It should be said at the outset of this chapter that, in a very true
sense, practically all men are laborers. That into which a man puts his
energy and by which he earns his living, is his labor, whether it be
work of the hand or the head. But the labor we are to consider in this
chapter is that of the men who work for wages; and we will also make the
arbitrary distinction that it is that of the men who work for wages in
some branch of manufacturing, mining, trade, or transportation, the
great divisions of modern industry which we have thus far considered.
Almost all these monopolies employ large amounts of capital in carrying
on their business; and in the popular speech, "monopolist" and
"capitalist" are often used interchangeably. It is a very common belief
that monopolies are confined to the capitalized industries of
production, transportation, and trade, which we have already considered;
but we are now confronted by the fact that the wage-workers in the
various trades of the country are engaged in exactly the same
monopolistic schemes, in which they have exactly the same ends in view
as have the monopolists who combine millions of dollars' worth of
capital to effect their purposes. On the one hand we have the Standard
Oil Trust and the Railroad pools and the hundreds of other capitalistic
combinations striving to benefit the producer at the expense of the
consumer; while among those whose only capital is their strength and
skill, we find the workers in all the various trades, and even some of
the lower grades of laborers firmly banded together with the avowed
purpose of raising their wages above those which they would receive if
competition alone determined the rate. And they are successful, too.
Notwithstanding the fact that they deal with tens of thousands of
producing units where the combiner of capitalized interests deals with
tens, the success achieved by the combinations of labor is quite
comparable with that reached by combinations of capital. It speaks
volumes for the intelligence and ability of the wage-workers of the
present day--yes, and for the growth of the spirit of fraternity; that
in the advancement of what they deem a just and righteous cause, they
should voluntarily put themselves under discipline and endure patiently
the untold hardships of uncounted strikes, often brought on in the
unselfish work of aiding their brother laborers against what they deem a
common enemy.
The modes in which the combinations of skilled laborers attain their
desired ends are akin to those which obtain in a well organized
manufacturers' trust. The former allow only a certain number of
apprentices to learn their trade. The latter permit the establishment of
only such additional mills as shall not unduly increase the market
supply. The former fix a standard scale of wages below which no member
of the union shall work; the latter fix a minimum price for the goods
sold in the market. If there are more laborers in the union than can be
employed at the advanced rate of wages, some must be idle. If there are
more mills in the trust than the lessened demand for the goods will keep
busy, some must be shut down. The trade-union boycotts competing workmen
outside its ranks, and stigmatizes them as "scabs." The trusts endeavor
to punish every outside manufacturer, sometimes by forcing upon him such
a competition as shall cause his ruin; sometimes by means as illegal and
criminal as are the riotous acts of a mob of hungry workmen, and far
less defensible. But let us not yet bring up the question of relative
blame. The main point which must impress every candid observer is that
the means employed for the monopolies of capital and the monopolies of
labor are identical in principle and motive. Nor are we confined to
manufacturers' trusts to show that the spirit of rule or ruin
characterizes capital as well as labor. Railroad monopolies, in the
words of the president of one of the greatest corporations of the
country, "strive eagerly to protect themselves while entirely
indifferent as to what shall befall their rivals." How many weak
corporations have been deliberately ruined by the cut rates of stronger
competitors? If the laborer has "scab" in his vocabulary, has not the
railroad manager his "scalper" and "guerilla"?
The close relationship, viewed in many different aspects, of the
monopolies of labor and the monopolies in production generally has
hardly received the notice its importance deserves. Still, it is an
evidence that people are thinking of and discussing the matter when such
a writer as W. D. Howells, who is popularly supposed to cater to the
tastes of those who have very little in common with the laboring
classes, puts into the mouth of one of his characters a defence of
workingmen for executing a boycott on a non-union workingman, on the
ground that they "did only once just what the big manufacturing trusts
do every day."
Perhaps it was never so forcibly realized how thoroughly effective these
labor combinations have become, and how completely they hold the country
at their mercy, as in the strike of the locomotive engineers on the
Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad system in March, 1888. Here
were, perhaps two thirds of the men in the country qualified for the
responsible and onerous work of running a locomotive engine, firmly
banded together to advance their own interests and secure assent to
their demands. Granted the will, the courage, the discipline, and it was
possible, yes, easy, for them to have obliged the railroads to raise the
wages of every engineer in the brotherhood to $10.00 per day, for on a
refusal they could have enforced the extreme penalty of bringing down a
total paralysis upon the business of the country. It speaks volumes for
the good sense, the honesty and moderation of the men and their leaders,
that, notwithstanding the fact that their demands were not immoderate,
and that the failure which came permanently deprived of a remunerative
position a thousand members of their brotherhood, they refrained from
the extreme to which they might easily have gone, and permitted
themselves to be defeated, when they had the power to have forced a
different result.
Organized workers in many trades have the power to force wages much
higher than they have done. Would that the Sugar Refineries Company, and
some other monopolies of production, were as moderate in their demands
upon the public as are the workingmen. But though their demands are in
one sense moderate, it is yet true that in so far as they exceed the
amount which the laborer would receive when the market for labor is
open to free competition, they are the direct result of the artificial
monopoly which the laborers have created by their combination, and, in
effect, levy a tax upon the community. To illustrate: let us suppose
that if every man were permitted to follow the trade of bricklaying who
wished to do so, the equilibrium between supply and demand would be
found at a rate of wages of $3.00 per day. At that rate, if the price
rose, more men would wish to follow the trade and at the same time less
people could afford to build houses, thus raising the supply above the
demand. If the price fell, some of the men would prefer to work at some
other trade and more people would conclude they could afford to build
houses. But when the rate, which, without prejudice, we call the natural
rate, is at $3.00 per day, suppose the men belonging to the trade form a
union and resolve to charge $5.00 a day for their work. Then it is very
evident that the cost of building is increased, and every one has to pay
more for construction and ask a higher rent to repay himself afterward.
Evidently, then, by this action of the bricklayers every man in the
trade receives $2.00 more per day for each day's work, which must be
paid, directly by their employers, but indirectly by the whole
community. It would be easy to prove that the tax on the community when
the wages are raised in any trade, affects the whole public as well as
those directly employing the workers in that trade; but it seems too
plain to require proof. The main point we now wish to show, is that any
increase in the wages of labor over that received under ordinary
competition must be paid by the community, just as much as any increase
in the price of coal, iron, copper, wood, wheat, or any other commodity
must be paid by consumers at large. Nor does the injury to the
community stop here, by any means. We saw that the advance of prices by
the linseed oil trust was an injury to all those who, on that account,
were obliged to forego painting; and that it thus caused a further
injury to painters, paint-makers, and even those employed in the
building trade. But the increase in the price of the bricklayers' work
has results no less important. Not only is injury done to those who
build and have to pay more for their buildings, but many are prevented
from building on account of the increased cost. If we argue according to
a prevalent method, we may say that this reduced activity in the
building trade will cause stagnation among allied trades with
corresponding loss of employment. Again, as a less number of houses are
built, and those which are built are more expensive, rents are certain
to rise, which means that the poor man must pay out a still greater part
of his earnings for his shelter, or else must put up with poorer and
meaner quarters.
It is a strange thing to trace, in connection with this, the history of
labor, and see how recent it is that the natural right of a man to sell
his services for such a price as he could obtain has been acknowledged.
History shows that until modern times, compulsory personal servitude has
been in every age and country the lot of a large part of the human race.
And when wages began to be paid for service, conditions were not much
improved. In England, in the fourteenth century, in the reign of Edward
III., a pestilence seriously depopulated the country, and reduced the
supply of laborers so much that it was not equal to the demand for
labor, and wages began to rise. Laws were therefore enacted that each
able-bodied man and woman in the realm, not over three score, "not
living in merchandise, nor exercising any craft, nor having of his own
whereof to live, nor land about whose tillage he might employ himself,
nor serving any other," should be bound to serve at the wages accustomed
to be given five years previously. No persons were allowed to pay an
advance on these wages, on pain of forfeiting to the Crown double what
they had paid. Previous to the fifteenth century, workmen in various
occupations were impressed into the service of the king at wages
regardless of their will as to the terms and place of employment.
Indeed, all through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there were
continual attempts to fix the rate of wages arbitrarily by law, and also
the hours of labor. These, by one old statute, were decreed to last from
5 A.M. to 7 or 8 P.M.
These acts, and others of similar nature, were intended for the
subjugation of laborers and the benefit of the employers of labor. It is
only since the era of popular government that legislation for an
opposite purpose has come in vogue. Gradually the right of the
workingman to have the price of his labor fixed as is the price of other
commodities, by the law of supply and demand, came to be recognized,
although the progress was pitifully slow. The old ideas of the relation
between "master" and "servant" were very tenacious of life, and the
substitution of the terms "workman" and "employer" is a change which has
taken place in England during the present generation.
It was the petty tyranny and the grinding extortion which the laborers
had begun to feel, even though they were far better paid and better
treated than their fathers, that caused the formation of the original
trade unions. Laborers saw that each was helpless alone, but that
combined they were a power which their employers need not despise. The
old craft guilds furnished them an example of effective combination
among those engaged in the same trade; and as men everywhere in every
age, when a common danger or misfortune has confronted them, have come
together for mutual help and defence, these ignorant laborers, in
violation of stringent statutes, but following blindly their human
instincts of self-defence, came together and organized the first trade
unions.
The common law has always held trade unions to be "illegal combinations
in restraint of trade." Between the reigns of Edward I. and George IV.,
the common law was affirmed and made more effective by the passage of
over thirty acts of Parliament, all intended to abolish the trade
unions. In 1800 a stringent law was passed, by which all persons
combining to advance their wages or decrease the quantity of their work,
or in any way affect or control those who carried on the business in
which they were employed, might be committed to jail by a justice for
not more than three months, or to work in the house of correction for
not more than two months. Not till 1824 was an act passed slightly
ameliorating this stringent law, and even then the trade unions remained
for the most part secret organizations. At last, in 1871 and 1876, laws
were passed under which no person can be prosecuted for conspiracy to
commit an act which would not be criminal if committed by him singly;
and the trade unions, thus legalized, were taken in common with other
benefit societies under the protection of the law.
We have already pointed out the main fact that the chief end and aim of
the trade unions is the advancement of wages by securing a monopoly of
the supply of labor in some particular trade. It is now fair to explain,
as we have for other monopolies, the labor monopoly from the standpoint
of the laborer himself.
It is a sound axiom of business that a forced sale is apt to be an
unprofitable one to the seller; and that when a man's needs are so great
that he is absolutely obliged to sell at any price, he is quite certain
not to get the full worth of his goods. Now it is an undeniable fact
that the condition of many of the wage-workers of the country
approximates to this: They must have food, shelter, and clothing for
themselves and their families, and the only thing they can offer in
exchange for it is their labor. Suppose an honest and industrious man
has some misfortune, as an accident, or illness, and loses employment.
When once more able to work, he finds his old place filled and new
places hard to find; but at last he finds a mercenary employer who
agrees to give him half wages. Disheartened at his prospects, he thinks
half a loaf is better than no bread, especially when those dearest to
him are hungry, and so takes the place. But his employer takes care that
his constant work shall leave him no time to hunt for a better position.
Indeed, by a few judicious threats from his employer, the man may be put
in terror of losing the pittance he already has, and seeing those
dependent on him in absolute starvation. Such cases are amply provided
for by the trade union. Ill treatment of any one of its members may be
avenged by the organization as a whole, on the principle, whose spirit
of fraternity and self-sacrifice all must admire, that "an injury to one
is the concern of all." More than this, by means of the benefit feature
of the fraternity, the member unfortunate, or in distress, is properly
cared for. No member is obliged to feel, when seeking for employment,
that his food or shelter is at stake if his attempts fail, and he need
never be at the mercy of employers who drive sharp bargains.
It is often charged as an evil of trade-unions interfering with wages,
that they tend to bring all their members to the same level, and are
opposed to the payment of wages in proportion to the varying abilities
of the men working at the same employment. But with unorganized labor,
and employers who were none too just in their ideas, it was not uncommon
to see the necessity of the laborer, or his inability to drive a good
bargain, taken advantage of. Thus the workmen whose necessities were
greatest, and who were the most docile and obedient, received lower
wages than the men who were not particular whether they were busy or
idle, and were inclined to pay more attention to their own rights and
prerogatives than to the work for which they were hired. While the
tendency toward non-recognition of the varying abilities and ambitions
of workmen by the trade unions must be deprecated, it has largely grown
from the reform of this worse abuse.
There is another benefit which the organization of labor has effected
which may, perhaps, be thought an evil by some, but which every broad
and generous man must gratefully recognize as a gain to the whole
community; and in a self-governed nation like our own, it is a benefit
whose importance it is difficult to over-estimate. This is the
maintenance of the laborer's dignity and self-respect. We have but to
look back to the times we have already mentioned, to see the laborer
hardly better than a dog, a cringing dependent, kicked and beaten on
slight pretext, and with almost every vestige of manhood worked and
bullied out of him. We have come upon far happier times to-day, and
there are few corners of the civilized world where conditions so evil
prevail now. But without the organization of labor, the status of
workingmen would be much farther removed from what is just and right
than it now is. Every employer who is wise and honest, and who has the
true spirit of a gentleman, will see that his workmen are treated with
the respect that is their just due. Discipline there must be, but it is
a wrong view of discipline that makes it consist of oaths and brutal
insults delivered according to the prevalent good temper or ugliness of
the overseer. Unfortunately, not every man who is placed in authority is
wise, honest, and a gentleman. Bodily violence is no longer permitted by
law, but too often the curses and insults which are heaped on men with
no due cause are a violence which is more severe to many a man than
actual cuffs and kicks. No man can take such treatment without
resentment, and maintain his dignity and self-respect. Yet in how many
places is petty tyranny of this sort still active, and its victims are
cowed into submission for fear of taking the bread from their children's
mouths.
But the member of a strong labor organization need not be cowed or
tamely accept insult. He has the right to resent it, and has the power
of his fraternity to support him. He knows this, and his employer knows
it. Overseers, big with their importance, and inclined to show it by
attacking the self-respect of the men under them are no longer in
demand.
It is very unfortunate that many people misconstrue this result of the
organization of labor as a move toward the abolition of all social ranks
and grades. It is nothing of the kind. Social gradations cannot be
created or brushed away by any legislative enactment, or the acts of
any single class. The combination of the workmen to secure their right
to protect themselves from insult is indeed a movement toward making
them better and nobler men, just as the abolition of slavery in all its
forms was a move in this direction. But no man is truly free if he is
not secure in his right to immunity from personal insult as well as from
bodily violence. It is not strange, however, that the workman, conscious
of the strength of the fraternity behind him, sometimes grows arrogant
and insolent toward those who must necessarily be in authority over him.
Unaccustomed for generations past to other government than fear of one
sort or other, he is all unused to self-control. But it is hardly
possible that this should be a great evil. The body of workmen will,
eventually, if not now, refuse to sanction and defend their members in
any thing which their innate sense of justice must teach them is wrong.
Few workingmen will causelessly ask their brotherhood to undertake the
hardships and loss of prestige which accompany a strike. And even when
insolence is shown toward employers or overseers, they have at least
equal power to resent it, and are not, as was the laborer of a
half-century ago, forced to submit to insults with outward humility.
We have already noticed the condition of the laws in reference to the
laborer in former times: but the repeal of the laws oppressing the
workman, and making him a servant to a master instead of a workman for
an employer, has been largely due to the organized efforts of the trade
unions. To them, also, we owe the passage of many acts like those for
the guarding of machinery in factories, the restrictions upon the
employment of child labor, and the proper care for the health, comfort,
and convenience of employés in general. It cannot be said that the
labor interests have always shown great wisdom in all their advocacy of
new legislation, and too many acts, like those in reference to the
employment of convict labor, show a lamentable retrogression. On the
whole, however, there is every reason to believe that the general course
of justice has been aided by the influence of the trade
unions--something which can be said of very few special interests for
whose benefit our legislatures have enacted laws.
All the above facts we must admit in defence of the organizations which
have, to a large degree, killed competition in the labor market. But in
defence of the especial action of the labor monopolists in forcing wages
up to a point above that which competition alone would determine, there
is also much to be said. Those who are unwilling to concede that there
is any justice in the claim of the wage-workers that full justice is not
yet awarded them, are accustomed to expand on the theme of the improved
condition of the laborer over that in which he was a century ago. How
this can be taken for argument is a mystery. No one thinks of disputing
or diminifying the well-known fact that many workmen of to-day have more
comforts than the princes of the Middle Ages. The single point in
dispute is this: Of the total wealth which is being produced in the
world to-day, is the laborer receiving his fair share? There are not
wanting men of judgment and ability who answer this question with a
decided No. And the greater share of the blame for this injustice they
lay upon the monopolies which we have been discussing. They charge, and
they verify their charge with ample and sound testimony, that of the
wealth which the united brains, and strength, and skill of the world
daily produces, the lion's share is taken by men who render the world no
proportionate service. This is partly due to existing laws, which the
public is not yet wise enough to better; partly to the inertia of public
opinion, which is still prone to cling in many points to the idea of
past generations that the workman was necessarily a slave; and partly to
the narrow selfishness and grasping ambition of many men in the business
world. This is not arguing for the reduction of all to a dead level, as
is so often absurdly claimed. It is arguing that the inequalities which
exist at the present day are not held securely in place by agreement
with the inflexible laws of justice and right. Instead they are abrupt
and uneven, and contrary to these laws; and there is great danger that
the readjustment, which must inevitably take place to bring them in
accord with these laws, will come, not as a gradual change, but as a
series of terrible social catastrophes, involving us in a wreck which
will require a century of civilization to repair.
Only fanatics preach absolute equality. As men differ in their ability
and their power to serve the world, so is it just that the reward which
the world metes out to them should differ in like proportion. But if we
stretch to the utmost the benefit which we conceive the world to derive
from the life of many of its men who reap the richest harvest from its
production, we cannot in any way make out that their services are so
valuable as to deserve such munificent reward. Indeed, it is not very
far from the truth to say of some of our most wealthy men that their
wealth was won instead of earned; and many place a much worse term in
the place of "won."
The workman sums up his case with the argument that as he is confessedly
not getting his just share of the results of his work, he is only
getting his due, or part of it, if by combination with his fellows to
crush out competition, he is able to put up the price of his labor above
the natural rate. Finally, as a last defence for the labor monopolies,
he calls attention to the trusts and pools and monopolies which are
taxing him at every hand for the necessaries of life, and declares that
if he, working on the same principle as the wealthy capitalists, is able
to combine his tens of thousands of fellows into an effective monopoly,
surely he should not be condemned for following the example of the men
who are, or are supposed to be, his social, moral, and intellectual
superiors.
Such is the strong case which the labor organizations present in defence
of the unions which they have formed to kill competition in the labor
market. The investigation we have pursued in the preceding chapters
enables us to add to this a statement of the case more comprehensive and
striking even, than the narrower views which have preceded. In the
chapter on the monopolies in trade, reference was made to the fact that
the competition among purchasers tends to keep prices up, just as
competition among sellers tends to keep them down. Now labor is a
commodity whose price in the market is governed by the same laws of
supply and demand that regulate the prices of all other things that are
bought and sold. But it has this peculiar difference, that the _sellers_
of labor are many, while the _purchasers_ are few, as compared with the
relative proportion of sellers and buyers of goods in general. Then,
wherever there is little competition among purchasers of labor, we shall
expect to find low wages; and where competition to secure workmen is
active, high wages will be the rule. This is so obviously true, in the
light of every one's experience, that we need not stop to prove it.
Now, in the days when manufacturing was carried on in small workshops,
there was a great number of purchasers of labor. The concentration of
manufacturing in great establishments where thousands of workmen are
employed has lessened the number of employers greatly; has it not also
lessened competition among them? It is a well-known fact that in many
great industries, as, for instance, the mining of coal or the
manufacture of iron, there is one rate of wages paid all through one
district, and the employers fix that rate through their associations.
The makers of trusts have sometimes defended them, on the ground that
they enabled the employer to pay his laborers higher wages; but it is
plain that when all the firms in a trade are united in one combination,
there can be no competition between them for the employment of labor.
They will pay them only such wages as they choose; and the bulk of
evidence seems to show that, notwithstanding the vast profits which the
monopolies are reaping, they have been far from showing any general
disposition to share their profits with their employés. It seems almost
unquestionable that we have here the real reason for the extraordinary
increase of labor monopolies within the past quarter century. This
period has witnessed a rapid growth of consolidation and combination in
all our industries, lessening thus the number of employers of labor. The
wage-worker found himself confronted with the fact that he was soon to
lose entirely the benefit of competition for the purchase of his work,
and felt that his only salvation from practical slavery was to prevent
the competition between himself and his comrades from forcing his wages
down to the starvation point. He met the monopoly that threatened to
lower his wages by forming another monopoly that could meet the first on
equal terms.
We have given little space in this chapter to the consideration of the
limit of the power of labor monopolies; but it is obvious that this is
very clearly defined. In the first place, while there are certain
attempts at combination among unskilled laborers, and those not working
at trades, these attempts cannot, as a general rule, be at all
successful. Any man out of employment may be a competitor for the work
which they do, and it seems practically impossible that any organization
can combine, under effective discipline, even a majority of the
workingmen of the country not skilled in a trade. The only ways in which
attempts to kill competition in unskilled labor can be successful, then,
are by the use of force or the boycott, or similar means, and these can
never come into vogue as permanent agents in the world's industry. The
labor monopolies which exist, and which promise, if let alone, to enjoy
continued success, are principally combinations of the workers in
skilled trades, and certain of those employed in manufacturing, mining,
trade, and transportation.