It is very unfortunate that many people misconstrue this result of the organization of labor as a move toward the abolition of all social ranks and grades. It is nothing of the kind. Social gradations cannot be created or brushed away by any legislative enactment, or the acts of any single class. The combination of the workmen to secure their right to protect themselves from insult is indeed a movement toward making them better and nobler men, just as the abolition of slavery in all its forms was a move in this direction. But no man is truly free if he is not secure in his right to immunity from personal insult as well as from bodily violence. It is not strange, however, that the workman, conscious of the strength of the fraternity behind him, sometimes grows arrogant and insolent toward those who must necessarily be in authority over him. Unaccustomed for generations past to other government than fear of one sort or other, he is all unused to self-control. But it is hardly possible that this should be a great evil. The body of workmen will, eventually, if not now, refuse to sanction and defend their members in any thing which their innate sense of justice must teach them is wrong. Few workingmen will causelessly ask their brotherhood to undertake the hardships and loss of prestige which accompany a strike. And even when insolence is shown toward employers or overseers, they have at least equal power to resent it, and are not, as was the laborer of a half-century ago, forced to submit to insults with outward humility.
We have already noticed the condition of the laws in reference to the laborer in former times: but the repeal of the laws oppressing the workman, and making him a servant to a master instead of a workman for an employer, has been largely due to the organized efforts of the trade unions. To them, also, we owe the passage of many acts like those for the guarding of machinery in factories, the restrictions upon the employment of child labor, and the proper care for the health, comfort, and convenience of employés in general. It cannot be said that the labor interests have always shown great wisdom in all their advocacy of new legislation, and too many acts, like those in reference to the employment of convict labor, show a lamentable retrogression. On the whole, however, there is every reason to believe that the general course of justice has been aided by the influence of the trade unions—something which can be said of very few special interests for whose benefit our legislatures have enacted laws.
All the above facts we must admit in defence of the organizations which have, to a large degree, killed competition in the labor market. But in defence of the especial action of the labor monopolists in forcing wages up to a point above that which competition alone would determine, there is also much to be said. Those who are unwilling to concede that there is any justice in the claim of the wage-workers that full justice is not yet awarded them, are accustomed to expand on the theme of the improved condition of the laborer over that in which he was a century ago. How this can be taken for argument is a mystery. No one thinks of disputing or diminifying the well-known fact that many workmen of to-day have more comforts than the princes of the Middle Ages. The single point in dispute is this: Of the total wealth which is being produced in the world to-day, is the laborer receiving his fair share? There are not wanting men of judgment and ability who answer this question with a decided No. And the greater share of the blame for this injustice they lay upon the monopolies which we have been discussing. They charge, and they verify their charge with ample and sound testimony, that of the wealth which the united brains, and strength, and skill of the world daily produces, the lion's share is taken by men who render the world no proportionate service. This is partly due to existing laws, which the public is not yet wise enough to better; partly to the inertia of public opinion, which is still prone to cling in many points to the idea of past generations that the workman was necessarily a slave; and partly to the narrow selfishness and grasping ambition of many men in the business world. This is not arguing for the reduction of all to a dead level, as is so often absurdly claimed. It is arguing that the inequalities which exist at the present day are not held securely in place by agreement with the inflexible laws of justice and right. Instead they are abrupt and uneven, and contrary to these laws; and there is great danger that the readjustment, which must inevitably take place to bring them in accord with these laws, will come, not as a gradual change, but as a series of terrible social catastrophes, involving us in a wreck which will require a century of civilization to repair.
Only fanatics preach absolute equality. As men differ in their ability and their power to serve the world, so is it just that the reward which the world metes out to them should differ in like proportion. But if we stretch to the utmost the benefit which we conceive the world to derive from the life of many of its men who reap the richest harvest from its production, we cannot in any way make out that their services are so valuable as to deserve such munificent reward. Indeed, it is not very far from the truth to say of some of our most wealthy men that their wealth was won instead of earned; and many place a much worse term in the place of "won."
The workman sums up his case with the argument that as he is confessedly not getting his just share of the results of his work, he is only getting his due, or part of it, if by combination with his fellows to crush out competition, he is able to put up the price of his labor above the natural rate. Finally, as a last defence for the labor monopolies, he calls attention to the trusts and pools and monopolies which are taxing him at every hand for the necessaries of life, and declares that if he, working on the same principle as the wealthy capitalists, is able to combine his tens of thousands of fellows into an effective monopoly, surely he should not be condemned for following the example of the men who are, or are supposed to be, his social, moral, and intellectual superiors.
Such is the strong case which the labor organizations present in defence of the unions which they have formed to kill competition in the labor market. The investigation we have pursued in the preceding chapters enables us to add to this a statement of the case more comprehensive and striking even, than the narrower views which have preceded. In the chapter on the monopolies in trade, reference was made to the fact that the competition among purchasers tends to keep prices up, just as competition among sellers tends to keep them down. Now labor is a commodity whose price in the market is governed by the same laws of supply and demand that regulate the prices of all other things that are bought and sold. But it has this peculiar difference, that the sellers of labor are many, while the purchasers are few, as compared with the relative proportion of sellers and buyers of goods in general. Then, wherever there is little competition among purchasers of labor, we shall expect to find low wages; and where competition to secure workmen is active, high wages will be the rule. This is so obviously true, in the light of every one's experience, that we need not stop to prove it. Now, in the days when manufacturing was carried on in small workshops, there was a great number of purchasers of labor. The concentration of manufacturing in great establishments where thousands of workmen are employed has lessened the number of employers greatly; has it not also lessened competition among them? It is a well-known fact that in many great industries, as, for instance, the mining of coal or the manufacture of iron, there is one rate of wages paid all through one district, and the employers fix that rate through their associations. The makers of trusts have sometimes defended them, on the ground that they enabled the employer to pay his laborers higher wages; but it is plain that when all the firms in a trade are united in one combination, there can be no competition between them for the employment of labor. They will pay them only such wages as they choose; and the bulk of evidence seems to show that, notwithstanding the vast profits which the monopolies are reaping, they have been far from showing any general disposition to share their profits with their employés. It seems almost unquestionable that we have here the real reason for the extraordinary increase of labor monopolies within the past quarter century. This period has witnessed a rapid growth of consolidation and combination in all our industries, lessening thus the number of employers of labor. The wage-worker found himself confronted with the fact that he was soon to lose entirely the benefit of competition for the purchase of his work, and felt that his only salvation from practical slavery was to prevent the competition between himself and his comrades from forcing his wages down to the starvation point. He met the monopoly that threatened to lower his wages by forming another monopoly that could meet the first on equal terms.
We have given little space in this chapter to the consideration of the limit of the power of labor monopolies; but it is obvious that this is very clearly defined. In the first place, while there are certain attempts at combination among unskilled laborers, and those not working at trades, these attempts cannot, as a general rule, be at all successful. Any man out of employment may be a competitor for the work which they do, and it seems practically impossible that any organization can combine, under effective discipline, even a majority of the workingmen of the country not skilled in a trade. The only ways in which attempts to kill competition in unskilled labor can be successful, then, are by the use of force or the boycott, or similar means, and these can never come into vogue as permanent agents in the world's industry. The labor monopolies which exist, and which promise, if let alone, to enjoy continued success, are principally combinations of the workers in skilled trades, and certain of those employed in manufacturing, mining, trade, and transportation.