In all great cities rents are enormously high, and by the operation of land monopoly and competition are steadily growing higher. In Harpers Magazine for November, 1882, there appeared an article by Junius Henri Browne on the subject of living in New York, setting forth in very strong terms the discomforts and exactions to which even the com- paratively well-to-do classes were subject. The following is an extract : " There is no prospect, in fact, of desirable flats that is ? apartments of any size, convenient, light, and airy being other than expensive in this city. It is twelve years since the first apartment houses were built; hundreds of them of divers grades have been put up all over town ; but those capable of accommodating a small family, with an elevator and pleasant, well-ventilated rooms, cannot be had for less than from $1,500 36 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. to $2,000. There are flats in poor quarters that rent for from $600 to $800, but they usually have dark chambers, they are ill-arranged, and are seldom really wholesome. As a generali- zation, it may be said, that reasonable apartments are not good, and that good apartments are not reasonable. The fond antici- pations cherished eight or ten years ago, that a nice healthful apartment might be procured for from $500 to $600 annually, have long been dispelled. They who have no more than that to spend for a house, so-called, are obliged to put up with sun- dry discomforts, and to jeopard their health more or less by sleeping in dark, close chambers. It would seem as if economy of any kind were impracticable in this the costliest of capitals. The mere decencies of life are well-nigh beyond the reach of men dependent on salaries or ordinary incomes. The average earnings here of men even of education and taste are not, it is alleged, in excess of $1,500 to $1,600, and as the majority of them have families (the unwritten law of Manhattan demands that no couple, unless financially independent, shall have more than two children), they are forced into a ceaseless contest for self-sustainment. They toil through life, endure vexation, disappointment, tribulation, pain, and quit the world leaving no provision for their families, but generally in debt. Com- paratively few men who can command credit, die, it is said, with all their liabilities discharged." If such is the condition of "men of education and taste," those who can earn no more than $1,500 or $1,600 what of the poor man, of the average mechanic or laborer, whose entire yearly earnings out of which he must feed, clothe, and educate his family, may not amount to the six or eight hundred neces- sary to procure even " flats in poor quarters," ill-arranged, dark, and unwholesome ? Frequently the nature of their employ- ment is such that they are obliged to live near their work. They have not the time necessary for a journey to and from the city every day. Consequently they are compelled to herd together in squalid and filthy tenements, amid such surround- ings of moral and physical pollution as render it almost impos- sible for them, even if they manage to preserve their own re- THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 37 spectability, to bring their children up in the Avays of decency. In these abodes of destitution and wretchedness, where honest poverty and shameless degradation are thrust into close asso- ciation, every influence tends to drag the self-respecting, clean- ly, and industrious poor down to the level of the weltering mass of depravity which closes around them. In the fetid and reeking slums of great cities there is contamination in the very air. The privacy of home life is impossible. The throng of human beings who swarm and huddle in the crowded tenements can know nothing of the joys of a free and wholesome natural life, such as brings its compensations to the lot of rural poverty. Deprived of the sunshine and the fresh air, hemmed in be- tween walls which exclude the light of Heaven, and robbed even of that limited and circumscribed share in the earth which gives the occupant of a hovel or a shanty a temporary foot- room, at least, upon the soil, the denizens of the city slums are in reality poorer than the wretchedest peasantry in Europe. The latter, at any rate, have elbow-room and fresh air. If their toil is hard and their lives monotonous, they know something of the freshness and freedom of nature. To the poor dweller in the purlieus of great cities, monopoly denies even the prayer of Ajax " Let us perish in the face of day." He is poisoned and stifled in the gloom. Since the condition of the poor has become a prominent subject of discussion, the attempt has been made by leading political economists and statisticians to answer the indict- ment framed by Labor Reformers against the competition- monopoly system, by the assertion that the rate of wages has increased. XAtthe meeting of the British Association at Mont- real, in 18s$, Edward Atkinson of Boston undertook to show that poverty was not increasing with the expansion of industry ; contending that during the previous 40 years, wages had been largely increased and the hours of labor shortened. Even were these statements justified by a wider range of observa- tion than that upon which Mr. Atkinson appears to have based his conclusions, they would not disprove the contention that the monopoly of resources and competition between 38 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. workers exercise an increasingly depressing influence upon the condition of labor. Political economists of the Atkinson and Giffen stamp invariably fall into the error previously noted, of narrowing the labor question down to the relations between the working-man and his employer. This, as has been shown, is a very superficial view. Obviously, any calculation based on the wages paid at particular periods leaves out of account altogether the condition of the unemployed. The gist of the Labor Reform contention is, that owing to the aug- mented pressure of competition and the limitation imposed to self-employment by monopoly, there is a large class of people, greatest always where population is most dense, who are only able to obtain work intermittently. The first annual report of the United States Labor Bureau, issued in the spring of 1886, stated that out of the total number of industrial establishments, such as factories, mines, etc., existing in the country, about five percent, were absolutely idle during 1885, and perhaps five per cent, more, idle a part of the time ; making 1\ and cent, a just estimate of the whole number idle, or equivalent to idle, during the year. On this basis, the Bureau obtains a total of J)98,839 wage-workers unemployed during 1885. But obviously this falls short of the reality. It only gives the number of the unemployed for whose employment theVe is provision in connection with existing establishments, and takes no accounj, of the class outside of this who are not attached to any special form of industry. *Never until very recently in the history of this continent was there this large unemployed or half-employed class, crowded out of the avenues of labor by the pressure of population, excluded from access to the untilled acreage by the operation of monopoly, and falling into habits of permanent idleness. \~Obviously, no mere increase in wages to those fortunate enough to obtain steady employment can compensate those who are out of work, any more than they can indemnify even those who are sure of continuous employment, for the lack of comfortable homes. Even though the increase were sufficient to make up for the additional outlay in rent, what money con- THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 39 sideration would be adequate to atone for the change for the worse in the home surroundings of the working-class, conse- quent upon the increase of land values and the growing den- sity of population, j There are, it is true, many wage-workers who own their "homes, but the proportion of those who are thus fortunate is steadily decreasing. In any manufacturing center it will be found on inquiry that the working-men who pay no direct tribute to the land monopolist are in nearly all cases the older residents, who have acquired their home- steads under more favorable conditions than now prevail that comparatively few of the new generation are in a posi- tion to become their own landlords. The typical American laborer of the cities is no longer an independent self-owning citizen, with a fixed place and stake in the community, but a proletarian, without the local attachment and deep rootage in the soil which develops the virtues of citizenship ; compelled by the fluctuations of industry and the chances of competition to frequent changes of residence. He does not first choose a home and then seek work, but is compelled to follow work wherever he can find it, and then look for a place to eat, sleep, and bestow his belongings. His interests as a man and a citizen are subordinated to the needs of the toilert If these alterations for the worse in the lofTdi labor were due to any inevitable cause, were there, for instance, such a " pressure of population on the means of subsistence " that it was but reasonable and just that each should be content with diminished comfort and freedom, they might well be borne without complaint. But the thing that adds bitterness to these evils is the thought now beginning to be firmly grasped by the disinherited masses, that the process of exploitation which robs them, adds enormously to the wealth of the few. That within the past two generations there has sprung up in America a millionaire class simultaneously with the growth of a proletariat is seen to be something more than a coincidence. It is perceived that under the regime of mon- opoly the economic forces carry out to a literal fulfillment the text, "For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and 40 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. whosoever hath not, froni him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have." \The "seeming" increase in wages is no real increase, because their power of purchasing, not merely cotton, sugar and coal, but the comfort, manliness and indepen- dence of the recipient, diminishes, to enrich the monopolist. \ Rent, usury, and profit are the three heads of the mottern Cerberus of capitalism which devour the toiler ; three forms of one and the same essential injustice, of regarding as com- modities as something to be traded and trafficked in, and made to pay tribute to idlers and schemers things which should not be placed in that category. Land ought not to be a commodity, because like air and water it is necessary to human existence ; and all men have by birthright equal rights to its use. Money should not be a commodity, because it is used for the exchange of other commodities, and when it is made an article of trade, the laborer is taxed to pay the dealer in money a profit under the name of interest for which he receives no value. Labor should not be a commodity, because it is human life. The difference between the slaveholder, who robs the slave of his whole time, and the capitalist, who robs the wage-serf of a portion of his time, during which he works for his em- ployer's " profit," is obviously one only of degree. The commodity-theory in regard to land, money, and labor is diametrically opposed to the idea that every man has a right to the full value of his labor, and no man the right to receive value for which he does not labor, which appeals to every man's natural sense of right and justice. It converts the natural resources of the soil and the mechanism adopted to facilitate exchange into the means of extorting from labor a continually increasing proportion of its product. The exaction of usury is an essential feature of the present Industrial organization. So long as capital remains in private hands, and is regarded as a means of personal enrichment rather than a power to be used for the benefit of the whole community, the advocates of interest as a natural and legit- THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 41 imate payment for an advantage received occupy an impreg- nable logical position. The declamations of the Green- backers against usury, while they do not propose to disturb the other features of capitalism, are inconsistent, and show a want of exact thought. To admit that capital should be under the absolute control of private individuals, for the purpose of realizing a gain additional to and irrespective of the value of their labor of superintendence and organization, justifies the entire system of usury. A man invests let us say $ 100,000 in a commercial or man- ufacturing enterprise, out of which he clears $ 10,000 a year after all expenses are paid. This is called by the misleading and inaccurate term, "profit." Analyzed, it comprises two elements labor value, the legitimate return for the skill and labor expended, and usury on the sum invested. Yet because these two components are lumped together and called " prof- it," the essentially unjust nature of the transaction passes unrecognized by many who consider themselves the uncom- promising opponents of usury. Four thousand dollars of the employer's "profit," let us suppose, is a fair equivalent for his personal labor of supervision and technical knowledge ; the re- maining $ 6000 is interest on his investment. Now, supposing that instead of going into business on his own account, he had lent his $ 100,000 capital to another man, who agreed to pay him six per cent, interest upon it. In this case, the " profit " is lessened by the elimination of a part at least of the usury element. But practically it makes no sort of difference to the laborer whether his employer receives the whole $ 10,000 profit, as being a capitalist as well as an organizer of labor, or whether these functions are divided and one man receives $ 6000 as usury, pure and simple, and another receives $ 4000 as profit. In either case there is just so much withdrawn from the product of labor, and handed over to one who has not earned it. The wrong and the injustice is in no way lessened by the fact that the capitalist-employer has earned a portion of his total receipts, and that the usury is merged in the amount reckoned as profit. During the greenback agita- L THE POLITICS OF LABOR. tion the " bloated bondholder " was the object of much vigorous denunciation by men who had a clear perception of the iniquity of the system by which the mere possession of wealth enables its oismer to live without exertion by taxing the labor of others. { But they failed to see that the personal ownership of capital to be used without control for the benefit of the individual logically justifies usury in all its forms. Morally there is no difference between the invest- ment of capital by the owner, in a business subject to his own direction, in the expectation of gaining a profit comprising usury plus wages of superintendence, and his investing it in bonds, stocks, or mortgages for usury alone. Once admit the right of capital as such to bring in a yearly return to the individual, additional to the worth of his personal services in connection with its management, and the whole case of the orthodox political economist as regards the interest question is conceded. To reverse the old legal maxim, " What a man does by himself he can do through another." f If it is right and just for the capitalist-employer to take ^the products of labor for the use of the means of employment and the tools of trade, it is equally right and just for the capitalist who is not an employer to delegate to another the same power. fThe weakness of the position of the Greenbackers is the re- sult of a want of clearness of thought. They have wasted their strength in fighting certain phases of usury which were mere incidents of the capitalistic system, and which can in no way be overthrown while the system itself endures. They have, however, done much to educate the public as to the evils of usury, and to prepare the way for more comprehensive measures than they had in viewj Although, while the individual power of the capitalist to control production and exchange continues to be recognized, no possible change in the currency system would of itself destroy usury, yet the present gold basis system greatly in- tensifies its evils, by making money artificially scarce and dear. The inadequacy of the currency to the legitimate demands of industry and commerce necessarily enables the usurer to THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 43 increase the tax levied upon production for the use of the medium of exchange. Money is called the tool of trade, and just as an artificial scarcity of axes, spades, and hammers would enable those who were in a posi- tion to monopolize the supply to charge exorbitant prices for their .use, so the requirement of a gold basis in the face of a continually expanding commerce and a steadily decreasing gold supply, forces up the price of money which is equiva- lent to forcing down the price of labor. According to the United States census reports the increase in the gross value of* manufactured products during the period of thirty years between 1850 and 1880 was 426 per- cent.; the increase in their net value, 325 per cent.; the increase in capital invested, 423 per cent.; and in wages paid, 300 per cent. Compare this wonderful expansion with the dimin- ished gold production as shown by the reports of the director of the mint, and the very slight and gradual increase in the aggregate yield of gold and silver. In 1857 the yield of gold in the United States was valued at $55,000,000 ; in 1860 it was $46,000,000 ; in 1870, $50,000, 000 ; in 1880, $36,000,000, and in 1884 only $30,800,000. Taking the aggregate of gold and silver, the production was $46,150, 000 in 1860; $66,000,000 in 1870 ; $75,200,000 in 1880 ; and $79,600,000 in 1884. Had the opponents of silver coinage been able to restrict the currency to a monometallic basis, the increasing disproportion to business needs of the gold supply, which it must be remembered is drawn upon for a hundred mechanical and artistic uses in addition to that of coinage. O would have resulted in widespread and intensified industrial depression. Every form of industry and trade would have been crippled, while the dealers in money would have reaped a similar harvest from the scarcity of the commodity to that which has fallen to the lot of the money monopolists in England, where the monometallic system prevails. The manner in w r hich those who control the currency profit during times of general industrial depression is shown by the following, which appeared in the Toronto Week, the organ of Professor Goldwin Smith, on the llth of March, 1886, THE POLITICS OF LABOE. " Considering the depression of trade, the dividends paid by the great British Joint-Stock banks are remarkable. The Bank of Ireland, with a capital of $15,000,000 and a reserve of almost $6,000,000, paid its stock- holders 12 per cent, last year, while the Bank of Belfast excelled this, its dividend being 20 per cent. ; and the prosperity of the Irish banks seems more remarkable when we remember the stories of depression, failure of crops, and agrarian troubles which come from the Emerald Isle. The Bank of Sydney, New South Wales, delights the fortunate holders of its stock with a clear dividend of 25 per cent., and the Bank of Australasia pays 16 on a capital of $5,000,000. The Lancashire County Bank gave its lucky stock owners 25. The largest dividend declared by any Bank in Great Britain in 1885 was 33, and the concern that paid it was the Whitehaven Joint-Stock Bank, a close corporation institution in Lon- don, the majority of its stock being held by the Duke of Westminster. The Scottish banks are very prosperous too. The Royal Bank of Scot- land the second oldest in Great Britain, for it was established in 1695 with a capital of 4,500,000, paid a dividend of 14 per cent., while the Commercial Bank, with a capital of 5,000,000, declared the same amount. The Clydesdale Bank, the next richest bank in Scotland, earned 12 per cent.on 5,000,000. These results are brought about by the shrewd- est management and a thorough understanding of the business in hand ; but besides this, there is a cause as yet but little appreciated the en- hancement of the value of money, the commodity dealt in by banks, as compared with all other commodities. While property of all other sorts has depreciated in value by 20 or 25 per cent, during the past five years, the value of money has remained stationary, to the porportionate ad- vantage of all owners of money." " Considering the depression of trade, the dividends paid by the great British joint-stock banks are remarkable " ! This is putting the cart before the horse with a vengeance. It would be just about as logical to sny that " considering the losses sustained by householders by robbery, the amount of plunder secured by burglars is remarkable." As the conclud- ing sentences of the quotation, in singular contrast to the ab- surdity of its opening remark, clearly show, the depression of trade is the effect of the artificial enhancement in the value of money resulting from the gold basis system. (All money ought to be issued by the government directly, without the intervention of corporations, not in the form of promises to pay, but as absolute money receivable as legal tender for all purposes, including all taxes and debts due the THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 45 government. The delusive and fraudulent gold basis and all pretense of intrinsic value or redeemability, should be aban- doned. Its volume should be regulated by the demands of commerce^ Flippant and shallow sneerers at the fiat money principle have ridiculed the idea of a scientific and systema- tized supply of money proportioned to the actual needs of pro- duction and exchange in place of the present plan of artificial restriction, according to the opportunities for individual profit, as a chimerical and unattainable project. But in this age of statistics and elaborate commercial calculations,when the details of every important branch of industry and business are so closely estimated, why should it be considered impossible to arrive at an approximate conclusion, based on the returns of material wealth, production, trade, and transportation, as to the amount of money needed to keep the wheels of industry in motion ? The volume of the currency required surely has some ascertainable ratio proportioned to the work to be done, to the number of persons to be employed, and the quantity of the product to be distributed. Given the statistics of these factors, and surely the boasted economic science is competent to an- swer the problem of how much of the medium of exchange is needed to prevent undue friction and keep the machinery of trade moving. The dangers of inflation are always held up as a bugbear, in connection with the proposal to dispense with a metallic basis. But, as has been abundantly shown by experience, these dangers are not averted by a "redeemable " currency. Tho worst evil of undue expansion under the fiat money system would be that the puchasing power of money would decrease all round. The dollar would not buy as much as if the cur- rency were fairly adequate to the needs of trade and no more. This would be an evil, and one to be carefully guarded against in fixing the amount to be issued ; but a very slight one indeed as compared with the evils of the too great expansion of a redeemable currency followed by a forced contraction, when, as in the case of the resumption of specie payments .after the war, the creditor class realized enormous sums from 46 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. the payment in gold or its equivalent of debts contracted dur- ing the inflation period. The advocates of a gold standard urge that the worth of the dollar is determined by the actual value of gold as an article of commerce. In other words, that the conception of a dollar is that of a certain fixed amount of the precious metal ; the only thing which imparts value to .the paper dollar being the knowledge that behind it there is this metallic value. As a matter of fact, the supposed gold basis is about the last thing that any one thinks of in the everyday transactions of business. "Lend me a dollar." "I made five dollars this morning." " I'll bet you twenty dollars." Who, in using or hearing these similar customary expressions, ever gives a thought to the gold coin or its equivalent in bullion which is supposed to be the only real dollar, of which the paper currency is merely the representative? The idea called up by these phrases is that of the purchasing power of the sum named ; or, if it take a more concrete form, that of the familiar crisp or tattered greenback. The real " dollar" is not the gold or the paper, but a conception of value in labor or its products. No abso- lute permanently fixed standard of value can be secured under any conceivable system. Value is not determinable with the same definiteness and precision as weight or bulk or distance, and least of all can it be fixed by adopting as the standard of measurement a commodity which of itself fluctuates in value as the supply becomes scarce or plentiful. Obviously, when any article which has in itself value is fixed upon as the standard, its supposed unchangeableness can only be main- tained by artificial fluctuations in the value of other articles which become relatively high in proportion to its plentifulness, and are said to fall in value, when it becomes scarce. This is illustrated by the article above quoted from the "Week. If other property has " depreciated in value by 20 or 25 per cent, during the past five years," it is not because it is really any the less valuable, but simply because gold is scarcer and from its position as the regulator of all other values, relatively more valuable. THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 47 Were the gold basis a genuine thing, did the actual gold coinage bear the proportion to the total volume of money in circulation which it should do to justify the theories of the metallic currency advocates, the consequences of this fluctua- tion would be much more severely felt than they are at pres- ent. As it is, the value of money is steadied, as it were, and the rise or fall of prices lessened by the comparatively large volume of paper in circulation in proportion to that of gold. A currency without intrinsic value is better adapted to the presentation of the ideal standard of purchasing power signi- fied by the " dollar " than one the commodity-value of which is subjected to continual fluctuations, calculated to raise or depress its relative worth as compared with the products, the value of which is subjected to its measurement. Most writers upon this question confuse the subject by in- troducing a host of historical details as to the origin and functions of money, with the object of showing that in the earlier ages the idea of intrinsic value was inseparable from money. They trace the beginning of the monetary system from the use of cattle and cowries, by pastoral and barbarous peoples, as a means of superseding barter, to the general adop- tion, as civilization progressed, of a gold and silver coinage ; and infer that, because the various commodities used from time to time as money possessed an inherent value, there- fore it is an essential quality and characteristic of money. This is altogether a misleading argument; in the ruder stages of social development it was necessary that the medium of ex- change should possess intrinsic value. When commerce was of an intermittent and transitory character, society insecure and government unstable, nothing else than a commodity would answer the purposes of money. Paper money is only possible in connection with a thoroughly established com- mercial system, with all the modern agencies and appliances, and with the guarantee of a settled government. At a time when business transactions were few and of the simplest kind, the mechanism of exchange unknown, and the vicissitudes of war or social disturbance always imminent, no man would 48 THE POLITICS OF LABOR, part with his property in the way of trade except in return for some object prized and sought after on its own account something having an actual value irrespective of political dis- turbances and interferences with the primitive system of traffic. Paper money is the product of a high stage of enlightenment, incompatible altogether with the ideas and wants of barbar- ism or semi-civilization. That at first it should be based on coin, and brought into use as an ingenious means of supplementing a defective supply of the precious metals was a necessary phase of the process of evolution, by which the barbaric idea of intrinsic value as a requisite of money is being slowly eliminated. But to go back to first principles, as the orthodox political economists are so fond of doing. The essential feature of a circulating medium is the general agreement to .accept it as an equivalent and measure of the value of goods sold or services rendered ; its intrinsic value or otherwise is merely an incident. This agreement, at first a matter of individual com- pact, then a general understanding, the outgrowth of custom, and finally ratified and expressed by law, rendering a particular coinage or currency a legal tender, is the real money basis. There is no appreciable intrinsic value in a postage stamp. Yet every man who is in the habit of writing letters will readily accept stamps at their face value to an amount limited by his probable requirements within a short period. That he may not care to accept a larger quantity is due to the fact that the kind of service they will procure is restricted to a single function. That he is willing to accept any, is due to the absolute guarantee of the State that the stamp will procure the single kind of service specified. If the government has the power to impart an exchangeable value to a square inch of paper, by guaranteeing the performance of a certain valuable service for the possessor, so that, though its purchasing power is legally restricted to one direction, stamps readily pass cur- rent as small change, how can it be doubted that if the govern- ment were to make paper money as legal tender for all trans- actions, including all taxes and debts due to itself, it would THE POLITICS OF LABOR. " 49 answer all the purpose of a national currency irrespective of any specie basis ? Much stress has been laid upon the supposed fact that such a currency would not be available for foreign trade, or exchangeable with the gold-based currencies of Eu- rope except at a heavy loss. It might not be so great a mis- fortune from the standpoint of labor as it doubtless appears to the bourgeois mind, if the foreign trade, which on our side principally consists of the importation of luxuries which could either be very advantageously dispensed with or manufac- tured at home, were considerably curtailed ; nor yet if the annual rush of wealthy Americans to Europe, to waste in dis- sipation and extravagance the means extorted from labor, were also checked, by reason of the inconvertibility of fiat money into gold excepting at a heavy discount. The foreign-trade bugbear may have its terrors for the profit-mongering, specu- lating class ; for those whose profits or pleasures or both depend on the commercial relations of this country Avith Europe. It has none for the toiler who only sees in the restriction of im- portations and foreign travel the stimulus to increased pro- duction and expenditure at home. But it is not probable that the discount upon an American irredeemable currency would be as heavy as is anticipated. Our debts to Europe are paid neither in gold nor in paper, but in exports ; and so long as the foreigner's demand for our wheat, corn, cattle, sugar, cotton, and other staples of production was maintained, and America held its position as an exporting nation, the money which was available for their purchase would maintain even its exchang- able value abroad. It is true that the history of finance records very many in- stances of depreciated paper currencies. But the reason can always be traced to some other adequate cause than the in- herent unsoundness of the theory of fiat money generally to a complication of causes, any one of which would be sufficient to result in depreciation. Either the currency assumes to be a promise to pay gold, which is notoriously impoesible of ful- fillment, or the government issuing it is unstable and liable to be pyerthrown ? or the country is backward and unproductive 50 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. owing to wars, revolutions, and the unprogressive character of the people. When a government refuses to accept its own currency in payment of customs duties, as did the United States during the war of the rebellion, the necessity of obtaining gold to meet them, as a matter of course depreciates the paper. To quote the examples of Hayti or the insecure and chronically disturbed South American States, or to instance the Confed- erate money, the value of which was contingent upon the suc- cess of a rebellion, or the French assignats issued by a revolu- tionary government, not as money, but as bonds secured by land, itself of depreciated and uncertain value, in condemna- tion of the principle of fiat money, is a flagrant perversion of the truth. Governments in desperate straits have frequently resorted to the expedient of issuing paper promises to pay gold, and the ruin and disturbance which have resulted from the absence of every condition and element which all advocates of absolute money recognize as essential to the system, are most unfairly charged against it by the advocates of metallic currency. Not theleast of the advantages of an irredeemable paper cur- rency over an issue based upon gold would be that in case of undue inflation, instead of having to resort to a spasmodic con- traction, such as caused such widespread calamity at the time of the resumption of specie payments after the war, it would merely be necessary to wait until the growth of population and the increasing demands of a rapidly expanding commerce and industry restored the equilibrium. A currency scientifically proportioned to the demands of trade would right itself, should it be issued in too ample a volume, without causing injustice to any class ; an inflated specie-based currency, on the other hand, enriches the gold monopolist at the expense of the pro- ducer during the period of contraction. It lends itself to the exactions of the usurer, and enables the capitalist-employer to depress wages, by the artificial restrictions it imposes on pro- duction, and the consequent increase of competition among laborers. That plenty of money will not of itself set the wheels of in.- THE POLITICS OF LAB OK. 51 dustry in motion^ is perhaps a truism ; but certainly an undue scarcity of the currency will check production, where other circumstances are favorable to its expansion. Money is the life-blood of industry, and though its free circulation may not by itself either cause or evidence perfect health, yet perfect health is impossible without it. CHAPTER III. THE NEW POLITICAL ECONOMY. What constitutes a state ? Not high-raised battlement or labored mound, Thick wall or moated gate ; Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crowned, Not bays and broad-armed ports Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride; Not starred and spangled courts Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride. No ! Men, high-minded men, With powers as far above dull brutes endued In forest, brake, or den, As these excel cold rocks and brambles rude. Men who their duties know, Know too their rights and knowing dare maintain, Prevent the long-aimed blow, And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain These constitute a state. SIB WILLIAM JONES. Political economy needs to be re-written from the stand- point of the Serjaan on the Mount and the Declaration of Independence. \ Hitherto it has concerned itself only with the production of wealth and the promotion of the material interests of the nation in bujkj According to its teaching, na- tional prosperity has been reckoned by the aggregate of produc- tion and accumulation the increase of exports and imports the volume of capital invested and business transacted. It takes no account of equity in distribution^-the degree of comfort and independence of the masses of the people. Labor in its eyes is simply a " commodity " raw material to be used up 52 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. in the production of wealth, and the cheapness of which, like the cheapness of coal, cotton, iron ore, or other forms of raw material, is to be viewed as an advantage rather than a detri- ment, because it tends to cheapen production, and so to in- crease the total amount of national wealth at the year's end. With the rights of the laborer as a man, with his status as a citizen, it has no concern. It has invented the lie upon which the whole industrial and competitive system is based, that in- stead of labor being primarily entitled as of right to the pro- duct of human exertion exercised upon natural resources, the prior claim rests with those who permit access to those re- sources and supply the tools. It has justified the assumption by capitalism of the power to control and fix the remunera- tion of labor, retaining the whole surplus as profit. It has inverted the natural order of things, and, instead of regarding capital, or the proceeds of previous labor, as a mere subsidiary aid to further production in the hands of labor, regards it as the prime mover and directing force. It may be urged here that political economy in this only recognizes established conditions ; that, as a matter of fact, capitalism does control and fix the remuneration of labor, and consequently political economy is not to blame for its teach- ings in regard to the working of the system. But political economy does more than this. Its doctrines furnish the apol- ogists for capitalism with a store-house of argument, to show that the existing system is just, natural, and inevitable. Its teachers are, for the most part, the tenacious and uncompromis- ing upholders of the usurpation by which the rights of man are subordinated to the interests of property. It has laid down the dictum, that society has no right to interfere, through its agent the government, so as to ensure a fair distri- bution of wealth ; but that the economic laws of competition and supply-and-demand must have free course and be glori- fied, as securing by their unrestricted operation a more desir- able and satisfactory result than could otherwise be obtained. The orthodox political economy is more than an exposition of the manner in which certain conditions being granted TUB POLITICS OF LABOR. 53 certain natural laws will operate. It starts by assuming that the conditions are not only actual, but intrinsically beneficent and permanent, and finds in the existence of the laws which it discovers a reason why their operations should not be in- terfered with. It is the bulwark and buttress of the system of monopoly and competition. As the pen of the historian has been employed to blacken and degrade the reputation of the Gracchi, Jack Cade, Wat Tyler and others, who have in- curred the deadly hate of the powerful and wealthy by their support of the rights of the people, so the ingenuity of the political economist has been devoted to combining economic truths and half-truths, right reasonings from wrong premises, and false deductions from axiomatic principles, into a com- pact system of doctrine, by which public opinion has been misled into imagining that existing evils were irremediable. Thus, injustice and oppression have been sanctioned in the name of science. Labor Reformers have been accused of ignoring demon- strated scientific truths, and flying in the face of eternal and immutable natural laws, when they have proposed to remedy industrial abuses by legislation. Supposed scientific truths and irreversible natural laws have so frequently, in the history of the world, been quoted by the venal or short-sighted de- fenders of systems, which all now admit to have been opposed to the best interests of society, that the reproach has lost much of its force. Those who remember how the name of science was invoked in favor of negro slavery and against the higher education of women how every successive stage of human progress has been retarded by the opposition of- fered on the ground that the proposed reform ran counter to immutable laws, will not be disposed to admit the finality of the current dogmas of political economy. There are truths embodied in the doctrines of the political economists which we should as little think of denying as the laws of gravitation or the motion of the earth round the sun. But the inferences which are drawn from these truths are often false, and their relations to the questions between 54 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. producer and consumer, capitalist and laborer, mis-stated. For instance, it is obviously true that the price of a commod- ity is regulated by supply and demand, and that if labor be treated as a commodity its price will also be fixed by the same inexorable law. To infer from this, that existing indus- trial relations are necessarily permanent, is to ignore the pos- sibility which exists of changing, not the law, but the condi- tions under which the law operates. Society, while recog- nizing to the full the immutability of the law of supply and demand, may neutralize its effect either by regulating the supply so as to bring it down to the level of the demand, or by taking labor altogether out of the category of commodi- ties. In other departments than political economy, natural laws are studied as much in order to interpose an artificial check to their operations, as to allow them unrestricted scope. It is a natural law that a certain degree of cold will destroy life. We provide against it by thick clothing and warm houses. Under the laws of electricity, lightning will fire buildings,, and kill or injure the occupants. We do not deny or ignore that law when we adopt the artificial protection of a lightning conductor. We simply change the conditions under which it operates. Floods and storms, pestilence and earthquakes, en- danger the safety of life and property. Instead of submitting to their effects, in the spirit of a blind fatalism, science en- deavors to study the natural laws which govern them, and the methods of their operation, so as to anticipate and counter- act them by artificial means. Modern research and progress, the improvements and inventions of which we boast, the ap- pliances and methods by which the conditions of civilized life are rendered possible, represent a continual struggle to over- come natural obstacles, and to interfere with the workings of natural law. In the realm of political economy alone do we find the exception. Only in that department of science which deals with the economic forces" regulating production and distribution, is the existence of a law of nature regarded as an imperative reason for holding all attempts to narrow the scope THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 55 of its working, or interpose artificial means to prevent its evil results, as unscientific, irrational, and foredoomed to failure. To find a parallel to the fanaticism which looks complacently upon the degradation and wretchedness of the victims of in- dustrial competition, because their condition is brought about by unchangeable natural laws, we must look back to the ages of superstition and ignorance, when the ravages of pestilence were regarded as proofs of the Divine wrath, any attempt to arrest which would be equally impious and futile. PFhe new political economy must be based upon the liberty and brotherhood of man, and the equal right of all to natural resources and opportunities. It must not only expound the natural laws which govern the distribution of wealth, but where those laws are found to operate unjustly, it must point out how the evil effects are to be counteracted. \Instead of regarding the aggregate volume of wealth as "the test of na- tional greatness and welfare, it must concern itself with the condition of the individual citizen. Its highest ideal must be the greatest possible good to the greatest possible number, and its constant aim to secure to each and all the just value of their services to the community. Labor, and labor alone, either of hand or brain, should be regarded as entitling any to share the product which only labor can create. Land must be held as the common heritage to which all have an equal natural right, and which none can therefore be permitted to use without paving into the common fund the value of its usufruct, and capital, simply as the tool auxiliary to labor, and subservient to the will of its creator. Adam Smith, the father of political economy, has stated in plain terms the axiomatic truth, that labor is the creator of all wealth. In the fifth chapter of his " Wealth of Nations " we read : '* The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. What everything is really worth to the man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of it, or ex- 56 TEE POLITICS OF LABOR. change it for something else, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself, and which it can impose upon other people. What is bought with money, or with goods, is pur- chased by labor as much as what we acquire by the toil of our own body. That money or those goods, indeed, save us this toil. They contain the value of a certain quantity of labor which we exchange for what is supposed at the time to contain the value of an equal quantity. Labor was the first price, the original purchase-money, that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or silver, but by labor that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased, and its value to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely equal to the quantity of labor which it can enable them to purchase or command." The broad principle thus enunciated strikes at the root of the entire system of capitalism. If all value is based upon labor alone, it follows that the only honest title which any man can hold to wealth created by others is by giving an equivalent in his own labor for what he receives. If he does not do this, if he depends simply on his parchment or paper monopoly "right" to the soil, to exact a personal tribute for the use of the land to which all have an equal right ; if, by usury or profits apart from the return for labor of superin- tendence, and representing merely the accumulative power of capital, he enriches himself without rendering a just equivalent, he has gained wealth dishonestly. He has absorbed what rightly belongs to others ; to those whose labor created it. It is, in many cases, extremely difficult to draw the line and say just where the process of dishonest accumulation begins, and how far a large class of capitalists are rendering value by their brain-work for what they receive. But when, in the course of a few years, men are able to count their fortunes in millions, or when the processes by which money is accumulated are obviously such as do not tend to return so- ciety any benefit, there can be no possible question that they are receiving from the labor of others, wealth for which they have rendered no substantial return. Take the great land- THE POLITICS OF LAKOU. 57 owners and money-kings, and apply the test to their ac- cumulations. What have they given in labor to the world as a return for the produce of labor which they absorb in such ample measure? In some cases they do a considerable amount of head-work it is true, but it is often work that benefits nobody, that does not increase by one iota the sum total of production, or the facilities of distribution. The men who are engaged in struggling for fortunes on the stock exchange work hard after their fashion, in scheming and planning to outwit each other. But their labor is unprofita- ble to the community. It is non-productive. They are no more use than so many gamblers or tramps, and render no value whatever for what they receive. A landlord who merely lives on ground rents is a thief pure and simple a curnberer of the earth and a parasite upon industry. A landlord who builds and rents houses does a public service and confers a measure of value in return for the income he draws. The capitalist who is a mere usurer and receives the produce of others' toil, without contributing either by thought or exertion to the increase of the production, lives by legalized theft* But the capitalist who personally gives direction to labor is a producer. Whether he is also in any measure a thief or not, depends entirely on whether the return he gets for his services is adequate or exorbitant. Frequently, not content with the fair value of his own labor of superintendence, he enriches himself by stealing from his employes a portion of their share of the common earnings. It is thus that large fortunes are realized. Judged by this test of the returns made in labor for the produce of labor, the gains of capitalism are largely the result of the spoliation of the workers, even where they are not, like the fortunes built up by land-ownership, usury or speculation, the result of processes which confer absolutely no benefit on the community. It has often been charged against Labor Re- formers that they ignore or undervalue brain labor; that the only " labor " they recognize is that of the wage-earner or the self-employed manual worker. In so far as this has been true 58 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. in the past it was the inevitable result of a system which re- gards capital as a separate interest controlling labor, and merges the just and reasonable rights belonging to the labor of supervision in the unjust and unreasonable claim of the capi- talist in unlimited profits. It is not by necessary and legiti- mate brain work that men become rich, but by the power of monopoly and competition to concentrate wealth in the hands of those who control the means of production. Were the system of distribution altered in accordance with the idea that labor alone should be recognized as entitling any one to share in the benefits of production, intellectual toil must of course participate in proportion to its value. Under the present system, much of the mental work, and as a consequence much of the physical labor of the world also, is misdirected, so that it is either valueless or positively injurious. It is directed not to increasing production or perfecting the machinery of distribution, but purely to self-aggrandizement, by methods that are destructive and serve no useful purpose whatever. The following news item, which appeared in the newspapers in the fall of 1885, will serve as an illustration. " LITTLE ROCK, ARK. Nov. 19. A war has been in progress for several days between the Arkansas Telegraph Co., and the St. Louis Iron Mountain and Southern Railway Co. The telegraph men have been erecting poles on the line of railway near the city, and railway men have taken them down as fast as they were put up. Each pole has been put up and taken down a number of times during the day. Frequently, while one set of men are digging a hole, the other set are shovelling dirt back into it. The contest is really between the Baltimore and Ohio and Western Union, the Arkansas Co. representing the latter.' 7 Though this is a particularly aggravated and pronounced instance of the waste of means and energy caused by com- petition, it is by no means an isolated case. It is rather typical of the entire system and the processes that are con- tinually going on all around us in the name of commercial en- terprise. A vast proportion of the labor of the world is as badly misdirected and as futile in its results as that of the THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 59 gangs of telegraph and railroad men kept busy in undoing each other's work. What are the men who "defy competi- tion " and " will not be undersold," the keen, pushing leaders of mercantile enterprise, doing, but seeking continually to cross each other's paths and cut each other's throats, and undo what their rivals have accomplished ? Half the energies of the organizers of the world's financial, railroad, manufact- uring, and commercial systems are devoted to fighting each other, to filling up the holes that their rivals have dug, and pulling downjsfljes they have erected to making their work ineffective. /Competition implies a continual warfare, which, like all warfare, results in a drain and a tax on productive in- dustry. Here, for instance, are a dozen wholesale merchants in a line where half their number would be amply sufficient to supply every legitimate demand. They accordingly engage in a desperate struggle, each fighting to keep his connections and take as much business as possible away from his neighbors.^ Each sends out his drummers to coax, importune, and tempt, the retail dealer into making purchases. Most of their work is utterly wasted and unprofitable energy. They are laboring to undo the work of others, just as much as the pick-and-shovel brigades of the rival corporations in Arkansas. And it is so throughout every department in which competition prevails. Why are the prices charged for life insurance by the regular companies just about double what they ought to be ? Because these companies, to get business, have to spend a very large portion of their receipts in fighting each other. They put up enormous and expensive buildings for show, and deluge the country with literature printed in costly, elaborate style, ex- tolling themselves and disparaging their rivals. Instead of waiting until people who wish to insure come to them, they send out canvassers on big commissions to drum up business. When one company adopts this expensive system, of course others in self-defence are driven to follow their example, and the result is, that the cost of all this waste and loss is paid by the public, Jt is all entirely unnecessary all a useless expen- 60 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. diture of labor and money. But the competitive system de- mands it, and industry bears the burden. Wherever there are two or more railroads doing the busi- ness that could just as easily be done by one, there is a waste of labor and a loss of capital, though it may not be quite as apparent on the surface as in the case of the battle of the rival corporations in Arkansas. But, practically, it is just as de- structive. Supposing the employes of one of the superfluous roads should go in a body, tear up the track, and burn the rolling-stock and freight-sheds of the other line. Everybody would be horrified at the awful waste of material. But a little consideration will show that there would be no more waste or sacrifice in such a high-handed act of aggression than there is in keeping up two roads to do the work of one. The waste lies in the mis-employed labor and capital spent in multiplying undertakings not demanded in the public interest. In the railway and telegraph world, competition is never of long duration ; it is always followed by combination or amal- gamation in some form, and then up go rates, and down go wages. The losses to capitalism of the period of competition are made good many times over by systematic extortion. The business of filling up holes dug by others will have to be paid for just .as though it w r ere productive industry. What a vast amount of the world's best energies, what countless millions of money, have been sunk in the unprofitable, stupid, wicked work of pulling down what others have built,.and filling up where others have dug. The warring armies of laborers in Arkansas, one trying to build and the other to demolish, are representatives of the state of industry and commerce to day, the world over. When will the senseless system cease, and men learn that it is better to co-operate than to compete ? to be all builders and none destroyers ? Not so long certainly as the selfish, soulless forces of capitalism and individual avarice have the control of industrial organization. The following passage from " Poor's Manual of Railroads" for 1885 gives some idea of the enormous extent of this waste, from misdirected labor and uselessly employed capital spent THE POLITICS OF LABOR, 61 in undertakings not demanded in the public interest, but origi- nated in a spirit of aggression. " Of the 40,000 miles of line built in the five years ending with 1883, no small part was built on speculation, and for that very reason paral- leled already existing lines. The most striking examples of this kind, examples so often adduced, are the West Shore and " Nickel Plate " lines. The general demoralization which has prevailed in railroad circles is due more to the construction of these two, and to the ill-fort- une which attended them, than to any other cause, or it may be said to all other causes. * * * Although West Shore and " Nickel Plate " seemed to be the occasion of the great catastrophe of 1883 and 1884, the real causes had been long at work in the wonderful success of signal instances of * watering,' of which the Pacific lines, the New York Cen- tral, and Lake Shore are striking examples. Incited by their success, our whole people became wild upon the subject of railroad construction, believing that two or three dollars could easily be made for every dollar put up, either by the success of their ventures or by the sale of their se- curities. In this mania or delusion the capitalist and the adventurer alike shared. The promoters of West Shore, men of capital, put up their money in good earnest under the idea that they were embarking in an honorable and meritorious enterprise. The promoters of Nickel Plate built their line on speculation and for the purpose of selling it, securities being issued at the rate of two or three dollars for every dollar of cash paid. No small portion of the 40,000 miles constructed in the five years ending with 1883 was built upon the same plan and with the same object. Whatever their fate a large number of them became competitors for a business for which ample provision had already been made by ex- isting lines. Railroads unfortunately seem to reverse the rule of the sur- vival of the fittest to ' the survival of the unfittest.' They can be used but for one purpose, and when they go into the hands of receivers they arc to be run so long as the operating expenses can be paid. If the earnings are not sufficient for this purpose, they are to be eked out by * Receivers' certificates.' The country is now at about its lowest depth, so far as railroads are concerned. The evil done, the remedy has now to be ap- plied." A very large proportion of the brain labor that is most highly remunerated is either useless or absolutely injurious to society, such as that devoted to the construction of the West Shore and Nickel Plate railroad lines, with the results above depicted, and the "work" of land speculators, gamblers either pn or off the stock exchange, usurers, corporation lawyers, and 62 THE POLITICS OF LABOE. the great majority of politicians. In the same category must also be placed very many of the class who mould public opinion editors, preachers, lecturers, magazine writers, and college professors. Much of their labor is devoted to incul- cating wrong ideas ; to making the worse appear the better cause; to justifying and apologizing for social abuses. Igno- rantly or knowingly, they prostitute their talents and oppor- tunities to the service of Mammon, and antagonize the rights of labor. The value of their services to society is often in inverse ratio to the remuneration they actually receive. Men- tal services of incalculable value are frequently poorly re- warded, or not rewarded at all. The great poets, inventors, thinkers the intellectual heroes and saviors of the race, the men who propound new truths or are quick to grasp the signifi- cance of altered conditions and apply old principles in a new way the pioneers of thought seldom indeed reap the fruit of their labors. They are fortunate if they win a bare subsist- ence. " Serve not for any man's wages, Pleasure, nor glory nor gold ; Not by her side are they won Who saith unto each of you ' Son, Silver and gold have I none; I give hut the love of all ages, And the life of my people of old.' " The poverty in which mechanical inventors have lived and died, while leaving to the world inventions which have im- mensely increased the productive capacity of labor, is notori- ous. The inventor, a poor man as a rule, toils and struggles for years in bringing his scheme to perfection sacrificing his ease, his pleasure, and his health, frequently denying himself needed food and rest, bending every energy of mind and of body to the accomplishment of the dream of his life. And when success is at last achieved, it is in the great majority of cases the man of money who reaps the benefit of the invention, while the creative genius pines in poverty and neglect. If the extent of their services to society were the measure THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 63 of the extent to which the product of the labor of others should be at their disposal, a very large class of brain-workers, now honored and wealthy, would have no claim whatever to the emoluments they now enjoy. On the other hand, many who toil on in penury and obscurity, whose creative powers in the departments of invention, literature, and art, or whose facul- ties for the organization and direction of physical labor have hitherto secured scant recognition, would have a fuller measure of reward. Under the present system, the returns of brain-labor, when exercised by the capitalist, are simply what he can secure under the workings of monopoly and competi- tion ; when exercised by the wage-earner its remuneration is measured by its adaptability to the purposes of capitalism. In neither case does the element of labor-value given to society enter into the account. We are living under a system of one-sided Socialism. Political economists, capitalistic editors, full-fed optimists, and sleek pulpiteers of the Henry Ward Beecher and Joseph Cook stamp may deprecate with all the energy at their command the theories of Socialism proper. They may ex- huust the resources of argument and ridicule in demonstrat- ing the injustice and utter impracticability of the Socialistic system. They may ransack history to show the failure of all attempts to re-organize society on such a basis, or to estab- lish permanently successful communities on the principle of equal rights. They may adduce from theology and science principles which they consider conclusive against the future accomplishment of any such scheme. But in the meantime the practical developments which are taking place all around us are a demonstration of the tendency of modern civiliza- tion towards a more perfect system of industrial organization, partaking largely of the Socialistic character. In some of its phases Socialism is already here. Every advance from the primitive system of isolation and self-dependence, every im- provement which brings closer together the producing forces, which simplifies the mechanism of exchange and distribution, which facilitates division of labor, and increases the de- 64 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. pendence of the individual upon the community, limiting the scope of his unaided powers, while increasing immensely his productive capacity, has been an advance towards Socialism in its co-operative phase. Here again the vocabulary of po- litical economy fails us for the right word to convey the mean- ing. Co-operation literally implies " working together," but its modern secondary meaning is the working together of those who have a common interest in the result of their en- terprise proportionate to its returns. This kind of co-opera- tion has not made much headway, but co-operation in the literal sense that is to say, industrial organization under the direction of capitalism the association of workers together by hundreds and thousands, under the same control and for the same ends, and the dependence one upon another of the enterprises in which they are engaged, gives us practically Socialism in work in connection with individualism in the distribution of returns. Under this anomalous semi-Social- ism the laborer gets the worst of it all around. He has all the disabilities of individualism and Socialism combined. His remuneration is fixed by competition, under the law of supply and demand, without regard to the productive power of his labor. Division of labor confines his training to one department, and he loses that general adaptability and ca- pacity for doing many things which the laborer possesses where work is less specialized. In case of a revolution in his particular branch of industry, owing to commercial changer: or new inventions, he is frequently unable to adapt himself to altered conditions, or find occupation outside the narrow groove to which he has all his life been accustomed. Social- ism in production only has reduced him to the level of an automaton a portion of the industrial mechanism and largely deprived him of the self-supporting faculty, should he by any chance drop out of his place ; while the compensation for his loss ot self-hood and absolute dependence upon social adjust- ments which true Socialism would offer in a recognized claim upon the common production and an assured future, is want- ing. The opponents of Socialism, who dwell upon its injuri- THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 65 ous effects upon national and individual character, by lessen- ing self-reliance and hardihood, and degrading mankind into a race of weaklings all looking to be helped and provided for by the state, completely overlook the fact that the modern industrial system is doing for the mass of wage-earners, in this respect, the very worst that State Socialism could possi- bly do. The tendency of large enterprises to absorb or crush out smaller ones is so fully recognized at this stage of the controversy, that there is no need to emphasize it. In every department the field for individual energy is being continu- ally narrowed, and the possibilities of success for new compet- itors diminished by the consolidation and welding together oLejd3ting interests. ("Enterprise" has long been regarded by Americans as a cardinal virtue, sufficient to atone for many defects of char- acter. It is natural that in a new country where much rough, arduous, and dangerous work had to be done to prepare the way for civilization, the pioneer and the pathfinder should be held in high esteem. The circumstances under which Amer- ica has been settled, the wilderness reclaimed, industries es- tablished, the means of travel and communication and all the agencies of civilized life introduced, not by government in- strumentality, but by the unconquerable resolution and energy of individual citizens, tended to set a high value on the qual- ity of enterprise. When, as was often the case, the wisdom of any particular course could only be decided by the event, it is not surprising that Col. Davy Crockett's maxim, " Be sure you are right, then go ahead," became abbreviated in the popular acceptation to " go ahead anyhow." Enterprise that no obstacles could daunt and no failure discourage, en- terprise that flung caution to the winds, and risked everything on a single chance, enterprise that took its life in its hand and braved all dangers, that encountered seeming impossibil- ities, and set at defiance all precedents and rules, has been the darling and cherished characteristic of those concerned in the development of the American continent, from the con- structors of the Union Pacific railroad down to the advent- 5 66 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. urous gold-seekers who faced the perils of the prairies with the legend " Pike's Peak or Bust" inscribed in straggling and uneven characters on their wagons. " Enterprise ! " There is a fascination for every American in the word. It tells of heroic struggles and sacrifices of the toilsome life of the fron- tier settler, determined to build up a home for himself in the wilderness of the hope deferred of the inventor, racking his brains to perfect some mechanical improvement upon which he has spent his all of the lofty and comprehensive projects of the great captains of industry, and of the ambitious designs and day-dreams of the penniless Yankee boy, pacing the streets of New York or Chicago with the determination to make his fortune. In the social struggle, as in war, one bril- liant success casts into obscurity a thousand failures. The career of the few who succeed, the Stewarts, and Jay Goulds, and Erastus Wimans, are blazoned forth as examples for the emulation of young men, and proofs that in America push and determination are always rewarded ; while those who have striven and struggled in vain, and live on in poverty, or fill unknown graves victims to enterprise are forgotten. Just so twenty years ago the names of Grant, Sherman, and Sher- idan shone freshly luminous with the glory of battle, while none but their immediate circle of friends knew or mourned the privates who fell in the conflict. " Some men must fill trenches, ten thousand go down, As unnamed and unknown as the stones in a wall, For the few to pass over and on to renown." If " peace has her victories not less renowned than war," she has also, alas! her tragedies of defeat, and her long roll of the vanquished and despoiled. While, as has been said, the tendency to magnify and esteem enterprise is a natural result of the conditions under which American civilization has been created, we have now reached that stage of social organization in which a much lower rank must be accorded to it. Qualities which are of invaluable practical utility at one period of social develop- THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 67 ment may be largely useless or positively detrimental to the general welfare at a more advanced stage. The enterprise which, during the formative period, manifested itself in pioneer work, which laid the foundations of civilized in- stitutions, turned to account the resources of nature, and built up great highways of traffic was a beneficent agency. But when thickly settled communities have grown up, and industry and production are fully organized, the enterprise which was formerly constructive becomes largely competitive and de- structive. In many of its forms it is positively injurious, and its sphere of possible utility is greatly decreased. But the current American tradition of "go ahead ! " still survives, and men still eulogize enterprise as such with very little discri- mination as to its objects. It m'ay be directed towards a wholly unnecessary and even ruinous competition with existing undertakings ; it may manifest itself in projects which derange the industrial and commercial machinery, without a single compensating advantage to the public ; it may take the form of speculation in grain or stocks, sharp financiering or land monopoly, enriching the operator at the expense of society. No matter how useless or how pernicious in its effects, a bias in favor of enterprise, simply as enterprise, cause it to be regarded with a large measure of favor and admiration, even bythose who suffer from it. I (The misdirection ofenterprise and the consequent waste or material and productive force are owing to the fact that the personal interests of individuals are allowed undisputed control of capital, without reference to the needs of the com- munity.* The greed, ambition, passions, or caprices of a very small minority are paramount to the vital necessities and highest interests of the masses, and the disproportion in numbers between the few who exercise control and the many whose means of existence are at their disposal, is constantly increasing. The Chicago News, for instance, in July, 1885, commenting upon the labor troubles which then prevailed in that city, called attention to the vast disparity between UHI7EESIT7] 68 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. the numbers of employers and employed. Owing to the immense accumulations of capital in few hands and the conset quent centralization of industry 200,000 out of the 300,000 wage-earners of that city were then employed by about 250 individuals or corporations. The following passage is full of significance, and is applicable to many other labor centers than Chicago. "Without some means of settling the difficulties that culminate in strikes, Chicago will sooner or later be called upon to face a general uprising of a large portion of its wage- working population. Indeed it was feared in the last strike, and in such an event what would the 2^0 employers of the 200,000 wage-workers in this city do ? The only alternative is to yield or stop In this growing disparity of numbers between capitalists and wage-workers lies the hope of a just and satisfactory solution of the problem. Capitalism is cutting its own throat very fast.. By killing off small competitors, and continually narrowing the circle of the employers of labor and the accumulators of wealth, it weakens immensely its powers of resistance to the popular demand for justice. The process will go on and on until some day in the not distant future the representatives of the toiling millions may quietly walk into the offices of the few hundred capitalists and say, "Gentle- men, the people have decided to dispense with you. We have concluded that you have engrossed the fruits of our labor long enough. Henceforth we shall conduct the business ourselves, and for our own benefit." The failure of the system under which capitalism controls labor for its personal advantage, and work and wages are regulated by monopoly above and competition below, to reg- ulate satisfactorily either production or distribution is so manifest that we find so orthodox a political economist as Francis A. Walker compelled to admit it, and to admit also the defects of political economy, and its absolute failure to point out any remedy for existing evils. In his work on " Money, Trade, and Industry " he says : T11E POLITICS OF LABOR. G9 " It would seem that the most important of the questions which politi- cal economy is called upon to answer, is the question why the production of a people so often falls below and remains below what would result from the proper application of its labor power and its capital power to the natural agents land, water-power, mineral resources, etc. of the country where they dwell ? Why is the actual at times so far short of the maximum production ? Yet there is no question with which politi- cal economists have so little concerned themselves. There are scores of systematic treatises on my shelves from which not a hint could be ob- tained in explanation of the economical situation of the United States at the present moment, and indeed at any time during the past live years an immense labor power and capital power only partially employed, while natural resources remain unexhausted, and even in a large degree undeveloped, to which labor and capital might be applied to the satisfac- tion of human wants. Those wants remain unsatisfied ; poverty and suffering result to hundreds of thousands; straitnessof means and dim- inution of comfort to millions more; and yet there is no indisposition of the capitalist to derive an income by allowing the use of his money in production, and no reluctance of the laborer to work. Abounding natural resources, unemployed labor power, unemployed capital power, no lack of disposition to labor, and yet an enforced idleness and result- ing poverty and squalor." It would be difficult to frame a more forcible indictment of the generally accepted system of political economy than this candid admission by an advocate of its cherished principles. If Mr. Walker's statement be true, that it has no explanation to offer of the present industrial evils, and no remedy to suggest, what claims have its teachings upon the intelligent opinions of those who are brought face-to-face with the practical aspects of this problem, which the writer sets before us so clearly ? How can men who feel bitterly the effects of the conditions he has thus graphically depicted, be expected to rest satisfied with the empty platitudes and time-honored traditions which have wholly failed to meet the living actual issues of the present? How can a system which reiterates with little modification the ideas and principles which were considered applicable to the condition of society before the railroad and the telegraph were in operation, before the era of mechanical invention and manufacturing expansion set in, help us in the solution of an entirely new and complicated set 70 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. of questions, the very possibility of which was not dreamed of when its theories were formulated? As well might the modern general, in these days of Winchester rifles, Armstrong guns, and iron-clad vessels, base his plan of campaign on the tactics of Frederick the Great or Turenne. It is idle to talk of the wisdom of our ancestors, or the respect due to principles which have so long been accepted by mankind. When all the conditions have altered, the longer that any system has been in vogue the less likely it is to be suitable to the pre- v-ailing requirements. 1 Of late the public mind, or perhaps rather the public con- science, has acquired some vague perception of the truth of the new political economy. If has become the fashion to speak of wealth as a " trust." The millionaire is held morally responsible for the use to which he puts his superfluous riches. If a rich man dies without leaving a considerable percentage of his money to religious, philanthropic, or public purposes, the fact is commented on by the press often in severe terms, as though he had in a sense defrauded the community by withholding what they had a right to expect. Now all this is entirely at variance with the recognized principles of political economy, that whatever wealth a man can accumulate by legal means is indisputably his to use as he pleases, to hoard or squander, to give or bequeath as he sees fit, without any one having the right to call him to account. This Instinctive sense, that, after all, the community has a claim upon the accu- mulations of wealth, utterly illogical though it is in its mani- festations, is significant of a widespread though undefined revulsion from the formally accepted theories as to property ri, Making every allowance for voluntary abstention and unavoidable ab- sence, these figures indicate but too surely the deprivation of the franchise to which the poorer classes have been subjected by registration laws, shifting upon the individual the duty rightly belonging to the state of securing the right of suffrage to those entitled to it, and by a poll-tax levied under conditions which make it virtually a tax on voting. Could any statistics show the proportion of instances in which the ballot cast by the laborer was in reality the vote of the employer given under the menace or the dread of loss of work; could any figures indicate the extent of intimidation practiced by powerful corporations or individual capitalists upon those dependent upon them, the result would be yet more startling. The right conferred on all by the founders of the republic is worse than withheld when it is perverted by coercion or bribery to become an instrument of oppres- sion. Then it may be said that "the spirit of murder works in the very means of life." The growth of the labor question as a factor in politics, and the deference which each party, however hypocritically, feels called upon to pay to labor in the caucus and the convention, are hopeful signs. From one aspect nothing can be more sickening than to see politicians who have not a single aspira- THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 101 tion or idea in common with Labor Reformers and whose inter- ests and sympathies are all on the side of capitalism, posing as the friends of labor, and inserting in the party platforms, pledges which they have not the remotest intention of fulfill- ing, in order to " capture the labor vote." Parties whose course as a whole has been utterly adverse to the interests of the masses, owing to whose shameful betrayal of the respon- sibilities confided to them the evils of the situation have been intensified, have of late felt it incumbent upon them to recog- nize the growing disposition of the wage-earning classes to use their ballots in their own behalf. To conciliate the labor vote and head off any broad, comprehensive scheme of political action looking to a radical and organic change in the rela- tions between labor and capitalism, the parties pay Labor Re- formers the hypocritical tribute of sympathetic professions and platforms embodying some of the demands made by or- ganized labor. Under the pressure of party exigencies millionaires whose lives have been one long course of greed and grab, lawyers whose ingenuity and technical knowledge have been perverted to the overthrow of justice and the ag- grandizement of corporations, and the whole tribe of venal and unscrupulous politicians who have ever been the servile tools of capitalism have been compelled to admit the necessity of considering in legislation the interests of the laboring masses. Utterly insincere as these formal professions are, inadequate as are the palliative measures so far secured by appealing to the political hopes and fears of partisans, they nevertheless both indicate and hasten a change in public opinion which is likely to be much more far-reaching and mo- mentous in its consequences than they anticipate. Hitherto the politicians have used labor. The time has come when labor must use the politicians. The politicians have been able to use labor because working-men have put party first. When they put labor first and let party interests look out for themselves they can make the politicians their obsequious servants. It is the prejudice, the ignorance, the unreasoning servile devotion to political leaders who have 102 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. duped them, and to parties which have always played into the hands of capitalism, which are alone to blame for the scant consideration received by labor in politics. Political movements, like those of natural forces, follow what is termed by the scientists " the line of least resistance." Capitalism dominates in public life because it knows no party. The great corporations and millionaires sit loose to the ties of partyism. They look upon politics simply as a means of ad- vancing their own interests, and throw the money-bags into either scale, according as they think those interests will be besj^ecured. The great majority of wage-earners, on the contrary, allow their partisan feelings to control their political action. A little hypocritical deference on the part of the party managers, the inclusion in the platform of a trivial concession or two in the shape of resolutions against prison labor or Chinese im- migration, a few nominations of professed Labor Reformers for minor offices are quite sufficient to keep them in line with the party. That the whole tenor and aim of its course, with these exceptions, is opposed to the rights of the people and dictated by devotion to the money power is not sufficient to shake their allegiance-J The politicians know that to refuse to give legal sanction to the encroachments of monopoly would lose, them the support of capitalism. They have no reason to believe that the de- fection would be offset in any appreciable measure by in- creased popular support^ While the money-power is swayed . \ solely by selfish considerations, the people cling tenaciously to their parties^ Is it any wonder that the politician seeks to preserve the equilibrium by giving an inch to labor where he gives an ell to capitalism ? {The hold which party associations and traditions have ob- tained over the masses of the American people is the greatest obstacle to any present advance^ Under this malign spell many men who, outside of politics, are enlightened in their views and thoroughly convinced of the necessity of such social changes as will secure a just system of distribution and THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 103 destroy monopoly, may be found, year after year, plunging into the excitement of political contests, fought out between parties both of which are controlled by capitalistic influence, on issues which completely ignore the supreme question of social and industrial re-adjustment. Energy and intelligence which ought rightly to be devoted to the solution of the labor problem are worse than wasted over the petty, mislead- ing, idle issues which partyism keeps in view ; and the attention of the people is distracted by campaigns which, whatever the result, settle no question of real significance, because neither party represents any principle which has any bearing upon the vital needs of the community. Repeated attempts have been made to organize third par- ties, to maintain popular rights against the sinister influences of capitalism, which have rendered the Republican and Demo- cratic parties corrupt to the core. The Greenback, Labor, National, and Anti-monopoly organizations have sprung up, rallied adherents to their support, won some local vic- tories, and finally dwindled away and become resolved into their original elements. The absorbing interest and conta- gious enthusiasm of the great quadrennial fight for the Presi- dency, involving the personal interests of hundreds of thou- sands of oftice-seekers and office-holders, draws away the sup- porters of the smaller parties. The temptation to share -the glory and participate in the spoils of present success is much stronger to the minds of most men than the inducement to stand up for a principle. [A grave defect in the American character is its impatience of small beginnings and slow growth. Unless a movement carries everything before it with a rush, and bears down all opposition with the momentum of numbers and enthusiasm, the mass easily become disheartened. They must have immediate tangible results, a growth like that of Jack's beanstalk in the nursery story, a birth like that of Minerva springing forth armed from the brain of Jupiter, or the enthusiasm soon gives place to apathyj When this predominating temperament is considered it is hardly surprising that parties which could offer to their sup- 104 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. porters no prospect of immediate triumphs on a large scale, and no stimulus in the way of patronage, excepting so far as these might be secured by demoralizing alliances with one or other of the older parties, have crumbled away under the pressure of the quadrennial struggle, leaving merely skeleton organizations to tell of their existence. But although in the past these efforts have proved futile against capitalism entrenched behind the rampants of party, there is no reason to despair of the future. If the regular parties have so far been able to hold their following it has only been by repeated concessions and pledges to labor. Slight and insincere as these may be, they nevertheless are an indication too plain to be misinterpreted of the influence of the new factor in public affairs. They are the thin end of the wedge. When the people learn in the process of political education now going forward that the concessions are futile so long as the wage system remains intact, and that the pledges are only made to be broken, a new departure on a broader scale, either within or outside of party lines, may be looked for. \ The success of the Irish Nationalists under Parn ell's leader- ship in dictating the policy of the Liberal party of England, overthrowing coercion, and advancing the cause of Home Rule so as to bring it, as the phrase goes, within the scope of " practical politics " is destined to give a powerful stimulus to the action of revolutionary parties on both sides of the Atlantic. If not the originator, Mr. Parn ell is at all events the first to carry to a successful issue the idea of the balance of power in polities. He has demonstrated that a small but compact, unanimous, and determined party, holding itself apart from the two greater organizations, never sinking its identity, but willing to co-operate with either or both in turns without merging itself in their following, can virtually make its own terms.! So long as the Irish members of the English Parlia- ment-were divided on English issues, and adhered to one or other of the historic British parties, Ireland might ask in vain for justice. When Parnell arose, and a handful of Irish THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 105 members shook themselves free from party ties, set political traditions and public opinion at defiance, and made Ireland's welfare their paramount object, they assured large instalments of reform. They have already overthrown two British administrations, and stand ready to turn out a dozen in suc- cession if need be to secure their object. The lesson should not be lost upon American Labor Re- formers. Had Parnell been afraid of " hurting the party," the land act would never have been passed, coercion would to-day be in full force, and Home Rule would be as far off as it was ten years ago. The American working-man, if he really desires to use the ballot effectively to secure Labor Reform, must get over his squeamishness as to the effect of his action on " the party." Owing to the differences between the English responsible government system and Democracy, it would not be possible to bring the balance-of-power principle into play so frequently in American state or national politics as in England, where the life of the administration depends upon its retaining a leg- islative majority] But, on the other hand, parties are so even- ly balanced that a much smaller force would suffice to turn the scale at a presidential election. A small matter of 1047 votes in New York State, in the election of 1884, made Gro- ver Cleveland president. The electoral vote of that state is pttfiarly always decisive of the result in Presidential contests. I Imagine the organized labor of the Empire state, swung loose from party fealty, as regardless of the issues between Demo- crat and Republican as the Irish party in Great Britain are of the differences between Liberal and Tory, and looking to the politicians as tools to be used for their end^. ["Suppose that, under the leadership of a man with something like the genius of Parnell for organization and political strategy, labor were or- ganized as thoroughly for political action as it now is for the purpose of resisting the unjust exactions of employers; that when thus massed into a compact and disciplined force nego- tiations were opened with existing parties, and a full conces- sion of all the demands of labor as formulated for instance 106 THE POLITICS OF LABOK. in such a comprehensive shape as the platform of the Knights of Labor were demanded as the price of the labor vote- Owing to the unfortunate experience of the past, it would no doubt take some time to convince either party of the sincerity of the movement, and of the determination of a sufficient num- ber of the workers to make it really formidable, to stand by their demands, j But if organized labor stood firm; if it showed"ho disposition to break ranks and fall into the party traces ; if the same strictness of discipline and unanimity of purpose animating the Irish Nationalists were manifested, one party or other would speedily show themselves anxious to make terms. It is no doubt probable that the pledges by which they would seek to secure an alliance with labor on a large scale for political action, would be no better observed that many promises given in the past to conciliate the work- ing-class element already affiliated with them. But if, as soon as the disposition to kick over the ladder by which they had climbed to power were 'fairly manifested, the whole strength of the political labor organization were devoted to punishing their treachery ; if, by independent action as a compact force, the Labor Reformers voted their betrayers out of power by a significant and sweeping majority, the lesson would be as ef- fective and as productive of practical results in forwarding the cause, as that administered by the Irish Nationalists to Liberals and Tories in turn. If the men who now unite and make sacrifices and submit to rigid discipline for petty local objects, small increases of pay, amelioration of unfair shop rules, and the like, would but show equal constancy, and equal determination in standing together for comprehensive, far- reaching objects, to be achieved by political methods, they could carry everything before them. {But they wont not at present. They are afraid it might hurt " the party." So they let the politicians use them instead of using the politicians, i Nevertheless the leaven of political thought is working, and the example of what a third party has accomplished for Ireland will exercise a marked influence on American political methods and ideas. THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 107 From the parties, as at present controlled, labor has nothing to expect. The American working-man has a great horror of " throwing away his vote," as it is absurdly termed, by casting it for a cause that has no chance of immediate success. He would be willing enough to join a political Labor party, if he thought it could possibly elect a president in 1888 ; but he has no idea of marching to certain defeat with a forlorn hope, even though the attack may prepare the way for a victory in the distant future. When present success rests between one of two parties the " least-of-two-evils " argument, that spe: cious plea of pessimists and trimmers, appeals with almost ir- resistible force to minds not under the sway of strong convic- tions. The temptation to vote for the " best man " of two party hacks without an enlightened idea between them, or to prefer this or that party because of old associations or taking catchwords is well-nigh irresistible. It is so easy to yield to contagious enthusiasm, to train with the old crowd, to follow the band and the torchlight procession ; so hard to stand aloof and bear ridicule as a crank and a visionary. But if every Labor Reformer, putting aside all these temptations and excitements, looked at the question solely from the stand- point of how his action was likely to affect the cause he pro- fesses to have at heart, he would be very apt to come to the conclusion never to cast a party ballot unless in pursuance of some such comprehensive strategic scheme as I have out- lined. Under existing conditions, while the claims of labor are ignored as at present, it is an absolute disadvantage to the cause for working-men to vote for party candidates, because it creates the impression that Labor Reformers are satisfied with half-measures. It would be better to let the public see plainly that such makeshift legislation is regarded as inadequate and misleading. Is is better to be unrepresented than misrepre- sented ; better to have it understood that no party politician is entitled to speak for labor than to have some smooth- tongued trimmer pose as one who owes his election to work- ing-men's votes. 108 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. In the incipient stages of great reforms the ballot is of use only as a means of giving expression to opinion. It is an invaluable agency to force discussion, ripen the issue, and mark progress. In all other respects just now it is practically useless that is, so far as securing any radical changes in the wage-system is concerned. We can hope for no immediate victory. The indirect use of the ballot to forward agitation and mould public opinion has been a frequent feature in American politics. The early anti-slavery agitators availed themselves of it. The candidatures of Gen. Butler and Governor St. John in the Greenback-Labor and Prohibition interests in 1884 are instances in point. Neither of these candidates had the ghost of a chance. None of their most enthusiastic supporters ever dreamed that there was even a remote possibility of the election of either of them. They were in the field merely to allow their respective supporters a chance to stand up and be counted as the practical politician would say, to " throw away their votes " for a principle. This being the case, in contests where there is no possibility or thought of success, where the object of putting a Labor Reform ticket in nomination would be merely to force the issue and give the adherents of the cause an opportunity to cast an honest ballot, why not vote directly for the principle ? Why go to the trouble of selecting candidates, which under the circumstances becomes a meaningless formula ? Would it not serve every purpose to drop a platform or a ticket with the simple inscription " Labor Reform," or any other explicit and convenient phrase, into the ballot-box. It is much easier to agree on a principle than on a candidate. A man is sure to have enemies. He has generally a record which pre- sents many points of attack. The selection of candidates arouses jealousies and creates divisions. In voting for a prin- ciple simply there is no weakening of strength from these causes. There is nothing to explain away or apologize for. And the moral effect upon parties and politicians of a large vote cast for the abstract principle of Labor Reform, would be far greater than has been produced by any form of political THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 109 action yet adopted. Supposing that, in any important elec- tion, when the votes came to be counted, it were found that there were enough electors who had taken the trouble to go to the polls and cast their votes for the idea, despite the fact that there was no man in the field to represent it, to have changed the result. Would not this action, as to the motive of which no possible doubts could exist, which would testify far more strongly to the sincerity and earnestness of those resorting to it than if there were even a remote possibility of personal advancement as the result, have an influence upon public opinion infinitely greater than could be obtained by the compromises and dickerings by which the " labor vote " is traded off for a few minor nominations or a " labor plank " in the party platform ? Its very novelty and boldness its unpre- cedented defiance of the traditions of political life its avow- ed abnegation of all hope of immediate personal triumphs and advantages, its deliberate "throwing away" of the valueless feature of the ballot that of promoting the success of one of two corrupt parties while retaining all which makes it really worth anything to the believer in comprehen- sive social reform would force the Labor question to the front as the main issue as no other use of the franchise could possibly do. Let no one underrate what has already been achieved by Labor Reformers in politics. Considering the difficulties un- der which they have worked, the apathy and lack of steady determination on the part of the bulk of the laboring class, and the strength of party predilections and politico- economical fallacies, very much has been effected, especially in State legislation. The volume of factory laws, the restric- tions on female and child labor, the mitigation of the evils of the convict and imported labor system, the abolition or limit- ation of the truck system, the abrogation or modification of mediaeval conspiracy laws preventing combinations among workers, and the establishment of bureaus of Labor Statistics, have been extremely beneficial in their results. Before labor was as generally organized and as fully cognizant of its rights 110 THE POLITICS OF LABOS. and disabilities as it now is, the only available method of pro- curing such ameliorative measures was the one hitherto fol- lowed. It was right and necessary to accept from one party or the other such piecemeal reforms as could be obtained in return for political support. But the time is ripe for a change. The concessions made to Labor Reform, important as they are in themselves, are slight as compared with the increased power of capitalism. The reforms thus far secured have been directed towards modifying the more obvious abuses of the system. They are mere palliatives excellent so far as they go, useful especially as precedents to establish and extend the principle of the right and duty of society to regulate industry in the interests of the whole^eople, instead of permitting it to be controlled by a class, i But the hour has arrived when educated and united labor must strike more directly at the wage-system itself; when its political force, instead of being divided between parties, each of which seeks to offset enormous priv- ileges to monopoly by niggardly concessions to labor, must be consolidated into a people's party. I Existing political parties are crystallized around dead issues and old-time reminiscences of the slavery and rebellion eras. They trim and fence not merely on the Labor problem, but on all live and important questions. A modern political plat- form is a marvel of disingenuous ingenuity. It has a verbal bait for every sort of political loose fish. Instead of being the clear expression of the views and aims of men who agree on certain principles, it is the utterance of those who agree on nothing except the desirability of obtaining office and to that end wish to conciliate as many opposing classes, interests, and sections as possible, without offending any. Consequently it is framed to please prohibitionists, while convincing the liquor-seller that no harm is intended to him ; to placate the tariff reformer, while allaying the fears of the protectionist ; to satisfy alike the bi-metallist and the believer in the gold standard of the currency; and to promise concessions to labor without alarming the capitalist. (No matter what pledges THE POLITICS OF LABOR. JJ j may be made in the direction of Labor Reform, the interests of those who, by virtue of their wealth and social position are entrusted with party leadership and put forward for the more important office, are always a guarantee that the claims of the money power will be the supreme consideration^ Instead of being thus treated as a side-issue, Labor Reform must be the main issue. Commissioner Arthur T. Hadley, of the Connecticut Bu- reau of Labor Statistics, begins his admirable report for 1885 with the following pregnant assertion : " The relations between labor and capital cannot be treated as a mere matter of private business, but involve social and political questions. This fact is becomi-]arer every day, whether we like it or not. The state of things is this. | The men who do the most physical work, as a class, seem to have the least to show for it. Their wages are often barely sufficient to meet the expenses of living. They sometimes can- not get work at all ; at best they are working for others with little inde- pendence of action, and often with little hope of anything better^ In their life, their work, and their relations to their employers, evils and abuses have arisen which it seems impossible for any individual to pre- vent; while the attempt to remedy them by organized action too often proves worse than useless. In this difficulty there is a demand for public investigation arid for legislative interference." Now, if the Labor problem be a political question at all, it is the supreme and overshadowing issue. If the right and the duty of State interference to remedy evils and abuses be ad- mitted and at this stage of the discussion there are few who can consistently deny it it logically follows that this inter- ference cannot be limited in extent or direction so long as these remediable abuses continue. In the Labor Bureaus, in the measures restricting the right of private contract, in whatever of regulative legislation has already been secured, we have the starting point of a new departure the germs of the social evolution. To make Labor Reform the supreme issue the one import-: ant end and aim of political struggle with the toiling millions, for which they are ready to sacrifice every other consideration is the only way by which the power of capitalism buttressed by partyism can be overthrown. 112 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. CHAPTER VI. STEPPING STONES. As between infancy and maturity there is no short-cut by which there may be avoided the tedious process of growth and development thro-ugh insensible increments; so there is no way from the lower forms of social life to the higher, but one passing through small successive modifications. If we contemplate the order of nature, we see that every- where vast results are brought about by accumulations of minute actions. HERBERT SPENCER. THE necessity of a gradual change from the system of cap- italistic rule and wage servitude to the control by society of the means of production and of all distribution of the gains of industry on the basis of labor-value being admitted, what are the first practical steps to be taken to forward this change ? In the political field, simply to do the work that lies nearest to hand in the line previously indicated of enlarging the func- tions of government and increasing the control exercised by the citizens over the governing body. The most obvious and essential reform to be accomplished in the near future is to reclaim for the government those powers which have been foolishly or corruptly granted to private corporations fulfil- ling public functions. Railroads, telegraphs, telephones, banks, insurance com- panies, and the like were called into being by special enact- ment. The corporations which conduct these and similar enterprises stand in a very different position to individual capitalists. But for the powers and privileges granted them by the people's representatives, conferring upon them quasi- public trusts, they could have had no existence. They are creations of the law. Those trusts having been violated, and the powers conferred for the public benefit having been pros- tituted to selfish ends, the people have the right to abrogate them, and to resume those functions, the exercise of which by private individuals has been the most fertile source of every species of political corruption and financial dishonesty. THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 113 The modern corporation occupies a wholly anomalous posi- tion. It is virtually a portion of the real " government " of the country. It exercises public functions, and is obliged to resort to the government to obtain its franchises and powers ; but it is irresponsible to the public, and there is no adequate means of holding it to account for the exercise of its despotic sway. No system could be better devised to promote corrup- tion, and to ensure the betrayal of the people by their repre- sentatives than the relations between the corporations and the government. In the first place, the whole of the immense transportation, money-issuing, and electric-communication systems of the country, on the management of which every branch of industry and trade is dependent, is entrusted to the hands of bodies composed of individuals of large wealth. They are dependent for their corporate existence, and the enormous facilities of levying tribute upon industry which the possession of corporate privileges confers, upon the assent of the people's representatives. As new opportunities present themselves, rings and syndicates for the procurement of charter-powers are organized. Their interests often clash with those of existing corporations or other applicants. Rival sets of rail- road or telegraph magnates, each seeking to promote its own aims or cripple its rival, having immense resources at their command, resort to every means of political intrigue and cor- ruption to secure favorable consideration of their claims. They buy legislators and judges like cattle. They enter the political field, and throw their influence into the wavering balance of party. There is no cause which has tended more to debauch American politicians than the struggle of corpora- tions, actual or prospective, for the immensely valuable privi- leges which are thus trafficked in by public men, in return for party advantage or personal emolument no class of legisla- tion which has been anything like so fatal to previously fair reputations as that dealing with corporate interests. Apart from gross cases of positive bribery, such as were isclosed in connection with the Credit Mobilier and Pan- Electric telephone scandals, where 114 THE POLITICS OF LABOB. distributed gratuitously in return for political influence, the indirect corruption resulting from the system is an evil of far greater magnitude. The prominent men in politics being mostly wealthy, and having extensive business interests, are frequently holders of large amounts of stock in corporations, acquired before they accepted office without a thought of its being other than a legitimate investment. But how can they be expected to legislate in the public interest, or give unbiased decisions upon questions affecting the companies in which they are stockholders ? Even if the particular corporations are not concerned, the heavy personal interest which a very large number of men in representative positions have in the claims of corporations renders it impossible to expect that they will be vigilant guardians of the rights of the people. While these immense interests are permitted to exist apart from government, irresponsible in the exercise of their power, having their ramifications throughout the business and politi- cal circles from which public officials are drawn, and continu- ally dependent for public favors upon the very class of men who in their private capacity are concerned in their mainte- nance, corruption in its most insidious form will be the inevit- able result. It is inherent in the system. There is a great deal of force in the remarks of Gen. Butler, who, in an interview published in the New York Herald of February 5th, 1886 regarding the Pan Electric Telephone ex- pressed himself as follows : " Is a senator of the United States to have no other business rela- tions ? A large proportion of the senators are very large representatives of business wealth. They are elected with such business complications, and they must vote in regard to legislation which affects their business interests. When I was in congress a majority of the house was com- posed of officers and stockholders of national banks, and upon the oc- casion of a vote being taken affecting the banks, I called the Speaker's attention to the rule of the house that no man should vote upon a matter in which he was personally interested, but it was ruled that as they were only interested in the business of the country, they must legislate con- cerning the business of the country ; they must vote in regard to it, al- though their votes might make thousands of dollars' difference, to them individually," THE POLITICS Off LABOR. 115 When the great majority of public men, owing to their busi- ness relations, are thus bribed in advance to support the insatiable claims of monopolies of all soils, how is it possible to expect that the public interest will be fairly considered ? The cabinet-minister, senator or congressman who is a stock- holder in a national bank, railroad or telegraph company, be his intentions ever so honest, is in a false position. On the one hand, the natural bias of personal interest continually prompts him to favor legislation looking to the aggrandizement and strengthening of monopolies ; on the other, as a representa- tive of the people, it is his duty to prevent the encroachments of corporations. A few may be public-spirited enough and sufficiently mindful of their obligations to act independently of pecuniary considerations, but all history shows that no class of men have ever voluntarily used their power against their own interests. It was not slaveholders that abolished slavery, or the owners of Irish estates who passed the Land Act. Gen. Butler's observation gives the key to the situation. Monopolies grow yearly in power, and strengthen their grasp upon the country because the people elect to office men who are identified with them by " business complications," who must either vote against their personal advantage or betray the trust reposed in them. Americans have been in the habit of congratulating them- selves that primogeniture and entail do not exist on this con- tinent, that because the system of hereditary estates descend- ing in unbroken bulk from father to son, generation after gene- ration, has not been as yet established, we are therefore free from the great cause of the disparity of social conditions existing in England. It is a shallow and short-sighted conclusion. Though entail, primogeniture, settlements, tying up estates for a long period of years, and other devices for enabling dead men to con- trol the interests of the living have not been introduced into America, a yet more formidable power for the accumulation of capital to be wielded by the hands of the few as an instru- ment of oppression, has been devised in the corporation. Men may die but the corporation outlives them. It concentrates 116 THE POLITICS OF LA&Oft. amounts of wealth, which if scattered would have iittie power for evil and places them at the disposal of ambitious money and railroad kings. When corporations were few and largely of a speculative character large fortunes were precarious- They were apt to get dispersed, if not during the lifetime of the accumulator at his death, But the firm establishment of the corporation system has changed all that. Money invested in the stocks and bonds of solvent companies does not disap- pear in a night, like the unsubstantial investments of the gambler on margins. Any capitalist of ordinary discretion can so place his money that it will be absolutely safe so long as the institutions of the country endure, and go on indefi- nitely increasing in amount and controlling influence. The Vanderbilt fortune is now intact in the hands of the third generation, and by the will of the lately deceased millionaire, all the railroad stocks are to be retained in bulk. The profits only will be divided, while the capital itself as a power in the railroad and financial world is unbroken. According to "Poor's Manual of Railroads" for 1885, the share capital of the railroad companies amounts to $3,762, 616, 686, and the funded debt to $3,669,115,772, making a total of $7,431,732,458, of " entailed " capital, so to speak in this one department of monopoly. According to the census of 1880 the estimated valuation of the farms in the United States is $10,197,000,000. If by any process of law or sudden change in the working of our institutions three-quarters of the farm property of the country were tied up by the English system of entail and primogeniture so that the land could not be sold, seized for debt, bequeathed or otherwise disposed of, but must be kept intact and undivided in the families of the present possessors, the danger to free, popular government would at once be apprehended. Every American would realize that such a system would before long be fatal to the spirit if not to the semblance of political equality. And yet, as the holders of the entailed farms would constitute a numerous, widely- scattered class identified with popular interests, the peril THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 117 would not be nearly so great as arises from the concentration in the hands of a very few men of the enormous powers represented by railroad capital. It is no argument to the contrary to point to merely personal changes in the manage- ment of corporations. It is true that in the despotisms of corporation rule as in those of arbitrary government "Amu- rath to Amurath succeeds." Yanderbilt II. in the course of nature gives place to Yanderbilt III. Stocks and bonds may pass from one holder to another, one great railroad magnate may be overthrown by a combination among his rivals, and a sudden transfer of the balance of power to a hostile syndicate ; but all such merely individual conflicts and changes affecting the depositaries of power in no respect mitigate the injurious exercise of the power itself; in no way decrease the peril to liberty from the existence of the concentrated and increasing control of public functions by a very small number of self-in- terested, irresponsible persons. " When we want to drain a marsh we do not take the votes of the frogs," says a French proverb. The great cause why the marshes of monopoly have been so long left to poison with their malaria the public life of the nation is, that we not only take the .votes of the frogs, but leave the whole matter to their decision. It is a political truism which no one thinks of dis- puting, that wealth is the first requisite for election to the United States Senate. Chosen for their wealth, and often by their wealth, it is not surprising that the members of this club of millionaires use their political power principally as a means of strengthening their monopoly power. As Buckle truly says in his "History of Civilization," " There is but one protection against the tyranny of any class, and that is to give that class very little power. Whatever the pretensions of any body of men may be, however smooth their language and however plausible their claims, they are sure to abuse power if much of it is conferred on them. The entire history of the world affords no instance to the contrary." During the civil service reform movement an expression much in vogue as characterizing the opponents of the mea- 118 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. sure was, that they were " part of the thing to be reformed." It is just so with the men who, committed beforehand to the interests of monopoly, fill not merely the Senate, but the popular branch of the national legislature, the high executive offices, the judiciary, and the state legislatures. They are a part of the thing to be reformed. We talk of the " abuses " and " evils " of monopoly. The whole system is one gigantic abuse. It is irresponsible govern- ment, it is arbitrary power, it is taxation without representa- tion. Nay, it is worse than these in their naked and undis- guised form, because it co-exists with free institutions and re- acting upon them, tends continually to debauch the character of public men and pervert the machinery of democratic gov- ernment into the instrument of spoliation and oppression. Under an honest despotism public officials may be honorable and high-minded men. Under the hybrid or double-headed system of popular government, limited in its scope, side by side with the monopoly government, dependent upon it for unjust privileges, the prevalent type of the successful politi- cian is the shrewd and unscrupulous trafficker in votes and subsidies, the betrayer of the people's rights for his personal enrichment. The only way to abolish the " abuses " of monopoly is the way in which the " abuses " of personal rule, chattel slavery, and piracy have been abolished by abolishing the system itself. Instead of granting charters and franchises to private in- dividuals, enabling them to exercise functions which are so far public in their character, that without the express sanc- tion of the state they could not be undertaken, the govern- ment should resume their powers and conduct such enter- prises as banks, railroads, telegraphs, and telephones as re- cognized public interest, and legitimate departments of the sphere of administration. If, in order to initiate any enter- prise, it is requisite to apply to the government for the granting of special privileges and prerogatives not otherwise attainable by individuals or combinations, it is a sure indication that the THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 119 undertaking is of a character that ought properly to be carried on by the whole people in their own interests, and not by pri- vate individuals for personal gain. But in order to take even the first steps in this direction, we need such a radical change in public opinion that wealth and social position, instead of being generally regarded as desirable qualifications in a candidate for public office, must be looked upon as a strong prima facie cause for distrusting and rejecting him. The slavish adulation of money which permeates every fiber of our social and public life, which dominates the party caucus and convention, and elevates to the con trolling position men whose selfish instincts and acquis- itive faculties are their only claims to consideration inter- poses an insuperable obstacle to every proposition for indus- trial reform at the outset. Just in proportion as wage-workers allow themselves to be carried away by the false estimate of men's worth, and join in paying the tribute of servile souls and beclouded minds to the owners of the money bags, do they help to rivet the chains of industrial serfdom on their own necks. If they will help to elect men to the state legis- latures and to Congress because they are rich, it is absurd to expect that the latter will use their influence as politicians to overthrow or weaken their power as monopolists. In sup- porting the candidate with a " bar'l," the people vote for their own enslavement. Men with " bar'ls " may empty them with lavish hand to obtain political positions, but it is always in the hope of refilling them again and again at the people's expense. Before monopoly can be reformed out of existence, those who profit by it must be voted out of public life. The advantage of the nationalization of the means of transit and communication are so manifest that only the antagonistic self-interest of the wealthy politicians and the false public opinion created by the influence of seven thousand millions of capital through a hireling press could have prevented its be- ing generally recognized. All competition would cease. The vast amount of waste and loss entailed by the construction of unnecessary lines of railroad and electric communication 120 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. would be saved. There would be no more probability of the useless expenditure of money and labor in building two or three railway-lines between the same points than there now is of the construction of superfluous wagon roads. Were any municipality to vote away money for the building of an ordi-' nary highway running parallel to one already existing and sufficient for the accommodation of travel, it would be regarded as an utterly unjustifiable and senseless waste of the public funds. The people would stand amazed at the folly of any set of men who, whether through ignorance, indifference, or venality, could sanction such a project. Yet so warped have men's judgments become by the undue exaltation of private enterprise that the syndicate of speculators who go to the leg- islature or congress and obtain a public franchise endowing them with what are virtually public trusts to run competing railway or telegraph lines involving an enormous needless out- lay are regarded with no sort of disfavor and probably lauded as benefactors. The nationalization of railroads, telegraphs, and similar enterprises would place the working employes in a far better position that at present. Instead of being subject to the fluctuations of the labor market, liable to have their wages reduced in order that the monopolies may pay dividends and to be treated as human machines, the working-force of rail- way or telegraph lines owned and managed by the govern- ment would be able to bring their political power to bear, to secure a just scale of wages and equitable treatment. No government dare deal with its employes as W. H. Van- derbilt did with his wage-slaves during the freight-handlers' strike at New York and other Eastern cities, or as Jay Gould did with the telegraphers, or more recently with the employes on his South- Western roads. No political party would ven- ture to justify the " iron law of wages " in relation to govern- ment employes. The politico-economical doctrine that labor is a commodity has been practically repudiated by the govern- ment. The wages of civil service employes are not fixed by competition do not fluctuate with the state of the labor- THE POLITICS OF LABO&. 121 market, but, so far at least as the lower grades of the service are concerned, are arranged on the principle of paying some- thing like the value of the labor performed. That some of the higher officials are paid extravagantly high rates, owing to the prevalent over-estimate of the value of executive ability as compared with ordinary work, is no valid argument against the change, since the same conditions now prevail in the com- mercial world. The high salaries or emoluments of post-mas- ters and collectors of customs in the principal cities are paral- leled by the scale of remuneration of railroad, bank, and insur- ance officials and the superintendents of large manufacturing and commercial businesses. The cause and the justification of high salaries is the competitive system under which it is essential to the success of business undertakings to secure at any cost alert, energetic, and keen-witted men of organizing capacity, diplomatic tact, and the qualities of judgment and resolution which characterize the capable general of an army. These qualifications of business leadership, in their highest form and most perfect combination, are so much in demand, because of the necessity which the enterprises concerned are under of fighting each other. The energies and talents which command so high a recompense are mainly devoted, not in any direction which benefits the public, but to outwitting and circumventing rivals. In short, the tendency of the competi- tive system and the survival of the fittest is to evolve a class and kind of capacity, the social value of which is very slight, while its value to the individual or combination in whose service it is employed is very great. This kind of capacity may be styled " business generalship." Now this fitness for leadership in commercial and industrial war commands a high price, just as the rare combination of qualities which consti- tute the successful military commander does in time of war or in the presence of conditions which render war probable. But as in an era of assured peace the estimation set upon the services of the military leader would decline, so, as the system of government ownership became substituted for that of monopoly, and the industrial war of competition died out, the 122 THE POLITICS OF LABOK. services of the Napoleons of railways and finance would de- preciate. High salaries for the class of positions in the public service requiring a measure of organizing talent and responsibility of superintendence are directly traceable to the demand which exists in all departments of business for men of unusual tact, resource, and executive ability to be utilized mainly in waste, ful and injurious struggles for supremacy between conflicting interests. The purely adventitious value thus imparted to commercial generalship is responsible for the unjust difference in the salaries of officials and the unduly high estimate placed on the class of talent supposed to be possessed by those chosen for leading administrative positions. When the com- petitive features disappear, mere capacity for organization and acquaintance with business methods, which will be all that is requisite, can readily be procured at a much less exorbitant rate. There will be no need to pay responsible administra- tive officials twenty, fifty, or a hundred times as much as the lower grade of public employes. When .once the nation has assumed the ownership of the means of transit and communication and the duties of a public character now performed by other corporations, the sphere of .government will be rapidly widened and extended. Many other enterprises are so closely bound up and identified with these that the necessity of embracing them in the system of state ownership will follow as a matter of course. Coal and other mines, for instance, are largely owned and operated in connection with railroads, and the monopoly system results in combinations by which the supply of fuel is restricted and the price kept up for the benefit of the railway corporations. If once the railways were expropriated, a demand for the gov- ernment ownership of all mines owned and operated by rail- road companies would naturally follow. The immense resources of mineral wealth which have been alienated by faithless and corrupt guardians of the- public welfare, owing to the apathy of the people, temporarily dazed and bewildered by the changes in the industrial system, and unable to forecast the THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 123 results of a delusive " progress," must be reclaimed by the government, and worked in the public interest. Such mono- polies as the Standard Oil Company and the natural gas cor- porations will be abolished, and the supplies of these free gifts of nature regulated by the government, instead of being made a means of extortion. Following up the idea of the gradual extension of the func- tions of the State, the next step would naturally be to national- ize those departments of industry closely connected and inter- woven with the systems brought under government control. Grain elevators, wharves, warehouses, express companies, steamboat lines, and other undertakings dependent upon rail- road traffic would be absorbed^ Then would follow the exten- sive branches of manufacture which supply plant for the rail- road and telegraph lines, such as steel and iron works, car and locomotive factories, telegraph, instrument manufactories, and the like. The printing, binding, and engraving offices which furnish the supplies of stationery consumed in connec- tion with the departments of traffic and communication would also come under government ownership. In short, the circle would continually and rapidly widen. The organization of modern commerce and industry is so complete, and the differ- ent departments are sodependent on each other, that every fresh extension of the sphere of government control would sug- gest and justify a further inclusion of some similar or closely allied industry. The economy of forces, owing to the absence of competition, and the better condition of the laborers in gov- ernment employ as compared with those serving individ- ual capitalists would popularize the change among the working-class, and petitions and movements in favor of fresh expropriations would give an impetus to the general tendency in favor of state-controflcd co-operation which nothing could withstand. In a hundred directions the opportunities for converting private into public enter- prises would be seen and sought for. Simultaneously with the movement for nationalizing the larger monopolies and t-heir associated and dependent industries, the same pro* 124 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. cess would be going on locally by the assertion of the rights of the individual states and municipalities to own and direct the smaller enterprises of a public character. Already there is a strongly developed feeling among Labor Reformers against the government and municipal contract system. It puts a premium upon the employment of cheap labor and gives the unfair and grinding employer an advantage in competing for public work. All that the body awarding a contract looks to is securing cheapness in construction, and in place of the interests of labor being secured by stipulations providing for the payment of fair wages the contractor is left free to ob- tain his labor on the best terms he can. If he can procure cheap, non-union, convict or foreign labor in sufficient quan- tities, he is enabled to underbid his rivals who may be willing to pay the current rate of wages. Thus the system becomes an engine of oppression and the means of keeping the scale of wages at a low level. It is grossly unfair that in under- taking work for which the whole community is taxed, the laborer paying in greater proportion to his means than those of any other class, the rights of labor should be so conspic- uously ignored as they have been. Commissioner Arthur T. Hadley, in his report of the Connec- ticut Bureau of Statistics for 1885, strongly condemns the contract system in factories in the following terms : " A manufacturer employs, let us say, a thousand hands in a large number of different rooms. He cannot, of course, come in direct personal contact with the whole number. Paying by the piece he is able to give a stimulus to each individual laborer to do his best. But this does not suffice to insure their work being organized and directed in the best manner. To remedy this he says to the foreman of a room, ' I will give you a certain gross sum for a certain amount of work to be performed in your room. Make what terms you can with the workmen, I will pay their wages; and your profit will be the difference between the amount paid in wages and the gross sum offered. ' " Under this system the owner has to furnish the capital and pay the workmen. The contractor makes the arrangements with the workmen, and in supervising their work has every interest to see that everything is done as economically as possible. The great advantage of the system |3 the stimulus which it gives the foreman to become a contractor, Jt THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 125 enables a man without capital to grow rich; in some instances, to absorb the lion's share of the profits. As far as it goes it is a system of co- operation. " But it is co-operation going only down to a certain point and then stopping abruptly. There is every danger that its effect upon the vast majority of workmen, who are not contractors, will be bad. The con- tractor is in some respect in a different position from the employer. Dealing with but a few men, and not having the permanent reputation of the firm to sustain, he is likely to economize by crowding down wages to the lowest possible limit. This is not a necessary consequence of the system. The best firms are wise enough to avoid it. But it is at any rate a frequent consequence, and may fairly be considered the usual one." These objections to the contract system in private manu- facturing enterprises, so forcibly presented by Commissioner Hadley, apply with tenfold force to the public contract sys- tem. The cutting down of wages to the lowest possible point may not be a necessary consequence of contracts between manufacturer and foreman as at present entered into. But supposing the manufacturer were to call for tenders from a number of competitors for the position of foreman, on the un- derstanding that the man who would undertake to turn out the most work for the least money would obtain the appoint- ment, then the grinding down of labor to the lowest living or starving point would be not merely the frequent but the inevit- able result. The foreman-contractor may squeeze the laborer for his personal gain after he has obtained his position. But the public contractor, under the competitive system, is com- pelled at the outset to place the wages of his employes at a low figure in order to obtain the contract. And while the individual employer may for his own reputation secure a measure of equity in the arrangements between his foreman and his working-men, the national, state, and municipal gov- ernments, not being held responsible by public opinion for the oppression resulting from the contract system, and aiming solely at cheapness, not merely take no measures to prevent injury to the rights of the laborer, but render it essential that the contractor should engage the cheapest labor obtainable before he can enter upon his undertaking. 126 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. The opposition to a system which thus arrays the people, in their collective capacity as an employer, against the just demands of wage-workers, will naturally strengthen the move- ment for the public control of corporation enterprises. The abolition of the public contract system, and the undertaking of the work now performed by contractors by the national, state, and municipal bodies on their own account, would be an important step towards the broader reform. Its influence would be greatly felt in molding public opinion, and con- centrating the power of the working-class in favor of the change. When post-offices, custom-houses, court-houses, jails, city halls, school-houses are built, harbors, bridges, light-houses, and breakwaters constructed, streets graded, paved, and drained, under the direct control of public officials employ- ing and paying all workers, without the intervention of the middlemen who now enrich themselves by cheapening labor, the advantages gained by the workers would be so obvious that the further extension of the sphere of public as opposed to the private enterprise would be insisted on. Simultane- ously with the movement for the nationalization of the rail- ways, telegraphs, and banks of issue, the local governing bodies, states, counties, cities, and villages would be urged to extend their powers over local corporate enterprises, such as street railways, elevated railways, bridges, ferries, gas companies and the like. As in the case of the larger public concerns of a national character to be expropriated by the general govern- ment, the principle of the thin end of the wedge would apply. When once a beginning is made, other branches of industry or systems of distribution, closely affiliated with or dependent upon those taken, will one by one be absorbed. While the people are asserting their right to control, in the interests of the community, those public undertakings now perverted as the instruments of oppression ; while they seek to use their political power through the government to destroy monopoly and limit the power of capitalism, there is another and equally inportant phase of the movement to be accom- plished by other means, It will be remembered that in the THE POLITICS OF LABOE. 127 second chapter the writer endeavored to show that the evils of present industrial conditions were caused by monopoly above and competition below monopoly of resources, of means of employment in the hands of the few, and competition among those dependent upon them for liberty to labor. Now, while monopoly is being assailed by substituting government ownership for individual control, striking first at the points where the power of insistence is weakest and the influences ranging themselves on our side are most powerful, the war against competition amongst workers must also be pushed. By perfecting labor organizations, establishing a more thorough community of sentiment among workers of all classes, and bringing to bear the pressure of an enlightened public opinion, with the coercive power of the boycott behind it as a last resort, labor can successfully combat the arrogant pretensions of capitalism to " do as it likes with its own " and "conduct its business in its own way." Organized labor, making its strength felt by united action, utilizing every ad- vantage, availing itself of the most effective methods of in- dustrial warfare in place of the crude and often unsuccessful plan of strikes, can secure, to a great extent, the control of capital and supersede the capitalist. The success of co-opera- tion in certain branches of industry, when wisely undertaken by men having the requisite skill, experience, and capacity, is no longer problematical. The wonderful expansion of the system in England has done much towards cheapening the necessaries of life and securing to the toiler larger returns for his expenditure. In Great Britain and Ireland, at the end of 1883, there were altogether 1461 co-operative societies. Re- turns from 1291 of these showed a total membership of 729,957 persons. Their sales for the year were 29,336,028, the net profit realized being 2,434,996. Compared with the figures for 1873 a very remarkable increase is shown. The societies have gained 88 per cent, in membership, 87 per cent, in sales, and 119 per cent in profit. During the twenty-two years from 1862 to 1883, inclusive, the total sales were 305,515,659, on which a net profit of 24,247,077 was 128 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. realized. Though these societies are mainly distributive, the returns include a number of productive enterprises conducted in connection with the stores. The English Co-operative "Wholesale Society, the sales of which in 1884 amounted to 4,675,371, has undertaken to manufacture its own supplies in several departments. [Though productive co-operation is merely in its infancy, the results already accomplished wherever it has been established are sufficient to show its immense possibilities as a means of bettering the condition of laborj The report on co-operative production published in the annual of the English Co-operative Wholesale Society gives details for 1885 respecting the enterprises founded under their auspices, from which may be gained some idea of the benefits to the worker from association in production. The Crumpsall Biscuit works, opened in 1873, employ about 70 persons ; value, of supplies 21,352 ; percentage of profit on capital, 193-8 Shoe-works, Leicester, established in 1873 ; number of em- ployes about 600 ; value of supplies, 110,996 ; percentage of profit, 10 1-8. Shoe factory, Heckmondwike, established 1880 ; value of supplies, 19,960 ; percentage of profit, 5 7-8. Soap-works, Durham, established 1874 ; value of supplies, 16, 570 ; percentage of profit 9 7-8. It must be borne in mind that the profit here given is in addition to interest at the rate of about 4 per cent included in the expenses, which are deducted before the profit is reckoned. That the system under which these results have been obtained is not pure co-operation, but a hybrid scheme, retaining some of the features of capitalism, giving large "profits" to non-workers who simply utilize it as a means of investment, and paying employes "wages," like any other employer, without giving them an interest in the result unless they are shareholders, does not in the least destroy the evidence afforded by these figures as to the power of workers by combination to retain the large percentage of the wealth they create. When in the course of a few years co-operative enterprises, starting heavily handicapped by their inexperience THE POLITICS OF LABOE. 129 in the ways of commerce, having to create for themselves a business connection and to compete against private capitalists with every advantage on their side, can produce such results during the early period of struggling for a foothold, what may not be hoped for when the difficulties of the pioneer stage of the movement are overcome, and increased experience and in- telligence have smoothed the friction attendant upon first experiments ? It is true that productive co-operation requires a much higher standard of intelligence, discipline, and organizing capacity than does distributive co-operation. Those engaging in it undertake a far greater risk. To start a co-operative store involves merely the investment of a few dollars each on the part of the great body of its members. If there are no profits, or even if the concern fails, they sustain no serious loss. But with productive co-operation the case is widely different. Those who undertake to be their own employers risk not only what little capital they may contribute, but their means of livelihood. They must have not only enough capital to purchase material and pay current expenses, but sufficient to subsist on until they can market their products. They require a degree of self-confidence and mutual reliance, and qualities of perseverance, hopefulness, and readiness to incur temporary reverses without discouragement which are only found among picked men. The difficulties in the way of both productive and distributive co-operation are greater here than in England. Americans are more migratory in their habits. There is seldom that feeling of permanent settlement and fixity of location among the working-people of this con- tinent which is necessary for the success of co-operative enterprises. The man who has already been compelled to make several changes of residence to secure work and who regardg himself as a temporary resident, not knowing when he may again have to remove to a distant point, is not likely to in- terest himself in undertakings which are essentially local. Where this liability to change of residence prevails, working- men have not the same opportunity of making themselves 9 130 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. thoroughly acquainted with each other's characters, and ac- quiring the confidence in the integrity and fidelity of their associates which exists where men have been brought up together and expect to live and die members of the same community. There are a large number, of course, to whom these observa- tions will not apply, men who, have steady employment and comfortable homes of their own, who are thoroughly identi- fied with the localities where they live. But for some reason or other, whether it be the contempt for petty economies and trifling percentages which is a legacy of the " good times " of inflation, or the kindred American aversion to small begin- nings and gradual progress, and the unattractiveness from that standpoint of a system which dispenses with the glitter and display of competitive trade, co-operation on this continent has not hitherto attained anything like the propor- tions which it can boast in England. In the present condition of labor there are few departments of industry in which much can be expected in the way of productive co-operative work at present. The conditions are against it as a general measure. Here and there a band of picked men, having the necessary capital and experience, and under exceptionally favorable circumstances in regard to finding a market for their products, may succeed, as some have already done, in working out their independence of capitalistic control. But in the great staple lines of manufact- ure, in those departments where huge corporations, counting their capital by the millions, already hold the position and command the channels of distributions, the attempt would be hopeless. The capitalists who control the cotton manufactur. ing interest or the iron and steel trade, would speedily crush out a co-operative rival, even if they had to sell at a loss for a time to do it. But in every direction in which co-operation offers a fair chance of success, wherever a branch of manufacture exists which can be carried on with comparatively little capital and begun on a small scale, then the attempt at self-emancipation THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 131 from wage-thraldom ought to be made. If, instead of wasting money upon strikes, which drain the resources of labor unions, the amounts were carefully laid by until an oppor- tunity to start a few men in some co-operative enterprise presented itself, the benefits achieved would be infinitely greater. The manner in which, during any extensive disturb- ance of the relations between capitalism and labor organi- zations of different classes of workers, totally unknown to each other perhaps even by name, render mutual assistance, is a splendid tribute to the great principle of the solidarity of labor. The sums of money proffered from far and near, the few cents from each individual swelling into the hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of dollars, present a noble testimony to the thoroughness with which the wage- workers have learned the lesson that " an injury to one is the concern of all." But how much more satisfactory would the result have been had the amounts thus lavishly poured into the treasuries of strike committees been devoted to organiz- ing co-operative associations. When, in addition to the money payments to support strikes, the loss of wages is also taken into account, the enormous waste of means and of energies, which might have been devoted to the permanent ameliora- tion of the condition of labor is still more apparent. The census returns give statistics respecting 762 strikes which occurred in United States in 1880. In 414 of these contests the number of persons engaged was 128,262. As regards the majority of strikes no returns as to direct or indirect losses were received ; but full reports as to the 226 strikes involving 64,779 persons show that the time lost was equal to 1,989,872 days, work, and the unearned wages for this time, $3,711,097. The report of the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics for 1886, shows that the wages lost in strikes during 1886, as far as reported, amounted to $2,538,544, in addition to strike allowances and disbursements by unions to the amount of $329,080. The cost to labor organization of the strike on the Gould railway system in the South-western states during the spring of the present year is estimated at one hundred thousand 132 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. dollars, the lost wages at one million. During the protracted strike of the Hocking Valley miners in 1884-5 upwards of ninety thousand dollars was contributed by the labor organi- zations of the continent in aid of the strikers! Had a like amount been put into any form of co-operative industry where a favorable opening seemed to present itself, the failure to achieve any beneficial result could not possibly have been more signal ; and had the enterprise succeeded an advance would have been made towards a permanent solution of the labor problem. But, unfortunately, in the past it has generally required the excitement of an open conflict with capitalism, and the knowl- edge of the urgent needs of men engaged in industrial warfare, to rouse the sympathies of wage-workers suffi- ciently to induce large contributions for Such purposes. Just as in national affairs hundreds of millions of dollars can be raised for war purposes when men's passions and resentments are aroused, where it would previously have been impossible to procure a tenth or a hundredth part of the sum for objects that might have conduced to a pacific solution of the difficulty, so in the case of labor agitations a lack of foresight and imagination renders men, who are easily moved to action by present emergencies and the excitement of conflict, slow to undertake remedial measures gradual in their operation. Those who will freely give in aid of a strike without hope or thought of any return, without stopping to consider the pros- pects of success, turn a deaf ear to appeals for co-operative schemes, and perhaps justify their refusal to aid them by expressing doubts as to the feasibility of the project or their chances of getting back their investment. In the one case workingmen contribute ungrudgingly and unquestioningly, in the other they hesitate and criticise and tighten the purse- strings for the fear of possible less. What can be accomplished by co-operation, as the term is usually applied, however, covers but a small portion of the field of labor reform. The number of enterprises in which co- operation under present conditions would be likely to succeed THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 133 is limited. In many departments the competition of accumu- lated capital, which has so remorselessly crushed out the small manufacturer and the small trader, would render co-operation impossible. The difficulties of the system, such as the want of cohesion, discipline, and mutual confidence, naturally in- crease in proportion to the extent of the enterprise and the multitude and complexity of its details. In those depart- ments of modern industry in which operations are conducted on a large scale, requiring vast amounts of capital and the em- ployment of thousands of men under the same management, each separate establishment again being a member of a com- bination controlling the trade co-operation, would be an im- possibility. Were it possible even to secure the means to make a venture in the same line on a smaller scale, and pro- duce as cheaply as the larger capitalistic manufactories, the co-operators would occupy no better position, and probably, from lack of business experience, might occupy a worse posi- tion, than numbers of-small enterprises which have been un- able to stand the competition of their wealthier rivals. In the case of these enterprises the solution must be sought in substituting the control of the community for that of cap- italism. In place of the absolute ownership of the means of production being vested in individuals, the people must assert the supremacy of the public good over private interests, the right of society to step in and regulate the distribution of the earnings of productive industry. The rule of King Capital has already begun to pass by evolution from an absolute to a limited monarchy. To the insolent demand of the capitalist, when called to account for some act of arbitrary oppression, to be allowed to " conduct his business in his own way" and " do as he likes with his own," the answer of recent discussion is an emphatic " No ! " It is virtually admitted that the abstract rights hitherto claimed for capitalism are practically untenable, and that labor must be allowed some voice in fixing the conditions of work and wages. The consensus of public opinion, never before brought so fully to bear upon the labor question as 134 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. during the last year or so, is fairly epitomized by the pre- viously-quoted utterance of Prof. Arthur T. Hadley : " The relations between labor and capital cannot be treated as a mere matter of private business, but involve social and poli- tical questions." ' A few years ago such an expression would have been regarded as revolutionary. Now it is echoed by a thousand presses and pulpits. The propounders of palliatives are studying how to hedge round and limit the heretofore absolute power of capitalism with checks and restrictions. The drift of public sentiment is all in favor of permitting the creators of wealth some voice in its distribution some guarantee against the power which they have called into exis- tence being used unjustly against them. Industrial partnerships, boards of arbitration, securities to employes against arbitrary discharge all such proposals are in the line of social evolution, and assert a right on the part of society to interfere with the management of what have hither- to been looked upon as strictly private enterprises. But the ad- vocates of these and similar amelioratives have little idea of the conclusion to which their logic leads. There is no finality about such proposals. They are steps towards collectivism. When once the principle they embody is admitted, it is sim- ply a question of increasing by degrees the extent of the con- trol exercised by the community, and decreasing in proportion the power of the individual capitalist, until the latter at length becomes little more than nominal, preparatory to its final extinguishment. " It is the first step which costs." As the granting of tenant right in Ireland is but the prelude to the overthrow of land- lordism, so the admission of the wage-earners' interest in pro- ductive enterprises, in addition to a weekly wage fixed by competition without reference to the intrinsic social value of his labor, will form the leverage for the destruction of capital- ism. When, either by legislation under the stress of a quick- ened public conscience or by more thorough organization and discipline among the workers themselves, the share of labor in the products of industry is fixed proportionately to the re- THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 135 turns, and when permanency of employment is secured, a long stride toward collectivism will have been taken. Fixing the share of labor, by whatever means of legislative authority or of industrial combination it is accomplished, is virtually fixing the share of the capitalist-employer. That accomplished, the next step will be to eliminate the factor of usury from the calculation, and by successive re-arrangements to bring matters to the point where " the share of capitalism " is reduced to a reasonable remuneration for the actual labor of superintendence and direction. When this stage is reached, and the industries now con- trolled by capitalism are practically socialized, each in the hands of its group of workers, a few additional regulations for government supervision will be all that is necessary to bring them into line with the expropriated enterprises under government control. Two movements, both of which are making great headway the one, the assertion of increased jurisdiction by the government over matters formerly consid- ered beyond their scope ; the other, the disposition on the part of wage-workers to closer organization and more em- phatic assertion of their claims irrespective of legislative ac- tion would thus close in as it were upon capitalism from above and below simultaneously, and meet and merge in each other. It is often assumed that there is an antagonism be- tween these movements. The advocates of the laissezfaire school are accustomed to deprecate looking to government action, and to urge upon working-people the advisability of doing everything themselves forgetful that under Demo- cratic institutions the government should be simply the instru- ment for accomplishing the people's will, and that in acting- through government agency the people are doing the work themselves just as much as if they established any other agency for the purpose. To abandon all governmental methods of reform is to deliberately throw away the immense advantage put into the hands of the people by the possession of the ballot. That this weapon has been misused in the past is no reason for discarding it now, for the same increased 136 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. intelligence and capacity for organization and discipline which are essential to the success of any other method of operation will secure it in the political sphere. Though apparently opposed to each other, government in- terference and popular organization are not really so. They are opposed only as the two blades of a pair of scissors are approaching each other from opposite directions, it is true, but working together and to the same end. The opposition to government interference is a survival of the caste idea. When the rulers represented a privileged class and governed in their interest, the masses of the people being unrepresented, it was natural to regard them as separated by a social chasm from the body of the nation, having diverse and antagonistic in- terests, and therefore to be intrusted with as little power as possible, and jealously prevented from encroaching on the domain of individual rights. But with the development of political Democracy the situation is reversed. It is unre- stricted private rights, swollen by the concession of unjust privileges into monopolies, which threaten liberty. The advocates of laissezfaire have not been slow to note a seeming inconsistency on the part of those who favor govern- ment interference yet denounce the government under exist- ing conditions as the facile and corrupt instrument of mono- poly. It is a seeming inconsistency only. Before adminis- trative interference, would be possible it would be necessary to popularize the government to get rid of the last vestiges of the Old World idea of the State as something elevated above the people to uproot the exotic tradition that a certain amount of ostentation and display is requisite to preserve the prestige of rulers, and to make Democratic simplicity an established fact in place of a byword and a sneer in the mouths of reactionaries and Anglomaniacs. As has been previously explained, it is the influence of monopolies reacting upon gov- ernment and the absence of any strong countervailing public sentiment that has made it corrupt. The inconsistency lies with those who quote the existing corruption as a reason for perpetrating the condition which fostered it. THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 137 The first step in establishing the control by the people of the means of production and transit should logically be the nationalization of the land. The greatest and most pernicious of all monopolies is that involved in private land-ownership ; the reform which more than any other would tend to redress social inequalities by lessening the stress of competition among workers would be the appropriation of all land values to pub- lic uses. So far as can be judged by % present aspects it is not probable that this will be generally accomplished until the change from capitalism to collectivism has proceeded very far in other directions, although approaches toward it may be made simultaneously with other advances. The agitation for land nationalization has made wonderful strides of late, but public opinion has not ripened on this ques- tion to the same extent that it has in regard to the other phases of Labor Reform. There are obvious reasons why this should be the case. Social, like natural, forces follow " the line of least resistance." The numbers of those who either are or think themselves to be interested in the maintenance of individual property in land are much greater than the num- bers concerned in upholding railroad, telegraph, and money monopoly and industrial capitalism. It is good generalship to attack the enemy's position at its weakest point ; necessary to capture the outposts before assailing the citadel. But while the full accomplishment of land reform by the substitution of public for individual ownership may be deferred until collect- ivism has made progress on other lines, it is altogether feas- ible that ground may be broken for the change by the gradual transfer of the burden of taxation to the land. As " incidental protection" was the stepping-stone to a high tariff, so "inci- dental " land taxation may be the beginning of the broader system of public not necessarily national land-owner- ship. Hitherto in the discussion of the land nationalization ques- tion, stress has been laid upon its ultimate results in abolish- ing speculative land values and placing the occupation of the soil within the reach of all. The matter has been presented from a bro nt. n S was of course necessary 138 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. in laying down a great principle unfamiliar to the people. To inculcate the elementary truth that the soil rightfully belongs to the whole people, and to show how, by the exercise of the taxing power, they can reclaim the rights which have been usurped under the system of private land-ownership, was the first work essential to be undertaken in order to secure a foundation for intelligent political action. But the benefits and blessings to accrue from the abolition of personal land- ownership have perhaps seemed too abstract and too distant to secure for the measure that cordial and earnest support from the masses which is requisite for its practical adoption. There are a great many who readily yield a formal assent to the land nationalization doctrine, as embodying an important truth which will some day or other prevail. But it does not come home to them as a question demanding present and persistent attention an issue to be fought out here and now, and from the successful carrying out of which they can expect personal and immediate advantages, as in the case of the shortening of hours labor or of financial reform. To interest the people it will be needful to give more prom- inence to the objects that can be accomplished with the money raised by land taxation, to show that long before any general or comprehensive all-round scheme of vesting the ownership of the soil in the government, or even imposing all taxes on the land could be achieved, local improvements unattainable on the present basis of taxation can be secured by the free use of the taxing power as a means of ap- propriating the unearned increment to public uses. A scheme for a free street car service to be maintained by a special tax upon the holders of land upon both sides of the line was recently broached by the American Tax reform League of New York. The street car and rapid transit system has enhanced enormously the value of land in the large cities by rendering it possible for those who gain their living in the business centres to live several miles away. It brings land in the suburbs, which would otherwise have little more than agricultural value, into the market for residence THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 139 purposes at high prices, and increases the value of property all along the business streets, which thus become great arteries of traffic. It is aptly argued that the landowners who are enriched by the system should be called upon to defray the cost of providing free street-car accommodation for the public, just as the landlord of a large business block pays for the maintenance and working of the elevator. I merely cite this proposition as an instance of the manner in which the idea of the appropriation of land values to public uses can be popularized by setting before the public the tangible concrete benefits attainable even by its partial appli- cation. In place of the abstract and far-away ideal of a com- plete system of land nationalization, to which men can be in- duced by argument to give a languid assent, just as they do to the doctrine of the millennium, with about as little active interest in bringing the one about as the other, Labor Re- formers must put before them such presently attainable objects as free street cars and ferries, parks, libraries, museums, recreation grounds, schools, and institutes for special branches of education and artistic culture, to be established and main- tained by special taxes on land values. When once the principle is established and a beginning made in one locality, the laboring masses will very quickly seize upon the idea, and the demand for public and benevolent institutions to be paid for by taxing ground rents will grow by what it feeds on. A hundred ways will be discovered in which the enormous yearly value of the soil in the larger cities can be devoted to its legitimate use in increasing the facilities for travel, provid- ing opportunities for knowledge and amusement, developing the public taste, and making life easier, brighter, and more pleasant for the masses of the population, by whose presence alone these values have been created. rCand reform must begin in the larger cities, ior two reasons. It is there that the consequences of land monopoly are most severely felt and the people most in need of the advantages which the judicious expenditure of ground rents in works of public utility would secure. It is there too that 140 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. the monopolists, if richest, are also fewest in proportion to the total population, and the disinherited strongest in voting power. When the experiment has been found to work suc- cessfully in New York or Chicago, and it is seen that no real danger to the public interest is involved, and that the small property owner is touched but lightly, getting a full return for his increased contribution in his share of the general ad- vantages, while the burden falls on the very rich, smaller mu- nicipalities, where the extremes of want and wealth are not so marked, will follow. Thus the system, unattainable as a com- plete and symmetrical plan of universa lapplication,will be grad- ually developed in accordance with the principle of evolution./ I did not set out to pen a " Utopia " or " New Atlantis,'^ to picture an ideal state of society based upon principles of abstract justice, with every detail of social adjustment pre- cisely set forth. There has perhaps been somewhat too much " utopianizing " in the discussion of the industrial future. We want to consider not what would be absolutely the best and most perfect system to draft for an entirely new social state, but to take all existing conditions into account, and to indicate what broad general lines of action can be most suc- cessfully followed, what already existing streams of tendency can be taken advantage of to further our ends, and how ap- parently opposite and conflicting movements can be made to harmonize and converge, and every power which nature or social organization has placed in the hands of the people be utilized to its full extent in moulding the institution of a true industrial Democracy. Those who condemn Socialism as impracticable, and praise existing institutions as the outgrowth of the wisdom and experience of the past, forget that these very institutions were not suddenly forced upon society, but were gradually evolved out of previously prevailing systems. The teachings of history are appealed to against Socialism. Men who, as students of those teachings, have seen constitu- tional government evolved out of despotism as "Freedom broadens slowly down From precedent to precedent ;" THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 141 who have witnessed the decline of feudalism by the growth of the middle classes ; who recognize in the overthrow of personal slavery the result of a development of the sense of justice and humanity to a degree unknown to the nations of antiquity, show themselves strangely blinded by prejudice when they assume the finalty of the capitalistic system. The admitted inadequacy of any scheme or any number of schemes formulated for the reconstruction of society proves nothing. It would be impossible in the very nature of things that the work should be accomplished in this way, just as impossible as it would have been for William the Conqueror or Henry VIII. to have imposed upon the English people by the exercise of his despotic power the system of constitutional government which they now possess. The very wildest and most Utopian socialistic system that ever emanated from the brain of a French doctrinaire seems no more visionary and beyond the reach of possible attainment to the hard-headed and hard-hearted political economist, than the actually exist ing social and political system would have appeared to the most liberal and enlightened of our forefathers a few hundred years ago. Ideas and principles of individual conduct, of social relations, of the rights and duties and responsibilities of the citizen, which are now the common property of the mass, and the veriest truisms, would have been absolutely in- capable of comprehension by the men of classic or mediaeval times. That social order and government should exist without hereditary castes and classes, that the ordinances of public worship should be maintained without state endowments by the voluntary contributions of the people, and that the necessary rough and menial labor should be performed with- out men being allowed to hold their fellows in personal bond- age would to the mailed baron or cloistered monk of the Plantagenet era have seemed paradoxical and subversive of all human experience, and contrary not merely to established usages and conventional opinions, but to the order of nature itself, Tel; tfrese great changes have been wrought by the 142 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. process of evolution going forward without pause or rest in which each phase of mental activity, each triumph of mechanical skill, each stage in the uphill struggle between the forces of progress and reaction is but the germ of new and undreamed-of further developments the foothold and vantage-ground for fresh advances. Though it is impossible even to outline the final form which social institutions based upon the principle of a just return to each for his labor will assume, it is within the power of each and every man to aid in rough-hewing the material for the edifice, assured that in leaving the ultimate result to the shaping of the future he will be building better than he knows. CHAPTER VII. STUMBLING-BLOCKS. Master, what of the night ? Child, night is not at all Anywhere, fallen or to fall, Save in our star-stricken eyes. Forth of our eyes it takes flight, Look we but once nor before Nor behind us, but straight on the skies, Night is not then any more. SWINBUKNE. IN such a contest as that upon which the Labor Reformers have entered, nothing is to be gained by ignoring or belittling the obstacles in the way of success, whether they are internal or external in their character. In all movements in connec- tion with the onward progress. of humanity the drawbacks and the difficulties have always been great and apparently insu- perable in proportion to the magnitude of the change sought to be accomplished. Arrayed openly against us are the selfish interests not only of the few who actually benefit by the existing state of things,[but of the much larger number who either think they benefit by it now or hope to do so at some future time; the influence of political and economic THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 143 traditions ; the instincts of the timorous and the naturally conservative ; the stolid apathy of the large class who can only be roused by extreme pressure ; and the bitter hostility of the supercilious and cynical Since the doctrine of evolution has come into fashion the position of those who hold that the substitution of co-opera- tion for competition would be opposed to the natural order of things has been reinforced by the scientific principle of the " survival of the fittest." Writers in the interest of capitalism have eagerly seized upon it to justify the existing inequality of conditions as a result of the natural superiority of the fortunate few. /The starvation and wretchedness of those who are pushed to tile wall and trodden under in the struggle for existence are held to be the legitimate consequences of their inferiority. This process is regarded as necessary to ensure the perfection of the race by weeding out those unadapted to their surround- ings. Scientific srnatterers are apt to confound " survival of the fittest," with the survival of the best. The phrase as commonly used is deceptive. In the scientific sense it im- plies neither moral, mental, nor physical superiority simply adaptation to existing conditions. In the modern industrial and commercial world the very qualities which go to consti- tute true manhood are often calculated to retard success in life. Other things being equal, the man who is sordid and penurious in his habits, unscrupulous in his transactions, but shrewd enough to keep within the law, and devoted heart and soul to money-making to the exclusion of higher consider- ations, will have a better chance in the struggle for existence than he who is generous and humane) who would scorn to take an unfair advantage of a competitor, and who studies to improve his mind and to cultivate the social and intellectual side of his nature rather than to amass wealth. /T'hat in accordance with present conditions, the cunning, the heartless, and the mercenary are most likely to succeed, is not an argument in favor of our accepting the " survival-of- the-fittest " doctrine as a permanent bar to social reform, jit is 160 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. rather the strongest incentive for us to labor to change the environment which evolves such a type of "fitness." When the advocates of capitalism advance this plea for the spolia- tion of the masses, they are treading upon dangerous ground, and putting forth a weapon which may readily be turned against them by the anarchist. Morally, there is no difference between obtaining property Wrongfully by cunning and tak- ing it by force. In a state of chaos and disorder, the survival of the fittest would make those possessing physical strength and numbers masters of the situation. Change the environment from one of unequal laws, framed in the class interests of the wealthy, to one of no law but the right of the strongest, and the position would be reversed the " fittest " of to-day would be the inferiors and the weaklings who must succumb to the superior bodily strength of the desperate and hungry multi- tudes. In the following verses, penned some years ago, the present writer endeavored to illustrate this point. THE POLITICAL ECONOMIST AND THE TRAMP. Walking along a country road, While yet the morning air was damp, As unreflecting on I strode, I marked approach the frequent tramp. The haggard, ragged, careworn man, Accosted me in plaintive tone: " I must have food " he straight began; " Vile miscreant," I cried, u begone! "'Tis contrary to every rule That I my fellows should assist; I'm of the scientific school, Political economist. " Do'st thou not know, deluded one, That Adam Smith has clearly proved, That 'tis self-interest alone By which the wheels of life are moved ? " That competition is the law j By which we either live or die ? I've no demand thy labor for, , then, should I thy wants supply ? riti THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 161 " And Herbert Spencer's active brain, Shows how the social struggle ends: The weak die out the strong remain ; "Tis this that Nature's plan intends. " Now, really, 'tis absurd of you To think I'd interfere at all; Just grasp the scientific view The weakest must go to the wall." My words impressed his dormant thought. " How wise," he said, " is nature's plan ! Henceforth I'll practice what you've taught, And be a scientific man. " We are alone no others near, Or even within hailing distance ; I've a good club, and now right here We'll have a ' struggle for existence.' " The weak must die, the strong survive Let's see who'll prove the harder hittist, So, if you wish to keep alive, Prepare to prove yourself the fittest. " If you decline the test to make, Doubting your chances of survival, Your watch and pocketbook I'll take, As competition strips a rival." What could I do but yield the point, Though conscious of no logic blunder ? And as I quaked in every joint, The tramp departed with his plunder. It behooves the economic champions of capitalism to con- sider well whether the systematic degradation of labor is not likely in the long run to result in a struggle for existence, fought out with other weapons than those which now result in the survival of the shrewd and unsrupulous, while the mass are victimized. Either men will, by the power of peaceful and intelligent combination, so regulate matters that it will be no longer possible for a few to enrich themselves by taking advantage of the "natural superiority" of their acquisitive faculties under the competitive system, or the li 162 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. people will re-assert the old-fashioned right of the strongest as against that of the most cunning. Against Labor Reform is arrayed the enormous influence of a venal and subsidized press. The modern " first-class " journal, and a large proportion of those published on a less pretentious scale, voice the opinions not of the people, but of the wealthy and influential class. The press, never backward in glorifying its mission, is apt to draw somewhat self-com- placent and boastful comparisons between the complete equipment and ample facilities of the journal of to-day and the limited sphere of the press as our fathers knew it ; but the modern improvements have been dearly purchased at the sacrifice of independence and outspokenness. The widening of the scope of journalism has been accompanied by an enormous increase of its expenses. James Gordon Bennett, the elder, started the New York Herald on a capital of $500, and Horace Greeley floated the Tribune to sudden success upon a similarly slender amount. Nowadays it is necessary to risk a fortune in the endeavor to establish a daily journal in a large city ; and success, if it comes at all, is the result of a long-continued and lavish outlay. The modern daily or " high-class " weekly newspaper is as strictly and necessarily a capitalistic institution as a bank, a railroad, or other large corporate enterprise requiring a heavy cash expenditure before the hope of a return can be entertained. The newspaper proprietor therefore, at the very outset, is committed by in- terest and sympathy to the side of the money-power. Fre- quently he is heavily concerned in other financial enterprises, especially if the journal is established on the joint-stock principle. Again, advertising patronage is the very life-blood of the newspaper of to-day. As every one knows, the competition between publishers as to cheapness has practically resulted in furnishing to the public the printed page for the price which the white paper costs the newspaper. The expense of obtain- ing the news and editorials, printing and distribution must be made up from the revenue received from advertisements. THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 163 The result is that to the natural bias of wealthy newspaper proprietors in favor of capitalism, is superadded the influence of the advertising class, that is to say, the well-to-do and moneyed people, the manufacturing and business corporations, the rings, syndicates, and speculators. The newspaper must conciliate the favor of those who hold the purse-strings or, as hundreds and thousands of honest and independent journ- alistic ventures have done, go down for want of financial sup- port. Being thus absolutely dependent for life, not to speak of prosperity, upon the good-will of a capitalistic constituency of advertisers, it is tied hand and foot, so far as the utterance of new ideas likely to be unacceptable to any considerable proportion of them is concerned. The vast majority of in- fluential daily newspapers are abject and servile in their devotion to the money-power. They instinctively or de- liberately range themselves on the side of capitalism in every struggle between the people and their oppressors. Not only do they systematically suppress anything like the individual- ity of early journalism in treating of social reforms, and taboo, as dangerous, discussions which seem to run counter to bourgeois prejudice or interests, but they deliberately set themselves to distort and suppress facts, and to pervert public opinion in reference to the Labor Reform movement. They habitually malign the reputations and asperse the motives of the best and most honest of the advocates of labor's rights. It is true that at times political considerations intervene, and that their malignity toward the cause is veneered over with a hypocritical and badly simulated affectation of sympathy, and a patronizing tone that is more insulting and exasperating than open hostility. But when any occasion arises which tests their professions of friendship, all such flimsy and superficial disguises are thrown off, and the real animus of intense and bitter class hatred manifests itself. " You can hear in every one of its utterances the clink of the dollar and the lash of the party whip. The great dominant press of the land has no sympathy for the masses," said Wendell Philips. Every large and important newspaper 1G4 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. is edited from its counting-room. The press as a whole truckles and cringes before wealth as it formerly did at the feet of the slave-power. It is simply a huge capitalistic ma- chine. Intellectual honesty in the editorial chair is an im- possibility. Neither talent nor brilliancy, neither scholarship nor literary reputation will enable its possessor to retain a responsible position in journalism unless he is prepared to sacrifice his convictions and to prostitute his intellect in the service of Mammon. A few years ago even so powerful and distinguished a writer as Hon. Carl Schurz was compelled to resign the editorship of the New York Evening Post because he dared to take the part of the Western Union Telegraph operators at the time of their strike against the tyranny of Jay Gould. The case attracted much attention owing to Mr. Schurz's political prominence, but it is by no means an ex- ceptional one. It is not indeed often that the editor-in-chief of a leading newspaper allows his conscientious scruples to stand in the way of his doing the dirty work of capitalism ; for in most instances he must become known as a zealous, or at all events a pliable and unscrupulous tool before he hns an opportunity to attain such a position. But in numberless cases men in subordinate places have been compelled to choose between stooping to the degradation of a mental pros- titution, which is as much more debasing than physical harlotry as the faculties of the mind are nobler than those of the body, and sacrificing their prospects of advancement in their profession. The honest, earnest, and conscientious men are weeded out ; the cynical, slavish, and selfish, those who value their convictions as Castlereagh did his country, because they can sell them, remain. The despicable subserviency of the press to the influence of wealth, its utter want of principle and consistency in dealing with questions bearing on the condition of labor was striking- ly manifested in two instances during the labor troubles of the spring of 1886. The sudden growth and popularity of the system of boycotting employed by the laboring peo- ple as a means of retaliation for acts of oppression or conduct THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 165 deemed prejudicial to their interests aroused a strong feeling of antagonism on the part of the employers and the bour- geoisie generally. This speedily found expression through the editorial columns of the daily press. The system was denounced as " un-American." The Anglomaniac wealthy classes of the Eastern cities, who devote themselves assidu- ously to aping English fashions in dress, equipage, arid demeanor, and carefully eliminating every trace of American- ism from their speech, aspect, ideas, and sentiments, suddenly developed a profound admiration for " Amer- ican" traditions, and denounced the boycott as a per- nicious foreign importation. Dudes wearing London-made clothes, and speaking with a carefully cultivated Eng- lish drawl and lisp, and high-toned " society " dames clad in the latest foreign fashions, attended by liveried flunkeys, drove round to Mrs. Gray's boycotted bakery in New York to testify by large orders their appreciation of her adherence to to the " American " principle of managing her business in her own way. Not content with editorial denunciations of boy- cotting, two New York journals, the Evening Post and the Times, established anti-boy cotting funds for the prosecution of the trades-unionists engaging in the practice. The criin inal code of the state was overhauled in order to discover an enactment under which this " un- American " system could be suppressed by the law. In short, the unanimous influence of the leading journals was thrown against the boycott with a virulence which was evinced by the supplementing of the ordinary methods of journalism with functions rightly at- taching to the public prosecutor. " Look here, upon this picture, and on this." In the annual report of the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics for 1885, page 305, the following testimony is borne respecting a grievance to which labor is subjected : " An abuse which has existed for some time and of which the work- ing people of the state bitterly complain is called black-listing. In brief this means that an employer has discharged a man because he was a prominent member of the uuion which ordered a strike and had taken an active part in it, and then notifying other employers in the same 1GG THE POLITICS OF LABOR. line of his action. If they are of a similar mind the unfortunate man is unable to obtain work at his trade, and is either forced to leave his native town and seek work elsewhere or else get into some other busi- ness. This abuse is a fruitful source of intemperance. Many trade- unions and labor organizations provide for victimized members by starting them in some small business. Frequently a man is suspected and discharged without a moment's notice. When the unlucky victim asks for an explanation of this summary treatment he is curtly informed that the firm does not propose to give a reason. A case of this kind happened at Buffalo while the Bureau was conducting an investigation in that city. A manufacturing company in Brooklyn entered into an agreement with several of the largest manufacturers by which a man cannot get employment without the written consent of his former em- ployers. It was charged that should a man secure work in any of these shops the company can pursue him and secure his dismissal. " From the evidence it would appear that in most labor troubles, the most reasonable, conservative, and sensible men are selected to serve on committees. These men, while honestly intending to do justice to their employer and acting in a peaceful manner, are really putting themselves at the mercy of the employers if they are bad ones. This has been demonstrated by the fact that they are the first ones put on the black-list and thus compelled to leave their homes in search of work. The man who counselled moderation and frowned down talk about the destruction of property and extreme action is discharged, while the men who advocated these actions are retained. A poor re- turn for the advocate of law and order.'' This system is of long standing. While it is essentially the same in principle as the boycott, it is infinitely more injurious and more productive of hardship in its results. A boycotted manufacturer or storekeeper can always come to terms and be reinstated in the favor of his customers by complying with their demands, generally of a reasonable character ; the black- listed employee is permanently deprived of his opportunity of earning a livelihood at his trade. But when has the press denounced black-listing? When has any newspaper outside of the Labor Reform press waged a war of suppression upon it as " un-American," raised a fund for the relief of black- listed working-men, or clamored for the prosecution as criminals of vindictive employers who resort to this cowardly means of retaliation upon working-men who dare to call their souls their own? THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 1G7 During the recent Missouri Pacific strike a number of mer- cenary desperadoes, hired and armed by Jay Gould ostensibly for the purpose of guarding his property, without provocation fired upon an unarmed crowd of citizens at St. Louis, killing about eight persons. This massacre was viewed by the news- paper hirelings of capitalism as an ordinary, if a deplorable incident of the general disturbance. There was no outcry of horror, no demand for the exemplary punishment of either the immediate perpetrators or the instigator of the crime. When, a few weeks later, on the 4th of May, 1886, seven policemen in Chicago were killed by the explosion of a dynamite bomb thrown by some one at an Anarchist meeting, the entire press gave vent to a furious, insensate howl for blood and ven- geance. Nothing that has occurred for many years has illus- trated the un-Democratic and slavish spirit of American jour- nalism more than this vindictive outburst of indiscriminate wrath. The case was prejudged against men on trial for their lives. Every editor became a public prosecutor, and the tre- mendous influence of the daily press as a whole was directed to secure the conviction upon utterly insufficient evidence of those who were perhaps guilty of no worse offense than the use of language which, though reckless and bloodthirsty, was certainly not more so than the expressions habitually em- ployed by these exponents of " law.and order " in denouncing Socialists and Labor Reformers. 'vThe shout of savage exul- tation with which the verdict secured by such influence was hailed, resembled the yell of a band of Cornanches triumphing over a prisoner at the stake rather than the utterance of civil- ized beings contemplating the infliction of the extreme penalty of the law. ' Had the evidence, instead of being weak and un- trustworthy, clearly brought home to every man a direct par- ticipation in the throwing of the fatal bornb ; were the whole community convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that jus- tice and public safety demanded the execution of the criminals ; even^then the hideous brutality which found in the death sentence of the seven convicted Anarchists a subject for ghoulish rejoicing and heartless jests would have been equally indefensible} 168 THE POLITICS OF LABOK. While launching indiscriminate execrations against Anarch- ists and Socialists the average newspaper editor is absolutely blind to the fact that Anarchism is a mere surface symptom of a deep seated social disorder. I du believe in freedom's cause As fur away ez Paris is, I love to see her stick her claws In the.n infarnal Pharisees. It's wal enough agin a king To dror resolves an' triggers, But liberty's a kind o' thing That don't agree with niggers, wrote James Russell Lowell in satirizing the editor of thirty years ago. His successor of to-day, in commenting on Rus- sian Nihilism, German Socialism, or Irish agrarian outrage, can realize that these manifestations of revolutionary feeling are not causeless, but have their provocation in the intolerable grievances to which the people are subject. But in dealing with similar outbreaks in America the conditions which ren- der the outcast and degraded populations of our large cities a favorable soil for the propagation of Anarchist ideas are ignored, and the old crude and brutal methods of suppression of free speech and the liberty of the press vindictive legal penalties, the policeman's club, and the soldier's bayonet are the only remedies which these cowardly betrayers of popular freedom have to propose. Akin to this malign influence of organized mendacity is that of the literary and so-called " cultured" class generally. The whole tone of university education is bitterly hostile to organ- ized labor. It draws its inspiration mainly from foreign sources, and preserves the traditions of the European indus- trial and social system. The shallowness of what passes as modern intellectual culture is shown by its lamentable failure to meet the problems of the time, or even to make an attempt in that direction. This is an age of book-making, of strenuous intellectual activity. Yet never since the dark ages was there a greater THE POLITICS OF LABOE. 169 lack of creative power or originality, of the boldness and mental grasp necessary in dealing with a new situation. We have fallen upon a period of mere criticism and imitation, of a dead-level of conformity to established formulas and rigid adherence to narrowing modes of thought. With the modern literary school, the Fawcetts, Howellses, Jameses and other pretentious pigmies who essay to fill the places of the robust and powerful writers of the last generation, the form of expression is everything, the idea nothing. The absence of a lofty purpose and the lack of the inspiration of a noble cause emasculate and enfeeble the productions is sued by the thousand by men who are mere book-makers, who write not because they think deeply or feel strongly, but simply as a profession. The ardent faith in humanity and the intense individualism and self-poise of the old school of New England literature, now well-nigh extinct, has been replaced by the supercilious and cynical polish of conventional European cul- ture. In place of a literature touching the strongest and most deeply-seated emotions, dealing with great problems of life, and appealing to the hearts of the mass of mankind, we have the " society " novel and the "society" poem, written for a class and embodying the caste idea. Elegant trifling, pretty conceits, dissertations on drawing-room manners, elaborate criticism of trivial details of social etiquette and nice shades of distinction in character, form the staple of this nerveless, marrowless, soulless literature. " He would have left a Greek accent slanting the wrong way and righted up a tailing man," wrote Thoreau of Capt. John Brown. The literary class are greatly concerned about the absolute correctness in form of their utterances and the finish of their style, but there is no help in them for prostrate humanity. The literary degeneracy of the age is due partly to the enervating influence of imported ideals of life and culture, and the reactionary distrust of Democracy fostered in those hot- beds of snobbery and caste feeling the universities; and partly to the almost universal craving for the material gains of authorship. Shallow and near-sighted observers often point 170 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. complacently to the great rewards of professional authorship in these days, when a single book frequently wins fame and a competency for the writer, in contrast to the time when the garret and the debtor's prison, the crust of dependence and " the key of the street " were too commonly the returns which a thankless world made for works which have since become classic. They do not see that, in proportion as authorship lias become a trade in which fortune awaits the successful aspir- ant, it has developed the huckster spirit among its votaries. As in the case of journalism, the literary guild have become to a very great extent, either instinctively or from sheer self- interest, the upholders of existing social injustice and the op- ponents of organic change. The whole range of influences and cramping conventionalities which surround the modern pro- fessional writer are hostile to freedom of expression and to the effective treatment of the new issues which have arisen. Men who write in the hope of large pecuniary rewards, and aim at social position ; who have set their hearts on immediate popu- larity and success, are under heavy bonds to say nothing op- posed to the interests or the prejudices of the moneyed and comfortable class. They dare not array themselves on the side of the struggling poor, or grapple with the question which is now overshadowing all others in its importance, except to deal in platitudes and falsisms, restatements of outworn econ- omic dogmas, and recommendations of palliatives utterly in- adequate to meet the case, such as form the stock-in-trade of the " labor " articles in the magazines. Not from those who have " given hostages to fortune " in a different sense from that in which the term is generally employed, who are look- ing anxiously for the favor of the wealthy, the press they control and the society they dominate, can Labor Reformers expect anything but opposition and misrepresentation. As the Garrisons and the Phillipses, in their long struggle to awaken the conscience of the American people to the i \iquities of slavery, had to face the hostility of the pre- tentious and pharisaical " culture " of their day, so those who are enlisted in the conflict against the oppressions of THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 171 capitalism must be prepared to encounter the hatred of the servile and self-seeking The culture of the college and of literary coteries is narrowing and dwarfing in its effects. It tends to prune and to polish away whatever of native vigor exists. It represses anything like spontaneity and naturalness. It limits instead of broad ening the range of sympathies, and cultivates a spirit of- pessirnistic optimism, if the paradox is permissible. By this I mean a complacent satisfaction with existing conditions, as viewed from the standpoint of personal and class interests, combined with indifference or despair as to the possibility of ever substantially bettering the lot of the many. Its creed is that the mass, even though nominally free, can never become intelligent, or fit to govern themselves that they must be led by " statesmen," and amused by giving them the sem- blance of political power w r hile the reality is exercised only by the few. While perhaps rendering a hypocritical homage to Democracy in its narrowest sense of " the right to choose one's jailers," the class who claim a monopoly of culture and enlightenment are strenuously opposed to the idea of a true Democracy of equality of social rights and opportunities. The exaggerated estimates set upon talent, diplomacy, tact, shrewdness, and the like qualities, which are so extravagant- ly rewarded under the competitive system, as compared with ordinary industry, is upheld by their teachings. The perni- cious and undemocratic view, that government is necessarily a science of infinite complexity, involving abstruse problems, and demanding qualities higher and more valuable than the ordinary business capacity and good sense of the average educated citizen, finds extensive currency in their utterances upon public affairs. In short, the tenor and aim of the bulk of modern American literature is to accentuate class dis- tinctions ; to exalt wealth, social influence, genius, and states- manship ; to build up a bourgeois aristocracy ; and to depress the simple citizen, upon whose plodding industry the stability of the whole fabric rests, to the level of European subject- hood. 172 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. The influence of wealth has corrupted our literary and educational institutions to the core. The practice which so largely prevails of millionaires bequeathing or giving during their lifetimes large endowments to colleges and academies naturally enlists these powerful factors of public opinion on the side of capitalism. The occupant of university chairs and like lucrative positions, whose salary is paid from the donations of merchant princes and railroad magnates, cannot, any more than the hired journalist or popularity-hunting book-maker, honestly employ his talents in searching for the truth. He is paid to find the best defence he can for an existing system, not to boldly and freely examine all sides of the question and fearlessly announce his conclusions. Owing to the same insidious influence the Church has also been largely perverted into an ally and an instrument of the money-power, and the apologist for the very worst of its op- pressions. There are noble exceptions, but for the most part the ministry are the servile tools of the rich men's social clubs and Sunday opera companies, which make a mockery of religion by calling themselves churches. The modern fash- ionable church is a capitalistic institution, membership in which is sought for its commercial and social advantages. The pastor, absolutely dependent on the favor of the rich and influential, becomes the obsequious sycophant of wealth, and the ready defender of the system which he, in common with his patrons, has a personal interest in maintaining. The pro- fessed expounders of a gospel abounding with the sternest and plainest denunciations of usury, extortion, land-grabbing, and oppression of the poor, wrest the scripture to justify every species of craft and villainy by which the poor are wronged. The religious " liberality " of the millionaires, so highly praised, and so often advanced as a plea in justification of the system the "beneficence" that endows churches, missions, theological colleges, Bible and tract societies, and the like, with the wealth upon which even the most tenacious grasp must relax at the touch of a skeleton finger, is, in fact, a subtle, insidious, but none the less effective means of whole- THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 173 sale bribery, by which professional religionism is suborned to the service of Mammon. In the Church of the Strangers in New York, endowed by the late Cornelius Yanderbilt, there was, and probablyis now, a bronze plate on the wall near the pulpit, bearing the fol- lowing inscription : Erected To the Glory of God, and in memory of CORNELIUS YANDERBILT, By the Church of the Strangers. " The name of God," says an indignant newspaper corre- spondent, " is placed on this tablet in small letters at the end of an insignificant line, while that of Cornelius Yanderbilt stands out on a broad brazen belt in the full obtrusiveness of flaring capitals." It is not often that good taste and religious feeling are so flagrantly outraged on the surface, but the spirit that dic- tated this piece of ostentatious irreverence pervades the fash- ionable religion of the day. In how many of our wealthy churches are the glory of God and the rights of humanity alike subordinated to the exaltation of the millionaire ! The stumbling-blocks in the way of Labor's emancipation are mental rather than physical. Bulwer Lytton, in his work on " England and the English," sums up the matter ad- mirably in speaking of those influences which there retard popular progress. " You- have observed," he says, " that the worst part of these influences is in a moral influence. This you can counteract by a new moral standard of opinion. Once accustom yourselves to think that * Rank is but the guinea-stamp, The man's the gowd for a' that' once learn to detach respectability from acres and rent-rolls once learn indifference for fashion and fine people, for the * whereabouts ' pf lords and ladies, for the orations of men 174 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. boasting of the virtue of making money once learn to prize at their full worth a high integrity and a lofty intellect once find yourself running to gaze, not on foreign princes and lord mayor's coaches, but on those who elevate, benefit, and instruct you, and you will behold a new influence, pushing its leaves and blossoms from amidst the dead corruption of the old. To counteract a bad moral influence, neyer let us omit to repeat that you must create a good moral influence. Reformed opinion precedes reformed legislation. "Now is the day for writers and advisers ; they prepare the path for true law-givers ; they are the pioneers of good ; no reform is final, save the reform of mind." CHAPTER VIII. THE SOLIDAEITY OF LABOB. Labor is of no country. KAEL MABX. Laborin' man an' labor! n' woman Have one glory an' one shame ; Every thin' that's done inhuman Injures all on 'em the same. LOWELL. THAT all labor has a common interest is one of the truisms of the Labor Reform movement. Loudly proclaimed, en- thusiastically preached, blazoned forth in the mottoes of labor unions, and ostensibly of universal acceptance, it is too seldom acted upon, or its full significance realized. The world of labor is pervaded by the spirit of class and division. The short-sightedness which looks only to trifling immediate ad- vantages, small increase of pay, petty advances of one class of workers at the expense of others, the prejudices of race and creed, and the divisions of party politics, have tended to keep asunder men whose larger interests are mutual, and whose future depends on united, harmonious, and well-directed action. These divisions have been cunningly fostered and THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 175 exaggerated by the influences at work in the cause of capital- ism. False issues are continually being raised, and jealousies assiduously promoted in order to prevent the laboring-class from presenting a united front to the common enemy. And no wonder. Ttye solidarity of labor means the anni- hilation of capitalism. When all who toil are practically unanimous in demanding the social reorganization of industry, and the recognition of labor-value as the only right to sub- sistence, the day of those who now claim the lion's share of production, as possessors merely, will be over. The American labor question is complicated and rendered difficult of solution by the results of Old-world systems of misgovernment and industrial oppression. Immigrants by the hundred thousand yearly seek our shores. The exten- sion of the ocean transportation-service and the shortening and cheapening of the voyage has mobilized the labor-forces of the civilized world, and given a literal significance to the saying of Marx, that " Labor is of no country." Whether we accept that doctrine in the sense in which it was uttered or not, we have no alternative as regards the fact that the barriers of race and language and distance, w r hich formerly restricted competition, are breaking down on all sides. We are entering upon an era of industrial internationalism. Narrow our sympathies, cherish our old-time prejudices as we may, the solidarity of labor as a force at the disposal of capitalism is an established condition which cannot be gain- said. When Italians and Irishmen w r ork side-by-side on the railroads, and Hungarians, Poles, and the miscellaneous cheap labor of South-eastern Europe compete with the American and English-speaking working-men in the coal mines and coke-ovens of Pennsylvania and Ohio when the French Canadians swarm in the textile factories of the East and the pine forests of the North-West, and the Southern plantations are drawn on for their dusky contingents when unskilled labor is on strike when the Pacific states, barely reclaimed from Indian savagery, have to be defended against the flood of Mongolian semi-barbarism, the inadequacy of any action 176 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. based upon national distinctions or the lines of color and creed ought to be apparent to all. Capitalism is cosmopolitan. It has no patriotism and no prejudices. It will levy its tribute from black or white, European or American, Protestant or Catholic with indis- criminating impartiality. The vampires of the London money-market, having drained the life-blood from Turk and Egyptian, seek fresh victims on the Western Continent. English and Irish landlords, conscious of their waning power, and alarmed by the diminution of their rent-rolls, cross the Atlantic and acquire millions of acres of virgin soil in order to command the product of the labor of Americans, and per- petuate here the system of landed estates which is tottering to its fall in their native country. There is no more mean- spirited and despicable class of reactionaries than the American millionaires*, whose sympathies are notoriously hos- tile to the popular cause in Europe. The most detested of Scottish landlords is the American, Ross Winans, who by his rapacity and petty despotism has done more to arouse public opinion against the system than the exactions of native land- lords. The idle and luxurious class of Americans abroad were conspicuous among the upholders of that gilded sham, the Second Empire in France, as to-day they are prominent in courtly and aristocratic circles in England. The instinc- tive sympathy of the wealthy and ruling classes of different countries with each other has at times produced the most far- reaching results in shaping the course of events. George Otto Trevelyan, in his " Early History of Charles James Fox," points out how the fellow-feeling of the British upper classes for the French aristocracy at the time of the Revolution af- fected the policy of England. " That sympathy was stronger and more practical in its effects than the compassion which our nation felt for the Protestants of Holland in the day of the Spanish fury, or for the Huguenots in the days of the dragonnades; for the patriots of the Tyrol, of Hungary, of Naples; for the slaves of South Carolina ; for the victims of Turkish cruelty in Greece and of Eussian cruelty in Poland. The silken bonds of common THE POLITICS OF LABOR 177 pleasures and tastes, which seem trifling enough at the moment, proved stronger under the test than the ties of religious faith or political creed; and while the Democrats of Paris were appealing almost in vain to the brotherhood which, according to the Jacobin program, was to unite against their tyrants all the peoples of Europe, there was nothing fictitious or shallow in the sentiment of class fraternity which instantly and spontaneously enlisted the gentry of Great Britain in determined and implacable hostility to the French Republic." Mr. Trcvelyan probably lays too much stress on the purely sentimental phase of the matter, and too little on the com- munity of interest and the dread on the part of the British upper class that the example of a successful French Republic might become contagious and inspire a similar attack on their own unjust privileges. But be this as it may, whether the bonds between the wealthy and influential castes of all countries are those of instinctive sympathy or keen- sighted self-interest or both, there is no question that the soli- darity of capitalism thus created is one of the most formid- able influences with which the movement for the rights of labor has to contend. The commercial and financial interests of the principal nations are so interwoven, and the associa- tions between the leisured and moneyed classes so much closer than formerly, owing to the facility of travel and communica- tion, that an international public opinion, which is distinctively a class opinion, has grown up, and exercises a tremendous pressure upon local movements. Voiced in the great capit. alistic newspapers, and through that monopoly-machine, the Atlantic cable, its influence is powerfully felt in antagonism to every agitation for popular rights. Thus the Irish national movement which is first and foremost a movement for indus- trial reform has been systematically misrepresented, its lead- ers have been maligned, its reverses magnified, and the abuses and drawbacks incidental to any widespread popular agitation grossly exaggerated. This was more especially the case dur- ing its earlier stages ; since it has obtained a headway which presages success these tactics are no longer available, though the old animus is still noticeable. International capitalistic opinion is largely responsible for 178 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. the infatuated financial policy pursued by the American government during the war of the Rebellion and subsequently, by which the bondholders were enriched by receiving pay- ment in gold for advances made in depreciated currency. The capitalists of America, in any contest with the masses, can always count on receiving the moral support of the ruling classes abroad, and in return are always ready to throw their influence into the scale with that of the opponents of social reform elsewhere. In short, whenever and wherever through- out the civilized world there is a movement on the part of the oppressed to secure a measure of justice, the forces of opinion are concentrated and brought to bear against it. The whole power and pressure of international capitalism, acting though a thousand channels of influence, is directed to crush it. The forces of labor, on the contrary, have in the past been divided by countless lines of cleavage in all directions, by differences of party, nation, and creed, of sex and color, of oc- cupation and locality ; by jealousies between skilled and un- skilled brain and manual workers ; and by finely-drawn grades and distinctions between those of the same trade. National and race differences, and the prejudices attaching to them, are much more strongly marked among the working-class than among the wealthy. It is a frequent remark that travel, education, and social intercourse have done much to assimi- late the richer elements of American and European society. The angles of national prejudice have been rubbed off. The old-fashioned antipathies between Briton and Frenchman^ American and European have subsided under the influence of a common caste feeling and a similar standard of conven- tional polish. The " gentlemen " of one country differ much less from those of another in dress, demeanor, and modes of thought than do the working-classes, among whom, excepting in so far as they may have been influenced by Socialistic teaching, the "foreigner" is generally regarded as an enemy. John Leech's often-quoted illustration of life in the English mining district " * Who is 'e, Bill?' is even worse than that of the average 184 ?Hfi POLITICS OP LABO&. mechanic. Their earnings are frequently less, their hours longer, and their subserviency to their employers more abject. No organization protects them from the effects of unlimited competition. There is everywhere a host of men and women, young and old, of all degrees of talent and capac- ity, seeking employment in these callings. They jostle each other in shoals whenever a vacant situation is advertised, no matter how small the salary. They advertise their own degradation, and tempt the unfair employer to grind them into the dust by the frequent announcement, " employment an object rather than salary." Brains without means are a drug in the labor market quite as much as hands, and there is no sort of check such as that interposed by trade-unionism to the operation of the law of supply and demand. All large publishing centers abound with literary hacks, well educated and clever, who, being without other resources than their brains and pens, are as completely at the mercy of the capitalist as any member of an unorganized trade when brought into competition with cheap labor. They will write anything to order for a pittance. They peddle articles and poems round the newspaper and magazine offices for anything they can get. Publishers drive hard bargains with them, beat them down to starvation prices, and frequently realize thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on works which have earned for the writers nothing more than a meager sub- sistence during the time they were actually engaged in their production. Yet how few brain workers, despite the intel- lect on which they pride themselves, can see that their grievances and disabilities are the same as those of the manual laborer ! They will grumble among themselves about the unappreciative public, and the miserably underpaid position of intellectual labor, but the idea of combining to fix a fair price for their work never enters their heads. Still less have they realized the need of uniting with other classes of workers to alter the social conditions which place labor, whether of brain or of muscle, at the mercy of wealth. In ques- tions between the toiler and the capitalist, most of them os- tentatiously take the side of capitalism. ftifi POLITICS OF LABO&. * 185 \The extent to which the substitution of machinery for hand-work has revolutionized the industrial system and inten- sified competition may be gathered from the report of the United States Labor Bureau for 1886, in which it is stated that the mechanical industries of the country are carried on by steam and water power representing in round numbers 3,500,000 horse power, each horse power equaling the mus- cular labor of six men ; that is to say, if men were employed to furnish the power to carry on these industries, it would require twenty-one million men, representing a population of 105,000,000 to do the work now actually performed by 4,000,000 representing a population of 20,000.000. The same authority estimated the total number of workers out of em- ployment during 1885 at 998,839. But the basis on which this latter calculation is made, is an obviously misleading one, as the result is arrived at by taking only the total of the estab- lishments, such as factories, mines, etc., which were absolutely or partially idle during the year.]. It leaves out of sight the large number of working-men not having regular employment or places open for them in a particular establishment as soon as work is resumed. As a calculation of the number of em- ployes laid off owing to hard times, it may be correct ; but manifestly a statement of the number of working-people thrown out of employment by the shutting down of factories and mines is very different from and less comprehensive than an estimate of the total unemployed labor force. But understated as it clearly is, the fact that one million workers at least were in enforced idleness, while four million more were doing the work which, prior to the era of mechanical expansion, would have required the labor of twenty-one million, is sufficient to show that organization on the lines of trades-unionism is powerless to deal with the altered conditions caused by the perfection of labor-saving machinery. So far, machinery has benefited capitalism only at the expense of labor. Considered as a consumer indeed, the laborer benefits by cheapness of production, but it is a good deal like the ad- vantage which the Irishman of the story received from length- 186 THE POLITICS OF LABOB. ening his blanket by sewing to the top the strip which ha had cut from the bottom, so as to make it long enough at both ends. Where is the advantage of cheapness of production to the army of the unemployed and half-employed, or to those whose labor has been so cheapened by competition that their purchasing power is correspondingly lessened? The cause of the trouble we are told is " over-production." The workers of the world, according to this theory, have been too industrious. By their superfluous enei'gy there have been accumulated vast surplus stocks of food, clothing, fuel, and manufactured articles of every description for use and ornament, for necessity and luxury. Periodically there is a glut of every salable commodity, and in order to restore the equilibrium between demand and supply, production and consumption, mills, factories, and mines are shut down or run on short time, or the force of workers is reduced. Industry in many departments is brought almost to a standstill. Great distress in consequence prevails among multitudes thus suddenly deprived of the means of livelihood, and many others who are fortunately able to keep the wolf from the door find their income materially reduced, or their small savings, accumulated during more prosperous years, gradually melting away. That destitution among workers should not only co-exist with a superfluity of the articles produced by their industry, but should actually be caused by it, is a suffi- cient proof of the deep-seated injustice of the present rela- tions between labor and capitalism. ' Under a fair system of distribution there could be no such thing as over-production. Still less could poverty be caused by it. The greater the production the more prosperity would be enjoyed by the industrious classes. Under the wages system, the worker is dependent on the capitalist-employer,/and he in turn on the purchasing power of communities largely composed of other wage-workers. The crude and drastic remedy of diminished production implies a considerable diminution of the amounts paid thorn as wages, and a consequent diminution of their purchasing THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 187 poweiv Thus the evil perpetuates itself. For instance, the boot and shoe manufacturer, having a surplus stock that he cannot dispose of, shuts down ; the woolen manufacturer, and the hat manufacturer do the same. But the employes of the one are the customers of the other. The hatters and woolen mill operatives have less money than ever with which to buy boots and shoes, and the shoemakers must make their old clothing, blankets, and hats last them for some time longer. And so it goes all round, and the very steps taken by indi- vidual employers to protect themselves from the consequences of stagnation tend to prolong and intensify it. It is always it her a feast or a famine, too much work or not enough. As boon as "hard times" are fairly over, a boom in productive industry takes place. Merchants' stocks are exhausted and orders come pouring in to the manufacturers. Mills, factories, and mines are worked to their utmost capacity ; prices go steadily up, and so, after an interval, do wages. Under the stimulus of an increased demand new enterprises are under- taken. In place of scarcity of employment there is abundant work for all. Employers, in their eagerness to " make hay while the sun shines," run their workshops and factories night and day. The long hours of toil are further lengthened by inducements being held out to employes to work over-time. Under the temptation of extra pay, or the fear of offending their employers by a refusal, men work twelve or fifteen hours a day, allowing themselves barely time for needed rest and re- freshment, and no time whatever for mental improvement or social recreation. The wheels of industry and commerce revolve at high pressure, and short-sighted politicians and publicists are loud in their congratulations on the prosperity of the country, ignoring entirely the fact that all this crowding on of sail and expenditure of surplus productive energy is simply preparing the way for the inevitable return of hard times. The inflation period is generally of short duration. Present demands are soon supplied, and goods again begin to accumulate in the factories and warehouses. The competition between producers is no longer as to which shall turn out 188 THE POLITICS OF LABOE. goods most rapidly and in greatest volume, but which shall sell the cheapest. Production slackens, wages fall, employes are discharged. Enforced economy diminishes the purchasing power and causes further stringency and greater distress among workers, and so the vicious circle is completed. Those who, reluctantly in some cases arid willingly in others, crowded two days' work into one, now think themselves fortunate to obtain one day's work in two. These recurring periods of inflation and stringency teach the absolute inadequacy of private enterprise, and supply and demand, for the regulation of production and distribution. Each manufacturer or association of manufacturers act strict- ly in their own interests in suspending or slackening produc- tion during a period of stagnation, and in crowding on sail when times mend ; yet the result is adverse to the interests of society as a whole. Only by a systematized organization of industry regulating production on the basis of the needs of the community, and distributing the work to be done in sup- plying those needs more evenly in point of time can the alter- nation of prosperity and depression be prevented. The eight-hour movement is a most important step to- wards such a general re-adjustment of production and distri- bution, as well as a temporary palliative for some of the worst evils of the competitive system. The establishment of an eight-hour working day would, in most industries, secure an opportunity to work for all. Ten hours being, as a rule, the present day's labor, the substitution of eight would mean, either the addition to the present working force of one-fourth, if the existing rate of production were to be maintained, or the lessening of production by one-fifth were no increase made in the number of workers. No doubt it would operate to a partial extent in both directions. An increase of the present labor force by one-fourth would hardly be possible, but it would largely exhaust the reserve force of unemployed labor, whose competition tends to the reduction of wages; and the limitation of production resulting where the deficiency was not macie up from this source, would be the Ibest guarantee THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 189 against glutted markets and undue competition. The tempo- rary individual loss ; of pay which would be sustained in many branches is the bugbear in the minds of many, which prevents their seeing the immense ultimate gain of shorter hours. Tak- ing the working-class as a whole, there would not be even a temporary loss and even supposing wages were never raised above the present hour-rate, there would be no permanent loss. When the unemployed and partially employed are con- sidered and an average struck, it will be found that eight hours all round is as much work as the toiler can get. It is really not a question of the working-class, as a whole, working less or more, but of the even distribution of what work there is. We already have not, indeed, shorter hours, but an in- crease of the number who cannot count on steady employ- ment, and a lessening of the average receipts, owing to the loss of opportunities to labor. The eight-hour movement, if successful, would equalize this decrease. The system of long hours, when it suits the convenience of employers, and short hours or no hours at all for many as a direct consequence, is the worst possible that could be devised in labor's interests. If men refused to work for more than eight hours, they would not so often be told a little later on, that there was no work for them. Now even if what some of the opponents of this great reform say were true, " that the laborer could not obtain as much for eight hours, work as he now gets for ten, " this would be a desirable thing. It would certainly be to the advantage of the laborer to have steady and certain work for eight hours daily, even at the same rate of pay per hour as at present, rather than ten hours for a year or two with a shut down for several weeks or months sprung on him unexpectedly. But it is not true that the pay would not be increased. If there is anything at all in the doctrine of supply and demand, it fol- lows that by limiting the supply of labor, as the eight-hour system would do, and so bringing it down tothe level of the de- mand, the power of the laborer to obtain higher wages would be thereby increased. Experience shows that the trades in which 190 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. the hours are shortest are the best paid. The natural effect of limiting the time worked by each laborer is to increase the market value of his services just as surely as the arbitrary limit put on the production of coal or iron or cotton goods keeps up the prices. Only by a united general movement, including the great bulk of the laboring-classes, can the shortening of the hours of toil be effected. Once secured, the now superfluous labor- ers, instead of being a standing menace to employed workmen, would become allies and not competitors. Organized laborers, as a whole, would secure a degree of control over the distribu- tion of the products of industry such as it could obtain in no other way under the wages system. And, after all, the question between present conditions and the socialism of the future is simply one of degree. Labor, in fixing its own remu- neration, virtually fixes the share of capitalism in the joint product. By advancing step by step from partial to full con- trol, and by such measures as shorter hours and arbitration on the basis of a recognition of labor's right to a specified share in the proceeds, the point will at length be reached where the " share" of capitalism can be minimized to the amount fairly due for labor of superintendence. The socialization of capital will then be an accomplished fact. It is often assumed that the powerful agricultural interest is solidly arrayed against Labor Reform, that the " territo- rial democracy " will to a man oppose the nationalization of the land, which underlies all other and less important though perhaps more immediately attainable phases of social re- adjustment. Those who criticise the Labor Reform move- ment on this ground are right in calling attention to a point which has been too frequently overlooked, namely, that the most important industry is that of agriculture, and that any popular movement, to be successful, must enlist the sympathy and co-operation of the tillers of the soil. But they are wrong in supposing that the true interests of the urban laborers and those of the farmers are so far apart that they cannot in the future act together. Far from being a crushing argument THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 191 against the possibility of a succesful political agitation, the large representation and powerful influence of the farming community in politics is one of the strongest grounds for hope. The great majority of farmers are in every sense of the word working-men, arid as such have every reason to sym- pathize with the wage-earner of the cities rather than with the capitalist class. They are subject to many of the same grievances which press so hardly upon city labor. All the forms of monopoly combine to tax the farmer's industry just as they do that of the citizen, and some of them bear down far harder on htm than on any other class. Railroad monopoly in par- ticular is the means of robbing the agricultural producer of a very large portion of his earnings. It was among the farmers that the first strong feeling of hostility to the power of the great railroad lines to levy taxes at will upon industry was developed. The question of the control or ownership of railroads by the people is one which affects the farmers in a more vital degree than it does the city working-man. The money monopoly is another matter in which farmers and other workingmen have mutual interests opposed to those of the capitalists, usurers, and speculators. When by basing money upon gold the supply is kept artificially scarce and dear, who suffers more than the farmer ? The scarcity of money and the exorbitantly high rate of interest have brought absolute ruin to many a once prosperous farmer, and reduced many others to hopeless bondage to the mortgage-holder. When times are dull owing to the scarcity of money, the farmer is unable to sell his wheat or his cattle at a fair price. He must live and pay running expenses, and is obliged to resort to the usurer. Who should be more anxious to bring aboftt the establishment of a national currency, adequate in volume to the demands of trade, which the dealers in money could not contract and expand at will, than the farmer? There is no doubt a measure of force in the argument that rural landowners will not be favorably disposed towards the proposal to lay the whole burden of taxation upon the soil. 192 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. Let us give all due weight to it. But, on any possible calcu- lation, the number of the agricultural class who would be bene- fited by the continuance of private land-ownership is far more than off-set by the number who would be advantaged by its abolition. Those who advance this argument have in mind the conditions which prevailed a quarter of a century ago rather than those which now obtain. According to the last United States census the total number of persons engaged in farming was 7,670,493, of whom only 2,984,306 were even nominal owners of their farms. Of the latter a very large proportion are heavily mortgaged. The "territorial democ- racy" is a misleading phrase a tradition, and nothing more. The available arable land still ungranted is on the verge of becoming exhausted. The number of tenant-farmers, and the landless class in the country is increasing, and immense areas have fallen into the possession of railroad corporations, land companies, and individual speculators, who hold it at a high price. On this point Thomas P. Gill says in an article on " Landlordism in America," which appeared in the JVbrth American JKeview for January 1886 : When there are no more far-distant patches of government land to be had by the hardy settler, he will have none but this high-priced land to choose from. How is he to possess himself of it ? He simply cannot possess himself of it. Never again will such a man have the opportunity of winning by his toil and his courage a free home for himself in the United States. The land will become the privilege of capital, and the hardy settler will have no alternative but to rent a farm and work it as a tenant, with no hope of coining nearer to being its owner after a life- time of labor than he was the first day he broke its verdure with th& plow. Thus, from the day now officially declared to be at hand that the public domain is quite exhausted, the manufacture of a tenant- anning class will go on in the United States at an enormous rate. * * * It is a fact that there cannot be a moment's doubt about the tendency to landlordism in the United States is inevitable and immense." It is not only the actual farmers of to-day we have to con- sider, it is the whole agricultural class ; those born and brought up in the country, or coming in from abroad, who desire or expect to farm on their own accountpfe the near future, far THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 193 from being a bugbear and an obstacle to the alliance between the agriculturist and the city wage-worker, the land nation- alization doctrine will prove the very strongest incentive to the large majority of the rural residents co-operating with organized labor for the overthrow of landlordism. It is man- ifestly and clearly in the interests of the small farmer who wants more land, of the tenant farmer, of the farmer's son, and of the farm laborer that they should have the opportunity to obtain access to the land locked up for speculative pur- poses, by the imposition of a heavy tax on land values, so as to make it unprofitable for any one to hold land which he does not cultivate. Before long, urban labor, now fighting the battle alone, will find an invaluable and invincible ally in the \~great bulk of the farming class, whose interests as producers outweigh their interests as landowners^ CHAPTER IX. THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED. God never scooped the Mississippi valley to be the grave of freedom, nor poured Niagara for its requiem. Wendell Phillips LABOR, in working out its own emancipation, will regenerate the world. In solving the labor problem, the other vexed questions which have so long pressed for solution will be set- tled. All the various forms of social and moral evil which afflict humanity are traceable to caste-rule and the spoliation of the laboring class. War, intemperance, prostitution, and crime are due either to the greed begotten of capitalism, the selfishness, arrogance, and luxury of the moneyed and influ- ential class, or the abject necessity, ignorance, and debasement of the disinherited. With social and political equality estab- lished, and every man and woman secured in the enjoyment of the full earnings of their labor, the motives which prompt and the conditions which foster these evils would largely cease. - 194 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. Labor Reform underlies all other reforms. To imagine that drunkenness and vice and law-breaking can be cured while a large part of the population are plunged into hopeless degra- dation by the working of the capitalistic system is the veriest social quackery. Temperance reformers tell us that drunk- enness is the great cause of poverty. The two are closely connected, but it is far oftener poverty that is the cause of drunkenness. Mental and physical exhaustion, consequent upon long hours of labor in a vitiated atmosphere, naturally drive men to seek relief in stimulants. Unhealthy domestic conditions, the filth and squalor of crowded tenement houses and reeking alleys, the evil examples and contaminating associations forced upon the decent poor who find refuge in such quarters, combined with the hopelessness of their lot, and the feeling that struggle and strive as they may, it is impossible to better themselves, make social wrecks and out- casts of numbers who under more favorable conditions might have lived and died useful and respected citizens. The tem- perance reformers, well-intentioned, but superficial and pos- sessed with one idea, wholly overlook these deep-seated causes of intemperance. Full-fed, handsomely paid, and well- conditioned orators of the Gough and Murphy type may draw crowds by their eloquence, and exhaust the powers of oratori- cal persuasion to reform the drunkard, but the few who can be reached by such methods are but a drop in the bucket compared with the number who are yearly sinking into the abyss. It is the conditions of labor and living in the great cities that make drunkards and prostitutes. The terrible picture of the evils of the lot of New York working-women presented in the report of the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics for 1885, is more eloquent in its practical matter-of- fact treatment of the subject than the most highly-wrought denunciations of the social crime which dooms them to sla- very or shame. Moralists and preachers combat the " social evil " just as they do intemperance, by missions and exhorta- tions ; and respectable society thinks that it does its whole duty by subscribing liberally to evangelize the slums and THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 195 establish Magdalen asylums and homes for the fallen. And oftentimes those who give most liberally and lament most sanctimoniously the increase of vice, are the grinding and conscienceless employers whose exactions have made the lives of the seamstresses and shop-girls in their employ miserable, and driven them to barter their honor for bread. It is true that the criminals and outcasts do not all come from the needy and dependent class. Professional criminals often graduate from comfortable homes, and the perpetrators of great financial crimes and breaches of trust, which have latterly been alarmingly frequent, are necessarily men of in- fluential positions and good education. But, nevertheless, the prevalence of crimes against property among the class who have special advantages and opportunities is no less the direct outcome of the capitalistic system than the vices of the degraded poor. /They are traceable to the wrong ideals of life and worldly success which are held up before the young from their very cradles. The whole tendency of modern education not merely in the restricted sense of book-learning, but in the broader significance which includes every influence which shapes men's thoughts and contributes to their intellectual and moral development is to make rascals. The teachings of the fireside and the school, the newspaper and the platform, by inference if not by precept, encourage the spirit of acquisi- tiveness. The boy from his earliest years is exhorted to " be somebody" to aspire to " rise in the world." The examples of men who have become wealthy after the customary fashion, by business shrewdness or the acquisition of some profitable monopoly, are continually quoted. Even in the church and the Sunday-school religious precepts are intermingled with worldly-wise counsel. A spurious Christianity inculcates the gospel of greed and grab. Wealth is everywhere honored without reference to the sources of its acquisition so long as its owners can keep clear of the law, while honest poverty is despised. Social position, political honors, public estimation are all dependent on the possession of money or of talents 19G THE POLITICS OF LABOR. which the owner is willing to devote to the service of capi- talism. Now, under existing conditions, this striving and straining after wealth is perfectly natural. It is wasting breath to re- iterate the customary moral and religious truisms, which every one accepts but nobody acts upon, with regard to the vanity of earthly possessions, and the folly of those who make haste to be rich, so long as riches are not merely the passport to every means of distinction and honor, but the only security against the abyss of wretchedness and degradation into which those without other resources than their labor often fall. It would be as effective to preach moderation and altruism to a crowd upon a vessel in danger of sinking, rushing for the boats and fighting for the possession of life-preservers. The intensity of the strife has been vastly increased by popular education, which, by making the masses more intelligent, has made them more capable of looking ahead and anticipating the evils of poverty. The wholly uneducated man seldom concerns himself much about the future ; but even a mod- erate degree of education, with the increased capacities for observation and reflection which it brings, induces the habit of anticipation. This fear of abject poverty is far from being wholly selfish. It is interwoven with, and derives its strength from, the warmest affections and most powerful emo- tions of our nature. Many a man who would face unmoved the prospect of an old age of penury and dependence, is daily tortured by anxiety at the thought of the terrible fate which might befall his family should he be suddenly removed by death, or overtaken by sickness or misfortune, rendering him unable to provide for them. In this world of paradoxes and contradictions men's best and worst motives are often inextricably mixed. Could we trace the secret incen- tives of the actions of many who are apparently hard and selfish, and destitute of kindly sympathies in their relations with their fellows, it would often be found that the over-mas, tering motive of their lives was to secure wife and children an assured position which should place them above the fear of THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 197 poverty. It is the possibility of beggary and wretchedness overtaking those near and dear to them which is the great \ stimulus to money-getting in the case of very many who would not be influenced by love of ease, pleasure, or social distinc- tion, or any of the varied enjoyments and opportunities which j riches bring in their train. What a world of terrible significance there is in the common phrase that a married man has " given hostages to fortune ! '' Poor Burns realized it to the full when he penned his half- humorous, wholly pathetic apology for accepting the beggarly pittance of an exciseman's position : " These movin' things ca'd wives an' weans Wad move the very hearts of stanes." To know that failure in the battle of life brings privation and suffering untold to those of your own flesh and blood, to picture their fate should bereavement cut them off from their sole dependence, to follow them in imagination to the abodes of poverty in the crowded tenement, or up the stifling alley exposed to the most revolting daily associations ; to fancy them pleading for the bitter bread of charity, or seeking with unaccustomed fingers to perform the ill-paid drudgery which alone offers the means of existence to the untrained worker ; to see them subjected to the slights of fair-weather friends, and the insults and sneers which poverty that has " seen bet- ter days " has always to encounter, struggling to maintain their respectability while beset with temptations and sur- rounded by evil examples this is the haunting dread which steels the heart and stifles the conscience of many a husband and father in his dealings with the world. Is it any wonder that, with such a peril ever present to the minds of those who exercise ordinary reflection or are capable of a thought beyond the immediate requirements of the passing day, men who have others dependent on their exertions will strain every nerve to acquire a competency, and that the temptation to do so by illicit methods, such as the " borrowing" of trust funds, or even engaging in crooked speculations, appears to them in the light of a providential opportunity. 198 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. The current bourgeois morality is the fruitful parent of financial crime. When those who have made enormous for- tunes by stock-watering or cornering grain, by the tricks of the exchange or the purchase from venal legislators of im- mensely valuable public franchises, by land-grabbing or usury, are not treated as criminals, but honored as enterprising citi- zens, the natural effect is to confuse the moral sense, and to blur the distinction between right and wrong in business mat- ters, otherwise than as it may be preserved by the often un- certain and always erratic and arbitrary line of legality. The volume of unpunishable financial crime is much larger than that of the recognized offenses against law conceived and exe- cuted in the same spirit. The changes in the social system, and the tone of public opinion which would either do away with the possibility or remove the main incentives for the one would be equally effective as against the other. It has been said that "you cannot make men moral by act of Parliament." The phrase has become hackneyed in the mouths of cynics and pessimists, but it embodies at least a half truth which no evolutionist will deny. In a politically, self-governed community, all law, to be effective, must be the outcome and embodiment of a public opinion strong enough to enforce it. It must be the expression ^of the will, not of a mere temporary accidental majority^ut of the deep- seated and matured conviction of the mass. \ In the present state of public opinion no law, however definite and drastic, however carefully drawn and hedged about with elaborate provisions for its enforcement, could establish a system of social equality and full industrial rights. The people are not prepared for it. What is first needed is a change of their habits of thought, a gradual breaking with bourgeois tra- ditions, and the adoption of the grander, nobler ideal of a social condition in which " all men's good shall be each man's rule," in which poverty and wealth shall be alike unknown, and co-operation shall imply equity of distribution instead of merely associated effort. The vexed questions as to the pre- cise relations of the workers to the state, of the greater or less THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 199 degree of supervision or control to be exercised by the central authority, and the details of the mechanism of exchange and distribution, may very well be left to solve themselves ac- cording to the law of evolution. The present and pressing work is to so direct the current of men's thoughts as to render possible the beginnings of the vast and complicated social changes which are needed for the regeneration of society/ That the change is possible who that has witnesses the overthrow of the slave power and is a spectator of the social revolution now in progress in Britain and Ireland can doubt? in the eyes of some the written constitution of the United States presents an insuperable obstacle. But there are two or three facts in the constitutional history of the country which are significant of tremendous possibilities. No paper con- stitution, however carefully guarded against innovation, can permanently shape the institutions of a people or prevent their being moulded according to the national genius and requirements. The framers of the constitution, in their anxiety to avoid giving the people too large a share of power, provided for the election of the president, not by the voters directly, but by electors chosen by the people of each state specially for that purpose. These electors at first exercised an independent freedom of choice, but at a very early stage in the progress of political evolution the people demanded the right of electing the president, and practically nullified the provision entrust- ing that duty to the electors by pledging them in advance to vote for a particular candidate. Outside of and supplement- ary to the written constitution grew up the national party convention system, under which bodies entirely unknown to the organic law, assumed the function of selecting the men between whose claims the people on election day decide. An elaborate and highly organized political mechanism has thus been developed which engrosses the real power, while the recognized constitutional officials only exercise a shadowy ministerial duty. Again, the written constitution makes no provision against 200 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. the re-election of a president for any number of successive terms. Here again the unwritten law of precedent and usage supplements the positive enactment. The feeling against a third term in thtncase of Gen. Grant, as a menace to political freedom and an insidious and perilous innovation upon established custom, could hardly have been stronger had the proposition involved a direct violation of the docu- mentary law. Note another phase of this curious accretion of usage having all the binding effect of law which has spontaneously grown up around and become incorporated with the consti- tutional system of the United States. Though, since the transfer of the real electing power from the electoral college to the people, several thousand electors have be-en entrusted with the duty of casting the formal vote for president with no other guarantee than a pledge of honor that the views of their constituents would be carried out, in no single instance has that pledge been violated. Even in periods of abound- ing political corruption, when the honor of politicians had become a by-word, when other obligations to constituents or to the country were set at naught, men of the very same class as were trafficking in their political influence for their own pecuniary benefit in other capacities have always re- ligiously observed the trust reposed in them in the matter of recording the vote of those who elected them, for presi- dential candidates. Even in the notable contest of '76, between Hayes and Tilden, when a single vote would have turned the scale, and millions of money would have been gladly paid for it, no elector showed a disposition to betray his trust. Now, supposing that the growth of Labor Reform senti- ment during the next few years should so change the current of men's ideas that a vital alteration in the relations of cap- italism to labor and the abrogation of the various forms of monopoly seemed as urgent as did the securing of power to elect the president, and the ascendancy which wealth has obtained in public affairs appeared as perilous as a presiden- THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 201 tial third term ; supposing, in short, that the industrial situa- tion assumed the foremost place and party politics became a secondary consideration, would not the same determination to assert the national will irrespective of formulas and artificial restrictions, which has modified the constitution without formal enactment, result in the development of a supplementary or extra-constitutional system ? Just what shape it would take it is useless to speculate upon. It might be a development of the labor bureau system or an outcome of the proposed boards of arbitration. It might be unconnected in any degree with the present administrative system, the product of organization among the toilers gradually taking on little by little the real governmental power, and leaving but the semblance and shadow of authority in the hands of the existing government. Why is it that a politician chosen as presidential elector keeps his pledge inviolate, while the same man elected to Congress or the Senate trades his vote to a monopoly, or becomes a member of a ring for the purpose of enriching himself at the people's expense ? Simply because he knows that in the former case the condemnation of public opinion, which would follow the exercise of his undoubted constitutional right of absolute freedom of choice, would be so complete and crush- ing that it would utterly destroy him, while ordinary acts of corruption are frequently condoned. The most profligate of politicians would not dare to sell out his party in the matter of electing a president, however huge the bribe that might be offered him. If public opinion were as vigilant, as unanimous, as unmistakably ready to visit swift and sure retribution up- on the betrayer of labor's rights, whether he acted within strict constitutional and legal limits or not, as it is in regard to the violation of the presidential electors' pledge, how the entire political situation, in its relations to the industrial system, would be transformed ! No, you cannot make men moral by act of Parliament, nor even of Congress ; neither can you by paper constitutions pre- vent the national genius and the popular sense of right from THE POLITICS OF LABOR. moulding institutions and finding expression in precedent and usage which modify or supersede the written law. But though the power of law, when confronted by a hostile or indifferent public opinion, may have been over-estimated by some classes of reformers, it is well not to run into the opposite extreme of undervaluing it. Law and public opinion act and react on each other. Every legal enactment in support of a great so- cial reform, even though it merely proves the high -water-mark of a temporary wave of enthusiasm, gives an impetus to the cause. A recoil may take place, but the triumph once achiev- ed is a stimulus to further exertion, and an inducement to perseverance until the end crowns the work. It may fail of the immediate object sought, but it helps in no small degree to educate and ripen public sentiment, even though it may n'; represent it. [t is precisely this educational influence of legislation which is needed at the present stage of the Labor Reform movement, j Any measures now attainable are valuable rather as vantage ground in the contest which must be fought out, inch by inch, for the overthrow of capitalism, as new points of departure, as concessions of the principle for which we are contending, to be one day extended and amplified into the basis for a new social order, rather than for any immediate beneficial result to be expected. To change the direction of the current is the all-important thing, trusting to the future to give it volume and impetus. The times are ripe for change. Old things are passing away. The prejudices and dissensions which have long kept apart those who should be united are dying out. Party, and sectarian, and national differences, which have alienated the working classes from each other, are losing their force. The grand idea of the solidarity of labor is dawning upon the minds of the mass. Their thoughts are quickened by the closeness of contact and thoroughness of industrial organi- zation, necessitated by the modern system of industry and commerce. Ideas spread literally with lightning rapidity. Wherever, throughout the broad world, an advance is made THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 203 by the workers in the struggle for their rights, their brethren elsewhere catch the impulse and are stirred by the inspiration of victory. The Labor Reform movement in America owes much to the Irish Home Rule agitation. Whatever of moral support and material aid the Irish and their friends in Amer- ica have contributed to the struggling peasantry in Ireland, has been more than repaid by the influence which that agitation has had on the cause at home. The watchword of " the land for the people " has been caught up and re-echoed on this side of the Atlantic, giving the movement the scope and comprehensiveness which it formerly lacked. In our turn we shall repeat history by making American social freedom the exemplar for the Old World nations, just as, in the early days of the Republic, its newly acquired political liberty was the beacon-light of the nations that sat in darkness. Hitherto, the appeals of Labor Reformers have been main- ly addressed to the intelligent self-interest of the working- classes. They have been exhorted to forego the opportunities of temporary personal advantage, which the competitive sys- tem offers to those of superior abilities, for the sake of securing the general good. Trade-unionism, in its cruder forms, sub- stituted a class selfishness for the personal selfishness, which is the animating motive under unrestricted competition. Each trade sought to promote its own interests merely. In its later developments, the circle of sympathy and co-operative effort has gradually broadened, as the great truth of the common in- terest of all workers has become better appreciated. There is much progress still to make in this direction. Many of the selfish, debasing teachings of political economy must be un- learned. In tracing the moral and social development of man we note one unvarying rule that, in proportion as men become enlightened, they realize that the well-being of the individual depends upon the well-being of the mass. In a condition of savagery or semi-barbarism, life and prop- erty are not secure. Existence is a round of perpetual watchfulness. Every man needs to be continually on the alert and ready to defend himself. Tribal wars, individual 204 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. blood-feuds, raids, massacres, and ambuscades are the custom ary incidents of life. To be a stranger is to be an enemy. The continual sense of danger and the dread of being surprised and taken at a disadvantage developed a keenness of observation, a sharpness of sight and hearing, and a fertility of resource unknown in civilized existence. As nations have gradually emerged from barbarism, violence has been repressed ; acts of open physical aggression upon the weak and helpless are no longer tolerated. Quarrels are settled by courts and laws, in- stead of by the sword. The place of a nation in the scale of civilization is judged mainly by the extent to which its laws and institutions afford protection to life and property, and provide a legal remedy for every acknowledged form of wrong. If a murder or a robbery is committed, the whole community is anxious for the apprehension and punishment of the criminal, even if the victim be a stranger, without friends or influence. Why? Because every intelligent man knows that in this sphere, at least, "an injury to one is the concern of all," that prompt- itude and certainty in the prevention or punishment of crime committed against others are the best guarantee for his own safety. Every one feels that laxity in the enforcement of law menaces his personal interest. In a highly civilized society, feelings of humanity and pity may enter largely into the zeal shown in bringing the perpetrators of crime to justice, but the prevailing motive is an enlightened self-interest. Supposing the attempt were made to impress a marauding savage chieftain with the advantages of civilized laws against robbery and murder. His apparent self-interest would at once be enlisted against the innovation. " I am stronger and braver, and have more followers than my neighbors. I should be a fool not to take their cattle and gold-dust when I can, and kill them if they resist. Laws against robbery and murder would be a good thing for the weak and cowardly ; not for me." This would be the train of reasoning that would naturally suggest itself to the savage mind. THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 205 But, apart from morality altogether, no citizen of a civilized state, except the few utterly reckless and desperate, would deliberately wish to see all law abrogated and the right of the strongest established. The vast majority realize that if life and property were dependent upon the ability of the in- dividual to defend them, no amount of personal superiority, in point of strength or activity, could ever give that degree of security that the law does., and that the privilege of com- mitting aggressions at will upon their weaker neighbors would be no compensation for the continual apprehension and peril of a condition of social anarchy,. It would need no argument to convince them of the waste and loss and general ruin which would follow such a reversion to barbarism. Now, just as in those matters now within the purview of Government, this intelligent, far-sighted selfishness which underlies our present civilization has taken the place of the narrow, purblind selfishness of the savage which looks only at the immediate gratification of his animal propensities, so, in the industrial sphere, the idea of social co-operation will super- sede competition. The imagined personal interests of many are enlisted on the side of the existing system. Tried by the standard of a higher enlightenment than is now general, they will be seen to be as thoroughly deceptive as the advantages of a social state in which might makes right. The advantage is real and tangible enough as compared with the position of the weaker, but that is all. As contrasted with the security and prosperity which all might enjoy if the social struggle in which every man's hand is against his neighbor were to give place to harmonious universal effort for the common good, they are delusive and unreal. To how many thousands who have strained every nerve to become wealthy have riches proved a source of care and anxiety ! How many who have plunged into the whirl of stock-gambling, or devoted themselves body and soul to mer- cantile speculations, have been driven to madness and suicide by the constant strain and worry, the alternations between hope an4 despair, the brooding over losses, the fierce, feverish 206 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. excitement of the game ! The brilliant financial successes envied by the world are frequently purchased at the price of shattered nerves, wrecked constitutions, and premature old age and decrepitude. When gained, a fortune can only be kept by ceaseless vigilance, and is often only a burden or a Nemesis to its possessor. The bankruptcy records show what an enormously large proportion of those who have money at their command yearly succumb to the stress of competition. All great cities are full of social wrecks and failures men who began life with ample resources and brilliant prospects, but whose fate illustrates the familiar commonplaces of the moralist as to the uncertainty of riches and the ups and downs of life. This phase of the subject is customarily presented as a sort of offset to the admitted evils of poverty and an inducement to the poor to be content with their lot. As well might the miserable lives and deaths of tyrants be quoted as a reason why the subjects of the Czar of Russia ought to be satisfied with the system which puts their lives and liberties at the mercy of a capricious despot. That slaveholders live in a continual fear of a servile insurrection, and frequently come to poverty owing to the idleness and un thrift begotten of the system, does not make it any more tolerable for the bondsman, though it does illustrate the workings of the principle of eternal justice. All oppression and injustice inevitably react upon the class which upholds them for their own apparent benefit. Instead of the anxieties and misfortunes attendant upon wealth or the pursuit of wealth being regarded as a compensation for the ills of poverty and a justification of existing inequalities, they afford an additional reason for working for the overthrow of social arrangements under which even the class who think they are benefited by conr petition are really the losers by it. The poet Moore, in his series of trenchant political satires entitled "Fables for the Holy Alliance," tells, for the benefit of the despots of Europe, the story of a supposed attempt made by the Mahometan conqueror of Persia to suppress the THE POLITICS OF LABOR. 207 religion of theGhebevs by extinguishing the sacred fire which was the object of their worship. After other means had failed it was proposed to keep the flames in check by the application of extinguishers, but in the end the extinguishers themselves, being made of combustible material, were ignited, and the flames blazed out more fiercely than ever. The appli- cation to the state of European affairs and the cherished methods of repression by standing armies, penal statutes, and the whole machinery of Imperialism, is obvious. For even soldiers sometimes think; Nay, colonels have been heard to reason; And reasoners, whether clad in pink, Or red, or blue, are on the brink (Nine cases out of ten) of treason. The fable and its moral are equally applicable to the in- dustrial situation to day. The " colonels" of the garrison of capitalism, leaders of those intellectual forces which have hitherto been depended upon to maintain the existing social order against attack, are beginning to reason ; and in some quarters the extinguishers of the press and the platform the church and the college are taking fire. Generous and unsel- fish spirits like William Morris and H. M. Hyndman, of England, have thrown off the traditions of social caste, and shaken themselves free from the entanglements of self-interest to make the people's cause their own. Labor Reform is not a class question. It appeals to the sympathies and the judg- ment of every reflecting man who has the welfare of humanity at heart, and apprehends that even-handed justice will surely in the end average every form of social and national wrong- doing. It is the cause of every man who believes in popular liberties and the permanency of Democratic institutions, now menaced by the growth of an oligarchy, of wealth, and weak- ened by the insidious and corrupting influence of capitalism. Our politics, literature, and society need the regenerating influence of a great cause. The decline of oratory and poetry and art, the Dearth of anything like real leadership in public 208 THE POLITICS OF LABOR. affairs, the absence of sincerity, simplicity, and manliness, and the prevalence of cynicism arid snobbery in the social life of the wealthy and educated class show the need of an up- heaval, which will purify and ennoble the national life by the generous impulses and loftier ideals of the conflict. The world of society and culture is full of men and women, originally of good purposes and high motives, who have lost faith in themselves and in humanity. On entering life they had set their hearts on a " career." They resolved to achieve something beyond mere money-making. They had ideas above social frivolities and fooleries. It was the dream of their youth to make a name for themselves in literature or art, to become the advocates of some great reform, to do their share in the work of popular enlightenment, to rouse and thrill the apathetic masses by their powerful appeals in speech or writing. They liave failed, and disappointment has made them sour and morbid. They have quickly discovered on entering their chosen path that the way to real accomplishment was rough and steep, the reward scant and uncertain ; and under the pressure, perhaps of necessity, perhaps of the influence of a sordid atmosphere, they have gradually sunk to the level of their surroundings.^ The high aims with which they set out have been forgotten in the struggle for temporary success and social position. The orator who was to have stirred the people by his fearless and forcible presentation of great truths has become the political hack or the quibbling lawyer. The would-be poet or philosopher is a journalist whose pen is at the service of the highest bidder. The aspiring young woman who hoped to do for the oppressed of her own sex what Harriet Beecher Stowe did for the negro has become the leader of a " society " clique. The ardent youths who, when at college, hoped to play leading parts on the stage of life, have developed into club-loungers and dilettanti, eaten up with ennui and discontent, railing at the barrenness and sordidness of the age, and the lack of opportunities for noble and heroic effort. The fashionable culture which gives polish of expres- sion and keen appreciation of literary form, which develops THE POLITICS OF LA&Oft. 209. the tastes and susceptibilities to a refinement bordering upon effeminacy, which- looks backward to past or passing systems of thought, instead of forward to the future for its inspirations, finds vent in such lackadaisical whimpering over its vanished ideals as Matthew Arnold's lamentation. Ah, if it be past take away At least the restlessness, the pain. Be man henceforth no more a prey To these out-dated stings again I The nobleness of grief is gone. Ah, leave us not the fret alone! # # # * # # # Achilles ponders in his tent; The kings of modern thought are dumb; Silent they are though not content, And wait to see the future come. They have the grief men had of yore, But they contend and cry no more . Just think of it ! In this last quarter of the nineteenth century, when the world is convulsed with the most far-reach- ing and momentous question in all history the right of the people to the means of life; when popular education and en- franchisement have stirred the masses with a new impulse, and men on all sides are questioning the justice of the system that makes a fraction of society wealthy, while the great majori- ty are doomed to hopeless poverty ; when the ruling forces are confronted with a growing demand for a readjustment of the laws which foster this inequality ; when, if ever, all that is unselfish and thoughtful and heroic and high-minded has the grandest of opportunities for noble and enduring work for humanity, the so-called cultured and intellectual class are bemoaning the emptiness and hollowness of modern life, and remain sunk in ignominious apathy. Could anything show more forcibly how the selfishness of capitalism has eaten out the very heart of modern scholarship and refinement, and stifled the natural promptings of duty and sympathy which should rally them with generous enthusiasm to the side of the struggling poor? j^ 210 TJ1E POLITICS Of 9 LABOR. The stone which the builders rejected, the same shall become the head of the corner. The influence which shall breathe the breath of life into the dry bones of literature and scholar- ship must come from below ; from the, as yet, largely inartic- ulate aspirations, hopes, and strivings of the people after fuller andjuster conditions, an ampler life, a more sympathetic, fra- ternal, and comprehensive interpretation of democracy. Here and now is the heroic age ! The social atmosphere is surcharged with the electricity of the coming storm. In the issue now presented all for which the pioneers of freedom have fought and its martyrs suffered, converges and culminates. Last and crowning stage of the battle for human rights, what nobler, grander purpose could animate the lover of his kind ? what loftier impulse could stir the heart, inspire the brain, nerve the hand, or touch, as with a live coal from the altar of liberty, the lips, than the resolve to do and dare in such a cause ? Young man ! entering on the world's stage of action, full of high hopes and generous aspirations, and bent upon a career of usefulness which will enable you in dying to leave the world better and brighter for your having lived in it, can you withhold your aid from this movement ? You have, no doubt, often felt your heart thrilled with emotion on reading of the trials and triumphs of the patriots and reformers of bygone times. You in imagination have inarched shoeless and rag- ged and half-starved through the snows of Valley Forge with the patriot army of the Revolution ; you have faced the British bayonets at Bunker Hill, and shared in the triumph at Yorktown. You have listened spell-bound to the eloquence of Patrick Henry, and stood in. spirit among the signers of the Declaration of Independence. You have died on the scaffold with John Brown, and confronted with Lloyd Garri- son the clamors and menaces of angry mobs, that the slave might be free. You have sprung to arms at the call of Abra- ham Lincoln, rolled back the" tide of rebel victory at Gettys- burg, marched with Sherman to the sea, and weltered amid the carnage of the Wilderness. " Ah, had I lived in such POLITICS OF LABOR* 211 times/' you have said to yourself, "I too would have been ready to strive, to suffer, to die for freedom. Then, indeed, the intensity of purpose, the joy of conflict and accomplish- ment, the grand scope of the aims to be achieved would have made life worth living, death worth dying." Look around you. Seek not inspiration from the past, save as far as its traditions and examples may serve to nurture the firmness of moral fiber, the quenchless ardor and en- thusiasm for freedom by which alone the progress of human- ity is attained. If in the wrongs and shames of the living, struggling world to-day you find nothing to rouse you to action, if the appeals of the poor and the disinherited for justice strike no responsive chord in your heart, if any coarse- ness or crudeness, ignorance or perversity on their part repels you, if the supposed requirements of your position, the desire to stand well with " society " or the dread of conven- tional opinion holds you aloof, then rest assured that in no age and under no circumstances would you have risked means, or life or limb in the cause of the weak against the oppressor. He who does not instinctively take the part of the railroad striker in Chicago, the miner in Pennsylvania, the starving New York seamstress and the rack-rented Connaught peasant, without stopping to inquire whether every means by which redress has been sought has been invariably pru- dent or justifiable, would have been a time-server and a recreant at any critical stage of the eternal battle of right against might. Confused issues and wrong-headed methods, the treachery of professed friends and the plausibility of defenses for exist- ing evils, when and where have these been wanting in con- nection with any great reform movement ? What noble cause has not been again and again wounded in the house of its friends, misrepresented by its enemies, outlawed by the respectability and learning and social aristocracy of the land ? What worker for the elevation of mankind, however buoyed up to tireless effort by an unshaken trust in the final triumph of right, but must at times feel the reaction of despondency 212 THE POLITICS OF L and be disposed to ask " What good ? " The old, old prob- lem of life, the sphinx-enigma, with destruction as the penalty of failure to answer it aright ! Let the profounder insight and firmer faith of the one American poet through whom the fullest and highest meaning of Democracy has found utterance give it solution : O me ! O life of the questions of these recurring, Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities filled with the foolish, Of myself forever reproach ing myself (for who more foolish than I and who more faithless ?) , Of eyes that vainly crave the light of the objects mean of the strug- gle ever renewed ; Of the poor results of all of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me, Of the empty and useless years of the rest with the rest me inter- twined ; The question, O me ! so sad recurring What good amid these, O me, O life? ANSWER. That you are here that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on and you will contribute a verse. THE UNIVERSITY THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY WILL INCREASE TO SO CENTS ON THE FOURTH DAY AND TO $1.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY OVERDUE. **w 2 / md fM\ ^ tl (N) :' K;?*sr Si ^ X J?>. 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