VOL. VI.

In writing a preface for my report about the “concentration of labor forces in North America,” Paul de Rousiers has not answered a question that English and American workmen ask very frequently: "Which are the best organized ones?" It is perfectly useless, says he, to compare minutely two systems of organization, when their parts are not interchangeable as might be pieces of two engines, alike and built in the same shop. Each system fills different wants.

Being less acquainted myself with the English trade unions, I shall not try to solve this interesting problem and I shall offer to the readers of the AMERICAN FEDERATIONIST only a summary of my personal conclusions.

Have labor organizations improved the condition of the American workingman, materially and morally?

Yes, in my judgment.

I shall deal now with the moral point, exclusively.

Official statistics show that about two-thirds of the United States immigrants were born in England, Ireland or Germany and the other third has not played an influential part in the labor movement.

Scandinavians have colonized the Northwestern plains. Italians have, as a rule, kept aloof from the trade unions. When Slavs, Hungarians and Eastern people arrived, the Anglo-Saxon element was predominant among the unions, on account of the assimilating power of the American nation. The sons of immigrants have been rapidly Americanized and the Germans' influence has never been in proportion of their numerical strength.

Anyhow, Anglo-Saxons, Germans and Irish constitute the bulk of the trade unions.

Formerly, some employers managed cleverly to prevent them to organize by intermingling them

* Professor of Political Economy at the Special School of Architecture, France.

No. 2

in the workshop and by granting the demands of the English-speaking workingmen, only. These are things of the past. Similar tricks were used in the Southern States, where misunderstandings between blacks and whites were encouraged. But the leading national unions affiliate colored people, and the American Federation of Labor has never allowed any discrimination of race, color, nationality or sex. Whatever are the incentives which induce the unions to organize foreigners, colored people and women, the result is benefiting the whole American commonwealth.

Years ago, as soon as Hungarians or Italians would appear on anthracite coal fields miners would lay their tools down, because the newcomers' ignorance would have put their existence in jeopardy. This seldom happens now. All these difficulties have been lessened by the progress of the trade-union movement. Civilization has increased, thanks to the labor organizers' unceasing efforts, for they helped ill-matched elements in the nation to coalesce.

The woman question is an unsatisfactory aspect of the labor problem. In New England, especially, working women have organized some unions in a few trades, but they have accomplished very little results. This question is a poignant one, because some women are compelled to earn their living, one way or another, and because a married woman or a girl living with her parents will be satisfied with small wages and will displace men, sometimes heads of a family. According to the last census in the United States, there are about 1,400,000 women against 8,000,000 men working at trades which are affected by some form of organization. This important subject ought to be a matter of serious concern to the labor leaders and social reformers.

However, as far as the workingmen themselves are concerned, I have not the slightest doubt their condition has been bettered, morally and intellectually. In order to prove my assertion, statistics would be of little use, but my personal inquiry would help to show that, as a rule, they have availed themselves intelligently of their conquered leisure hours.

A good many have taken greater care of their physical conditions and developed their intellectual strength. Every impartial American I have

interviewed has supported this opinion and I found it warranted whenever I perused the lists and catalogues of popular libraries, whenever I cast a glance at book cases in meeting-rooms and workers' homes and whenever I had a talk with a workingman. Furthermore, a great social benefit would be won, albeit this opinion would be correct for a small number only, albeit we should not see today eloquent speakers, clever journalists, powerful writers and first-class business men, emerging from the workshop or the factory.

And by the way, let us consider the socalled "labor leader" whom some people curse because he is omnipotent, and others because he has no power at all; who is charged by some with fostering strikes in order to keep his "job," and by others with adjusting industrial conflicts in order to receive bribes from the employers. This is an interesting subject, for the character of the leaders has influenced, with a certain degree, the labor movement. This movement has been shaped, first, by economic and social conditions; second, by trade circumstances. But, suppose nobody would have understood its origin and forseen its tendencies, it never would have crystalized and assumed its development.

Leaders are men like other men; they have passions and desires; they are impulsed by noble feelings and selfish motives. Their enemies assert they are dishonest; but, as a rule, I have been unable to obtain a precise account of the charges preferred against them. Besides, I don't think fidelity insurance companies would advance money upon a basis of one-half of one per cent. per annum to the officers who must give their union a bond (sometimes amouting to $30,000), if this accusation was warranted. At all events, who could deny the intelligent activity they have exerted for the benefit of the organizations they have identified themselves with.

In 1881, Samuel Gompers was supposed, rightly or wrongly, a socialist leader. When history taught him that discussions about a complete recasting of our social world were useless, and revolutionary methods ineffective, he made up his mind to do his best in order to keep the trade unions upon economic principles. Knights of Labor and Socialists attacked him bitterly, but his temper being a fighting one, he has only become more obdurate, and, in 1895, he lost his function as American Federation of Labor President in order to maintain the position he had assumed. He has endeavored energetically to organize nonunion men and he has been very efficient in voicing the aspirations of organized labor appropriately and convincing public opinion that labor deserves a peaceful hearing and an earnest consideration.

P. J. McGuire has stumped the whole country in the interest of labor and socialism. A very forcible speaker. I have seen him move a meeting deeply, with a few words. Experience has made

him a staunch trade unionist, before everything. He knows how to handle men and interests and to conduct his union's affairs along business principles.

Jas. Duncan, J. O'Connell, M. M. Garland, J. B. Lennon, R. Howard, A. Strasser, John Phillips, Martin Fox, G. W. Perkins, W. B. Prescott, Th. Kidd, Harry White, and so many others have managed their unions very ably, and conquered the esteem of the employers who have discussed trade matters with them. Geo. E. McNeill, F. K. Foster, J. W. Sullivan and others have written clever essays about the history and philosophy of the labor movement.

After ten months of scrupulous observation in 1893, 1896 and 1898, I have been very much impressed by their constituents' sagacity. As a rule, they put the right man in the right place. This one will go speaking; this other one organizing. Another one will be assisted by clerks, stenographers and typewriters and enabled to dispatch a large amount of office work.

Besides, a host of active organizers, (of whom there are over 450) like my friend J. F. O'Sullivan and his worthy wife, will stump North America in every direction, and preach the gospel of organized labor, keeping enthusiasm up, rallying undecided minds and recruiting for national unions.

Sometimes an organizer is a walking delegate too. Then he will patrol workshops and yards and see that the union rules are put in force; he will object to scabs (and perhaps to nonunion men) being employed. Very seldom is he empowered to order a strike, but very frequently he will appear before the public as the real instigator, and comic papers will be delighted to expose him as a corrupt fellow with the appearance of a drunkard. Whatever we may think about the moral standard of some walking delegates, industrial circumstances make them necessary, like sheriff's officers and policemen among civilized nations.

When we try to cast an impartial judgment upon the trade union movement we must bear in mind the huge mass of unorganized workingmen, the refractory spirit of the latest immigrants and the sundry obstacles which confront the labor leaders in managing discordant constituents and their conflicting interests.

We shall not excuse any outrage inflicted on scabs and even nonunion men but we should understand the assaulters' disposition of mind. Andrew Carnegie, the iron king, was right when he wrote, in the Forum (1886): "To expect that one dependent upon his daily wages for the necessaries of life will stand by peaceably and see a new man employed in his stead is to expect much."

It would be most unfair to ignore the efforts of responsible leaders to stop damnable violences. Congressional reports on the Homestead strike (1892), and the great railway strike (1894), show that the Amalgamated Association of Iron and

Steel Workers and American Railway Union offivery cers have done their best to prevent outrages frequently perpetrated by unorganized strikers.

The contempt of the union man for the scab will not subside but the former's behavior towards the latter seems to become more and more tempered. Moreover, some trade unionists have endeavored to stir up a sympathetic feeling for the unorganized among their comrades.

When, A. MacCraith resigned his functions as American Federation of Labor Secretary he wrote in the AMERICAN FEDERATIONIST: "I am of the opinion that a considerable portion of our advance is derived from those workers who are outside our ranks, and compelled to contribute to the increase which we demand. . . . There are many industries which are not organized whose products we buy cheaply, and the poor unfortunates engaged in them are compelled to pay more for ours or go without them, which means less employment for us." I believe there is some truth in this statement and I think labor men ought to bestow their attention upon it. If I remember correctly, J. W. Sullivan asserted, in the course of a lecture delivered at the Musée Social, that the trade unions had been indirectly beneficial to the nonunion and unskilled workingmen. Undoubtedly it has been so, in many cases, but it would be extremely interesting to have this important point thoroughly thrashed out in the AMERICAN FEDERATIONIST. However, while the anxiety of Aug. MacCraith for the unorganized masses is most creditable, to make his point good, he ought to have proved that trade unions had made the condition of the unorganized worse just by improving their own members' condition. In other words, that a man has not lost something because he has failed to reap the same advantages as another fellow.

From a social standpoint, when people organize, learn parliamentary proceedings and submit to some form of discipline, it is already an immense result, because associations which discuss collective interests are in a democratic country the only practical schools where the enfranchised citizens can learn to deal with national and international matters.

Besides, we must recollect that in a civilized nation does not everybody draw a personal profit from every institution opened to the people in order to improve their intelligence and to increase their knowledge? Shall we shut art galleries, public libraries, scientific collections and public schools because some taxpayers will support and yet not patronize them?

It is right, indeed, to improve the condition of the greater number but let us not neglect to improve the condition of a smaller number every time we get a chance. Who would try to measure out the beneficial influence of a handful of educated men, and perhaps of a single educated man?

The Trade Union Movement.

SLAVERY AMONG THE ANCIENTS-IN THE MIDDLE AGES-PROGRESS OF ITS EMANCIPATION.

By SAM L. LEFFINGWELL.

I.

It is not enough that trade unionism in this country is working progressively, though tardily, to the accomplishment of improved conditions, tending to an amelioration that will lessen, if not entirely subvert the existing ills which oppress and afflict the laboring masses. It needs no flowery word-picturing to excite the mind in furtherance of the belief that the principles of trade unionismunadulterated with contending "isms," free from schism or anything resembling diversity of opinion-trade unionism, pure and simple-has accomplished, and is now fulfilling and realizing more for the absolute relief of mankind than any or all of the other forms of creed or orthodoxy ever conceived in the mind of man. It deals with the present, and in its incentive and incitement is prompted by impulse not less holy than the church.

Through all ages of the world's history the weaker classes of the world's people-though always in a large majority-have been the victims of cruelty and oppression. It is not necessary, in this paper to recite the slow, but gradual, improvement in the conditions of the poorer masses, since the advent of the Christian era. Slavery has existed since the days of the early empires of Greece and Rome. And even the Germans, who conquered the Roman Empire, and established their dominion over every part of modern Europe, were familiar with the institution of slavery. The Anglo-Saxons, of whose commingled blood we hear so much of late, and who conquered England in the fifth and sixth centuries, took with them the institution of slavery. Two-thirds of the people were absolute slaves, or in an intermediate state of bondage to the other third. Cattle and slaves were the coin money of the Anglo-Saxons and were the medium of exchange by which the value of commodities was measured. The conquest of Anglo-Saxon England by the Normans, under William the Conquerer, in the eleventh century, while it completely supplanted the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy, brought about little of change in conditions. The soldiers of William were put into the places of the nobles who had ruled the peasantry and the Norman baron proved to be no worse a master than the Saxon thane whom he superseded.

The development of this condition of things from a state of absolute slavery up through the intermediate stages, until slavery gave way to personal freedom of the present century, was a very slow one, and one which progressed very unequally in different countries. All the modern European nations commenced with this condition of affairs and have finally ended with the legal independence of the present century.