BEYOND THE TYRANNY OF TRADES-UNION.
[WE are not objecting to trades-union on rational, legitimate lines, but to the tyranny and intolerance of trades-union, and intolerance and tyranny in union or trust. For years we have pointed out the trend in American politics, in American legislation, in American society. More and more is public opinion as expressed in its representatives turning from true principles of liberty, and bending a pliant neck to the demands of social and semi-religious organization. The prophecy of God foretells the ultimate—persecution in religious matters. Read it in Rev. 13:11–16. And then read the following editorial from the Chicago Chronicle of Feb. 14, 1904.] What Buttonism May Lead to.
One would think that among the membership of labor-unions, which embraces a great many intelligent and patriotic citizens, there would come some such self-questioning as this at times:— If Americans can be intimidated in industrial matters, why not in matters of religion and conscience? If Americans can be persecuted for working as their own inclinations and interests dictate, why not for voting in obedience to the same impulses? If Americans may be beaten or killed for not joining a labor-union and contributing to its treasury, why not for failing to join a church or a secret society? If Americans and their families can be ostracized, starved, and otherwise injured in person or estate, because they do not wear a button of a certain kind, why not because of their race, their nativity, or their color? In a word, if some American principles are not recognized in organized labor, which avows a purpose and a hope to control government and society, what reason is there to suppose that any American principle will be respected if organized labor shall succeed in establishing the policies that it contends for? These are not idle questions. They go to the root of things. They bring to the well-informed mind recollections of the ages of proscription through which humanity passed by toil and suffering to the privileges which even now only a small portion of it enjoys. They suggest most forcibly the barbarities practised at this moment in many quarters of the earth where all labor is oppressed and where organized labor has not yet made bold to assail the rights of others. The names given to things often confuse and mislead the well disposed. Religious persecutions, whether directed against saints or bandits, have nearly always proceeded on some accusation against the victims calculated to inflame the minds and harden the hearts of the most circumspect. Political proscription is nearly always based upon an indictment of a whole people, which takes no exceptions into account. Men of unfavored races or colors have been hated and hunted, not on specific charges against themselves, but on sweeping generalizations intended to appeal only to passion and prejudice. We may see the same inclination to-day in the spirit which controls so many of the leaders of organized labor. Ostensibly our unions are formed for the purpose of advancing the cause of labor. They notoriously embrace only a small minority of the men and women who work for a living, and, in the nature of things, they can not hope to include them all. They set out, in the first place, to give their members an exaggerated idea of their own importance. In the second place, they teach dislike, antipathy, and hatred of all who have not assumed the obligations of membership. Since no persecution for the sake of religion, race, or politics is entered upon without long preparation by slander and personal altercation, so the intolerance of organized labor does not find full expression until an imaginary class known as "scabs," to which may be attributed all the crimes in the industrial calendar, has been created, and against which the wrath of the organization can be directed. In spite of the rage which the name itself engenders, the "scab" is no more an outlaw and an outcast than the most arrogant member of a union. He is an average American citizen. Man for man the "scabs" will compare favorably with the gentlemen whose names are carried on the rolls of the unions. No man who can secure a sure passport to polite industrial society by the simple process of joining a union and paying dues—no man whose uncleanness can be washed away so quickly and so cheaply, can be such a leper inherently, as classification among the scabs is supposed to make him. American citizens are persecuted as "scabs;" then, falsely and maliciously, just as are the Jews in Russia and the Christians in Armenia, on lies; by hate and by prejudice; as a result of passion; and in consequence of wholesale indictments having no basis of fact and being entirely beside the real issue. American citizens, who have a right to be "scabs," and the majority of whom in labor-union parlance are "scabs," are oppressed not so much because they do not belong to unions as because they have been identified with an offensive epithet freely applied to all whom the leaders of the persecution would destroy. Calling a man non-union excites nobody. Calling him a "scab" stirs multitudes to riot and tumult. It is the duty of the authorities, of course, to enforce the laws and to protect all citizens in their undoubted rights, but, whether this is done or not, can the men of good conscience in the labor-unions sanction a movement which may at any time be turned upon themselves? Persecution begets persecution. One violation of the law leads to others. There is popular retrogression as well as popular progress. Governments become more arbitrary as well as more liberal. Freedom won at a great price is easily and quickly lost. Rights are taken away as often as they are bestowed. Encroachments upon one man's liberties always pave the way for the invasion of another's. The spirit which is now unpleasantly conspicuous in the labor movement is at war with the elementary privileges of freemen. If it be not checked in industry, we may look for its introduction into matters of religion and politics, into matters of race and nationality. Men who submit to a tyranny in their bread-winning need not be surprised if they fall victims to an all-embracing absolutism. Neither political nor religious liberty can long survive the loss of industrial liberty. Let the misguided Americans, who, in silence assent to outrage and murder, think of these things.