There is a form of conflict between farmers and organized workers, because the farmer has to hire labor, and wants it cheap. This conflict is carefully made use of by the old party politicians, who wish to plunder the two groups separately. I point out to both farmer and workingman that their deeper interests are identical; they are the producers, and supplement each other. The farmers grow food for the city workers, while the city workers make building materials and machinery, clothing, newspapers—everything the farmers need. These two groups form the basis of the new society, and in their political union lies our hope for the future.
When I say “workers,” understand that I mean workers of both hand and brain: housewives and teachers, clerks and stenographers, architects, chemists and doctors, foremen, superintendents and executives—all who are actually necessary to the efficient production of wealth. The only ones not necessary are the owners, in their capacity as exploiters and parasites.
I know that many owners also work as managers, and if they are competent, I respect them, and invite their aid. I should be glad to see young Rockefeller managing our national oil trust—provided only that somebody would convert him to the ideal of public service. When the real crisis comes, some employers will realize that the making of industrial democracy is a task worthy of all the energy they are now putting into making millions of dollars—to be used later on in wrecking the lives of their descendants.
The useful workers of industry, and those on the land, must get together. They must have a political party of producers—the plan has been fully worked out in Minnesota, and the other states have only to follow. Also we must build up and strengthen the trade unions of both workers and farmers; for it is not at all certain that the masters of money will surrender to white paper ballots in whatever number; they must know that these ballots are backed by nationwide organizations, capable, determined, and wielding the threat of the mass-strike.
As part of the process of organizing and drawing together farmers and workers, we must encourage business co-operation between these groups. The farmers can feed the workers, and the workers can set up co-operative factories for their farmer customers. The railway brotherhoods have made a beginning at this, and so have the clothing workers. Equally important is labor-banking, to finance such undertakings. At present a great deal of labor-banking turns out to be shadow—there is no real control by labor, and all that happens is, some former labor officials become successful bankers. But that also will be remedied—the unions will have banks which they actually control, and whose funds they use for their own enterprises. What could be more pitiful than the present situation—the workers putting their billions of savings into capitalist banks, to be shipped on to Wall Street and there used for robbing labor, and financing anti-labor newspapers—and even breaking labor strikes!
At the present time the policies of American labor both political and industrial, are a generation out of date; our workingmen are like the Moros in the Philippines, fighting machine-guns with bows and arrows. The unions are still organized according to crafts; and they face gigantic combinations of capital, which have merged a hundred different crafts into one. So of course the unions are beaten or outwitted at every turn; and membership falls off, and the old officials whistle to keep their courage up.
I remember, Judd, that in some of our arguing you asserted that many labor leaders are corrupt; that is one reason why you are not a union man. But go and investigate trade union corruption, and you find just what we found about political corruption. Who puts up the money to buy labor leaders? The employers, and the employers’ associations! Wherever you touch this evil in our society, it is one and the same thing—private wealth seeking to increase itself at the expense of the poor and weak. In Chicago I once investigated a strike of teamsters, which had kept the city in an uproar for weeks, and cost several lives—to say nothing of discrediting the workers. And what was behind it? A great mail-order house trying to put another mail-order house out of business, hiring a strike and gangs of sluggers!
The remedy for that is not to desert the unions, but to put new blood into them, a new policy and a new ideal. The task of labor is no longer to get five cents more per hour for its members, or an extra hour off on Saturdays; it is to reconstruct society, and make a world of producers, managed by producers, for the benefit of producers. And for that every worker is needed, and the place where he is needed is in the union with his fellows. If there are officials without vision, go in and teach them; point out how the employers have formed trusts, and how the workers must match them with great industrial unions. If labor officials are dishonest and betrayers of their cause, kick them out, and find others who are class conscious and loyal. I know that is easy to say and hard to do; yet surely, Judd, labor cannot lie down and give up! Get it straight—this is a changing world, and you can’t stay as you are; there are forces at work that will beat the workers back into their age-old status of serfs, unless they have the courage and brain power to master these forces, and lift themselves to the new status of citizens of industry. Join, and do your part; and some day the law will provide that every man who works at a trade becomes automatically a member of his union, an equal citizen of the industry, with no power to exploit others, nor fear of being exploited by others.