The Great Steel Strike and its Lessons Part 20

This belief, that the trade unions are inherently conservative bodies, is the basis of the strong conviction that they are hopeless and that they must be supplanted by a new organization, aiming to abolish the wage system. The conception is found in some degree or other among virtually all radicals. And it has done incalculable harm to the unions.

It has cost them the support of thousands of militants, of the best and most intelligent that the working cla.s.s produces. These might have done a wonderful work; but their time and energies have been worse than wasted in trying to build up organizations such as the I. W. W. When one considers that the life of nearly every labor union depends upon the activities of a very small fraction of its membership, it is clear that this constant drain upon its best blood must have seriously hindered the advance of the trade-union movement. Many have complained at the slow progress it has made; but the marvel is rather that it has been able to progress at all.

This devitalizing drain must be stopped, and the great body of progressives and radicals won over to a whole-hearted support of the trade unions. I consider this one of the most important tasks confronting the labor movement. But it can be accomplished only by driving home to these elements the patent facts that the trade unions are making straight for the abolition of capitalism and that they are going incomparably faster towards this goal than any of the much advertised, so-called revolutionary unions, in spite of the latter's glittering preambles. They must be taught that the weaknesses of the trade unions are but the weaknesses of the working cla.s.s, and that as the latter gradually improves in education and experience, the unions will correspondingly take on higher forms and clearer aims. You cannot have perfect organizations with imperfect workers to build upon. In a word, the progressives must be won over from the idealistic and utopian to the evolutionary point of view.

Indeed, it must be granted that insistence upon the real goal and tendency of trade unionism will provoke the capitalist cla.s.s into greater opposition against the movement. But this will be trebly offset by the added support which the unions will get from the large numbers of militants who now stand apart from them because of lack of understanding. The power of even a few such men, proceeding intelligently along practical lines, is one of the marvels of the labor movement. It may be confidently expected, therefore, that when the many thousands of these, now indifferent or hostile, begin to work together, setting up their own press and systematically furthering amalgamation and federation projects to bring the unions into closer cooperation, initiating and prosecuting organizing campaigns, retiring to private life such officials as now find themselves at the head of the Amalgamated a.s.sociation, etc., vast changes for the better are bound to occur in the labor movement.

The trade unions have cost the workers untold efforts to build, and in the main they seem loath to give them up, despite the blandishments of utopian dual unions. Apparently, it is through the old unions that the workers will eventually achieve their industrial freedom, save, perhaps, in such cases as the United Garment Workers, where conditions in the organization were so utterly hopeless that there was nothing to do but form a new body, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. But this was an exceptional case. Most of the unions are moving steadily onward and upward, and they have an unshakable grip upon the workers in their respective spheres. This being so, the logical thing to do is systematically to set about improving and strengthening them. If this is done, then, instead of the wild, desperate, dualistic outbreaks and strikes, which have characterized the American labor movement for years, and done it incalculable harm, the discontented rank and file will find relief through an orderly and rapid progress within the folds of the organizations they already have. The sooner these facts are recognized the better for American Labor.

During the past few years much has been said about the wonderful progress being made by the English trade-union movement. This, I venture to a.s.sert, is due largely, if not altogether, to the absence among the radicals of England of the idealistic, dualistic att.i.tude towards the unions which exists so widely here, and which has produced the I. W. W.

and its great body of sympathizers. The English radicals have a better conception than ours of the trade unions; for, flesh and blood of the labor movement, they pit their policies and energies against the conservatives, and win. They are the ones who are writing the highly-praised programs, and driving onward the great wage movements.

They are practical and constructive. Unlike so many of our radicals they do not waste their time and strength in empty, pessimistic criticism of the trade unions, and in vain, foolhardy attempts to tear the whole labor structure to pieces and to reconstruct it according to the dream of Daniel De Leon.

In England the turning point came ten years ago when she felt the great wave of sentiment for revolutionary unionism then sweeping the world.

The question was whether this movement should realize its aims through the old unions or by starting new ones. The existing unions were notoriously conservative. Several of our leading radicals had said they were even more hopeless than our own organizations and strongly urged the formation of an English I. W. W. But fortunately, Tom Mann and his colleagues, with a deeper knowledge of trade unionism, were able to forestall this movement and to direct the strong stream of progressive thought and energy into the old unions. The result was magical. Within two years the great and successful strikes of the transport workers, railroaders and miners had occurred, and the renaissance of the English labor movement was a.s.sured. British workingmen will never realize the invaluable service which Tom Mann rendered them in saving England from an I. W. W. dual movement, with its tremendous waste of power and its weakening effect upon the trade unions.

How long are American progressives going to continue deceiving themselves with the words of high-sounding preambles? When are they going to quit chasing rainbows and settle down to real work? These are important considerations indeed. The hour when our militants generally adopt English methods, and turn their whole-hearted attention to building up and developing the trade-union movement,--that hour will be the dawn of a new day for American Labor.

THE END