Still more light on the progress made in that direction under the very eyes of the present generation is thrown by the figures which recently made the rounds of the daily press. They deal with the growth of the volume of business and power wielded by one single capitalist concern, the J. Pierpont Morgan banking firm in Wall Street, New York. The figures show that the business capital of that concern alone, the stocks and bonds of all the innumerable enterprises, commercial, industrial, etc., controlled by it represented the amount of $527,282,564. But that was 21 years ago, in 1892. Gigantic as this mass of capital was it was insignificant compared with the proportions it reached in subsequent years. In 1897 it was $1,396,506,231; in 1902, $3,852,940,908, and in 1912 it was estimated to be $26,854,254,628. In other words, nearly TWENTY-SEVEN THOUSAND MILLION dollars of business capital are controlled by the one man at the head of this single concern, whose mere stroke of pen would suffice, if he saw fit, to turn the key in the lock of the door of thousands of factories and other business concerns where millions of workers must earn their daily bread. The lives of millions of workers and of many more millions of members of their families actually depending upon the will and the whim of a single individual! How much more is needed to complete the evolution towards industrial autocracy, the gate to Industrial Democracy? The power of political autocrats, of Czar Nicholas of Russia, of Louis XIV of France, etc., is like that of children, compared with the economic power wielded by this colossus of Twentieth Century capitalism. It will not require, it cannot require, centuries or generations for the thirty-three and a half millions of wage-slaves to realize that they can have the power and must,—to save their own lives—throw off from their necks the Iron Heel of modern Industrial Autocracy!
In point of development of all these material conditions, as prerequisites for a successful Social Revolution, America leads the procession of all modern nations. In one important respect, however, America lags far behind the procession. It is with regard to the economic organization of labor, with regard to the labor union movement. As yet this strategically vital and determining field is in the possession of the reactionary forces of the American Federation of Labor, the organization that is doing all in its power to check the growth of Socialism in this country, to perpetuate the capitalist system of wage labor.
The supremacy of this organization in the economic field of the labor movement exercises upon the American working class, eagerly though that class is seeking its own emancipation, an influence which, in the political field likewise, prevents it from organizing and fighting on proper lines. The baneful influence of the American Federation of Labor thus threatens to render nought the otherwise ripe material conditions, and to render abortive the impending Social Revolution.
Whether the coming crisis in the life of this nation will result in the rearing of the Dome of Socialism and Industrial Democracy, or whether it will lead only to a most stupendous slaughter of the working class, to the erection of a “Caesar’s Column,” and to complete and hopeless subjugation of the masses depends largely on reorganization of the union movement from the craft union basis of the American Federation of Labor to a correct and sound industrial union basis.
Unfortunately among the Socialists of America the vital importance of the educational work needed as a prerequisite for the reorganization of the labor union movement of the land is very little recognized. Only too frequently one meets Socialists who innocently assure themselves and others that they “believe in industrial unionism” and are “opposed to the A. F. of L.” merely because they try to hit back when Gompers attacks their party. The knowledge possessed by such Socialists as to the essential features of the A. F. of L. unionism, which makes of that organization a veritable trap that holds the working masses fast and helpless against the capitalist exploiters, is very indistinct. The literature, the press, the lectures, etc., that mold the views of such Socialists avoid, for sundry reasons, the dissecting and exposing of the dangerous features of craft unionism. As a rule, in the minds of such Socialists there is only a vague idea that “there is something wrong with the American Federation of Labor,” and they are mostly inclined to find that “wrong” in the opposition of the A. F. of L. leaders to the political work of the Socialists. Most of them are only too ready to forget and forgive the “mistakes” of that organization if it would only “leave the Socialists alone.”
It is to stimulate the study of the essential and distinct features of A. F. of L. craft unionism, and as a contribution towards that study that this pamphlet is offered to the working class.
BORIS REINSTEIN.
MAY DAY AND LABOR DAY—A CONTRAST.
The workers who are more or less familiar with the Labor and Socialist Movement in this country and especially in European countries, often wonder why most American workingmen celebrate “Labor Day” on the first Monday of September instead of May Day, on the first of May.
We shall endeavor, in this pamphlet, to give a sketch of the difference in the character and effect of these two holidays of Labor.