When it was proposed to introduce the Canadian law in Massachusetts, no unionists of prominence indorsed it, but it was favored by a very large number of employers, while those employers who objected did so for widely scattered reasons. Mr. Clark is probably right in suggesting that, while such a law will not be enacted in the United States as things are now, it is very probable that it can be secured after some industrial crisis—and there is little doubt that President Eliot and perhaps also Mr. Roosevelt, for whom Mr. Clark was investigating, and many other influential public men, are expecting this time to arrive soon.
The attitude of a large minority of British unions and of a considerable part of the British Socialists is similar to that of the Canadian and Australian majority. When in 1907 the railway employees of Great Britain were for the first time sufficiently aroused and organized, and on the point of a national strike, a settlement was entered into through the efforts of Mr. Lloyd George and the Board of Trade (and it is said with the assistance of King Edward) which involved an entirely new principle for that country. A board was constituted to settle this and future strikes of which the Master of Rolls and other British functionaries were the leading elements. Actually the workers consented for several years to leave in the hands of the judges over whose election and appointment they have only an indirect and partial, if indeed any, control, complete power over their industrial life. The executive of the Fabian Society issued a manifesto congratulating the government on this "progressive" settlement, though few prominent labor leaders were willing to give it their full indorsement. The Fabian manifesto said that the advance in wages which could be secured by the settlement "will undoubtedly have been secured on the trade-union program, through the trade-union organization, by the trade union's representatives, and finally, in the argument before the arbitrator, by the ability of the trade union's secretary." But this settlement had nearly all the features of the Canadian law which I have just mentioned, and especially in failing to give any recognition to the unions, left the strongest possible weapon in the hands of their enemies. Nevertheless, more than a third of the members of the British Trade Union Congress voted since that time for a compulsory arbitration act, and British radicals like Percy Alden, M.P., to say nothing of conservatives, agitate for a law along New Zealand lines. The railway strike of 1911 has decreased the popularity of this proposal among unionists and Socialists, but has augmented it in still greater proportion among nearly all other classes. In the meanwhile, in spite of the employees' efforts, and external concessions by the employers, the power in the newest railway conciliation scheme lies also in the hands of the government (see [Part III, Chapter V]).
Statements by President Taft and other influential Americans lead us to believe it will be a very short period of years before similar legislation is applied to this country, in spite of the hostility of the unions, or perhaps with the consent of some of the weaker among them, which have little to gain by industrial warfare. While Secretary of War, Mr. Taft predicted a controversy between capital and labor which should decide once and for all how capital and labor should share the joint profits which they created. In this and many similar utterances there is foreshadowed the interference of the State. Indeed, the settlement of the Pennsylvania coal strike in 1903 was a clear example of such interference, and there is no question that the precedents established will be followed up on the next occasion of the kind by some arrangement even less advantageous to employees who now almost universally feel, as the present demands of the miner's union show, that they got the worst of the former decision.
The railway and mining situations in Great Britain, and the demand for the government to take some measure to protect employees against the "trusts" in this country (to say nothing of the menace of a great coal strike), promise to make compulsory arbitration an issue of the immediate future. Mr. Roosevelt, who now proposes that the government should interfere between monopolies and their employees, is the very man who is responsible for the coal strike tribunal of 1903, which not only denounced sympathetic strike and secondary boycott, but failed to protect the men against discrimination on account of their unionism. Were he or any one like him President, the institution of government wage boards would be dreaded like the plague.
Similarly Mr. Winston Churchill, in Great Britain, recognizes the extreme seriousness of the situation. His position is ably summed up by the Saturday Evening Post:—
"Winston Churchill has propounded a capital-and-labor puzzle to his British constituents.
"To a modern state, he says in substance, railroad transportation is a necessity of life—and how literally true this is of England was shown in the general strike of last August, when the food supply in some localities ran down to only a few days' requirements. So the government cannot permit railroad transportation to be paralyzed indefinitely by a strike. It cannot sit by and see communities starve. A point will soon be reached where it must intervene and force resumption of transportation.
"Strikes, however, form one of the modern means of collective bargaining between employer and employees. They are, in fact, the workmen's final and most effective resource in driving a bargain. Denied the right to strike, labor unions would be so many wooden cannon at which employers could laugh. If the employer knew absolutely that the men could not strike, he might offer any terms he pleased. In wage bargaining the men would not stand on a level footing, but be bound and gagged.
"If, then, the government takes away, or seriously restricts, the right of the men to strike, isn't it bound to step into the breach and readjust the balance between them and the employer, by compelling the employer to pay them fair wages? There can be no free bargaining if it is known that at a certain point the government will intervene on one side. Must it not, then, also be known that at a certain point the government will intervene on the other side and compel payment of adequate wages?
"Mr. Churchill carries his puzzle only that far. On our own account we add, How far will that leave us from regulation of wages as well as of rates by the government, and how far will that leave us from government ownership?"[76]
In a word, Mr. Churchill's remedy for the evils of "State Socialism" is more "State Socialism"—and undoubtedly there is an inevitable trend in that direction. But the government railway strikes of France, Austria, Italy, Hungary, and other countries ought to show him that his remedy, advantageous as it may be from many standpoints, is scarcely to be considered even as a first step towards the solution of the labor problem. As long as capitalists continue to control government, "State Socialism," on the contrary, makes the strike more necessary, more decisive, and invaluable, not only to employees, but to every class that suffers from the government or the economic system it supports.
The most representative of American Socialists, Eugene V. Debs, has given us an excellent characterization of this movement as it appears to most Socialists.
"Successful leaders are wise enough to follow the people. For instance, the following paragraph is to the point:—
"'Ultimately I believe that this control of corporations should undoubtedly, directly or indirectly, extend to dealing with all questions connected with their treatment of their employees, including the wages, the hours of labor, and the like.'
"And what Socialist made himself ridiculous by such a foolish utterance? No Socialist at all; only a paragraph from his latest article on the trusts by Theodore Roosevelt. Five years ago, or when he was still in office and had the power, he would not have dared to make that statement. But he finds it politically safe and expedient to make it now. It is not at all a radical statement. On the contrary, it is simply the echo of E. H. Gary, that is to say, John Pierpont Morgan, president of all the trusts.
"Mr. Roosevelt now proposes that Bismarck attempted in Germany forty years ago to thwart the Socialist movement, and that is State Socialism, so called, which is in fact the most despotic and degrading form of capitalism.
"President Roosevelt, who is popularly supposed to be hostile to the trusts, is in truth their best friend. He would have the government, the capitalist government, of course, practically operate the trusts and turn the profits over to their idle owners. This would mean release from responsibility and immunity of prosecution for the trust owners, while at the same time the government would have to serve as strikebreaker for the trust owners, and the armed forces of the government would be employed to keep the working class in subjection.
"If this were possible, it would mark the halfway ground between industrial despotism and industrial democracy. But it is not possible, at least it is possible only temporarily, long enough to demonstrate its failure. The expanding industrial forces now transforming society, realigning political parties, and reshaping the government itself cannot be fettered in any such artificial arrangement as Mr. Roosevelt proposes. These forces, with the rising and awakening working class in alliance with them, will sweep all such barriers from the track of evolution until finally they can find full expression in industrial freedom and social democracy.
"In this scheme of State Socialism, or rather State capitalism, Mr. Roosevelt fails to inform us how the idle owners of the trusts are to function except as profit absorbers and parasites. In that capacity they can certainly be dispensed with entirely and that is precisely what will happen when the evolution now in progress culminates in the reorganization of society."[77] (My italics.)