The labor world., 1919-02-22
STARTING A REVOLUTION.

STARTING A REVOLUTION.
1t is a pretty good time for union
men to keep their heads and to
watch we'll their step. After all, the
hard beaten roads are the safest to
travel. Labor has come up through
the centuries by the gradual process.
At no time has its position been Sc
cure, and it has frequently fallen
back with deadening thud after
some such fool break as was pulled
of last week in Seattle.
Labor is powerful wnen it learns
It's strength, but there is a greater
power than organized labor or or
ganized capital, and that power is
public opinion, which no force has
ever been able to successfully over
ride, and which some folks have
learned to their sorrow is not to be
trifled with in America. There are
number of big corporations whose
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get them back into the good graces
OF the people where they once
proudly and complacently reposed.
Organized labor's standing with
the American people was never so
high as it has been since the war.
1t earned it's way to public recog-
milton by loyalty to the country,
good conduct and the pursuit of
reasonable policies. The Unions that
did not play the game according to
the rules have suffered tremendously
Some of them went by the boards
entirely, and others have limped
back in the face of bitter opposition.
In the meantime the men and women
they represented were obliged to
needlessly wait for the better things
they had coming to them.
The American labor movement has
experienced rapid growth during the
past few years. Many new members
have been admitted who are inpa-
tient at the apparently slow prog
ress that is being made. A large
number of them hail from foreign
parts, and they have brought with
them ideas and methods that have
never been workable here. They
have not taken the pains to study
the history of the past in the Amer
lean movement Many of them do
not know that our movement has
any past
They seem to think that the zone
big-union" idea or the general strike
has never been tried out in America,
so they are ready to give it a whirl.
They probably have never heard of
the Knights of Labor, the American
Railway Union. the. American Labor
Union, over the remains of which
monuments have been erected to the
one-big-union idea.
The general sympathetic strike is
the fore-runner OF revolution. 1t is
revolution, and none know it so we'll
as do its we'll informed advocates.
The trade union is not a revo-
1utionary organization: 1t was never
Intended as such. It's founders knew
better than most men that revolu-
tions never improve, the economic
conditions of the workers. The trade
union is an institution designed to
make for the orderly rise of the
working people through the educa-
tional, evolutionary process. When
1T is placed to any other use it is a
failure, as it should be.
Fortunately we have within our
hands in the United States all the
weapons that it is necessary for man
! to WELD to bring about his complete
Afreedom. Our laws and institutions
4re framed to give men the oppor-
4unity to work out their own des-
tiny. We have self government, we
have the ballot. If the workingmen
who are shouting the loudest for
revolution devoted one-half as mucl,
energy to constructive effort as
they are now wasting on imprac-
ticable theories there would be no
need for talk. about "starting the
fire works."
The American trade union offers
to all workingmen an orderly way
to secure economic betterment. II
may be a tritle, slow to suit the i'm
patient ones, but it is the surest and
safest thing we know of: Then our
free institutions and the law of the
u land permit the workers and all the
people to evolve from one govern