Drift and Mastery

5. A Key to the Labor Movement

5 A Key to the Labor Movement When employers talk about the freedom of labor, it may be that some of them are really worried over the hostility of most unions to exceptional rewards for exceptional workers. But in the main that isn't what worries them. They are worried about their own freedom, not the freedom of wage-earners. They dislike the union because it challenges their supremacy. And they fight unions as monarchs fight constitutions, as aristocracies fight the vote. When an employer tells about his own virtues, he dilates upon his kindness , his fairness, and all the good things he has done for his men. That is just what benevolent autocrats do: they try to justify their autocracy by their benevolence. Indeed, the highest vision of those who oppose unions is that the employer will develop the virtues of a good aristocrat. But, of course, wage-earners are not dealing with men inspired by a sense of noblesse or richesse oblige. Henry Ford is a sensational rarity among employers.1 No doubt there are some others, not so conspicuous. Now, if workers faced only men with such an outlook, I don't think their problem would be solved, but it would take on a very different complexion. This is, however, an academic question, for the great mass of employers show no desire to make big concessions. Employers are organized for obstruction. There is, for ex1 Although to a later generation Herny Ford was known as a bitter foe of unionism, in these years he was regarded as a model employer because of his well·publicized high wage policy and profit·sharing plans. 57 A KEY TO THE LABOR MOVEMENT ample, the National Association of Manufacturers, embracing four thousand individual employers, who represent a capital of about ten billion dollars. Their constructive program consists of such attractive items as "unalterable antagonism to the closed shop," opposition to eight-hours' bills, and with mild emphasis hostility "to any and all anti-injunction bills of whatever kind." American civilization is also assisted by the National Council for Industrial Defense, an unincorporated body which employs a lobbyist at the rate of a thousand dollars a month. According to the proud words of its late President, this Council "in the number of members, in the capital which they control, and in the social, industrial and political influence which they exert ... is by far the largest and most powerfulleague of conservative and public-spirited citizens ever formed in any country of the world." 2 There are also a number of national associations in various trades endeavoring to prevent wage-earners from submerging their individuality in unions. They have been known to refuse advertising to papers which were friendly to organized labor--on the highest grounds, of course, such high grounds being a refusal "to pander to the unthrifty class." They have been known to use the black-list, though of course they do not approve of it. They have been known to place spies in labor unions to protect workers against themselves. They have been known to use what revolutionists call the "provocateur ": in Cleveland during the garment strike there was a glib, plausible person who talked dynamite in an effort to discredit the union. There have been some actual "planting" of dynamite as at Lawrence, a little beating up as at Calumet, kidnapping, private armies, gatling guns and armored trains as at West Virginia and Colorado.3 • Harry W. Laidler, Boycotts and the Labor Struggle (New York: John Lane, 1914). The President of the National Council for Industrial Defense was James W. Van Cleave. S The copper strike of the \Vestern Federation of Miners in Calumet was one of the most violent in the country. In the Kanawha valley of West Virginia, striking United Mine Workers engaged in a bloody civil war with mine guards. Mother Jones, the "Stormy Petrel of Labor," was imprisoned in this fight to unionize all the coal fields of West Virginia. At Ludlow, Colorado a strike against the Rockefeller-controlled Colorado Fuel and Iron Company had ended in the "Ludlow massacre." Militia and mine guards had turned machine guns on the tent colony of striking coal miners and set the tents afire; women and children died in the flames. A KEY TO THE LABOR MOVEMENT It is well known, of course, that newspapers make every effort to enable workingmen to reach public opinion, and make...