The Latest Development of Labor Unionism
By L. A. S.
RECENT developments in the industrial world have forced upon observing minds the query, What will be the end, the final outgrowth, of the organizing movement which is sweeping through the ranks of all representatives of industrial life? This query is partly answered by a striking article in the February issue of McClure’s Magazine, by Ray Stannard Baker, who is a recognized authority on the subject which he considers. Mr. Baker shows what state of things has already been reached in one section of the country where conditions have favored more than elsewhere a rapid development of the monopolistic movement in industry. The chief point in this section is the city of San Francisco. There, when the prosperity of the past few years created a demand for laborers which it was difficult to fill, owing to the isolation of the city from other industrial centers, a condition of things was soon reached under which the labor unions rose to supreme power, and became absolute masters of the industrial situation. What followed from this supremacy of labor unionism is here set forth. The unionism which was developed in San Francisco was, says Mr. Baker, “a different sort of unionism from that which existed a few years ago.” The new sort of union, he says, “is no longer a mere strike mob, clamoring for something to eat. It is learning business. It has gone to school to Wall Street; and the sooner we recognize the fact that the union is a cold business proposition, often managed by men not only of intelligence and force, but of notable business acumen, the better for the country.” The country has seen what capital directed by the intelligence and methods of Wall Street, has been able to accomplish in the way of industrial monopolies; it remains now to be seen what labor unionism, conducted on the lines of a business enterprise with methods borrowed from Wall Street, can accomplish for the subversion of the principles of free government. Some of the principal features of the situation in San Francisco, as set forth by Mr. Baker, are the following:— 1. The union assumes the prerogative to punish such as do not yield ready obedience to its dictation, not only by imposing a fine, but by denying them the right to work at all for such length of time as it sees fit. The following instance of this sort of discipline is related:— Let me tell you the experience of R. J. Techan, a prominent restaurant keeper of San Francisco. Techan was boycotted because he hired non-union musicians. When weary of the struggle, he finally tried to make a settlement; the musicians’ union demanded that he discharge the leader of his orchestra absolutely. The leader had been a faithful worker, and Techan refused to discharge him. The boycott continued, and finally became so annoying that Techan sold out. His orchestra was immediately thrown out of employment, and the players had to make the best peace they could with the union. One of the members with whom I talked was fined one hundred and thirty-five dollars; ten dollars for rehearsing with a non-union orchestra, one hundred dollars for playing with a non-union orchestra, and twenty-five dollars initiation fee into the union. He was also ordered not to play in the Techan tavern for one year. . . . The leader was also fined, and ordered not to work for one year. Since then he has not been able to get any work at all, and his family has had to be assisted by friends. Such is the fate of the man who will not go into the union; he is pursued with implacable hatred until he either gets out of town or joins. As a labor leader told me, “If he don’t obey, let him look out for another city to live in.” When a man is punished by compulsory idleness, he not only loses the money which his work would bring, but suffers demoralization of character as well. The union does not hesitate to inflict moral as well as physical injury upon those who by their non-subserviency incur its wrath. 2. “There have been cases in which unions have ruthlessly forced an entire class of workmen out of employment.” The Stone-Cutters’ Union of San Francisco one day demanded that the stone-yard employers discharge all their planer men, and substitute members of the Stone-Cutters’ Union in their places. The planer men were expert in the handling of machinery, whereas the stone-cutters knew little about machinery. It was not stone-cutters’ work to run the planers; but that made no difference. The employers offered to arbitrate; offered to discharge their planer men one at a time, so as to cripple their plant as little as possible, and show some consideration to their workmen. The union refused all such propositions. The planer men applied for admission to the union, and were refused on the ground that they were not expert stone-cutters. Finally the employers “had to surrender unconditionally, discharge a whole class of labor, and put inexperienced men on their machinery, with the immediate result of numerous accidents and a lessened output.” 3. As illustrating the lengths to which the unions will go in disregard of both the rights and sensibilities of the people, it is mentioned that “the grave-diggers won a strike last year, in the course of which burials were actually prevented by the filling of non-union graves with water, and the blowing up of the crematory.” 4. The new unionism is evolving the labor boss, and setting up in the country a one-man power—an absolute monarchy. There has appeared in San Francisco one McCarthy, who has made himself an absolute dictator of the entire building industry of that city. He has forced his way to the leadership in the Building Trades Council by such means and methods as political bosses make use of to attain to political dictatorship. There are three hundred members of this council, but the controlling power is exercised by a committee of sixty-two, which McCarthy dominates. Here is an instance of the power of the boss, told me by Secretary Harry Costen, of the Sheet Metal Workers. Because the Sheet Metal Workers would not submit to dictation in the matter of selecting delegates to a convention called at the instance of the American Federation of Labor, McCarthy personally expelled the entire union of one hundred and forty-seven men from the Building Trades Council, without charges and without a trial. Members of other trades, at McCarthy’s orders, then refused to work with the outlaws. 5. The unions even assume the functions of civil government, and cause the arrest of non-subservient workmen, as if by standing up for their rights they had committed a crime punishable by the courts of law. Mr. Baker mentions the following case:— A Scotch Sheet Metal Worker named Forbes, acting under the directions of his employer, insisted on staying at work on one of his jobs. The foreman carpenter, a union man, called a policeman to arrest Forbes, who had committed no offense greater than that of remaining at work contrary to the orders of McCarthy’s walking delegate. The policeman led him down the street, but did not dare to take him to the station house. Forbes, refusing to be thus browbeaten, went back to work, declaring that he would not stop until his employer ordered him to do so. Then the foreman carpenter swore out a warrant for Forbes’s arrest, charging disturbance of the peace!—and he was locked up in the city prison. Brought finally into court, he was actually accused of keeping the other mechanics on the building out of work, he at the time not being a “scab,” but a member in good standing of his own union. “He refused to quit when I told him to,” was the complaint made to the court by the foreman carpenter. “The judge took down the statutes, read a list of the6offenses classed under disturbance of the peace, and discharged Forbes!” 6. Unions in some cases have become capitalists. Boss McCarthy approved a strike for an eight-hour day in the San Francisco planing mills. With the money that would have been necessary to pay strike benefits, he built a large new mill, organized a company capitalized at one hundred thousand dollars, much of the stock being taken by the various unions in the building trades. He hired an experienced mill manager, and began operating it on an eight-hour basis, with exclusively union men. The planing-mill employers made overtures for peace, the result of which was an agreement admitting the union mill into the Employers’ Association, and the Building Trades Council agreed to use no material which did not bear the union stamp, or which was not made in an eight-hour mill. “In other words, here was a complete monopoly of the mill-working business, in which the unions actually appeared on both sides of the agreement—on one side as the owners of the second most important mill, and on the other as dictators of the labor employed.” 7. There is to be seen in the unions, “besides the familiar restriction of apprentices, a marked tendency to make it difficult for men to get into the unions. The initiation fee is often a barrier to poor men. Certain unions, like that of the tile-layers and electricians, charge as high as fifty dollars; some also, like that of the engineers, insist upon a difficult examination which, designed with the excellent intention of keeping inefficient workmen out of a dangerous trade, has often been used as a barrier to keep all workmen out, and assist in forming a closer monopoly.” A further manifest tendency is “toward the take-it-easy system so familiar now in England—in effect, a limitation of output.” 8. Unionism is exerting marked political and legislative pull. “We find the labor monopoly pursuing exactly the policy of the trust; last winter the Labor Council maintained a paid lobby in the legislature, of which eight members are already labor unionists. The unions have definitely decided the eight-hour question in California, not by securing the passage of any uncertain and repealable law, but by getting an amendment to the State constitution, and a provision in the city charter limiting the employment of all public service workmen to eight hours, and in the city fixing a minimum wage of two dollars. They have succeeded also in other important legislation.” 9. While adding to their own strength, the unions are decreasing the strength of the State militia, the military force which might be brought against them in time of trouble. The opposition of unionism in San Francisco to the militia “has reduced most of the companies to half normal strength.” Such is the state of things which has been reached through the development of labor unionism in the city of San Francisco; and as Mr. Baker observes, the situation in that city to-day may be the situation in other large cities tomorrow. And when that shall be so, as erelong it evidently will be unless this movement is arrested in its course, government of the people, by the people, for the people, will have given place in this nation to government by labor unionism, and the man who can become boss in the governing general council—the congress, as it were—of the unions, will be the real president of the United States; or, as it might be more correct to say, the monarch of the despotism into which this republic will have been turned. For while the forms of republican government may remain, of what use will all these be to the man who is denied that most fundamental and essential of all privileges,—the right to work to earn a living for himself and his family? Many men will be denied this right if labor unionism gains the ascendancy in this country; of this the plain evidence is already before us. And who, seeing what has already come to pass here, can think it strange that such things as inspired prophecy has specified concerning this country should also come to pass; that in the developments which time shall bring, a power should arise which shall forbid the people to buy or sell unless they shall have received the “mark of the beast”? How much more despotic would this be than what has already been done? Who that believes the Bible can doubt that the specifications of this prophecy will surely be realized? And who can say that the day of these things is now far away?