Arizona republican., 1920-01-13
Rx Erederio l. Haskin

By Frederic J. HaSkln
 WASHINGTON, D. C.-Not long ago a number of clerks in New Orleans or ganized for the purpose of getting bet
 ter wages and better conditions of labor from their employers. The coil lege professors have organized, and so, all the world knows, have the actors. The police have gone on strike in one city, and threatened to do so in an- other. Tn at least two towns the news
 paper men have tried to organize regular unions, though without com plete 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. It means that the vast army of the salaried and pro fessionaJ people, squeezed and starved between capital and labor, bearing the brunt ot heavy taxes and high living cost, are beginning to organize in self defense. It mear1s that the war of classes which is being waged all over the world is forcing another class into class consciousness and class organfza- tion-the middle class.
 Of course. in this country We have no classes. We are all social equals, and so there are, theoretically, no so- ciai 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 a 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 you will do it, you don't know. You have faith in 1uck and latent ability. You may marry the boss 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 log cabin into the White House?
 This has long been our national faith-that opportunity is equal and that good man can forge ahead, and is not, therefore, a permanent mem Der 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 laboring man, and that he intends to make that career as profitable and comfortable as possible. Of course. he may skyrocket into big business Wit ness Charley Schwab. But he has ob- served that the number of those who so skyrocket is relatively small. In the salaried 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 beginning to realize that fact. We notice. 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 a government hospital young doctors performing op- erations were getting s12O0 a year which is about s4 a day, and certain artisans working around the place were getting six. Situations like that are numerous. Men write for news papers and mould public opinion for less than plasterers get. A young en- gineer in government employ has charge of a hundred laborers on big job, and some of the skilled ones make more than he does. A coal miner in Alabama makes fifty a week, and the superintendent of local high school envieS him.
 But it is hardly necessary to em- 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- getEer in self defense. That is what tie white collar unions mean. It is also what most of the consumers leagues and cooperative stores mean. l
 In England they have gone a step farther. They have never had our | democratic squeamishness out classes over there. They have frankly l organized a Middle Class Union un- | der Uat name. and it has already be- come political factor to be reckoned | with. In Germany, too, there have been | formed some middle class organiza- tions to resist the Spartacide effort of | the working class to rule.
 The fact of the matter is. of course, 1 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, 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, com posed of those who have money and live by investing it in those same in for the most part. The farmers really constitute separate class. The farmer has been wont to regard himself as capitalist, but is beginning to realize that his interests are more nearly identical with those Of the laboring man.
 The other and the largest class of all consists of those who work for sal aries and fees. This class is far less