The attention of the world has been called to the great strike and
lockout in the building trades in Chicago because it rested upon the
question of individual liberty--a question which is not only vital alike
to the employer and the employe, but which affects every industry, every
class of people, every city, state and country. It is a principle which
antagonizes no motive which has been honestly conceived, but upon which
rests--or should rest--the entire social, political and industrial
fabric of a nation. It underlies the very foundation of free
institutions. To antagonize it is to thrust at the beginning point of
that freedom for which brave men have laid down their lives in every
land since the formation of society. With this question prominently in
the fight, and considering the magnitude of the interests affected, it
is not at all surprising that the public has manifested interest in the
agitation of questions which have affected the pockets of thirty
thousand artisans and laborers, hundreds of employers, scores of
manufacturers and dealers in building materials, stopped the erection of
thousands of structures of all classes, and driven into the vaults of a
great city capital amounting to not less than $20,000,000.
The labor problem is not new. Neither is it without its perplexities and
its grievances. Its entanglements have puzzled the brightest intellects,
and its grievances have, on many occasions, called loudly for changes
which have been made for the purpose of removing fetters that have
bound men in a system of oppression that resembled the worst form of
slavery. These changes have come none too soon. And, no doubt, there yet
remain cases in which the oppressed should be speedily relieved of
burdens which have been put upon working men and women in every country
under the sun.
But, because these conditions exist with one class of people, it is no
justification for an unreasonable, or exacting demand by another class;
or, that they should be permitted to reverse the order of things and
inaugurate a system of oppression that partakes of a spirit of revenge,
and that one burden after another should be piled up until the exactions
of an element of labor become so oppressive that they are unbearable.
When this is the case, the individual who has been advocating the cause
of freedom--and who has been striving for the release and the elevation
of the laboring classes--becomes, in turn, an oppressor of the worst
kind. He stamps upon the very foundation on which he first rested his
cause. He tramples upon the great cause of individual liberty and
becomes a tyrant whose remorseless system of oppression would crush out
of existence not only the grand superstructure of freedom, but would
bury beneath his iron heel the very germ of his free existence.
The laborer is a necessity. If this is true the converse of the
proposition is equally true--the employer is a necessity. Without the
employer the laborer would be deprived of an opportunity to engage in
the avocation to which his faculties may have been directed. Without the
laborer the employer would be in no position to carry forward any
enterprise of greater or less magnitude.
All cannot be employers.
All cannot be employes.
There must be a directing hand as well as a hand to be directed. In
exercising the prerogative of a director the employer would be powerless
to carry to a successful termination any enterprise if liberty of
action should be entirely cut off, or his directing hand should be so
fettered that it could not exercise the necessary freedom of action to
direct. At the same time, if the employe should be so burdened that he
could not exercise his talents in a manner to compass the line of work
directed to be done, it would be unreasonable to expect from him the
accomplishment of the task to which he had been assigned. There is a
relation between the two around which such safeguards should be thrown
as will insure that free action on the part of both that will remove the
possibility of oppression, and at the same time retain, in its fullest
sense, the relation of employer and employe. The necessity of the one to
the other should not be forgotten.
That the employer should have the right to direct his business in a
manner that will make it successful, and for his interest, none should
have the right to question. The successful direction of an enterprise by
an employer results, necessarily, in the security of employment by the
employe.
A business which is unsuccessfully prosecuted, or which is fettered by
the employe in a manner which prevents its successful prosecution, must,
of necessity, result in displacing the most trusted servant, or the most
skilled artisan.
An employer, in the direction of his business, should not be denied the
right to decide for himself whom he shall employ, or to select those who
may be best fitted to accomplish his work.
An employe should expect employment according to his ability to perform
the work to be done.
A skillful artisan should not be expected to accept the reward of one
unskilled in the same trade.
An unskilled workman should not receive the same wages paid to a skilled
workman.
Had these rules been recognized by the bricklayers in Chicago there
would have been no strike, no lockout. The fight was against the right
of the employer to direct his own business. It was originated by a
class of men who claimed the right to demand that all bricklayers should
be paid the same rate per hour, regardless of their ability; that none
should be employed except those who were members of The United Order of
American Bricklayers and Stonemasons of Chicago; and that every edict
issued by this union should be obeyed by the Master Masons, including
the last one made viz: That the pay day should be changed from Monday,
or Tuesday, to Saturday.