William Z. Foster
The Great Steel Strike and Its Lessons
THE POINT OF VIEW—ARE THE TRADE UNIONS REVOLUTIONARY —CAMOUFLAGE IN SOCIAL WARS—RUINOUS DUAL UNIONISM—RADICALS SHOULD STRENGTHEN TRADE UNIONS—THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE—TOM MANN’S WORK
For those progressives who will look upon the steel campaign from an evolutionary standpoint—that is by a comparison with past experiences—it will stand out in its true light as marking a great advance in trade-union methods and practices. It is true that the unions in the campaign made many mistakes, quarreled seriously among themselves, and put forth only a fraction of their real strength; but when one considers that they substituted a group of twenty-four unions for individual action in other campaigns; established a standard initiation fee instead of the multitude that existed before; adopted modern methods of organizing in place of the antiquated system previously prevailing; organized a joint commissariat, carried on a successful organizing campaign and waged a great strike together, one must admit that a tremendous stride forward has been made. The conclusion is bound to be optimistic and full of enthusiasm for the future.
But unfortunately there are large bodies of progressives who do not judge from the evolutionary viewpoint when it comes to trade unionism. These range all the way from the mildest liberals and friends of Labor to the most extreme I. W. W.’s. They form an influential group. Theirs is the idealistic method; more or less clearly, these elements hold in their mind’s eye a smooth-running, intelligent, imaginary “one big union.” This they use as an inelastic criterion by which to judge the trade unions. And the natural result is that, even in such cases as the steel campaign, the unions cut a sorry figure. Their weaknesses are unduly emphasized; their progressive innovations lose their import and seem but make-shift imitations of the real thing. The conclusions are necessarily pessimistic. The true significance of the epoch-making movement is lost. This viewpoint is so general and its consequences so far-reaching and detrimental, not only to the steel unions but to the whole labor movement, that perhaps a discussion of it may not be amiss at this point.
For many years radicals in this country have almost universally maintained that the trade unions are fundamentally non-revolutionary; that they have no real quarrel with capitalism, but are seeking merely to modify its harshness through a policy of mild reform. They have been pictured as lacking both the intelligence to want industrial freedom and the courage to demand it. And so often have these ideas been repeated, so slight has been the inquiry into their soundness, that they have come to be accepted in a large degree by virtually the entire left wing of the labor movement. To these ideas, more than anything else, is due the current idealistic labor pessimism, the unsympathetic attitude toward, and general lack of understanding of, the trade unions.
Yet their falsity is readily apparent when one takes into consideration the real situation. It is an indisputable fact that the trade unions always act upon the policy of taking all they can get from their exploiters. They even overreach themselves sometimes, as a thousand lost strikes eloquently testify. Their program is directly anti-capitalistic. But let me quote from a booklet, written by myself several years ago, entitled, “Trade Unionism; The Road To Freedom,” page 18:
It is idle to say that the trade unions will rest content with anything short of actual emancipation. For they are as insatiable as the veriest so-called revolutionary unions. In the measure that their strength increases, so do their demands. They have sent wages up: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 dollars per day, and hours down: 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, per day with all kinds of other concessions sandwiched in between. And now they are more radical in their demands than ever before in their history. Permanently satisfied trade unions under capitalism would be the eighth wonder of the world, outrivalling in interest the famous hanging gardens of Babylon. They would be impossible. With its growing power, Organized Labor will go on winning greater and greater concessions, regardless of how profound they may be. It is purest assumption to state that the trade unions would balk at ending the wages system.
So far as the tendency of their demands is concerned, there can be no question about that to anyone who will look at them squarely; the trade unions may be depended upon always to check exploitation through the wages system as far as their power enables them. The big question is whether or not they will be able to develop enough power to stop this exploitation altogether. As for me, I am confident that they will. In every country they are constantly adding to and solidifying their ranks; building ever more gigantic and militant combinations and throwing them athwart the exploiter’s path. It is safe to say that if they cannot finally stop him it will be because it does not lie within the realms of possibility for the working class to produce a sufficiently powerful organization.
Why, then, have these strongly anti-capitalistic qualities been so long and generally ignored and the trade unions considered merely as palliative bodies? In my opinion it is because they, like various other aggressive social movements, have more or less instinctively surrounded themselves with a sort of camouflage or protective coloring, designed to disguise the movement and thus to pacify and disarm the opposition. This is the function of such expressions as, “A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work,” “The interests of Capital and Labor are identical,” etc. In actual practice little or no attention is paid to them. They are for foreign consumption. The fact that those who utter them may actually believe what they say does not change the situation a particle. Most movements are blind to their own goals anyway. The important thing is the real trend of the movement, which is indisputably as I have stated above, on the one hand constantly expanding organization, and on the other constantly increasing demands. The trade unions will not become anti-capitalistic through the conversion of their members to a certain point of view or by the adoption of certain preambles; they are that by their very makeup and methods. The most that can be done is to clarify their aims and intensify their efforts towards freedom.
If the trade unions instinctively throw dust in the eyes of their enemies, they do it for an altogether worthy purpose, the elevation of the standard of well-being for the mass of the people. In the case of the capitalist class we see the same principle applied to an utterly vicious end. The whole trend of the great employing interests is to set up an oligarchy of wealthy parasites, neither toiling nor spinning, yet for whom the whole body of workers would be compelled to labor in degradation and poverty. And if unopposed, they would not only bring about this condition, but in so doing would rob the people of every right they have—free speech, free press, free assemblage, legislative representation, trial by jury, and all the rest. But do they openly avow their purpose? Most assuredly not, for they know that powerful though they are they would be swept away by a wave of popular opposition. Therefore, through their newspapers and innumerable other propaganda agencies, they proceed to cover up their nefarious schemes of exploitation and oppression with hypocritical cloaks of patriotism, religion, benevolence, and the like. Their practice is one thing, their preaching something entirely different. Thus we have Garys and Rockefellers actually enslaving their workers by the most brutal methods and at the same time seeking to convince the public that what they are trying to do is to protect these workers from union domination, to preserve to them their sacred right to work for whomever they please, etc. Men such as these are knifing America and doing it in the name of 100 per cent. Americanism. They are social camouflagers par excellence.
The question may be pertinently asked, why, if camouflage is such a potent weapon in social as well as military warfare, should the true nature and tendency of the trade unions be pointed out, thus stripping the movement of its philosophic protection and leaving it bare before its enemies? The answer is that the camouflage works both ways; it deceives friends as well as enemies. It has thus to a great extent cost the unions the support of the whole left wing of the labor movement. Its advantages are outweighed by its disadvantages.
In what I have called the left wing of the movement there are large and ever-increasing numbers of workers and sympathizers who refuse to face the prospect of a society forever based upon the wage system. They demand an organization that is making for its abolition and the substitution therefor of a system of industrial justice. If they were to look sharply, they would see that the trade-union movement is traveling faster than any other body toward the end they wish to reach. But unfortunately, looking sharply is not their method. They habitually attach too much importance to surface indications and not enough to real results. They go almost entirely by preambles and manifestoes. Consequently, taking the trade-union slogans at their face value and finding them altogether unsatisfactory, they turn their backs upon the trade-union movement and give support to the organizations which have the sort they want, the I. W. W., the W. I. I. U., etc.
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 class 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 class, 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 class 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 Association, 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 assert, is due largely, if not altogether, to the absence among the radicals of England of the idealistic, dualistic attitude 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 assured. 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.