machinery; muscles necessarily move in curves and that is why grace is characteristic of muscular movement and is absent from a machine. The more finished the technique of a workman and the greater his strength, the more graceful are his movements, and, what is important in this connection, vice versa. A certain flourish, superfluous only to the untrained eye, is absolutely characteristic of the efficient workman's motions.

"Speeding-up" eliminates grace and the curved movement of physiological repose and thus induces an irresistible fatigue, first in the small muscles, second, in the trunk, ultimately in the brain and nervous system. The early result is a fagged and spiritless worker of the very sort that the "speeder-up's " partner, the "efficiency engineer," will be anxious to replace by a younger and fresher candidate, who in his turn will soon follow his predecessor if the same relentless process is enforced.

It will always be necessary to consider workers as human beings, and charity and moderation in the exaction of results will usually be found the part of wisdom, as representing a wise economy of resources. This scientific charity, however, is something quite apart from the moral effect on the personnel of due recognition of their long service and of the loyalty which is likely to accompany it.'

All propositions to increase wealth make an appeal to imagination. No one, certainly not organized labor, doubts the ability of American capitalists to discover new schemes for increasing the output, nor of the American workman to produce it. It has been reported that the labor cost of production in England, with its lower wage rates, is higher than the cost in America, because the American workmen, through the

pressure of management, yield an amount per worker unknown to English labor. Scientific management proposes to increase this yield by several hundred per cent.

Workers looking back a generation or two may admit that with the introduction of machine processes they have here and there reaped a harvest of several cotton shirts instead of one woolen, a standing lamp instead of the ancestral candlestick, and, as clear gain, a Victor talking machine. But no one is ever jubilant over luxuries which they have bought with their lives. It is organized labor alone that remembers the ghastly price paid for increased consumption; the generations of men, women, and children who have been maimed and murdered in the process. Greed and desire, not the well-being of labor, are still the motive forces back of increased wealth production. If we are about to enter upon an era of a New Capitalism" which recognizes that it will pay to increase the number of cotton shirts without exacting so heavy a toll as has been exacted in the past, organized labor still demands that it shall determine, or have a voice in determining, what that toll shall be and what shall be the reward.

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Scientific management, the promoters say, recognizes no difference in determining standards of efficiency between management, capital goods and labor. Well and good; labor does.

Organized labor's observations of a worker do not

end with the day's work. They extend over the wear and tear of a lifetime. They take into consideration a worker's ability to react after work, mentally as well as physically. They take into consideration the worker's ability to realize his maximum in his nonlaboring hours. And they would also consider his ability to realize his maximum in his laboring hours if labor had an opportunity to fix a maximum consistent with the life interests of labor as a whole. The difference between scientific management and organized labor is that the aim of the latter is to make men, the aim of the former is to make goods.

CHAPTER XIX

LABOR IN POLITICS

Socialist Party efforts to commit labor unions-Original policy of A. F. of L. aloof from all political action-Reversed policy-Entered practical politics, not partizan-Election of union card men-Radical political declaration of Washington State Federation-Opposition of I. W. W. to all political affiliations.

THE American Federation of Labor, as a national organization, refrained from all political activity until recently and still refuses allegiance to any one party.

Socialist Party representatives have worked industriously to secure the indorsement of the Socialist position, as well as of the Socialist Party, on the ground that it was the only political party which stood unequivocally for labor. The Federation has not only resisted the "Socialist element," as it is derisively called; it has attacked it with bitterness, and in much the same spirit as it attacks the sworn enemies of the capitalist class. The National Executive of the Federation, at its convention of 1912, commented on an event of the past year as follows: "What could be expected from the National Manufacturers' Association, their agents and their hirelings? What from the Socialists, except to employ the occasion for vote catching? What from such

reactionary organs as the New York Sun but diatribes?

So long as these declared enemies of the trade unions are what they are, and unionism is what it is, no help can come from them to the labor

The Federation has borne many undeserved accusations, but it has officially kept itself free from the 66 Socialist element." While this While this "element" has increased within the membership of the Federation, and while it polls a one-third vote at the conventions, the Federation has successfully resisted all attempts to commit it to the Socialist Party.

Various organizations affiliated with the American Federation, especially the city organizations, in different parts of the country, have indorsed and worked for the election of candidates to municipal office on the ground that they would favor the interests of organized labor if elected. Local politicians throughout the country have sought and placed high value on the support of the local trade union men and their organizations.

The American Federation of Labor as a national organization withheld its indorsement of candidates for national office, and refrained from active participation in elections. It feared that political activities might divert its energies and divide its ranks; it feared that a political campaign might impair its united front; it feared also political entanglements and attacks on its reputation for single