, m i- e/> o 2 HD 65-11 BANCROFT LIBRARY o THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Living or Dead Labor Unions BY Caroline Nelson Published by THE LABOR UNION EDUCATIONAL LEAGUE KANSAS CITY, MO. BOX 684 Living or Dead Labor Unions BY CAROLINE NELSON This pamphlet is the outgrowth of "Aggressive Unionism", which was sold out, in the Pacific Coast unions, in a short time, by Carl Rave, who gave the Author of this, many valuable suggestions. PUBLISHED BY THE LABOR UNION EDUCATIONAL LEAGUE Kansas City, Mo. - - Box 684 CONTENTS PAGE War and the Working Class 3 The Evolution of the Labor Movement 5 Revolution and Reform 8 Industrial Unionism 12 Local Autonomy 15 The Militant Minority 18 The General Strike 20 The Unemployed Army 25 The Neo-Malthusion Movement 27 The Neo-Malthusian Movement 27 Education 30 Co-Operatives 31 96 WAR AND THE WORKING CLASS Every day in every country there is an army of men, women and children rushing forth to do battle with all their strength of their bodies and minds in the mines, mills and shops. They shiver in their thin clothing in the cold winter mornings. They hug their pieces of bread with perhaps a slice of pie and bottle of cold coffee for their lunch. They hitch themselves to their machines and tools that callous their hands and callous their minds to the thundering, roarings of the machinery. But they cannot callous their lungs and blood to poison- ous fumes, to stifling air, to bad food and to little rest. These things eat away their vitality and make them old long before their time. This army of workers struggle now here and now there to better their conditions.- In that struggle they have to take their lives into their hands, for they are clubbed by the police, shot down by the soldiers, out- lawed by the courts, and while they work they are often maimed and crippled. This is the working class war fought with empty hands for the principle of life. Now and then they gain, now and then they are beaten. But forever this army struggles onward throughout the ages, every time it has been beaten it rises again and yet again. War cannot end until this army is victorious ; for it cannot and will not make peace with slavery and injustice. In the working class war all property and the lives of their enemies are held to be sacred. If they destroy any lives, machinery, buildings, they are called mur- derers, hoodlums, social vipers, etc. But the moment the privileged classes war, both prop- erty and life cease to be sacred. Here the same deeds on a much larger scale become glorious and heroic. When the workers kill and destroy in the interest of the ruling classes they are patriots, courageous and brave. What kind of ethics are these? They are ruling class ethics. They are nothing but shams and hypocrisy. 4 LIVING OR DEAD Did the working class in Europe want to go to war in the interest of their ruling classes, who like thieves fight over their ill-gotten privileges? No. The German workers had no grievance against the Belgian, the French or English. But they were told that the barbaric Russians stood at the border-line, ready to gobble up their fatherland and to sweep away what freedom they had. They became eager to go "soldiering." They marched on the Belgians and the French. The Belgians and the French workers were in turn carried away by similar claims, this includes the English. The English workers were really the only workers who had the liberty to refuse to go to war, as they are not conscripts. But the English women were used to shame the men into going to war. To arouse the noblest of human passions and emotions by the lowest trickery to get what they want, is the game of the ruling classes. Anyhow, the workers' internationalism was only formed in the abstract. There was practically no organ- ization formed to prevent war. Such an organization can only come into being when the workers realize that they must be in a position to declare a general strike to avoid it. In the meantime war has been carried right into the homes of the rich, by the airships. This placing the rich ladies and gentlemen in constant danger of governmental bombs from the air is too cruel. Nice ladies who used to worship the gold-braided officer and his profession have suddenly become aware of the brutality of war. This may lead to the establishment of an international police force, in the name of peace, and the abolishing of the national armies. In other words, the world's ruling classes will unite against the world's working class, under the protection of a cossack clan. This will make the working class' battle clear, and sweep the field clear for the struggle of the real issue the abolition of a privileged economic class with its gunmen, its false ethics, and its social hypocrisy that lays claim to a natural and moral superiority. The workers may not be in a mood to LABOR UNIONS 5 be tricked any more with fake peace; they may gather from all the world and decide this matter for themselves in their own interest. THE EVOLUTION OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT Auguste Comte says: "Every social problem goes through three stages, viz. : the metaphysical, the abstract and the concrete." No doubt, our modern religions have grown out of human attempts to solve social problems by speculations. The labor unions were born in the shops among hostile surroundings. The world through them became aware of the sufferings and the unrest of the working class. Wise men came forward to solve the labor problem by beautiful ideals and dreams about a glorious brother- hood here on earth. They had an idea that the human race advanced by having beautiful ideals placed before it, and that the labor movement would disappear in the universal good will of an ideal working class and an ideal employing class. These metaphysical dreams ut- terly failed, while they helped to blur the vision of the workers for the time being. Along comes Karl Marx with his "CAPITAL." He showed that human society is not built out of dreams but out of economic necessity, and that modern society is under the control of capital. This capital is created by the workers by surplus labor. Surplus labor means that portion of social labor which they put into the prod- ucts which they do not get paid for. Everything is valued according to the labor put into it, but by the wage system the employing class get value created by labor, which they do not pay for. This is surplus value. This surplus value creates capital. Capital ever tends to center into fewer and fewer hands, forming trusts and monopolies, that in turn tend toward the control of society through life's necessities. Karl Marx thought that this centralization of capital would put the middle class out of business, and that 6 LIVING OR DEAD society would form itself into two main groups the few capitalists on one side and the immense working class on the other. This has not happened. The middle classes today flourish on the credit system and the com- mon share-holding system, to say nothing of the numer- ous agencies and official positions that our complicated civilization calls for. The labor movement through the Marxian influence was taken out of the dream world. Very well, but the principle of social evolution became a materialist pre- destination doctrine, almost as dogmatic as the spiritual- istic. The trusts were represented as the forerunners of .the co-operative commonwealth. The labor move- ment on the economic field was made secondary to the socialist party. The workers began to see the folly of this. A new movement under the name of syndicalism came into being. It held its first international congress in London in 1913, where directly and indirectly fourteen countries were represented. The South American dele- gation promised to have 600,000 syndicalists in the field, in the very near future. An international correspondence bureau was formed there, which has its headquarters in Amsterdam, Holland, 17 Riesenstraat, where it publishes a paper. The first "red" International declared that the free- dom of the workers must be accomplished by their own work. So do the syndicalists, and add that the workers have all-sufficient power on the economic field to do so. The labor movement here becomes a concrete move- ment in the hands of the workers themselves. The women and children become a part of it, since it is no longer a movement mothered by the wise and fathered by learned academicians, who can only impress the metaphysical and the scientific-minded. True, these wise and learned people shielded the proletarian infant, born among the people who were regarded as animals, by the brutal ruling classes. Now that the movement has grown to manhood and insists on performing its own mission in its own way, its foster parents "the learned LABOR UNIONS 7 and the wise" weep and predict dire failure, and some- times curses and disowns it as a child of the slum proletariat in league with the dreadful anarchists. They promise all sorts of help and blessings, if only the naughty labor movement will follow their advice and be tied to their apron strings and be nice and respectable, which is the only way to success. The labor movement in turn has a great affection for the "wise and the learned'' with their conservatism and outworn methods and ideas. Its struggles away from this conservatism within itself is a herculean effort. But it is only the sign of new life, where the labor organiza- tions will become vibrant with new activities, and be- come the real institutions of the working class. The workers cease to be parrots of the "wise and the learned." They will not repeat, for instance, that the middle class is going out of business, when a blind bat can see that they are increasing. The increased rented and mortgaged farms in the United States is not due to the farmers getting poor and going out of business. It is due to increased land-value. The farmers finding that their lands have increased in value to such an extent that they can sell or rent them out and move into Easy street, do so. The renter and mortgagee are hard driven by the financial powers, just like the small business elements are in the towns. They are usually bitter against unionism, and delude them- selves with the idea that the high cost of living is due to high wages, in spite of the fact that the rise of wages is far behind increased cost of living. Harvest workers are lured into the farm districts yearly by the offer of high wages and many months of work, to find only a few weeks' work at half the wages that a mechanic gets in town. While the farmers them- selves organize to hold their grains for the highest price, they get constables to shoot down the workers who at- tempt to organize to get the highest price for their labor- power. The best social protection for a ruling class is a large middle class; for their social ideal swirls around their bit 8 LIVING OR DEAD of property and business interests. They largely form the public opinion that reacts powerfully on the minds of the working class. Their cry is for reform for the patching up of the worn-out social system. They natur- ally look with horror upon the proposition of the workers gaining control of the industries. They see in that the disappearance of their bit of property and their chance gone to forge ahead individually for property. They in- sist that it is bad for the workers to fight directly for power in the shops ; that they must only vote for it and get the right politician in the parliament, or confine them- selves to committees to peacefully dicker with the bosses All this reflects itself in the working class minds ; it re- flects itself in their unions and in their press, and creates a dead, dull, mere dues-paying membership, with the temporary purpose of getting a job. The fostering of a large and more contented middle class is everywhere seen. Different governments are setting aside money to be lent out at the lowest possible rate to enable men to purchase parcels of land. The rural credit system is another means of strengthening the middle class, and to create a contented farming class for the present system. Nowhere, except in the minds of the would-be Marxians, do we see any signs of the disap- pearance of the middle class. The new labor movement separates itself from the middle class with its catch phrases about the salvation of the human race. When the workers throw off their human parasites by attending to their own business and by setting their own house in order, humanity needs no more salvation than any other living species. REVOLUTION AND REFORM The revolutionists are the workers who have come to the conclusion that a society divided against itself by opposite economic interests cannot stand. They do not believe that any kind of reform can bring about hap- piness and good will among mankind as long as the LABOR UNIONS 9 wage system lasts. They see that even if the workers get to the point where they get enough wages to live fairly comfortably, that as long as they do not get the full product of their labor that they will not be satisfied. And that even if they become satisfied, capital and the scramble for it, corrupts the whole of society. It creates gambling, pros- titution of mind and body, trickery, blackmailing and it gives economic advantages and training to certain mem- bers, while it deprives those certain advantages to other members, thereby artificially creating a superior class that may be naturally inferior, who can lord it over those who may be naturally superior. For that reason the revolutionists aim straight for the overthrow of the wage system. But the reformer says : You cannot overthrow society by one thing in one blow. True, says the revolutionist, but experience teaches me that no set of human beings get anywhere without a distinct object in view. "Hitch your wagon to a star," is a saying that everyone under- stands. It means to aim at the highest, even though it seems impossible to attain. This aim concentrates the energy and effort made. It becomes an inspiration where petty quarrels and aimlessness disappear. When the whole labor movement or even a portion of it becomes imbued with the revolutionary object, its activity will carry in its train reforms proposed and carried out by the upper class to save itself. Whereas the workers who merely beg for a few more crumbs from society in various reforms, usually get them full of jokers, and they lose sight of their class-power. Almost from the very start of the revolutionary idea, the workers have been divided into two camps the politi- cal socialist and the economic socialist. The political socialist contended that the capitalist governmental ma- chinery had to be captured, first, to keep the police, the militia and the troops away from the workers while they fought for better conditions ; second, to have the govern- ment overtake all social production and distribution. It seems very easy, once the workers gained the franchise. 10 LIVING OR DEAD It has proven a failure. Wherever the laborites and socialists in New Zealand, Australia, France, England and other places have got into political power, they have invariably been a surprise to the upper class, who ex- pected them to do some harm to their privilege, while they have been a sad disappointment to the workers, who expected them to do something for them. It has been found that the police under a socialist mayor club the workers, when they are socalled violent and out on a strike, just as hard as any other police. We shall see later on how a socialist prime minister protected the workers. The socialists in America boasted for years that they had a party where the candidates were abso- lutely under the control of the party, because whenever they gained office they were required to sign their resigna- tion and leave it in the hands of the party. They tried that on a socialist mayor in California, who said : "I am not mayor of the socialist party; I am mayor of Berkeley," or something to that effect. Once a candidate has climbed into official power in our system, he must protect that system, or be ousted as a traitor or inefficient. Wherever the political socialists have gained power a reaction has set in against political action. A cry for direct action from the workers has gone up. Even the conservative labor federations of Sweden and Germany saw the necessity of withdrawing all official connection with the socialist party. When Berger, the first socialist congressman in the United States, was elected the party realized that it must clear its skirts from sabotage, or direct action where the workers fight the boss with slow work or bad work, or anything else that hurts his profit. While the capitalists themselves have no laws against sabotage, the socialist party voluntarily constituted itself a police force to pro- tect the bosses, by an amendment to their constitution, with the object of gaining more political power, which failed for the simple reason that the gradual political reform program of the socialist could be duplicated by the progressive, middle-class people. The workers, there- fore, all over the world, are losing faith in political social- LABOR UNIONS 11 ism, where they do not openly fight it; they feel that whatever political rights they have and whatever politi- cal reforms they want, they can best protect and get them by showing their organized economic strength and influ- ence. They know that all they have ever got, political or otherwise, they have gotten not by the laws, but in spite of them. They know that government ownership will not save them. They know that the government is as hard a slave-driver as a trust, and a great deal worse to fight. The economic socialist or syndicalist is therefore com- ing on the scene with his direct action of sabotage, the sympathy strike, the intermittent strike, the general strike and the mass strike, etc. Ten times to one, the syndicalist is a graduate from the socialist political school. If he is a terrorist, who has taught him that only so-called terror will get the working class anything? Answer, principally the utter failure of the socialist party, with its compromises, its smug, respectable Bergers, Spargos, John Burns, Briands, etc. The socialist party constitution has no clause in it for- bidding its members to become policemen, militiamen or soldiers. In other words, it does not forbid its members to commit violence on the working class in the name of law. It does not make it unlawful for their members to carry arms against the worker, and to violate his most sacred property his body when it is done in the name of law and order. The economic socialist proposes to reconstruct a new society of his own organizations on the economic field. He is doing so now in his labor unions, his co-operatives and his educational institutions. The great trouble with the conservative labor movement is that it does not recog- nize the importance of educating the workers, apart from the system-educators, who are helpless and powerless in becoming real educators as long as thev are under the control of the upper classes and their ethics. How many a teacher has not been made to recognize this bitterly? Why do the millionaires endow universities? to control learning. Why do the rich build magnificent churches, 12 LIVING OR DEAD where they invite the worker to worship, while they draw high rents from shabby tenements? to control re- ligious beliefs. All the writers who have come forward of late years to voice the interests of the workers, all the committees instituted to investigate their wrongs, are the result of the violent stirrings of the workers themselves. The workers cannot stir in the bottom without stirring the whole of the social structure. Therefore, the one who is out telling the workers not to stir, that it does more harm than good does not know what he talks about. Finally, the social revolution means the throwing aside of the old order, to give room for the new that has grown up underneath. What that shall be depends upon the workers today who are laying the foundation of that society, which is a very good reason why centralized authority in the organizations should be fought to death, less we shall only build up a new tyranny. INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM The Knights of Labor in America organized en masse. They went down and the A. F. of L. that organized on the minute craft line took its place. The K. of L. was supposed to be an industrial organization, and when it went down industrial unionism received a bad name. Owing to the many weaknesses shown in the craft division industrial unionism again came to the front, and for some years industrial unionism was supposed to be the sum and substance of revolutionary unionism that was a final cure for all the ills of the working class. The fact of the matter is that industrial unionism has largely held sway in Germany, where it has been shown that industrial unionism is and can be as conservative as any other kind of unionism. In the summer of 1913 the shipbuilding workers, belonging to the powerful, indus- trial, metal workers organization, rushed out on a strike, LABOR UNIONS 13 after they had petitioned their authoritative officials for two years to be allowed to fight to improve their condi- tions. Thanks to the strict discipline in Germany, they were chased back to their slavery by their own central- ized, authority officials. The Butte copper miners were industrially organized when they blew up their own headquarters in 1914 to make an end to the official machine that dominated them. There were twelve thousand miners in one big union, who had a building of their own with a hall that held less than one thousand members. Only so many members out of twelve thousand could get in the meeting. The machine men always got to the meeting first; they were always in the majority in the hall. So that while the crafts unions, such as the carpenters, the bricklayers, the plumbers, etc., raised their wages, the industrially union- ized workers' wages stood still, while they were really the whole support of the town. Craft unionism is gradually disappearing in the A. F. of L. The minute crafts divisions merge in the general trades and industries more and more. The organizations in the A. F. of L. have trade autonomy, but not local autonomy. Their authority is centralized in their international executive boards. It has the warp of freedom, but not the woof to weave it into a whole cloth. Local autonomy knits the workers to- gether, while national trade autonomy compel union workers to scab on one another. One trade goes on strike leaving all the others on the job. A single trade cannot fight successfully nowadays, not even with the money donated by the unions that stay on the jobs. Workers cannot fight with money; they cannot win by putting up their pennies alongside the capitalists' gold. A long strike means slowly starving the workers out. A strike to win must be a quick solar plexus blow, economically by cutting off the trade or shop completely by sympathy strikes. So that trade autonomy is worse than no autonomy without local autonomy. Some organ- izations now have local autonomy, but it cannot be ef- fective until all have it. 14 LIVING OR DEAD The Chinese walls of high initiation fees, high dues and closed books which some of the unions in the A. F. of L. have erected, is another source of bitterness of the workers outside the unions, and very naturally, for it keeps them out. These walls are breaking down. The workers find that by locking their fellow workers out of their unions they lock themselves out of the shop, instead of locking the boss out. The skilled mechanic has for ages regarded himself as an aristocrat, in comparison with the laborer. In modern times one highly skilled craft aftci another dis- appears in the machine, where it is put into the hands of women and children. New skills, of course, come up, but on the whole the skilled mechanic feels uncertain of his job and his skill. Half the time in the year he is without a job in the building trades, and he never knows when he may be glad to get a laborer's job. Under these conditions this aristocracy in the working class disap- pears. To deny this and to still harp upon the evil of aristocracy of labor is to prevent the solidarity of the workers, by forcibly opening the fast healing wounds. Such chauvinism is out of order. The so-called unskilled worker in all parts of the world has been slower to organize than the so-called skilled. Now that he has begun to organize in earnest, many phrase mongers are out pointing to the skilled workers as his real enemy, who has kept him down, and who is keeping him down. The skilled worker is here put up as a target to shield the privileged class, which is fine and dandy for the bosses. Out of industrial unionism the industrial democracy must grow. But if this industrial democracy is to consist of the privilege of the rank and file to vote their indus- trial power into the hands of a few central officials, this kind of democracy will be no better than the kind of democracy that we have now, which has failed. The privilege of voting our power out of our hands is a new way of fooling ourselves by grasping at the shadow of democracy. LABOR UNIONS 15 If industrial democracy does not mean that the work- ers can gather wherever they work, and by their own majority vote, make their own conditions under which they shall work, then it does not mean anything. Then it is merely a new creed. The machine is the producing center that equalizes the workers using it. No set of workers would be able to monopolize the different machines. The workers who build the machines, build them to sell or to exchange them for all the good things of life produced by other workers. It is only by the wage system, which produces capital, that the machine can be monopolized by a set of capitalists. The economic needs of the human family, whose mem- bers have equal economic opportunity, with no privilege to use any other member for his personal gain, will inter- link the human race in what one might call one big union. But the moment that one big union tried to gather around a set of authoritative officials, that moment it would split into factions, each faction wanting a different set of rulers, or public servants, as they would call them to hide the real facts. LOCAL AUTONOMY Local autonomy is the watchword of the new labor movement. The workers find that they can best fight for their rights by making demands and threatening strikes when the boss needs them the most. To give the bosses long notice of a strike is to give them a chance to prepare to defeat them. But if they have centralized their power to act in the shop in authoritative officials who are miles away from the scene, they have to dicker with them for permission. The authoritative officials in turn dicker with the bosses or their representative until the scabs are collected and the urgent work finished, and a victorious strike becomes impossible. The employing class, being the privileged class, forms the state machinery with its central, political authority, to 16 LIVING OR DEAD protect them in their individual and collective liberty of exploiting the workers upon the industrial field. They insist on having the right to run their own business. They do not ask the State, their central authority, if they may lock their workers out and upon what terms they shall take them back to work. On the contrary, they have the right to call upon the authorities to help them win a fight over the workers, by having the scabs pro- tected and the workers' leaders jailed upon some pretext. Here we have the State at the beck and call of the indi- vidual and collective employer. The centralization of the financial power in the Wall Streets is not an authoritative central power over the industries. They are mere gambling houses of fictitious or real values of shares in them. The organized shop power of the bosses is vested in the Merchants, Manufacturers and Employers Associa- tions. They have local autonomy, and centralize nation- ally and internationally in a common economic interest, and not by placing their local power to act in the hands of a few national officers but even if they did, it would be no excuse for the workers to tie their own hands locally. Authoritative officials naturally become conservative. The responsibility rests upon them in a fight, and they must be on good terms with the conservative majority. But the workers do not develop any initiative ; they are so many dumb, driven cattle in their unions as well as in the shop. They expect their officials to act for them, in- stead of getting together to act for themselves. Central authority is the most potent force in creating dead unions and arrogant officials and political machines in the labor movement. First and foremost the workers must have liberty to act in their own unions. They must know what they want and plan how to get it. The common understanding of economic interest will bring solidarity in the working class that will centralize the energy far better than any coercive arrangement could. LABOR UNIONS 17 Local autonomy does not mean local separation. It means local co-ordination to the whole body. Central authority demands local subordination, which means local weakness, and local weakness means weakness all along the line. This is w r ell proven in Germany and the Scandinavian countries, where centralization and local subordination is the order, and where ultra-conservatism with its failure, have created rebellion within the labor movement itself, which have resulted in dual movements and syndicalist leagues. It does not do much good to have a few organizations have local autonomy; labor must stand together in strikes with their sympathy strikes. During the Bismarck persecution in Germany, where the workers were forced to act secretly together locally, these workers learned the great power of local freedom. And when the workers got the right to organize there, the question at once swung around local autonomy. But centralized authority gained the day. Now come the "localites" and prove that they were right. They kept their organization in the field, which now forms the syn- dicalist organization in Germany, with headquarters in Berlin. It was the "Localites" who plastered Berlin with anti-military placards, after war was declared. In the Bourses du Travails, local liberty again proved its virility, as it was in the Bourses that syndicalism, or revolutionary unionism, first sprouted forth. The Bourses with their lecture courses, their labor councils and techni- cal instructions, gave the labor movement in France new life. And its tactics and principle of organization are spreading over the world. The workers have been so enslaved and misled that they do not see that co-ordina- tion throughout nature forms the strongest organization. They were under the delusion that a highly paid bureauracy in the labor movement could whip the work- ing class into line by flourishing the whip of discipline, which simply means that the workers did not trust the workers, that suspicion and hatred of their own class members dominated their minds, making all real organ- ization impossible. 18 LIVING OR DEAD THE MILITANT MINORITY The budding of new life on all lines of social progress, in art, science and literature, in the pulpit, press and the labor movement, produces new ideas and new spirits, expressed through a militant minority. The militant minority are the social rough riders. They ride rough- shod over old methods and old ways and storm the con- servative stronghold. They are usually cursed while they live and blessed long after they are dead. The man who seeks popularity and gets it is usually a mere echo of the dead past. The upheaval in the labor movement in the last few years the world over is a healthy sign of new life. Nearly every union has its militant minority, or rough necks, who challenge the old leaders, the old methods and the old tactics. But it should not be forgotten that the old is tenacious and the new feeble and real progress slow. A good many militants start out with an eagerness that burns itself out in a short time, and after that they sing the song "it is no use." Blusterers and bullies should not be mistaken for mili- tants. They are often stool pigeons and disrupters. The militant fights in his organization to get it to fight for better conditions, and to help all other organizations to fight for better conditions. He knows that better condi- tions are not going to be handed to the workers on a silver platter, because they form mutual admiration socie- ties with benefit systems. The militant minority understand that the working class have a common interest, and that when one organ- ization is defeated, it acts as a signal for a general on- slaught of the employing class. A victory, on the other hand, arouses the courage and aspiration of the workers. The militant is therefore not a mere trade unionist ; he is a working class unionist. Nor does he cater to public opinion ; he knows that public opinion is a wall of con- servatism that must be broken down. The best way to curb a militant member is to give him an office with a good salary. He gets away from the LABOR UNIONS 19 toil and sweat and uncertainty of a job and becomes a member of the official family, where he sees the world from a pleasanter view, and comes under the domination of conservatism. The employing class always had a militant minority that broke away from old methods, which enabled them to go forward in small bunches to try out new methods of production, and new ways of getting more out of the workers, by new ways of working them and controlling them. If the capitalists had been so organized that they could not go ahead until the majority of them voted for it nationally, there w r ould have been another story to tell of the capitalists. The militant minority among the workers can only gain a hearing where there is local freedom to act. A locality may then go ahead to show the majority through- out the nation what can be done or cannot be done, as the conditions do not differ so very much in different local- ties in modern times. The conservative unionist is always trotting out statistics to show how much the wages have increased, and how much the work-day has shortened. But he for- gets to show how much the cost of living has increased, and how the speeding-up system takes more energy out of the worker in eight hours now than the ten and twelve hours did. Only a small portion of the workers have an eight- hour day, while the productive methods have doubled in speed since it was first demanded. So that if labor had kept up with the times, four hours a day should now be agitated for and have been gained in some industries. In Germany before the war, during the last twelve years, the skilled workers increased their wages 25 per cent, but the cost of living increased 41 per cent. Other countries have jogged behind very much like that. In England the workers increased their wages the last twenty years seven million pounds sterling, while the cost of living increased thirty million. Where is the real advance made? There is a dire need of a militant minority in every organization to stir the whole labor movement into new 20 LIVING OR DEAD life. A labor movement that falls behind economically is dead, and the militant minority of the capitalist class will soon find a way of putting it on the scrap-heap as a benevolent association. The Dublin strike in 1913 in Ireland, that stirred all Europe, was largely the work of a few militants. The cost of living had advanced by leaps while wages had re- mained behind. If it had. not been for the conservative labor leaders in England that strike would have been a success instead of a compromise. In the conference held in London to consider the gen- eral strike and militant tactics that year, the old labor leaders scored Jim Larkin as a firebrand, while the rank and file of the workers throughout the British Isle stood by him, and many of the leaders had to fall in line. THE GENERAL STRIKE From the very beginning of the labor movement the general strike has more or less agitated the minds of the workers. The socialists advocated the use of the general strike to gain the franchise, and they have used a general strike several times in different countries to get the franchise extended. As late as in 1913 there was a general strike in Belgium instituted to gain the manhood suffrage. The syndicalists propose to use the general strike to overthrow the employing class. But the socialists in Germany and other countries decry this as ''general non- sense." It is easy to see why politicians should cry down a general strike as general nonsense, except when it is carried on to extend the votes, because it strips the politi- cian of the mission of being a working class savior in the parliament. But the general strike idea becomes more and more popular. The C. G. T. in France has a general strike committee of twelve members, whose duty it is to agitate and educate the workers for the general strike. LABOR UNIONS 21 It is claimed that the general strike is bad because so far general strikes have been failures. The social upris- ing in Russia in 1905 was a failure, true. But it was chiefly a failure because the workers were not prepared to use it. The workers in St. Petersburg only a little while before were so ignorant that they could be led by the thousands by the priest, Gappon, in front of the winter palace to petition their little white father, the czar, for freedom, only to be shot down like so many sheep. For the first time in Russian history the czar was forced to grant some sort of political liberty. The general strike in Sweden in 1909 was a failure because it was not a general strike to begin with, but it was, on the contrary, a general lockout. For years the wide-awake Swedish workers had seen the storm coming. They knew that the employing class had grown more and more arrogant, because the workers organizations had become more and more conservative under the leadership of socialist politicians, who promised that all would come through the capitalist parliament, if the workers would be quiet on the economic field. The general strike was declared to be nothing but a vain dream or general nonsense, echoing the German socialists. When the employing class began to throw thousands of workers out and declaring a general lockout through- out the nation if the workers did not come to terms, the conservative labor leaders and the politicians began to sing a different tune, and they now declared that a general strike had to be called to offset the general lockout. They suddenly had to become nonsensical. But such a bunch of cowards were not fitted to lead a general strike. As politicians they could think of nothing but how to retain the good will of the public. Hence, a general strike was called, leaving all the necessary workers to carry on the daily sanitary work and social conveniences. The trans- port workers, the gas and electric workers, the scaven- gers, etc., were left to keep the dear public in good humor and conveniences, so that they could see that the workers' politicians were real humane. And the dear public re- warded the working class by sticking tongues out at 22 LIVING OR DEAD them, and called them traitors, outlaws, human beasts, etc. The conservative politico-labor leaders would not and could not, as representatives in the parliament, be- come enemies of the public. The government declared that the workers had placed themselves outside the pro- tection of the state. Very naturally, as the state is for the protection of the employing class. The general lockout will force the general strike. In a conflict between two forces the stronger seeks to anni- hilate the weaker. The bosses, feeling the weakness of the labor movement, decided to break its backbone in a general onslaught. If the workers so organize that they can carry on offensive strikes instead of defensive they will become conscious of their power, and the tables will be turned and all the drivel about the impossibility of a general strike will disappear. A general strike cannot be avoided. The sooner the workers get that into their heads the better for them. The California workers in Stockton have already had the taste of a general local lockout, and that undoubtedly will be a mere beginning. In a general strike all the workers that are needed to carry on the daily routine of social and public work should be withdrawn. A general local strike should put the locality in darkness and the traffic to a standstill and other things equally drastic. Strike where the blows count immediately ! and the fight will soon end in victory for the workers. But if the \vorkers don't dare to strike where the blows count, they should not fight at all ; for the result will be defeat. And the end of the whole labor movement will be defeat. The ruling class in each country will ride down the workers in general lockouts until they have brought them to their knees. A general lockout was staged in the Scandinavian countries for 1916 on account of the success of the differ- ent lockouts in those countries. The general lockout in Sweden that goes under the name of a general strike was such a howling success for the bosses that they wanted an international lockout. All this while people go about telling that a general strike is impossible and point to the LABOR UNIONS 23 failure of the general strike in Sweden, which was a failure because no preparation had been made for it. After four weeks these impossible leaders consented against the wishes of the rank and file to a rational cleav- age of the workers. This cleavage meant that all the work- ers not belonging to the Merchants, Manufacturers and Employers Association should go back to work. And when they rushed back to work it created a general stam- pede among all the strikers, and all rushed back anxious to get their jobs back at all costs. It crushed the whole labor movement in Sweden for the time being. The Scandinavian employing class now prepared for an inter- national lockout by having all the contracts run out with labor in 1916, and they openly boasted that they would crush labor in a general lockout at that time, which per- haps is off on account of the war. In France there has already been two general strikes of the railroad workers. Both are reported to have been failures, yet, this has not cooled the French workers' ardor for a general strike. Incidentally we may report that the employing class of France has never become gay over the notion of lockouts or the practice of them. Aristide Briand, the first socialist prime minister in the world and in France, was in his powerful political seat in 1910 when the general strike broke out on the railroad. He declared the strikers outlaws, and he had the strike committee arrested in the office of "Humanite,* the socialist paper that he had been editor of, and in whose columns he had posed as the most revolutionary socialist. He also drafted the strikers into the army to run and protect the railroads they were striking on, be- longing to Rothschild. A good many of the strikers took their Socialist Briand conscript orders, put them in a sack and sent them back to the revolutionary socialist in power, who had shown what he could do. Viviani and Millerand, two socialist cabinet ministers in the French parliament, did not do much better toward the workers during their term of office. No wonder the French work- ers turned their backs on the socialist politicians. They learned by experience that all brands of politicians serve 24 LIVING OR DEAD them alike. Yet, there are people who have the nerve to circulate the stupid rot that the French workers are not socialist-politico because the industries are small in France. The whole socialist press turned its batteries on Briand, the traitor, thus incidentally shielding- the Rothschild, the owners of the railroads. Briand the so- cialist, as prime minister, became the lurid light beyond which the workers could not see. The real oppressors on the economic field were forgotten and hidden behind Briand. This general strike was also premature. The workers on the railroads were divided. Half of them belonged to centralized, conservative unions, while only half of them were revolutionary and de-centralized. The latter rushed out, thinking that the conservatives would go out with them, but they first had to dicker with their authoritative officials, and when the strike committee was arrested, the strike was declared off. But the strikers struck on the job and won all the points that they struck for. The strikers demoralized the whole railroad system. Trains could not reach any destination in time. Freight cars became so mixed up that freight did not reach its destination at all. Telegraph wires separated by the mile. The telegraph system was put out of order. The railroad bosses got wise and granted the demands. This general strike was therefore not a failure. In the future the workers will learn that direct action in the shop is a powerful weapon in their hands. The first general strike in the United States for the eight-hour day (1886) was said to be a failure. But was it? True, the so-called anarchists were hanged, and the press and pulpit went on a drunken spree of abuse against labor. But it created a reaction that was all in favor of labor. The anarchist hanging served as an eye-opener to the whole working cla-ss. The Haymarket martyrs did not die in vain. There was a general strike in Italy in the summer of 1914, which was a success and which gave the govern- LABOR UNIONS 25 ment a thorough scare. A successful general strike, how- ever, must be preceded by preparation in local general strikes with their sympathy strikes and by educational campaigns. At a social, general strike the military forces are ren- dered powerless by the impossibility of transporting sol- diers and means from place to place. The points of at- tack will be everywhere at the same time, and determined picket lines will prevent the middle class to act as scabs. THE UNEMPLOYED ARMY The most serious question of the working class is the unemployed army. This army forms the most effective club in the hands of the employing class. The workers who work dare not stir. The threat of discharge hangs over their head like the proverbial sword on a thread. This unemployed army is created, as already men- tioned, by the failure of labor to keep up Avith the techni- cal improvement of labor-saving devices. The mere men- tion of a four-hour day at this time cannot be considered in the present state of labor, except as a far cry in the wilderness. Society is exultant every time a new machine appears that displaces labor. It rejoices over the inventive in- geniousness displayed, without a single thought for the people that it displaces. The provisions that municipalities and State reform advocators try to put through to relieve the unemployed are all hurtful to labor as a whole. If roads are built, parks laid out, streets and lots cleaned, stump-land cleared by cheap labor under the ex- cuse that half a day's wage is -better than no wages for the unemployed, the working class must eventually fall to the level of the State and municipal workers. The laborer is first on the list to feel it. To beautify a city with cheap, starvation labor, is to strengthen the employing class' property by degrading 26 LIVING OR DEAD human beings, and to keep the workers in a treadmill when it is carried out to its logical conclusion. Reformers advocate that the government so time its road constructions and other activities to absorb the un- employed in a large measure during times of industrial depressions, which means that the government will be able to save the taxpayers a great deal of money at the expense of the unemployed ind at the same time keep a reserved unemployed army in readiness for the capitalist class, to be rushed into the industries the moment there is boom time, to prevent any increase in wages. The more one studies the unemployed question, the more one real- izes that it is THE question around which the real ad- vancement or retrogression of the whole working class swirls. What can the working class do to get out of this mire? Evidently it does not do any good to put into the market cheap goods made for temporary relief by the unemployed because it only puts the worker who is on regular pay out of work. Again, if the unemployed be- come criminals and run into the penitentiaries they again produce all kinds of goods that puts the men and women out of jobs or cheapen their work. We have in years past heard so much, from the so- called revolutionists, about what would happen when thousands stand without jobs. Millions are here now and nothing has happened. The philosophy of misery is evidently a fallacy. Courage doesn't travel on an empty stomach. Courage flees from the man and woman who is ill-fed or hungry. The unemployed cannot organize except for momentary demonstrations, and these demon- strations can easily be scattered by the authorities, and it all simmers down to immediate relief by charity or cheap work or each for himself. We need not dream about revolution via the unemployed army. In the French revolution the hungry mob was backed by the business element who were bent on putting the feudal lords and their king out of business to become the ruling class. If organized labor had come to the conclu- sion that they wanted to put the capitalist out of busi- LABOR UNIONS 27 ness in an uprising, they, too, could make up of the hun- gry mob for that purpose, but they have not. The work- ers are not apt to become revolutionary as long as they on the whole are compelled to work in fear and trembling of discharge. NEO-MALTHUSIAN MOVEMENT Organized labor in their present state are not in a con- dition mentally or financially to help the unemployed, except a few who belong to the different unions. What are we to do? The child is father to the man. The army of unem- ployed of from twenty to thirty-five years of age, that many years hence, is still unborn. Shall they be born? Or will the workers control the child-birth, and limit their families as the upper classes are doing? Every farmer who is not incompetent carefully breeds and limits his stock to get a strong, healthy, valuable breed. In fact all educated classes of people limit and control their off- springs. It is only the savages and the working class who breed their kind indiscriminately and ignorantly, without any serious thought of the future of that life that they place in the world. They blindly follow their passions without thoughts of the results. The ruling classes are anxious to have cheap labor, and cheap labor can only be had by an unlimited supply of workers. Hence, the information of the control of child-bearing is made crim- inal in the United States, while in Europe, so far, it can be openly circulated. And the working classes have established international societies to teach the workers Neo-Malthusianism, as it is called. Race-control is called race-suicide by the ruling classes, while they have very little to say about race- degeneracy resulting from over-crowded families in pov- erty, where the mother and the father are both taken away from the children to enable them to feed them at all. They have very little to say about the crime of set- ting children in this world who are doomed before they are born to a life of hardship and misery, that ends in 28 LIVING OR DEAD the potter's field via ill-nourishment, reformatories, sweat-shops, jails and penitentiaries. All working class social ignorance makes for a rich harvest of profit. Out of millions of helpless workers, millionaires are made. The crowded family misery of the workers is the pool out of which the rich dip out their riches, The workers collectively are too ill-informed to realize the direct importance of the control of child-birth in their struggle for existence. They foolishly think that it is. a side issue. Let every thoughtful, working class father or mother go to reliable doctors or trained nurses until he or she gets the information sought. If drugs or abortion is advocated, turn it down. Havelock Ellis, the famous English writer on feminism, has written fully on this subject. His book can be had in nearly every library, provided one can show that he is a student of medicine or a doctor. So that doctors cannot plead ignorance. There is nothing in the United States that could show more conclusively that it is ruled by the economic inter- est of the upper class than that such valuable information to the human race is forbidden to be circulated in the open; for the educated know how to get it; while the ignorant and foolish hear about it and become preys of misinformation and shysters, who prey upon their pocket- books and diseased minds and bodies. The workers have a right to the full, scientific knowledge of any and every- thing, and no laws or ruling class have any right whatso- ever to say what they shall or shall not know. There was a time when the workers were not allowed to read the Bible for themselves because it was supposed to be harm- ful to them. Now they are not allowed to inform them- selves on sex matter because it is claimed by a lot of "mutts" in congress and elsewhere that they are not fitted to have the knowledge. The cry of race-suicide is a mere blind to delude the ignorant. Nothing is more ridiculous than to hear in the gatherings composed sometimes of old maids and old bachelors, all about the duty of bringing children into the world. According to Professor Knut Wicksell, one LABOR UNIONS 29 of the most famous sociologists in Sweden, the human race at the present rate of births and deaths is doubling itself every seventy years. It means that today we have twice as many human beings in the world as we had seventy years ago. The increase in population takes place almost exclu- sively among the poorest workers, where it acts as a millstone around the neck of the whole working class. It is therefore to the greatest interest of the better in- formed and better paid workers to see to it that a stop is made to this state of affairs. If there is any cardinal sin in this world, it must be to degrade the human race, to keep it in ignorance, poverty and disease and helplessness. If there is any cardinal virtue in this world, it must be to raise only strong, healthy, happy children, that as men and women will be strong-minded and strong-limbed, who will not tolerate injustice and who cannot be deceived by mushy philosophy or over-awed by a set of money-changers. The unemployed army will gradually lose its recruits by the control of child-birth among the workers until it disappears altogether. The workers cannot be harassed then in their work by the arrogance of the bosses, who boasts that outside stand ten people anxious to get the job. The workers will lose their fear and it will be the turn of the boss to fear that he will lose his workers and that they will want more pay and shorter hours. In other words, the boss will be on the defense, the workers will take the offense. The only objection of any value to it that can be advanced is that it is too slow. From twenty to forty years seem a long time to those who want a remedy over night. But in the last few years the workers have gained very little and they will gain very little the next few years unless they use every means at their command and become keen and sharp and careful in their planning. 30 LIVING OR DEAD EDUCATION The working class is travelling very slowly. But it has travelled a long way since a worker had absolutely no right. The men who first formed organizations had not only the whole of the employing class to fight, but a very great part of their own class, and very often their own families. The one great obstacle in the labor movement is the ignorance of the workers themselves. The common school system is supposed to educate the workers' chil- dren. But this system is used by the dominating class to so educate the children that they can see nothing wrong in our social injustice. Not only are the little minds shaped so that they can see nothing wrong, but they see that it is wrong to change it. Their little minds are actually so warped that they think that it is wrong for the workers to fight for the product of their labor. Our educational system is a hive of misinformation. It is a machine that grinds out so many little enemies of the working class economic freedom. History, science and sociology are all twisted to show that the workers are composed of inferior people, while the employing class is composed of superior people. The most ill-paid workers, in a dozen indirect ways, are placed before the child-mind, as being the most brainless, while the richest men in the same manner are placed before it as Hercules in brain-power. The whole educational system mentally kills the workers' children in the interest of the present social injustice. It is not until the children learn for themselves in the brutal conditions out in the world, that they become valuable to the labor movement. Many privileged workers are needed who get good sal- aries, and they never change their minds; they form a sort of bodyguard around the privileged class. The workers are beginning to see that they must start schools for their children. So we are getting the Ferrer schools. Ferrer taught the child self-reliance, by permit- ting it to reach out and get the knowledge that it desired ; LABOR UNIONS 31 he taught it self-discipline by co-ordination, instead of discipline by sub-ordination ; he taught it natural and social sciences as they are, without any creeds. In short, he permitted the child to grow into a human being capable of reasoning for itself. This was a crime. Ferrer had to be killed by the Spanish government. But his schools live after him, and are called the modern schools. They are feebly springing into life all over the world. New York has quite a large modern school. When the workers wake up to the importance of having their chil- dren with them in their struggle the modern school will come to the front. Take the privilege away from the ruling class of shaping the workers' minds through the educational system and one of their greatest advantages is gone forever. CO-OPERATIVES The first co-operatives of the workers were built uoon the capitalist principles. Shares in them were sold to Tom, Dick and Harry of all classes, who bought them to get dividend. They were ruled at the top by a board of trustees who selected the managers, and who hired and fired the. workers, to get the most out of them, just like any other capitalist concern. A great many of these mercantile co-operatives still flourish all over the world, and some of them have grown into immense, powerful concerns. While the agricultural co-operatives mostly failed. In all cases they were patterned after the ruling class institutions, and neither the success nor the failure of them helped the workers. A new kind of co-operatives have come into existence, put into the field by the different labor unions. The bakers in Belgium have a splendid co-operative bakery, managed and run by the bakers themselves who work in it. They gather to decide what to do, how much wages they are to pay themselves, how many hours they shall work, what they shall do with any money over and above all expenses, etc. The glass workers syndicate in Italy, which controls over one-half of the national output 32 LIVING OR DEAD of that country, built their co-operative on the same principles. They absolutely refuse to draw dividends, and use their net profit to educate and further the interests of the whole working class. The agricultural workers in Italy also have a large arid successful co-operative, formed on the same basis. So have the hatters in France. But these co-operatives are formed by and for the work- ers themselves who work in them, and who know all about the trade. They need no expensive officials to drive them, and they certainly would not tolerate the paying of dividends to some outsiders, which only perpetuates the same old injustice It is up to the laundry workers' union to start co- operative laundries or the bakers' union to start co-opera- tive bakeries, and so on. Most unions have large sums of money in the capitalists' banks that -could be used for that purpose. The co-operative could easily pay the small interest that the bank pays to their own union. The workers in these co-operatives get confidence in their own ability to run the industries, which is of great educational value. By cutting out the dividends and high salaried officials, goods can be sold cheaper and of better quality, thereby cutting down the cost of living, and thereby beginning to cut out the middle class. But these co-operatives cannot duplicate the railroads, the mines, and other institutions under the capitalist regime. They can only help. The co-operatives can sup- port education on various lines. To conclude, no one thing counts. Family limitations without revolutionary education would only produce healthy, smug workers. Labor unions without the ideal of the abolition of the wage system can have no real life and mission. Local autonomy, the militant minority- all can have little permanent value unless all of these things combined point to the road of emancipation from the wage system. - San Francisco Headquarters for the Literature of the LABOR MOVEMENT in all its Advanced Phases at the Book Omnorium WM. McDEVITT, Manager 1346 FILLMORE STREET :: SAN FRANCISC< Syndicalist journals The Toiler", "Mother Earth", and other labor periodicals and pamphlets on sale. Manufactured by GAYLORD BROS. Inc. Syracuse, N. Y. Stockton, Calif.