TRUST AND UNION | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 6, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 32.

TRUST AND UNION.

RATHER it is trust versus union. It is a sad, appalling condition, the fearful strife upon which the two great forces of capital and labor are in earnest entering. Sometimes the victory has rested upon the side of union labor, generally on the side of capital; but in all cases with tremendous loss to both,—loss in sympathy with and influence over each other, and in constantly-increasing antagonism. In the case of the trust magnate the feeling grows into contemptuous disregard of the "working class;" in the case of the labor unionist the feeling grows into enmity to and hatred of the rich, and with many unionists, hatred of all who do not positively stand with them.

There is another class, lovers of free thought and action, who believe in neither the trust regime nor the labor unions. They refuse to ally themselves with either. Many are business men, and employers of labor. Many are laboring men. Another part are small tradesmen or farmers, who conduct their own business as God gives them wisdom. These men feel free to deal with any one who offers best conditions of trade. They do not ask a merchant or manufacturer if his store or factory is unionized. They do not ask a laborer if he is a union man. Can he do his work? Are wages and time satisfactory? Farther than this they do not trouble themselves. They do not believe in being coerced by the trust even tho they are compelled to pay it tribute in many things. They do not believe in being coerced by a labor union, or in endeavoring to coerce the union. They believe in freedom for the man; in persuasion, not coercion.

The labor unionists are making a sad mistake in the coercive, tyrannical measures they are employing. They are sowing constant seed of discontent, of hatred, of tyranny; and every coercive, tyrannical measure they adopt waters and fosters the evil in their own hearts and lives. They are getting to that place in thus doing that they will recognize no rights of any man unless he will join the union in some of its branches or affiliations. Surely it would seem that every American union man could see that such a course was un-American, and that every Christian man among them could see that such a course is unchristian in principle and operation. According to the principles of true Americanism and Christianity, it is the MAN that is to be granted equal rights to differ with us as well as to agree; and that the exercise of the right to differ on matters of policy and expediency shall not in any way deprive him of his rights of citizenship.

These principles are utterly ignored by labor unions in the attempt, and where strong enough in the accomplishment, to crush out all non-union laborers, even tho these men are good citizens, good neighbors, good Christians, fathers and husbands, with wife and family dependent upon them for support.

The other day a man who conducts a printing house not under the control of labor unions was chosen grand marshal of the Fourth of July celebration at San Francisco. The labor-unions protested, the man was set aside. The Winters Express says: "Talk about tyranny, could there be any worse form of it than that which makes a man join a society or be debarred from acting in a public capacity when he is called to do so by a majority of the citizens?" And is it not true? Suppose that a union man had been appointed, and all the non-union men should so protest; would it not be considered persecution?

Another case: we learn from the New York World that a Union Labor Church has been organized in the Indiana gas belt, "from which the rich are to be rigorously excluded." Upon this the World says:—

If the object of all agitation, discussion and policy is to keep separate and to force into wider separation the elements whose united endeavor is necessary to the complete benefit of humanity, then it is right to meet exclusion with exclusion—or fancied intolerance with intolerance. In that case it will not be in the church and in society alone that little groups will presently be hustling off, each to play in its own high-fenced yard.

The Marion and Grant County laborers complain that no inducements are offered to them to attend the regular churches. And so they build their own place of assembly, and offer every inducement to other church-goers to stay away. Is it not true that their iron would strike deeper if they were to open wide the doors? if they were to invite the well-to-do to come freely and see how, even with few goods to their store, they can practise as well as preach the Golden Rule?

It is one grand blessed thing to the Christian who loves freedom (and what Christian does not?) to know that in God’s realm of giving and blessing, there are no human organizations to come between himself and his Creator. God’s water of life is not mixed with Standard Oil. His law bears the signature of no trust magnate. It is not bound with American Federation steel. His Gospel does not bear syndicate stamp nor union label. God in all His wisdom, knowledge, goodness, and power, meets us as individual men, union or non-union, white or black or yellow or brown, convicts us as individual men, cleanses us and accepts us as individual men, builds us up as individual men, and associates us in work together as individual men, meets us as individual men in the judgment, but never asks us whether we bear the union label. His question is, Are we clothed in His righteousness? We appeal to our fellow-laborers, union and non-union, to think of these things, and live and act as Christ would, and as we will wish we had when we stand in the white light of His visible presence.