International May Day and American Labor Day / A Holiday Expressing Working Class Emancipation Versus a Holiday Exalting Labor's Chains

by Boris Reinstein

Craft Union “Organization” and Spirit.

For this purpose the American Federation of Labor—the celebrant of Labor Day—gathers the masses of the workers, who in their blindness, ignorance and anxiety to secure immediate relief, respond to its luring call and flock to its banner. The gathered masses are then cut up into innumerable “independent and autonomous” craft divisions. They are taught to respect the claim of “Brother Capital” and to be guided in their actions not by the consideration of solidarity and identity of interests of all workers of the world, not even of those of the working class of America, not even of those of the American workers belonging to the same craft, but merely by the consideration of the interests of their personal jobs.

Accordingly, to monopolize their jobs they proclaim the principle of “America for Americans,” and try to build a Great Chinese Wall around America by means of reactionary anti-immigration laws and, in the meanwhile, build innumerable small Chinese walls around their unions by means of high, often prohibitive, initiation fees, dues and assessments; apprenticeship rules, catchy, tripping examinations of applicants for membership; system of “closing books” to all new applicants; forcing “troublesome” members out of the union and jobs by unjust and excessive fines, etc.

It is again only natural that labor “unions” of this type, built upon the principle of CLASS PEACE instead of CLASS STRUGGLE, discard the up-to-date ammunition from the arsenal of modern social warfare and persistently train their armies of “organized labor” to use the worse than worthless wooden swords and wooden bullets of conciliation, mediation and arbitration. Every careful observer of the American Labor Movement knows that the only effect of these weapons always was to break the aroused fighting spirit of the workers; to lead the electricity of the social storm into the ground; to make workers lose the advantageous position and opportune moments for securing substantial gains; to put them, broken in power and demoralized in spirit, at the mercy of their masters, and to give their false leaders the opportunity they so much crave for “settling the strike” and,—feathering their own nests financially, politically, or both.

Likewise is it only in keeping with this spirit and character of the heroine of Labor Day, the American Federation of Labor, that much of its time and energy is spent in fratricidal jurisdiction fights, fights over the question whether it should be the exclusive privilege of this, that or the other union to control certain kinds of jobs.

These jurisdiction fights, together with the system of agreements and contracts concluded by separate craft unions with the employers, without consideration of the interests of the other unions, and of the welfare of the labor movement generally,—contracts by means of which the members of the contracting unions are delivered over to the employers tied hand and foot and deprived even of the right to strike,—lead in innumerable cases to acts of betrayal and even of direct scabbing of members of one union against those of another.

Labor Day and Politics.

If the American Labor Day does not represent real unity and solidarity of the workers in their immediate field—the economic field—what wonder that it represents the same disruption and betrayal in the political field? That Labor Day plays a considerable part in the politics of the country no person familiar with the question can deny.

It must be remembered that America is a county where most of the workingmen, and now a rapidly growing number of working women, have a right to vote, and, as the working class—in America, of all countries—is the class to which the overwhelming majority of the people belong, no politician can get his fingers into the public pie, and the capitalist class cannot secure the control over the powers of government they need so badly, without employing some means of fooling the working people out of their votes.

American Labor Day is one of the institutions that is made to serve that purpose, too. The capitalist politicians have conveniently fixed it for the early part of September, about two months before Election Day, the season when the politicians make or prepare to make their nominations of candidates. The big gatherings of union men, voters, at Labor Day parades, mass meetings and picnics, supply splendid opportunities for advertising the candidacy of some capitalist politician claiming to be a “friend of Labor.” They give the false and treacherous leaders of the unions a chance, in expectation of good reward, to render these politicians a good service by securing them as speakers at these gatherings, and otherwise advertising them. They also give these false and ambitious union leaders a chance to boost their own stock on the political market by demonstrating to the politicians what a big crowd of voters the leader can influence for the one or the other political party of capitalism. It is in this respect both surprising and amusing how easily the labor fakers bluff and swindle at this game the politicians, who are otherwise supposed to be such shrewd men.