The employes on the Paris underground railroad had a strike and
have settled their strike.
The terms of the settlement amaze the outside world. The terms
are especially amazing to the American--and well they may be.
The employes of the underground railroad in Paris are GOVERNMENT
employes.
Their strike inconvenienced the public, and even the radical
French people were annoyed with the strikers.
In other European countries and in this country, as the news
reports very truly say, the strike of those Government employes
would have been dealt with very summarily. Three engines of
civilization would have been brought into play effectively.
"First the police, second the cavalry, third Gatling guns." ----
But the police, the cavalry and guns were tried on the French
people long ago, and that little matter was fought out and
settled. The men who govern France know that at a certain stage
in the proceedings a courageous people will not stand Gatling
guns, cavalry or police. They have found out in France that the
way to deal with striking workmen is just the way the Government
official would like to be dealt with himself if he were a
striking workman instead of a well-paid public officer.
The striking men complained that their day's work was too long
and their pay too small. The pay was increased and the day
shortened--which was perfectly right.
Each employe is now allowed one day off in seven, and ten days'
vacation every year with full pay--which is perfectly right.
The young men employed on the road are compelled to do twenty
days' work in the army each year. Their wages are paid while
they are doing this compulsory military work--which is perfectly
right.
If a man is ill through no fault or vice of his own he gets his
pay as long as he is ill up to three hundred and sixty-five days,
and the company in whose service he has become ill pays his
doctor's bill, his drug store bill and any extra expenses
involved--which is perfectly just and fair.
No striker is to be dismissed because of having taken part in the
strike. A benefit fund is provided for the employes of this
Government enterprise--and the company pays the membership
subscription to the benefit fund with NO DEDUCTION FROM THE
WORKMEN'S PAY.
The above seems a horrible narrative to the energetic American
exploiter of labor.
It would have seemed very stupid, in fact quite incomprehensible,
to the French Government at any time before the Revolution.
But the Revolution taught France and some other people that a
nation, like any other structure, is insecure when its foundation
is agitated. The foundation of a nation is the enormous mass of
working people, and that foundation the French have learned to
respect and treat well.
We shall learn as much here some day. Let us hope we shall learn
it more peaceably than the French did.
UNION MEN AS SLAVE OWNERS
WHAT PLANS HAS THE FIVE-DOLLAR-A-DAY MAN MADE TO HELP HIS POORER
FELLOW-CREATURES?
Every addition within reason to wages, every reasonable reduction
of working hours, must help the whole nation. Working human
beings have been looked upon through the ages as slaves, either
on an actual slave-owning basis or on an insufficient wage
basis--which is about the same thing. Each recognition of the
worker's rights moves us a little farther from slave days. Every
time a new class earns decent treatment by hard fighting we see
increased the number of those who may properly be called men.
The blind employer asks: "Shall men be allowed to fix their own
wages?"
OF COURSE they shall. And until they do fix their own wages they
are not men at all. The ox does not fix his hours of labor or
the quantity of his corn. But the man does. The man controlled
like an ox is nearer an ox than a man.
We delight in the efforts of unions. We are advocates of every
movement that tends to divide among a still larger class the good
things of the world.
But this newspaper is no mere labor union organ. We care more
for the welfare of the humblest, non-organized, underpaid,
underfed citizen than for the finest, most highly paid, most
intelligent mechanic.
The man who is least well off needs our help most. He needs,
above all men, some practical PROOF that he lives where men
are equal. He should be the object of earnest thought on the
part of the five-dollar-a-day man.
It is the five-dollar-a-day man, the able mechanic, whom we
address to-day: ----
Many of your thoughts and words, Mr. Five-Dollar Man, are
devoted to plutocrats. You are not free from envy. You
consider, and with perfect justice, that you do not--even with
your five dollars--get your share of the world's good things.
But, for a change to-day, will you look DOWN instead of UP?
You work hard at five dollars per day "to fatten in comfort the
happy millionaire employer." All right; admitted.
But did you ever think who works hard to fatten YOU?
Did it ever occur to you that you are a plutocrat, and a very
numerous and decided plutocrat? Do you ever wonder what you will
answer when the time comes for those whom you underpay to demand
eight hours and fair wages of YOU?
You keep a servant girl to help your wife. Does she work eight
hours a day? No; she works about fourteen, and hears a good deal
of grumbling because she does not do better. Does she get union
wages? No; she gets about thirty cents a day. Does she get
double pay on holidays? Can she put on any substitute if she
chooses to wander off for two or three days a week?
The woman who works to make your life comfortable works just as
many hours as you can make her work, and she gets just as little
pay as you can get her to take. Is that all right? ----
And the servant girl is not the only one. Some farmer's hand
works to raise the wheat, the potatoes that you eat. What is he
paid? What are his hours? Fifty cents a day, twelve or fourteen
hours of work. And your bootmaker in the factory, and the
sweat-shop slave who makes your coat, and the long list of other
poor devils who work for about one-tenth of your salary. Do you
know why you are comparatively well off? Simply because the man
for whom YOU work pays you ten times as much as you pay the
men and women who work for YOU.
You pay indirectly? True. But what difference does that make?
You are well-to-do because you purchase without question the
product of men who are really slaves. You have brains, and by
combination have FORCED your employer to treat you decently.
Yes, and you deserve credit. But you are not fundamentally
superior to the other men around you. What are you going to do
when they demand treatment as good as yours? What are you going
to reply when they class you with the other plutocrats?
You enjoy the work of only ten or twenty underpaid men--that is
so. But you are in the same class with the plutocrat who enjoys
the profit on the work of ten or twenty thousand men.
Utter disregard of others--where it does not affect your own
wages--is your rule, and you know it. What better joke is there
than the joke about the union label? How many hats on your rack
have union labels in them? How many of you can swear no
sweatshop ever saw your clothes? How many of you would apologize
for not offering your friend a "union-made" cigar?
It is the nature of man to think earnestly of only one thing at a
time. If one pursuit really engrosses his attention he has
little time to think of anything else. In the hard struggle for
a living the workingman has little time for any thought save for
his OWN wage, his OWN stomach, his OWN welfare.
As union men you will continue to struggle for your five dollars
a day--restricting apprentices, that others may be shut out from
your field; opposing changes threatening you, however beneficial
they may be generally.
But as individuals you must THINK. You study, and, being
free from the grind of real poverty, you should be less hardened
than the unfortunate, and inclined to feel for others.
You have made a good fight against the slavery that used to
oppress you. In England you destroyed mills, endured shooting
and hanging. All over the world, by hard fighting and wise
voting, you have established the fact that the top class of
mechanics must no longer be treated as cattle.
Now, what are you going to do for the others who are still
cattle? You have demanded in the name of holy justice that
others help you. In the same name, what do you propose to do for
those still oppressed? Will you use your big voting power for
the millions who are still at the bottom?
Will you combine for the benefit of the vast army as you have
combined for your OWN benefit?
Or will you wait--as did the employers--to be FORCED into
decency? Will you free your own collection of underpaid,
overworked slaves, or wait for them to organize and beat you into
decency, as your representatives did with your oppressors long
ago?
Take a look downward once in a while. Study those below you.
Glance over your own little collection of "wage slaves" in your
kitchen and wherever your money is spent.
There is a problem there for you when you shall have finished
hurrahing for your own eight hours.
AGAIN THE LIMITED DAY'S WORK
WISELY HANDLED, IT MEANS EMANCIPATION FROM INDUSTRIAL SLAVERY.
We refer again to the much discussed rule in labor unions
limiting the amount of work that a man shall do in a day. As a
matter of fact, in many unions no such rule exists. In some it
does exist, and MUST exist.
There is nothing in the notion that limiting the day's work will
diminish the excellence of American workmen. On the contrary,
the BEST work is done slowly and carefully. The WORST work is
done at high speed.
That very aristocratic financier who denounces the regulations as
to a day's output will say to the man who is doing something
FOR HIM, "Take your time; I want this done very carefully."
Why should not EVERYBODY'S work be done carefully?
But it is not merely careful work that is involved in the
regulating of the day's work. The welfare of the nation and of
the nation's future is involved.
Go with the man who denounces labor unions for limiting the
amount of work that a good American mechanic should do in one
day, to the stable in which that man keeps his fine horses. You
can easily bring about this dialogue:
"That mare in the box stall is a beautiful horse. Is she fast?"
Rich Owner--"Yes, very fast. I value her more highly than any
horse I have. "
"How many miles do you drive her every day?"
"Oh, I don't drive her EVERY day. I drive her one day, and
have her jogged quietly the next. When I do drive her, I jog her
for two or three miles to warm her up, then speed her a mile or
two, and then take her home. She covers perhaps six or seven
miles in an entire day's work."
"But you COULD drive her twenty-five miles, couldn't you, and
drive her as far as that EVERY day?"
"Oh, yes, I COULD, of course, if I was only thinking of using
her up and getting all I could out of her now. But, you see, I
mean to use her for a brood-mare; I expect to get some splendid
colts from her, and I don't want to wear out her vitality. I
might get a little more fun or a little more work out of her just
now, BUT I WOULD LOSE IN THE LONG RUN." ----
Now, gentlemen, the labor union rule limiting a day's work simply
considers the workingman as that imaginary rich person considers
his beautiful horse.
And the feeling of the labor unions should be shared by the
entire country.
The highly skilled American mechanic is one of the chief assets
of this country; the intelligent, scientific, up-to-date American
farmer is another highly important asset. These two classes of
citizens ARE THE UNITED STATES. Between them they are more
important than all the rest of the nation put together.