The Communistic Societies of the United States | Page 3

wages--to the Trades-Unionist.

To assert necessary and eternal enmity between labor and capital would
seem to be the extreme of folly in men who have predetermined to
remain laborers for wages all their lives, and who therefore mean to be
peculiarly dependent on capital. Nor are the Unions wiser or more
reasonable toward their fellow-laborers; for each Union aims, by
limiting the number of apprentices a master may take, and by other
equally selfish regulations, to protect its own members against
competition, forgetting apparently that if you prevent men from
becoming bricklayers, a greater number must seek to become
carpenters; and that thus, by its exclusive policy, a Union only plays
what Western gamblers call a "cut-throat game" with the general
laboring population. For if the system of Unions were perfect, and each
were able to enforce its policy of exclusion, a great mass of poor
creatures, driven from every desirable employment, would be forced to
crowd into the lowest and least paid. I do not know where one could
find so much ignorance, contempt for established principles, and
cold-blooded selfishness, as among the Trades-Unions and
International Societies of the United States and Great Britain--unless
one should go to France. While they retain their present spirit, they
might well take as their motto the brutal and stupid saying of a French
writer, that "Mankind are engaged in a war for bread, in which every
man's hand is at his brother's throat." Directly, they offer a prize to
incapacity and robbery, compelling their ablest members to do no more
than the least able, and spoiling the aggregate wealth of society by
burdensome regulations restricting labor. Logically, to the
Trades-Union leaders the Chicago or Boston fire seemed a more
beneficial event than the invention of the steam-engine; for plenty
seems to them a curse, and scarcity the greatest blessing. [Transcriber's
Note: Lengthy footnote relocated to chapter end.]
Any organization which teaches its adherents to accept as inevitable for
themselves and for the mass of a nation the condition of hirelings, and
to conduct their lives on that premise, is not only wrong, but an injury
to the community. Mr. Mill wisely says on this point, in his chapter on
"The Future of the Laboring Classes": "There can be little doubt that
the status of hired laborers will gradually tend to confine itself to the
description of work-people whose low moral qualities render them
unfit for any thing more independent; and that the relation of masters

and work-people will be gradually superseded by partnership in one of
two forms: in some cases, association of the laborers with the capitalist;
in others, and perhaps finally in all, association of laborers among
themselves." I imagine that the change he speaks of will be very slow
and gradual; but it is important that all doors shall be left open for it,
and Trades-Unions would close every door.
Professor Cairnes, in his recent contribution to Political Economy, goes
further even than Mr. Mill, and argues that a change of this nature is
inevitable. He remarks: "The modifications which occur in the
distribution of capital among its several departments, as nations
advance, are by no means fortuitous, but follow on the whole a
well-defined course, and move toward a determinate goal. In effect,
what we find is a constant growth of the national capital, accompanied
with a nearly equally constant decline in the proportion of this capital
which goes to support productive labor.... Though the fund for the
remuneration of mere labor, whether skilled or unskilled, must, so long
as industry is progressive, ever bear a constantly diminishing
proportion alike to the growing wealth and growing capital, there is
nothing in the nature of things which restricts the laboring population
to this fund for their support. In return, indeed, for their mere labor, it is
to this that they must look for their sole reward; but _they may help
production otherwise than by their labor: they may save, and thus
become themselves the owners of capital;_ and profits may thus be
brought to aid the wages-fund." [Footnote: "Some Leading Principles
of Political Economy Newly Expounded." By J. E. Cairnes, M.A. New
York, Harper & Brothers.]
Aside from systematized emigration to unsettled or thinly peopled
regions, which the Trades-Unions of Europe ought to organize on a
great scale, but which they have entirely neglected, the other outlets for
the mass of dissatisfied hand-laborers lie through co-operative or
communistic efforts. Co-operative societies flourish in England and
Germany. We have had a number of them in this country also, but their
success has not been marked; and I have found it impossible to get
statistical returns even of their numbers. If the Trades-Unions had used
a tenth of the money they have wasted in futile efforts to shorten hours
of labor and excite