A writer in the Federationist demands "a reduction of railway charges, express rates, telegraph rates, telephone rates," and a radical change in the great industrial corporations such as the Steel Trust, which is to be subjected to thorough regulation. Swollen fortunes are to be broken up, together with the power of the monopolists, of "the gamblers in the necessities of life, etc."[243] In this writer's opinion (Mr. Shibley), the monopolists are the chief cause of high prices and the only important anti-social group, and all the other classes of society have a common interest with the wage earners. But business interests, manufacturers, the owners of large farms, and employers in lines where competition still prevails, would also, with the fewest exceptions, take sides against the working people in any great labor conflict—as the history of every modern country for the past fifty years has shown. It is not "Big Business" or "The Interests," but business in general, not monopolistic employers, but the whole employing class, against which the unions have contended and always must contend—on the economic as well as the political field. Mr. Gompers and his associates, like Mr. Bryan and Senator La Follette, demand that the people shall rule, but they all depend upon the hundreds of thousands of business men as allies, who, if opposed to government by monopolies, are still more opposed to government by their employees or by the consumers of their products, and are certain to fight any political movement of which they are a predominating part.
The American Federation of Labor, and the majority of the labor unions comprising it, are thus seen to have a political program scarcely distinguishable from that of the radical wing of either of the large parties,—for it seeks little if any more than to join in with the general movement against monopolists and large capitalists in a conflict that can never be won or lost, since the leaders in the movement are themselves indirectly and at the bottom a part of the capitalist class.
The President of the American Federation views this partly reactionary and partly "State Socialist" program as being directed against "capitalism." "The votes of courageous and honest citizens in all civilized lands," says Mr. Gompers, "are cutting away the capitalistic powers' privilege to lay tribute on the producers. Capitalism, as a surviving form of feudalism,—the power to deprive the laborer of his product,—gives signs of expiring."[244] Democratic reform and improvement in economic conditions are apparently taken by Mr. Gompers as a sign that capitalism is expiring and that society is progressing satisfactorily to the wage earners. Although the constitution of the Federation says that the world-wide "struggle between the capitalist and the laborer" is a struggle between "oppressors and oppressed," Mr. Gompers gives the outside world to understand that the unions have no inevitable struggle before them, but are as interested in industrial peace as are the employers. He has expressed his interpretation of the purpose of the Federation in the single word "more." He sees progress and asks a share for the unionists as each forward step is taken. He does not ask that labor's share be increased in proportion to the progress made—to say nothing of asking that this share should be made disproportionately large in order gradually to make the distribution of income more equal. A capitalism inspired by a more enlightened selfishness might, without any ultimate loss, grant all the Federation's present demands, political as well as economic. Therefore, Mr. Gompers, quite logically, does not see any necessity for an aggressive attitude.
"Labor unions," says Mr. John Mitchell, who takes a similar view, "are for workmen, but against no one. They are not hostile to employers, not inimical to the interests of the general public. They are for a class, because that class exists and has class interests, but the unions did not create and do not perpetuate the class or its interests and do not seek to evoke a class conflict."[245] Here it is recognized that the working class exists as a class and has interests of its own. But, if, as Mr. Mitchell adds, the unions do not wish to perpetuate this class or its interests, then surely they must see to it, as far as they are able, that members of this class have equal industrial opportunities with other citizens, and that its children should at least be no longer compelled to remain members of a class from which, as he expressly acknowledges, there is at present no escape.
Both Mr. Gompers and Mr. Mitchell have gone to the defense of the leading anti-Socialist organization in this country, Civic Federation—and nothing could draw in stronger colors than do their arguments the complete conflict of the Gompers-Mitchell labor union policy to that of the Socialists. Mr. Gompers defends the Federation as worthy of labor's respect on the ground that many of its most active capitalist members have shown a sustained sincerity, "always having in mind the rights and interests of labor," which is the very antithesis to the Socialist claim that nobody will always have in mind the rights and the interests of labor, except the laborers—and least of all those who buy labor themselves, or are intimately associated with those who buy labor.
Mr. Mitchell says that through the Civic Federation many employers have become convinced that their antagonism to unions was based on prejudice, and have withdrawn their opposition to the organization of the men in their plants. No doubt this is strictly true. It shows that the unions had been presented to the employers as being profitable to them. This, Socialists would readily admit, might be the case with some labor organizations as they have been shaped by leaders like Mr. Mitchell and conferences like those of the Civic Federation. To Socialists organizations that create this impression of harmony of interests do exactly what is most dangerous for the workers—that is, they make them less conscious and assertive of their own interests.
The Civic Federation, composed in large part of prominent capitalists and conservatives, endeavors to allay the discontent of labor by intimate association with the officers of the unions. Socialists have long recognized the tendency of trade-union leaders to be persuaded by such methods to the capitalist view. Eight years ago at Dresden, August Bebel had already seen this danger, for he placed in the same class with the academic "revisionists" those former proletarians who had been raised into higher positions and were lost to the working classes through "intercourse with people of the contrary tendency." It is this class of leaders, according to the Socialists, which, up to the present, has dominated the trade unions of Great Britain and the United States and occasionally of other countries.
No Socialist has been more persistent in directing working-class opinion against all such "leaders" than Mr. Debs, who does not mince matters in this direction. "The American Federation of Labor," he writes, "has numbers, but the capitalist class do not fear the American Federation of Labor; quite the contrary. There is something wrong with that form of unionism whose leaders are the lieutenants of capitalism; something is wrong with that form of unionism that forms an alliance with such a capitalist combination as the Civic Federation, whose sole purpose is to chloroform the working class while the capitalist class go through their pockets.... The old form of trade unionism no longer meets the demands of the working class. The old trade union has not only fulfilled its mission and outlived its usefulness, but is now positively reactionary, and is maintained, not in the interest of the workers who support it, but in the interest of the capitalist class who exploit the workers who support it."
In a recent speech Mr. Debs related at length the Socialist view as to how, in his opinion, this misleading of labor leaders comes about:—
"There is an army of men who serve as officers, who are on the salary list, who make a good living, keeping the working class divided. They start out with good intentions as a rule. They really want to do something to serve their fellows. They are elected officers of a labor organization, and they change their clothes. They now wear a white shirt and a standing collar. They change their habits and their methods. They have been used to cheap clothes, coarse fare, and to associating with their fellow workers. After they have been elevated to official position, as if by magic they are recognized by those who previously scorned them and held them in contempt. They find that some of the doors that were previously barred against them now swing inward, and they can actually put their feet under the mahogany of the capitalist.
"Our common labor man is now a labor leader. The great capitalist pats him on the back and tells him that he knew long ago that he was a coming man, that it was a fortunate thing for the workers of the world that he had been born, that in fact they had long been waiting for just such a wise and conservative leader. And this has a certain effect upon our new-made leader, and unconsciously, perhaps, he begins to change—just as John Mitchell did when Mark Hanna patted him on the shoulder and said, 'John, it is a good thing that you are at the head of the miners. You are the very man. You have the greatest opportunity a labor leader ever had on this earth. You can immortalize yourself. Now is your time.' Then John Mitchell admitted that this capitalist, who had been pictured to him as a monster, was not half as bad as he had thought he was; that, in fact, he was a genial and companionable gentleman. He repeats his visit the next day, or the next week, and is introduced to some other distinguished person he had read about, but never dreamed of meeting, and thus goes on the transformation. All his dislikes disappear, and all feeling of antagonism vanishes. He concludes that they are really most excellent people, and, now that he has seen and knows them, he agrees with them there is no necessary conflict between workers and capitalists. And he proceeds to carry out this pet capitalist theory, and he can only do it by betraying the class that trusted him and lifted him as high above themselves as they could reach.
"It is true that such a leader is in favor with the capitalists; that their newspapers write editorials about him and crown him a great and wise leader; and that ministers of the gospel make his name the text for their sermons, and emphasize the vital point that if all labor leaders were such as he, there would be no objections to labor organizations. And the leader feels himself flattered. And when he is charged with having deserted the class he is supposed to serve, he cries out that the indictment is brought by a discredited labor leader. And that is probably true. The person who brings a charge is very likely discredited. By whom? By the capitalist class, of course; and its press and pulpit and 'public' opinion. And in the present state of the working class, when he is discredited by the capitalists, he is at once repudiated by their wage slaves."[246]