_Girard, Kansas, March, 1908._
* * * * *
This appeal is made particularly to railway employes, among whom I began
my career as a wage-worker, with whom I spent twenty-seven consecutive
years—the complete span of my young manhood—as co-employe, labor
organizer and union official, and for whom I shall have an affectionate
regard of peculiar tenderness that will end only with my days.
The very relation I bear them inspires me with the liveliest sense of
obligation to that great body of brave and brawny men whose hands, as
hard as their hearts are soft, first grasped my own in welcome as a
recruit to the army of toil; whose honest faces, beaming with approval,
first warmed my heart and stirred my blood, and whose applause, the
first I ever knew, fired my boyhood years with high resolves. In every
dark and trying hour these comrades of my early years stood staunch and
true and pushed me on and raised me up that others might see my face and
know my name, while they remained unnoticed, unapplauded, the soldiers
of obscurity, the rank and file, the lower class, the common herd, who
made and move this world and who should be, and yet will be, its ruling
aristocracy.
* * * * *
I believe it can be said with truth, as I am sure it can without vanity,
that I personally know, and am personally known to, more railroad
employes than any other man in the country; and with equal truth, I
believe, that the great majority who know me—better than this, the whole
body of them, with but few exceptions—feel kindly toward me, and may be
claimed my personal friends.
In all my travels—and I have been moving almost continually these twelve
years past, over all the railways of the continent, especially since the
railway corporations forcibly divorced me from their employes—in all my
travels I have never made a trip, nor ever expect to, without feeling
many times the touch of kindness, oft in stealth, of my old comrades of
railroad days.
It is not, therefore, because of any lessening of our mutual regard that
I am no longer in active touch with them, but because of the stern
decree of fate which commanded me to go where they might not yet follow
for a while, but where they will be found in good time, united with
their class, and battling manfully for freedom.
* * * * *
I could yet be the “grand” officer of a railway brotherhood, have a
comfortable office, a large salary, plenty of friends, including railway
and public officials, and read my praises as an “ideal labor leader” in
capitalist newspapers, but my convictions would not allow it, and so I
had to resign, and having no choice about it, I am entitled to no credit
for quitting a “good” position and plunging recklessly into “a career of
folly, failure and disgrace.”
It was not easy to resign, and I had to insist upon it in a way that
hurt me as much as it did the loyal brothers from whom I had to tear
myself apart; and it has been the first and almost the only case of
voluntary resignation from a similar organization.
* * * * *
I had been with the Brotherhood of locomotive firemen almost from its
birth; had organized the Brotherhood of Railroad Brakemen, now the
Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen; had helped to organize the Switchmen’s
Mutual Aid Association, the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen, the Order of
Railway Telegraphers, and other labor unions, and was now to organize,
with half a dozen others, the American Railway Union, to embrace all
railway workers, so that the engine wiper and section man might come in
for their share of consideration as well as the engineer and conductor.
There is where I broke with the railway officials. They were perfectly
willing that we should have a firemen’s union, but they were not willing
for us to have a union that would unite all employes in the service in
the equal interest of all.
* * * * *
This much by way of introduction. Now a word as to the purpose of this
writing. I have something to say to the railway employes of America. It
may not be considered as amounting to much, but I think it of importance
enough to ask the railway workers to follow me through with patience,
and think over what I have to say at their own leisure.
* * * * *
You railroad men are told that I am too radical, that I am dangerous,
that as a “leader” I am a failure, and a good many other things, but the
time will come when you will know that from first to last I was true to
you, and because of that very fact the corporations you work for warn
you against me; and you will furthermore know that, for the opposite
reason, most of your present leaders are not true to your best
interests. They are “popular” with the public, and your railway
officials sing their praises on every occasion and tell you over and
again how wise and good these “leaders” are and how lucky you are and
how proud you should be to command their valuable services.
* * * * *
Time will tell and I can wait. I am not courting your flattery nor
evading your blame. I am seeking no office; aspiring to no honors; have
no personal ax to grind. But I have something to say to you and shall
look straight into your eyes while saying it. I shall speak the truth—as
I see it—no more and no less, in kindness and without malice or
resentment.
I should tell you what I think you ought to know though all of you
turned against me and despised me.
* * * * *
I am not wiser than you, but have had more experience with capitalists
and more chance to study their system of fleecing and fooling labor than
most of you. I am not better than you—not so good, in fact—for there is
no better man on earth than an honest workingman. So I shall not preach
to you, nor moralize you, nor even venture to advise you, but I shall
put a few facts before you that may temporarily disturb your digestion,
but if you will stick to them and assimilate them you will feel yourself
growing stronger and you will thank me for having changed your mental
bill of fare.
* * * * *
Taken in the aggregate, there is no division of the working class more
clannish and provincial, more isolated from other divisions of labor’s
countless army, than railway employes, the workers engaged, directly and
indirectly, in steam railway transportation. Nor is there a group or
department in the entire working class that, outside of its own sphere
of industrial activity, is more ignorant of the true essentials of the
labor question or more oblivious of the class struggle and the
fundamental principles and objects of the labor movement.
* * * * *
To verify this statement it is not necessary to refer to the
unorganized, unskilled and poorly-paid employes; on the contrary, let a
dozen engineers and the same number of conductors, picked at random, be
put upon the stand and catechized from a primer on economics and see
what percentage of them can give even a definition of the term. They
know how to run engines and trains and, as a rule, that is practically
the limit of their knowledge. That is all the corporations want them to
know, and, from their point of view, all they are fit to know.
* * * * *
It is true that they read journals published by their unions in which a
five-column account is given of a reception to some “noble grand chief,”
and as many columns more about babies born and brothers buried, but
which may be searched in vain for a line of revolutionary economics to
nourish their brain, open the eyes, give cheer to the heart or
aspiration to the soul of a corporation slave.
* * * * *
The several unions of railway employes, considered in any militant
sense, are not labor unions at all. Warren S. Stone, grand chief of the
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, worthy successor of the late P. M.
Arthur, is on record as having pledged his word to a well known railway
manager that the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers should never go out
on strike while he was its executive head. The same grand chief is on
record as threatening John J. Hannahan, grand master of the Brotherhood
of Locomotive Firemen, with keeping his engineers at work on the
Northern Pacific system, virtually scabbing on the firemen, if the
latter went out on strike.
If the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers was a bona fide labor union
instead of the fossilized tool of railway corporations its grand chief
would be peremptorily impeached for treason to the working class.
* * * * *
The _Civic Federation Review_ loves to print the portrait of Mr. Stone
and idealize him as a “leader of labor” worthy to sit at the feast with,
and at the feet of, August Belmont, Andrew Carnegie, Archbishop Ireland
and other millionaire labor exploiters who regard workingmen as sheep to
be sheared and skinned and slaughtered, and asses to be harnessed and
worked and whipped, and, from that point of view, the engineers and the
rest of the railway unions are to be congratulated upon their astute
leadership.
It is not that Mr. Stone is personally dishonest and corrupt; he may be,
and I think he is, perfectly conscientious in what he says and does, and
the same is doubtless true of the grand officers of the other railway
unions, but that is not the question.
If workingmen are betrayed and defeated and made to suffer, it makes
little difference if their misfortunes are due to dishonest, or ignorant
and incompetent, leadership.
* * * * *
The question is not, Are these leaders honest? Let that be conceded. The
question is, Are they true to the working class? If their official
attitude does not square with the working class as a whole, then they
are not in line with the true interests of their own union and are not
_in fact_ the friends, but the enemies of labor; not serving, but
betraying those who trust and follow them.
* * * * *
In saying this and making the further statement that the existing
railway brotherhoods are of far more actual benefit to the railway
corporations than they are to the employes who support them, and that in
some essential respects they are a positive detriment to their members
in teaching them to venerate a “grand” officer, subjecting themselves,
bound and gagged, to his “official sanction,” and in keeping them in
economic ignorance—in saying these things, it is possible that Grand
Chief Stone of the Engineers, and other “grand” officials will take
issue; and here let me say that nothing would please me better than the
chance to meet Mr. Stone before his engineers, or any other grand
official before his followers, at any time, or in any public place, to
prove every assertion herein made, and more, too; and I shall not object
if the grand officers invite their friends, the railway officials, to
occupy their accustomed seats on the platform, but I will not guarantee
that the menu will be as agreeable to their corporation palates as that
served at a recent Chicago banquet of the Order of Railway Conductors,
or at the average brotherhood convention.
* * * * *
Now to another branch of the question: According to the report of the
interstate commerce commission there were, for the year ended June 30,
1904, a total of 1,206,121 employes on the railways of the United
States, as against 1,017,653 in 1900, an increase in four years of
278,468. How many thousands of unemployed there are, ready to take jobs
when they are offered, in event of a strike, or otherwise, the reports
do not say. Since 1904 there has been great increase in railroad
activities and it is probable that the total has since reached
1,400,000. In 1894 the number was 779,608. That was during the last
period of “hard times.” In the ten years since, from 1894 to 1904, from
“panic” to “prosperity,” the number of railway employes has been almost
doubled, the actual increase being 620,392, an average of over 60,000 a
year. Fully five hundred thousand (500,000) new railroad men have been
made in that time, and they have swelled the brotherhoods to
unprecedented limits.
* * * * *
Now keep your eye “peeled” for the signal for the return trip from
“prosperity” to “panic.”
That is not a matter of guess, but of arithmetic.
It may not come next month nor next year, but it will come, and the
longer it is coming the longer will be the backward trip.
Railway employes, as a rule, do not know why there are alternating
periods of “panic” and “prosperity”; panic that paralyzes, but
prosperity that does not prosper, except for the plutocrats. The reason
they do not know is that they are ignorant of working class economics,
which are not discussed by their leaders, nor in their journals, and
this accounts for the further fact that nearly all of them vote these
sufferings upon themselves, as non-political labor unionists uniformly
do, while their unions, vaccinated by the corporation doctor against
politics, become parties to “grand balls,” such as the Brotherhood of
Locomotive Firemen has given in Chicago, and the “grand banquet” held by
the Order of Railway Conductors in the same city, where the “grand
march” is led by the capitalist mayor and a “grand” officer, and “grand”
officials of the railroads beam approvingly, while “grand” corporation
politicians disport themselves in huge diamonds and swallow-tails and
“grand” speeches are spouted about the “brotherhood of capital and
labor,” the choicest lobster on the bill; the whole “green goods” affair
being concocted by a tool of the corporations who belongs to the union
and who, as a smooth politician, is on the pay roll at the city hall, or
the state house, or capitol. Such nauseating exhibitions—planned by
sycophants and patronized by plutocrats—are given to hoodwink the common
herd and keep it forever in the capitalist corrals of wage slavery.
* * * * *
Political conspiracy is the term to apply to these doings of the
henchmen of capital, masquerading in the garb of labor, who are so
fearful that their dupes may wake up and go into politics.
* * * * *
But to return for a moment. Keep your eye open for that signal! When
Wall Street says the word you’ll see the signal, but it will not prevent
you and your little union from going into the ditch. The signal and the
slump will come together.
Several hundred thousand of you will be left high and dry; no jobs, but
plenty of time to tramp and think. What next? Sweeping reductions of
wages. Next—Strikes? Probably. And then? Defeat and disaster!
That’s the history of all the “panics” of the last thirty years. They
have all been ushered in with widespread railroad strikes, and when the
crash has come the brotherhoods have burst like bubbles and been crushed
like egg-shells, utterly powerless to give their members the least
particle of protection. This is what has uniformly come to the unions
that waste their time at such child’s play as “exemplification of secret
work” and studying signs and passwords, as if every corporation did not
have its union reporter to inform it of every move worth knowing.
* * * * *
And so it will be again. Mark it! Make a note of it! Ask your grand
officer about it and make a note of his answer. Don’t allow him to dodge
by calling me a calamity howler. He will help you after the lightning
has struck your job by certifying that you are entitled to another, but
you will have to hunt it alone, and in the meantime the “brotherhood of
capital and labor” will have suspended and cannot save your wife from
eviction, nor your children from starvation.
* * * * *
Think it out; don’t let go till you do! Don’t take my word; rely on
yourself! I can’t help you railway slaves. You only can help yourselves.
No one else can. If you don’t even know that you are slaves in the
existing capitalist system, the gods have mercy on you, for your
blindness is complete; your condition is pitiable and there is no hope
for you but death.
* * * * *
The most pathetic object to me is a corporation slave with a dazzling
diamond or a constellation of brass buttons to decorate his deformity
and hide the hollows in his gray matter. He swells like a toad as he
talks about the good wages “we” are paying; he is a part of the
corporation, as a pimple is a part of the plutocrat. He has hinges in
his knees. He fawns like a spaniel at the feet of an official, but
snarls like a cur at the car inspector or track man. He believes in the
“brotherhood of capital and labor”; he is “conservative”; is opposed to
politics in the union or the journal; talks about his masters as “our
superiors”; is proud of his pusillanimity; does with alacrity what he is
ordered to do and asks no questions; is a scab at heart, if not in fact;
has no trace of manhood, no self-respect, no honor—craven-hearted and
stony-souled—and when he dies Judas Iscariot will have another recruit
for his army of the damned.
* * * * *
In his address to the joint committee of the several brotherhoods of
railway employes that called at the White House on November 14, 1905, to
plead in behalf of the railway corporations, President Roosevelt, among
other things, said: “I would be false to your interests if I failed to
do justice to the capitalist as much as to the wage-worker.”
The president was much impressed by the delegation and the delegation by
him. The president was really addressing his own brethren, for, like
themselves, he was a brotherhood man, and had the grip, sign and
pass-words, all up to date; and they were all agreed that no injustice
must be done the poor capitalists. The latter themselves were not in
evidence. Their president and their brotherhoods would see that no harm
came to them.
* * * * *
In his message to the banquet of the Order of Railway Conductors, given
at Chicago on December 31, 1905, in behalf of the railroad corporations,
and presided over by Major (?) B. B. Ray, paymaster, U. S. A., in
recognition of his faithful services in lining up railway employes in
support of the corporation ticket on election day, and as smooth a
politician as ever came down the avenue—in his communication to this
corporation auxiliary, regretting his inability to mingle with the
railway presidents and managers who were in attendance to point around
at the conductors as evidence that the working class in general, and the
railway slaves in particular, were opposed to rate legislation—in his
telegram of regret Vice-President Fairbanks, once himself a railroad
attorney and now a magnate, said:
“The Order of Railway Conductors * * * recognizes in full degree the
right of both employer and employe and understands full well that in a
large sense the interests of one are the interests of the other, and
that the interests of neither can be disregarded without harm to both.”
* * * * *
Precisely! “Our interests are one,” exclaimed the fox, after devouring
the goose. “Same here,” answered the hawk, with the feathers of the dove
still clinging to his beak. “I’m with you,” chipped in the shark; and “I
congratulate you upon your wise political economy” was the amen of the
lion as the lamb’s tail disappeared down the red lane.
* * * * *
Toastmaster Ray, the mortgaged major of the railroads, read another
telegram of regret from President “Jim” Hill, of the Great Northern, and
then President Delano, of the Wabash, was introduced and proceeded to
orate on “Opposition to Railroad Rate Legislation.” The dummies are
reported to have nodded in hearty approval every time he looked at them.
President Delano might have stayed at home and used a string to operate
his puppets.
Upon this important point of “identity of interests,” between lion and
mutton, President Roosevelt, Vice-President Fairbanks and all the
railroad presidents, corporations and brotherhoods are a unit.
The railroads furnish the lion and the brotherhoods the mutton.
It is upon this false basis, this vicious assumption, this fundamental
lie, that the railroad brotherhoods are organized, and in that capacity
they are of incalculable value to the railroads, the very bulwarks of
their defense, and the sure means of keeping the great body of railway
employes in economic ignorance, and, therefore, unorganized, divided and
helpless.
* * * * *
Such unionism means organized strength for the railroads and organized
weakness for the employes. And the latter foot the bill. No wonder their
grand officers get annual passes and their delegates free trains. The
stupid employes pay for them all an hundredfold.
And to what base purpose the railroad magnates put these brotherhoods to
still further entrench their power and perpetuate their reign of
robbery!
* * * * *
At this very moment they are using them as political pokers to stir up
the fire of public sentiment against rate legislation. And the poor
dupes that pay the dues don’t even know that their unions are in
politics, corporation politics, the dirtiest of all politics.
On their own account the unions are forbidden to have anything to do
with politics—that would fracture their delicate diaphragm—but when the
corporations need them as political tools—ah, that’s different; that’s
what they are for!
Cannot you hoodwinked railway slaves begin to see something?
In all the history of organized labor, from the earliest times to the
present day, no body of union workingmen ever served in a more
humiliating and debasing role than that in which the railway unions
appear at this very hour before the American people and the world.
It is a spectacle for the gods, and future generations will marvel that
such an exhibition of servility was possible in the twentieth century.
* * * * *
Union workingmen, rallying round the robbers of the working class, and
defending them against their own people!
It is true that there is nothing in rate legislation for the workingman,
but the incident loses none of its significance on that account.
The free use of the brotherhoods by and for the corporations, at
election time, when the legislature meets, when congress is in session,
whenever and wherever required—that is the point.
How smoothly this emergency appliance works!
* * * * *
The corporations sniff danger; they send for their officials—the
officials for the “grand chiefs” of the brotherhoods—the “grand chiefs”
for their decoy ducks, and presto! a joint committee—and it is a “joint”
committee—serves notice on the president and the country that the
million and more railway employes want no interference with the divine
right of the railroad robbers to hold up the people.
Then another set of political tools of the same robbers take their cue
and bound to their feet in the capitalist congress and in a serio-comic
burst of paid-for passion, exclaim: “Don’t you see, gentlemen, that
organized labor, the horny-handed nobility of the land, the muscle and
sinew, the very backbone of the nation, recognizes this measure as a
menace to its “full dinner pail” and interposes its righteous
indignation! Gentlemen, we dare not make such an assault upon the
dignity, the sacred rights, aye, the very life of honest toil!”
* * * * *
That settles it! The trick is done. The Goulds, Vanderbilts and
Harrimans are on top, their slaves at the bottom, and their “identity of
interests” is once more triumphantly vindicated.
* * * * *