FOOTNOTES:
[123] The American Commonwealth, Chapter 94.
[124] Andrew Carnegie.
[125] T. W. Higginson, Book and Heart, 145.
CHAPTER XXV
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE ILL-PAID CLASSES
The Need of Class Organization—Uses and Dangers of Unions—General Disposition of the Hand-Working Classes.
It is not the purpose of this book to add anything to the merely controversial literature of the time; and in treating the present topic I intend no more than to state a few simple and perhaps obvious principles designed to connect it with our general line of thought.
It is quite apparent that an organized and intelligent class-consciousness in the hand-working people is one of the primary needs of a democratic society. In so far as this part of the people is lacking in a knowledge of its situation and in the practice of orderly self-assertion, a real freedom will also be lacking, and we shall have some kind of subjection in its place; freedom being impossible without group organization. That industrial classes exist—in the sense already explained[126]—cannot well be denied, and existing they ought to be conscious and self-directing.
The most obvious need of class-consciousness is for self-assertion against the pressure of other classes, and this is both most necessary and most difficult with those who lack wealth and the command over organized forces which it implies. In a free society, especially, the Lord helps those who help themselves; and those who are weak in money must be strong in union, and must also exert themselves to make good any deficiency in leadership that comes from ability deserting to more favored classes.
That the dominant power of wealth has an oppressive action, for the most part involuntary, upon the people below, will hardly be denied by any competent student. The industrial progress of our time is accompanied by sufferings that are involved with the progress. These sufferings—at least in their more tangible forms—fall almost wholly upon the poorer classes, while the richer get a larger share of the increased product which the progress brings. By sufferings I mean not only the physical hardship and liability to disease, early decay, and mutilation or death by accident, which fall to the hand-worker; but also the debasement of children by premature and stunting labor, the comparative lack of intellectual and social opportunities, the ugly and discouraging surroundings, and the insecurity of employment, to which he and his are subject. There is no purpose to inflict these things; but they are inflicted, and the only remedy is a public consciousness, especially in the classes who suffer from them, of their causes and the means by which they can be done away with.