The degradation of the majority is not the only evil that results from the trusts. The rich are accustomed to look upon this evil as necessary and, therefore, one that they cannot hope to do more than mitigate by philanthropy. They seem unconscious of the goal to which this evil is inevitably driving them; and it is to this goal that I want above all to direct their attention.
(a) The Conflict Between the Trust and the Trade Union
It might seem as though the title for this section ought to be the conflict between capital and labor rather than the conflict between trusts and trade unions. This, however, is a mistake. So long as labor and capital were disorganized, there was not much danger in the conflict between the two. The employer was too strong and he had on his side in case of disturbance, the police, the militia, and the law. The moment, however, that labor became organized, it became too powerful for the police; it became dangerous even to the militia; and it has in England been strong enough to change the law; and this in spite of the fact that the organization of the workingman in unions has compelled the employers to combine in associations and trusts.
Again, although all violence is injurious to individuals, the violence to which unorganized workingmen resort in local disputes with their employers, however injurious to local interests, tends to be essentially temporary and does not tend to overthrow economic or social institutions. The effect of organization, however, expresses itself in the magnitude of the conflicts to which it gives rise; as for example, the Homestead strike in 1892, the Pullman strike in 1894, and what was practically equivalent to a civil war in Colorado during 1903.
It is generally believed that violence is the peculiar weapon of the workingman. This again is a mistake. Employers have often been the first to have recourse to violence and under conditions which hardly seem pardonable. That a striking employee should be enraged at seeing his place taken by strikebreakers and should be driven by his rage to violence, is easily understood; but that employers, merely for the sake of keeping down wages and making more profit, should have recourse to it seems altogether unjustifiable. It is a matter of official record that the Carnegie Steel Company opened negotiations with Robert A. Pinkerton for armed men nineteen days before any strike occurred.[109] The report also says that there was "no evidence to show that the slightest damage was done or was attempted to be done to property on the part of the strikers,"[110] and so far as acts of violence are concerned, a personal investigation of the Colorado strike satisfied me that the Employers' Association was just as guilty as the miners. An impartial account of this struggle is to be found in the Political Science Quarterly[111] published by a board of which J. Pierpont Morgan is a member, and which cannot be accused therefore of tenderness to miners or leanings towards Socialism. It is difficult to justify the action of the mine owners in removing Moyer, Haywood, and Pettibone under the circumstances described by Judge McKenna in his dissenting opinion.[112]
If the trust managers have deliberate recourse to violence and questionable methods in their conflict with labor which involve merely a question of more or less profit, is there not excuse for the workingman who has at stake his very livelihood and that of his wife and children?
There are elements, however, in the coming conflict which to my mind make it clear that notwithstanding the enormous advantages which capital has over labor, it is labor and not capital that in the end will triumph. To understand these elements it is indispensable to consider the character of the advantages which the trusts have over the trade unions, and the character of the advantages which the unions have over the trusts.
(b) Advantages of Trusts over Unions
So far in America the conflict between trusts and unions has been confined to the economic field, and in the economic field it must be admitted that trusts have the advantage. In the first place, as has already been intimated, the trusts have at stake merely a matter of more or less profit. The trust can for the purpose of crushing the union, sacrifice part of its profit without material damage. The trust in this respect is in an infinitely better condition than the isolated employer, for whom a strike very often means bankruptcy. This is not the case with the trust. Its capital is too large and its operations are conducted over too great an area for any strike to threaten insolvency.[113]
Moreover, an isolated employer is far more at the mercy of the employees than a trust, because a strike very often deprives him of custom. The orders he cannot fill are filled elsewhere and he may never recover the custom he has in this manner lost. The trust, however, can allow a strike to take place in one factory without for that reason failing to fill all its orders; for it can transfer them to another of its numerous factories in another place. That this is regularly done by the trust is a matter of common knowledge. The case cited by the Industrial Commission[114] is that of the American Smelting and Refining Company which "continued its business in the districts where there was no strike, transferring the work as far as possible."