There are plenty of other causes for the rise of social unrest besides this defeat of effective labor organization, but in this country socialism owes an immense debt of gratitude to every capitalist who rejoices over the undoing of labor unions.
Some years later, I twice spent a week in Pittsburg. Though incomparably better at the top than twenty other roaring centers of industry, it was not worse at the bottom except in volume and intensity. As nowhere else, one could mark the massed energies of wealth-production at the point of utmost achievement. The top of the pyramid was in quite dazzling light. Priceless art collections open to the public, noble music, heaps of best books, and such higher schools as the country had not seen. But lower down upon the pyramid, the light turned into shadow; lower still, it grew black as pitch. Here in choking tenements was the forgotten city. Here were the legions that worked twelve hours in the day, and even Sundays. Here was the chaos of low and uncertain pay. Here was every incalculable shape that insecurity could take, all the horrors of maiming and unnatural death. On this great army of the forgotten rested the pyramid with its glistening cap.
