THE CROWNING OF LABOR. By John W. Alexander
From a Thistle Print, copyright by the Detroit Publishing Company. Reproduced by permission.
THE CROWNING OF LABOR
By John W. Alexander
This picture forms one of the panels in a series of mural decorations, representing the achievements of labor, at the head of the great staircase in the Museum of the Carnegie Institute at Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh, a great industrial community, is depicted as a knight in steel armor, emblematic of strength and power. Labor having reached its highest expression in the prosperous industrial community, the city is being crowned with a laurel wreath and heralded by the winged figures which have arisen out of the smoke and steam. The whole picture is symbolic of the immense energy which is guided by labor into productive channels.
Labor problems came with the Industrial Revolution.
The advent of steam power, factories, and clanging machinery changed all this. The number of employers diminished; the number of employees increased. Hundreds and even thousands of workmen were brought together into great brick factories, working long hours, destined to be laborers throughout their entire lives, with no hope of ever being anything else. With this new organization of industry the relation of the employer to his helpers was completely changed. The old personal relation disappeared; the employer no longer possessed even a passing acquaintance with his men.[[178]] The new relation was simply one of dollars and cents. He gave them so much wages; they gave him so much work. Being only one among a hundred, or one among several hundred, the individual employee lost his industrial independence. Whether he liked his work or not there was little for him to do but take the wages that were offered; he could no longer leave his employer and set up in business for himself as he could in the older days of hand-industry. The Industrial Revolution thus brought into being a new labor class, new conditions of labor, and a new labor problem.
Why Labor Organizes.—Organizations of workmen, now commonly known as trade unions or labor unions, were not in existence prior to the Industrial Revolution. There was no need for such associations then. But when the workers found that as individuals they could not bargain with their employers on terms of equality, they naturally sought to achieve this position of equality by combining together into groups or unions. The original purpose of a labor organization, therefore, was to enable its members to act unitedly in the interest of the worker, making a collective bargain with the employers. |The aims of labor organizations.| By this process of collective bargaining they aim to secure fair wages, reasonable hours of work, sanitary conditions in factories, and security against dismissal except for proper cause. In addition to seeking these advantages the labor organizations try to promote the social and intellectual interests of their own members.[[179]] They have supported the policy of free, public, education and have urged the prohibition of child labor in order that the children of the workers may be kept at school. They have advocated wholesome forms of public recreation, particularly the establishment of play-grounds. In a word the policy of organized labor is to support every movement which aims to make the worker self-respecting and independent while opposing everything that tends to reduce him to the ranks of a mere cog in the great industrial mechanism.[[180]]