Arno Dosch-Fleurot

“ At any rate it is a very important move in the history of American industry, and, whatever it may be leading to, it is going to have a far-reaching effect.
It may, for one thing, put an end to unionism, or render it much less important. It is pretty sure to interfere with the organization of industrial unionism, which might prove to be the road to revolution. While union leaders in England favor the idea because they can approach it on an equality with the employers, in America, union leaders fear it. Instead of stabilizing unionism as it is doing in England, here it is choking unionism out. ”

“ What struck me as an interesting comment on the unionizing of factory workers was made to me in Detroit by Mr. C. M. Culver, director of the Employers’ Association, an institution which handles the labor problem for its members. He said:
“When employers do not combine to hold down wages, unionism does not grow. When employers are competing for workmen, as they have been doing here in Detroit, when they are too busy turning out machines, when the inventive minds are just boiling and the native American genius is concentrated on getting results, men do not join unions.” ”

“ Men with any liberalism at all—and there are liberals managing great industries—are not in favor of either. They do not want the closed shop, but the ruthless way many employers’ associations and groups of associated industries are trying to use the present reaction as well as the existing depression to “break the back of labor” is regarded by them as the madness of power and wealth.
I find only two groups of rebels against democracy who view with favor this knock-down-and-drag-out fight for the open shop. I might call them roughly Bolshevik employers and Bolshevik employees. ”

“ In Europe, where there is a process of social revolution, there can be no thought of a readjustment of any kind without first finding out what effect it is going to have on the working classes. But here there is no proletariat, no hard and fast working classes, hence no class consciousness.
I have found recently in my travels about the country that all kinds of people are agreed that prices, rents, wages, everything must come down to somewhere near what they were. Before talking to labor leaders I find the same reasonableness. This would be impossible if there were any sentiment for class war. ”

“ Certainly there is no such spirit among the farmers, but what they have in mind means such a decided change in national economy as to be a real revolution, one that may make a decided change in the life of the country and carried on by effective organization, instead of by the silly parade of arms and loud talk about the proletariat, the way it is done in Europe. ”

“ I had visited Irkutsk, several times during the Kolchak regime, when it was a thriving trading centre, and now I found it hard to realize that this red-beflagged, poster-besmirched conglomeration of buildings could constitute the same town. The prosperous, well dressed, happy looking townspeople of the past had been replaced by drab and dirty workpeople, peasants and soldiers, all liberally bedecked with red stars. I discovered later that all those who wore red stars were by no means Bolsheviks ”

“ It is only in wonderfully rich America such things can happen. Here alone we dare organize industry on this bonanza scale. In Europe the big industrials know that if they build in this rapid fashion they must be prepared for the slump. The soil will not reabsorb the migratory workers as it has done for Akron and Detroit. In Europe the workers belong to a proletariat divorced from the soil, descendants of a long line of workmen. They are also class conscious and they do not conveniently disappear in the labor turnover. ”

“ Here is Russia from the inside as seen at close hand for ten months by an unusual observer—not an author, not an artist, not a propagandist, not a sympathizer, not an enemy, not a Socialist, not a reformer, not a reactionary, but a hard-headed, clear-seeing, unimaginative, fair-minded, give-the-other-fellow-a-chance kind of American business man. ”

“ I have talked with all sorts and conditions of people in Moscow, from the lowest to the highest, and failed to find one person, apart from those in favored positions in the employ of the Soviet, who had a good word to say for Bolshevism or Communism or any other “ism.” On the other hand, the working classes have no wish to be again under the old regime. They all want the same thing—a Government that will give them a chance to earn a decent living and will leave them alone. ”

“ There are, broadly, two kinds of employers in American industry. There is the “catch ’em young, treat ’em rough and learn ’em nothing” kind which is loud in support of “property rights” and is backing the ruthless open-shop “American plan.” The steel, coal and copper industries, the heavy industries, are dominated by this spirit even at this late date. To them labor has no rights. It is enough to make a Bolshevik out of any workman who comes in contact with them. ”

“ Manufacturers absorb industries which furnish them, so labor does the same thing. The combinations of industries in large plants has so highly specialized the work that no one workman need be a rounded mechanic. Men can also be shifted easily from one machine to another. Common and semi-skilled labor has almost entirely taken the place of skilled labor in industry. I used to be an auto-fitter. There is now no such job. The manufacture of even such a finished article as an automobile has been specialized to a point where one man need know very little. ”

“ The wheat farmers are right now in revolutionary foment. They are carrying on industrial strike. They refuse to sell their wheat. They are asking a high price, but that is merely symbolic. What they want is to get the price at which the wheat is finally sold. They are striking for the profits now made by the operators, the elevator owners, the speculators and the shippers. They have not yet carried their strike to the point of refusing to plant more wheat unless they get the full profit they demand, but it is not beyond the bounds of possibility. ”

“ Workers Are Not Organized. One reason may be that the portion of the working classes most hit is not organized. Craft unionism has not kept pace with the growth of industry. The important centres of diversified industry, as well as what the Germans call the heavy industries, are not unionized. In the Pittsburgh district there are approximately 400,000 workmen and whatever organization exists among them is too small to count. No big manufacturing centre in America is now union. Chicago, for instance, is industrially open shop. So is Detroit or any other city where industry has had rapid growth. ”

“ In establishing the Bureau and sending official notice of the organization to its correspondents, inviting their co-operation, The World not only insured better and more conscientious service in its own columns, but it spread the gospel of accuracy and fair play in journalism throughout the newspaper world. Every notice sent out by the Bureau to correspondents was prefaced by the following declaration:
“The World aims to be accurate. It aims to be fair and just to every person who reads it and to every person whose name it prints. ”

“ As I wandered through these plants, each with its own life, it occurred to me that within these plants was developing what the modern sociologists call the social conscience. If it has not such a spirit it does not succeed. The calculating employer who is only pretending mutual interest will not get the service in return. ”

“ WOMEN IN NATIONAL REFORMS The World, since the inception of the woman’s movement, has chronicled the advance of women in organization from the small individual club working for development along conventional lines to the great federated bodies who throw the influence of educated and enlightened womanhood on the side of national reforms. The germ of practically all philanthropic endeavor has either sprung from or been promoted by organized women, and the columns of The World bear ample testimony to the detailed care with which these ambitions have been aided by publicity. ”

“ There is a way to peace, at least comparative peace, in industry. The warfare that is forever being carried on through the open shop, the closed shop, the strike and the lockout, is coming to be considered just as uncivilized as any other form of warfare. ”

“ If an epidemic broke out in Moscow the people would die like flies.
The children are well taken care of. There are numerous creches, children’s homes and children’s dining rooms. However, even in the care of children the Soviet differentiates between the children of Communists and the offspring of non-Communists. The main reason why the Bolsheviki take good care of the children is because it enables them to bring up the coming generation on Bolshevism, Communism and class hatred from the cradle. ”

“ Much the same thing happened in Detroit. Last year it had more than 100,000 more people than it could properly house. These people had been drawn into Detroit by the high wages. Handy men with intelligence were getting $15 to $30 and more a day. Then came the slump in the automobile market. Beginning last May, the demand for labor in Detroit began to decrease, factories took on fewer men, but the city did not become crowded with idle men. For a certain number took their time each week and moved on. The overpopulation began to disappear. Detroit as a working man’s bonanza was working out. ”

“ That The World’s attitude on public questions is guided by these instructions of Joseph Pulitzer is generally agreed by the reading public. Its editorial policy is one of intelligent liberalism. It would seek for the evils of democracy a cure in more democracy. It would welcome the widest opportunity for change and experiment in fitting popular government to new conditions, while setting its face like a flint against revolution by force and the subversive doctrines of anarchy. ”

“ In Minnesota its enemies quickly seized upon the party cry. The wheat manipulators of Minneapolis, who, being rich, dominated socially, sent their wives out to tell the women of Minnesota to vote against this “free love” party. These ladies, being rich and powerful socially, went with the virtuous plea into every town in Minnesota and, being known as rich and prominent socially, swept the woman vote of Minnesota with them. ”

“ After visiting the steel towns and the modern factory cities I agree with the I. W. W. that American industry is not organized. Labor, as distinguished from industry, is organized, but the factories, with their hundreds of thousands—added together, their millions—of unskilled and semi-skilled labor, are quite unorganized. ”

“ You live in a free country, free from all persecution, enjoying every human comfort, under an established Government; and you go to Russia, spend two weeks there with your bleating, mouthing perversion of humanity, Maxim Gorky, and come back and tell your countrymen that they must support a set of blackguards. ”

“ THE DRAMA No other city in the world contains so many theatres as New York, or is the centre of so great activity in every branch of the stage’s art. The entertaining articles on plays and acting by Louis V. De Foe, for more than twenty years The World’s dramatic critic, are everywhere recognized as a dependable guide to the theatregoer—this, because of his fearlessness and fairness and the authority of his opinions and impressions gained from more than a quarter of a century of constant observation and study of the most popular and generously patronized of all the arts. ”

“ Wells—leave Russia alone. You have done a lot of harm and you have earned the just resentment of every true friend of Russia. If you must dabble with poison, write another “Ann Veronica.” The Russian problem is one which will be solved by men, not by literary acrobats.
In conclusion, I would like to remind the great American people that they fought in the great war to make the world safe for democracy. You helped to destroy German militarism, but remember that German militarism was nothing as compared with that of Soviet power. ”

“ The labor is in much closer human relationship to the management than the capital. If capital earns big dividends it is satisfied, but the other two elements, management and labor, live and work together every day. Once an industrial council is established reuniting the management and the workshops, it is rarely let drop. It eases up the day to day difficulties. No matter what system is used the daily contact is certain to avoid some strikes. ”

“ Everywhere I turn, in every city, every street, every shop, every home, there is so much wealth it is hard to believe. After Europe one would be inclined to say we are disgustingly rich, if the new-wealth, in spite of the war fortunes, were not so widely distributed. I hear people complain that workmen have been making so much money they have been buying themselves $10 silk shirts and their wives are wearing $50 hats. ”

“ This is what is really happening among farmers. One way or another they are beginning to understand they have been the victims of disorganization. They have marketed all together and have bred speculation. Now they intend to change. They do not mean to hold up the country, but to force a change, so they are organizing, the wheat men in one group, the corn in another, the cotton and wool in still further groups, &c. There are dozens of different organizations all working to the same end, and their strength is being united in the Farm Bureau. ”

“ The basis of all business is credit, and the basis of credit is reputation. The Bolsheviks are thieves. Their word is worthless and their stock in trade is principally stolen gold, and I decline to become a receiver of stolen property even at the instigation of the British Government.
Mr. W. B. Vanderlip told me in Moscow that as soon as Mr. Harding took office the United States would recognize the Soviet Government and trading between the States and Russia, would be in full swing this coming year. ”

“ The lack of food in Omsk, which is the centre of a great agricultural and dairy farming district, is due solely to the Communistic system. The problem of transportation does not even enter into the question. The peasants refuse to hand over their produce at the insignificant prices in worthless paper roubles which the Soviet offers, and the Bolsheviki have so far not dared to proceed to extreme measures in order to coerce them.
The peasants of Siberia are in the main small landowners and were so under the Czar’s regime. Communism does not appeal to them and they will have none of it. ”

“ The United States Steel Corporation has not even an industrial manager. Similar great industries in Europe cannot take so independent an attitude, but here it is obvious that neither now nor in the immediate future can the great masses of factory workers get together and force recognition. They will eventually, of course, if the situation demands, but they are, on account of their lack of organization, for the time being helpless. ”