Part 71

We cannot believe that their fears are well founded. We know that leaders both able and honest can be found among American workingmen, and we say that they should be found and trusted promptly. ----

For mark this:

THE TRUSTS WILL INEVITABLY COMPEL THE LABOR UNIONS TO BECOME POLITICAL UNIONS.

TRUSTS WILL MAKE IT CLEAR TO UNIONS THAT THEIR ONLY HOPE IS IN POLITICAL ACTION WHICH SHALL GIVE THEM THE POWER TO CONTROL LEGISLATION.

When individual firms are competing the injustice of one firm may be punished and controlled by a strike.

THE TRUST WILL RENDER THE STRIKE LAUGHABLE AND USELESS.

Suppose all the shops or manufactories of a certain kind to be under the control of one trust. What good will a strike do? The concern in which the strike occurs will simply stop work. Its business will go to other concerns in the trust; the firm in which the strike occurs will calmly draw its share of the trust profits and laugh at the strikers. The latter will lose their wages and time--no one else will lose anything.

What does one paper mill care for a strike if all the other mills in the Paper Trust are running, and making the money which it nominally loses? ----

Perhaps the workingmen think they can stop ALL the manufactures of a certain kind. In the first place they probably cannot--with trusts that reach across 3,000 miles of country.

And if they could, what about the TRUST OF TRUSTS?

If the trusts are not already formed into a formal union for mutual support they soon will be. And the union of trusts already exists so far as practical sympathy goes.

Havemeyer will gladly spend millions of trust money--not his own--to help Morgan in a coal-trust fight.

Rockefeller will spare a few hundred thousand if necessary to buy a small State Legislature and prevent passage of laws threatening a weak little trust now and dangerous to him in the long run. ----

Jealousy, mistrust, and the lack of really competent leaders may delay political union among workmen for a time.

But the political union must come. Bigger work must be done by American workmen than chattering about little local wage regulations or quarreling about hours or overtime.

The question at issue is:

SHALL ORGANIZED CAPITAL CONTROL THE PEOPLE, OR SHALL THE PEOPLE CONTROL ORGANIZED CAPITAL AND LIMIT ITS POWER?

The workingmen are the people. They are the interested parties, and they have got to vote together pretty soon or fight together a little later.

THE TRUSTS ARE NATIONAL SCHOOL TEACHERS

Look at the coal strike, the opinions that it calls forth, and notice how respectability dances and hops from one foot to the other when the RESPECTABLE shoe pinches and the RESPECTABLE toe suffers.

A little while ago the man who spoke against trusts and general monopolies of public necessities was called demagogue, socialist, anarchist, inciter of the masses against the classes, and so on.

But along comes the Beef Trust and begins to punish even the respectable "upper" classes. Double prices for food mean a serious difference even in a very respectable income.

Then you have the respectabilities also suddenly developing signs of demagogism, socialism and anarchy.

They want the tariff taken off of foodstuffs. They want the managers of the Food Trust put in jail.

The Beef Trust teaches the nation one interesting lesson--namely, that by excessive extortion the trusts will lose soon their respectable friends and unite all of the people against them.

The Beef Trust also teaches that the language called socialistic and anarchistic, when confined to working people, becomes profound political economy when uttered by some respectability with a pinched toe. ----

The Coal Trust is a later and even more radical national teacher.

The respectable individual who a short time ago could see no difference between advocating Government ownership of national resources and communism or thievery has seen a wonderful light while gazing on his coal fire at Twelve Dollars a ton.