The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1902-08-02
masses of which he has chosen to re-


main a member.
1t is generally understood that Mr..
Schwab does not believe in trade
unions, as usually managed. Plenty
of men who have worked their way
from poverty to wealth hold similar
views. Their standpoint is purely
selfish. When they were making
two dollars and fifty cents a week,
they would have been glad of union
to help them to make more. When
they are pocketing hundreds of thou
sands year, they see no need for
union to help anybody else. They
oppose the union for its merits. Just
in so far as it helps the workers, they
object to it.
If this were Mr.. Schwab's position,
it would not be worth notice. But
his idea is something very different.
His objection to the union policy is
that it disco1rages ability. He wishes
to leave the way open for every work
er to win, if he can, success like his
own. He sees that possibility in the
new organization of industry.
To his mind, the trade-union of
the future is the trust. He sees in
that the solution of the problem of
national prosperity as well. His
theory was explained by himself some
time ago in these words:
"The larger the output, the small
er, relatively, is the cost of produc-
ton. This is a trade axiom. 1t
holds good whether the output con-
sists of pins and locomotives. 1t is
much more economical, proportion
ately, to run three machines under
one roof than it is to run one. 1t is
cheaper to run a dozen than it is to
run three, and cheaper still to run a
hundred. Therefore, the large plant
has an undoubted superiority over
the small plant, and this advantage
increases almost indefinitely as the
process of enlargement continues.
The we1l-managed combina-
tion is a direct gain to the state. Any
one who doubts this need only con-
suit the foreign newspapers. Every
where, he will find a cry of industrial
alarm 1eveled, not at the individual
American manufacturer, but at the
American nation. This is because
the combination has done for the
American state what the individual
was never able to do-put it in indus
trial control of the world The
capitalist and the laborer are equal
sharers in the advantages the new
scheme offers. Capital finds itself
more amply protected, and laborer
finds an easier route to partnership
with capital. To the workingman,
the combination offers the most feasi-
bic scheme of industrial cooperation
ever presented"
Mr.. Schwab is a socialist in dis
guise. He recalls the difficulty a
worker found under the old individ-
ualistic system in securing foothold.
in business for himself. His savings
would not buy factory, or partner
ship in one. The exceptional man
could save enough to start little
workshop and he could add to his
business from day to day until with
good luck he had built up great in
dustry, but the average wage-earner
could never hope to be his own en-
ployer. Now, a man with any thrift
at all can buy a share of stock. A
little later he can buy another share.
Before he knows it, he is perceptibly
a partner in the business that employs
him. This Mr.. Schwab believes to
be the direction in which evolution is
going to carry our industrial system.
He has given his views dazzling IL
lustration in his own person. In his
case it has been, not merely the pur-
chase of one share at time out of
weekly savings, but the acquisition of
blocks of stock as a reward for con-
spicuous ability. The Carnegie idea
has been to give an interest in the
business to the ablest brains in the
service of the company. That has
been also one of the ideas through
which young Mr.. Harmsworth, of
England, has been enabled to pile up
a million for every year of his life.
If we ever come to the Cooperative
Commonwealth, perhaps statue of
Schwab may be found along with the
effigies of Rockefeller, Morgen and
Carnegie in its Westminster Abbey.
These nationalizers and International
izers of industry are wiping out the
competitive system, not only in the
United States but in the whole world.
For the present, their work has its
selfish side, but they are all toiling,
some of them perhaps unconsciously,
but some with undoubted appreciation
of the meaning of their efforts, to-
ward the creation of a gigantic in
dustrial organism in which every hu
man atom will be harmoniously rela-
ted with every other.
Bellamy's ideal was community
the products of whose industry should
be equally divided among all its men,
bers. Schwab's is community in
which every man can get what he
earns and in which earning possibili-
ties are unlimited. Like Napoleon,
he would open a career to talent. He
would have basis of well-paid, COM
Portable labor, but he would have no
laboring class. He would have every
position in the industrial world open
to any man with capacity to reach it,
and he would put no brakes on any
mans grogress. There would be no
speed limit for automobiles on his
industrial highway. Thus he would
reconcile the aspirations of ambitious
workers with the need for the intelli-