Labor problem

“ There are only three parts to the labor problem, and this is one of them. This fear causes “unrest.” This unrest was used by revolutionists to promote Bolshevism which turns whole empires into poor-houses. Such a “remedy,” of course, is worse than the disease. I think I know a plan by which all workers can make their old age secure. I will go into it more fully in a later chapter.
CHAPTER XX. THE RED FLAG AND THE WATERMELONS
I have said that the labor problem has three parts. I call them (1) Wages, (2) Working Conditions and (3) Living Conditions. ”

“ The sum and essence of every wrong and injustice that can hedge about the worker is found at this point, and remains a problem to every worker among the poor, the solving of which will mean the solution of the whole labor question. ”

“ The proletariat has arisen; and wherever the struggle of the laborers has taken definite form, the bourgeois codes have been convicted of falsehood. Written judgment has shown itself powerless to save the wage-workers from the oscillations of the market, to guarantee women and children against the oppressive hours of the factories, or to find an expedient to solve the problem of forced idleness. The partial limitation of the hours of labor has, itself alone, been the subject and the occasion of a gigantic struggle. ”

“ Long hours, the employment of women and children, the weakened economic position of the laborer, fluctuations in production, liability to be without employment, industrial accidents, the abolition of personal ties between employer and employe, the crowding of workmen into a small space to work by day and their concentration in city tenements by night—these are some of the problems for which the factory system must be held responsible. The condition and position of labor have been vitally affected. ”

“ No work, no food, and after a while, no credit, and all this in the shadow of the abundance these very workers have created.
Don't you agree with me, my brothers, that this condition is an intolerable and indefensible one, and that whatever may be said of the past, this system no longer answers the demands of this time? Why should any workingman need to beg for work? Why forced to surrender to anybody any part of what his labor produces? ”

“ The task is far beyond our present opportunity. It is worth while, however, for present purposes, to delimit the task sharply, and to attempt a brief enumeration of the most important of the conditions which determine, on the one hand, the need of the productive system for labor, and, on the other hand, the supply of labor—that is, of the relative plenty or scarcity of labor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We now approach a yet more thorny subject than the organisation of the workers. What should be the remuneration of labor—what the share of the product taken respectively by the individual, the municipality, and the State?
The answer depends on the answer to a previous question. Is the organisation of the unemployed to be undertaken in order to transform them into self-supporting, self-respecting citizens; or is it to be carried on as a form of exploitation, utilising pauper labor for the production of profit for non-paupers? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Many workers objected to what was called the waste of labor. It was pointed out that under the Socialistic rule, the product of labor had to go to labor, and as the building of the flying machine factory was not producing food or clothing, and the workers on it had to be supported by the labor of the whole community, it was making a distinct class of them, which was illegal. ”

“ This is not a plea of free workmen, but of slaves begging to be better fed.
(b) They may complain of too many hours of labor; but the number of hours of labor is arbitrarily fixed. There is no valid constant reason why one should wish to work less. In the management of one's own work, and the collection of his own earnings, there are times when long hours, of the strain of labor, are necessary, and there are other times when ease can be taken. With no standard of earnings or time, it is impossible to arrive at a just and satisfactory settlement. ”

“ There is a shallow optimism which, from the heights of prosperity, throws all the blame of labor's sufferings on labor's own broad shoulders; steels the heart of society against it because of these patent faults, and closes the hand against its help, while it sings the gospel of the Gradgrinds—"As it was and ever shall be. Amen."
Labor itself is not wholly responsible for its own faults. These faults spring largely out of the defective social conditions amid which the workingman finds himself placed. ”

“ But the organized workers, caring nothing for the interests of any particular employer, demand improved conditions of labor, though the inefficient employer be eliminated and all production be carried on by a few capable employers doing business on a large scale and able to pay the highest wages. ”

“ The philanthropological demand for it is founded on the thought that work is a dreadful thing, imposed by capitalistic task masters, that ought to be escaped whenever and however possible. The labor union principle is parasitic. ”

“ The hours of labor are too long, and should be shortened. I recommend a universal movement to cease work at five o'clock Saturday afternoon, as a beginning. There should be a greater participation in the profits of labor by the industrious and intelligent laborer. In the present arrangements of labor and capital, the condition of the employee is simply that of wage slavery—capital dictating, labor submitting; capital superior, labor inferior. ”

“ There is too commonly as little sense of identity with the employer's interests, or of concern that any equivalent in work should be rendered for the pay received. In forms irritating beyond expression employers are made to feel that their employees do not in the least mind wasting their material, injuring their property, and blocking their business in the most critical moments. Under what possible system, save in a grievous dearth of laborers, can such labor be well off, and incompetence and indifference draw high wages? ”

“ But can we deny that our present social life, founded upon Capitalist rule and Wage-Labor, moves in a direction which, if it should continue unchanged, must bring us with every passing day nearer to the social conditions just depicted? ”

“ Now it is an undeniable fact that the condition of many of the wage-workers of the country approximates to this: They must have food, shelter, and clothing for themselves and their families, and the only thing they can offer in exchange for it is their labor. Suppose an honest and industrious man has some misfortune, as an accident, or illness, and loses employment. When once more able to work, he finds his old place filled and new places hard to find; but at last he finds a mercenary employer who agrees to give him half wages. ”

“ This we may hope to do by several methods; for example, by reducing the daily hours of labor, by promoting vocational education, by the restriction of child employment, by a better organization of the labor market (see p. 418) , and by providing wholesome recreation for the workers.
Labor is a service. Is Labor a Commodity?—Labor, as a factor in production, receives its return in the form of wages. A generation ago it was customary to speak of labor as a commodity and to say that the worker “sold his labor” for wages. But labor is not a commodity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But can the condition of labor be improved? Yes, if labor is entirely in earnest about it. Labor’s principal need is brains. I don’t mean they must increase their own brains; but in their conflicts with employers the laboring men should be led, or their interests should be managed, by men who know both sides of the question. Are there such men in the ranks of the laborers? ”

“ Skilled workers have often been able to form skilled labor monopolies, or unions, where their particular skill has been in demand, and have forced their employers to give them shorter hours, higher wages or better working conditions. ”

“ There is nothing strange in the fact that, in spite of the enormous increase in productive power which this century has witnessed, and which is still going on, the wages of labor in the lower and wider strata of industry should everywhere tend to the wages of slavery—just enough to keep the laborer in working condition. ”

“ Irregularities in the conduct of industry and in the method of employing labor are evident in dock work, in the unskilled work in iron and steel, and in slaughtering and meat packing; in the competitive conditions in industries which force employers to cut labor cost down to the utmost and to close down in order to save operating expenses ”

“ But the industrial organization, as in all civilized countries, is such that labor and capital, and especially labor, must press for employment on any terms—the industrial organization is such that mere laborers are not in a position to demand their fair share in the new adjustment, and that any reduction in the application of labor to production will, at first, at least, take the form, not of giving each laborer the same amount of produce for less work, but of throwing some of the laborers out of work and giving them none of the produce. ”

“ Prosperity and contentment can only be found where all industrial pursuits prove remunerative; where manual labor not only supports the laborer, but enables him to acquire a competence in process of time. That division of labor and capital which compels the laborer to toil daily to keep want from his door, and is so inflexible that the sickness of a single day entails the loss of necessaries to his family, is a species of slavery. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Honest labor, continued through reasonable hours, paid at a rate which assures a wholesome support, is ennobling; but overwork, that is hopeless of comfortable reward, is degrading in the extreme. On the continent of Europe, where men and women work in the factories for fourteen and sixteen hours in a day, the laborers are reduced simply to machines. ”

“ We are not insisting, be it understood, on a four-hour or eight-hour system of labor. No industry or occupation will be hampered or meddled with by doing justice to the laborer in the way proposed. The railroad employee, printer, baker, factory hand, etc., can work on as now, but they must be compensated with just wages for the labor done. ”

“ The constant aim and tendency of every improvement of mechanism is indeed to do entirely without the labor of men, or to reduce its price, by superseding the labor of the adult males by that of women and children, or the work of the skilled by that of the unskilled workman. ”

“ Recognition of this fact effectually destroys much criticism of the theory.
The interest of the wage-worker, as wage-worker, is to receive the largest wage possible for the least number of hours spent in labor. The interest of the employer, as employer, on the other hand, is to secure from the worker as many hours of service, as much labor power, as possible for the lowest wage which the worker can be induced to accept. The workers employed in a factory may be divided by a hundred different forces. ”

“ Having seen how the pressure of the market forces factory owners to overwork their employees and to dismiss all who are not able to earn the wages they receive; how casual employment creates and keeps alive a class of labor such as is described by Mr. ”

“ Labor has awakened the state to a sense of responsibility for its great sins of neglect and has made it conscious of its social duties. Labor, like other elements of society, has often been selfish, narrow, vindictive ”

“ Why is it that he working class are in relative misery compared with the enormous amount of wealth that is produced?
I have already given you the answer: the employer is only concerned, while engaging you, to carry through certain operations for the purpose of placing the results of your labour on the market for sale. You know full well, all of you, that when you go into the mill or the factory to produce goods, those goods are not taken by the employer for his own personal consumption. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The worker, wholly separated from the land and the tools, with his skill of craftmanship rendered useless, is sunk in the uniform mass of wage slaves. He sees his power of resistance broken by class divisions, perpetuated from outgrown industrial stages. His wages constantly grow less as his hours grow longer and monopolized prices grow higher. ”

“ Although these conditions were favorable at first, owing to the simple reason that the employers had to make them favorable in order to obtain a sufficient number of workers, they soon deteriorated when the supply of available labor power increased. ”