§ 814]

EMPLOYERS' LIABILITY LAWS

677

family wreckage that goes with such loss of life by the breadwinners is even more appalling. Unless this slaughter is checked by law, or by greater sense of responsibility in employers, American industry threatens to become more wasteful of human life and social welfare than ancient

war was.

814. Closely related to one of these forward steps is a gain made recently under threat of strike. In March of 1916, the four

WOODROW WILSON ADDRESSING CONGRESS IN JOINT SESSION, urging the enactment of the Eight-Hour law. From a photograph. After President Washington's unpleasant experiences in meeting Congress (cf. § 369), no President visited that body in person until President Wilson renewed the original practice of reading his "messages" in person-without the monarchic ceremonial which made such action repulsive a century earlier.

great railway "brotherhoods" (conductors, engineers, trainmen, and firemen) began an earnest agitation for "an eight-hour day, with pay-and-a-half for overtime." After various fruitless conferences with railroad managers, the men voted (94 per cent of the 400,000 members of the brotherhoods) to give their "heads " authority to call a nation-wide strike if the managers persisted.

1 The railroad managers insisted that this really meant not shorter hours but an increase of $ 10,000,000 a year in wages. The men declared they were after shorter hours, and that they asked extra pay for overtime mainly to compel the roads to arrange eight-hour schedules.

The nation was alarmed. There seemed no doubt that the brotherhoods could tie up the transportation of the country completely; and that would mean ruin to business and starvation to the city poor. The managers offered to arbitrate: the men were willing to arbitrate as to pay for overtime, but not as to the eight-hour day. President Wilson now called the "heads" and the railway managers into consultation; but many days of conference brought no result. The President then made a public statement of his position :

"I have recommended the concession of the eight-hour day that is, the substitution of an eight-hour day for the present ten-hour day in all the existing practices and agreements. I made this recommendation because I believe the concession right. The eight-hour day now undoubtedly has the sanction of the judgment of society in its favor, and should be adopted as a basis for wages even where the actual work to be done cannot be completed within eight hours. . . ."

The roads, the President continued, might or might not be entitled to increase rates to the public: only time could show what adjustments would be necessary. Accordingly, he recommended that the men postpone their demand regarding pay for overtime.

The men accepted the President's plan, but the managers refused it. The strike was set for an hour only some six days off. But Congress, under the President's capable leadership, hastily enacted an eight-hour law for all interstate commerce, referring the matter of pay for overtime to future arbitration by a commission. A national calamity was averted, and the eight-hour day received general approval even from those who savagely criticized the President's "surrender." The whole matter was a leading issue at the election in November, when the President was given a second term; and in the following March the law was upheld by the Supreme Court.

815. The Closed Shop" has been a chief aim of labor unions in many strikes and boycotts. Labor unionists believe that they must have "collective bargaining" if labor is to deal with

§ 816]

THE CLOSED SHOP

679 capital on anything like equal terms: the individual laborer must accept any terms offered him. Accordingly, members of a union contend that every worker in their trade must be persuaded, or forced, to join the union or leave the industry. The man who stays out gets whatever better conditions may be secured by collective bargaining, without giving his help toward it; and, in time of trial, he becomes a traitor to the cause of labor by underbidding the union standard.

On the other hand, many liberal-minded people look upon the principle of the closed shop as "un-American." It is easily designated as tyranny toward the individual laborer, who is no longer "permitted" to work" on his own terms." Sometimes, too, a strike against a fair employer who himself recognizes union labor, but who has contracts with firms that do not, involves serious injustice. The unions, too, fall often into the hands of self-seeking leaders, or of treacherous ones, and are used to bad ends; and the most sincere leaders are no more beyond possibility of error, in their puzzling duties, than other men are.

But the sins of organized labor, while often more violent, are usually less dangerous to human progress, than the sins of organized capital which commonly provoke them. From labor's viewpoint, talk by a "scab" of his individual "right" to bargain his own labor is as much out of place as like vaporings by a deserter in war. The unionist" feels that organized labor is the only hope to-day against industrial serfdom, and that its victory means better conditions of life for the masses of mankind.

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II. SOCIALISTS AND SINGLE TAXERS

816. While the Labor Union has been appealing to skilled workers, Socialism has been making rapid converts among unskilled laborers on the streets and among students in the closet. To-day it is a force to be reckoned with in American life; and therefore it must be understood. The time has gone when ignorant critics could contemptuously dispose of it by confounding it with either anarchy or communism.

Modern Socialism points out that a few capitalists practically control the means of producing wealth ("the machinery of production and transportation"). This, they argue, is the essential evil in industrial conditions. Their remedy is to

have society step into the place of those few, taking over the ownership and management (1) of land, including, of course, mines, water power, and all right-of-way, (2) of transportation, and (3) of all machinery employed in producing wealth. Private ownership for private enjoyment and consumption, they claim, would then regulate itself without injury to the common life.

For a more immediate program, Socialists urge among other matters: (1) "compulsory State insurance" of all" against unemployment, illness, accidents, old age, and death"; (2) government relief for unemployed workers by extension of public works" building schools, reforesting of cut-over and waste lands, reclamation of arid tracts, and improving roads"; (3) equal suffrage for men and women; (4) extension of inheritance taxes and of graduated income taxes; (5) the "free administration of justice"; (6) the abolition of the powers of the Supreme Court to declare laws void; (7) the initiative, referendum, and right of recall.

817. Until recently the political Socialist movement was confined to large manufacturing towns, but of late it has gained power rapidly in multitudes of small villages and even in purely agricultural districts. The leading Socialist party (Social Democratic) polled 94,000 votes in 1900 for Eugene V. Debs (§ 811) for President. In 1904, with the same candidate (at the reëlection of Roosevelt), it secured over 400,000 votes, and it more than doubled these at the election in 1912. In 1916, it cast only 750,000 votes, probably because many railroad men who had been loosely affiliated with it in previous campaigns voted this time for Woodrow Wilson on the issue of the Eight-Hour law.

818. A radical faction of Socialists has split off into a distinct organization, the Industrial Workers of the World (I. W. W.). This party decries mere political activity, and insists on "direct action" against the present industrial organization of society. And society, in its turn, alarmed and angered, instead of merely punishing these agitators when they have incited to actual crime, has many times refused them the

§ 820]

SOCIALISTS AND THE SINGLE TAX

681

ordinary privileges of free speech and public meeting-so exalting them into "martyrs."

819. Unhappily, the leaders of the Socialist party are largely of German or Austrian birth; and when America entered the war for democracy against Germany, in 1917, the Socialist party as an organization took a distinctly disloyal position. This fact not only arrayed that party against progress it also cast discredit upon the whole Socialistic program. There are leading Socialists, however, eminently patriotic, like John Spargo and Charles Edward Russell.1 And, repudiated though they are by the party, they have a large following among former Socialists. When the Socialistic movement again becomes a political factor, it will probably be under the leadership of these, men.

820. In 1879 Henry George published Progress and Poverty. This brilliant book, to its converts, transformed "the dismal science" of political economy into a religion of hope. George teaches that land values are created by the growth of population. They are a social product, not earned by the individual. Society therefore should take them. It can do so by taxing land up to the rental value of unimproved land equal in location and quality. This taxation would include, of course, the full value of the use of city streets to transportation companies and lighting companies, and of railroad right-of-wayunless the public choose to keep such enterprises wholly in its own hands. Thus taxation would reach all "natural monopolies."

The advocates believe that such a tax would exceed present public expenditure and make other taxation unnecessary. Therefore it is styled the "Single Tax." Other taxation, it is urged, "penalizes industry." The Single Tax takes from the individual only what he has never earned (the "unearned increment"), and takes for society only what society has

1 Said Mr. Russell, when his party cast him out:- "I am not yet convinced that I cannot be both a Socialist and an American: but if I have to choose, I choose to be an American."