American Syndicalism/Chapter 05

by John Graham Brooks

V

A HISTORY OF DISAPPOINTMENT

If the entire movement known as Socialism (including its newer and more audacious forms) is to be studied with any profit, it must be measured by other competing attempts to remedy evils and inequalities against which modern society has risen. Neither Socialism nor Syndicalism is alone in the field against the recognized facts of social injustice. In forms public and private, compulsory and voluntary, we have at last an accessible record of classified attempts to check and to remove these ills. Socialism owes much of its vigor and achievement to the conviction that these previous attempts have failed because too exclusively in control of "the master class," and its interests. It is not open to question that the history of reform is the history of disappointment. It is as if nature could not get its newer and harder tasks performed without overloading man with expectation and hope. From the upper flights of these expectations, probably no instance can be given of reform in religion, politics, or education whose ripening fruit matched in the slightest the vehement confidence from which the reform sprang. This is not only true of the very greatest of the world's inspirers: it is not only true of men of emotional impelling like St. Simon, Fourier, or Mazzini: it is true of those as cool and disciplined as John Stuart Mill and Richard Cobden. Compared with Mills' splendid hopes for representative government (and what it "would hasten of great and fundamental reforms"), the actual thing obtained looks pallid enough.

Here in the United States every step in the swift coming of direct primaries, initiative, referendum, and recall records the disappointment of our people with legislative and legal procedure. It is a fact that effective political power has been kept from the people. It is the gist of this new protest that the broad, inclusive interests have been in no vital sense "represented." To get this representation is now a world fight. Everywhere it is seen that if democracy is to be real it must have a far broader economic basis. This is not a cry of the cranks alone. It appears among the very ablest students of politics. In the stiff volumes of Ostrogorski,^[1] which won high praise from James Bryce, our own sinning against genuine representation is set down in pages cruel with veracity. In his recent study, Democracy and the Party System, a single passage from his concluding chapter shows us how he would broaden these economic foundations of our political life. He sees how the people's choice is choked and defeated in the Senate—Federal and State. He asserts that the weaker economic interests have no representation there. He then adds:

Conflicts are getting more and more bitter, clouds are gathering thick in the social sky, and it is on the arbitraments of the Senate that social peace will depend. But how can fair judgment be secured if the representation of economic interests in the Senate is not made broader? And how can such a representation be established? I think it could be done, and without breaking the old framework of the Senate. Its basis should remain unchanged, every State, large and small, keeping its two representatives in the high Federal chamber. But to these Senators should be added Associate Senators representing directly and specially the great social and economic forces of the country—chambers of commerce, boards of trade, manufacturers' associations, trades unions, granges, churches,—not as ecclesiastical but as great social organizations,—universities, bar associations, etc. Every great national interest would have its legitimate spokesman in the high assembly, and their knowledge of the special conditions with which they are connected would bring these latter to light before the Senate and the country. The coordination of struggling economic forces, so far as it depends on legislation, would be promoted in a spirit of fairness. The trusts themselves could plead their cause, they would only be challenged to come out in the open instead of working out their ends underhand as now. Organized labor too should have the opportunity and obligation of stating and of proving its case.

The spirit of this passage does not differ from scores of passages in syndicalist writing—as, for example, this, which just appears in the English organ:

Parliament is merely the organ of the existing Capitalist Class, and with the inevitable decay and passing away of that class as a class, Parliament itself must also wither and decay with it. . . . This, in fact, is already the condition of Parliament. It is an organism which, having fulfilled its mission in life, is now naturally withering and passing away before our eyes.

The reactions in this disappointment are far deeper than that against representative government. The feeling has deepened that, until the economic grip of capital is loosened, reforms in every variety will fail to reach the heart of the disorder.

Again, two generations have passed since Cobden's glowing prophecies about freedom applied to trade. If he could repeat his long journey today, it would be to look upon a greedy scramble for market restrictions scarcely without exception. We know what Thomas Jefferson thought that popular educative agencies, such as public libraries, would bring about. We have these institutions far beyond his dream. In Massachusetts scarcely a hamlet is so small as to be without its public library. Some commonplace towns have two or three, and one town upon Cape Cod has five. These and the people's schools have wrought their service, but every deeper human and social problem remains about as obstinate as before. So little has universal suffrage met the earlier hopes, that half the educated people one meets distrust it, and would hail its restriction with downright satisfaction. We turn back to the first writers upon some new phase of education,—let us say, manual training or the kindergarten. The first messages were like a new and conquering religion. They had the promise of some stately reconstruction which a single generation might bring about. In Cambridge, I have just listened to two very high authorities on these special forms of training. They know the changes these have brought about, and they do not undervalue them, but their estimates are very cool and balanced. Another lecturer was on fire with the new anarchistic emphasis in child rearing of Madam Montessori. The listener guessed that after a decade or two, he also would speak calmly and more critically about this latest educational innovation.

And thus it is with the whole galaxy of reforms. I listened to the first heralds in Massachusetts of the Australian Ballot. They seemed at the time to offer a fundamental cure for our political ills. The reform has corrected some evils. It has brought some bettering. More than this cannot be said.

If we pass directly to the "Social Question," the story does not change. For more than a century, we have had in the United States above two hundred costly colonizing experiments in which some thousands of men and women staked their all to prove the new and better ways in genuine brotherhood. Unless held by religious faiths, these brave ventures have had an average life of less than three years. With perhaps two exceptions, that prove little, even the religious ones have almost vanished.

Long since the socialists learned to deride and disclaim them, but not until two generations had made it obvious that success did not lie that way. When experience had well proved their failure, we were told: "Of course scattered colonies in a continent of capitalism can not endure. We must work through the social whole. We must first capture and reform the continent." This history of frustrated hopes has the more significance because these "Apart Colonies" have had every variety of form in the whole gamut of social scheming; Anarchist, Socialist, Communist and now Single Tax. Their constitutions, programs, and practical policies show much diversity, and yet the shades of defeat are over them all, as colonies.

Not one of these could hold its own against the hated competitive system. Not one of them could retain the most enterprising and virile of its youth. Not one of them could match in the slightest the stimulating opportunities for larger and a richer life which a capitalistic society, in spite of its sins, still offers.

In another series of reforms, the disappointment has been less final, but very real. For half a century heroic groups have gathered about "arbitration," "conciliation," "profit sharing," "sliding scales," and "bonus systems," and these have paid their way, some of them richly. Each has left its increment of good which a wiser future will put to use and learn to integrate with other agencies. But these tiny deposits to our assets bear but a ghostly likeness to those first high-hearted hopes.^[2] The older literature of arbitration and profit-sharing is fired with confident anticipation that a "solution" has been found; an open way along which capital and labor, arm in arm, may pass to early and permanent peace. After a generation of "voluntary arbitration" had shown with chilling proof that some of the deepest difficulties in the wage relation were beyond the reach of this contrivance, then New Zealand appeared with her famous bill adding "compulsion." By good luck, it came in days of rising prosperity when labor had its fairest chances. It was then that one of the most fearless and gallant of our citizens, Henry D. Lloyd, brought back his story of "A Country Without Strikes." It was an epic of hope, reflecting upon every page his own generous spirit. But labor there today shows a surly disposition. In some of the severer conflicts, the act is so feared that settlement is sought outside the act. Yet Mr. Reeves, its author, told a Boston audience that the act was conceived to meet this very class of strikes.^[3]

After watching the workings of the act for several years, trade unions in England and the United States bluntly and stubbornly refuse their approval, while Socialists of prominence like Charles Edward Russell have only boisterous ridicule for the act.

Let it be said again that these reforms have "paid their way." Utter failure is not to be charged against them. As in Emerson's poem, these reforms, like the Dervish, have not brought diadems; their offering was only homely and useful fruits. It is our habit to exclaim, "But if men do not expect diadems, they will not give themselves greatly and pluckily to their tasks." For herbs and apples, they will not suffer as Mazzini suffered. Hauntingly before him he must see the shining towers beneath which dwells his "cleansed and perfected Republic." One wonders if he would have starved and risked his life an hundred times for the actual Italy of 1912, with its war against Tripoli. Would those who bore all the weary buffeting in early trade union organization have done it for the existing American Federation of Labor? One chief source of I. W. W. rebelling is the embittered sense of miscarriage and shattered hopes in that large majority to which the trade union has brought so little.

In the same spirit of distrust, the trade union itself rebels against the proffered benefactions of capital.

The recent action of some forty thousand brewery workers has an unmistakable meaning. There was no stampeding of minorities; no thought of violence, or even haste. With cool deliberation and by overwhelming majorities, this powerful labor body refused to accept one of the most liberal Compensation Funds ever offered to labor. After its provisions had been published in their own official organ,^[4] a month was given to discussion with communications pro and con, like the long discussion of sabotage and the referendum vote in the New York Call. Another month was given to the vote. Nearly twenty-three thousand men voted against the Compensation and Old Age Pension offer, although each beneficiary was still free to choose the common law or statutory remedy. Every old offense of "contributory negligence," "fellow servant defense," and "assumption of risk," had been discarded. The benefits were to begin ten years earlier than under the German State Insurance,—a concession of the utmost importance.

These labor men had learned, too, that not one injury in five secured compensation under present conditions. They knew well the long and uncertain delays, even when they won the case, as they knew the bleeding fees of the private lawyers. Not a feature of all this but had been amply discussed. There was no shadow of doubt that the employers would promptly pay the benefits.

Of what were the benefits to consist?

Every brewery-worker injured in connection with his work would receive a specified, liberal, compensation of sixty-five per cent of the wages he would otherwise have earned during the period of his disability, or that in the event of his killing in connection with his work his dependents, if any, would receive, in lump sum or in pro rata payments as the Board of Directors and Award might deem best in each case, the equivalent of sixty-five per cent of the victim's wages for three hundred weeks, or practically six years—to the amount of not more than $3,400.^[5]

One hundred and eighty-one unions voted against the plan. There is nothing inscrutable about this, even to the employers who say: "They think we are Greeks bearing gifts." That is the explanation. This strong and well-paid labor organization has become so far socialist, so far "class conscious," that it dreads every measure which identifies its interests those of the master class. This labor organization knows that it is very far in the future before the Government in this country will give them anything comparable to what the employers offered. Yet they refuse, preferring freedom to fight for their cause unimpeded, when and how they choose. This is the syndicalist spirit, and with the growth of Socialism, it becomes daily more and more the spirit of the trade union. It is this spirit that refuses the New Zealand Arbitration Act, and the "incorporation" of their unions. It is this spirit that turns them like one man against "court injunctions" and deepens their suspicion against the courts themselves.

In trying to account for a world impulse like Socialism and even more for one like Syndicalism with its theoretic fascinations and the bravado of its practice, we may save ourselves much trouble if these balked hopes in the history of reform are kept in mind. In the half dozen countries where Syndicalism has made itself really felt—where, as "proletariat" or the "fourth estate," it has made men stop to listen and reflect, we shall find the same story of disappointed expectations. Politicians of every ilk and shade had promised results that did not come. Incoming governments held out hopes that were not realized. Wherever these disappointments reach a certain portion of the wage earners, Syndicalism gets its first expression. It began in France, where labor unions were so organized as to secure political influence, the results of which could be tested:—where very few years were enough to show what politics could do for them and what it could not do. It began when the older unions (craft organizations) had come to see how little they had done or were likely to do for their own uplifting. Many a union had won advantages for itself, but these were always checked by the employer's use of new machinery plus easy access to tenfold larger numbers outside the unions, always there, to keep wages low. The part played by several of these French unions led, moreover, to a momentous discovery that economic forces, transportation and electricity were so safely in the hands of the workers that they might use them to gain their objects far more directly than through the tedious ways of politics.^[6]

The very right to organize had been withheld as late as 1884. When permission came, unions burst into such efflorescence that in ten years, more than two thousand active organizations were a part of the industrial and political life of the nation. The very attempt to crib them had turned them over to socialist influence. This meant political action. They captured towns by the score. Besides mayors and local officials, they sent their own men to the Chamber of Deputies and were the first in Europe to count Socialists among the Ministers of State.

Ten years ago, I visited several of these communes under socialist administration, hearing from Socialists for the first time the pique and irritation because their officials were doing so little for the cause. I have seen no socialist city with even six months' experience in the United States, where this same precocious complaint could not be heard. It is shallow and unfair criticism, but it shows us the sources of Syndicalism.

Two or three years later it was written: "We Socialists in ninety Communes have benches full of Deputies and two Members of the Government, but what have they done for Socialism? They are busy, most of them, explaining why they can do nothing. One critic said, 'The only talent they had developed was "le talent de s'execuser"; it is all talk, talk.'" Thus out of the sorrow or the rage of disappointment Syndicalism was born. It was only a more concrete and acute form of that chagrin at the failure of parliaments and legislatures which the people of many countries have come to feel, and none more rebelliously than we in the United States.

It is thus not alone the revelation that politics and trade unions work so feebly and so tardily, Socialism also brought its own discouragements, to those who are now Syndicalists. Socialism is long enough in the field to have furnished its own "history of disappointment."

Socialism has democratized hope, and it is nobly to its credit that it has done this; but it will also be one of its most enduring and exacting disciplines. If it incites lively anticipations, they must be satisfied. The socialist impeachment has smeared the existing order as with pitch, and at the same time fixed all eyes on its own radiant picture of the world that is to be when "land and the tools are restored to those who labor."

In nothing is Socialism more useful than that it has carried new ardors of expectation and faith to the huddled masses lower in the scale. It has done this at the very time when these masses refuse longer to be put off with other worldly substitutes. That we have come so near accepting poverty, unemployment, prostitution and sweated wages as practical fatalities which must always abide with us, has as little moral excuse as to take small pox or dirty milk as fatalities. Socialism, as much as any other single influence, has forced on the coming war against these immemorial dishonors. These with economic changes have made this socialist criticism and arousing possible. The city and industrial center have gathered the workers where they can be reached by the new method. These centers have made organization possible. A thousand socialist papers and an enormous pamphlet literature are in active circulation.

Whatever else may be said of this literature, it stimulates belief in possible social changes that shall enlarge opportunity and distribute economic values with more equal hand. But Socialism will have to pay the same penalty that those have always paid who promise too much. The deepest causes of Syndicalism are economic, but its more obvious and proximate origin lies in these frustrated hopes. It is the child of disillusionment. Those who began it had been over-promised or had come to expect of politics, of the trade union, and of the Socialism then in vogue, far more than each or all of them could deliver.

Out of the chagrin, hopes that no defeat can extinguish in the heart of youth took another flight. The goal toward which it turns is much the same, but the route and the means through which the journey must be made differ from those of politics, of trade unions and of Socialism, as these have hitherto been known. Yet in studying Syndicalism, we are still dealing with labor organization, though it has changed its emphasis and form. We are still occupied with politics, though its whole basis of representation is transformed. Neither are we quite cut loose from Socialism.

What most concerns us in this study and what is at the same time most beset with perplexity is sufficiently to differentiate Syndicalism and preserve the roots that still inhere in the mother trunk from which it springs.

No intelligent step in this study seems to me possible unless the larger movement is first considered. A powerful contingent of our trade unions is now desperately defending itself before the public. Never were so many well-to-do folk more relentless in their animosity toward trade unions than at the present moment. Never was labor^[7] so outspoken in its bitterness against the imperfections of the wage system. There is nowhere a sign that this hostility is lessening. The organized and articulate part of labor never showed more moody distrust of all those agencies meant for peace between capital and labor.

More and more our most momentous strikes are at bottom for "recognition." The points of conflict are thrown out nearer the capitalistic citadel of management. The present working of the wage system is challenged. Certain portions of this system as arbitrarily managed are obviously breaking up before our eyes.

Syndicalism is the outer, more daring and reckless labor section in this attack.

1. Democracy and the organization of Political Parties, Macmillan.
2. In a Bulletin of the Department of Labor for January, 1912, is an admirable summary of the results of arbitration.
3. Recently a New Zealander, W. D. Stewart, and an American economist, Professor Le Rossignol, have given us the sobered estimate of this act in their volume, State Socialism in New Zealand.
4. See Brauerei-Arbeiter Zeitung, Feb. 3, 1912.
5. The details of this may all be found in The American Underwriter, April, 1912. There was obviously the fear of a "joker" which in some way was believed to cripple their freedom of action.
6. The word syndicalism is the counterpart of our own term trade unionism,
7. To save tedious qualifications the word "labor" will be freely used in this volume for the "wage earner."