This is the terrible spectre which Mr.John Graham Brooks sees looming portentously over the twentieth century world.No man may boast a more intimate knowledge of the labor movement than he; and he reiterates again and again the dangerous likelihood of the whole labor group capturing the political machinery of society.As he says in his recent book: {6} "It is not probable that employers can destroy unionism in the United States.Adroit and desperate attempts will, however, be made, if we mean by unionism the undisciplined and aggressive fact of vigorous and determined organizations.If capital should prove too strong in this struggle, the result is easy to predict.The employers have only to convince organized labor that it cannot hold its own against the capitalist manager, and the whole energy that now goes to the union will turn to an aggressive political socialism.It will not be the harmless sympathy with increased city and state functions which trade unions already feel; it will become a turbulent political force bent upon using every weapon of taxation against the rich."This struggle not to be a scab, to avoid giving more for less and to succeed in giving less for more, is more vital than it would appear on the surface.The capitalist and labor groups are locked together in desperate battle, and neither side is swayed by moral considerations more than skin-deep.The labor group hires business agents, lawyers, and organizers, and is beginning to intimidate legislators by the strength of its solid vote; and more directly, in the near future, it will attempt to control legislation by capturing it bodily through the ballot-box.On the other hand, the capitalist group, numerically weaker, hires newspapers, universities, and legislatures, and strives to bend to its need all the forces which go to mould public opinion.
The only honest morality displayed by either side is white-hot indignation at the iniquities of the other side.The striking teamster complacently takes a scab driver into an alley, and with an iron bar breaks his arms, so that he can drive no more, but cries out to high Heaven for justice when the capitalist breaks his skull by means of a club in the hands of a policeman.Nay, the members of a union will declaim in impassioned rhetoric for the God-given right of an eight-hour day, and at the time be working their own business agent seventeen hours out of the twenty-four.
A capitalist such as Collis P.Huntington, and his name is Legion, after a long life spent in buying the aid of countless legislatures, will wax virtuously wrathful, and condemn in unmeasured terms "the dangerous tendency of crying out to the Government for aid" in the way of labor legislation.Without a quiver, a member of the capitalist group will run tens of thousands of pitiful child-laborers through his life-destroying cotton factories, and weep maudlin and constitutional tears over one scab hit in the back with a brick.He will drive a "compulsory" free contract with an unorganized laborer on the basis of a starvation wage, saying, "Take it or leave it," knowing that to leave it means to die of hunger, and in the next breath, when the organizer entices that laborer into a union, will storm patriotically about the inalienable right of all men to work.In short, the chief moral concern of either side is with the morals of the other side.They are not in the business for their moral welfare, but to achieve the enviable position of the non-scab who gets more than he gives.
But there is more to the question than has yet been discussed.The labor scab is no more detestable to his brother laborers than is the capitalist scab to his brother capitalists.A capitalist may get most for least in dealing with his laborers, and in so far be a non-scab; but at the same time, in his dealings with his fellow-capitalists, he may give most for least and be the very worst kind of scab.The most heinous crime an employer of labor can commit is to scab on his fellow-employers of labor.Just as the individual laborers have organized into groups to protect themselves from the peril of the scab laborer, so have the employers organized into groups to protect themselves from the peril of the scab employer.
The employers' federations, associations, and trusts are nothing more nor less than unions.They are organized to destroy scabbing amongst themselves and to encourage scabbing amongst others.For this reason they pool interests, determine prices, and present an unbroken and aggressive front to the labor group.
As has been said before, nobody likes to play the compulsorily generous role of scab.It is a bad business proposition on the face of it.And it is patent that there would be no capitalist scabs if there were not more capital than there is work for capital to do.
When there are enough factories in existence to supply, with occasional stoppages, a certain commodity, the building of new factories by a rival concern, for the production of that commodity, is plain advertisement that that capital is out of a job.The first act of this new aggregation of capital will be to cut prices, to give more for less,--in short to scab, to strike at the very existence of the less generous aggregation of capital the work of which it is trying to do.
No scab capitalist strives to give more for less for any other reason than that he hopes, by undercutting a competitor and driving that competitor out of the market, to get that market and its profits for himself.His ambition is to achieve the day when he shall stand alone in the field both as buyer and seller,--when he will be the royal non-scab, buying most for least, selling least for most, and reducing all about him, the small buyers and sellers, (the consumers and the laborers), to a general condition of scabdom.
