Chapter 9

But the police, the cavalry and guns were tried on the French people long ago, and that little matter was fought out and settled. The men who govern France know that at a certain stage in the proceedings a courageous people will not stand Gatling guns, cavalry or police. They have found out in France that the way to deal with striking workmen is just the way the Government official would like to be dealt with himself if he were a striking workman instead of a well-paid public officer.

The striking men complained that their day's work was too long and their pay too small. The pay was increased and the day shortened--which was perfectly right.

Each employe is now allowed one day off in seven, and ten days' vacation every year with full pay--which is perfectly right.

The young men employed on the road are compelled to do twenty days' work in the army each year. Their wages are paid while they are doing this compulsory military work--which is perfectly right.

If a man is ill through no fault or vice of his own he gets his pay as long as he is ill up to three hundred and sixty-five days, and the company in whose service he has become ill pays his doctor's bill, his drug store bill and any extra expenses involved--which is perfectly just and fair.

No striker is to be dismissed because of having taken part in the strike. A benefit fund is provided for the employes of this Government enterprise--and the company pays the membership subscription to the benefit fund with NO DEDUCTION FROM THE WORKMEN'S PAY.

The above seems a horrible narrative to the energetic American exploiter of labor.

It would have seemed very stupid, in fact quite incomprehensible, to the French Government at any time before the Revolution.

But the Revolution taught France and some other people that a nation, like any other structure, is insecure when its foundation is agitated. The foundation of a nation is the enormous mass of working people, and that foundation the French have learned to respect and treat well.

We shall learn as much here some day. Let us hope we shall learn it more peaceably than the French did.

UNION MEN AS SLAVE OWNERS WHAT PLANS HAS THE FIVE-DOLLAR-A-DAY MAN MADE TO HELP HIS POORER FELLOW-CREATURES?

Every addition within reason to wages, every reasonable reduction of working hours, must help the whole nation. Working human beings have been looked upon through the ages as slaves, either on an actual slave-owning basis or on an insufficient wage basis--which is about the same thing. Each recognition of the worker's rights moves us a little farther from slave days. Every time a new class earns decent treatment by hard fighting we see increased the number of those who may properly be called men.

The blind employer asks: "Shall men be allowed to fix their own wages?"

OF COURSE they shall. And until they do fix their own wages they are not men at all. The ox does not fix his hours of labor or the quantity of his corn. But the man does. The man controlled like an ox is nearer an ox than a man.

We delight in the efforts of unions. We are advocates of every movement that tends to divide among a still larger class the good things of the world.

But this newspaper is no mere labor union organ. We care more for the welfare of the humblest, non-organized, underpaid, underfed citizen than for the finest, most highly paid, most intelligent mechanic.

The man who is least well off needs our help most. He needs, above all men, some practical PROOF that he lives where men are equal. He should be the object of earnest thought on the part of the five-dollar-a-day man.

It is the five-dollar-a-day man, the able mechanic, whom we address to-day: ----

Many of your thoughts and words, Mr. Five-Dollar Man, are devoted to plutocrats. You are not free from envy. You consider, and with perfect justice, that you do not--even with your five dollars--get your share of the world's good things.

But, for a change to-day, will you look DOWN instead of UP? You work hard at five dollars per day "to fatten in comfort the happy millionaire employer." All right; admitted.

But did you ever think who works hard to fatten YOU?

Did it ever occur to you that you are a plutocrat, and a very numerous and decided plutocrat? Do you ever wonder what you will answer when the time comes for those whom you underpay to demand eight hours and fair wages of YOU?

You keep a servant girl to help your wife. Does she work eight hours a day? No; she works about fourteen, and hears a good deal of grumbling because she does not do better. Does she get union wages? No; she gets about thirty cents a day. Does she get double pay on holidays? Can she put on any substitute if she chooses to wander off for two or three days a week?

The woman who works to make your life comfortable works just as many hours as you can make her work, and she gets just as little pay as you can get her to take. Is that all right? ----

And the servant girl is not the only one. Some farmer's hand works to raise the wheat, the potatoes that you eat. What is he paid? What are his hours? Fifty cents a day, twelve or fourteen hours of work. And your bootmaker in the factory, and the sweat-shop slave who makes your coat, and the long list of other poor devils who work for about one-tenth of your salary. Do you know why you are comparatively well off? Simply because the man for whom YOU work pays you ten times as much as you pay the men and women who work for YOU.

You pay indirectly? True. But what difference does that make? You are well-to-do because you purchase without question the product of men who are really slaves. You have brains, and by combination have FORCED your employer to treat you decently. Yes, and you deserve credit. But you are not fundamentally superior to the other men around you. What are you going to do when they demand treatment as good as yours? What are you going to reply when they class you with the other plutocrats?

You enjoy the work of only ten or twenty underpaid men--that is so. But you are in the same class with the plutocrat who enjoys the profit on the work of ten or twenty thousand men.

Utter disregard of others--where it does not affect your own wages--is your rule, and you know it. What better joke is there than the joke about the union label? How many hats on your rack have union labels in them? How many of you can swear no sweatshop ever saw your clothes? How many of you would apologize for not offering your friend a "union-made" cigar?

It is the nature of man to think earnestly of only one thing at a time. If one pursuit really engrosses his attention he has little time to think of anything else. In the hard struggle for a living the workingman has little time for any thought save for his OWN wage, his OWN stomach, his OWN welfare.

As union men you will continue to struggle for your five dollars a day--restricting apprentices, that others may be shut out from your field; opposing changes threatening you, however beneficial they may be generally.

But as individuals you must THINK. You study, and, being free from the grind of real poverty, you should be less hardened than the unfortunate, and inclined to feel for others.

You have made a good fight against the slavery that used to oppress you. In England you destroyed mills, endured shooting and hanging. All over the world, by hard fighting and wise voting, you have established the fact that the top class of mechanics must no longer be treated as cattle.

Now, what are you going to do for the others who are still cattle? You have demanded in the name of holy justice that others help you. In the same name, what do you propose to do for those still oppressed? Will you use your big voting power for the millions who are still at the bottom?

Will you combine for the benefit of the vast army as you have combined for your OWN benefit?

Or will you wait--as did the employers--to be FORCED into decency? Will you free your own collection of underpaid, overworked slaves, or wait for them to organize and beat you into decency, as your representatives did with your oppressors long ago?

Take a look downward once in a while. Study those below you. Glance over your own little collection of "wage slaves" in your kitchen and wherever your money is spent.

There is a problem there for you when you shall have finished hurrahing for your own eight hours.

AGAIN THE LIMITED DAY'S WORK WISELY HANDLED, IT MEANS EMANCIPATION FROM INDUSTRIAL SLAVERY.

We refer again to the much discussed rule in labor unions limiting the amount of work that a man shall do in a day. As a matter of fact, in many unions no such rule exists. In some it does exist, and MUST exist.

There is nothing in the notion that limiting the day's work will diminish the excellence of American workmen. On the contrary, the BEST work is done slowly and carefully. The WORST work is done at high speed.

That very aristocratic financier who denounces the regulations as to a day's output will say to the man who is doing something FOR HIM, "Take your time; I want this done very carefully."

Why should not EVERYBODY'S work be done carefully?

But it is not merely careful work that is involved in the regulating of the day's work. The welfare of the nation and of the nation's future is involved.

Go with the man who denounces labor unions for limiting the amount of work that a good American mechanic should do in one day, to the stable in which that man keeps his fine horses. You can easily bring about this dialogue:

"That mare in the box stall is a beautiful horse. Is she fast?"

Rich Owner--"Yes, very fast. I value her more highly than any horse I have. "

"How many miles do you drive her every day?"

"Oh, I don't drive her EVERY day. I drive her one day, and have her jogged quietly the next. When I do drive her, I jog her for two or three miles to warm her up, then speed her a mile or two, and then take her home. She covers perhaps six or seven miles in an entire day's work."

"But you COULD drive her twenty-five miles, couldn't you, and drive her as far as that EVERY day?"

"Oh, yes, I COULD, of course, if I was only thinking of using her up and getting all I could out of her now. But, you see, I mean to use her for a brood-mare; I expect to get some splendid colts from her, and I don't want to wear out her vitality. I might get a little more fun or a little more work out of her just now, BUT I WOULD LOSE IN THE LONG RUN." ----

Now, gentlemen, the labor union rule limiting a day's work simply considers the workingman as that imaginary rich person considers his beautiful horse.

And the feeling of the labor unions should be shared by the entire country.

The highly skilled American mechanic is one of the chief assets of this country; the intelligent, scientific, up-to-date American farmer is another highly important asset. These two classes of citizens ARE THE UNITED STATES. Between them they are more important than all the rest of the nation put together.

AND YET THEY ARE NOT AS IMPORTANT AS THEIR CHILDREN.

The workingman of to-day is the father of the future.

The trouble with us is that the employer, unlike the owner of the fine horses, has no interest in that workingman's future or in his future family.

He employs and treats the workingman as the casual heartless customer would treat that fine horse if it were rented by the day at a livery stable.

There is much to be said, no doubt, on the side of harassed employers, many of whom are fair-minded men, and many of whom are put to unjust annoyance by some of the labor unions' mistakes.

But, first of all, the employer must realize the RIGHTS and the EQUALITY of his workmen. And as a patriotic citizen he must realize that the welfare of the future is in the health and vitality of parents to-day.

By limiting the amount of work which they do in one day our mechanics enable themselves to preserve some of their vitality for mental work, for educating talks with their children. THEY GIVE TO THEIR CHILDREN THE VITALITY WHICH THE SWEATSHOP SLAVE CAN NEVER GIVE.

What are our laws against sweatshops but laws acknowledging the justice of regulating the amount of the day's work?

And why do we refuse to permit unions to do for themselves what we do on a sentimental, philanthropic, haphazard basis, through our "sweatshop laws," for the miserable, unorganized workers of the slums?

TO THE MERCHANTS PLEASE LISTEN PATIENTLY TO A DISCUSSION OF THE LABOR UNION FROM YOUR POINT OF VIEW.

We invite the merchants to consider the question of unions and of high wages from THEIR OWN point of view.

If we err in our statements or conclusions we shall be glad to print replies and criticisms from responsible merchants over their own signatures.

This we maintain: THAT IN PROMOTING THE WELFARE AND INCREASING THE WAGES OF THE GREAT BODY OF WORKINGMEN, WE PROMOTE THE WELFARE AND INCREASE THE PROSPERITY OF ALL LEGITIMATE MERCHANTS AND BUSINESS MEN.

The unions make mistakes. The employers make mistakes. The unions are often unreasonable. The employers are unreasonable sometimes.

No doubt in America the workingman is more exacting and more highly paid than anywhere else.

But in America, also, the merchant is more quickly and numerously successful than anywhere else. ----

As a subject for our text to-day we shall take the street-car lines--surface, underground or elevated--of any great American city.

The success of every street-car system is made BY ALL THE INHABITANTS OF THE CITY. Every woman who brings a baby into the world in a great city adds so much value to the stock of that city's street railroads. She increases the gross income of that railroad by about three dollars and sixty-five cents a year with each child to which she gives birth.

Therefore the street railroad should properly serve the public that gives the road its value.

Next in importance to the traveling public come the human beings that work on the street railroad--the conductors, motormen, gatemen, gripmen, engineers, etc.

This newspaper fights constantly to improve within reason the pay and the hours of work of the street railroad employes.

This we do for the sake of the employes themselves, and for no other reason. We demand better pay for the men that they may lead decent American lives, feeding and clothing their wives and children, and educating their children properly. We demand short hours for them, that they may live part of the twenty-four hours WITH their families, knowing their own children and bringing a little pleasure and companionship into the lives of their patient wives.

We are proud of the fact that we have helped in a small way to increase the prosperity and happiness of many tens of thousands of honest families, that we have increased the OPPORTUNITIES of many thousands of children.

We want the merchants to remember that, while we have thus striven to protect those masses of the people whom we represent and whose ADVOCATE we are, we have also advanced enormously, although without premeditation, the fortune and quick success of every capable and legitimate merchant.

Who owns the stock in the street railroads? A few individuals--a Widener, an Elkins, a Yerkes, a Whitney, or some other energetic private individual.

One street railroad system, let us say, employs ten thousand men.

They struggle to add one dollar per day to their pay. We help them with moral support and publicity, and they succeed. TEN THOUSAND FAMILIES have each ONE DOLLAR a day more to spend, or ten thousand dollars a day in all.

What becomes of that ten thousand dollars added daily to the living-money of ten thousand families?

EVERY DOLLAR OF IT GOES INTO THE HANDS OF THE MERCHANT, THE LANDLORD, OR THE SAVINGS BANK.

If the men had not got that increase in wages, what would have become of that ten thousand dollars daily, or $3,650,000 A YEAR?

Would it have gone to the merchants of the great cities? Would it have gone to build up thousands of comfortable little homes in all the suburbs of the great towns? Would it have enabled thousands of American boys and girls to stay in school instead of going in their infancy to the mills and factories?

No!

If that money were not distributed among the people in the shape of good American wages for good American work, it would go to build big race tracks, where thieves and gamblers are manufactured. It would go to buying foolish bogus antiquities that no man needs. It would go to building ridiculous and uncalled-for palaces where human mushrooms without a sense of humor imitate in their idleness the active types of the past. ----

When this newspaper adds to the payroll of a great corporation, it adds to the happiness of a great many families; and therein lie its pride and its excuse for being. And at the same time this increase in the payroll of the Trust or the monopolizer of public privileges means an increase in the income, the prosperity, the legitimate reward of the enterprising merchant, builder and general business man.

We do not lack criticism from well-meaning friends who conduct great stores or other business enterprises. We appreciate all criticisms and suggestions. We offer a suggestion in return:

Let the builder who dislikes unions GO TO CHINA and build his apartment houses. He will find patient workmen at ten cents a day. He will find laws that suppress the unions, and laws that suppress the newspaper which takes the side of the poor.

He will find a non-union Utopia.

But he will not find tenants for his buildings, because in a land where men don't get high wages they can't pay high rents, and when the few Li Hung Changs have built their palaces the building boom is over.

Let the great merchant who deplores unions start a DEPARTMENT STORE IN CHINA.

He will never see a walking delegate; he will never be bothered by the dark cloud of unionism.

He will find a perfect heaven in the way of low wages.

BUT HE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SELL GOODS.

His department store will dwindle into a store for selling rice, and while his velvets, silks, hats and muslins moulder he will get very sick of a hundred million women who don't spend forty cents in a year.

In the land where men are not well paid THEY CAN'T SPEND MONEY.

The best friend of the American merchant, builder, lawyer, doctor, property owner, banker and general business man is the individual or the newspaper that helps the people to get high wages, AND THUS GIVES THEM MONEY TO SPEND.

WHAT ABOUT THE CHINESE, KIND SIR?

A prosperous and old New York merchant assures a conference of workingmen that England's great strikes have caused that country to lose its leadership in exports of machinery.

If England's wonderful system of trades unionism has hurt its exports of machinery, if abundance of very cheap slave labor means great industrial superiority, we beg to ask this question:

WHY IS NOT CHINA THE GREAT EXPORTING COUNTRY OF THE WORLD?

There are scores of millions of men in China glad to work for a few pennies per day.

There are no labor unions in China, and in some districts the employer can have his workmen beheaded for demanding an increase of pay. If the venerable old New York merchant is right, China ought to be certainly a marvellously successful country industrially.

As a matter of fact, China is dead, and there is no better proof of her complete deadness than the fact that among all her millions of coolies there is not enough spirit for the formation of a labor union.

The energy of the British workman established England's industrial greatness and fought for and won the great trades-union system which the workmen of this country are developing so ably. ----

Suppose it were true that trades unionism, with its higher wages and shorter hours, decreases exports--what of it?

Is it not more important to have ten million workmen well paid, with reasonable leisure and decent lives, than to have a handful of iron masters and coal-mine owners piling up millions of pounds and producing sons like the famous "Jubilee Juggins"?

Wouldn't it be better for China if her several hundred millions of citizens were well paid, well fed and well educated, even though Li Hung Chang and the other prosperous viceroys should all be paid a little less money, and own fewer square miles of rice fields and tea plants? ----

In Huxley's admirable biography, written by his son, you may read of a 'longshoreman who, thanks to reasonably short hours of work and a little leisure, took up the study of scientific subjects.

He was aided by Huxley, who lent him a microscope, and ultimately this common 'longshoreman's researches were of real value to the scientific world.

Isn't it well to have a trades-union system which curbs the avariciousness of employers and gives workmen a chance to develop the best that is in them?

Isn't it better for England to have that 'longshoreman develop into a scientist than to let some man who employs him make an extra shilling a day out of his labor, even though it should add a little to the exports of England? ----

A country's greatness depends on the quality of the men that live in the country, not on goods manufactured to sell to outside nations.

Rome was doing little exporting when she ruled the world.

She was breeding men, independent and brave, who could bring the products of the world to her.

She did not need to worry about exports, nor does any other country need to worry about them.

The thing to worry about is the condition of your citizens, the education of children, the decent treatment of women, the equality of laws.

Other things take care of themselves.

150 AGAINST 150,000--WE FAVOR THE 150,000

It should not take long to convince a man fit to live in a republic that public welfare demands the support of Union Labor.

No better proof of that could be asked than a spectacle presented in Chicago.

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY contractors have practically locked out ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND men.

The contractors want bigger profits--to be got through underpaying and overworking their employes.

The men want better pay and shorter hours. ----

Leave out sentiment if you choose. Ignore the fact that on one side the few who enjoy everything are industriously squeezing the many who have little enjoyment.

Look at things purely from the standpoint of benefit to the nation and the nation's future.

If the hundred and fifty win, they will have a little more money.

Their wives and daughters will dress a little more grotesquely. Their families will be able to go abroad oftener and stay longer.

Their heirs will be able to make more complete idiots of themselves--and that is all. Personally we should like to see all contractors' families prosperous--all American families prosperous. No man's wife or daughter can be too happy to suit us, provided things more important be not neglected. ----

If Union Labor wins, ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND families will be able to lead at least decent American workingmen's lives.

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND wives will be able to dress their children comfortably and to dress themselves respectably.

ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND families of children will be brought up more nearly as American children ought to be.

Which is more important:

THE WELFARE OF 150 CONTRACTORS' FAMILIES? (They will have enough anyhow.)

Or THE WELFARE OF 150,000 WORKINGMEN'S FAMILIES? (They will have only a decent living at best.)

Perhaps you have drifted away from the early American idea, and refuse to admit that one family is as good as another. It may seem anarchistic to suggest that the workingman's wife, who acts as wife, mother, cook, washwoman, nurse and housekeeper, is as good as the lady who has less to attend to.