The Butler County press. [volume] (Hamilton, Ohio) 1900-1946, 1914-09-25
THE WHY OF LABOR UNIONS.

Pioneers In the Effort to Extend Civil
iization-Fiehting For the Beginnings
of Industrial Government-Th Free
..dom of Labor.
Men don't agitate for democracy just
because it is fine theory. They come
to desire it because they have to; be
cause absolutism does not work out
any longer to civilized ends. Employ
ers are not wise enough to govern
their men with unlimited power and
not generous enough to be trusted
with autocracy. That is the plain fact
of the situation-the essential reason
why private industry has got to pre-
pare itself for democratic control
! don't pretend for one moment that
labor unions are farseeing. intelligent
or wise in their tactics. have never
seen political democracy that arous-
ed uncritical enthusiasm. 1t seems to
me simply that the effort to build up
unions is as much the work of pio-
neers as the extension of civilization
into the wilderness. The unions are
the first feeble effort to conquer the
industrial jungle for democratic life
They may not succeed, but if they
don't their failure will be a tragedy
for civilization, a loss of cooperative
effort, baking of energy and the fix
ing in American life of class struc-
ture.
The unions are struggling where life
is nakedly brutal. where the dealings
of men have not been raised even to
the level of discussion which we find
in politics. There is almost as little
civil procedure in industry as there is
in Mexico or as there was on the
American frontier. To expect union
lists then, to talk with velvet language
and act with the deliberation of a col
lege faculty is to be a tenderfoot, a
victim Of your class tradition. The
virtues Of labor today are frontier vir-
tues. Its struggles are for rights and
privileges that the rest of us inherited
from our unrefined ancestors.
Men are fighting for the beginnings
of industrial self government If the
world were wise that fight would be
made easier for them, but it is not
wise Few of us care for ten minutes
in a month about these beginnings or
what they promise, and so the burden
falls entirely upon the workers. who
are directly concerned. They have got
to win civilization; they have got to
take up the task of fastening a work
ers control upon business.
When employers talk about the free
dom OF labor it may be that some of
them are really worried over the hos
tility of most unions to exceptional re-
wards for exceptional workers, but in
the main that isn't what worries them
They are worried about their own
freedom, not the freedom of wage
earners. They dislike the union be-
cause it challenges their supremacy
and they fight unions as monarchS fighr
constitutions, as aristocracies fight the
vote. When an employer tells about
bis own virtues he dilates upon his
kindness, his fairness and all the good
things he has done for his men. That
is just what benevolent autocrats do
they try TO justify their autocracy by
their benevolence. Indeed. the highest
vision of those who oppose unions is
that the employer will develop the vir-
tues Of good aristocrat, sense of
noblesse oblige.
But of course wage earners are not
dealing with men inspired even by
such vision. Henry Ford is a sensa-
tional rarity among employers No
doubt there are some others not so
conspicuous. Now, if workers faced
only men with such an outlook | don't
think heir problem would be solved,
but it would take a very different com
plexion 1t is. however. an academic
question, for the great mass of employ
ers show no desire to make big conces-
sions.-From "A Key to the Labor
Movement" In Metropolitan.