The daily Nome industrial worker., 1916-09-19

l
 {, take any attempt to maintain posi-
 tion otherwise, seems the embodi ment of such social acceptance.
 Years of working experience also fastens upon even the unemployed a respect for authority and they in stinctively, and against their own interests, assume the attitude of the stoic that whatever is, is right.
 During war, naturally enough, things are thrown in the crucible.
 Manners, customs, institutions, Sy
 stems that prevailed with hardly any change or modification for scores of years, become upset or changed over night The mind
 loses it's anchorage of past experi-
 ence and drifts with the flood. A
 new mentality is born society, and
 this has within itself all the ele-
 mental instinct which has no dis
 cipline of experience to control it,
 especially to drive it to accept a
 course of action prejudicial to itself
 and the old instincts above all
 which find expression in a struggle for existence awaken, showing a
 tendency to resist authority and
 offer to might counter display of
 might, in order to secure the means
 of subsistence.
 Only in this way. would it be
 possible to explain how the Germans
 peaceful and above all things else
 law abiding, and easily amenable
 to the social discipline which au- thority for years eXerted upon them
 refuse to accept the food situation
 as irremediable and revolt in wild
 riotings that in some places only
 were controlled when considerable
 blood was shed.
 Neither the Germans nor the Aus trian poorer classes suffer a bi- , more than do the poorer unem ) ployed classes in America, during , the periods economic depression , but the American workers accept , their calamitous position as inevit , able and impossible to better, with out a thought of seizing to satisfy : their needs.
 The American worker ordinarily
 is not so subject to social and gov
 ernmental discipline as is the Ger ) man. But he is subjected to a fal ! intenser industrial discipline. The
 German in a German factory is a fal freezer individual than the individu
 al worker who enjoys life in an Am ; erican industrial plant. The elimi'
 nation of individuality as far as the . American worker is complete and thorough. He is subjected to al
 most whimsical authority from the } very start of his employment. hi |, tiative is destroyed, and he is simp. ly an automaton. Only those who have worked in American factories } realize what a completely restrained activity is that of the worker. bound
 by rules, regulations and authori- } tartan enforcement which the aver age German would regard with
 astonishment. The mentality oi
 the unemployed worker is the result of that experience. And he takes with him from that factory when unemployed this result of his indus.
 trial discipline and is ready for the social discipline, because he has had his training. The hobo factory worker in America is the most sub servient of all hoboes, nerveless, dis 7 ciplined and shrinking before au thority.
 As far as the factory worker i! concerned he is creature with al iron industrial discipline born O. , his factory experience, and witl ? hardly anything at all to counter
 act his industrial subserviency ex l cept the industrial union movement l This is no exageration. The fact, t of the Lawrence strike, even if tn, : workers were mostly foreign born revealed condition of slavish em ployment which is unequalled. in thu annals of industry. During tha
 strike, the Industrial Workers O l the World, for a time succeeded il organizing them with splendit spirit of revolt against this slavisl condition, but after normal condi tions of activity returned, the! again inevitably succumbed to tn,