lan's.

The demand for the free administration

of justice is a practical one.

16. "The calling of a convention for the revision of the Constitution of the United States." It is difficult to see what would be gained by that; at the present time the Constitution would be "revised by its friends."

The program concludes: "Such measures of relief as we may be able to force from capitalism are but a preparation of the workers to seize the whole powers of government in order that they may thereby lay hold of the whole system of socialized industry and thus come to their rightful inheritance." The socialization of industry is not a matter of rightfulness or of inheritance; it is purely a matter of power. So far political Socialism has not succeeded in forcing from capitalism a single measure of relief. As a matter of expediency capitalism has granted many measures of relief and is likely to grant many more until it puts into force all the non-revolutionary proposals embodied in the Socialist program. If capitalist legislation yields at all to the pressure of the working class, it feels that pressure in the practical economic contest and it has not up to the present time been even threatened by the Socialist at the ballot box. From

1912 to 1914 the Socialist party vote in the United States fell off from about 900,000 to about 600,000. This is partly due to the fact that 1912 was the year of a presidential election. It is also due to the fact that the party has lost some of its fighting spirit, has become orthodox, conservative, humdrum; its stupidly unsympathetic attitude toward revolutionary unionism has alienated from it many who once regarded it as a useful instrument. It has sunk so low as to do things for which the capitalist press has praised it (an indication if not a proof of decay), notably its removal from the National Executive Committee of Mr. Haywood and its adoption of the notorious clause against sabotage and violence, of which more hereafter. Whether it will rid itself of its reactionary elements or whether it will be superseded by a new and more militant organization remains to be seen. At the present time it is less of a force in the world of labor than the

trade unions.

CHAPTER VIII

THE OLDER TRADE UNIONS

THE largest and oldest unions are those which compose the American Federation of Labor and the independent brotherhoods of railway employees. The Federation reports a membership of about 2,000,000; the brotherhoods number 70,000 engineers, 50,000 conductors, 90,000 firemen, 135,000 trainmen. The Federation is the growth of thirty years; it may be likened to a middle-aged man whom success has rendered self-confident and at the same time cautiously conservative. It includes IIO national and international unions, each of which represents one craft or group of allied crafts, for example the United Garment Workers America, the International Brotherhood of Foundry Employees, United Textile Workers of America. Three of the unions are industrial in their composition, that is, their membership is determined not by the process in which the individual engages but by the general industry to

of

which he contributes; these are the coal miners (United Mine Workers), the metal miners (Western Federation of Miners), and the Brewery Workers. The several unions are selfgoverning, in a way somewhat analogous to the autonomy of the political states, and the Federation as a whole settles disputes between the component unions and shapes the general policy.

The federated unions embrace the oldest and the most highly skilled crafts. There are 30,000,000 wage-earners in the United States. We may assume that half of these are amenable to organization. It will be seen that not more than one seventh of the organizable workers of this country are directly affected by old-fashioned unionism. The Federation is the upper stratum of labor; it has won a definite position in society by years of effort and it has been too little inclined to extend hard-earned privileges to the vast majority of unskilled workers. This is the charge brought against it by Socialists and revolutionary unionists. But the influence of the organization reaches beyond its own membership, its activity helps to determine the condition of labor as a whole. The Federation is an expression and a cause of the rise of the working class during the past generation. It has com

pelled the respect of other classes (and it makes little difference whether that respect is hostile or friendly), and it has been a school in which the workman has learned to manage his own affairs and so to discover himself as potentially capable of managing the affairs of the world.

The purpose of the Federation is not revolutionary but meliorative. Its watchword is "a fair day's pay for a fair day's work." That is, it postulates a partnership between capital and labor and it demands of capital only a fair share of the fruits of production in return for which it promises dutiful service and friendly dealing. Revolutionary unionism and Socialism aim at the destruction of capitalism; they insist that there is no determinable fair day's pay or fair day's work, that labor should take all it can get and should be content with nothing less than the whole. The federated unions have been unquestionably successful in realizing their declared purpose to make advantageous bargains with employers. Organized workers usually get better wages and enjoy better conditions of work than unorganized workers in the same or similar trades. The steel workers, whom the Steel Trust has prevented from organizing, receive lower wages than their neighbors, the organized mine