John Graham Brooks

“ They have learned a far larger thought of interests that infold not "labor" alone, but the whole stumbling, yet climbing race of men and women in the world. They have learned that "interests" bind us up and down, perpendicularly as well as horizontally. The claim that interests unite the wage earners alone and apart from all others, leads to the most treacherous morass through which they stagger to their goal. Labor has depths of interests that are in common, but far greater depths of interest that are human and all-inclusive.
Socialism has half learned this lesson. ”

“ So far as Syndicalism turns to coöperation, it falls into line with the world's best and safest reform work.
No one assures of this with more impressiveness than the "intellectual father" of the movement, George Sorel. It is not merely that he rejects sabotage, he rejects even more all attempts to chart off the future of society. His interest is in the obscure, unconscious forces which underlie this mass-movement. He sees the middle class in a state of decay. All the commanding energies through which, for centuries, it came to power have sickened. ”

“ No movement commits itself to coöperation without at the same time committing itself to the peaceful and creative methods of reform. Workmen's coöperation has a growth of two generations. There is not a spot where it has won the least real power that it has not affiliated with politics and with reforms. This is both its hope and its strength. It grows only by creative action. Sabotage and strikes alike are an abomination to the coöperator. His success is measured by his achievements in substituting an efficiency superior to that of private profit-making employers. ”

“ Socialism has democratized hope, and it is nobly to its credit that it has done this; but it will also be one of its most enduring and exacting disciplines. If it incites lively anticipations, they must be satisfied. The socialist impeachment has smeared the existing order as with pitch, and at the same time fixed all eyes on its own radiant picture of the world that is to be when "land and the tools are restored to those who labor."
In nothing is Socialism more useful than that it has carried new ardors of expectation and faith to the huddled masses lower in the scale. ”

“ This strong and well-paid labor organization has become so far socialist, so far "class conscious," that it dreads every measure which identifies its interests those of the master class. This labor organization knows that it is very far in the future before the Government in this country will give them anything comparable to what the employers offered. Yet they refuse, preferring freedom to fight for their cause unimpeded, when and how they choose. This is the syndicalist spirit, and with the growth of Socialism, it becomes daily more and more the spirit of the trade union. ”

“ The spread of this sympathy will compel business management in all conspicuous business to revalue the whole human side of its problem. I do not mean that it should be friendlier or more philanthropic. I mean that the fatal note of arbitrariness and priggish aloofness has got to go. Labor, with its powers of collective bargaining, must be met in a spirit that is strictly coöperative—coöperative in the sense of some recognized equality between the status of labor and that of capital. Business must put as high ability into the human side as into the financial. ”

“ These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.
Instead of the conservative motto, "A fair day's wages for a fair day's work," we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, "Abolition of the wage system."
It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. ”

“ Thus out of the sorrow or the rage of disappointment Syndicalism was born. It was only a more concrete and acute form of that chagrin at the failure of parliaments and legislatures which the people of many countries have come to feel, and none more rebelliously than we in the United States.
It is thus not alone the revelation that politics and trade unions work so feebly and so tardily, Socialism also brought its own discouragements, to those who are now Syndicalists. Socialism is long enough in the field to have furnished its own "history of disappointment." ”

“ In every advanced nation labor has made its own solid and incontestable gains in alliance with political intellectuals who have given every proof of sincerity that disinterested life-long service carries.
It must be conceded that the most sacred struggle in the world is that in which labor may be said to lead;—the struggle toward a regenerated and reorganized society in which at last every rotten shred of unfair privilege shall be cut out. But this highest and hardest task is not to be performed by one class alone. ”

“ Wherever Socialism has created its own coöperative business in distribution, production, banking, it has at once to deal practically with all these vital issues.
A coöperative village is quick to learn that all its inhabitants create their ground rent and therefore rent should go to their community and not to any speculating individual. They are as quick to learn that private interest on money is quite another matter. They learn that, at least under capitalism, it has its uses. They learn that if ever interest is to pass away, it cannot be until capital is far more widely diffused than now. ”

“ There is no chapter in the history of the labor struggle so luminously clear as that in which the practical Anarchist fights social organization. Where-ever Socialism reaches the organic state, enabling it to coöperate with other social forces, the Anarchist attacks it as Bakounine attacked Marx, as Anarchists raised havoc with the Chartists and as W. D. Haywood is at this moment raising equal havoc with the socialist party. ”

“ Fortunately, a large part of the labor world has learned that the mere smashing of machines is only heady stupidity. The labor of the future will learn that sabotage set up as a principle, or loosely advised, is an economic silliness because it is destructive. It means a deliberated lessening of products—a process in its aftermath always deadlier to the weak than to the strong. It has a grim pathos to hear the strongest man in our I. W. W. crusade congratulating a great and enraptured audience upon the successes of the latest English strike. ”

“ It has learned it so well that conspicuous business can no longer act in the spirit of "I'll manage my business as I like." This public has also come to feel that all the gilded welfare schemes which only screen secret and arbitrary power over labor have probably had their day. The great and healing resources left us are those of "social insurance," meant primarily to secure labor against those dire fatalities—sickness, accident, unemployment, and death. The best of them are far more generous and more efficient for those insured than any government insurance in the world. ”

“ Knowing well that his life was to be cut short by fatal disease, he worked with serene passion for the coming triumph of coöperation until the end. Now it is the supreme value of this ideal, that those who hold it are influenced in their choice of means and methods. If we are to be trained to work with each other, rather than competitively against each other; if we are to substitute "democratic for aristocratic management;" if labor groups are to assume the heavy risks of direction as well as possible losses, then the one fatal thing is not to educate labor for its coming duties. ”

“ But why should street car systems, express companies, telegraph and mining corporations require organization, while the wage labor connected with them is deprived of it? Capital asks for organization because an unchecked competition raises plain havoc with its undertakings. Organization brings these pillaging disorders under conscious control which helps to steady and maintain price standards. But what of labor at the bottom? Is it less mercilessly beset by competition than is the employer? ”

“ And as for taking such property from the owners, why shouldn't we? The world has not only in the past taken slaves from their owners, with no compensation or with meager compensation; but in the history of mankind, dark as it is, there are innumerable cases of slave owners resigning their inhuman rights. . . . There are, no doubt, a number of dull, base, rich people who hate and dread socialism for purely selfish reasons; but it is quite possible to be a property owner and yet be anxious to see socialism come into its own. ”

“ With epigrammatic skill, he voices this fast emerging and plaintive aspiration which lowlier and ignored masses of working men and women are coming to feel; those without votes; those that no trade union would have for the asking; those who can be shoved aside and "put upon" because they neither speak our tongue nor know our ways—these half bewildered legions become articulate in this agitator who is to that extent educator. They recognize something in him which feeds hungers that in some way have to be fed. It is a craving which no church, catholic or protestant, can satisfy. ”

“ They learned thus intimately to face one of the great questions on which the future of Socialism will turn. Even if interest and profits are now necessary evils under the perversions of capitalism—can they be altogether dispensed with under Socialism? Or will interest and profits, stripped of present abuses, still have such utilities in so stimulating savings as to justify their continued use, even when the monopolies have been socialized? That Syndicalism at its highest should have recognized an ideal so admirable puts it safely beyond cheap and sniffy criticism. ”

“ This far pulsing strike in a neighboring town makes men read this indictment. It opens the mind to evidence that otherwise would have no hearing. It is pitiful enough that such wrecking disturbances should be required even to make us look these evils in the face. But until we learn a new solicitude for things that shame us, this sharp surgery of revolt is to be welcomed.
It is directly to a threatening and rebuking Socialism that Europe owes much of its most effective social legislation. It literally scared society into some of its most elementary duties. ”

“ The employers have only to convince organized labor that it cannot hold its own against the capitalist manager, and the whole energy that now goes to the union will turn to an aggressive political socialism. It will not be the harmless sympathy with increased city and state functions which trade unions already feel; it will become a turbulent political force bent upon using every weapon of taxation against the rich."
"Those who represent the interests of capital must make the choice. With magnificent energy they have created an industrial organization that no other nation now matches. ”

“ At these more developed stages in the wage system, there is from now on not a step toward security or progress, unless labor (as well as the public) is allowed some voice in management. This is the lesson which every industrial autocrat has to learn. Strictly on this issue, the side of the striker is as sacred as any struggling reform in human history. It has long been as sacred as at present, but the practically eventful fact now is that millions of wage earners have become sensitively conscious of the situation. ”

“ Go! if all that you have learned from the marvelous discoveries of modern science is that you see no other way of obtaining one's well-being but out of that squalid misery to which one-third of the population of the great cities of this extremely wealthy country are condemned. Go! and 'a plague o' both your houses' if that is the only way you can find to manage industry and trade. We, workmen, will know better how to organize production, if we only succeed in getting rid of you, the capitalist pest! ”

“ Even in theory, if capital once convinces labor that its trade union is futile; that it can have no organic and recognized part with capitalist management, then labor, if it have a gleam of intelligence, will look elsewhere for succor. It will say, "The capitalist refuses to play fair with us. Real power in the business world has become organic. Its great achievements now come through organization. Knowing this and glorying in it, capital either fights us or palavers. ”

“ Hundreds of unions fell away, one after another, because the resonant phrases about "labor's united interests" came to be questioned and then defied. When errors of judgment are made or violent passions lead, it is a wild folly to insist that "labor's cause is always sacred against the employer." The sole measure of labor's common interest is the soundness and justice of its cause. There are no "common interests of labor, right or wrong," any more than there is a decent patriotism, "right or wrong." ”

“ Multitudes now believe that the wage system is but an instrument in the hands of these powers. Of the dizzy heights of finance and credit labor knows nothing, and even special students war with each other over its most elemental explanation; but of the "wage system" the worker has his own opinion, founded on experience. Labor therefore begins its rebellion at this point. It is striking at the kind of power that appears through this wage system. Its very ignorance of the power behind, deepens its suspicions. ”

“ For two generations, in spite of much squalid vanity and dreary demagogic play, it was a rousing struggle for an enlarged and richer human life. These wider opportunities for the mass of men were plainly impossible until the pretentious pieties of authority, arbitrarily enforced, were beaten. But arbitrary power did not then quit the scene. It slowly changed its form, and on the field of industry and commerce it grew great and held its own. Its cumulating power has now reached a climax. It stalks among us so flauntingly that millions of common folk can see it. ”

“ Is this no business of the public? Who is to pay the bill for all the wreckage which such overpaced industries throw back upon the community? We do not forget that when managers themselves looked through the lid they, too, were startled into belated action. Quite magnificently have they set to work to standardize the human side of their industry; to deal with the living factor as cunningly as with steel beams and finance. ”

“ Before the sullen reactions of the Homestead Strike in Pittsburg had ceased, I asked a man of real power in those great industries, if it were true that he and his friends had determined to wipe out trade union organization. "Yes," he said, "that is our purpose. They seem to exist only to make trouble and we are done with them." Without excitement or braggadocio, he explained to me how this could be done and would be done. "They bother the life out of us," he added. "They keep men at work we do not want; prevent or try to prevent our turning off those for whom we have no further use. ”

“ In private conversations, I have found that "labor," as used by leaders, included far more than the wage earner, but that it was "better not to say much about it." "If we begin hair-splitting," said one, "we should muddle them up." "We are out to make them conscious of their class interests; conscious that those interests are not the interests of the employers. To make them believe that and act on it is our work." ”

“ But Socialism will have to pay the same penalty that those have always paid who promise too much. The deepest causes of Syndicalism are economic, but its more obvious and proximate origin lies in these frustrated hopes. It is the child of disillusionment. Those who began it had been over-promised or had come to expect of politics, of the trade union, and of the Socialism then in vogue, far more than each or all of them could deliver. ”