Arizona republican., 1920-01-13
WHITE COLLAR UNIONS

distinctive and homogeneous and self conscious than any of the others. It is not aware of itself. It does not know what it wants or what is good for it. It is the prey of demagogues and of propagandas. Labor appeals to it saying:
 You, too, are a worker for wages. Your interests are mine. Government ownership and government control, everything that will break monopoly and lower the cost of living. is to your. interest as well as to mine. Join me, and we will run the country
 But capital also addresses the poor salarie6 man by way of the other ear.
 You are the child of opportunity" it tells him. What you want is un- restricted opportunity. unrestricted freedom for personal initiative in making money. Thus you can make your fortune just as l have made mine.''
 The poor salaried man doesn't know which to believe. But one thing is be- ing borne in upon his consciousness and with painful clarity. If the cost Of living doesn't fall. or IT it keeps on rising, he will not be able to exist at all He begins to see that to hammer down prices is his only salvation. How is he going to do it?
 Tn one way the interests of the sal aried man and of the professional diff fer from those of the laborer. He an rot 20 on strike with effect. Direct action designed to increase his reward is not of much good to him. Collective bargaining with employers is out of the question. And this for several reasons. He works at too niany diff fcrent things and under too many diff ferent arrangements. The coal miners can strike and hold up the whole coun- try because the coal mines are abso- luteiy dependent upon them, and be- cause all of them are working for the operators on substantially the same terms. The same is true of the rail- road men, the steel men. and a host of others. But what would a strike of bookkeepers come to. for example? Or of travelling salesmen?
 It takes a strong minority to defy the majority. That is what the police men found out when they tried to strike. The country simply wouldn't let them strike. The newspaper re- porters found out the same thing when they tried to organize unions. Neither the public nor the publishers would stand for it, and perhaps rightly.
 Tie middle class, then. to give it its proper name, cannot work in unison to raise it's wages. as the laboring class can. But it can work m unison to reduce the cost of living. which is simply chopping off the same log at the ether end. In it's methods of mak- ing living. it is too diverse to act in unison. but in its method of buying necessities it is perfectly unified. All of us face the problems Of getting enough to eat and - wear and a place to live for the ever-dwindling stipend. We cannot act together to regulate the amount We receive, but we can act to- gether to regulate the amount we Wi spend, to a surprising extent. House. wives boycotts and organisations oS tenants in New York. local and spor- adic efforts though they were, nave shown the power of the consumers acting together. So have cooperative stores which have flourished here and there. It would seem that the white collar class in this country, with it's unions in imitation of labor unions is on the wrong track, and that the mid dle class union of England, formed for the purpose of influencing legisla- tion to lower the cost of living, Is on the right track. In a word. the CO., operative movement among consumers seems to be the solution to the ever more pressing difficulty of the middle class. If this movement would spread, if it should attain to a national or ganization, the middle class could take it's place with labor and capital as a force in controlling the distribution of the things by which we live.