The Great Combine.
"Your war has ended at last," said Wilbrid, after a long pause. "Ours is
but beginning; and our conquest will not be limited by an empire's
boundaries, or even by those of a continent. It will embrace the earth."
Having spoken he turned to the window and peered at the blood-red sunset
contemplatively.
I surveyed his tall, spare figure, his steel grey hair and sharply-cut
features, the latter pinked by the evening glow.
Here is a new Kaiser, I thought.
"You said a 'world conquest,'" I remarked to him. "Don't you think the
days have gone when persons should 'talk big'? The great war should
henceforth limit the ambitions of those who dream of world's dominion by
conquest."
"Do not misunderstand me," he said. "We shall conquer the world because
of the human appeal of our creed. Its basis is that the strength of a
nation lies in the welfare of its producers--the working class, and not
in its mighty armaments or individual wealth. There is not an atom of
national strength in the accumulation of much money by any individual.
Where wealth is in the hands of the few, misery stalks among the many;
and, where the masses are ill-fed and hopeless, moral and physical
strength cannot exist."
Then he walked from the window to his desk and back again; his arms
still behind him, flinging his phrases at us as he passed to and fro.
"Great things can only be achieved by combination," he went on. "The
victory of the Allies is proof of that. We are going to combine all
workers, and, in order to make our combination supreme, we will not
only organise those at work, but, also, those out of work. It is going
to be a combination of all who can labor," he snapped out.
"Up till now," he continued, "there have been more men in the world than
there have been jobs to go round; so there have always been many
unemployed. Those unemployed are the men who keep down the wages of the
workers. If there were no men or women to take the jobs from those who
work, then the workers could demand shorter hours and a better share of
the wealth they produce. It is the unemployed who have been keeping up
the competition in wages. That is where they have been useful to the
employer.
"Up till now the workers have struggled to hold their jobs; and have
fought to maintain or raise their wages without taking into account the
thousands of unemployed who need work.
"Those out of work are humans after all, and when hunger drives them to
take the work at lower wages, they're called 'scabs' and other vile
names; and we have treated them as our bitterest enemies.
"Can you blame a man whose wife is sinking and whose children cry for
food, if he is willing to take a job at less than the wage you get?
"Would not any man lower the wages scale and take another man's job for
less, in order to save the life of his wife and the new baby? Should any
union principles stand between him and his wife's life? That is why we
are going to combine with the unemployed."
It had grown dark, so he stepped to the wall and touched a switch. As
the light flooded the room I ventured a reply.
"Don't you think the human appeal in your creed is rather one-sided," I
remarked. "Why not purge your workers' unions first! You know there are
certain trade unions that make the entrance fees so high, that many of
their own trade are excluded."
"There is a Wharf Laborers' Union in Australia that has an entrance fee
that is considered to prohibit new membership, and it has as its
secretary a Federal Minister of the Crown."
"I guess you're right just there," Nap put in. "The Union of Glass
Blowers of the U.S.A. demand 1000 dollars as initiation fee; so they get
fine pay and they're 'some' people, I guess."
"There are unions in Australia," I rejoined, "that not only demand a
high entrance fee, but, in order to continue a monopoly of employment,
are limiting the number of apprentices who desire to learn their trade.
"There are unionists who, when work is slack and members are unemployed,
will advocate shorter hours at the same rate of pay so as to make room
for their unemployed mates.
"And, perhaps, you are not aware that Australia is a land where Nature
is so generous that in its short history it has reached the highest
level in the world's wheat and wool production. Yet in that land, twenty
times the size of your Germany and with one-thirteenth of your
population, the workers discourage immigration of people of their own
British race, because they foolishly fancy the newcomers would create
competition in their high-priced work; and that is in a wonderful land
crying out for development and only having an average population of one
person to the square mile."
I finished in a highly-strung manner, but Wilbrid came forward and put
his hands on my shoulders.
"My boy," he said calmly, "you are right, and I am also right. That
selfishness on the part of the workers is but the fear of having their
wages cut and becoming unemployed with the advent of further
competition. Remove that fear and keep the unemployed from cutting wages
and the selfishness will disappear. The Humanist creed recognises all
men as sparks of Divinity. There will be no 'scabs,' 'pimps,'
'blacklegs,' or other vile, cruel epithets. The men and women who work
will combine with those unemployed. The result will be such a world's
combination of labor that all sources of profit-winning will be in the
hands of the men who toil. It will indeed be a conquest of the world.
"Already we control the Governments of Germany and Austria. France and
England will certainly follow at the next elections. The French workers
do not forget that, during the war, their Government successfully
organised the whole of the industries; and the English toilers remember
how the Asquith Government successfully controlled all the great
munition factories and limited the employers' profits to 10 per cent.,
giving the surplusage to the State. Now I note that the British workers
are demanding that just as the State successfully controlled great works
during the war and claimed the profits in excess, so it should control
all works now and let the profits go also to the Common Good--yes,
that's the term. It's almost a divine inspiration. The Common Good is
the doctrine of the Humanist! Watch the cause! It will sweep the earth!"
As he shook hands with me, I could feel his nerves twitching.
Nap and I walked back to the great camp almost in silence, and little
sleep came to me that night.