The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-09-27
WAY MARKS OF
 LABOR DAY
A National Holiday that Registers the Ebb and Flow of the Tendencies and Destiny of Laboring Life and Capital.
By Graham Taylor.)

Our American Labor Day registers
 Waymarks of the ebb and flow in the
 tendencies and destiny of laboring life,
 and also of employing capital. In the
 long run they go up or down together.
 Neither can exploit the other very long in modern industry without suf-
 fering from the loss it inflicts. The
 same economic necessities force upon
 both similar policies and tactics. If
 one more than the other is compelled
 to conform it's organization and pro-
 cedure to such necessity, the other is
 thereby obliged to organize in the
 same way. And yet it is not true,
 as is often too good-naturedly claimed,
 that the interests of capital and labor
 are identical. The differences between
 them are real, honest and inevitable.
 unavoidable under the existing com
 petitive order of industry. The years
 may vary the form of the conflict but
 they do not alter the fact of it.
 gress or reaction which any year
 brings forth in the industrial move
 ment of national life is to be seen in the forms which the conflict takes on
 and the way in which it is settled.
 The progress of the past year regis terS itself in the tranSference of this class struggle in large part from the field of the strike and the lockout ito the arena of the courts. The crucial cases pending in the District of Co.,
 lumbia which involve not only the
 liberty of the chief labor leader. but
 the limits of the writ of injunction in restricting the liberty of speech and the freedom of the press, will be epoch making in the history of Judicial decis- ions affecting organized labor.
 The legislative forum has become the field for making peace more notably this year than in many another. > The Illinois Industrial Commission scored a great advance in protecting the health, comfort and safety of employees
 by the enactment of it's bill through State Manufacturers Association and the State Federation of Labor. The joint session of the commissioners of three other States to secure just 1ia- bility and compensation for injuries
 by accident promises a 1ong-delayed advance in the equities of American life. Tn steady progress of the Amer ican section of the International AsSo- ciation for Labor legislation is a har- Einger of the new bond of national and international peace founded on in dustrial justice and cooperation. Its publications register the tendency of Legislatures among all people, at last to give labor it's day in court. The legal removal of irritating industrial conditions and adjudication of indus y supplant violent tests of strength or endurance by rational methods of set ting industrial strife. As surely as some form of arbitration will supplant strikes and lockouts, so surely will conciliation between the parties at variance supersede arbitration by out siders.
 The more equal standing in court and the fairer share in the common heritage of the law which labor IS
 s-1- So I,,~ s,N oyrf fJ1o ever and everywhere increasing unifi- cation of the wage-workers of the world. They are making common cause more and more not only within the same craft, but also as members of the largest class in every commun- ity. This lass-consciousness has grown apace the past year both among wage earners and their employers. In the employing class, it has almost al- ways been full-grown. As far as the history of industry reaches pack ana as long as the acts of legislation have been recorded, so long have those in the imaster class instinctively felt, thought and acted together. But year by year they have united more closely for joint action in organizations of their several trades, in unions of all or commercial men and in alI-inclusive employers associations. These class organizations of employers have grown stronger and more effec- tive both in defense and attack, as they have conformed their type, and tactics to those of labor organizations. Their employees have been amazingly slow to catch the class conscious spirit of the master class. But now it is spreading rapidly and widely among all industrial people, and organizes them earlier. more solidly and effec- lively, than their employers have ever been able to organize themselves un- til very recently.
 Labor still organizes itself more by | instinct than by deliberate purpose or agreed method. Beneath all labor is the instinctive feeling l of working people that they belong to- gether. It is this elemental instinct which constitutes the solidarity of la bor, which makes labor unions possible and necessary, which accounts for the bitterness against "the scab' as trea- | sonab1e to his class, and yet a. bene- | ficiary of it's struggles, and which is l far greater, more permanent, more in | Givisible and indestructib1e than any l or all forms of organized labor" The | past year has given us three most inn l significant demonstrations | of the reality and strength of the sol | Idarity of labor. The most united and | strike of the year is that | of a,O00 unorganized men of many | races and languages, against the un- reasoning arbitrariness of the Pressed Steel Car Company at McKee's Rocks, Pa. The national strike iA Sweden, to which so large a proportion of the entire working population of the coun- try, whether organized or unorganized, l were rallied by their common instinct of preservation; the spread of class consciousness from the industrip | to the peasant classes of Russia, which makes possible the struggle for consti- liberty,-these movements, in whatever part promoted by organized effort, are to be rated far more as the spontaneous movement of the common aboring life. They are the product of the spirit prevailing among the peo- cle, more than of any possible organi- zation, whether of trade unionists or of socialists. They are signs of the coming democracy in industry. Hap oily for the peace of the world, the class is giving some en-