The Steel Strike and the Future of American Industry.
The strike ordered by the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers for the purpose of coercing three of the companies embraced in the United States Steel Corporation will be regarded with keen interest by all persons acquainted with the grounds on which the manufacturers of the United States are able to compete with those of Great Britain and other European countries. We do but state the naked truth when we say that, if this strike should prove successful, our employers of skilled labor would be gradually subjected to disabilities which, ultimately, would put an end to the hope of competition with their transatlantic rivals in the markets of the world.
The fundamental difference between the powers of extensive, quick and improved production possessed by American manufacturers, on the one hand, and by British manufacturers on the other, is that, by comparison, the latter are now, and have been for a good many years, under the heel of the trade unions. In almost every branch of British manufactures the trade unions prescribe, not only the rate of wages and the hours of labor, but also the amount of work to be performed by a given workman in a given time, and the kind of machinery to be used. Instead of opening a career to energy, assiduity and talent, the whole system of British industry, as organized by the trade unions, is adjusted to a low average capacity of diligence and of intelligence. Far from being encouraged, a vigorous or a specially skillful workman is discouraged from turning out more than the average amount of product during the fixed hours of labor, as also for working overtime for extra pay. Improvements in machinery intended to economize time or labor are eyed with suspicion and can be introduced only after long delay and with the utmost difficulty. In England, as compared with the United States, the inventor finds no incentive. The result is that now the British manufacturer is unable to vie with his American competitor in branches of industry where rapidity of execution is essential, or where the employment of the latest mechanical devices is indispensable to the cheapness or the perfection of a product.
It is indisputable that American labor associations are organized on the same fundamental principle which actuates the trade unions of Great Britain. That is to say, their aims, demands and regulations are based on the primary assumption that the whole industrial system should steadily keep in view the interests, not of employers, nor of workmen exceptionally gifted in intellect or character, but those of the great mass of operatives possessed only of average physical, mental and moral qualities. The inevitable outcome of such a system, where it is carried out with a completeness now approached in Great Britain, is a reduction of a nation’s industry to a dead level of achievement to a status of Chinese stagnation with respect both to quality and quantity. Such would be the drear and hopeless prospect which would confront our manufacturers, should our labor associations gain the nearly absolute mastery of industrial conditions which the trade unions have managed to acquire in the United Kingdom.
Should the present steel strike prove successful, our labor associations will have made a long stride toward the acquirement of such mastery. The strike has been ordered, not because of any disagreement between employers and employed with regard to wages or to the hours of labor, but because certain companies have refused to put in the hands of the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers the means of forcing every non-union workman employed by those companies to join that society. Were the principle asserted by the Amalgamated Association to be accepted by the three companies now subjected to coercion, it would presently be applied to every constituent company of the United States Steel Corporation, and, this colossal combination of capital once conquered, all outside representatives of the iron and steel industries would, of course, speedily succumb. From that moment all the employers of skilled labor in this vast field of production would be at the mercy of the employed, firmly organized as they all would be in American counterparts of the British trade unions, with regard not only to the rate of wages and the hours of labor, but also to the encouragement of inventive talent and the introduction of improved machinery. The bright, and thus far continually brightening, outlook of the iron and steel industries of the United States would have been eclipsed forever.
There could be no better time than the present to answer once for all the question whether American manufacturers of iron and steel will bow their necks to the yoke which their British competitors have long found too heavy to be borne.—N.Y. Sun.
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