Part 36

And still later, "Aw, forget this working business and get married."

There was much red tape to leaving that hotel--people to see, cards to sign and get signed. Everyone was nice. I told Kelly--and the news spread--the truth, that I was unexpectedly going to Europe, being taken by the same lady who brought me out from California, her whose kids I looked after. If after six months I didn't like it in Europe--and everyone was rather doubtful that I would, because they don't treat workin' girls so very well in Europe--the lady would pay my way back to America second-class. (The Lord save my soul.)

I told Schmitz I was going on the afternoon of the evening I was to leave. Of course he knew it from Kelly and the others. "Be sure you don't forget to leave your paring knife," was Schmitz's one comment.

Farewells were said--I did surely feel like the belle of the ball that last half hour. On the way out I decided to let bygones be bygones and sought out Schmitz to say good-by.

"You sure you left that paring knife?" said Schmitz.

CONCLUSION

Here I sit in all the peace and stillness of the Cape Cod coast, days filled with only such work as I love, and play aplenty, healthy youngsters frolicky about me, the warmest of friends close by. The larder is stocked with good food, good books are on the shelves, each day starts and ends with a joyous feeling about the heart.

And I, this sunburnt, carefree person, pretend to have been as a worker among workers. Again some one says, "The artificiality of it!"

Back in that hot New York the girls I labored among are still packing chocolates, cutting wick holes for brass lamp cones, ironing "family," beading in the crowded dress factory. Up at the Falls they are hemming sheets and ticketing pillow cases. In the basement of the hotel some pantry girl, sweltering between the toaster and the egg boiler, is watching the clock to see if rush time isn't almost by.

Granted at the start, if you remember, and granted through each individual job, it was artificial--my part in it all. But what in the world was there to do about that? I was determined that not forever would I take the say-so of others on every phase of the labor problem. Some things I would experience for myself. Certain it is I cannot know any less than before I started. Could I help knowing at least a bit more? I do know more--I know that I know more!

And yet again I feel constrained to call attention to the fact that six jobs, even if the results of each experience were the very richest possible, are but an infinitesimal drop in what must be a full bucket of industrial education before a person should feel qualified to speak with authority on the subject of labor. Certain lessons were learned, certain tentative conclusions arrived at. They are given here for what they may be worth and in a very humble spirit. Indeed, I am much more humble in the matter of my ideas concerning labor than before I took my first job.

Perhaps the most valuable lesson learned was that a deep distrust of generalizations has been acquired, to last, I hope, the rest of life. It is so easy, so comfortable, to make a statement of fact to cover thousands of cases. Nowhere does the temptation seem to be greater than in a discussion of labor. "Labor wants this and that!" "Labor thinks thus and so!" "Labor does this and the other thing!" Thus speaks the labor propagandist, feeling the thrill of solid millions behind him; thus speaks the "capitalist," feeling the antagonism of solid millions against him.

And all this time, how many hearts really beat as one in the labor world?

Indeed, the situation would clear up with more rapidity if we went to the other extreme and thought of labor always as thirty million separate individuals. We would be nearer the truth than to consider them as this one great like-minded mass, all yearning for the same spiritual freedom; all eager for the downfall of capitalism.

What can one individual know of the hopes and desires of thirty millions? Indeed, it is a rare situation where one person can speak honestly and intelligently for one hundred others. Most of us know precious little about ourselves. We understand still less concerning anyone else. In a very general way, everyone in the nation wants the same things. That is a good point to remember, for those who would exaggerate group distinctions. In a particular way, no two people function exactly alike, have the same ambitions, same capacities.

There is, indeed, no great like-minded mass of laborers. Instead we have millions of workers split into countless small groups, whose group interests in the great majority of cases loom larger on the horizon than any hold the labor movement, as such, might have on them. Such interests, for instance, as family, nationality, religion, politics. Besides, there is the division which sex interests and rivalries make--the conflict, too, between youth and age.

Yet for the sake of a working efficiency we must do a minimum of classifying. Thirty million is too large a number to handle separately. There seems to be a justification for a division of labor, industrially considered, into three groups, realizing the division is a very loose one:

1. Labor or class-conscious group. 2. Industrially conscious group. 3. Industrially nonconscious group.

The great problem of the immediate future is to get groups 1 and 3 into Group 2. The more idealistic problem of the more distant future is to turn a great industrially conscious group into a socially conscious group.

* * * * *

By the first group, the labor or class-conscious group, is meant the members of the American Federation of Labor, Industrial Workers of the World, four railroad Brotherhoods, Amalgamated Clothing Workers, socialist and communist organizations--workers whose affiliations with certain bodies tend to make them ultraconscious of the fact that they are wage workers and against the capitalist system. Class antagonism is fostered. There is much use of the word "exploited." In their press and on their platforms such expressions are emphasized as "profits for the lazy who exploit the workers." Everything possible is done to paint labor white, the employer black, forgetting that no side has the monopoly in any shade.

To those who from sympathy or antagonism would picture at least organized labor as like-minded, it must be pointed out that for the great part the several millions represented by Group 1 are perhaps more often warring in their aims and desires than acting as one. Never have they acted as one. Organized labor represents but a fraction of labor as a whole. Some more or less spectacular action on the part of capital against labor always tends to solidify the organized workers. They are potentially like-minded in specific instances. Otherwise the interests of the carpenters' union tends to overshadow the interests of the A. F. of L. as a whole; the interests of the A. F. of L. tend most decidedly to overshadow the interests of organized labor as a whole. Socialists bark at communists. Charges of capitalist tendencies are made against the four Brotherhoods. The women's unions feel legislated against in the affairs of labor. Indeed, only utter stupidity on the part of capital ever could weld organized labor into enough solidarity to get society or anyone else agitated for long. Much of the "open shop" fight borders on such stupidity.

Group 2 is at present but an infinitesimal fraction of labor. It comprises those workers whose background has been fortunate enough, as to both heredity and environment, to allow of their main industrial interests centering around the doing of their particular job well for the sake of their industry as a whole, to which a sentiment of loyalty has been aroused and held. There is no feeling of class antagonism, no assurance that the interests of labor are forever inimical to those of the employer, and vice versa. Where such an attitude exists on the part of workers it presupposes an employer of unusual breadth of understanding or a deep love for his fellow-man. As co-operation in industry can be shown to pay socially and financially, so may this type of employer come more and more to supersede the old-fashioned "boss."

Group 3, the industrially nonconscious workers, includes the great majority of labor in the United States. Under this heading come all those who for reasons connected with the type of industry engaged in, or because of individual or sex characteristics, remain apart from any so-called labor movement. Practically all women fall under this head, most of the foreign labor population, most of unskilled labor. Many members of labor organizations technically belonging in Group 1 really fall under Group 3. The great majority of American labor undoubtedly are not class or group conscious in the sense that they feel themselves as workers pitted against a capitalist class. Temperamentally, intellectually, the doctrines of Karl Marx are not for them. They never heard of Karl Marx. They get up and go to work in the morning. During the day they dub away at something or other, whatever it may be--the chances are it changes rather often--putting no more effort into the day's work than is necessary to hold down an uninteresting job. They want their pay at the end of the week. Many have not the minimum intellectual capacity necessary to do a piece of work properly. Many more have not the minimum physical capacity required for even routine tasks. Very many, indeed, are nervous misfits.

Yet a goodly number in Group 3 represent a high type of worker to whom the doctrine of class warfare is repugnant, and yet whose industrial experience has never resulted in making them industrially conscious. They feel no particular call to show more than average interest in their job.

Peace, efficiency, production in industry, can come only as Group 2 increases. To recruit from Group 1 will always be difficult. Once labor feels itself hostile to the employer and his interests, which is another way of saying, once the employing group by its tactics succeeds in making labor conclude that "the working class and the employing class have nothing in common," the building up of a spirit of co-operation is difficult indeed. Class consciousness is poor soil in which to plant any seeds of industrial enthusiasm.

Would you, then, asks a dismayed unionist, build up your so-called industrially conscious group at the expense of organized labor? The answer is a purely pragmatic one, based on the condition of things as they are, not as idealists would have them. Rightly or wrongly, the American employing group long ago decided that the organized-labor movement was harmful to American industry. The fact that the labor movement was born of the necessity of the workers, and in the main always flourished because of the continued need of the workers, was never taken into account. Every conceivable argument was and is used against organized labor. Many of those arguments are based on half truths; or no truths at all. The fact remains that probably the majority of the American public believes the organized-labor movement to be against our social, civic, and industrial welfare. However right or wrong such a deduction is, it is safe to say that for the great part those who hold that belief do so in absolute good faith.

The result is that the American labor movement has developed ever in an atmosphere so hostile that the effect on the growth of the movement has been that which hostile environment always exerts on any growing thing. It has warped the movement. It has emphasized everything hostile within the movement itself. No wonder a fighting spirit has ever been in evidence. No wonder only the fighting type of labor leader has emerged. The movement has had little or no opportunity for construction. Always the struggle for existence itself has been uppermost. No wonder the conclusion can justly be drawn that the American labor movement has not always played a highly productive role in American industry.