Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers

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You say that labor unions have killed English industry? No.
They have kept England alive in the face of fierce competition.
Millions upon millions of Englishmen live on a little foggy
northern island incapable of supporting them. By their courage,
their mental power, their genius, their UNION, they have kept
the nation great. It is as though in one corner of New York
State we had the greatest industrial power on earth. What the
Gulf Stream has been to England's agriculture, labor unionism has
been to England's industry.

It is not the English WORKINGMAN who has been beaten. The
English workmen did not sell the English mercantile navy to J.P.
Morgan. English capitalists did that.

Get this in your heads, you who talk against unions. Morgan and
his fellow American capitalists have formed themselves into
financial UNIONS, which we call trusts. And they have beaten
the English capitalist, who did not know enough to take lessons
from his workman and form unions of his own.

The American FINANCIAL union, not the English LABOR union, has
beaten England in the race for industrial supremacy.

Union is strength everywhere and forever. The remaining strength
of England is in her labor unions, which give men time to think,
food to grow on, and give real men to the nation. You say that
powerful unions kill nations.

Why is not China a great industrial power?

She has vast fortunes and no unions. Li Hung Chang was richer
than Morgan, and could cut off the head of any striker. His
coolies got five cents a day and worked fourteen hours--is THAT
your ideal system? ----

Last of all (and we apologize for this unforgivably long
editorial), let us discuss the question of foreign labor. The
capitalist complains that the Hungarian, "the brutal, ignorant
foreigner," makes much of the trouble, and "wants as much as an
American."

Loud is this cry against the foreign laborer. And the ignorant,
know-nothing American workman joins in the cry only too
willingly.

Who brings in those foreign laborers by the shipload, Mr.
Mineowner?

Who rounds up cargoes of Slavs on the other side and brings them
here to cut the wages and the living of the native-born?

Who shrieks dolefully, Mr. Miner, when the Slav shows that he is
a MAN brave and willing to prove worthy of freedom by joining
the army of union labor?

The Slav and the Hungarian ARE HERE, and their children will
be here when we are dead.

Which is better, to underpay them, treat them like cattle, fill
them with just hatred of unjust discrimination, or give them a
chance to be men?

Shall their children grow up ignorant mine slaves? Or shall they
go to that factory of honest citizenship--the public school--to
be improved as we have all been improved, whether we came
originally from Hungary, Ireland, England, France, Russia, or
elsewhere?

The struggle of the strikers, like all great struggles, is
sometimes unjust. It has not always the wisest or the most
unselfish leaders.

But it is an effort to improve the AVERAGE CONDITION OF
HUMANITY. Help that effort.

"LIMITING THE AMOUNT OF A DAY'S WORK"
THERE'S A GOOD DEAL OF NONSENSE TALKED ON THIS SUBJECT

An honest, well-meaning clergyman talked the other day on labor
unions, and wandered out of his depth. As a rule, clergymen,
having studied the teachings of Christ, are aware that they ought
to be on the side of the workingman. Hence the strongest
supporters of the union are found among the clergy.

The mistake of the clergyman whom we mention is discussed here,
because it is often made by well-meaning, but narrow-minded,
citizens.

He spoke of "the custom union labor has of limiting a day's work
AND OTHER DISHONEST PRACTICES."

By limiting a day's work, the reverend gentleman referred to the
rule existing in certain unions regulating the maximum day's
labor.

That rule does exist, and sometimes undoubtedly--labor union men
not being angels or cherubim--the rule may be pushed to extremes.

But on the whole the rule is necessary, and it works for good.

We shall tell this clergyman and other citizens one special
reason for limiting the day's work.

The contractors want to make all the money they can. When the
unions forced them into recognition of certain hours of labor as
constituting a day's work, THAT was looked upon as a dishonest
practice. It was felt in the old days that a workman should be
only too glad to get out of bed at daybreak and work until dark.
Now even the stupidest and most selfish have come to recognize
limited hours as a feature of American industry. And the
enlightened gladly admit that the well-paid, well-rested,
independent worker usually does more in his eight or nine hours
than he used to do in his twelve or fourteen.

After the inauguration of the limited-hour day the contractors
invented what is known as a "rusher."

The "rusher" is a young workman, in his prime, marvellously quick
in his work as compared with the ordinary, good, capable workman.

On a job of bricklaying, carpentering, or other work, it was
customary for the shrewd contractor to hire one or more
"rushers." Nominally the "rusher" was paid regular union wages.
But secretly the contractor paid him double wages, or more than
double wages. The "rusher" worked at high pressure hour after
hour, day after day. The others could not possibly have kept up
with him had he worked his fastest. But his instructions
were to keep just a little ahead, that the others might struggle
and do their best to keep even in their task, in order not to
lose their work for apparent idleness. Thus the "rusher," a man
of unusual skill, getting double wages, went along well within
his forces, while the others were working themselves to death in
order to keep up and not lose their jobs.

The limitation of the day's output is based originally on the
desire to squelch this "rusher" idea, or to put the quietus on
the very young and able workman anxious to curry favor with his
"boss" by making the pace too hot for the men working beside him.

----

Our friend, the clergyman, and many others say that it is
dishonest to limit the day's output. But is it dishonest? What
is the difference between limiting the DAY'S output and
limiting a YEAR'S output?

In the middle of the Summer the clergyman says, "I have worked
enough; I ought to go to Europe," and he goes.

The bricklayer does not criticise the clergyman for limiting his
YEAR'S output to forty sermons. He does not say to him, "You
are ABLE to preach fifty-two sermons a year. If you preach
only forty, you are dishonest and rob your parishioners."

What business is it of the clergyman's if the bricklayers, among
themselves, decide that it is better for them in the long run to
set only a given number of brick per day?

The trouble with some clergymen and many others is that they
forget one important thing--namely, THAT THE WORKINGMEN NOW
HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY.

When it comes to a question of laying brick, it is no longer the
squire or the local clergyman who decides what shall be done.
The BRICKLAYER DECIDES WHAT SHALL BE DONE.

And when it comes to carpenter work, the CARPENTER decides what
shall constitute a day's work.

In olden times the clergymen, the lawyers, the rich, the lucky
class in general, decided for THEMSELVES what THEY should do, and
then they decided for their so-called inferiors what those
INFERIORS should do.

Our prosperous class are having a very painful time indeed
getting into their minds the fact that such a thing as the right
of the majority REALLY EXISTS. And they find it very hard indeed
to believe that the doctrine of human equality is to be taken
seriously in matters of business.

Labor unions are performing an important educational function
when they drive into the heads of these would-be superiors the
fact that this nation is becoming actually a republic in which
the workingmen shall decide for themselves questions affecting
themselves, and in which they shall no longer be guided by the
whims or financial interests of would-be "superiors."

CATCHING A RED-HOT BOLT

Men were working on the roof of a Pennsylvania ferryhouse,
overhanging the North River on the Jersey side.

The passengers on one of the big ferryboats watched with
admiration the work of the fearless young mechanics.

The men stood on a board not more than a foot wide. They had
nothing to hold to. Sixty feet below them was a mass of rough
piles. A misstep would have meant death.

One of the men, standing perfectly at ease on his narrow ledge,
swung a heavy sledge-hammer, while the other held in place the
bolt to be driven home in the iron-work. ----

The work on that bolt was finished, and one of the young men, a
wiry giant over six feet tall, picked up in his arms a small
wooden keg which stood on the board beside him. It was a keg
such as nails are packed in. About forty feet away from the
bridge, up among the iron beams, a smith was at work heating the
bolts red-hot.

This smith saw the young man on the narrow board holding the
wooden keg in his arms. He knew that another bolt was needed.

The bolt, white-hot, was seized with a pair of tongs, thrown
violently through the air, sending off a shower of white sparks
as it went.

As the white bolt shot toward the metal worker, he held out the
wooden keg in a matter-of-fact way, caught the bolt, picked it
out of the keg with a pair of pincers, and soon the heavy sledge-
hammer was at work driving the metal, still white-hot, into the
hole. ----

Passengers who make their living in a less exciting way watched
with great excitement as one after another of these heavy red-hot
bolts came flying through the air, each in its turn caught by the
mechanic standing on the narrow board.

If the bolt had struck or burned him, he must almost inevitably
have fallen. He must have fallen had he made a misstep reaching
out the wooden keg to catch the flying iron.

Among those who watched him were very prosperous men come in from
the seaside on the flying express, bound for Wall Street. These
men were sorry when their boat pulled out, so deeply interested
were they in the skill and courage of the mechanics working so
high up on so narrow a footing.

If their opinion had been asked then and there they would have
said that no reasonable rate of pay would be too high for such
mechanics, and that eight hours of work catching red-hot bolts
and driving them home, on a narrow plank sixty feet in the air,
ought to be considered a fair day's work.

We trust that if these men read in the future that the structural
iron-workers or the house-smiths are striking for a little more
pay and for eight hours' work they will remember those men
working on the ferryhouse, and remember that all of these
iron-workers, like all miners, and many others, earn their bread
at the risk of their lives.

We hope that those who watched the red-hot bolts flying through
the air will remember their sensations when they hear of a strike
among those men, and not say, as they usually do:

"The impudence of union labor must be suppressed. The men are
lazy; that's what's the matter with them. It is all nonsense to
talk about working eight hours. Union labor, if it keeps on,
will ruin this country's commercial supremacy." ----

The trouble with human beings is that their lives are widely
separated and sympathy is killed by ignorance.

The banker does not see, therefore cannot appreciate, the courage
of the man working on an iron beam at the top of a steel frame
300 feet in the air.

The mechanic cannot understand, and therefore cannot appreciate,
the worry, the mental stress of the money man, who must make ends
meet, pay bills, arrange mortgages, find tenants and settle his
union troubles at the same time.

Better acquaintance with each other is what human beings need.

It would be well if more very rich men had seen that young
mechanic catching his red-hot bolts.

It would be well if more young mechanics who like their beefsteak
and onions could see John D. Rockefeller sipping his glass of
milk and seltzer (his whole dinner), or know what Rockefeller
feels when he lies awake half the night. He has found pretty
well-paid employment for a hundred thousand men who sleep soundly
while he tosses and turns and feels the weight of a ton on his
chest.

THE TRUSTS AND THE UNION-- HOW DO THEY DIFFER?

A letter signed "Several Democrats from St. Paul" reads, in
part, as follows:

"In order to convert several rank Republicans it is necessary
that we should be able to explain the difference between a trust
and a labor union. Will you kindly, through your columns, make a
clear explanation of this distinction? Our opponents holdthat
both trusts and unions are combinations, which appears to be
true, but there is apparently a weak point in our ability to
definitely show the difference, and we beg that you explain it."
----

Trusts and unions are both combinations, beyond question. But a
pronounced difference distinguishes them, and we shall endeavor
to make it clear.

You see a horse after a hard day's work grazing in a swampy
meadow. He has done his duty and is getting what he can in
return.

On the horse's flank you may see a leach sucking blood.

The LEACH is the trust.

The HORSE is the labor UNION.

Possibly you have read "Sindbad the Sailor," with its story of
the Old Alan of the Sea. The Old Man of the Sea rode round on
the sailor's back squeezing his neck with his tightly twisted
legs.

The OLD MAN is the TRUST.

The SAILOR is the labor UNION. ----

In Chicago two combinations are fighting. One is a combination
of citizens--the Citizens' Union. The other is a combination of
public robbers--the Gas Trust. Each combination is trying to get
what it wants. Surely you can see the difference between the two
combinations.

The citizens are striving in a purely legitimate way to obtain
their RIGHTS.

Similarly, Labor Unions, when soundly organized, are striving
properly and legitimately to obtain their RIGHTS.

Gas Trusts and other Trusts endeavor improperly and
illegitimately to obtain what does not belong to them. ----

In old times, on the high seas, there were two classes of
vessels. The great majority were honest vessels of commerce,
doing good to the world, while striving, of course, to benefit
their crews and owners.

Those honest SHIPS were the Labor UNIONS. On the same waters
there sailed other ships--fast, daring--manned by unscrupulous,
although able, men.

Those were the pirate ships.

The TRUSTS compared to Labor UNIONS are the pirate ships
compared to honest ships of commerce.

FRANCE HAS LEARNED HER LESSON

The employes on the Paris underground railroad had a strike and
have settled their strike.

The terms of the settlement amaze the outside world. The terms
are especially amazing to the American--and well they may be.

The employes of the underground railroad in Paris are GOVERNMENT
employes.

Their strike inconvenienced the public, and even the radical
French people were annoyed with the strikers.

In other European countries and in this country, as the news
reports very truly say, the strike of those Government employes
would have been dealt with very summarily. Three engines of
civilization would have been brought into play effectively.

"First the police, second the cavalry, third Gatling guns." ----

But the police, the cavalry and guns were tried on the French
people long ago, and that little matter was fought out and
settled. The men who govern France know that at a certain stage
in the proceedings a courageous people will not stand Gatling
guns, cavalry or police. They have found out in France that the
way to deal with striking workmen is just the way the Government
official would like to be dealt with himself if he were a
striking workman instead of a well-paid public officer.

The striking men complained that their day's work was too long
and their pay too small. The pay was increased and the day
shortened--which was perfectly right.

Each employe is now allowed one day off in seven, and ten days'
vacation every year with full pay--which is perfectly right.

The young men employed on the road are compelled to do twenty
days' work in the army each year. Their wages are paid while
they are doing this compulsory military work--which is perfectly
right.

If a man is ill through no fault or vice of his own he gets his
pay as long as he is ill up to three hundred and sixty-five days,
and the company in whose service he has become ill pays his
doctor's bill, his drug store bill and any extra expenses
involved--which is perfectly just and fair.

No striker is to be dismissed because of having taken part in the
strike. A benefit fund is provided for the employes of this
Government enterprise--and the company pays the membership
subscription to the benefit fund with NO DEDUCTION FROM THE
WORKMEN'S PAY.

The above seems a horrible narrative to the energetic American
exploiter of labor.

It would have seemed very stupid, in fact quite incomprehensible,
to the French Government at any time before the Revolution.

But the Revolution taught France and some other people that a
nation, like any other structure, is insecure when its foundation
is agitated. The foundation of a nation is the enormous mass of
working people, and that foundation the French have learned to
respect and treat well.

We shall learn as much here some day. Let us hope we shall learn
it more peaceably than the French did.

UNION MEN AS SLAVE OWNERS
WHAT PLANS HAS THE FIVE-DOLLAR-A-DAY MAN MADE TO HELP HIS POORER
FELLOW-CREATURES?

Every addition within reason to wages, every reasonable reduction
of working hours, must help the whole nation. Working human
beings have been looked upon through the ages as slaves, either
on an actual slave-owning basis or on an insufficient wage
basis--which is about the same thing. Each recognition of the
worker's rights moves us a little farther from slave days. Every
time a new class earns decent treatment by hard fighting we see
increased the number of those who may properly be called men.

The blind employer asks: "Shall men be allowed to fix their own
wages?"

OF COURSE they shall. And until they do fix their own wages they
are not men at all. The ox does not fix his hours of labor or
the quantity of his corn. But the man does. The man controlled
like an ox is nearer an ox than a man.

We delight in the efforts of unions. We are advocates of every
movement that tends to divide among a still larger class the good
things of the world.

But this newspaper is no mere labor union organ. We care more
for the welfare of the humblest, non-organized, underpaid,
underfed citizen than for the finest, most highly paid, most
intelligent mechanic.

The man who is least well off needs our help most. He needs,
above all men, some practical PROOF that he lives where men
are equal. He should be the object of earnest thought on the
part of the five-dollar-a-day man.

It is the five-dollar-a-day man, the able mechanic, whom we
address to-day: ----

Many of your thoughts and words, Mr. Five-Dollar Man, are
devoted to plutocrats. You are not free from envy. You
consider, and with perfect justice, that you do not--even with
your five dollars--get your share of the world's good things.

But, for a change to-day, will you look DOWN instead of UP?
You work hard at five dollars per day "to fatten in comfort the
happy millionaire employer." All right; admitted.

But did you ever think who works hard to fatten YOU?

Did it ever occur to you that you are a plutocrat, and a very
numerous and decided plutocrat? Do you ever wonder what you will
answer when the time comes for those whom you underpay to demand
eight hours and fair wages of YOU?

You keep a servant girl to help your wife. Does she work eight
hours a day? No; she works about fourteen, and hears a good deal
of grumbling because she does not do better. Does she get union
wages? No; she gets about thirty cents a day. Does she get
double pay on holidays? Can she put on any substitute if she
chooses to wander off for two or three days a week?

The woman who works to make your life comfortable works just as
many hours as you can make her work, and she gets just as little
pay as you can get her to take. Is that all right? ----

And the servant girl is not the only one. Some farmer's hand
works to raise the wheat, the potatoes that you eat. What is he
paid? What are his hours? Fifty cents a day, twelve or fourteen
hours of work. And your bootmaker in the factory, and the
sweat-shop slave who makes your coat, and the long list of other
poor devils who work for about one-tenth of your salary. Do you
know why you are comparatively well off? Simply because the man
for whom YOU work pays you ten times as much as you pay the
men and women who work for YOU.

You pay indirectly? True. But what difference does that make?
You are well-to-do because you purchase without question the
product of men who are really slaves. You have brains, and by
combination have FORCED your employer to treat you decently.
Yes, and you deserve credit. But you are not fundamentally
superior to the other men around you. What are you going to do
when they demand treatment as good as yours? What are you going
to reply when they class you with the other plutocrats?

You enjoy the work of only ten or twenty underpaid men--that is
so. But you are in the same class with the plutocrat who enjoys
the profit on the work of ten or twenty thousand men.

Utter disregard of others--where it does not affect your own
wages--is your rule, and you know it. What better joke is there
than the joke about the union label? How many hats on your rack
have union labels in them? How many of you can swear no
sweatshop ever saw your clothes? How many of you would apologize
for not offering your friend a "union-made" cigar?

It is the nature of man to think earnestly of only one thing at a
time. If one pursuit really engrosses his attention he has
little time to think of anything else. In the hard struggle for
a living the workingman has little time for any thought save for
his OWN wage, his OWN stomach, his OWN welfare.

As union men you will continue to struggle for your five dollars
a day--restricting apprentices, that others may be shut out from
your field; opposing changes threatening you, however beneficial
they may be generally.

But as individuals you must THINK. You study, and, being
free from the grind of real poverty, you should be less hardened
than the unfortunate, and inclined to feel for others.

You have made a good fight against the slavery that used to
oppress you. In England you destroyed mills, endured shooting
and hanging. All over the world, by hard fighting and wise
voting, you have established the fact that the top class of
mechanics must no longer be treated as cattle.

Now, what are you going to do for the others who are still
cattle? You have demanded in the name of holy justice that
others help you. In the same name, what do you propose to do for
those still oppressed? Will you use your big voting power for
the millions who are still at the bottom?

Will you combine for the benefit of the vast army as you have
combined for your OWN benefit?

Or will you wait--as did the employers--to be FORCED into
decency? Will you free your own collection of underpaid,
overworked slaves, or wait for them to organize and beat you into
decency, as your representatives did with your oppressors long
ago?

Take a look downward once in a while. Study those below you.
Glance over your own little collection of "wage slaves" in your
kitchen and wherever your money is spent.

There is a problem there for you when you shall have finished
hurrahing for your own eight hours.

AGAIN THE LIMITED DAY'S WORK
WISELY HANDLED, IT MEANS EMANCIPATION FROM INDUSTRIAL SLAVERY.

We refer again to the much discussed rule in labor unions
limiting the amount of work that a man shall do in a day. As a
matter of fact, in many unions no such rule exists. In some it
does exist, and MUST exist.

There is nothing in the notion that limiting the day's work will
diminish the excellence of American workmen. On the contrary,
the BEST work is done slowly and carefully. The WORST work is
done at high speed.

That very aristocratic financier who denounces the regulations as
to a day's output will say to the man who is doing something
FOR HIM, "Take your time; I want this done very carefully."

Why should not EVERYBODY'S work be done carefully?

But it is not merely careful work that is involved in the
regulating of the day's work. The welfare of the nation and of
the nation's future is involved.

Go with the man who denounces labor unions for limiting the
amount of work that a good American mechanic should do in one
day, to the stable in which that man keeps his fine horses. You
can easily bring about this dialogue:

"That mare in the box stall is a beautiful horse. Is she fast?"

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