men and, since they choose to accept the laws and standards of the master class, it is but natural that they should regard their bargains, or contracts, as holy and sacred, even when such contracts force them to work alongside of men who are "scabbing" or "black-legging" on other craft unionists who may be out on strike. They are thus forced into the paradoxical position of paying strike benefit assessments with one hand while they filch away wages with the other by working with the scab or black-leg and aiding the boss to break the strike.
Such string-halted morality certainly comes from ignorance of the structure of capitalist society and the mission of the working class, and so long as it continues to influence the minds of these workers will lead their class in an ever-descending spiral.
So long as the capitalists competed vigorously among themselves and the various shops confined themselves to the manufacture of single articles, or closely related articles, or only one of the processes of transformation was carried out in the one shop, the craft unions had a measure of success, but when, through the process of elimination, competition entered wealth into fewer hands and machine production took on the form of industry (following the raw material through all the processes to the completed article) craft unionism lost its force and effect.
The machines break up the skill of the craftsmen and spread it out in the hands of groups of unskilled workers, who do simple tasks in connection with the machines. And since such skill as these machine workers require is mostly in the nature of mere nimbleness and can be acquired in a very short time, the craftsman's notion of "property in skill" can never obtain any foothold with them. The essence of property is a right of exclusion, and the machine tender's skill (?) is too easily acquired for exclusion to be practiced at the machines.
The craftsman's opposition to the machine in industry loses validity in the presence of the machine—defeat
