The Enemy of the Workingman.
By J.
THE following is the greater part of an editorial of the San Francisco Chronicle, September 19, 1886, on “Errors of the Labor Party.” It shows how absolutely a man sells himself into slavery, and pledges himself, his wife, and his children, to want, when he joins one of those unions. “The decision of the masons, plasterers, and carpenters at Charleston to raise wages 50 cents to $1.00 a day in consequence of the increased demand for labor resulting from the earthquake, illustrates the tendency of unions to commit errors of policy when they are not under intelligent guidance. Of course the house owners of Charleston are less able than ever to pay increased wages to labor, and thus the result of the ill-advised proceeding of the unions will be twofold—first, it will check the repairs of injured buildings, and thus retard the recovery of the city and protract the period of enforced idleness among classes whose employment depends on a resumption of business; and secondly, it will attract to Charleston an influx of masons, plasterers, and carpenters from other States, and in a little while the supply of labor will be in excess of the demand and wages will fall down lower than they were before the earthquake. Instead of helping the classes whom the policy of the unions was designed to serve, it cannot but injure them. “Unions must be guided by broad, liberal, far-seeing principles of policy, or they will prove a curse instead of a blessing. It is a serious matter for a workman who has a wife and children dependent on him to part with the control of his own actions in favor of a body in which he is a mere unit. If there is any danger that the plan of action which he binds himself to pursue is going to be dictated to him by a party of men who are not real workmen, but are mere politicians and stump speakers—who have no regular job to lose, and who calculate to make their living as agitators, by levying assessments on men who do work, then he had far better not join any union at all. It is on him and not on the union that the responsibility of feeding his wife and children rests. It is nothing to the union if they starve. It ought to be a good deal to him. “There is a man walking the streets of San Francisco to-day who until lately had a steady job in one of the largest manufacturing establishments in this city. He had held his job for thirteen years.647He was a good, steady workman; his employers thought well of him and paid him good wages. One day there arose a dispute between these employers and a union of which he was a member, and the union ordered him out. He had no quarrel with his bosses, no complaint to make, no grievance to urge; but he had bound himself to obey the orders of his union, and when it ordered him out he laid down his tools and out he went. The controversy lasted some weeks. When it was finally adjusted the workman went back and asked for his old job. He was told that his place had been filled by a man from the East. The firm had contracts which they were bound to fulfill under heavy penalty, and when their old hands deserted them they sent East and got new men. They could not now discharge these to make room for hands that had left them of their own free will. So this man—an honest, sober, industrious, competent workman—walks the streets of San Francisco to-day with nothing to do. How his family lives perhaps the neighbors could tell. “Surely cases of this kind—and we are told that the workman in question is one of 150 in the same calling who are out of a job—ought to lead unions and assemblies of labor to pause before they order men out on strike on trivial grounds, or in the vain pursuit of an object which cannot be attained. It is a grand thing, no doubt, to be revenged upon a grasping employer by leaving him without a working force just when he needs it the most to fulfill his contracts. But revenge is a luxury in which few can afford to indulge. It generally costs more than it yields. If the employer needs his hands to fulfill his contracts, the workman needs his employer to feed his family. And this country is getting to be so full of people that it is a good deal easier to find a new workman than a new employer. An advertisement in a New York or a Chicago paper will cause workmen to spring up by the thousand, eager for steady work and ready to take the place of strikers without the smallest regard for unions or Knights of Labor. Where the effect of a strike is merely to transfer a steady job from a San Franciscan to an Eastern man, how is the former benefited? “The great industrial machine is so complicated that it cannot be trifled with without serious consequences. Results flow from rash acts which their authors did not for a moment foresee. The railway hands on the Gould system of railways felt sure that they were going to dictate terms to the managers of the roads, or to stop their running—but what is the result? The roads are running as usual, and Sedalia and East St. Louis are full of hungry children of railway hands out of a job. Looking back over the causes which produced these results, is it not time for workmen to insist on their executive assemblies going a little slow in ordering men to throw up their jobs in order to assert a principle which may be unsound or impracticable? “Unsuccessful experiment is expensive. While it is being worked out to failure, men and women must live, and they cannot live without work. It is dry work chanting hymns to labor, with an empty stomach.” The real enemy of the laboring man is not the employer, but the tyrannical managers, and the scheming manipulators, of the despotic unions, whose beck or nod he binds himself to obey. The laboring man must have an employer, if it is not himself it must be somebody else; the employer must have workmen, or else his business comes to a standstill; but the manager of the union has nothing at stake, nor to do, but to maintain the power and standing of the union, and by that his own power, while he laughs in his sleeve at the real toiling workman, and grows fat on the assessments and monthly dues of the order. J.