A New Industrial Combination
By L. A. S.
A NEW phase of the problem of capital and labor has had its appearance, one of much significance, and which seems destined to be permanent. Capital and labor have at last come together, there is peace between them, but the result is far different from that which had been anticipated from the long-sought union. Capital and labor, organized, have come together on the basis of a mutual agreement to support each other in advancing their own interests at the expense of the unorganized public. There is peace, but it is the peace of a new and deeper conspiracy and a more powerful combine to enforce their arbitrary demands, a peace which is more ruinous to the public than was the previous open warfare. This new phase of the labor problem has not yet become universal, but we are assured that it is rapidly becoming so, and that every prominent city in the land will soon show the conditions which have become established in one or two. Chicago is the city in which this new state of things in the industrial sphere has first grown up. The story of its development there, and of the crushing despotism it now exercises over the residents of that city, is told by Mr. Ray Stannard Baker, in the September issue of McClure's Magazine. The following quotations from Mr. Stannard's articles state the leading features of the situation which has resulted from this new union. First, Mr. Baker speaks of the coal-delivery business, in which there were two unions chiefly concerned—the Coal Teamsters' Union, composed of men who drove the teams, and the Coal Team Owners' Association, composed of men who owned the teams, and sometimes the coal which they carried. He says:— Not so long ago the teamsters and the coal team owners were busily cracking each other's heads. The teamsters wanted more wages, the owners wanted more profits, and Chicago got its coal delivered promptly, at reasonable prices. . . . Some genius—he must have been a genius or he would never have thought of anything so simple—suggested one day that the teamsters and their employers stop shedding each other's blood, and unite. And this is exactly what they did. The two organizations came together and formed a close compact, offensive and defensive—a sort of monopoly new to American life. Instead of fighting each other, to the profit and peace of the on-looking public, they now turned, united, and attacked that public. The teamster salved his sores with a large increase in wages, the coal dealers and the team owners fattened their bank accounts with a large increase in profits, and the defenseless organized public paid the bill; is paying it with groanings to-day. Between these two unions a secret agreement was signed, of an exclusive character. It read:— Party of the first part (the Coal Team Owners' Association) agrees to employ none but members of the Coal Teamsters' Union, Local No. 4, in good standing, and carrying the regular working card of the organization. We (the Coal Teamsters' Union) further agree that we will not work for any firm that does not belong to the Coal Team Owners' Association. Fear of being prosecuted for conspiracy led the parties to change the last clause of this agreement, substituting the following, which means the same thing:— We agree that we will use our best endeavors to have all employers of coal teamsters become members of the Coal Team Owners' Association. Harmless as these words appear, they amount virtually to an exclusive agreement which is the very essence of the new monopolistic combinations. This is what it means: The coal team owners agree to employ none but union men; result—the independent workman, the so-called “scab,” is instantly driven out of existence, and competition on the side of labor is killed. The coal teamsters agree to work for none but members of the Coal Team Owners' Association; result—the independent employer is driven out of existence, and competition on the side of capital is killed. Total result—an absolute monopoly of the industry. Let any man not a member of the union try to drive a coal wagon in Chicago, and see how quickly his head would be broken. Similarly, let any important employer concern, come into Chicago and try to go into the coal business without first making peace with or joining the Coal Team Owners' Association, and see how long it would remain unmashed. As a result the price of coal cartage in Chicago was raised from $1.40 to $2.00 a load, and “no citizen could draw his own coal with his own wagon to his own cellar. The Salvation Army was compelled last winter to get special permission to draw a few loads of coal for the suffering poor.” I asked one of the teamster leaders what was the next step in this campaign of the combination. “We're going to stop delivering coal in bags,” he said. “It's too hard work for the men; the dirty water runs down the back of their necks.” To the suggestion that the public might not like to hire a member of the “coal hustlers” union to do the work formerly done free by the teamsters, the reply of the teamster leader was, “They'll have to like it.” “Under such conditions as these,” says Mr. Stannard, “the public of Chicago gets its coal to-day.” But the coal combination is only one among many. The Milk Dealers' Association—employers—and the Milk Wagon Drivers' Union got together and decided5that one delivery of milk during the day was sufficient for the people of Chicago, without even thinking of consulting the milk buyers. In most districts two deliveries had been the custom for years, but all Chicago was instantly compelled to come down to one delivery a day. On June 5 Dr. Arthur R. Reynolds, commissioner of health, wrote a letter to the Milk Shippers' Union, the Milk Dealers' Association, and the Milk Drivers' Union, the three organizations which control, absolutely, the milk business of Chicago, protesting that a single delivery of milk, in the poorer districts of the city, threatened an increased mortality among the little children. “If the present conditions of supply and delivery continue during the warm weather,” he wrote, “they will have a most serious effect on the child life of the city.” No attention whatever was paid to this letter, and just a month later the weekly bulletin of the Chicago Board of Health had this to say:— “In the last week of June the deaths among infants and young children were 123; this week 172 such deaths were reported, an increase of 40 per cent; and deaths from ‘convulsions’ and the intestinal diseases of children increased 90 per cent over those of the previous week. The ‘one-daily delivery’ of milk has begun to reap its harvest. Even in well-to-do families this thirty-six to sixty hours' old milk can not be kept from souring from one delivery to the next. Herod was more merciful in the method he used in his ‘slaughter of the innocents.’” Some examples are given by Mr. Stannard of the methods by which the combine deals with independent operators. A shipment of eggs having arrived for one Samuel Gates, a commission merchant, and delivery of the same being impossible because the teamsters were striking in sympathy with the freight handlers, Mr. Gates borrowed a wagon and drove over himself to the freight house to get his goods, fearing that they would spoil if left to wait the end of the strike. He was met by Abram Covert, a union teamster, who ordered him away. “You have no business here,” shouted Covert. Gates replied that he was coming in his own wagon to get his own goods that were spoiling. Covert struck him in the jaw and killed him. In the trial which followed, Assistant States Attorney Crowe said:— “Covert as a union man accused Gates of violating union principles, tried him, found him guilty, and executed him, all within a few minutes.” Covert was finally convicted of manslaughter. Builders are held up and robbed by the combine in the following manner:— The bidders on the job meet together, talk over the job, and decide three things in regard to it: first, what it would actually cost, say $40,000; second, what it is worth, that is, what a contractor can do it for and make a fair profit, say $50,000; third, they discuss the character of the architect and of the general contractor and of the owner, whether they are “easy” or not, or careless, or driven by necessity, or whether any of them can be “touched,” deciding finally how much the job would “stand” without raising suspicion, say $70,000; in other words, $20,000 more than the job was “worth.” They then decide which of their number shall actually do the work, a point, be it observed, of minor consequence, and he puts in a bid of $70,000, all the others going higher, up to $100,000 or more. Of course the lowest bidder gets the job. The pool of $20,000 over and above the real value of the work, is divided equally among the members of the ring. The problem of these monopolies is exactly the problem of the American democracy. Here we have a close monopoly in which all health-giving competition is completely shut out. This combination falls into the hands of a dishonest machine, exactly comparable to the machine so dearly familiar to the American political party, with the result that corruption follows, and the public pays the bill. . . . We now have with us the “industrial boss.” He is personified in the walking delegate, in the secretary or manager of the employers' association; for good or for evil, his hand is upon the industry of the nation. The ancient antagonism between labor and capital—what may be called the horizontal division of society—is apparently giving place to a very different—a vertical—division of our industrial life, in which each industry, close-knit, combining both employer and employee, may stand solid against the world. Imagine such a close future combination in some indispensable necessary of life, like bread or brick or coal (the combination in coal is already within view of completeness, and the public has felt the effect of it), what is to prevent that combination from raising prices to a very high point, immensely adding to its own wealth, and taking it out of the public? We have been sighing for labor and capital to get together; we have been telling them that they are brethren, that the interest of one is the interest of the other. Here they are together; are we any better off? And now that capital and labor have “come together” in this unlooked-for and unwelcome way, it is evident that there is no remedy for industrial disturbances in the agreement between the two, as had been supposed. It is evident that the real and only remedy for industrial troubles, the one thing that can bring peace and establish justice, is not any change that can be effected in outward forms, not any mechanical transformation that can be brought about in the industrial world, but only the inward change that is wrought in the heart by Christianity, and the working out of its principles in the individual life. Now, as ever, Christianity is found to be the world's great need, the one thing that will remedy the evils in any of its spheres of life, industrial or social. “Be patient, therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord.” L. A. S.