The Threat to the Labor Movement/Section 30
"Uninterrupted and Increased Production"—Slogan of
American Imperialism.
IT is noticeable that only where highly exploited workers revolt, as in the textile industry recently, or only in militant strikes with some political consciousness, like those of the furriers and cloakmakers, does the capitalist class conduct a direct offensive and heap columns of abuse upon them in its press.
Wage demands of large and decisive groups of workers, as in the railroad industry, do not evoke such open hatred and abuse, when the capitalist class knows that they will be compromised thru the compulsory arbitration machinery, as do relatively small and unimportant strikes in less decisive industries.
"Uninterrupted and increased production" is the slogan of American imperialism and it is echoed by the trade union bureaucracy. The present labor leadership, as has been stated an the introduction to this pamphlet, has no policy beyond that of securing a small share of the enormous wealth produced for the workers by means of "cooperation" agreements providing for increases in output per worker—piece work in a wholesale scale for the working class. When the inevitable period of crisis comes, the labor leadership is helpless. Still worse, as it has done in the past, it becomes the open ally of the suppressive machinery of the capitalist government.
Its fight on the movement for the formation of a labor party can be explained by no other reason than its fear that it may become an effective weapon of the masses in periods of depression.
The official policy of the American Federation of Labor, based on the present temporary prosperity, can be shown easily to be similar to the viewpoint of the most representative spokesmen of imperialism. For instance, Charles E. Mitchell, president of the National City Bank of New York, the bank to whose service more gunboats and marines have been devoted than to any other American financial institution, in an interview relative to prospects for 1927, said:
Increasing powers of production are the basis of prosperity. The problem of maintaining this prosperity will not be solved by indiscriminate wage increases which necessitate price increases, interfere with distribution and threaten a slow-down of industry. ONLY WHEN WAGE ADVANCES ARE ACCOMPANIED BY CORRESPONDING INCREASES IN PRODUCTION ARE THEY COMPATIBLE WITH ENDURING PROSPERITY. (Emphasis mine.)
Compare this statement by one of America's leading imperialists with a statement made for the same purpose (a forecast of prospects for 1927) by the head of the trade union movement—President Green:
MANY OF OUR INDUSTRIES HAVE MADE REAL PROGRESS IN DEVELOPING PRODUCTION POLICIES AND METHODS THAT SUSTAIN PROSPERITY… THE WAGE INCREASES FOR THE CONDUCTORS AND TRAINMEN ON EASTERN ROADS AND THE SHOPMEN ON THE BALTIMORE AND OHIO AND THE CANADIAN NATIONAL railroad may reasonably be regarded as indicative of what is to be expected in 1927. (Emphasis mine.)
To this statement by President Green which was given to the press we can ad another statement, previously quoted, from his editorial in the December number of the Federationist:
The workers' demands UNDER COOPERATION HAVE BEEN RESTRAINED by better understanding of the facts of production. (Emphasis mine.)
It is hardly necessary to point out that there is no essential difference between these statements—one by an open and avowed imperialist, head of a bank whose depredations in Haiti, Cuba and Nicaragua are notorious, the other by the head of the American labor movement.