“A State Greater Than the Union”
Do the people of this country realize that a new government, neither republican nor free, nor created with any regard whatever to the popular rights and liberties, has risen up in this land, and stands ready to supersede in practise, if not in form, the republic founded by Washington and the statesmen of his time? Such is the meaning of the attitude taken by the great army of federated labor toward the non-union shop and workman. The right to work, the right to transact business, is fundamental, and essential to the enjoyment of all other rights or privileges secured by the government; and any power which can take away or prevent the exercise of this right, and does so, nullifies all the essential provisions of republican government, and becomes a government itself. This has been previously pointed out in the Review, and those who may have thought the statements made were too strong, are invited to consider some statements made by a leading American newspaper, the New York Tribune. In the editorial columns of The Tribune of November 21 we note the following:— The American Federation of Labor has decided to supersede the United States government, but it is extremely courteous and conciliatory about it. It does not wish to hurt the feelings of anybody who loves the old order. It will let the Constitution remain as a superfluous relic of a bygone age. Like the Roman emperors in assuming supreme power, it is willing to leave in operation the empty forms of our institutions. It carefully avoids anything like insult to the president. Nevertheless it impressively asserts its paramount authority; and with the calm unobtrusiveness which marks mastery announces that this is to be a government of the labor unions, by the labor unions, for the labor unions. Other people are of no consequence. The Constitution and the laws which give other men the same rights in their relations with public authority as labor unionists are of no consequence. The American Federation of Labor is the sovereign, and obedience to its regulations a more binding obligation than regard for the laws of the United States. No other interpretation can be put upon the condemnation of the “open shop” in government work. This condemnation was passed after long discussion, full explanation by conservative members of the federation of the essential difference between government and private employment, and with a clear understanding that the demand was in direct antagonism of the fundamental American principle of equality before the law. It can mean nothing, then, but that the American Federation of Labor refuses to give its allegiance to the United States; that it is an independent sovereign, privileged to make its own supreme laws for the conduct of its members. That is an attitude which has before now been observed in groups of labor unionists. They show it when they make war upon the national guard or apologize for strike riots. They show it in the tendency to treat a class, or rather that part of a class organized in their membership, as the whole people. Cultivating class feelings, and attempting arbitrarily to impose their will upon others having only the remotest relation to them by boycotts and sympathetic strikes, they try to erect what is not a mere empire within the empire, but an empire above the empire. Yet we have not before seen a great labor organization like the assembled American Federation of Labor deliberately putting itself on record for the subversion of the fundamental principle of the American nation. The “open shop” is fundamental. The private employer can say that no man may work for him who does not belong to a labor union. He could also say that he would employ only Methodists or Swedes or red-haired people. That is his affair. The government of the United States is bound to recognize the equal rights of Methodists and Roman Catholics, Swedes and Irishmen, blondes and brunettes, American Federation of Labor men and “scabs.” The “scab” may be a mean sort of person, unwilling to sacrifice himself for his class, but unless the class is really the State, and has, like the State, the right to demand that its members sacrifice life for it and to punish traitors with death, then the “scab” has a right to live and work. The private employer can hire whom he chooses, and if he wants to exclude the “scab,” he has the privilege; but the State in which the “scab” is a citizen has not, and even if it had, it could not afford to act upon it at the demand of a private organization. That would be making itself the puppet of the private organization, abdicating its functions, and handing over to the labor union the government of the country. President Roosevelt naturally will not do that. He has shown great, and indeed in some quarters greatly criticised, friendship for the labor unionists, but because he will not let them usurp the functions of government and exclude their private enemies from the rights of citizenship, labor union meetings are filled with denunciations of him, and the Federation of Labor declares that no laborers without its label may work for the United States! Surely a State greater than the Union has come upon the scene! In connection with this testimony from The Tribune, it will be fitting to quote by way of illustration some statements from an article in the December number of The Century magazine, entitled “The Daily Walk of the Walking Delegate.” The author gives instances showing how the arbitrary power of the “walking delegate” of the union is often exercised merely to satisfy a personal grudge, or from some other equally base and petty motive, and then quotes this remark addressed to him by a union leader, which is interesting, considered in connection with the persistent demand for the expulsion of Foreman Miller from the government printing office, made by the union on the ground, ostensibly, that Miller is a person of unfit character:— “Nothing in our constitution or by-laws,” said a responsible labor leader to me, “prohibits a pickpocket from being a walking delegate, or a walking delegate from being a pickpocket. If he is caught picking pockets, it is the business of constables and courts to deal with and punish him—not ours. All we ask is that he shall get us more pay for less work.”6 Labor unions have already begun to usurp the functions of the courts. As showing this the following instance is given:— A “walking delegate” who was an anarchist and known as such, one day entered the office of T— Brothers, a Chicago firm. He was thrown out of the office. Thereupon the union to which he belonged “set itself up as a court, imposed a ‘fine’ of one hundred and fifty dollars on the firm, and adjudged that they must give bond in another one hundred and fifty dollars to be deposited with the union, that they would keep the peace!” Another illustrative incident is thus related: Donald Call, “walking delegate,” was asked on the witness stand in court what right he had to demand ten thousand dollars from Colonel Baird and certain Brooklyn (N. Y.) employees. “It was to pay the expenses of the strike in 1894,” he replied. “For a strike eight years back?” “You testified that you first demanded fifty thousand dollars.” “O, that was only a bluff.” “Has your union been in the habit of making these collections?” “Yes, it is done by all unions.” (Italics ours.) Surely from all this no candid person can fail to see that it is not a theory but a condition that confronts us, and one that calls for very sober, serious thought. It is a condition from which the only escape is by the way of God’s special message for this time. L. A. S.