p. 5 | LABOR UNIONISM by W. N. G.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 1, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 48.

LABOR UNIONISM.

By W. N. G.

A contributor to a San Francisco religious journal complains that the church publications are nearly all “non-union,” and endeavors to show that in thus discouraging organized labor they go against the example of Christ, whose “ranks, when the church was first formed, were recruited, not from employers, but employees.”

The deception of this specious plea is the pretense that the unions comprise all the laboring classes, and that every one who does not uphold the “confederacy” idea (condemned in the Scriptures, Isa. 8:9–13) is against those classes. As a matter of fact, the trades unions comprise a small proportion of the rank and file of our race. The masses of laboring people have no more persistent enemy than the unions, who would fain keep every employee out of employment who does not see fit to join a union, if there be a union of employees in his line of work. So bitter is their animosity toward the greater number of laboring men who do not join them, that they would even destroy the business of all who in any way sympathize with or endeavor to assist the poor man who does not belong to a union. And then to plead the example of Christ in such a principle of “confederacy” against the employment of poor men who can not conscientiously join such confederacies, or who could not join if they so desired, is a gross misrepresentation of the cosmopolitan life of the Saviour.

The incongruity of an industrial institution being controlled by its employees is one of the leading principles of unionism, and this control never for an instant considers what the institution can afford to do. There may be a dull season for months, or even a year, when proprietors lose money in their business; there often come times when they take work at prices barely covering expense in order to keep their hands employed; but union employees rarely or never dream of sharing any of the sacrifice by a reduction of wages, even temporarily. The stereotyped reply to proprietors under such circumstances is, “If you can not make money, you had better go out of business.”

It is complained, and justly, that capital oppresses labor by taking advantage of its necessities. The unions, while making this complaint, aim to justify themselves in working on exactly the same principle. Of course this is the way of the world, and we do not expect anything but selfishness and retaliation in the world. Capital and labor are on a par in this respect, so far as the principle is concerned, the former having the advantage generally in powers of endurance in a direct contest. But to expect Christianity to enter a race on the principle of retaliation is to mistake its character.

The unions, practically, do not wage their battle against capital so much as against the larger class of laboring men and women who do not or can not join them. They say to these poorer classes, “If you do not join us, you shall not work at all; and we will mob you if you attempt to work for any one who endeavors to throw off the yoke of our control; and if any one who refuses to be controlled by us gives you employment, and you would prefer to work for less than our schedule rather than to beg, we will use our utmost effort to destroy the business that gives you a living.”

When union men come to pleading the example of Christ, they should remember that He never taught a doctrine of coercion. He always taught the equality of all men; no individual, or corporation, or union, can find any precedent in the life or words of Christ for oppression of any class, rich or poor. No act or word of Jesus ever tended to deny the right of any employer to employ whomsoever he would, or the right of any man or woman to work for any one, on any stipulated terms. The theory that the non-union worker has not a right to earn a living, and that any legitimate institution has not a right to employ non-union help at any price which the business can afford to pay, is not a Christian theory; and no one can justly cite anything in the life of Christ in support of such a theory. The effort of the unions to traduce, boycott, hinder, or destroy any business because the union can not control it, is simply so much effort to starve all employers and employees whom they can not coerce. To expect any man or institution to place his or its business absolutely in the hands of other parties who have no interests but their own to subserve, is just as tyrannical as any scheme the most unscrupulous corporation ever conceived for the oppression of employees. The manifest purpose of each union is to confine the business with which it is connected to limits which it can control—in common parlance, to “corner” the labor in that line. This is just the principle on which the great “trusts” are conducted. The trade union and the trust are twins in principle. Both are alike oppressive of the laboring poor, but Christianity has naught in common with any oppression.

W. N. G.