Suppose all the shops or manufactories of a certain kind to be
under the control of one trust. What good will a strike do? The
concern in which the strike occurs will simply stop work. Its
business will go to other concerns in the trust; the firm in
which the strike occurs will calmly draw its share of the trust
profits and laugh at the strikers. The latter will lose their
wages and time--no one else will lose anything.
What does one paper mill care for a strike if all the other mills
in the Paper Trust are running, and making the money which it
nominally loses? ----
Perhaps the workingmen think they can stop ALL the manufactures
of a certain kind. In the first place they probably cannot--with
trusts that reach across 3,000 miles of country.
And if they could, what about the TRUST OF TRUSTS?
If the trusts are not already formed into a formal union for
mutual support they soon will be. And the union of trusts
already exists so far as practical sympathy goes.
Havemeyer will gladly spend millions of trust money--not his
own--to help Morgan in a coal-trust fight.
Rockefeller will spare a few hundred thousand if necessary to buy
a small State Legislature and prevent passage of laws threatening
a weak little trust now and dangerous to him in the long run.
----
Jealousy, mistrust, and the lack of really competent leaders may
delay political union among workmen for a time.
But the political union must come. Bigger work must be done by
American workmen than chattering about little local wage
regulations or quarreling about hours or overtime.
The question at issue is:
SHALL ORGANIZED CAPITAL CONTROL THE PEOPLE, OR SHALL THE PEOPLE
CONTROL ORGANIZED CAPITAL AND LIMIT ITS POWER?
The workingmen are the people. They are the interested parties,
and they have got to vote together pretty soon or fight together
a little later.