Two remarkable books are Ghent's "Our Benevolent Feudalism" {7} and
Brooks's "The Social Unrest." {8} In these two books the opposite sides
of the labor problem are expounded, each writer devoting himself with
apprehension to the side he fears and views with disfavor. It would
appear that they have set themselves the task of collating, as a warning,
the phenomena of two counter social forces. Mr. Ghent, who is
sympathetic with the socialist movement, follows with cynic fear every
aggressive act of the capitalist class. Mr. Brooks, who yearns for the
perpetuation of the capitalist system as long as possible, follows with
grave dismay each aggressive act of the labor and socialist
organizations. Mr. Ghent traces the emasculation of labor by capital,
and Mr. Brooks traces the emasculation of independent competing capital
by labor. In short, each marshals the facts of a side in the two sides
which go to make a struggle so great that even the French Revolution is
insignificant beside it; for this later struggle, for the first time in
the history of struggles, is not confined to any particular portion of
the globe, but involves the whole of it.
Starting on the assumption that society is at present in a state of flux,
Mr. Ghent sees it rapidly crystallizing into a status which can best be
described as something in the nature of a benevolent feudalism. He
laughs to scorn any immediate realization of the Marxian dream, while
Tolstoyan utopias and Kropotkinian communistic unions of shop and farm
are too wild to merit consideration. The coming status which Mr. Ghent
depicts is a class domination by the capitalists. Labor will take its
definite place as a dependent class, living in a condition of machine
servitude fairly analogous to the land servitude of the Middle Ages.
That is to say, labor will be bound to the machine, though less harshly,
in fashion somewhat similar to that in which the earlier serf was bound
to the soil. As he says, "Bondage to the land was the basis of
villeinage in the old regime; bondage to the job will be the basis of
villeinage in the new."
At the top of the new society will tower the magnate, the new feudal
baron; at the bottom will be found the wastrels and the inefficients.
The new society he grades as follows:
"I. The barons, graded on the basis of possessions.
"II. The court agents and retainers. (This class will include the
editors of 'respectable' and 'safe' newspapers, the pastors of
'conservative' and 'wealthy' churches, the professors and teachers in
endowed colleges and schools, lawyers generally, and most judges and
politicians).
"III. The workers in pure and applied science, artists, and
physicians.
"IV. The entrepreneurs, the managers of the great industries,
transformed into a salaried class.
"V. The foremen and superintendents. This class has heretofore been
recruited largely from the skilled workers, but with the growth of
technical education in schools and colleges, and the development of
fixed caste, it is likely to become entirely differentiated.
"VI. The villeins of the cities and towns, more or less regularly
employed, who do skilled work and are partially protected by
organization.
"VII. The villeins of the cities and towns who do unskilled work and
are unprotected by organization. They will comprise the laborers,
domestics, and clerks.
"VIII. The villeins of the manorial estates, of the great farms, the
mines, and the forests.
"IX. The small-unit farmers (land-owning), the petty tradesmen, and
manufacturers.
"X. The subtenants of the manorial estates and great farms
(corresponding to the class of 'free tenants' in the old Feudalism).
"XI. The cotters.
"XII. The tramps, the occasionally employed, the unemployed--the
wastrels of the city and country."
"The new Feudalism, like most autocracies, will foster not only the
arts, but also certain kinds of learning--particularly the kinds
which are unlikely to disturb the minds of the multitude. A future
Marsh, or Cope, or Le Comte will be liberally patronized and left
free to discover what he will; and so, too, an Edison or a Marconi.
Only they must not meddle with anything relating to social science."
It must be confessed that Mr. Ghent's arguments are cunningly contrived
and arrayed. They must be read to be appreciated. As an example of his
style, which at the same time generalizes a portion of his argument, the
following may well be given:
"The new Feudalism will be but an orderly outgrowth of present
tendencies and conditions. All societies evolve naturally out of
their predecessors. In sociology, as in biology, there is no cell
without a parent cell. The society of each generation develops a
multitude of spontaneous and acquired variations, and out of these,
by a blending process of natural and conscious selection, the
succeeding society is evolved. The new order will differ in no
important respects from the present, except in the completer
development of its more salient features. The visitor from another
planet who had known the old and should see the new would note but
few changes. Alter et Idem--another yet the same--he would say.
From magnate to baron, from workman to villein, from publicist to
court agent and retainer, will be changes of state and function so
slight as to elude all but the keenest eyes."
And in conclusion, to show how benevolent and beautiful this new
feudalism of ours will be, Mr. Ghent says: "Peace and stability it will
maintain at all hazards; and the mass, remembering the chaos, the
turmoil, the insecurity of the past, will bless its reign. . . .
Efficiency--the faculty of getting things--is at last rewarded as it
should be, for the efficient have inherited the earth and its fulness.
The lowly, whose happiness is greater and whose welfare is more
thoroughly conserved when governed than when governing, as a
twentieth-century philosopher said of them, are settled and happy in the
state which reason and experience teach is their God-appointed lot. They
are comfortable too; and if the patriarchal ideal of a vine and fig tree
for each is not yet attained, at least each has his rented patch in the
country or his rented cell in a city building. Bread and the circus are
freely given to the deserving, and as for the undeserving, they are
merely reaping the rewards of their contumacy and pride. Order reigns,
each has his justly appointed share, and the state rests, in security,
'lapt in universal law.'"
Mr. Brooks, on the other hand, sees rising and dissolving and rising
again in the social flux the ominous forms of a new society which is the
direct antithesis of a benevolent feudalism. He trembles at the rash
intrepidity of the capitalists who fight the labor unions, for by such
rashness he greatly fears that labor will be driven to express its aims
and strength in political terms, which terms will inevitably be
socialistic terms.
To keep down the rising tide of socialism, he preaches greater meekness
and benevolence to the capitalists. No longer may they claim the right
to run their own business, to beat down the laborer's standard of living
for the sake of increased profits, to dictate terms of employment to
individual workers, to wax righteously indignant when organized labor
takes a hand in their business. No longer may the capitalist say "my"
business, or even think "my" business; he must say "our" business, and
think "our" business as well, accepting labor as a partner whose voice
must be heard. And if the capitalists do not become more meek and
benevolent in their dealings with labor, labor will be antagonized and
will proceed to wreak terrible political vengeance, and the present
social flux will harden into a status of socialism.
Mr. Brooks dreams of a society at which Mr. Ghent sneers as "a slightly
modified individualism, wherein each unit secures the just reward of his
capacity and service." To attain this happy state, Mr. Brooks imposes
circumspection upon the capitalists in their relations with labor. "If
the socialistic spirit is to be held in abeyance in this country,
businesses of this character (anthracite coal mining) must be handled
with extraordinary caution." Which is to say, that to withstand the
advance of socialism, a great and greater measure of Mr. Ghent's
_benevolence_ will be required.
Again and again, Mr. Brooks reiterates the danger he sees in harshly
treating labor. "It is not probable that employers can destroy unionism
in the United States. Adroit and desperate attempts will, however, be
made, if we mean by unionism the undisciplined and aggressive fact of
vigorous and determined organizations. If capital should prove too
strong in this struggle, the result is easy to predict. The employers
have only to convince organized labor that it cannot hold its own against
the capitalist manager, and the whole energy that now goes to the union
will turn to an aggressive political socialism. It will not be the
harmless sympathy with increased city and state functions which trade
unions already feel; it will become a turbulent political force bent upon
using every weapon of taxation against the rich."
"The most concrete impulse that now favors socialism in this country is
the insane purpose to deprive labor organizations of the full and
complete rights that go with federated unionism."
"That which teaches a union that it cannot succeed as a union turns it
toward socialism. In long strikes in towns like Marlboro and Brookfield
strong unions are defeated. Hundreds of men leave these towns for
shoe-centres like Brockton, where they are now voting the socialist
ticket. The socialist mayor of this city tells me, 'The men who come to
us now from towns where they have been thoroughly whipped in a strike are
among our most active working socialists.' The bitterness engendered by
this sense of defeat is turned to politics, as it will throughout the
whole country, if organization of labor is deprived of its rights."
"This enmity of capital to the trade union is watched with glee by every
intelligent socialist in our midst. Every union that is beaten or
discouraged in its struggle is ripening fruit for socialism."
"The real peril which we now face is the threat of a class conflict. If
capitalism insists upon the policy of outraging the saving aspiration of
the American workman to raise his standard of comfort and leisure, every
element of class conflict will strengthen among us."
"We have only to humiliate what is best in the trade union, and then
every worst feature of socialism is fastened upon us."
This strong tendency in the ranks of the workers toward socialism is what
Mr. Brooks characterizes the "social unrest"; and he hopes to see the
Republican, the Cleveland Democrat, and the conservative and large
property interests "band together against this common foe," which is
socialism. And he is not above feeling grave and well-contained
satisfaction wherever the socialist doctrinaire has been contradicted by
men attempting to practise cooperation in the midst of the competitive
system, as in Belgium.
Nevertheless, he catches fleeting glimpses of an extreme and tyrannically
benevolent feudalism very like to Mr. Ghent's, as witness the following:
"I asked one of the largest employers of labor in the South if he feared
the coming of the trade union. 'No,' he said, 'it is one good result of
race prejudice, that the negro will enable us in the long run to weaken
the trade union so that it cannot harm us. We can keep wages down with
the negro and we can prevent too much organization.'
"It is in this spirit that the lower standards are to be used. If this
purpose should succeed, it has but one issue,--the immense strengthening
of a plutocratic administration at the top, served by an army of
high-salaried helpers, with an elite of skilled and well-paid workmen,
but all resting on what would essentially be a serf class of low-paid
labor and this mass kept in order by an increased use of military force."
In brief summary of these two notable books, it may be said that Mr.
Ghent is alarmed, (though he does not flatly say so), at the too great
social restfulness in the community, which is permitting the capitalists
to form the new society to their liking; and that Mr. Brooks is alarmed,
(and he flatly says so), at the social unrest which threatens the
modified individualism into which he would like to see society evolve.
Mr. Ghent beholds the capitalist class rising to dominate the state and
the working class; Mr. Brooks beholds the working class rising to
dominate the state and the capitalist class. One fears the paternalism
of a class; the other, the tyranny of the mass.