What Eminent Men Have Said on the Principles Involved.
(Senator Marcus A. Hanna, Chairman of Republican National Committee, and President of the National Civic Federation, Chicago, Oct. 15, 1903.)
The industrial problem presents the greatest question before the American people to-day—aye, before the whole civilized world. (Utterances from Thomas Jefferson.)
The foundation on which all [our constitutions] are built is the natural equality of man, the denial of every pre-eminence but that annexed to legal office, and particularly the denial of a pre-eminence by birth. An equal application of law to every condition of man is fundamental.
To unequal privileges among members of the same society the spirit of our nation is, with one accord, adverse.
The true foundation of republican government is in the equal rights of every citizen, in his person and property, and in their management.
Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political, I deem essential principles of our government. MANHOOD MORE THAN MACHINERY.
(From Bishop Henry Codman Potter.)
The wonders which mechanical appliances, in connection with manufactures, and, indeed, with almost all forms of industry, have achieved; the greater cheapness and the greater consumption which have followed upon this, the increased incentives to trade and commerce which have been a result of both; these, it must be owned, have dazzled the eyes and blinded the judgment of men as to their effects upon that which is more precious than machinery, or manufactures, or wealth, or national expansion, and that is manhood; and especially to the well-being of that vast majority of the race which, under the most civilized conditions of life, must always mainly earn its bread with its hands. (Dr. Lyman Abbott, Editor of the "Outlook.")
If any section of society endeavors to prevent any man from working, and from enjoying the product of his work, that section of society is unjust. If any organization undertakes to prevent any man from working, when he will, where he will, for whom he will, and at what wages he will, that organization violates the essential rights of labor. It is not primarily the enemy of capital; it is primarily the enemy of labor; for every man has a right to work, and every man has a right to the products of industry. (Archbishop Ireland.)
While the right to enter upon a strike is and must be conceded as a right belonging to the personal freedom of workingmen, this much must ever be demanded, and in the name of the same principle of freedom under which the men act who refuse to work; that they should [who?] cease to work must in no way interfere with the liberty of others who may wish to work. The personal freedom of the individual citizen is the most sacred and precious inheritance of America. The Constitution and the laws authorize it. The spirit of the country proclaims it; the prosperity of the people, the very life of the nation, require it. PERSONAL LIBERTY AND THE CONSTITUTION.
(Arthur Twining Hadley, President of Yale University.)
The Constitution of the United States, so far from sanctioning unlimited rights of the majority against the minority, is filled from beginning to end with restrictions upon the exercise of such rights—restrictions devised in the interest of personal liberty. The Constitution, indeed, provides for elections to decide who shall govern; but it in nowise encourages the intrusion of the officials thus elected into those fields of legislation where class and personal interests are arrayed one against the other. (President Roosevelt.)
No man is a good American—I could put it stronger—the worst enemy of American institutions is the man who seeks to excite one set of Americans against their fellow-Americans. And it matters nothing whether the appeal is made in the fancied interest of a class, of a creed, or of a section, the man is a traitor to our institutions and spirit who makes it. We can make this government a success only by proceeding in accordance with its fundamental proposition, and treating each man, Northerner or Southerner, Easterner or Westerner, whatever his birthplace, whatever his creed, his occupation, his means, as a MAN, and as nothing else. (Hon. Carroll D. Wright, United States Commissioner of Labor.)
After many years of investigation into the social, moral, and industrial condition of the people, I came to the conclusion that, in the adoption of the philosophy of the religion of Christ as a practical creed for the conduct of business, there was to be found the surest and speediest solution of the difficulties which excite the minds of men, and which lead many to think social, industrial, and political revolution is at hand. AS TO STRIKES AND BOYCOTTS
(Mr. John Mitchell, in copyrighted article, entitled "The Coal Strike," in "McClure's Magazine" of December, 1902.)
I am opposed to strikes as I am opposed to war. As yet, however, the world, with all its progress, has not made war impossible; neither, I fear, considering the nature of men and their institutions, will the strike disappear in many years to come. . . . The State by its laws has fixed the rules of contest, and both parties should rigidly keep the law. If they fail to do so, the government should compel them by the use of all the force necessary. . . . The operators taught us the boycott by first using the blacklist; but that is beside the point. I oppose and shall oppose any illegal boycott carried out by threats or intimidation of any kind. But when a great contest has been forced upon us, I favor recognizing friends as friends and opponents as opponents. (From the same article as the above, by Mr. John Mitchell.)
Since labor organizations are here, and here to stay, the managers of employing corporations must choose what they are to do with them. They may have the union as a present, active, and unrecognized force, possessing influence for good or evil, but without direct responsibility; or they may deal with it, give it responsibility as well as power, define and regulate that power, and make the union an auxiliary in the preservation of stability and discipline and the amicable adjustment of all local disputes. Where employers have accepted the union in this spirit, they have found it easy to deal with, and a powerful co-operating agency for good, and both owners and workmen have advanced in reasonableness and mutual helpfulness. The union can no more be crushed than the "trust" can be crushed. The two must work side by side, and hand in hand go peaceably along together. Society's efforts should be directed, not to crushing combinations of capital or combinations of labor, but to preservation of the good ones which wholesomely do their share of the world's work, and to regulation and reformation of those which show bad tendencies. Above all, the leaders of combinations of both capital and labor should prove to the country that they are able to get along together in peace and harmony, so that disastrous and destructive quarrels between them may not provoke society into saying, "A plague o' both your houses." NO RIGHTS NOT BELONGING TO OTHERS.
(Judge Hammond, United States Circuit Court for the Western District of Tennessee, Bulletin of the Dept. of Labor, March, 1902.)
The strikers can not have, under the law of equal rights, a liberty of contracting as they please, working when they please, and quitting when they please, which does not belong to the non-union men and employers. (Hon. E. J. Livernash, San Francisco "Examiner," Nov. 30, 1902.)
Governments are instituted to protect the weak from the strong, the poor from the rich, and to promote the true happiness of society. INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY AMERICAN.
(James Bryce, "American Commonwealth," chapter XCI.)
Everything tended to make the United States in this respect [individualism] more English than England, for the circumstances of colonial life, the process of settling the western wilderness, the feelings evolved by the struggle against George III., all went to intensify individualism, . . . the pride in personal freedom. And from that day to this, individualism . . . and the pride in personal freedom have been deemed by Americans not only their choicest, but their peculiar and exclusive, possession.
But Mr. Bryce also mentions the fact that latterly—
"The power of groups of men organized by incorporation as joint stock companies, or of small knots of rich men acting in combination, has developed with unexpected strength in unexpected ways, overshadowing individuals, and even communities, and showing that the very freedom of association which men sought to secure by law when they were threatened by the violence of potentates, may, under the shelter of the law, ripen into a new form of tyranny." UNCHRISTIAN—THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CHURCH.
(From Dr. John C. Peters, Pastor St. Michael's Episcopal Church, New York City, September, 1901.)
Tremendous rush and push, every man trying to get for himself all he can, shouldering, jostling, throwing the weaker ones down, crowding them out, trampling them underfoot. . . .
The bulk are trying to get the money—some few so that they may keep body and soul together; the greater part that they may have a little more than their neighbors, that they may be able to dress better, to live better, to be counted better.
The measure of social worth in the community, and largely in the Christian church—I am speaking of the great body of its professing members—is the amount of the money which a man possesses.
There are certain rules which must be observed in this struggle. A man may trample others underfoot in this struggle; he may jostle them aside; but he must do it in a particular way (and it is an advantage that there are rules). The burglar who undertakes to appropriate other people's money by breaking into the house at night, the pickpocket who undertakes to appropriate it by taking your watch or your purse, unknown to you—these are universally condemned.
But the man who can devise a scheme for getting your money out of your safe into his, or out of your pocket into his, without any value rendered, through some ingenious scheme of so-called finance, he is admitted into social circles; he may be a pillar of the church as well as society.
He is a thief as much as the other man, but he is not recognized as such by society, or even by his own conscience.
The man who is caught gambling in a poolroom by a raid of the Committee of Fifteen is ashamed to have his name known. The proprietor of the place tries to keep incognito, because society universally condemns such gambling.
But the gamblers who gamble for tens and hundreds of thousands on Wall Street, the brokers who keep the poolrooms in which they gamble, are not ashamed to have their names known, to put up signs over their offices; and the money which they make is accepted without question in society and by the church. . . .
It was Mr. Choate who said, not many years since at a public dinner in this city, that the churches insist upon a higher code of morals in the control of business corporations; that they must expel from their membership and hold up to the opprobrium and contumely of society, officers and directors of corporations who are guilty of political corruption. Until the Christian church and Christian churches at large have reached that standard, we can not expect to obtain a correction of this evil. . . .
The trouble is that society, although calling itself loosely Christian, is not organized on the lines of the teaching of Christ. The society of Christian12(Continued on page 12.) What Eminent Men Have Said on the Principles Involved.
(Continued from page 9.)
countries, of Christian churches, is very far remote from Christianity in its social and economic conditions in the application of the teaching of Christ to its business and its society relations. Our society, using the word in its narrower sense, has as its foundation, as its main principle, in actual practise, a definitely anti-Christian doctrine. It is not the man or woman who labors and toils that is honored socially, but the man who does not need the labor, and who does not labor and toil to serve his brother men and women as Christ served. The standard of social worth is, with us, not what a man or a woman has done to serve his or her fellows, but what a man or woman has gotten for himself or herself, or, worse still, what a man or woman's ancestors—the more remote the better—have gotten and stored up and passed on to them.
The whole thing is un-Christian, anti-Christian. (Mr. Geo. F. Baer, President Philadelphia and Reading Railway, Feb. 12, 1903.)
In general, no one denies the right of men to organize for any lawful purpose, but the right to organize and the power of the organization when organized must still be governed and controlled by the general law of the land under which our individual and property rights are protected. We concede to organized labor the same rights that we claim for organized capital. Both must keep within the law. There can not be one law for citizens and corporations and another for labor organizations. . . .
We can not delegate to the miners, or any other labor union, the right to determine who shall be our employees. The law of Pennsylvania and the charter of the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company in express terms give to the president and directors the power of appointing all such officers, agents, or employees as they deem necessary. We have the right to employ any honest man without discrimination as to religion, nationality, or membership in labor organizations. This is a right we will not surrender. We do not object to our employees joining labor organizations. We will not agree to turn over the management of our business to a labor organization because some of our employees belong to it. (Bishop H. C. Potter.)
Brute force is the poorest of all arguments to be addressed to a reasoning being, whether it consists in one man's shutting a shop door in another man's face, or in the other man's breaking the skull of a "scab" with a brickbat or a club. AN ATTACK ON THE REPUBLIC.
(From the "Argonaut," Aug. 31, 1903, on the attitude of some labor unions in forcing members to quit the militia.)
In a despotism the law is not the supreme authority. The despot stands above all law, and is accountable to no one. But in a republic law is supreme. No man is too high and none too low to be equally subject to law's beneficent or maleficent sway. Law without power of enforcement is void. In this republic, power of enforcement resides primarily in the civic officials, and ultimately in the military arm. Any act designed to weaken the arm that executes law is a blow at the law itself. Since government rests upon law, such an act is a blow at the government. Workingmen in American labor unions are to-day engaged in inciting, permitting, or performing coercive acts designed to render the National Guard powerless to perform its proper function of upholding law and preserving order. It is our earnest hope, our sincere belief, that such workingmen know not what they do. If these acts are performed knowingly, then their authors are enemies of the Government of the United States. Such acts are treasonable. . . . Such men are traitors.
President Theodore Roosevelt is a fearless man. More than once he has spoken loudly and boldly in moments of national stress. . . . Fraught with greater portents of evil than the circumstances which moved him to these declarations is the present insidious attack on the republic. Believing, as we do, that it is undertaken by workingmen in ignorance of its profoundly treasonable character, we hold that a solemn word of warning from one high in authority would bring to them a realization of their false position, and check, if not end, this traitorous movement. (From President Roosevelt to a committee of labor leaders who asked him to discharge a non-union man, Miller, from the government bookbindery.)
In dealing with it [this case], I ask you to remember that I am dealing purely with the relation of the government to its employees. I must govern my action by the laws of the land, which I am sworn to administer, and which differentiate any case to which the Government of the United States is a party from all other cases whatsoever. These laws are enacted for the benefit of the whole people, and can not and must not be construed as permitting discrimination against some of the people. I am President of all the people of the United States, without regard to creed, color, birthplace, occupation, or social condition. My aim is to do equal and exact justice among them all. In the employment and dismissal of men in the government service, I can no more recognize the fact that a man does or does not belong to a union as being for or against him than I can recognize the fact that he is a Protestant or Catholic, a Jew or a Gentile, as being for or against him. (Mr. John Mitchell, at the Civic Federation Conference, Chicago, Oct. 15, 1903, "Inter-Ocean.")
The union workmen who refuse to work with non-unionists do not say in so many words that the employer shall not engage non-union workmen. What the unionists in such cases do is merely to stipulate as a condition that they shall not be obliged to work with men who, as non-unionists, are obnoxious, just as they shall not be obliged to work in a dangerous or unsanitary shop for unduly long hours, or at insufficient wages.
Of course, where unions are strong, and include all the best men in the industry, this condition amounts to a very real compulsion. The compulsion, however, is merely the result of the undoubted legal right of workmen to decide upon what terms they are willing to give their labor, and the employer is always—theoretically, and often practically—in a position where he may make his choice between union and non-union labor.
To refuse to work with non-union men is to no greater and to no less extent compulsion than for a life or fire insurance company to refuse certain classes of risks, for a church to refuse membership to certain classes of people, or for any association whatsoever to set conditions under which it will have dealings with certain persons. There is, it must be admitted, a certain danger apart from antagonism of employers in compulsory unionizing of shops. The union button does not make a unionist at heart. An enemy is sometimes more formidable within the lines than on the outside. The presence of a few anti-unionists at trade-union meetings may enable employers to inform themselves of the plans of the organization, and thus cripple the union more effectively than if the avowed friends were open enemies.
I believe that trade unions have a perfect legal and moral right to exclude non-unionists, but that this right should be exercised with the utmost care, and only after persuasion has been tried and failed. I also believe that, with the growth of trade unionism in the United States, the exclusion of non-unionists will become more complete. (Mr. Thomas F. Woodlock, Editor of the "Wall Street Journal," in reply to Mr. Mitchell's argument above, Chicago, Oct. 15, 1903, "Inter-Ocean.")
The question of the open shop resolves itself into whether associated labor has the right to aim at monopoly of employment for its members. The union notifies the employer that he must choose between all union labor and all non-union labor, and it notifies the non-union man that he may not work alongside the union man. It explicitly denies the right of the employer to hire whomsoever he pleases, and it explicitly denies the right of the non-union man to work for whomsoever he pleases.
Leaving out of consideration the matter of violence—which, while it is, unfortunately, at times a very practical question, is not necessarily part of the principle of "closed shops"—it seems to me clear that the principle of "closed shops" is as complete and perfect an example of restraint of trade in labor as any one could wish. No more direct denial of the principle of equality in opportunity could possibly be imagined than denial of the "open-shop" principle. If associated labor is justified in aiming at a monopoly in opportunity by monopoly of the market for labor, then there can be no just ground for preventing associ- ated capital in any form from aiming at a monopoly of the market for its products.
Why is it not restraint of trade for associated laboring men to agree not to work with somebody else, or for somebody else? Individuals may do things as individuals.
When the union denies the principle of the "open shop," it enunciates a principle of monopoly, relying for its enforcement either upon the necessity of the employer or the use of coercion toward the non-union man. (John S. Stevens, President National Association of Builders, in "Independent," June 25, 1903.)
The present stage of the danger is different from almost all others in that it has passed all questions of wages, of just treatment, hours of labor, or any other matter properly within the purview of trades-union action. The agitation of to-day ignores the very groundwork of men's rights to their property and labor.
The present outlook in relation to trades unions is serious. No assault is intended upon the principle of unionism; but no one knows where power unrestrained will lead. Business men in union are far more powerful than laboring men, and can defeat their most formidable uprisings. The consciousness of power which the demonstration affords will cause, in some minds, a desire for reprisals for injuries inflicted by brutal and unjust strikes in the past. Should they come, it will be no justification to say that the workmen, by their arbitrary acts, have brought retribution upon themselves. The thing to be considered will then be whether the very independence of American labor is not itself in danger. The backward swing of the pendulum, from the present excesses of the unions, may be far; those who wish well for their country and its people must hope sincerely that it will not result in a permanent lowering of the tone of labor in the United States.
The unions, by meeting the situation in a spirit of fairness, by the abolition of violence, of boycotts, and the sympathetic strike, can avert their danger. (Wm. H. Pfahler, former President National Founders' Association, Philadelphia, quoted in "Inter-Ocean" of Oct. 17, 1903.)
I stand for the open shop, because it is the freedom of the individual, because there is no condition by which any body of men in this country can gather to themselves a power or a right that each individual shall not enjoy. Suppose I want to earn my living in a way that seems best fitted to me, in a manner that seems best fitted to me, in a place in which I can best do it, have I the liberty? Who says I have not?—Only the labor unions. INCITING TO CLASS HATRED.
(San Francisco "Examiner.")
Men can not stand alone. They must combine to enforce their rights and advance their interests. The individual who refuses to join his fellows for the common benefit, so far from being the "hero" that President Eliot, of Harvard, acclaims him, is the hut burner of Mr. Gompers' illustration—a source of danger to his fellows, a betrayer of the common interest. He deserves no respect or good will from workingmen, and is entitled to no sympathy whatever from anybody when he finds himself disliked, looked down upon, and shunned by union men. (The late Chief Arthur, of the Locomotive Engineers.)
It is optional with a man whether he become a member of our organization or not. We offer no incentive; we place no obstacles in his way. If our record as an organization is not sufficient to convince him that it is to his interest to become a member thereof, he remains out. THE TRUE AND ONLY CORRECTIVE.
(From a sermon on "Work," by E. A. Healy, D. D., in University Methodist Church, Los Angeles.)
The true and only corrective of the abuses above named [in the labor world] is a right public opinion. The sanity of a Christian civilization in which conscience is enthroned on both sides of the line dividing capital and labor will alone perpetuate our institutions.