When a publisher offers an author better royalties than other publishers have been paying him, he is scabbing on those other publishers.The reporter on a newspaper, who feels he should be receiving a larger salary for his work, says so, and is shown the door, is replaced by a reporter who is a scab; whereupon, when the belly-need presses, the displaced reporter goes to another paper and scabs himself.The minister who hardens his heart to a call, and waits for a certain congregation to offer him say $500 a year more, often finds himself scabbed upon by another and more impecunious minister; and the next time it is HIS turn to scab while a brother minister is hardening his heart to a call.The scab is everywhere.
The professional strike-breakers, who as a class receive large wages, will scab on one another, while scab unions are even formed to prevent scabbing upon scabs.
There are non-scabs, but they are usually born so, and are protected by the whole might of society in the possession of their food and shelter.King Edward is such a type, as are all individuals who receive hereditary food-and-shelter privileges,--such as the present Duke of Bedford, for instance, who yearly receives $75,000 from the good people of London because some former king gave some former ancestor of his the market privileges of Covent Garden.The irresponsible rich are likewise non-scabs,--and by them is meant that coupon-clipping class which hires its managers and brains to invest the money usually left it by its ancestors.
Outside these lucky creatures, all the rest, at one time or another in their lives, are scabs, at one time or another are engaged in giving more for a certain price than any one else.The meek professor in some endowed institution, by his meek suppression of his convictions, is giving more for his salary than gave the other and more outspoken professor whose chair he occupies.And when a political party dangles a full dinner-pail in the eyes of the toiling masses, it is offering more for a vote than the dubious dollar of the opposing party.Even a money-lender is not above taking a slightly lower rate of interest and saying nothing about it.
Such is the tangle of conflicting interests in a tooth-and-nail society that people cannot avoid being scabs, are often made so against their desires, and are often unconsciously made so.When several trades in a certain locality demand and receive an advance in wages, they are unwittingly making scabs of their fellow-laborers in that district who have received no advance in wages.In San Francisco the barbers, laundry-workers, and milk-wagon drivers received such an advance in wages.Their employers promptly added the amount of this advance to the selling price of their wares.The price of shaves, of washing, and of milk went up.This reduced the purchasing power of the unorganized laborers, and, in point of fact, reduced their wages and made them greater scabs.
Because the British laborer is disinclined to scab,--that is, because he restricts his output in order to give less for the wage he receives,--it is to a certain extent made possible for the American capitalist, who receives a less restricted output from his laborers, to play the scab on the English capitalist.As a result of this, (of course combined with other causes), the American capitalist and the American laborer are striking at the food and shelter of the English capitalist and laborer.
The English laborer is starving today because, among other things, he is not a scab.He practises the policy of "ca' canny," which may be defined as "go easy." In order to get most for least, in many trades he performs but from one-fourth to one-sixth of the labor he is well able to perform.An instance of this is found in the building of the Westinghouse Electric Works at Manchester.The British limit per man was 400 bricks per day.The Westinghouse Company imported a "driving" American contractor, aided by half a dozen "driving" American foremen, and the British bricklayer swiftly attained an average of 1800 bricks per day, with a maximum of 2500bricks for the plainest work.
But, the British laborer's policy of "ca' canny," which is the very honorable one of giving least for most, and which is likewise the policy of the English capitalist, is nevertheless frowned upon by the English capitalist, whose business existence is threatened by the great American scab.From the rise of the factory system, the English capitalist gladly embraced the opportunity, wherever he found it, of giving least for most.He did it all over the world whenever he enjoyed a market monopoly, and he did it at home with the laborers employed in his mills, destroying them like flies till prevented, within limits, by the passage of the Factory Acts.Some of the proudest fortunes of England today may trace their origin to the giving of least for most to the miserable slaves of the factory towns.But at the present time the English capitalist is outraged because his laborers are employing against him precisely the same policy he employed against them, and which he would employ again did the chance present itself.
