AMERICAN LABOR UNIONS

CHAPTER I

PHILANTHROPY AND LABOR UNIONS

Philanthropic movement-Difference between the two movements, in aim and methods-No question of rivalryDifference between benevolent and self-imposed measures -Reform movements not co-extensive with democracy but with bureaucracy.

It is a policy on the part of the most liberal of social reformers to include labor unions as far as possible in their many schemes for general social uplift. They regard the movements which they initiate for labor and labor's own movements as common agencies for improving the material conditions surrounding industry as well as the lives of the workers themselves. The effort of the many agencies and the improved conditions constitute the forces of a "New Democracy" or are, rather, the new democracy itself.1 These agencies are, indeed, not confined to any class; they include employers, and they draw their moral and financial support from large and small capitalists.

There are employers who are building sanitary workshops and developing elaborate schemes of welfare work; women's clubs and consumers' leagues are 'For Notes, see end of volume.

actively engaged in regulating the working hours of women and children by legislative enactments; associations for labor legislation are helping to secure compensation for injured workmen and state regulation of dangerous trades; safety committees have forced the enactment of fire protection laws. The churches, social settlements, Christian and Hebrew associations, clubs for working women, and clubs for working men offer nation-wide opportunities to men and women of leisure, of professional and technical training, of wealth, of social position, and political influence to share some of their good fortune and to help in the general effort to better the lives of the men, women, and children who are without the assets of an enriched existence.

Social service has become a profession. Experts in service are developed through schools of philanthropy and special university courses. The movement has passed, indeed, through stages of organized giving of the rich to the poor to extensive surveys and investigations into the condition of the poor for the enlightenment of those who help in the administration of their lives and conditions of work. We seem to be on the eve of witnessing the inauguration and administration of such service by capital and by the

state.

The whole movement received an epoch-making impulse in 1912 and became a national issue in politics. Theodore Roosevelt, twice President of the

United States and candidate for a third term at a convention of a new party of his making, received from Jane Addams, the most eminent prophet of the new social spirit, the armor of its aspirations. His cry at the convention, "We stand at Armageddon and battle for the Lord," was a promise to thousands of hard working reformers that their dreary years of effort were to be crowned with victory.

Theories underlying the movements for labor reform were well developed before they became a national political issue. For many, the movements were the expression of pure benevolence. Others discounted the philanthropic impulse or spirit as a basis for extensive reform and approached the problem of devastation wrought by tuberculosis, industrial fatigue, poison, accident, and death of workers less from a sense of pity than from a sense of the economic and social waste. And as social waste and bad business it has been recognized at last by the philanthropist as well as the statesman. Efforts had been made for many years to persuade capital that industrial fatigue and disease did not pay, even in terms of profit. Capital in various quarters recognized the point before industrial betterment became a political issue. Leading economists had successfully inculcated the theory among their followers that every industrial advance of labor is bound up with a continued and a progressive prosperity on the capital side. Every concession to labor involved an equivalent return to capital.

There are leaders of trade unions who seem to support this theory; but, leaving the leaders out of account for the present, the theory or the position is either instinctively or consciously opposed by the rank and file. Boldly stated, the position of the labor unionist is less work and more pay. Whether labor does or does not make an equivalent return for what capital concedes in wages; whether it pays or does not pay disastrous prices for the gains it calls its own, are questions of first importance, but they have nothing to do with the difference between the attitude of the labor unionist and the reformer. This difference in attitude is the first point of estrangement between them. The unionist knows that less work and more pay sounds like robbery to the reformer, as it does to the capitalist and the politician. The reformer's formulation of the case is more pay, more work, and better returns to capital. It may work out that way, but it does not sound straight as a union proposition. The unionist knows that he does not expect to give more or as much; that the very essence of his fight is that he gives too much. If the economist can prove to the satisfaction of every one that the capitalist will get more out of labor by giving more, well and good; but the unionist is not comfortable in alliance with those who talk

that way.

The reformer or the statesman, moreover, lays emphasis on reforms which to labor are secondary in