4 Struggle for Control
By L. A. S.
THE great change which has come over the labor question in this country recently is shown by the fact that while the wage question was the chief point at issue when organization into unions was begun a few years ago, to-day this question has but little concern with that for which the labor unions are contending. With a realization of power has come a broadening of ambition, and to-day the unions aspire to the control of the great industries of the country, not only in respect of wages, but of all other features. This question of control is the present issue between employers and unions. A recent editorial in the New York Times, calling attention to an article by Mr. William E. Walling in the World’s Work, says of the present main issue in the industrial conflict:— The question of wages enters very little into the matter. Of scarcely greater concern is the question of hours of labor. Expressed in the simplest terms, the issue between employers generally, and trades unions as they average, is whether5hours of labor and output shall be in inverse ratio to wages paid. Mr. Walling tells of a foundry owner in St. Louis who took a contract to cast some rough iron plates, and based his estimate upon the conviction that a workman of ordinary skill could mold and pour about fourteen in a day. The man who was first selected to do this work made but one in a day, and spoiled that. He was discharged as inefficient, and the work given to the best molder in the shop. He also finished but one in a day, excusing his inefficiency on the ground that the union rule was that the first man on the job “set the pace.” In the face of such conditions as this would indicate, the question of wages is without significance. Mr. W. H. Pfahler, of the National Stove Founders’ Association, gives in few words the reason why manufacturers who believe in high wages object to the union control of industries: “The unions define the workman’s rights, but say nothing of his duties.”
The struggle for control is now raging around the question of the “open shop.” A movement for an open shop, that is, for the right to employ non-union workmen, has been instituted by employers, who have banded together for mutual support against union dictation. Since the year 1900, when the first employers’ association was organized in Dayton, Ohio, such associations have been springing up in various States, and these were federated together last fall at Chicago, into the Citizens’ Industrial Association, which has branches in St. Louis, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati. A summary by Mr. Walling of what has been accomplished under this movement says:— Every city where the unions have acted in concert has now its employers’ or manufacturers’ association or its Citizens’ Alliance. The movement has been nationalized in the Manufacturers’ Association, the Anti-Boycott Association, and the Citizens’ Industrial Association of America.
“It is significant,” says the New York Times, “that whereas the old trade associations were generally favorable to the unions, the new national associations, and most of those formed to protect local interests, are hostile to them. There are a great many reasons for this, the chief of which is undoubtedly the disposition of the unions to oppose every measure to which employers are actuated by the instinct of self-protection. They have used the powerful machinery of the boycott to destroy whatever they could not control, and have forced the representative men of every community which is sustained by productive or distributive industry to say in effect what was lately said by the head of one of the largest business houses in the United States: ‘Some day the unions and the business community will have to fight it out to see who owns Chicago.’” Such, unfortunately, is the prospect before us,—that of a fight “to a finish” between the business communities and the unions, to see who owns the country. How much better if the contending parties would adjust their relations by the application of the principles of the Prince of Peace. L. A. S.