Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors]

was

them that the militia was ready to go to them on an hour's notice, but that, first, the town's authorities should use every endeavor to preserve order. When duty thus shown to them, all used every endeavor. The troops were ready, but they were not needed. Law and order were preserved, and Illinois was the only one of the large steel-manufac turing States which was free from violent outbreak.

Lowden is always definite. There is no doubt where he stands. John Walker, President of the Illinois Federation of Labor, says of him:

He has not always given us what we wanted, but he has always given us a hearing and said what he would do and what he would not do. We could always find out where he was.

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

As a Presidential candidate one can also find out where Lowden is. He said to me the other day: "Present conditions in America bring two elemental questions to the fore:

"The first is, Shall we have law and order?

"The second is, Shall we have one hundred per cent Americanism?

"These questions are intimately related. All good Americans should instantly resist every sign of disloyalty and disorder.

"In addition there are other problems before us. One is to reduce the high cost of living. Now you cannot do that until you reduce the high cost of government, for you cannot reduce taxes until you

reduce that high cost of government. It is high because of extravagance and because of overlapping work. Why not apply modern business principles to governmental methods? Here in Washington, instead of ten distinct Government departments there are very many overlapping bureaus. All this unnecessary overlapping and extravagant expendi ture should be abolished. A Federal budget on the plan of the one established in Illinois under my Governorship would mean a saving of millions of dollars a year to the Government.

"Another question is that of the League of Nations. I believe in the passage of the League of Nations Covenant with reservations. I defend the action of Senators who insisted upon reservations to the charter submitted to them. Without them the League would have become a superstate. It would have overawed and might have overcome the American Republic. When the Republican party is in power, we shall, I hope, proceed to establish this machinery for adjusting international differences. The Republican party will, I trust, have the wisdom and the courage to take up the great work of the Hague Conferences and carry on that work until the wars of the future shall be reduced to a minimum. Even as modified by the reservations, the League of Nations charter hardly takes the best form. It should be a judicial rather than a political organization. If the Treaty is ratified by us, and America becomes a party to the League, we will have an opportuuity to influence its activities and help to modify its form. In

time it may realize our aspirations for peace and justice."

Lowden has been farmer, lawyer, business man, teacher, legislator, executive. In each of these spheres he has been a success, but especially as an executive. And the significant thing about that success is the fact that in Illinois he has solved some of the very problems he would be called upon to solve as President.

In general, Lowden, one may say, stands for Roosevelt's aims through Hamiltonian methods. But a friend of mine, an Illinois farmer, thus criticises him :

The only fault I find with Lowden is that he does not go after some things in more or less the Roosevelt way. He would make a good President and give a splendid business administration. He has convictions and cannot be moved from what he knows is right, though he is always open to suggestion. He is about forty per cent conservative and otherwise progressive. He is not at all reactionary, and is liberal in many respects -quite liberal in some-but is not spectacular and does not act quite so quickly as some of the rest of us might.

With regard to domestic affairs, Lowden may very possibly be more conservative than are Wood and Hoover; certainly he is far more conservative than is Johnson. With regard to foreign affairs he is less a citizen of the world than are Hoover and Wood and more than is Johnson.

Should Lowden become the Republican nominee for the Presidency the country might expect, if he should be elected, a sane and constructive Administration.

LABOR AND THE
THE OPEN
OPEN SHOP

BY SENATOR MILES POINDEXTER

Senator Poindexter, of the State of Washington, is a Presidential candidate and therefore his views on the labor question have a

[ocr errors]

UT of the turmoil of the war many new problems have been developed for the decision of the American people. Changing conditions present new issues vitally affecting the destiny of the Nation. There are great questions in volved in the approaching Presidential campaign which are as fundamental in their effect upon the policies of the Government and the status of our people as any crisis through which we have passed, not excepting our struggle for freedom in 1776.

One great question which is pressing upon the attention of the American people is the freedom of labor and industry. By that I mean the right of a workingman to work, to support himself and his family, and that he shall not be denied employment because he belongs to a labor union, or because he does not belong to one; and the right of the employers of labor, in the industries upon which our prosperity depends, to the protection of the law against intimidation and violence in the settlement of industrial disputes.

timely value and interest. We comment upon them elsewhere in this issue.-THE EDITORS.

To this may be added, as perhaps a more important phase of the question, the interests of the general public in the rule of the people as a whole, through Constitutional means rather than, by a special class, through the coercion of physical class, through the coercion of physical force.

The war has given a powerful impetus to the movement for the so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat." It takes different forms, and is sometimes openly avowed, as in the case of the Bolsheviki of Russia and their followers in this country, and sometimes disguised, as is the movement of many labor organization leaders claiming to be conservative, who insist that all controversies affecting the wages, hours, or other conditions of labor must be settled by the labor unions themselves, and that in enforcing their claims the employees must have the right to cut off production of essential industries, to bring transportation to a standstill, and by this means deny the necessities of life to the people.

The strikes which dislocated our indus

try and delayed our productivity during the war were numbered by thousands. In the past year strikes have been in existence, varying from month to month from a hundred or so to more than three hundred in existence at the same time.

There is no doubt whatever, and it can be easily demonstrated, that the majority of these strikes have been fomented by radical agitators, who are not concerned merely with demands for increase of wages or reduction of hours-exorbitant as these demands are in many instancesbut whose avowed purpose is to "abolish the wage system." By this they mean communism.

They entertain their deluded victims among the workers with specious arguments to the effect that the wealth of the country was created by the workers, and from this they draw the silly conclusion that it is owned by the workers and that the workers have a right to seize it. Strikes and sabotage, murder and assassination, are regarded by many of these leaders as legitimate means of bring

ing about this result. They overlook the obvious fact that the accumulated wealth of the world is the result of the efforts of mankind since civilization first began, and even before that remote period. They overlook the fact that discoverers and statesmen, generals and inventors, scientists and artisans, as well as laborers, contributed in varying degree, from generation to generation, to the present wealth of the world. They overlook the obvious fact that, even so far as labor itself enters into production of the myriad forms of modern utilities and comforts, it was the labor of a thousand generations of workers, and that the share in this production of those who labor to-day is but an infinitesimal part of the whole. They overlook, further, the fact that, in great measure, if not altogether, the laborer has already been paid the wages of his labor, and that the account has so been balanced and closed.

Another absurdity in this modern application of Socialistic theories is the omission of these Anarchist agitators to tell their followers that if the doctrine of force is invoked the communists have no exclusive privilege in its use; but that, on the contrary, one man under such a system would have as much right as another to seize property and other things he desires by force of arms or strategy, by sabotage, dynamite, or assassination.

Although these union leaders may claim to oppose Bolshevism, the result of the methods they advocate by a process of terrorization, by subjecting the public to cold and hunger through the suppression of transportation and essential industries, would of course be government by the dictation of the employees, which is the same object proposed by the Communist Bolsheviki. If economic questions are to be settled in this way, it means of course the "dictatorship of the proletariat," however much this may be denied by the labor leaders who advocate these methods. Such methods mean that industry and the property invested in it will be subject to the dictates of the employees, and this will open the way to the avowed object of the Socialists-the so-called "abolishment of the wage system" and the establishment of a communistic state; and, remarkable

I

as it may seem, this result brought about in this way will have been accomplished not by law, nor by any constitutional method, but by economic coercion. Furthermore, if the course marked out by many of the unions is adhered to it will mean, in effect, unless it is successfully resisted, that laws will be passed or repealed and executive administration directed by the same method of coercion ; and thus will be established, instead of a government by the people, a government by a special class.

In 1912 this country witnessed a great political revolt against the undue influence in the government of the so-called "invisible government" of special, private, business interests. Control by employees is as abhorrent to the spirit of our institutions as control by employers. Neither capital nor labor can direct by intimidation or coercion the making and administration of the laws, or control the settlement of industrial problems in which the public have a paramount interest, if our Government is to remain that free gov ernment "of, by, for the people" of Abraham Lincoln. Neither can labor be free if a laboring man can be compelled, by being denied work, to submit himself to the control of the government of the unions. He should be free to pursue his vocation, as one of his inalienable rights and as essential to that "pursuit of happiness" of the Declaration of Independence, without discrimination, whether a member or not a member of a labor union. In the very nature of its relation to its members, a union is under the control of a few men. It is invariably controlled by an inner circle; its proceedings and elections are governed by no law and are subject to no public supervision; so if, by the methods of control of transportation and industry, unions can control the Government itself, power will be centered

in the hands of a few virtual dictators.

During the pendency of the recent Railway Bill the open demand was made by certain ones of those claiming to control labor that unless their demands were granted the railways would be "tied up so that they never would run again." Labor, as the foundation of our indusLabor, as the foundation of our industrial structure, is entitled to every con

sideration-perhaps the first consideration-at the hands of the Government, and, in general, it has received such consideration. The Railway Bill contained liberal provisions for profit-sharing and other benefits for labor. These were opposed and stricken out at the instance of officials of the American Federation of Labor, presumably because it would tend to lessen the control of these leaders over labor. A vast volume of laws for the improvement of the condition and remuneration of labor have been enacted by Congress and by most of the States. Decent living conditions and the full opportunities of citizenship for the families of labor are recognized by all as essential to the prosperity and strength of the Nation. Men must have the right to or ganize, but they cannot be allowed to dictate the enactment of laws or have the power to decide the essential disputes to which they are parties. They are entitled to a square deal," but so are employers, and especially so is the great public.

66

Private citizens are not allowed to settle their disputes by force, either applied to one another or to the public. In the interest of the peace and order of the community and that security of person and property which must be the basis of any state, disputants are required to submit their differences to an impartial court and to abide by its decision; so it must be if the perpetuity of free institutions is to prevail as to disputes between classes or groups of private individuals and in economic controversies between employers and employees.

In their own interest and in the interest of the community, they cannot be allowed to settle their differences by the application of force and violence, either directly by arms or indirectly by subjecting the community to suffering through the suppression of essential industries. Government tribunals must be established for the settlement of economic disputes, as they have already been established for the settlement of property disputes; and the parties to them, both employers and employees, must be re quired to submit to the arbitrament of the law.

[blocks in formation]

HESITATE somewhat to take up this problem of the soldier's bonus; for I am not among the fortunate class which succeeded in getting across on the other side. Yet the proposal so vitally affects me as a citizen, and incidentally as one of the prospective beneficiaries of the measure, that I feel I am somewhat justified in speaking out. I am further fortified by the fact that I do represent some millions who were forced by circumstances to serve their time in the Army on this side. That some sixteen months of " squads east' in the

[ocr errors]

BY LOUIS B. BLACHLY sandhills of California or Georgia in a fighting organization, while the real fight was thousands of miles away, had its bitterness will be backed up by a million others who ached to get into the big game. So I believe that those who served their country on this side of the water should-with the exception of the soldiers who actually got into the real fightinghave an equal interest in any plan of bonus distribution.

Why do we deserve this money? I have asked a good many and tried to figure it out for myself, and I seem to

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
[merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors]

We can never expect to get back the money sacrificed in those stirring times. Many of us had the choice of staying at home and earning high wages or accepting the greater compensation found in fighting a just cause for our country. We chose the latter course freely and without reservations. It is poor sportsmanship now to forget all those high purposes for which we entered the game and claim that we should or can be paid in dollars and cents for that service. That is impossible. The real reason that many of the soldiers claim a bonus lies deeper than this.

Then there is another class, smaller than the above, which demands compensation for the physical hardships or the mental anguish which they suffered as soldiers. For those who fought in the trenches and suffered injuries we are in the mood to grant almost anything they might ask. But for the others it is somewhat different. It is as if a group of men had volunteered to fight a fire which threatened to engulf their homes, had done good work and perhaps saved much property and many lives, and then demanded that they be paid money for the hardships they had experienced in saving their own homes. The community might out of charity aid the unfortunate, but that help could never be on the basis of a bonus for their heroism.

There is still another group-which probably outnumbers all the rest-consisting of those who say that so long as the Government has money which is going to be passed around, they want their share. And they are absolutely right. If there is one thing which a fellow learned in the Army-if he had not already learned the lesson-it is that every man must look out for himself. If he does not grab the biggest piece of pie at the mess-table, somebody else will. It is this class which makes the bonus proposal in the slightest degree possible. There is a large enough class of self-interested propagandists to keep the matter actively before the public until it becomes a common feeling that some such money is going to be "divvied up." Then those who mean to get their share of the booty come to the rescue and create enough pressure to put the thing over. That tendency is already beginning to make itself felt. The papers are telling of certain sections which are gradually swinging around to an indorsement of the bonus plan. But here let it be noted that if this class simply thought the thing out and realized the grave consequences involved they would actively oppose such a measure. The success or failure of any bonus scheme rests upon the attitude of this large group.

The last group-or perhaps it should be the first is composed of those who are hard up or just plain "broke." This class is the one which is really justified in demanding some immediate action. So far the Government has done mighty little for them. It has, if anything, actually worked against their welfare. The only means which existed to relieve the situation on demobilization—the employ

ment service-was abolished by Congressional action, or rather inaction. And the Government put nothing in its place. Instead, the ex-soldiers have been largely left to shift for themselves as best they might. The way these men feel is pretty might. The way these men feel is pretty well expressed in a recent letter to the New York "Times" by an ex-Buck." He says:

66

"I don't believe that any ex-service man expected any other recompense than his regular pay and the promised $60, but the Government's attitude of Now I'm through with you the devil with you,' has made most of us (at least I know it is so in my case) ready to grab whatever we can get out of it."

Not only has the Government failed to retain the machinery by which these soldiers could obtain profitable employment, but it has utterly failed to undertake any substantial measures to provide work for the soldier, which he must have or fall back on begging-and the latter is just what he is doing now in demanding the bonus. But don't blame the soldier.

Where are all those great schemes of reconstruction -- the road-building, the great public improvements, which were promised as a means for the returned soldiers to earn a living? They have been locked away into political cold storage while Congressmen hunt the elusive Bolsheviki or study their political maps for the spring campaign.

But something has been happening of late which has brought the politicians scurrying back from their hunting and geographical studies. A great big class of American voters has begun to register its opinion of the intolerable delay in providing for reconstruction. Disappointed in getting action on just and highly commendable measures for relief, they have turned to demand immediate action. And with this an election year, who dare refuse? If Congress has been unable to think out what should be done, there are others who have been thinking. The demands which many ex-soldiers are making are clear enough. What they want are bonuses-either in the form of cash, homes, or land. But what the most demand now is cash. This demand has become so insistent and the feeling is so widespread that such a bonus is going to be granted by Congress always timorous and obliging in an election year-that it is worth while going into the principles involved and the indirect effects of the granting of the stupendous sum which will be necessary.

First, we might as well strip for once and all the camouflage from this word bonus-already somewhat discredited and rechristened by its foster parents by the euphonious term euphonious term "adjusted compensation." We should understand and call this proposed appropriation by its right name, not by any aliases. It is the old pension, no more, no less, familiar enoughthe pension which has drained the country for half a century. For a pension is a payment made after a service has already been paid for. It is money which is not

paid as earnings, but as a benevolence. The characterization may seem harsh, but it is an accurate description of the proposed bonus. It may be objected that this is a bonus which is paid only once, that it will not be demanded again, while a pension is an annual payment. But if we heed that excuse we are flying in the face of all that history has to teach us. It is only necessary to recall that this is the second bonus since the armistice. The past shows clearly enough that once such a principle is granted the demands become only more insistent. The time to check such a wholesale and permanent drain upon the public treasury is at the outset, before entry is made. For it seems that we face one of two alternatives if this bonus proposal succeeds: either the outcome upon our credit and financial welfare will be so disastrous that we will never repeat the experiment, or, if we do weather through, the demand for another and larger bonus will outdo the present

pressure.

Like our Civil War pensions, the proposed plan violates the essential characteristics of a bona-fide bonus scheme. Let us compare, for example, the proposed plan with that widely adopted in industrial concerns. Industrial pensions have two fundamental characteristics: first, they are based on many years of service; and, second, they are paid only to those who are disabled or who are retiring on account of old age. The years of service required are usually ten to twenty; the ages at which the payments usually begin are from sixty to seventy. What about the pensions suggested for the soldiers of the late war? The term of service required is from two months to two years; the age at which payment is made is from twenty to thirty-five. Service measured in years against service measured in months; infirm old men against young men in the height of their productive power. Merely to state the proposals is to show how fundamentally the soldiers' pensions violate sound pension practice.

But there is another phase of the matter. An industrial worker does not owe allegiance to the firm for which he works. The employee may quit or the employer may discharge him at any time. The employee has the privilege of demanding all he can wring from his employer. The reverse is true of the citizen of a state. As the service to his country is obligatory, his right to demand full recompense has less basis. A man owes to his country a certain loyalty which in its very nature can have no price. To put a price upon that loyalty in time of war verges on treason itself. It may well be asked whether a like attitude in times of peace does not bear a similar taint. At the outbreak of the war the Government demanded and received every man's unstinted support without any obligation to render full recompense for his services. And no red-blooded man held back, though all he possessed-even life itselfwas demanded. I cannot but feel humiliated that I am one of those who ask a bonus for the mere sacrifice of time and

personal comfort while those thousands who gave their very lives lie sleeping under the white crosses in France. Nor do I feel such an attitude less keenly when I think of those who still linger in our hospitals or who, once more in "civies," hobble on crutch or with canepathetic witnesses of the spirit which did not count the cost when the country's safety and ideals were in peril. I am loth to believe that men made of such stuff will be found begging for recompense unless they face genuine need.

It appears, rather, that we are facing another campaign like that which foisted the enormous Civil War pension onto the country. Any one who will take the pains to follow the gigantic lobby which through the years forced the issue in Congress until the final achievement of the "dollar a day" pensions will be struck by its similarity to the pressure to-day upon our lawmakers. Fully organized, and pushing its sentimental advantage to the limit through its National newspaper as well as through local pressure, this great organization finally built up the same feeling which already seems to pervade our recent soldiers-the idea that so long as the public purse was about to be rifled, they also wanted a hand in the game. The slow but extensive development of this sinister viewpoint and its long train of evil consequences should not be lost sight of by those who to-day are unwittingly following the same road.

Surely we have not forgotten the feeling of gratification which the country experienced when, after the outbreak of the late war, legislation was passed which aimed to make unnecessary another pension system such as we had learned to dread. This legislation provided for compensation for those wounded in battle and insurance for the dependents of those who lost their lives. Since the cessation of hostilities the awards and terms have been made more liberal. In the clarified atmosphere which swept self-interest and selfishness out of our spirits then we recognized truly that the task before us could not be met by the old methods. A Nation mobilized-universal military service! A system of pensions for this host was inconceivable. We would grant aid, therefore, only to those whose dependents were left without support or to those whose earning powers were impaired in the supreme conflict. That this was a sound principle had been recognized for years, and it now found concrete expression. Is it possible that we have again become so befogged with short-sighted selfishness that we are going back upon this principle? If we do, what will it involve? We ought to face the matter frankly.

Let us take the figure given by the strongest supporters of the proposed bonus measure-$2,000,000,000.

The effect of this expenditure upon our economic system has already been pretty well aired by financial authorities. It is said by those most closely in touch with our financial machinery that the

raising of this stupendous sum at this time would seriously impair our whole credit structure. This, in itself, should be sufficient argument to give pause to the insistent advocates of cash bonuses. But the indirect effects, while less spectacular, may be even more far-reaching and injurious to the country.

Again, as Presidential elections loom in the not distant future, the old cry of economy goes up. But no American needs further argument to be convinced that we need economy in the Government. It is the application of this principle which hurts.

To-day the recently appointed Secretary of Agriculture is pointing out to the country that false economy in certain lines threatens to impair the effectiveness of many of the most vital phases of agricultural work. The fight against the wheat rust, the cotton-boll weevil, hog cholera-all these are to suffer as the result of "economy." How will the expenditure of two billion dollars for bonuses affect this? It will mean almost inevitably that legitimate expenditures in the Agricultural Department which save for the Nation millions of dollars will be cut even more deeply. But that is not all. The insistent demand for economy, coupled with the enormous extra expenses of providing bonuses, will result in curtailing needed expenditures all along the line.

We have recently passed acts providing for vocational education and for Federal aid for construction of roads. This immensely valuable work will be dwarfed and curtailed. The threat at our institutions by ignorant and illiterate persons, both alien and foreign, is about to be met by an Americanization bill appropriating Federal aid for teaching the English language. This measure must be sacrificed. We are developing in our various Federal departments service of untold value to the country: protection of the public health, increase in educa tion, upon which the whole structure of democracy is reared, development of internal transportation, protection and utilization of our National forests, extension of agricultural experiment and mine safety work-all these must be stunted and limited in their usefulness as an indirect result of the proposed gigantic bonus issue. That this will be the almost inevitable outcome those associated with Governmental affairs know too well.

Compare the expenditure of this great sum with an equal expenditure in other directions. The starving children of Europe and Asia Minor cry out for food. We ignore the. plea for some hundred million dollars in loans to save them from starvation, and at the same time talk lightly of giving outright twenty times that sum in pensions to able-bodied young men. Education in the United States is being forced into a critical position for lack of funds; yet we ignore this threat at the country's welfare and propose commencing a pension system for a very considerable proportion of all able-bodied males between the ages of twenty and thirty-five years of age!

One cannot but think of what such an amount would do toward endowing universities which are now pleading for funds or toward establishing some protective system for the old and infirm or those who are the innocent victims of our industrial system. In the last month there was a widely advertised case in New York of a widow who offered her baby for sale for $1,000, because the State could not give her the necessary aid so that she could care for it herself. With the price of that child she hoped to keep her other children from starvation or the poorhouse. What would even a fraction of the proposed bonus grant do to assure a living to unknown thousands of other women and children in poverty like hers? Some day we shall move to save these, but that action is put off into the more distant future by the adoption of this pension plan. So long as we are compelled to economize and pay interest on enormous National debts, just so long will measures of public welfare be retarded. Not upon this alone, but upon other progressive measures the blighting effect of such type of expenditures will extend on and into the years to come. This is the grave and sinister fact which should make us pause and consider our stand.

We need right now a revival of that spirit among ex-soldiers which stirred their hearts and moved them to swift action in 1917. We need a few hundred thousand volunteers who now, as then, are willing to move to the defense of the principles which must guide the hearts and actions of those who put the welfare of their country above personal gain and comfort. They should act instantly and decisively to check this invasion of a common enemy which, once established, is not likely to be driven out again.

But we should not forget that the demand of the ex-soldiers has a sound basis -even though the remedy which they propose is fraught with such grave consequences. If pensions are not given, there must be some measures enacted in their stead. The rank and file ask only a "fair shake," a reasonable chance to make up for part of the time they lost. But they feel that their interests and their needs have been ignored too long. They would like to ask our lawmakers certain questions and they want these question answered.

What happened to the proposal of ex Secretary Lane for reclamation and settle ment of land by returning soldiers? Wha has happened to the employment servic through which the Government-whic took the soldier from his job-shoulhave replaced him? What has happene to business reconstruction, which shoul have been aided by ratification of th Treaty, or to those well-laid plans fo renewed construction of highways an other public improvements which were t have given the soldiers a chance to ear their living? If we can get Congress answer these questions to our satisfactio we will not have to beg the Governme for a "hand-out."

[graphic]
« PredošláPokračovať »