IV
It would be idle to declare that all the tendencies make toward acquiescence. Just as in the atmosphere a prevailing drift of the wind is accompanied by cross currents, flurries, and rotatory motions, so the dominant tendency discoverable in social industry is qualified by many complex processes. Of the cross currents here to be briefly noted, some are but trifling, while others undoubtedly reveal a certain force and constancy. A small part of the public is ever in a state of ferment over imputed social evils, and at rare times this ferment becomes general. Recurring labor troubles indicate that the spirit of resistance, if it really be dying, dies hard. Strikes of the magnitude of those at Homestead and in the Tennessee mines in 1892, at Chicago and other railroad centres in 1894, the several anthracite coal strikes of 1897, 1900, and 1902, and the steel strike of 1901 prove that organized labor has not wholly succumbed to the encompassing forces about it. The remarkable growth in numbers, these last two years, of the unions composing the American Federation of Labor, is confirmatory testimony. Radical political movements, furthermore, have not been wanting. The Socialists have increased their voting strength in the nation from some 2000 ballots in 1888 to upward of 130,000 in 1900. The Farmers’ Alliance made tremendous headway in the election of 1890, and its political successor, the People’s party, secured by fusion more than 1,000,000 votes in 1892 and nearly 2,000,000 in 1894. “Labor” mayors and even Socialist mayors have been elected in several cities, and the polling of 106,721 votes for Samuel M. Jones for Governor of Ohio in 1899 was a truly remarkable showing of the residual independence of the citizenship. There are also general social movements to chronicle. Reform societies and clubs are occasionally heard of; arbitration movements have met with some favor; there has been a considerable growth in the number of university and college settlements; and anti-trust conferences and things of that sort have frequently met, talked, and dispersed. Indeed, all of us at times grumble and find fault with general conditions. Even Mr. Russell Sage, in the face of his exultant panegyric on the beneficence of combination, has very recently given to the press a statement denouncing the further consolidation of industry, and predicting, in case his words are not heeded, “widespread revolt of the people and subsequent financial ruin unequalled in the history of the world.” Though only a few of us are irreconcilable at all times, all of us are disaffected sometimes—especially when our particular interests are pinched. We talk threateningly of instituting referendums to curb excessive power, of levying income taxes, or of compelling the Government to acquire the railroads and the telegraphs. We subscribe to newspapers and other publications which criticise the acts of the great corporations, and we hail as a new Gracchus the ardent reformer who occasionally comes forth for a season to do battle for the popular cause.