Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers
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Rich Owner--"Yes, very fast. I value her more highly than any
horse I have. "
"How many miles do you drive her every day?"
"Oh, I don't drive her EVERY day. I drive her one day, and
have her jogged quietly the next. When I do drive her, I jog her
for two or three miles to warm her up, then speed her a mile or
two, and then take her home. She covers perhaps six or seven
miles in an entire day's work."
"But you COULD drive her twenty-five miles, couldn't you, and
drive her as far as that EVERY day?"
"Oh, yes, I COULD, of course, if I was only thinking of using
her up and getting all I could out of her now. But, you see, I
mean to use her for a brood-mare; I expect to get some splendid
colts from her, and I don't want to wear out her vitality. I
might get a little more fun or a little more work out of her just
now, BUT I WOULD LOSE IN THE LONG RUN." ----
Now, gentlemen, the labor union rule limiting a day's work simply
considers the workingman as that imaginary rich person considers
his beautiful horse.
And the feeling of the labor unions should be shared by the
entire country.
The highly skilled American mechanic is one of the chief assets
of this country; the intelligent, scientific, up-to-date American
farmer is another highly important asset. These two classes of
citizens ARE THE UNITED STATES. Between them they are more
important than all the rest of the nation put together.
AND YET THEY ARE NOT AS IMPORTANT AS THEIR CHILDREN.
The workingman of to-day is the father of the future.
The trouble with us is that the employer, unlike the owner of the
fine horses, has no interest in that workingman's future or in
his future family.
He employs and treats the workingman as the casual heartless
customer would treat that fine horse if it were rented by the day
at a livery stable.
There is much to be said, no doubt, on the side of harassed
employers, many of whom are fair-minded men, and many of whom
are put to unjust annoyance by some of the labor unions'
mistakes.
But, first of all, the employer must realize the RIGHTS and
the EQUALITY of his workmen. And as a patriotic citizen he must
realize that the welfare of the future is in the health and
vitality of parents to-day.
By limiting the amount of work which they do in one day our
mechanics enable themselves to preserve some of their vitality
for mental work, for educating talks with their children. THEY
GIVE TO THEIR CHILDREN THE VITALITY WHICH THE SWEATSHOP SLAVE CAN
NEVER GIVE.
What are our laws against sweatshops but laws acknowledging the
justice of regulating the amount of the day's work?
And why do we refuse to permit unions to do for themselves what
we do on a sentimental, philanthropic, haphazard basis, through
our "sweatshop laws," for the miserable, unorganized workers of
the slums?
TO THE MERCHANTS
PLEASE LISTEN PATIENTLY TO A DISCUSSION OF THE LABOR UNION FROM
YOUR POINT OF VIEW.
We invite the merchants to consider the question of unions and of
high wages from THEIR OWN point of view.
If we err in our statements or conclusions we shall be glad to
print replies and criticisms from responsible merchants over
their own signatures.
This we maintain: THAT IN PROMOTING THE WELFARE AND INCREASING
THE WAGES OF THE GREAT BODY OF WORKINGMEN, WE PROMOTE THE WELFARE
AND INCREASE THE PROSPERITY OF ALL LEGITIMATE MERCHANTS AND
BUSINESS MEN.
The unions make mistakes. The employers make mistakes. The
unions are often unreasonable. The employers are unreasonable
sometimes.
No doubt in America the workingman is more exacting and more
highly paid than anywhere else.
But in America, also, the merchant is more quickly and numerously
successful than anywhere else. ----
As a subject for our text to-day we shall take the street-car
lines--surface, underground or elevated--of any great American
city.
The success of every street-car system is made BY ALL THE
INHABITANTS OF THE CITY. Every woman who brings a baby into the
world in a great city adds so much value to the stock of that
city's street railroads. She increases the gross income of that
railroad by about three dollars and sixty-five cents a year with
each child to which she gives birth.
Therefore the street railroad should properly serve the public
that gives the road its value.
Next in importance to the traveling public come the human beings
that work on the street railroad--the conductors, motormen,
gatemen, gripmen, engineers, etc.
This newspaper fights constantly to improve within reason the pay
and the hours of work of the street railroad employes.
This we do for the sake of the employes themselves, and for no
other reason. We demand better pay for the men that they may
lead decent American lives, feeding and clothing their wives and
children, and educating their children properly. We demand short
hours for them, that they may live part of the twenty-four hours
WITH their families, knowing their own children and bringing a
little pleasure and companionship into the lives of their patient
wives.
We are proud of the fact that we have helped in a small way to
increase the prosperity and happiness of many tens of thousands
of honest families, that we have increased the OPPORTUNITIES of
many thousands of children.
We want the merchants to remember that, while we have thus
striven to protect those masses of the people whom we represent
and whose ADVOCATE we are, we have also advanced enormously,
although without premeditation, the fortune and quick success of
every capable and legitimate merchant.
Who owns the stock in the street railroads? A few individuals--a
Widener, an Elkins, a Yerkes, a Whitney, or some other energetic
private individual.
One street railroad system, let us say, employs ten thousand men.
They struggle to add one dollar per day to their pay. We help
them with moral support and publicity, and they succeed. TEN
THOUSAND FAMILIES have each ONE DOLLAR a day more to spend, or
ten thousand dollars a day in all.
What becomes of that ten thousand dollars added daily to the
living-money of ten thousand families?
EVERY DOLLAR OF IT GOES INTO THE HANDS OF THE MERCHANT, THE
LANDLORD, OR THE SAVINGS BANK.
If the men had not got that increase in wages, what would have
become of that ten thousand dollars daily, or $3,650,000 A YEAR?
Would it have gone to the merchants of the great cities? Would
it have gone to build up thousands of comfortable little homes in
all the suburbs of the great towns? Would it have enabled
thousands of American boys and girls to stay in school instead of
going in their infancy to the mills and factories?
No!
If that money were not distributed among the people in the shape
of good American wages for good American work, it would go to
build big race tracks, where thieves and gamblers are
manufactured. It would go to buying foolish bogus antiquities
that no man needs. It would go to building ridiculous and
uncalled-for palaces where human mushrooms without a sense of
humor imitate in their idleness the active types of the past.
----
When this newspaper adds to the payroll of a great corporation,
it adds to the happiness of a great many families; and therein
lie its pride and its excuse for being. And at the same time
this increase in the payroll of the Trust or the monopolizer of
public privileges means an increase in the income, the
prosperity, the legitimate reward of the enterprising merchant,
builder and general business man.
We do not lack criticism from well-meaning friends who conduct
great stores or other business enterprises. We appreciate all
criticisms and suggestions. We offer a suggestion in return:
Let the builder who dislikes unions GO TO CHINA and build his
apartment houses. He will find patient workmen at ten cents a
day. He will find laws that suppress the unions, and laws that
suppress the newspaper which takes the side of the poor.
He will find a non-union Utopia.
But he will not find tenants for his buildings, because in a
land where men don't get high wages they can't pay high rents,
and when the few Li Hung Changs have built their palaces the
building boom is over.
Let the great merchant who deplores unions start a DEPARTMENT
STORE IN CHINA.
He will never see a walking delegate; he will never be bothered
by the dark cloud of unionism.
He will find a perfect heaven in the way of low wages.
BUT HE WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SELL GOODS.
His department store will dwindle into a store for selling rice,
and while his velvets, silks, hats and muslins moulder he will
get very sick of a hundred million women who don't spend forty
cents in a year.
In the land where men are not well paid THEY CAN'T SPEND MONEY.
The best friend of the American merchant, builder, lawyer,
doctor, property owner, banker and general business man is the
individual or the newspaper that helps the people to get high
wages, AND THUS GIVES THEM MONEY TO SPEND.
WHAT ABOUT THE CHINESE, KIND SIR?
A prosperous and old New York merchant assures a conference of
workingmen that England's great strikes have caused that country
to lose its leadership in exports of machinery.
If England's wonderful system of trades unionism has hurt its
exports of machinery, if abundance of very cheap slave labor
means great industrial superiority, we beg to ask this question:
WHY IS NOT CHINA THE GREAT EXPORTING COUNTRY OF THE WORLD?
There are scores of millions of men in China glad to work for a
few pennies per day.
There are no labor unions in China, and in some districts the
employer can have his workmen beheaded for demanding an increase
of pay. If the venerable old New York merchant is right, China
ought to be certainly a marvellously successful country
industrially.
As a matter of fact, China is dead, and there is no better proof
of her complete deadness than the fact that among all her
millions of coolies there is not enough spirit for the formation
of a labor union.
The energy of the British workman established England's
industrial greatness and fought for and won the great
trades-union system which the workmen of this country are
developing so ably. ----
Suppose it were true that trades unionism, with its higher wages
and shorter hours, decreases exports--what of it?
Is it not more important to have ten million workmen well paid,
with reasonable leisure and decent lives, than to have a handful
of iron masters and coal-mine owners piling up millions of pounds
and producing sons like the famous "Jubilee Juggins"?
Wouldn't it be better for China if her several hundred millions
of citizens were well paid, well fed and well educated, even
though Li Hung Chang and the other prosperous viceroys should all
be paid a little less money, and own fewer square miles of rice
fields and tea plants? ----
In Huxley's admirable biography, written by his son, you may read
of a 'longshoreman who, thanks to reasonably short hours of work
and a little leisure, took up the study of scientific subjects.
He was aided by Huxley, who lent him a microscope, and ultimately
this common 'longshoreman's researches were of real value to the
scientific world.
Isn't it well to have a trades-union system which curbs the
avariciousness of employers and gives workmen a chance to
develop the best that is in them?
Isn't it better for England to have that 'longshoreman develop
into a scientist than to let some man who employs him make an
extra shilling a day out of his labor, even though it should add
a little to the exports of England? ----
A country's greatness depends on the quality of the men that live
in the country, not on goods manufactured to sell to outside
nations.
Rome was doing little exporting when she ruled the world.
She was breeding men, independent and brave, who could bring the
products of the world to her.
She did not need to worry about exports, nor does any other
country need to worry about them.
The thing to worry about is the condition of your citizens, the
education of children, the decent treatment of women, the
equality of laws.
Other things take care of themselves.
150 AGAINST 150,000--WE FAVOR THE 150,000
It should not take long to convince a man fit to live in a
republic that public welfare demands the support of Union Labor.
No better proof of that could be asked than a spectacle presented
in Chicago.
ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY contractors have practically locked out ONE
HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND men.
The contractors want bigger profits--to be got through
underpaying and overworking their employes.
The men want better pay and shorter hours. ----
Leave out sentiment if you choose. Ignore the fact that on one
side the few who enjoy everything are industriously squeezing the
many who have little enjoyment.
Look at things purely from the standpoint of benefit to the
nation and the nation's future.
If the hundred and fifty win, they will have a little more money.
Their wives and daughters will dress a little more grotesquely.
Their families will be able to go abroad oftener and stay longer.
Their heirs will be able to make more complete idiots of
themselves--and that is all. Personally we should like to see
all contractors' families prosperous--all American families
prosperous. No man's wife or daughter can be too happy to suit
us, provided things more important be not neglected. ----
If Union Labor wins, ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND families
will be able to lead at least decent American workingmen's lives.
ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND wives will be able to dress
their children comfortably and to dress themselves respectably.
ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND families of children will be
brought up more nearly as American children ought to be.
Which is more important:
THE WELFARE OF 150 CONTRACTORS' FAMILIES? (They will have
enough anyhow.)
Or THE WELFARE OF 150,000 WORKINGMEN'S FAMILIES? (They will
have only a decent living at best.)
Perhaps you have drifted away from the early American idea, and
refuse to admit that one family is as good as another. It may
seem anarchistic to suggest that the workingman's wife, who acts
as wife, mother, cook, washwoman, nurse and housekeeper, is as
good as the lady who has less to attend to.
But admitting--which we don't--that one hundred and fifty
contractors' families are more important than one hundred and
fifty workingmen's families, surely all will agree that ONE
HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND of the alleged inferiors ought to
offset the 150 alleged superiors. ----
If the contractors win, the Paris dressmakers will be richer, and
a few families will have a little added to what they do not
really need.
If the workingmen win, the future of hundreds of thousands of
men, women and children will be made brighter, and the
citizenship of the future made stronger by men better fed, better
clothed and better educated. ----
This newspaper hopes for labor union victory and means to help it
along, BECAUSE THE PUBLIC WELFARE DEMANDS IT.
TO-DAY'S WORLD-STRUGGLE
Far off in the distance shines the goal of present human
ambition.
It is a shining, golden light. Toward that light the millions
struggle, trampling each other, sacrificing everything in the
harsh fight for the dollar.
Here and there a preacher thunders, here and there a philosopher
proses against the money struggle. But they might as well
whisper at the brink of Niagara. And often the preacher changes
his thundering when a RICH church calls him, often the
philosopher grasps the first chance to forget philosophy in Wall
Street.
The men admired to-day are the men who have made millions--some
are admired because they find excitement in giving the millions
away, others because they silently pile more millions upon the
others already gained.
"Society," the class devoted to pleasure, consists now, in
America, of those who have much money.
Literary success depends upon the money which the writer
accumulates.
The man talked about is he who has SOLD a hundred thousand
books.
The rich boy at school is followed by toadies. In college he
learns contempt for human nature from the sycophancy of others.
"Representatives" of the People may be found dogging the
footsteps of those who need to buy laws, or to steal the people's
rights. ----
It is a fierce and remorseless climb up the steep road to wealth.
There are many corpses, many crimes, many broken hearts, haggard
faces and bitter disappointments on that road.
The man with the "Good-money-making idea" struggles on with it
over the bodies of suicides and of those who have fallen in
despair.
At the bottom of the road the murderer plies his trade with knife
or poison--to make money. And the murderer who has tried for
MUCH money calls forth special interest and special
privileges, special new trials, special newspaper headings.
At the top of the road to wealth, another, more intelligent
class, work with equally remorseless energy. They murder no
individual. But they rob entire classes of society.
They tax others to fatten their pockets--they add to the cost of
food that children eat--they coin human life into cash--smoothly
and nicely, using law-makers as tools. Envy and admiration are
theirs--such admiration as the retail murderer can never earn.
----
The struggle for money is the struggle of THE WHOLE WORLD to-day.
And of the money-making movement, as of ALL WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENTS,
there is a side that is good and necessary.
Divine wisdom guides the world, and the human race, working out
its destiny in seeming blindness, is not allowed to wander from
the track of actual progress.
The money-making mania is one phase of human advancement.
This is the age of industrial progress. Money is simply the
means of perfecting industry. It is human labor condensed and
put into compact, transferable shape.
The man with the hundred millions can build the great railroad
across the continent. There is no more important work now than
the building of that road.
The man with the thousand millions can control the great oil
trust and a dozen other trusts. He taxes the people--but his
hundreds of millions do an important and necessary work.
It is well for us all that such a man has sacrificed health,
digestion, happiness and all idea of self-indulgence to the
accumulation of a vast industrial army of dollars.
The scramble for money, looked at without understanding, is a
horrid sight. But horrid also is the sight of a battle that
frees slaves.
When the battle of money shall end, the score will be on the
right side of humanity's ledger.
A few forgotten billionaires will have struggled and died. Some
millions of men will have died disappointed.
But industry will have been brought to perfection. Universities,
libraries and other benefactions will abound, pleading for
recognition of the money-making dyspeptics. Human ingenuity will
have contrived some means for freeing men's minds from the dread
of destitution.
The money struggle will have ended and humanity will be much
better off, much further advanced--as it is at the end of all
great and painful struggles.
WHITE-RABBIT MILLIONAIRES AND OTHER THINGS
The most wonderful thing in America is--what do you think? It is
the absolute nullity of the man of many millions. It is the
vapid colorlessness, the dull inactivity, the total lack of
imagination among men whose power is unlimited. What
possibilities are spread out before the man who by signing his
name could set to work in any direction a million of his fellow
men! The world stands ready to obey his orders; every law says
that he shall have whatever he demands. Any conception born in
his brain can become reality as soon as conceived. But there is
no conception there.
These comments are written, not to scold, or complain, or
suggest, but simply to express wonder.
What man of millions does anything that a white rabbit does not
do?
One man--of a hundred millions at least--has become recently very
conspicuous among his golden fellows.
How?
By undertaking a scheme to irrigate the desert of Sahara and give
millions of fertile acres to humanity?
No.
By calling together, at his expense, the ablest thinkers of the
world to discuss and to solve, if possible, the social questions
that so deeply concern the millionaire's future?
No.
By seeking, through study and experiment, to abolish child-labor,
to promote public education, to encourage science art or American
inventiveness?
No.
This millionaire, much discussed because of his piquant
originality, has put on a dress coat with two pointed tails
behind, and, geared in a white shirt front and white tie, with
silk socks highly colored and patent leather shoes, this splendid
American product has led a cotillon and has led a cakewalk.
Grand, splendid, magnificent, inspiring, isn't it?
What lop-eared, mild-eyed rabbit dancing in a clover field with a
full paunch need fear comparison with this man of millions?
Old Jacques Coeur, of France, giving his fleets to his
country--there was a man of millions and imagination combined.
But his kind has died out, and in his place we have a herd of
overfed, sleek, timorous, hopping white rabbits, hoarding their
piles of gold, shivering at the mention of change or innovation,
asking only for peaceful possession, as free from thought as
the fat oyster in his bed.
What wonderful things, what useful things, what dangerous things
could these all-powerful men do?
What could they not do? They DO nothing.
NO HAPPINESS SAVE IN MENTAL AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY.
Bresci, who murdered the Italian King, is sentenced to solitary
confinement for life. While you read this he sits on a narrow
plank in a cell not much bigger than a sleeping-car section.
If you talk to any friend about Bresci--and especially if you
mention the subject to any young man inclined to be idle--call
attention to this point. You can amplify what must be presented
briefly here.
Bresci's imprisonment is torture--why?
Because it sentences him to DO NOTHING.
Every man put on this earth is put here for a purpose. He is put
here to work, to struggle, to interest himself in his fellows, to
share the pleasures and disappointments of others. The wise laws
ruling the universe fill us with a DESIRE to do that which we
were meant to do. It is intended that we should be active here,
and, therefore, although we often fail to realize it, our
happiness lies in activity.
Bresci is to be tortured beyond the power of imagination because
he will be forbidden to follow nature's law. He will be
forbidden to fulfill man's destiny here. His brain, his muscles,
his sentiments must lie idle until death or insanity shall
come to relieve him. ----
Bresci will live on bread and water--but it is not the bread and
water that will make his life worse than death. He could be
happy on such simple fare if his mind had work to do. Many a man
has done his good work and enjoyed life's greatest pleasures
while suffering mere hunger or poor fare.
Many men would be happier if they could see Bresci, the murderer,
forced into that idleness which is sometimes ignorantly desired.
In his prison Bresci is protected from the sun and the rain and
the cold. He can sleep as many hours as he likes. No duns can
trouble him. He pays no rent. There is absolutely nothing that
he MUST do. But there is absolutely nothing that he CAN do.
The saddest slave in Morocco toiling under the heaviest load
would win Bresci's gratitude if only he would let Bresci carry
that load.
The most desperate man, harassed by cares of all kinds, would
seem blissfully happy in Bresci's eyes, for he has at least full
play for his sentiments, for his activities. ----
To punish Ravaillac's attack on the life of the French King, long
ago, they tried ingenious devices. They broke him on the wheel.
They tortured him slowly. Finally they poured melted lead
into his stomach through his navel. It was a hard death.
But they did not punish Ravaillac as severely as Bresci is to be
punished.
The minutes, the hours, the weeks, months and years will drag
along.
Idleness, idleness, idleness. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
No human smile or voice to measure time.
Sleep, bread and water; sleep, bread and water.
Gradually madness will come and bring relief.
Be glad that you are active, you who work willingly.
And you young man who rebel against labor and long for the chance
to do nothing, study Bresci's case and take up your load gladly.
The decree condemning us to earn our bread in the sweat of our
brow was merciful, not stern. For that same power which
sentences all to work also causes happiness to be found in work
alone.
THE OWNER OF A GOLDEN MOUNTAIN
An old man sits at the end of his life, with money piled up on
all sides of him. Years ago he was working hard. All his
ability was strained to the utmost pushing back those who strove
to pass him on the road up the golden mountain.
He enjoyed the conflict, he enjoyed the sight of beaten rivals.
His delight was in work, in ACQUISITION. His growing surplus
added new zest to his life. He pitied "the poor fool" who wasted
time at anything save money-making.
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