Part 10 (1/2)

Heretofore, pa.s.sage from the lower cla.s.s to the cla.s.s above has been comparatively easy, and it has blinded people to the existing cla.s.s antagonisms, though, as Mr. Ghent justly observes, it should no more be taken to disprove the existence of cla.s.ses than the fact that so many thousands of Germans come to this country to settle is taken to disprove the existence of the German Empire.[127] The stereotyping of cla.s.ses is undeniable. That a few men pa.s.s from one cla.s.s to another is no disproof of this. The cla.s.ses exist and the tendency is for them to remain permanently fixed, as a whole, in our social life.

But pa.s.sage from the lower cla.s.s to the upper tends to become, if not absolutely impossible and unthinkable, at least practically impossible, and as difficult and rare as the transition from pauperism to princedom in the Old World is. A romantic European princess may marry a penurious coachman, and so provide the world with a nine days' sensation, but such cases are no rarer in the royal courts of Europe than in our own plutoaristocratic court circles. Has there ever been a king in modern times with anything like the power of Mr. Rockefeller? Is any feature of royal recognition withheld from Mr. Morgan when he goes abroad in state, an uncrowned king, fraternizing with crowned but envious fellow-kings?

The existence of cla.s.ses in America to-day is as evident as the existence of America itself.

VI

Antagonisms of cla.s.s interests have existed from the very beginning of civilization, though not always recognized. It is only the consciousness of their existence, and the struggle which results from that consciousness, that are new. As we suddenly become aware of the pain and ravages of disease, when we have not felt or heeded its premonitory symptoms, so, having neglected the fundamental cla.s.s division of society, the bitterness of the strife resulting therefrom shocks and alarms us. So long as it is possible for the stronger and more ambitious members of an inferior cla.s.s to rise out of that cla.s.s and join the ranks of a superior cla.s.s, so long will the struggle which ensues as the natural outgrowth of opposing interests be postponed.

Until quite recently, in the United States, this has been possible.

Transition from the status of wage-worker to that of capitalist has been easy. But with the era of concentration and the immense capitals required for industrial enterprise, and the exhaustion of our supply of free land, these transitions become fewer and more difficult, and cla.s.s lines tend to become permanently fixed. The stronger and more ambitious members of the lower cla.s.s, finding it impossible to rise into the cla.s.s above, thus become impressed with a consciousness of their cla.s.s status.

The average worker no longer dreams of himself becoming an employer after a few years of industry and thrift. The ambitious and aggressive few no longer look with the contempt of the strong for the weak upon their less aggressive fellow-workers, but become leaders, preachers of a significant and admittedly dangerous gospel of cla.s.s consciousness.

President Roosevelt has a.s.sailed the preachers of cla.s.s consciousness with all the energy of a confirmed moralizer. It is evident, however, that he has never taken the trouble to study either the preachers or their gospel. Never in his utterances has there been any hint given of a recognition of the fact that there could be no preaching of cla.s.s consciousness had there been no cla.s.ses. Never has he manifested the faintest recognition of the existence of conditions which develop cla.s.ses, out of which the cla.s.s consciousness of the propagandists springs naturally. He does not see that there is danger only when the preachers are not wise enough, nor sufficiently educated to see their position in its historical perspective; when in blind revolt they engender cla.s.s hatred, personal hatred of the capitalist by the worker.

But when there is the historical perspective, wisdom to see that economic conditions develop slowly, and that the capitalist is no more responsible for conditions than the worker, there is not only no personal hatred for the capitalist engendered, but, more important still, the workers get a new view of the relations.h.i.+p of the cla.s.ses, and their efforts are directed to the bringing about of peaceful change.

The Socialists, accused as they are of seeking to stir up hatred and strife, by placing the cla.s.s struggle in its proper light, as one of the great social dynamic forces, have done and are doing more to allay hatred and bitterness of feeling, and to save the world from the red curse of anarchistic vengeance, than all the Rooseveltian preaching in which thousands of venders of moral plat.i.tudes are engaged. The Socialist movement is vastly more powerful as a force against Anarchism, in its violent manifestations, than any other agency in the world.

Wherever, as in Germany, the Socialist movement is strong, Anarchism is impotent and weak. The reason for this is the very obvious one here given. Cla.s.s divisions are not created by Socialists, but developed in the womb of economic conditions. Cla.s.s consciousness is not something which Socialism has developed. Before there was a Socialist movement, in the days of Luddite attacks upon machinery, and Captain Swing's rick-burners, there was cla.s.s consciousness expressed in cla.s.s revolt.

Modern Socialism simply takes the cla.s.s consciousness of the worker and educates it to see the futility of machine-destroying, or other foolish and abortive attacks upon capitalists and their property, and organizes it into a political movement for the peaceful transformation of society.

VII

Nowhere in the world, at any time in its history, has the antagonism of cla.s.ses been more evident than in the United States at the present time.

With an average of over a thousand strikes a year,[128] some of them involving, directly, tens of thousands of producers, a few capitalists, and millions of noncombatants, consumers; with strikes like this, boycotts, lockouts, injunctions, and all the other incidents of organized cla.s.s strife reported daily by the newspapers, denials of the existence of cla.s.ses, or of the struggle between them, are manifestly absurd. We have, on the one hand, organizations of workers, labor unions, with a members.h.i.+p of something over two million in the United States; one organization alone, the American Federation of Labor, having an affiliated members.h.i.+p of one million seven hundred thousand. On the other hand, we have organizations of employers, formed for the expressed purpose of fighting the labor unions, of which the National a.s.sociation of Manufacturers is the most perfect type yet evolved.

While the leaders on both sides frequently deny that their organizations betoken the existence of a far-reaching fundamental cla.s.s conflict, and, through ostensibly pacificatory organizations like the National Civic Federation, proclaim the ”essential ident.i.ty of interests between capital and labor”; while an intelligent and earnest labor leader like Mr. John Mitch.e.l.l joins with an astute capitalist leader like the late Senator Marcus A. Hanna in declaring that ”there is no necessary hostility between labor and capital,” that there is no ”necessary, fundamental antagonism between the laborer and the capitalist,”[129] a brief study of the const.i.tutions of these cla.s.s organizations, and their published reports, in conjunction with the history of the labor struggle in the United States, in which the names of Homestead, Hazelton, Coeur d'Alene and Cripple Creek appear in b.l.o.o.d.y letters, will show these denials to be the offspring of hypocrisy or delusion. If this much-talked-of unity of interests is anything but a stupid fiction, the great and ever increasing strife is only a matter of mutual misunderstanding. All that is necessary to secure permanent peace is to remove that misunderstanding. If we believe this, it is a sad commentary upon human limitations, upon man's failure to understand his own life, that not a single person on either side has arisen with sufficient intelligence and breadth of vision to state the relations of the two cla.s.ses with clarity and force enough to accomplish that end, to make them understand each other.

Let us get down to fundamental principles.[130] Why do men organize into unions? Why was the first union started? Why do men pay out of their hard-earned wages to support unions now? The first union was not started because the men who started it did not understand their employers, or because they were misunderstood by their employers. The explanation involves a deeper insight into things than that. When the individual workingman, feeling that from the labor of himself and his fellows came the wealth and luxury of his employer, demanded higher wages, a reduction of the hours of labor, or better conditions in general, he was met with a reply from the employer--who understood the workingman's position very well, much better, in fact, than the workingman himself did--something like this, ”If you don't like this job, and my terms, there are plenty of others outside ready to take your place.” The workingman and the employer, then, understood each other perfectly. The employer understood the position of the worker, that he was dependent upon him, the employer, for opportunity to earn his bread. The worker understood that so long as the employer could discharge him and fill his place with another, he was powerless. The combat between the workers and the masters of their bread has from the first been an unequal one.

Nothing remained for the individual workingman but to join with his fellows in a collective and united effort. So organizations of workers appeared, and the employers could not treat the demands for higher wages or other improvements in conditions as lightly as before. The workers, when they organized, could take advantage of the fact that there were no organizations of the employers. Every strike added to the ordinary terrors of the compet.i.tive struggle for the employers. The manufacturer whose men threatened to strike often surrendered because he feared most of all that his trade, in the event of a suspension of work, would be s.n.a.t.c.hed by his rival in business. So, by playing upon the inherent weakness of the compet.i.tive system as it affected the employers, the workers gained many substantial advantages. There is no doubt whatsoever that under these conditions the wage-workers got better wages, better working conditions, and a reduction in the hours of labor. It was in many ways the golden age of trade unionism. But there was an important limitation of the workers' power--the unions could not absorb the man outside; they could not provide all the workers with employment. That is an essential condition of capitalist industry, there is always the ”reserve army of the unemployed,” to use the expressive phrase of Friederich Engels. Rare indeed are the times when all the available workers in any industry are employed, and the time has probably never yet been when all the available workers in all industries were employed.

Notwithstanding this important limitation of power, it is incontrovertible that the workers were benefited by their organization.

But only for a time. There came a time when the employers began to organize unions also. That they called their organizations by other and high-sounding names does not alter the fact that they were in reality unions formed to combat the unions of the workers. Every employers'

a.s.sociation is, in reality, a union of the men who employ labor against the unions of the men they employ. When the organized workers went to individual, unorganized employers, who feared their rivals more than they feared the workers, or, rather, who feared the workers most of all because rivals waited to s.n.a.t.c.h their trade, a strike making their employees allies with their compet.i.tors, the employers were easily defeated. The workers could play one employer against another employer with constant success. But when the employers also organized, it was different. Then the individual employer, freed from his worst terrors, could say, ”Do your worst. I, too, am in an organization.” Then it became a battle betwixt organized capital and organized labor. When the workers went out on strike in one shop or factory, depending upon their brother unionists employed in other shops or factories, the employers of these latter locked them out, thus cutting off the financial support of the strikers. In other cases, when the workers in one place went out on strike, the employer got his work done through other employers, by the very fellow-members upon whom the strikers were depending for support.

Thus the workers were compelled to face this dilemma, either to withdraw these men, thus cutting off their financial supplies, or to be beaten by their own members.

Under these changed conditions, the workers were beaten time after time.

It was a case of the worker's cupboard against the master's warehouse, purse against bank account, poverty against wealth. The workers' chances are slight in such a combat! A strike means that the employers on one side, and the workers on the other, seek to force each other to surrender by waiting patiently to see who first feels the pinch of hards.h.i.+p and poverty. Employers and employees determine to play the waiting game. Each waits patiently in the hope that the other will weaken. At last one--most often the workers'--side weakens and gives up the struggle. When the workers are thus beaten in a strike, they are not convinced that their demands are unreasonable or unjust; they are simply beaten because their resources are too small to enable them to stand the struggle.

When the master cla.s.s, the masters of jobs and bread, organized their forces, they set narrow and sharp boundaries to the power of labor organizations. Henceforth the chances of victory were overwhelmingly on the side of the employers. The workers learned by bitter and costly experience that they could not play the interests of individual employers against other employers' interests. Meantime, too, they have learned that they are not only exploited as producers, but also as buyers, as consumers. For long, dominated by economic theories, the Socialists refused to recognize this aspect of the labor struggle, though the workers felt it strongly enough. They set their fine-spun theories against the facts of life. Their contention was that wages being determined by the cost of living, it mattered nothing how much or how little the workers got in wages, the cost of living and wages adjusted themselves to each other. But in actual experience the workers found that when prices fall, wages are _quick_ to follow, whereas when prices soar high, wages are _slow_ to follow. Wages climb with leaden feet when prices soar with eagle wings. Because the workers are consumers, almost to the last penny of their incomes, having to spend practically every penny earned, that form of exploitation becomes a serious matter.

But against this exploitation the unions have ever been absolutely powerless. Workingmen have never made any very serious attempt to protect the purchasing capacity of their wages, notwithstanding its tremendous importance.[131] The result has been that not a few of the ”victories” so dearly won by trade union action have turned out to be hollow mockeries. When better wages have been secured, prices have often gone up, most often, in fact, so that the net result has been little to the advantage of the workers. In many cases, where the advance in wages applied only to a restricted number of trades, the advance in prices becoming general, the total result has been against the working cla.s.s as a whole, and little or nothing to the advantage of the few who received the advance in immediate wages. At this point, the need is felt of a social revolution, not a violent revolution, be it understood, but a comprehensive social change which will give to the workers the control of the implements of labor, and also of the product of their labor. In other words, the demand arises for independent, working-cla.s.s action, aiming at the socialization of the means of production and the product.

VIII

A line of cleavage thus presents itself between those, on the one hand, who would continue the old methods of economic warfare, together with the advocates of physical force, and, on the other hand, the advocates of united political action by the working cla.s.s, consciously directed toward the socialization of industry and its products. The measure of the crystallization of this latter force is represented by the strength of the political Socialist movement. Whoever has studied the labor movement during the past few years must have realized that there is a tremendous drift of sentiment in favor of that policy in the labor unions of the country. The clamor for political action in the labor unions presages an enormous advance of the political Socialist movement during the next few years.