Labor conflict

“ There were plenty of them indeed who had heard the defendant say that in his opinion the wage system was all wrong, that wealth obtained from the product of labor should be fairly divided between the capitalist and the workman, and that his sympathies in the present industrial conflict were entirely with the men, all of whom should be permitted to resume their old places on their own terms. ”

“ With the extension of trade and the wider use of machinery the number and power of the adult employed workmen increased, and with their increase of power came a jealousy, on the one hand, toward the masters; on the other, toward the apprentices, who were regarded as cheapening labor when employed in too great numbers. The conflict which arose between employer and employed gradually merged into one between capital and labor. ”

“ And while professors thus disagree, the ideas that there is a necessary conflict between capital and labor, that machinery is an evil, that competition must be restrained and interest abolished, that wealth may be created by the issue of money, that it is the duty of government to furnish capital or to furnish work, are rapidly making way among the great body of the people, who keenly feel a hurt and are sharply conscious of a wrong. ”

“ Another necessary result of a system of production that sets the man who works with his hands against the man who works with his head, is the conflict between capital and labor, that expresses itself in strikes and lockouts. The conflict itself is treated in detail in the chapter entitled Trusts and Trade Unions. ”

“ We believe that the class struggle existing in society is expressed in the economic power of the master on the one side and the growing economic power of the workers on the other side meeting in open battle now and again, but meeting in continual daily conflict over which shall have the larger share of labor's product and the ultimate ownership of the means of life. The employer wants long hours, the intelligent workingman wants short hours. The employer wants low wages, the intelligent workingman wants high wages. ”

“ That principle has particular application in the construction of labor legislation which is 'to a marked degree, the result of conflict and compromise between strong contending forces and deeply held views on the role of organized labor in the free economic life of the Nation and the appropriate balance to be struck between the uncontrolled power of management and labor to further their respective interests.' Local 1976, United Brotherhood of Carpenters, etc. ”

“ It is necessarily improvident and ruinous, because, as a general truth, communities prosper and flourish, or droop and decline, in just the degree that they practise or neglect to practise the primary duties of justice and humanity. The free-labor system conforms to the divine law of equality, which is written in the hearts and consciences of man, and therefore is always and everywhere beneficent.
The slave system is one of constant danger, distrust, suspicion, and watchfulness. ”

“ Come into our ranks, ye shirkers, for we now rule this land.
Work or starve, the workers said, for you must earn your bread.
Then into their ranks came the masters and joined the workers' song;
Then into their ranks came the masters and joined the workers' song.
All workers, "The Army of Production," in One Big Union, regardless of age, creed, color or sex, is invincible.
Labor is entitled to all it produces. An injury to one is an injury to all. ”

“ No longer may they claim the right to run their own business, to beat down the laborer's standard of living for the sake of increased profits, to dictate terms of employment to individual workers, to wax righteously indignant when organized labor takes a hand in their business. ”

“ Now if the wages-laborers of the cities and manufacturing places will be ready to lead the van in the struggle for the interest of labor, the rest of the whole working-class have no right to put themselves in the position of idle, indifferent, or even grudging and hostile spectators. On the contrary. It is the duty of the whole working-class to participate in this struggle, for this war is carried on in the interest of all workers, and the wages-laborers, who have taken up the gauntlet, are the Pioneers for the human race. ”

“ Deny it as may the cunning capitalists who are clearsighted enough to perceive it, or ignore it as may the torpid workers who are too blind and unthinking to see it, the struggle in which we are engaged today is a class struggle, and as the toiling millions come to see and understand it and rally to the political standard of their class, they will drive all capitalist parties of whatever name into the same party, and the class struggle will then be so clearly revealed that the hosts of labor will find their true place in the conflict and strike the united and decisive blow that will destroy slavery and achieve their full and final emancipation.
In this struggle the workingmen and women and children are represented by the Socialist party and it is my privilege to address you in the name of that revolutionary and uncompromising party of the working class. ”

“ THE class war between employers and workers over the product of Labor goes on without letup. "Settlements" in wage movements, whether these are accompanied by strikes or not, are at best only truces in the ceaseless struggle, only turning points where the struggle takes on new forms. ”

“ While encouraging these outgrown divisions among the workers the capitalists carefully adjust themselves to the new conditions. They wipe out all differences among themselves and present a united front in their war upon labor. Through employers’ associations, they seek to crush, with brutal force, by the injunctions of the judiciary, and the use of military power, all efforts at resistance. ”

“ That in every country where capitalism has had a chance to develop, it has brought into existence a working class, yoked to the wage system, victimized by capitalist wars, and regimented into its mines and factories. ”

“ As an illustration of the kind of hyperbole characteristic of labor-management strife, this 'libel' is hardly incendiary. To the experienced eye, it is pale and anemic when compared with the rich and colorful charges freely exchanged in the heat of many labor disputes. ”

“ If labor were to offer an effective opposition to this kind of progress, it would in the long run paralyze all other progress. The way to overcome the opposition of labor is not by hostility or moral homilies, but by giving to labor the direct interest in economical processes which now belongs to the employers. ”

“ The million menial workers among us include 300,000 upper servants,—skilled men and women of character, like hotel waiters, Pullman porters, janitors, and cooks, who, had they been white, could have called on the great labor movement to lift their work out of slavery, to standardize their hours, to define their duties, and to substitute a living, regular wage for personal largess in the shape of tips, old clothes, and cold leavings of food. ”

“ As we have stated before there is no gain-saying that Labor produces all wealth. Captalism is based on the robbery of the workers. Those who own industries but do not work in them, pay wages to the workers and keep profits to themselves. But both, profit and wages, are only the product of Labor. ”

“ This strike has taught both capital and labor that they owe certain obligations to society and that their obligations must be discharged in good faith. If both are fair and conciliatory, if both recognize the moral restraint of the state of society by which they are surrounded, there need be few strikes. They can, and it is better that they should, settle their differences between themselves.... ”

“ Finally, that all so-called "immediate demands" of the workers, such as the eight hour work day, employers' liability, limitation of child labor, protection of machinery, etc., can be obtained and made effective only through the action of a united and powerful movement of the working class on the industrial field. ”

“ In periods of commercial revulsion and distress, like the present, the distress, in countries of free labor, falls principally on the laborers. In those of slave labor, it falls almost exclusively on the employer. ”

“ The right of labor combination? It is tempered by the power of your class to subdue the workers leaders by starvation through dismissal.
The right to strike? The witnesses whom you have heard, witnesses from own class in many cases, come to tell you how strikers, even inoffensive strikers, are sabred and horsewhipped, and how, after strikes, even victorious ones, the powerful employers thin out the ringleaders in order to terrify the rest. ”

“ They proved themselves to be labor sons
In all of the workers' fights;
They have been hounded by power unbounded
Of capitalists throughout the land,
But all are astounded, our foes are confounded
For we still remain a union grand.
Then hail to this fighting band!
You live on coffee and on doughnuts;
The Boss lives on porterhouse steak.
You work ten hours a day and live in huts;
The Boss lives in the palace you make.
You face starvation, hunger, privation,
But the Boss is always well fed. ”

“ There are thousands of factory operatives, day laborers, domestic servants, mechanics, sewing women, clerks, apprentices, and such like, whose cry for justice against oppression goes up to heaven by day and by night. ”

“ That the economic subjection of the man of labor to the monopolizer of the means of labor, that is, the sources of life, lies at the bottom of servitude in all its forms, of all social misery, mental degradation, and political dependence ”

“ We give even the wild creatures a chance for their lives; and so long as the industrial struggle continues, the chivalrous employer will not insist that his employees shall go into the contest with their hands tied behind them.
Beyond this question of personal honor between employer and employee is one that touches very deeply the foundations of their social structure. "If capital refuses to labor what capital asks and takes for itself, what are the final consequences of that injustice? How. in the long run, is labor to take this defeat of what it believes to be its rights? ”

“ A constant filtration goes on in the working world, and good material is continually drawn from the surplus labor army. Strikes and industrial dislocations shake up the workers, bring good men to the surface and sink men as good or not so good. ”

“ What has labor conquered up to date in the United States? The inquiry is fruitful of thought. What is the testimony of the labor press of the country, corroborated by statistics which defy contradiction? It is this, that the land is cursed with wage slavery—with the condition that labor, which, according to the proverb, “conquers everything,” is itself conquered and lies prostrate and manacled beneath the iron hoofs of a despotism as cruel as ever cursed the world. ”

“ First shoemakers, then carpenters and railroad men, and stone-masons, and iron-molders, and hod-carriers—all wanting higher wages. Where does the happiness and content come in? I heard you say, yourself, the other day, that the disorganized system of labor was such in this country, that it was degenerating into socialism and anarchy and was ruining every branch of business. ”

“ Even the struggle for higher wages and shorter hours carried on by the unions, Legien says, is fought in the consciousness that it will make labor "more capable of the final solution of the social problem." ”

“ With eyes that have been opened, Labor abroad is conscious of its revolutionary mission, and it is striving constantly, despite a thousand timidities and mistakes, towards the only way to solve the labor problem, towards the abolition of the capitalist system and the establishment of a proletarian regime. ”

“ In nearly every country, in consequence of the growing power of the capitalist class and the lack of unity among the workers, advantages gained in the direction of reduced hours of labour and increased wages have been lost. ”

“ Never before did labor do these things. After the Great Plague in England, labor, finding itself in demand and innocently obeying the economic law, asked higher wages. But the masters set a maximum wage, restrained workingmen from moving about from place to place, refused to tolerate idlers, and by most barbarous legal methods punished those who disobeyed. But labor is accorded greater respect today. ”

“ It is not easy to believe that a system of perpetual protest and frequent strife is a natural one, and it seems as if it must in the future be replaced by some more peaceful and satisfactory relation between capital and labor. During the nineteenth century the labor problem has given rise to a number of experiments and theories looking towards its solution, an account of which is here in place. ”

“ They feared, of course, that if they were exposed to its effects—perhaps at the bargaining table with representatives of organized labor—their ability to exploit the workers for fantastic profits would be at an end. ”

“ We know that when the union declares a strike the discipline of organized labor is sufficiently strong to make the laborers freely take upon themselves all the dangers and horrors of unemployment and to remain hungry for months in order to secure a victorious conclusion for the common cause. ”

“ He must be fought [239] and destroyed. There is no form of mediation or conciliation possible between the worker and his employer. Conditions must, therefore, be made intolerable for the capitalist. Work must be done badly. ”

“ AS a background of the present, widely separated struggles with groups of workers have driven the individual capitalist, or corporation, into the present great combination to crush all organized labor. Without assistance by other wealthy interests in influencing authority and muzzling the press, the isolated employer stood chances of losing out in a strike. ”