CHAPTER VI. TRADES UNIONS. Their History, Power and Possibilities-Why They Are at I had long since made up my mind to study the social and industrial problem in all its branches, and to get to the bottom if possible and know the truth. I learned that there were many aspects to the problem, but determined to investigate each phase closely. Naturally, I cast about to see if there was any force at work to meet and do battle with the forces of Plutocracy. Trades Unionism made this profession and I immediately started my researches. Furthermore, Gladstone once said, "Trades unions are the bulwarks of modern society," and my mind was certainly unbiased and open to conviction. "Some very trustworthy and efficient men are interested in the cause of Trades Unionism; one, a St. Louis man, has a national reputation for his honesty and fidelity to the cause he has espoused. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch discusses him as follows: "Mr. John T. Wilson, President of the Brotherhood of Railway Trackmen of America, and generally considered. by his friends the most effective, honest and conscientious labor organizer in the country, has turned down an offer of a bonus of $25,000, and an executive position with a railroad company at an annual salary of $5,000. "The remarkable circumstance about the proposition is that it was made to Mr. Wilson by a railroad company whose striking trackmen were led to victory by the president of their organization. "The wonderful executive ability displayed by Mr. Wilson, while handling the interests of the striking maintenance-of-way men, his fairness, honesty and indomitable pluck and perseverance, so impressed the management of the railroad company that an outright offer of the handsome bonus and permanent position was made to him. "But the ambition of Mr. Wilson's life is to elevate the Brotherhood of Railway Trackmen of America to such a position of influence that it can command the respect the laboring men deserve, and he spurned the offer and returned to his desk in the Benoist building, to preside over the destinies of the organization he founded fifteen years ago at Talladega, Ala. MEN SHOULD STRIKE ONLY WHEN FORCED. "Mr. Wilson may have looked upon the offer as a bait to draw him away from the work to which he is devoting the best energies of his life. In fact, it is said that tempting propositions are frequently thrown in his way, in the hope of influencing him to abandon his work. 108 TRADES UNIONS. "Through the instrumentality of the work of his organization the railway trackmen of America will receive $2,000,000 more in salaries during the present year than they would had not the organization been in existence. "Mr. Wilson does not believe in strikes, except when the men are forced into them. He is an advocate of the arbitration of labor disputes, but when he does take up a fight he goes in to win. Last summer the maintenance-of-way men of the Canadian Pacific Railway, one of the greatest and strongest financed railroads in existence, struck for an increase of wages. Mr. Wilson was called from St. Louis to Canada to handle the strike, which he did with such consummate skill that the men were conceded practically all of their demands. COST CANADIAN PACIFIC $250,000 MORE ANNU- "Mr. Wilson's fight against the Canadian Pacific Railway cost that corporation $250,000 annually in increased. wages to its trackmen." But now the labor unions are going into politics. They realize that they have a powerful vote and that by acting together may secure anything they wish. The New York Journal, which is the most widely read newspaper in the country, says that labor can elect their own men to rule the country whenever they want to. They have the power to do it now. The Western Labor Union, in its recent session in Den 1 1 1 ver, put itself on record in favor of independent political action. At time of going to press no definite action had been taken, but here follows the opening declaration of one of the most prominent men in the Western labor world: Daniel McDonald, President of the Western Labor Union: "The wage system must go. I am in favor of the convention declaring for independent political action. It is time for the workingmen to assert themselves. They hold in their hands the political power of the country. They must learn to use it.” Labor contends that but a very small per cent of legislation is ever enacted in its behalf. That it is called upon to vote and parade at election time, but that is all the good it ever gets out of it. Petitions and requests avail but little. I quote an article in Equality: "Labor stands pleading at the doors of the Legislature, each succeeding session, for relief from its thousand and one ills. It asks that the so-called labor laws heretofore enacted and that have proven to be unconstitutional, impracticable or worse than the laws they superseded, be taken up and so amended as to give them force and effect for good purposes. "It pleads that the measures it presents shall not be handed over to machine-made committees in the Senate and House, to be either throttled therein, or have all the life and spirit taken out of them, so that they are not, as passed, worth to labor the paper on which they are written. It pleads that committees shall be no longer made up to suit the monopolies of the State, to recommend bills the monopolies want and negative those to which the monopolies object, and generally to exploit the monopolies for money to run machine campaigns. "It asks no special favors, but wants the right to live and make a living by honest and fairly-paid work, and that the leaders in the law-making shall give some heed to the fact that, when labor is not prospering, the State cannot prosper. The producer is also the consumer, and when his ability to buy is cut off by selfish monopolies, created and fostered by machine legislatures and executives, all classes must suffer. "It pleads that when departments and bureaus are created ostensibly for its benefit they shall be officered by clean and capable men who will do their duty faithfully and fearlessly and not, as too often happens, to machine heelers who recognize no allegiance but to the machine. "Finally, it pleads for a Governor who has not and never had connection with monopolies of any kind, who has never served any form of corporations, who is a plain man, in full sympathy with the plain people, utterly untrammeled and prepared for anything that will uplift the people and progress the State. "With such a man as the chief executive and a Legislature against the machine, labor's pleas will be heeded and its causes of complaint will disappear." Certainly the Labor Unions have a right to go into politics and fight their own battles, for if they don't nobody |