When the master class, the masters of jobs and bread, organized their forces, they set narrow and sharp boundaries to the power of labor organizations. Henceforth the chances of victory were overwhelmingly on the side of the employers. The workers learned by bitter and costly experience that they could not play the interests of individual employers against other employers' interests. Meantime, too, they have learned that they are not only exploited as producers, but also as buyers, as consumers. For long, dominated by economic theories, the Socialists refused to recognize this aspect of the labor struggle, though the workers felt it strongly enough. They set their fine-spun theories against the facts of life. Their contention was that wages being determined by the cost of living, it mattered nothing how much or how little the workers got in wages, the cost of living and wages adjusted themselves to each other. But in actual experience the workers found that when prices fall, wages are quick to follow, whereas when prices soar high, wages are slow to follow. Wages climb with leaden feet when prices soar with eagle wings. Because the workers are consumers, almost to the last penny of their incomes, having to spend practically every penny earned, that form of exploitation becomes a serious matter.
But against this exploitation the unions have ever been absolutely powerless. Workingmen have never made any very serious attempt to protect the purchasing capacity of their wages, notwithstanding its tremendous importance.[131] The result has been that not a few of the "victories" so dearly won by trade union action have turned out to be hollow mockeries. When better wages have been secured, prices have often gone up, most often, in fact, so that the net result has been little to the advantage of the workers. In many cases, where the advance in wages applied only to a restricted number of trades, the advance in prices becoming general, the total result has been against the working class as a whole, and little or nothing to the advantage of the few who received the advance in immediate wages. At this point, the need is felt of a social revolution, not a violent revolution, be it understood, but a comprehensive social change which will give to the workers the control of the implements of labor, and also of the product of their labor. In other words, the demand arises for independent, working-class action, aiming at the socialization of the means of production and the product.
VIII
A line of cleavage thus presents itself between those, on the one hand, who would continue the old methods of economic warfare, together with the advocates of physical force, and, on the other hand, the advocates of united political action by the working class, consciously directed toward the socialization of industry and its products. The measure of the crystallization of this latter force is represented by the strength of the political Socialist movement. Whoever has studied the labor movement during the past few years must have realized that there is a tremendous drift of sentiment in favor of that policy in the labor unions of the country. The clamor for political action in the labor unions presages an enormous advance of the political Socialist movement during the next few years.
The struggle between the capitalist and working classes must become a political issue, the supreme political issue. This must result, not only because the collective ownership of property can best be brought about by political methods, but also because the capitalists themselves have taken the industrial struggle into the political arena to suit themselves; and when the workers realize the issue and accept it, the capitalists will not be able to resist them. One is reminded of the saying of Marx that capitalism produces its own gravediggers. In taking the industrial issue into the political sphere, to suit their own immediate advantages, the capitalists were destined to reveal to the workers, sooner or later, their power and opportunity.
Realizing that all the forces of government are on their side, the legislative, judicial, and executive powers being controlled by their own class, the employers have made the fight against labor political as well as economic in its character. When the workers have gone on strike and the employers have not cared to play the "waiting game," choosing rather to avail themselves of the great reserve army of unemployed workers outside, the natural resentment of the strikers, finding themselves in danger of being beaten by members of their own class, has led to violence which has been remorselessly suppressed by all the police and military forces at the command of the government. In many instances, the employers have purposely provoked striking workers to violence, and then called upon the government to crush the revolt thus made. Workers have been shot down at the shambles in almost every state, no matter which political party has been in power. Nor have these forces of our class government been used merely to punish lawless union men and women on strike, to uphold the "sacred majesty of the law," as the hypocritical phrase goes. They have been also used to deny strikers the rights which belonged to them, and to protect capitalists and their agents in breaking the laws. No one can read with anything like an impartial spirit the records of the miners' strike in the Cœur d'Alene mine, Idaho, or the labor disturbances in the state of Colorado from 1880 to 1905 and dispute this assertion.
Most important of all has been the powerful opposition of the makers and interpreters of the law. A body of class legislation, in the interests of the employing class, has been created, while the workers have begged in vain for protective legislation. In no country of the world have the interests of the workers been so neglected as in the United States. There is practically no such thing as employers' liability for accidents to workers; no legislation worthy of mention relating to occupations which have been classified as "dangerous" in most industrial countries; women workers are sadly neglected. Whenever a law of distinct advantage to the workers in their struggle has been passed, a servile judiciary has been ready to render it null and void by declaring it to be unconstitutional. No more powerful blows have ever been directed against the workers than by the judiciary. Injunctions have been issued, robbing the workers of the most elemental rights of manhood and citizenship. They have forbidden things which no law forbids, and even things which the Constitution and statute law declare to be legal.
Mr. John Mitchell refers to this subject, in strong but not too strong terms. "No weapon," he says, "has been used with such disastrous effect against trade unions as the injunction in labor disputes. By means of it, trade unionists have been prohibited under severe penalties from doing what they had a legal right to do, and have been specifically directed to do what they had a legal right not to do. It is difficult to speak in measured tones or moderate language of the savagery and venom with which unions have been assailed by the injunction, and to the working classes, as to all fair-minded men, it seems little less than a crime to condone or tolerate it."[132] This is strong language, but who shall say that it is too strong when we remember the many injunctions which have been hurled at organized labor since the famous Debs case brought this weapon into general use?
In this celebrated case, which grew out of the Pullman strike, in 1894, Eugene V. Debs, president of the American Railway Union, was arrested and arraigned on indictments of obstructing the mails and interstate commerce. Although arraigned, he was not tried, the case being abandoned, despite his demands for a trial. President Cleveland's strike commission subsequently declared, "There is no evidence before the commission that the officers of the American Railway Union at any time participated in or advised intimidation, violence, or destruction of property." Realizing that it had no sort of evidence upon which a jury might be hoped to convict, a new way was found. Debs and his officers were enjoined in a famous "blanket" injunction directed against Debs and all other officials of the union, and "all persons whomsoever." For an alleged violation of that injunction, Judge Woods, without trial by jury, sentenced Debs to six months' imprisonment and his associates to three months'. The animus and class bias of the whole proceeding may be judged from the fact that President Cleveland selected to represent the United States Government, at Chicago, Mr. Edwin Walker, general counsel at that very time for the General Managers' Association, representing the twenty-four railroads centering or terminating in Chicago. And these railroads were operating in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law at the time.[133]