Strikes and the Nation – Part 2

November 27, 2009 By

HAS PRIVATE OWNERSHIP LOST GROUND?
Has private ownership of great public utilities been strengthened or weakened by the contest? “As concerns the coal industry,” says Mr. Roberts, “a considerable proportion of the correspondents and editorial writers incline to favor something like Nationalization, perhaps temporary, perhaps partial, though recognizing that when coal mining has once become the Nation’s business it may stay so. One editorial writer remarks that ‘as an independent, self-regulated industry, old King Coal is having his last chance.’ However, I detect little, if any, enthusiasm in the effort to find a substitute for private ownership. The effort appears to spring from what might be called emergency opinion. Then, too, it is offset by an effort to keep us from ‘seizing things.’ How should we manage them after they were seized? You notice that the Grand Rapids ‘News’ remarks: ‘The Government represents all the people. If it takes control of the coal mines, it will not pay without question the wages the miners demand. The Government would be concerned first of all in securing a steady supply of fuel for everybody. There would be no right to strike against wages or conditions then. Strikes would be little short of rebellion.’ On those terms, where should we obtain miners? That difficulty is not overlooked by the press. In the case of the railways, you remember that the New York ‘Times’said lately that, ‘even if Congress should authorize the President to commandeer the roads, it could not give him power to compel men to work on them if they were unwilling to do so.’”

HAS NATIONALIZATION GAINED?
The Outlook asks if the contest in the coal and railway industries has tended toward or away from Government ownership of public utilities. “Among the railway employees,” says Mr. Roberts, “there is a pronounced leaning in that direction. See how the New York ‘Times’ puts it: ‘Their view is that Government operation of the railroads would permanently erect the unions into a privileged class, recelving higher wages than their fellows and given a political power which could be used to terrorize Congress and intimidate the Administration.’ But popular opinion, as reflected by the press, is radically opposed to such a measure. People have not forgotten our war-time experience with Federal control, and, for that reason partly, they oppose Government ownership of the coal mines. However, one recognizes a general demand, summed up in the sentence I have marked in this cutting from the New York ‘Herald,’ that the coal industry ‘be put on a sound economic and solid business basis, under private ownership and management but at the same time under Government sanction and regulation.’ That nothing short of thorough reorganization can prevent trouble is fully appreciated. See what the ‘Survey’ has shown in an article signed by two Government geologists. That during the last thirty years the, bituminous mines have lost three working days out of ten. That, although the most that has ever been burned or exported in a year is 550,000,000 tons,’ our mines ‘are developed to an annual capacity of 750,000,000 tons’-the ‘chief cause of intermittency.’ As Messrs. Tryon and MeKinney, the geologists I have quoted, tell us, ‘the over-development is the result of free competition playing on a resource so widely distributed as to be almost a free gift of nature.’ So it is not the managers fault. ‘Without concerted action of the kind forbidden by the anti-trust laws, they cannot control the economic forces that surround them.’ And now let me read you a few paragraphs from an editorial in the New York ‘World:’

“‘Bituminous mining in the United States hardly deserves the name of a business. It is a chaos, and a bloody one. Because of seasonal production and uneven demand, there are nearly twice as many men in mining villages as are needed. Because there are too many for the jobs on hand and because they are isolated from communities that might furnish other employment, the miners can’t enforce their demands under normal conditions. With surplus labor keeping wages low, the pits will show a profit in a good year even when run without modern machinery.

“‘They are so run, and according to the Federal Trade Commission, they do show a fair profit. At the same time a majority of the men are poorly paid upon an annual income basis and often desperate. When they strike, they are met by the solid facts that there is not enough money for higher wages and that there are not enough orders to run more than sixty per cent of the mines. They are met also by the autocracy of the mine-guard system, established to handle desperate employees.

“‘There is no final solution except a complete reorganization of bituminous production. Until that is done it will be necessary to restrain both sides from violence in a dreary series of conflicts ever menacing civil warfare. One after another, strikes will recur, bringing violence with them if continued, so long as coal is mined in this country as it is mined now.’

“Have I made my point clear? What the people want is not Government ownership, either of railways or of coal mines, but successful, because scientific, Government regulation. They approve when such a paper as the San Antonio ‘Express’ declares that, coal being ‘just as essential to National life as the transportation system, further Federal regulation is inevitable.’ ”

MONOPOLIES OF MONEY AND MEN
The Outlook’s question, “Has this contest tended toward or away from monopoly?” seems to Mr. Roberts somewhat vaguely worded. “You mean the One Big Union?” he asks. “And a corresponding unionization of capital? Then a fight between the two, with no mercy on the consumer? In that case, I may say that it is a question not at all widely discussed in the press. However, on its labor side, there are labor journals that deal with it more frankly than is usual, and they have been led to do so during the strikes, though not wholly because of them. Over the announcement of the Supreme Court’s decision making labor unions suable there was deep resentment. The New York ‘Call,’ a Socialist paper, termed this ‘the most staggering blow ever aimed at the organized working class: Though declaring it would be ‘as futile as was the crucifixion of Christ,’ the Minneapolis ‘Labor Review’ saw in it an ‘attempt to abolish the unions.’ The Seattle ‘Union Record’ said, ‘It is pie for the direct actionist who preaches that Government is designed solely for the purpose of keeping the working class in a state of subjection to employers.’ It was then that the Indianapolis ‘Union’ asserted: ‘The Reds and Bolsheviki will thrive on such decisions. They say triumphantly, “Didn’t we tell you the courts were against the worker? Join the One Big Union and kick the bucket over. Seize every-thing.” , But observe. Even here the point is made indirectly. There is nothing like ‘Who says so? We do!’”

THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PEOPLE
Has the policy of the Government under this Administration shown weakness or strength in our Governmental structure? “There has been criticism of the President,” says Mr. Roberts, “but not of our Governmental structure except by Socialists and Radicals. And when critics of the Administration assail Mr. Harding the Democratic New York ‘Times’-I had the cutting in my hand a moment ago, let me take it up again as I was saying, the New York ‘Times’ remarks: ‘Those who accuse him of hesitancy and weakness should in fairness point out what warrant of law he has for doing otherwise than he has done. The fault lies, not in him, but in the happy-go-lucky spirit in which Congress has permitted the country to drift into seeming helplessness in the presence of a Nation-wide strike. There ought to be remedial and safeguarding legislation. But it is foolish in the extreme to fancy that this can be framed overnight or put into effect in a panicky state of mind.’”

THE CURE
This brings us squarely in front of The Outlook’s concluding question: What legislation, if any, does the situation call for from Congress and the States? In reply, Mr. Roberts quotes the very general assertion that we must provide the Labor Board with “teeth.” It has none whatever at present. The “New Republic,” he reminds us, has been saying: “The law grants the Board no power to enforce its decrees. Public opinion is its only police, and publicity its only weapon of punishment.” Also, he reads aloud from an editorial in the Philadelphia “Evening Public Ledger,” which declares: “The Transportation Act is working badly, and in its labor provisions it is working very badly. The Labor Board which it created is based on the mistaken principle that the wages problem can be artificially segregated from the general financial problem. Experience has now confirmed what was freely predicted in 1920, that since wages are so large a part of costs, wage policies must be regulated by the authorities that regulate the other aspects of railway finance. The immediate trouble has arisen through failure to recognize this fact.” When discussing the President’s demand for legislation to make the Labor Board’s decisions binding, Mr. Roberts takes up a clipping from the Philadelphia “Bulletin,” which contends that what the Board should have, in order to prevent strikes, is “the power to compel arbitration of railroad labor disputes”-a concrete suggestion, but offset by the Norfolk “Ledger-Dispatch’s” remark that “no decision of the Labor Board could compel a man to work.”

The President demands “a National investigation of the coal industry, so as to provide constructive recommendations for legislation to govern its conduct,” and Mr. Roberts tells us that, while the Brooklyn “Eagle” predicts that “the factfinding commission will amount to nothing,” a number of influential papers warmly approve. Among them is the Philadelphia “Public Ledger,” which, so Mr. Roberts points out, believes that “the proper sort of commission would in the end do more than prevent labor troubles at the mines; it would put coal mining and distribution upon a scientific basis, and at the same time bring down the price of bituminous and anthracite coal.”

But perhaps the most important step toward the prevention of strikes in both the coal and the railway industry has already been taken. Recalling once more that the Supreme Court’s decision in the famous Coronado coal-strike case pronounced “such organizations suable in the Federal Courts for their acts” and declared that “funds accumulated to be expended in conducting strikes are subject to execution in suits for torts committed by such unions in strikes,” Mr. Roberts quotes an attorney for the American Federation of Labor as admitting that, accordingly, if the railway unions strike, they will be liable under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act for conspiracy in restraint of trade.

It is not surprising to find that Mr. Morris Hillquit calls the decision “a serious blow to organized labor,” or that Senator La Follette complains, “It is most ominous in what it foreshadows.” From their point of view, both gentlemen are right. Labor has enjoyed special privileges hitherto. Under the Clayton Act it has been free to conspire in restraint of trade, whereas capital could not. At last we have arrived at something “ominous” -namely, one law for all. From a file of clippings Mr. Roberts selects an editorial that recently appeared in the Ohio “State Journal” and concludes with this brief but significant sentence: “If Government has the right to exercise control over organizations of capital, so has it over those of labor.”

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Strikes and the Nation – Part 1

November 25, 2009 By

An Interview with the American People on Strikes

THE OUTLOOK asks: “Is the settlement of the coal strike merely a temporary armistice, and will the battle break out again? If so, when? Have the unions in the coal and railway industries strengthened themselves or weakened themselves? Is the public more sympathetic now or less sympathetic than it was before the strikes with the trade-union idea in all industries? Are the trade unions as a body, as William Allen White says, a parcel of fools in this contest? Have the coal operators and railway managers shown a disposition to deal fairly with leaders and to compromise on reasonable terms? Has private ownership of great public utilities been strengthened or weakened by the contest? Has this contest tended toward or away from Government ownership and operation of public utilities? Has the policy of the Government under this Administration shown weakness or strength in our Governmental structure? What legislation, if any, does this situation call for from Congress and the States?”

In order to answer these questions, it has been necessary to interview the American people -a thing less difficult than might appear.

They speak through their 2,500 newspapers. All those papers come regularly to the editorial rooms of the “Literary Digest.” There all reports and editorials bearing on the labor problem are brought to one desk. For a dozen years and more they have been examined by one man, Mr. William Carman Roberts-a brother, by the way, of Charles G. D. Roberts and a cousin of Bliss Carman. During the absence in Europe of Mr. W. S. Woods, Mr. Roberts is serving as editor-in-chief, though added responsibilities have not prevented him from continuing his patient, thorough, and wholly unprejudiced study of public opinion regarding the strikes. I have interviewed Roberts and, through Roberts, the 2,500 newspapers which am I not right? -speak for the American people.

IS IT AN ARMISTICE?
Is the coal-strike settlement merely a temporary armistice? “The best informed observers,” says Mr. Roberts, “expect the battle to break out again. At no distant date, either. Run your eye over this clipping from a trade paper, the ‘Black Diamond.’ Although that paper seemed to welcome the strike, as it ‘was going to bring many miners to their senses,’ we now read, ‘The public can look for a repetition of the struggle next year. A temporary surrender to the miners’ union was thought best. to prevent our population from freezing next winter and to avoid industrial paralysis that was slowly but surely being felt in all parts of the country. He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.’”

THE STRENGTH OF THE UNIONS
Have the unions gained or lost strength? “It is too early to judge of the effect on the railway unions,” says Mr. Roberts, “but-in point of morale, at least-the coal miners appear to have gained. Let me quote you a, sentence or two from a labor journal published in Minneapolis: ‘The union has won one of the most notable labor triumphs of the United States. In view of the previous power, pride, and arrogance of the employers, this result is remarkable. Nothing has happened in a generation so calculated to inspire and strengthen organized labor.’”

THE VOICE OF THE PUBLIC
But what, meanwhile, of the sympathies of the public? Mr. Roberts answers: “Never in my whole experience have I known strikes to be so generally condemned. As a rule newspapers are inclined to side with the ‘under dog.’ This time, with the exception of the labor press. they have been almost unanimous in denouncing the strikers, as the strikes appeared selfishly inopportune, coming just when a return of prosperity was in sight. The railway strike especiallv invited censure. The railway unions, so the papers have been declaring, assumed that ‘the sacred right to ‘strike’ was greater than ‘the sacred right of the Government to act for the greatest good of all the people.’ For instance, here is the Washington ‘Post’ telling us that ‘in flouting the efforts of the Labor Board to avoid a strike the shopmen have flouted the Gnvernment of the Unlled States for whom it speaks and the American people whom, as an agency of the Federal Government, it represents.’ And here is the Philadelphia ‘North American’ declaring: ‘A circumstance that has had a powerful influence in turning sentiment against the unions is that they fully recognized the jurisdiction of the Labor Board when it increased the railroads’ pay-rolls to the extent of $600,000,000 a year, and repudiate its authority only when it reduces wages on the same principle on which it raised them.’ The public still believes in unionism, still thinks trade unions necessary to keep the balance. Moreover, the public recognizes that in the recent struggle they have shown remarkable restraint. The Herrin affair was an exception, of which the unions bitterly repent. The ‘United Mine Workers’ Journal’ said at the time, ‘God knows the miners’ union would not have had this thing happen for a- million worlds.’ And yet it is clear that, however steadfast fhe public’s belief in trade-unionism on general principles, both the miners’ and the railway unions have lost ground.”

ARE THE UNIONS FOOLISH?
As to William Allen White’s assertion t hat the trade unions were a parcel of fools in this contest, Mr. Roberts resists a natural temptation to recall that Mr. White recently inaugurated a new series of the “Martial Adventures of Henry and Me” by posting placards announcing his daily percentage of sympathy with the strikers and forcing “Henry” (Governor Allen, of Kansas) to order his arrest for so doing. Disregarding all that, Mr. Roberts says: “On the whole, the press has been too busy reckoning with the seriousness of the strikes to consider their folly, Mr. White’s remark was called forth by the ‘cruelty and cowardice’ with which trainmen ‘left helpless people at Needles and Seligman on the desert in midsummer without food or shelter save the little mite the wayside towns provided.’ Like the Herrin affair, this was an exceptional case. Like the Herrin affair, though in a lesser degree, it invited condemnation and received it.”

THE STAND OF THE MANAGERS
Have the coal operators and the railway managers been fair? Have they shown a readiness to compromise on reasonable terms? Not all of them, apparently. “Certain papers have thought they were a little too conscious that the strikers lacked the support of public opinion, a little too anxious to ‘smash’ unionism, and, in certain instances, too outspoken in their refusal to yield ground. Here is a clipping about President Loree, of the Delaware and Hudson, who said the other day: ‘Reports that peace is coming in the railroad strike are all bunk. You can quote me as saying I stand where I have stood from the start, solidly against any surrender, and it would be a surrender on the part of the roads to give back to the strikers their seniority.’ This same cutting tells us that W. W. Atterbury, of the Pennsylvania, said Mr. Loree expressed the views of all the Eastern roads. “He speaks for the bunch,” were General Atterbury’s words.’ Moreover, Mr. Loree is said to have said, ‘Peace talk has done the roads more harm than good.’”

Source: The Outlook, 6 September 1922

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Railroad and Coal Strikes

November 25, 2009 By

History of the Strikes of 1922

THE strike of the coal-miners began on April 1; the strike of the railway shop men on July 1. In the first case, therefore, five months have been spent in argument, debate, and attempts at an agreement; in the second case two months have elapsed. As August ends in neither case does there seem to be immediate prospect of com-plete or satisfactory settlement. From week to week and month to month we have had proposals, counter-proposals, public remonstrances, Governmental urging, and yet the public, which, after all, is the party most deeply involved in the injury, has been fed upon hopes only. As Don Marquis in his “Sun Dial,” remarks of the anthracite strike: “Every paper we pick up we see that the miners and operators are still hoping for peace. We hope that hope will warm a house next winter.”

The cost of this summer of labor troubles to the workmen, to the railway and mine owners, and to business at large has mounted into hundreds of millions of dollars. So far as business and the household are concerned, the prospective loss in the coming fall and winter will continue indirectly even if the strikes are now settled promptly. Probably one reason why the public have until recently been somewhat apathetic about the conditions is that they have not been directly injured seriously as much at this time of year as they would be in the full tide of railway business and when a supply of coal is absolutely necessary for business as well as for the home. Lately, however, the people and the Government have realized that action is needed, but are still debating as to what must be done. It is a good time to recall what Mr. Roosevelt said to the leaders of mine strikers and operators in 1902: “The evil possibilities are so far-reaching, so appalling, that it seems to me that you are not only justified in sinking, but required to sink for the time being, any tenacity as to your respective claims in the matter at issue between you. The situation imperatively requires that you meet upon the common plane of the necessities of the public.”

Source: The Outlook, 6 September 1922

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