The daily Nome industrial worker., 1917-08-09


 stiff IS plentiful enough and has to sell his labor power to the first buyer that comes along or find that the buyer has bought the other fel- low while asked for higher wages.
 President Wilson agrees with Gompers that labor is not com modity. But he does so because of reasons more sentimental than prac- tical In a recent speech he refer red to what MT. Gompers had said on this subject and he added to 1t:
 "Mr Gonpers was referring just now to the sixth section of the Clay ton Antitrust Act. the section in which the obvious is stated, namely that a mans labor is not commo- dity. but a part of his life, and that therefore the courts must not treat it as if it were commodity, but must treat it as if it were a part of his life. l am sorry that there were any judges in the United States who had to be told that. It is so obvious that it seems to me that that section of the Clayton antitrust act were a return to the primer of human liberty. But if the judges wish to have the primer opened before them, I am willing to open il. Ii any part of the United States, through habit, through anci- ent prejudice. through long addc- tion to technical ideas. insists upon living in an age which GIerY one else knows has gone by. Nh%, then, We have got to sound some great note that will wake them up, but wake them up to the same things with which we would thrill as well as others; that 1t is take HG well as give; that the other man has as much right as we have; that we are not to seek for an ad !artage but for an equality; that though we
 
 sire any other man put upon or any other class. but we should all have our highest ideal merely to baSk in that only nourishing sun that has ever shone upon the human heart, the sun of justice and of truth and of humanity"
 Now that sounds very nice indeed, but we defy any person to begin to think over it and Say that it means anything at all; it is very eloquent no doubt but it conveys no idea to any person other than that it is very high sounding, very lofty and very elevating such as one would expect from the illustrious author of the New Freedom. But it would be hard to select a paragraph from the utterances of any one which more completely reveals the sound truth of Sancho's proverb that fine words butter no parsnips.
 We don't know whether Mir. Com pers or President Wilson or Con- gress means us to believe that there can be any such thing as an equality in the relation of employer and employed. That such should be in- tended to be understood, it is cer tainly meant that a fallacy should be believed. All the fine words on liberty, truth, justice and humanity, high sounding words of truth, do no. blink the fact that the man who controls the job controls the lives of those who must have the job to live. The law justifieG the owner of the taking for his own use all that comes from the labor of the man he employs, after the wages have been paid. Once the man is hired his personal interest in his labor power ceases. It belongs to the boss. It may be part of his life, but it is part of the life in the sense that the energy transmitted from the engines of tho boss's plant, and bought as commodities in the open market belongs to the engine. And when the engine is bought it is bought as an energy producing com modity, in precisely the same sense as when laboring man is hired, he is bought as a labor producing com modty. How many would buy labor, or hire it if you prefer the term, if labor was not to deliver any more goods in the form of labor than