Every day over six weeks that the plant is idle, the workers are paying from their own pockets!
Our young revolutionists are going by the Russian model, and that is natural, because many of them come from there. But Russia had a small industrial plant, and we have a great one, enormously complicated. Moreover, Russia had no middle class, while we have a powerful one, ready to turn out at a moment’s notice and use machine guns and poison gas in the interest of property rights. The workers’ revolution succeeded in Russia, because the country was broken by war; but to bring us to a similar state of disorganization would take decades of suffering and waste—I venture the guess that it would be twenty times cheaper to buy the capitalists out, than to bring America to the point where a physical force revolution could prevail.
And yet, having said all that, fairness compels me to admit another side. I have been setting forth the ideal procedure; but this is not an ideal world, and many times we have to take what we can get, instead of what we want. Having told you my hopes, I will now tell you my fears.
The masses of our country are ignorant and unorganized. More than half of them do not vote at all; a large percentage value their votes at two dollars each, and the rest take their party as they take their God—from their grandfathers. They are interested in baseball and prize fighting, and jazz, and the doings of the “smart set”; they do not know how to think, and they never read anything but the “kept” newspapers and magazines, which tell them they are the greatest people in the world. Never in history has there been so elaborate a system for the hoodwinking of a hundred million people; and they lap up the propaganda, and go to the polls and vote their government into a branch-office of J. P. Morgan and Company.
But all this does not stop the process of industrial evolution; rather it speeds it up—giving the rich more money to produce more goods, and causing the poor to have less money to buy the goods. So the crisis comes on like a cyclone; and we shall find ourselves with our factories idle and millions of people starving, and no idea of the next step to take. There will be no time to teach the masses, no machinery for reaching them; but the desperate workers in our cities will hear the voice of the Communist soap-boxer, saying, “Take the factories, and produce goods for yourselves and your fellows.” The soap-boxer will ask: “Do you have to starve, because the majority has not voted you food?” He will ask: “Does a man have to remain a slave because the majority has not voted him free?” So it may happen that the hungry workers seize the factories and attempt to run them; and we shall have to make the best of it and help them to success.
In such an emergency, the social changes will be sudden and drastic; and that is the reason why I do not attempt to foretell what the new industrial forms will be. Just how the business will be managed depends in great part upon those who now have the power in their hands; they may choose either to be stubborn and brutal, or to display vision and a sense of justice, not to say of common prudence. You can see the difference this makes if you compare the great French revolution of a century and a half ago with the series of changes that have taken place in England during the same period. England has become a partly democratic country in fact, while remaining a monarchy in form; the reason being that the governing classes never pushed the people to the last extreme, but made concessions, just enough to keep themselves in power.
There is room for a variety of compromises between the workers and the capitalists, and also between the workers and the state. The capitalists may permit the setting up of shop committees, with the right of control over working conditions; they may consent to representation of the workers in boards which oversee each industry, with power to make adjustments and enforce decrees. Or both sides may prefer to call upon the government to do the adjusting. Or again, the workers may get control of the government, and laws may be passed providing for the taking over of control by the trade unions. A practical program has been worked out by the railway brotherhoods, the Plumb plan; providing for the purchase of the roads by the government, and their operation by a board representing the government, the brotherhoods, and the bondholders until the latter have been paid off. The day may come when the money-masters of this country will wish they had had the statesmanship to put that plan into operation while there was time.
I have argued here for government ownership of industry; but you must understand—that is not the same thing as operation of industry by politicians. The people who understand an industry are those who work in it; and the way to combine democracy with efficiency is to make each industry a self-governing unit, and confine the part of government to supervision, and the regulation of prices. Let us have an industrial constitution and an industrial parliament, and let every man become a citizen of industry, with a voice in the control, and equal rights with all other citizens. That is the goal we work towards, and it is a strictly American goal, in line with American traditions. The practical steps are, first, to organize the workers in each industry, and make them class conscious, awake to their own interests; and second, to use the power of the state to open the books of each industry and expose the profits, cutting down the share which goes to the idle owners, and increasing the share which goes to the useful workers.