LABOUR IN AMERICA.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVII, Issue 197, 18 August 1906, Page 9

LABOUR IN AMERICA.

(By H. H. LUSK.) NO. IL—WHERE IT HAS FAILED. Failure may seem a strange word to use in connection with the splendidly organised forces of skilled labour in Amorica; yet in a sense, at. least it is appropriate. It is by no means intended to-suggest that trades unionism has been of little use to the workers in the United States; such a suggestion would be entirely misleading. What is meant is. that with all its organisation, with all the influence which the adherence of. three and a-half millions of men—probably oneflfth of the men of the nation —should give to any cause, trades unionism has done so little permanently to improve industrial conditions. That it has done something cannot be questioned, for it must be remembered that during the last twenty years the circumstances of America have not been in all respects favourable to the real interests of labour. During that short period nearly twelve millions of immigrants have entered the country—-perhaps thirteen times ' the population of New Zealand to-day—and of these a far greater proportion than at any former time have acted as a drag on the labour market. The proportion of skilled workmen has not been so great as formerly, indeed, -when the greater part came from Great Britain and Germany, but the actual number has been enormous, and besides that they have crowded the market for unskilled labour, and thus forced an increasing number of the young men, of the country into the ranks of the artisans. In spite of this the. wages of the-skilled workmen have generally continued at least moderately good, and the other conditions of work

have not been altered for the worse, and this has been due entirely to the organisation of the wcrkers. It may perhaps be asked what are the legitimate objects of trades unionism, if such results as these are not to. be looked upon as satisfactory? It would perhaps be difficult to give a complete answer, but this may be suggested as at least a partial one: The legitimate objects being the well-being of labour, little has been realiy accomplished as long as that wellbeing has to be preserved at. the point of the bayonet; as long also as any further improvements can only be secured at the price of social conflicts, causing suffering to those who are dependent upon skilled labour for a living, and dislocating for longer or shorter periods the industries of a whole people. The American labour unions, with all their perfection of organisation, have as yet done little or nothing towards placing the skilled workers of the Eepublic iv a better position than this. The strike on the one hand, and the lockout on the other, are still, as they have been in the past, the weapons used for the settlement of all serious trade' disputes, and in no' country in the world have they been attended by circumstances of more painful brutality. It. is no exaggeration to say that every considerable strike that hastaken place during the last ten years;— and these have been far more numerous than people at a distance have any idea of —has been the occasion of bloodshed, which has been, as a rule, by no means confined to the persons actually engaged in the struggle..' When higher wages and better conditions of work have been sought in any trade, it has been with the threat of the strike, held like a blud-; geon over the heads of the employers. If the employers have sought to reduce wages, or to increase the hours of. .work,

the proposal has been made with the alternative threat of turning out of doors all the workers who will not agree. Each party may fairly be described as resembling two packs of savage animals, only prevented by fear from flying at one another's throats. It need hardly be pointed out that the result is a poor one. either from a social or economic point of view. Up to this time it has been the custom to answer, any suggestion of the law stepping in to bring about some more . satisfactory settlement of such questions by the statement that it is contrary to American ideas to mix politics with such questions •at all. The right to fight out their own quarrels in their own wajjr has tie en claim- j ed as a part of American liberty; and to mix such questions with politics is a course which has hitherto been objected to as strongly by the workers as by the employers. To anybody who is "a stranger . to America, and the somewhat vague j ideas on the subject of liberty current I among its people, the objection may ap- ! pear strange. To claim as a privilege the right, and with it the practical necessity of engaging in ruinous" strikes, which necessarily involve loss and suffering to those who are seeking better conditions, seems a singular commentary on advancing civilisation. There are, however, explanations applicable to the United States, which fortunately do not apply to either Great Britain or the colonies. Party government, which seems to be an almost necessary part of popular -government, as understood by our people, has from the first taken a very strong hold' on the imagination of the American people, till it has become a kind of political fetish in the States. Its influence was enormously strengthened, no doubt, by the doctrine, long accepted as un-

questionable, that the party in power, and its most active supporters, were entitled to look not merely for power, but for profit also, from a victory at the polls. There was a time—it ia not very long ago either—when nearly every office under a Government—State or Federal—was held by the official only on . the tenure of his party's success at the next election. This was equally true of the Judges of the Supreme Court Bench —with the single exception of the Federal High Court —the State or Municipal magistrates, the clerks in every Government office, the police force of every town, and the warders of every asylum. If their party was successful ( at the next elections—Municipal, State, I or Federal—and they had secured the I reputation of working hard or paying handsomely, to secure that success, their positions were safe till the next election. If not, as a matter of course, they lost | their positions until the party to which i they belonged got the upper hand once I more. This system has been modified by the Civil Service Act, so far as Federal appointments are concerned ■— though even there its operation is very limited-V----but it still prevails iv State and Municipal services to an extent that would hardly be credited by a stranger. The natural effect has been to make all prominent electors cling to their party colours with an enthusiasm unknown in countries where immediate selfish interests are less strongly appealed to. To induce American voters—especially the important class likely to influence their neighbours —to exchange from one party to another is, therefore,, by no means- an easy matter, and to induce them to transfer their allegiance to a party without power or chance of patronage -would naturally be more difficult still. The rank and file, indeed, have little to expect in this direction in any

case, but, the case is' necessarily . different with men of influence in their own localities. It -has been this consideration, raoTe than any which would be readily admitted, that has prevented'the real leaders of organised. labour in the States from taking steps long ago to make labour .questions political platforms. The objection of the Labour leaders to constituting a political Labour party has really meant that, in the first place, they were by no means certain they could carry the influential-members of the unions with them; and-in the second, that they feared to approach the two great parties, between which the Labour vote lias hitherto been divided, with proposals that would be bitterly opposed by all the most influential politicians. A majority—probably a very large majority^—of trades unionists have iip to this time been Republicans. This party has always been the one most identical with capital; it has also been the one that favoured extreme protection, in the interest, as was always asserted, of plentiful employment and high wages; there was no hope of getting any real concessions from the capitalist phalanx that really holds the Republican party in the hollow of its hand, and little nope, even if it were .certainly desirable, of getting men who had always been Republicans to go over to,the Democrats. Eor, after all, the Democrats are the aristocratic party of the United States. They are the old pro-slavery party of the Southern States, and they were not likely, it was argued, with at least a show of reason, to do much for the workers in opposition to the employers. The situation was a difficult one. "_ . It would, be a mistake to suppose that the importance of organised labour at the polls has been overlooked by the party politicians of America. For a good many years, and especially within the last seven or .eight, every national Convention—the preliminary step to the elections of President and the representative Chamber of Commerce—has embodied in its "platform" or political programme resolutions in which the rights and claims of labour have been acknow-, ledged, and even made much of. This has been equally true of Republican and Democratic Conventions. When tlie elections were over it has been found. :in every case that; matters rested there. Nothing was done, either in Congress or in the State Parliaments, to reduce the high-sounding phrases of the platforms either to legislative or executive action. The President and his Cabinet were the nominees, and therefore' the representatives, mainly of the capitalists, and men who were either members, on at least a small scale, of the class, or aspirants to membership, occupied every seat in Congress, and nearly every seat in the State Parliaments. Of late years these have been chiefly Republican; no' reasonable person, however, has doubted that a Democratic victory- at the polls would in this respect have led to the same result. The. hopes and demands.of organised labour maj-, of course, .be looked upon as .reasonable or the reverse; but at least it has been growing more evident every year that they would not be realised through the agency of either of the two great political parties as long, at any rate, as they were allowed to remain the unquestioned masters of the political situation. ' . ~ : y. -