Imperialism in the Labor Movement
In a San Francisco daily paper of recent date is a picture of “children jeering at non-union teamsters” as they drive along the street. Thus the rising generation is being taught that men have no right to engage in honest labor, unless they belong to some kind of combination that denies them the right to think and act for themselves—some order in which one irresponsible “president” or “delegate” may command thousands of laborers to quit work at a moment’s notice, and his command must be obeyed. When we see the “bone and sinew” of the nation inaugurating the principles of imperialism in their daily labor, and see these principles inculcated in the children of the laboring classes at the instance of their parents, shall we wonder that imperialism is fostered in aristocratic circles, and even in the government itself? How could it be otherwise? In a representative government, in a government by representatives of the people, shall we not expect to find the principle of like people like government? Can the laboring classes reasonably complain of autocratic treatment by employers or by capitalists, when they themselves resort to that principle among themselves, and teach their children to jeer at men who seek to maintain independent action?