The facts stare us plainly in the face, if we will only look at them, that the wages of the employees and the price of the products have nothing to do with each other; that the wages have nothing to do with the profits of the employer; that they have nothing to do with the cost of living or with the prosperity of the business. They are really governed by the supply and demand of labor, as every strike shows us, and by nothing else.
Turning to the moral relations of the subject, we are constantly exhorted to do something to improve the relations of employer and employee. I submit that the relation in life which has the least bad feeling or personal bitterness in it is the pure business relation, the relation of contract, because it is a relation of bargain and consent and equivalence. Where is there so much dissension and bitterness as in family matters, where people try to act by sentiment and affection? The way to improve the relation of employer and employee is not to get sentiment into it, but to get sentiment out of it. We are told that classes are becoming more separated, and that the poor are learning to hate the rich, although there was a time when no class hatreds existed. I have sought diligently in history for the time when no class hatreds existed between rich and poor. I cannot find any such period, and I make bold to say that no one can point to it.
TRUSTS AND TRADES-UNIONS[43]
I have attempted to show, in foregoing essays,[44] what an immense rôle is played by monopoly throughout the whole social life of mankind in all its stages. There would not be any struggle for existence if it were not true that the supply in nature of the things necessary for human existence is niggardly. The struggle for existence consists in a contest against the constraints by which human life is surrounded; the process by which men have won something in that contest, in the course of time, has consisted in playing off one of nature’s monopolies against another—the process, namely, which we call “employing natural agents.” On its social and political side, the advance has consisted in securing for the individual a chance in some degree to control his own destiny; not to be at the sport of natural and social forces, but to bring his own energy to bear to enlarge his own conditions of enjoyment and survival.
At every stage of history, however, the natural monopolies have formed the basis of social and political monopolies. The possession of those powers which, under the circumstances, were most efficient for the acquisition of what men want has always given superiority and dominion in human society, whether those powers were physical force, beauty, learning, virtue, capital, or anything else. Where does any one find ground to believe that the fact will ever be different, and that those who have the powers which are most potent in the society in which they live will use those powers, not to get the things which all men want for themselves, but to get those same things for other people?
The fashion has always been in the past for those who possessed the essential powers to take control of the state and realize their monopoly in that way. If plutocracy should now prevail it would be simply a repetition of that experience. The only device which has ever given promise of wider and more humane organization of the state is constitutional liberty, which compels, by the intervention of institutions created to serve this purpose, the ruling class, whoever they were, to respect the recognized and defined rights of all the rest.
Now, democracy having sapped and dissolved all the inherited forms of social organization and reduced the social body to atoms, it is most interesting to observe the inevitable recurrence of all the old tendencies, in new forms fitted to the times. Some of us thought that liberty was won forever, and that the race was nevermore to be disturbed by its old problems, but it is already apparent that, when a society is resolved into its constituent atoms, the question under what forces, and upon what nuclei, it will crystallize into new forms, has acquired an importance never known before.
Just now public attention is all absorbed by the new name “trust” applied to one of these phenomena. I can see nothing new in a trust as compared with the rings, pools, etc., with which we have been familiar during this generation, except the guarantee which the trust secures to all the members of the same that no one inside of it shall play traitor to the rest. The greatest difficulty with modern combinations has been that there have been no sanctions by which the members could be bound, and that the profits of the insider who turned against his comrades have always been an irresistible temptation. In the mediæval guilds, which were “trusts” of the most solid construction, the sanctions were of the sternest kind—religious, political, and social—and yet they never succeeded in their purpose. In modern times, as is well known to all who are acquainted with the attempts which have been made, inside of various branches of industry, to arrange agreements which have not been large enough or public enough to get into the newspapers the difficulty of enforcing loyalty against those who felt strong enough to beat the rest if they should go alone, or against those who saw a chance to sell out on the rest, or against those who were in desperate straits for cash, has been the constant stumbling-block. Fifty years ago, in the last days of the United States Bank, Nicholas Biddle organized a cotton trust, to try to control the cotton market of the world. It was a complete failure. In general, combinations of this character are in constant dilemma: they must always grow bigger and bigger, in order to encompass a sufficient area to constitute a unit; but the bigger they grow, the less is their internal cohesion. The exception to this must be noted in a moment.
The great expansion of the market by modern inventions in transportation has broken up all the former local and petty monopolies, and is rapidly making of the industry and commerce of mankind a whole which cannot be divided by geographical lines. The conditions of competition in such a system are no doubt onerous to the last degree. The conditions that must be taken into account to win success are numerous and complicated. The nerve-strain of comprehending and of justly estimating the factors, and of following their constant variations, is too great for any one to endure. Foresight must be used, yet there are so many unknown quantities that foresight is impossible; if the attempt is made to master all the unknown quantities, then the task is so enormous that it cannot be accomplished. Furthermore, the relations with other persons in the industrial system are necessarily close. It is impossible to escape such relations, and it is impossible to avoid a share in the consequences of the mistakes and incompetence of the others. It must be added that, at a time when the advance in the arts has forced the whole industry of the globe into intimate relations which nothing can possibly cut off, legislative interferences have produced artificial and erratic currents in the industrial and commercial relations of all countries. The consequences are disappointing and disastrous incidents in the history of industry. At the same time the improvements in the communication of intelligence have made it possible for men farthest apart in space, language, and nationality, if they have confidence in each other’s business ability and command of capital, to coöperate by personal agreements.