Iowa Unionist (Newspaper) - January 3, 1908, Des Moines, Iowa IOWA UNIONIST VOLUME IX The of One la the Concern of All PES IOWA FRIDAY THE LABOR UNION An Interesting Resume of the Labor from the Pen of One Closely Identified with it in Recent History Making For the elemental reasons which made for destruction of absolute slavery this partial slavery is bourn to fade info n state where every chik shall be born to a fair opportunity tor developing the best life of which lie in capable hampered neither as the Greek slave was hampered nor as the in a Pennsylvania As far back as we can Deer with anything like certainty Into the morning twilight of oir race wo widespread absolute subjection of one class to another class The writ ings which have survived tlie peoples ot the Tigris and the Euphrates show iuman slavery strongly established In Babylonia and Assyria at the point their social system is re to us So with Egypt whose very monuments bespeaking vanished greatness are for the larger part the So of slaves ashore and at sea and sending dealers abroad to barter in slaves as merchants ot today trade in silks work of multitudes of slaves with Phoenicia having hordes and grain So Rome So with Palestine though least Sinns passion for dominion over his neighbors yields slowly Haby lon and Nineveh were still gangrened with slavery when they sank to dust and silence Memphis and Thebes in the closing of night upon them coal mine is hampered It Is by the aspirations of the human race by every addition to human knowledge by every growth In spir grace And among the most powerful forces counting to reduce it must be reckoned the modern la bor union The laboi union is a defense Tyre and Carthage when ceased to be it was so prevalent iii Greece 300 D c that in Corinth there were 40000 masters and 640 000 slaves So long loo as a shred of authority of ancient Home re mained slavery a fundamental institution among the Romans and in such extent that at one time there were 60000000 slaves within the Empire And powerful as was the fine religious spirit of early Israel even such enslavement as was in ex press the law continued general in the time of Jeremiah Not only did absolute slavery persist side by side with tlie Iliad the Book of Job the Dialogues of Plato the Code Justinian it clung upon civilized state long after Jesus Christ had said A new command ment I give unto yon that ye love one long after the great Charter of English liberties long after Rousseau and Jefferson With all the forces ot and love oper ating from the remotest antiquity it was but yesterday in Russia Drizil and our own America that chattel slavery lost the last sanction of civ mankind And not alone tin forces of light and love working a the rain wears away the rock bu forces of passionate revolution work Ing as tho earthquake ing aud the floo of the deep sea into the light of day for desperate struggle It lias taken too to break the that bonne some men to be the chattels of men But absolute subjection of one class to another class is dead at last in enlightened lands after nine thou sand years of civilization and all the in tho abysm of time the other side of Babylon Relative subjection lives on though so slow ly do we move into the light not the subjection that made it lawful for the young aristocrat of to hunt and slay slaves of Sparta as in our day sportsmen chase and kill wild game nor the milder kind that put around the neck of the collar of but a kind based on the concept that though one man can not rightfully own another one man may rightfully draw a circle about the life of that other and confine him within It This Is the slavery which puts clouds of children at loll aa breadwinners when they should bo nt school and at play forces myriads Greece and thrown up by manual workers those evils of the competitive system tending at the worst to grind them into and at the best to ive them less a reasonable share of property rest and oppor for intellectual growth In the natural advance of socie announced as a law of political economy the wages of labor will have a tendency to fall as far as they are by supply and demand This the manual workers came lo know by ex and they organized into trade groups to collec tive bargaining backed by the strike downward pull of supply and demand In proportion as they pro enough out of the shadows through the spread ot education and ethics to see with somewhat of clear ness their rights is freemen and in proportion also to the rise of the factory system with its rapid lion of wealth and its propensity to press workers to a low standard of living regardless of value of things produced The modern union came in England later In Continental Europe and afterward In the United Stales and with most of its growth In the last fifty years it has devel Into an institution with 2000 000 members in the United Kingdom aud approximately 3000000 in the United States Ill all of Europe before the labor inions were powerful the workday was from twelve to fifteen hours prosperity among the workers of tl United Kingdom is higher than a any time since the unexampled sear ity of laborers in the fifteenth cen following the Black Death th conclusion of Geoffrey Drage tha while half of all the workers o Great Britain and Ireland were ge ting no more than a bare living i 1850 only a fifth were on that leve in 1890 and the conclusion of Emi Levasseur and Robert that i England France and the Unite States wages in commodities con have doubled in the last sixt years for all of tlie working classe not now on or near the level of bar subsistence It would be very unsound to at tribute all of the improvement he condition of the working classe to their unions for beside the gen nal favorable Influence of thos otherwise the inions and besid atever tht conscience and v of othe may have towan and then has been the tremendous influence o mechanical Inventions In multiplying the wealth subject to as with the converters in the T xi nill which change NUMBER 45 he rate of four tj am vith the cotton gii ter ours formerly rei iu tv o tin to free from seeds a pound and half of cotton successfully treats lore than four thousand times x inch But authorities agree eduction of the workday lias been entirely due to direct de lauds of the unions aud to agita ions begun by them and that while the labor union as with it le working classes would as con have participated in the ad antages following the fall of com prices in cases where machin ry has cut the prices of things con by them the unions have gen operated to make the wage fund of an industry a much larger percentage of the wealth than it would have heen in the absence of organized insistence By striving to raise tho standards of living among the working people of the world and urging equity in distribution of the products of in dustry the unions are important safeguards of the liberties of society Their position is that it is not for the successor of the old masterclass to arbitrarily what kind of lives the toilers shall be able to lead THE OPEN SHOP A True Exposition of what the Open Shop Ac and the Reason Laid Bare for the Tenacity of its Advocates The advocates of the open shop have claimed to be actuated by the highest motives They have claimed it as their pur pose to rescue industry from the ty ranny of labor and to secure to every man the right to work when ind where he pleases They profess that every working nan may or may not belong to a abor union at his own option but he union is not to be recognized pendent one upon the other that in a large measure what Is the business of one of us is tho business of all Of US These advocates of the open shop seek to disfranchise labor of its in vote They seek to establish an industrial kingdom composed of a few and many Fri They will deny this Impeachment n any way in the underneath the freedom aud equality are alleged to es deadly enmity to abide but which in fact Is the home l a if despotism They say that the rules ot unions the right ot contract which honld be free and honld be free and unrestricted When was the right of contract Illustrations 1 A owns a piece of laud and vants to build a house He finds hat his right to contract for a s abridged by laws which require im to observe certain sanitary rules nd certain safety construction regu 2 A owns a piece of land in a section and starts to uild a soap factory His enterprise s adjudged a nuisance and he Is topped by law He had no right i inflict this nuisance upon those had in good faith developed a for financial gain to control the iges the hours and the lives of Jir employes the Fridays of district 3 Freedom of contract would Tumi lo and the Canadians until tlle i Imt that there shall be substituted ere strong the hours were for unions were strong the hour were for arbitrary power of one class over rary power o one class over for down to nil classes government ot all clashes some of th England bud day and in the a llway of aud endanger menl of motherhood works the mass of men beyond their strength fulness ol their pow ers and neglects them when the flagging comes withholds from most of Hie worlds workers In commerce manufacture agriculture art let ters Hold in short both mental and manual a Just par In wealth and leisure ness throughout the United States and Canada until unions ot carmen rose to within the last fe tin workday commonly ra fourteen to seventeen hours Now in the United Kingdom th United States Canada and Austral tlie workday in most lions is nine hours or less and li many especially In Australasia has wno to eight hours while In Con Europe the tendency toward tho day is In proportion o the progress of the unions With wages the contrast are even nore impressive George L Boleu loos not overstate the case as it In the United Kingdom when ie says that during the first quarter of the nineteenth century in En before trade unions hnd dev eloped strength competition hnd riven the price at which labor could o bought to just enough food air nd rest to keep the laborer alive nd able lo work Nor McMaster ho says of the first waa barely starting In the general advance made by society In fifty yearn the workingman had shared but little Many old grievances no longer troubled him but now ones more numerous and galling than tho old wore pressing him sorely Wages by all classes that Is to say had risen but not In proportion to tlie coat of living Complementing these statements may be placed tho conclusion of that government in politics and business instead of commands by autocrat or class con between all concerned or the representatives of all concerned free and fair agreement instead of something like the old slave state ecm to permit a man to sell what e owns but a man owning liquor in only sell it within certain ed conditions and hours and any states not at all In many cases a man may he by the law if he refuses i sell what he owns as for Instance hotel keeper who having empty rams refuses to accept a guest 5 In Massachusetts a woman can gaily work only 5S hours per week of what her desires in the alter mny be C You own a decrepit horse hich you are about to sell to a for The society with a long name comes along and lias you arrested and fined for cruelty to ani mals and kills your horse Perhaps you to work on few weeks ago the writer was sitting in the smoking room of a Pullman sleeping car coining east and as the writer looks like ready money and would not be suspected of being interested in labor unions he involuntarily heard some gentle conversing in a full tone of One of the gentlemen was an east ern man who had been in the west men voice for several years mn large manufacturing business Iii tne party were several of bis friends he was telling them about his labor troubles aud how he handled them He had a strike and declared the open shop To quote him You can beat them the unions every time with the open shop It sounds fair because yon say you will employ without regard to whether they are members of unions or say each employe may or may not belong to a union as he sees fit and yon will not discriminate Still there ire ways you can out what Is going on among your employes and there are ways to get rid of danger elements without discrimination union members Ha Ha Trade unions said Gladstone bulwarks of modern demo God exclaimed Lincoln we have a system of labor where there can be a strike Both were right for the wide division of property softens the lines of class demarcation as has and especially discourages the rise of aristocracies of wealth on the one hand and dangerous tendencies to re volution on the other and the unions directly promote such division and diffusion Strikes wrote John Stuart Mill and the trade societies which render strikes possible arc not i mischievous but on the contrary i valuable part of the existing ma chinery of and this because lo quote him further the unions make toward that regular ton of the laborers In tho profits of heir labor every tendency to which t Is so Important to encourage since o It we have chiefly lo look for any Improvement In the social nd economical relations between and capital It Is agreeable lo feel too that n the readjustments of tho fortunes he labor tend to bring about he scaling down of Inordinate riches in order there may bo a leveling up where equity demands is quite Continued on lago S Sundays but the lay says yon shall I not except in certain specified ot stances S The law says that any contract you make on Sunday or anv legal to va holiday is void your employ In all of the foregoing illustrations and countless others the socalled sa cred right of contract has been re for the public good Modern society does not permit the individual to do as he wishes without regard to the rights or well being of his fellows Robinson Crusoe was free and In dependent and ran his own business until he found he ran Fridays business This very wrong of Crusoe but a very natural ict judged by human standards Almost without exception the strong subdue oppress and plunder tho weak Speaking Industrially as well as economically we have In modern or society become so Maintain the right of all to work laughter and weed out the Agitators more Form a mutual benefit society among your employes making a small donation yourself conditional upon the em ployes paying dues and supporting society thereafter Let the of ln i lle society be in I the different departments under tho immediate supervision of the fore I man each officer to vacate ills office on leaving your employ Then toady the u little and compel all employes to join taking out the dues in the and you have got n perfect working machine which will report to yon every whisper among your employes Cries of good clever etc t Vow all you have got to do Is to maintain your principles weed out the agitators and yon can enjoy in peace Great hilarity The writer Is here describing an actual occurrence of less than three months ago which shows that this employer was an advocate of the open shop as n means of preventing from obtaining any advantages and that bis conception ot industrial peace was condition where tho employer Is Continued on Page S H B G 315 JOHN A Cashier THE MECHANICS SAVINGS BANK MANHATTAN Capital Surplus S
