The Americans

by Hugo Münsterberg

This does not hinder the working-men, in their fight for better conditions of labour, from adopting many socialistic tenets. The American calls it socialism even to demand that the government own railways, telegraph lines, express companies, or coal-fields, or that the city conduct tramways, or gas or electric-light works. Socialism of this sort is undoubtedly progressing, although the more extravagant ideas find more wordy orators to support them than hearers to give belief. It is also very characteristic that the labour leaders do not make such agitation their life work, but often after a few years go over to one or another civil occupation. The relation between working-man and capitalist, moreover, is always felt to be temporary. A man is on one side of the line to-day and on the other to-morrow. There is no firm boundary between groups of men, but merely a distribution in temporary groups; and this separates the American labour unions from even the English unions, with which otherwise they have much in common.

Many other conditions by which the American working-man’s life is separated from the Englishman’s are of an economic sort. It is remembered, for instance, how successful the English unions have been in establishing co-operative stores, while in America they have failed in this. The department shops in the large cities have been able to sell cheaper and better goods, and have been in every way more popular. But enough of comparing America with the Old World—we must discuss the actual situation in the New.

The labour movement of the United States really began in the third decade of the last century. Of course, only the North is in question; in the South slavery excluded all alliances and independent movements for improving the condition of the manual labourer. There had been small strikes as early as the eighteenth century, but the real movement began with the factories which were built during the nineteenth.

From the very beginning the demand for shorter hours and higher wages were the main issues. At the same time the American world was filled more or less with fantastic notions of co-operation, and these influenced the course of affairs. Boston and New York were the centres of the new movement. As early as 1825 in New York there appeared the first exclusively labour newspaper, the “Labour Advocate”; it commenced a literature which was to increase like an avalanche. The labourers figured independently in politics in 1830, when they had their own candidate for governor. But all political endeavours of the working people have been mere episodes, and the chief labour movements of the century have taken place outside of politics; the leading unions have generally found that their strength lay in renouncing political agitation. Only when legal measures for or against the interests of labourers have been in question, has there been some mixing in with politics, but the American workmen have never become a political party.

At the beginning of the thirties, working-men of different industries united for the first time in a large organization, such as later became the regular form. But at the outset of the movement there appeared also the opposite movement from the side of the capitalists. For instance, in 1832 merchants and shipholders in Boston met solemnly to declare it their duty to oppose the combinations of working people which were formed for the illegal purpose of preventing the individual workman from making a free choice as regards his hours of labour, and for the purpose of making trouble with their employers, who already paid high wages.

The organization of the working-man and that of the employer have grown steadily, and the nation itself has virtually played the rôle of an attentive but neutral spectator. In the case of direct conflict the sympathy of the country has almost always been on the side of the working-man, since in the concrete case the most impressive point was generally not the opposition between capital and labour, but the personal contrast of the needy day-labourer and the rich employer; and the sentimentality of the American has always favoured the weaker classes. The nation however, has shown an equal amount of sympathy toward capital whenever a general matter of legislation was in question; that is, whenever the problem has seemed more theoretical than personal. In such cases the capitalists have always been felt to be the pioneers of the American nation by putting their enterprise into all sorts of new undertakings, applying their capital and intelligence to economic life; so that they have seemed to a greater extent in need of national protection than the workman, who may always be easily replaced by some one else.

Considering the matter as a whole, it can be said indeed that the nation has preserved a general neutrality, and let both parties virtually alone. A change has very recently taken place. The new conditions of the industrial struggle make it clearer day by day that there are three parties to the conflict, rather than two; that is, not only capitalist and labourer, but also the general public, which is dependent on the industrial output, and therefore so immediately concerned in the settlement of differences as to seem, even in concrete cases, entitled to take active part. The turning-point came perhaps during the coal strike in the winter of 1902–03, when the President himself stood out to represent this third party. But we must follow the development more minutely—must speak of the labour organizations as they exist to-day, of the results of legislation, of the weapons employed by the labourers and those used by the capitalists, of their advantages and disadvantages, and of the latest efforts to solve the problem. Three forms of working-men’s organizations can be discriminated to-day—the Knights of Labour, the independent trades-unions, and the federated trades-unions.

The Knights of Labour are by principle different from both of the other groups; and their influence, although once very great, is now waning. Their fundamental idea is a moral one, while that of their rivals is a practical one. This is, of course, not to be taken as meaning that the labour unions pursue immoral ends or the Knights of Labour unpractical ones. The Knights of Labour began very modestly in 1869 as a secret organization, somewhat like the Free Masons, having an elaborate initiation and somewhat unusual procedures. Their constitution began with the motto, “Labour is noble and sacred,” and their first endeavours were for the intellectual uplifting of the labourer and opposition to everything which made labour mean or unworthy. The order grew steadily, but at the same time the practical interests of different groups of working-men necessarily came into prominence. In the middle eighties, when they gave up their secret observances, the society had about a million members, and its banner still proclaimed the one sentiment that industry and virtue not wealth are the true measure of individual and national greatness. Their members, they insisted, ought to have a larger share of the things which they produced, so as to have more time for their intellectual, moral, and social development. In this moral spirit, the society worked energetically against strikes and for the peaceful settlement of all disputes.

Its principal weakness was perhaps that, when the membership became large, it began to take part in politics; the Knights demanded a reform in taxation, in the currency, in the credit system, and a number of other matters in line with state socialism. It was also a source of weakness that, even in local meetings, working-men of different trades came together. This was of course quite in accordance with the ethical ideal of the society. As far as the moral problems of the workmen are in question, the baker, tailor, mason, plumber, electrician, and so on, have many interests which are identical; but practically it turned out that one group had little interest in its neighbour groups, and oftentimes even strongly conflicting interests were discovered. Thus this mixed organization declined in favour of labour societies which comprised members of one and only one trade, so that at the present time the Knights of Labour are said to number only 200,000 and their importance is greatly reduced. It is still undoubted that the idealistic formulation in which they presented the interests of labour to the nation has done much to arouse the public conscience.

At the present time the typical form of organization is the trades-union, and between the independent and the federated trades-unions there is no fundamental difference. There are to-day over two million working-men united in trades-unions; the number increases daily. And this number, which comprises only two-fifths of all wage-earners, is kept down, not because only two-fifths of the members of each trade can agree to unite, but because many trades exist which are not amenable to such organization; the unions include almost all men working in some of the most important trades. The higher the employment and the more it demands of preparation, the stronger is the organization of the employed. Printers, for instance, almost all belong to their union, and in the building and tobacco trades there are very few who are not members. The miners’ union includes about 200,000 men, who represent a population of about a million souls. On the other hand, it would be useless and impossible to perfect a close organization where new individuals can be brought in any day and put to work without any experience or training; thus ordinary day-labourers are not organized. The number of two million thus represents the most important trades, and includes the most skilled workers.