The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1920-01-12
TOPEKA STATE JOURNAL
Information Bureau
FREDERIC j. HASKIN, Director.
Washington, d. C.
WHITE COLLAR UNIONS.

|
Orleans organized for the purpose of
getting better wages and better con-
ditions of labor from their employers
The college professors have organized,
and SO, as all the world knows, have
the actors The police have gone on
strike in one city. and threatened to do
so in another. In at least two towns
the newspaper men have tried to or
ganfze regular unions. tho without
complete success.
And this is only a partial list of them
the white collar unions. You will
hear that term in the middle west, and
! perhaps in some other parts of the
country 1t means that the vast army
of the salaried and professional peo-
! pie, squeezed and starved between
capital and labor, bearing the b~unt of
heavy taxes and high living costs. are
| beginning to organize in self-defense-
| 1t means that the war of classes which
| is being waged all over the world is
| forcing another class into class con-
seriousness and class organizauon-the
middle class.
OF course, in this country we have
no classes. We are all social equals,
| and so there are, theoretically, no
social classes. We have been raised
on the doctrine that any boy born in
America has a perfectly good chance
to be president of the United States
or of the Standard Oil company. We
have firm faith in opportunity and in
progress. You may be bookkeeper
today and therefore in the class OF
salaried employees, but you look con-
| fidently forward to the time when you
will own a share of the company. or
found a company of your own. How
will In
have immense faith in your own luck
and latent ability. You may marry
the boss's daughter. like the poor but
deserving lad in the story, or you may
| play the stock market on a good tip,
or you may just naturally plug your
way to the top by hard work. Isn't
that the way Abe Lincoln climbed
from a log cabin into the White
House,
| This has long been our national
| faith-that opportunity is equal and
| that a good man can forge ahead. and
! is not, therefore, permanent member
| of any class. social or economic. The
validity of this national faith might be
| debated at great length. The point is
that we have it, especially those of US
who wear white collars. Labor has
practically rejected it. BY organizing
unions and striking and lobbying for
| better conditions of work. the laboring
man announces in effect that he
knows he is going to remain a7abor
| ing man, and that he intends to make
I that career as profitable and comfort
able as possible. OF course, he may
skyrocket into big business. Witness
| Charley Schwab. But he has observed
that the number of those who so sky
| rocket is relatively small. In the SAL
| aried classes it may be a. little larger
but still there is an enormous number
of us who are doomed to work for
salaries all our lives. And we are be-
ginning to realize that fact We no.
| tice, too that the laboring man, by
acting upon the assumption that he is
going to remain a laboring man, Is
rather getting ahead of US. His wages
have come nearer to keeping up with
the living cost than have our salaries
and fees. Recently at government
Hospital young doctors performing
| operations were getting $1,000 year,
which is about four dollars a day,
I and certain artisans working around
the place werc getting six. Situations
| like that are numerous. Men write
| for newspapers and mould public
| opinion for less than plasterers get. A
| young engineer in government employ
| has charge of hundred laborers on a
make more than he does. A coal
miner IN Alabama makes fifty week,
and the superintendent of local high
| school envies him.
!
But It is hardly necessary to en-
phasize. the fact that the salaried man.
| and to a lesser extent the professional
man working for fees, are the ones
who have suffered most from the high
cost of living. All of us who belong
| in that class are bitterly aware of the
! fact The significant thing is that
we are beginning to be conscious of
ourselves as a class and to band to-
gether in self defense. That is what
the white collar unions mean. 1t is
| also what most of the consumers
leagues and cooperative stores mean.
In England they have gone a step
farther. They have never had our
democratic squeamishness a b u
classes over there. They have frankly
| organized a middle class union" I'M
der that name, and It has already be-
tcome a political factor to be reckoned
with. In Germany, too, there have
been formed some middle class organ
izations to resist the Spartacide effort
of the working class to rule.
The fact of the matter is, of course,
that there are at least three distinct
classes in every industrial nation, and
that most of the members of each of
them remain in them all of their lives.
On the one hand is the laboring class,
composed of those who work for
wages in the great primary industries
| which produce the necessities of life.
On the other hand is the capitalist
class. composed OF those who have
money and live by investing it in those
same industries, for the most part.
The farmers really constitute a sepa-
rate class The farmer has been wont
to regard himself as a capitalist, but
is beginning to realize that his inter
ests are more nearly identical with
those of the laboring man. ~
The other and the largest class of
all consists of those who work for
salaries and fees. This class is far less
distinctive and homogeneous and self
Observation-Disclosures
0TC~~R n