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THE PHILOSPHY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT
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A PAPER READ BEFORE THE
INTERNATIONAL LABOR CONGRESS
CHICAGO, ILL., SEPTEMBER, 1893
A
BY GEORGE E. MCNEILL
The phenomena of the labor movement
startles the rich, the comfortable, the indiffer-
ent, and many of the professional classes, be-
cause of the prevailing ignorance of its cause,
its direction and its results.
JUNOS RE
RECEIVED
The thunder of the denunciation of wage-
slavery startles the possessor of wealth, oppor-
tunity, and position into fear for the structure
of society. The lightning of the awakened
hate of the unpossessed and the tremor of the
earthquake of despair are to the lords of in-
dustry, commerce, and finance, as unexplain-
able as natural phenomena is to the savages of
the plains and jungles.
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The la A mover ont is born of burger:
hunger for food, for shelter, warnith, clothing
and pleasure. This hunger provokes activi-
es for the possession of the desired objects.
The congregation of men develops other appe
tites and desires, increasing in number and
quality, each satisfaction awakening an aspi-
ration for the possession of the opportunities
and enjoyments of a higher manhood. The
appetite for coarse food, rude shelter and
meager clothing and debasing pleasures is
succeeded by the aspiration for more and bet-
ter, the aspiration for the better creating the
desire, the desires forcing the demand, and
the demand compelling the supply.
Men are born possessed with the inalienable
right, not only to life and liberty, but to the
pursuit of happiness, and the labor movement
is the outward expression of the instinctive ap-
preciation of these rights. In savage life, the
organization of the tribe, and in so-called civil-
ized life the organization of the nation, and the
higher inner organizations, religious, fraternal
and economic, are the growths from the root
of human hunger for the attainment of the
higher happiness.
In the movement of humanity toward happi-
ness each individual seeks his ideal often with
stoical disregard of the happiness of others.
The savage man delights in the infliction of
torture upon his victims. The civilized man
delights not in the torture of his weaker
brother, but is satisfied to partake of the re-
sults of the torture of those who are made con-
tributors to his pleasure.
First families in the Eastern States were par-
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1893
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ticipants in the profits of the slave trade and
first families of the Southern States were par-
ticipants with the slave pirates of the East.
The war dance of the savages about the burn-
ing body of their prisoner is the same in spirit
as the insane conduct one witnesses at the
stock exchange in times of great excitement.
The savage man enslaves the woman, and
the wife who should be the inspiration of the
home becomes the drudge. The civilized
man enslaves the wife or daughter of a less.
fortunate brother. Tribe wars against tribe,
nation against nation, race against race, and
the individual man against his brother.
(WHAT DOES LABOR WANT?-By Samuel Gompers, President A. F. of L. See page 4.)
Possession is said to be nine points of law.
In nine cases out of ten it is an evidence of a
theft committed, and the giving back of a
beggarly part in the sacred name of charity is
Set of a muiltu usponsibility
The labor movement commenced with those
who by the crudest form of association agreed
to mitigate each others woes and to resist the
common oppressors. It has from most remote
antiquity developed along the line of the in-
creasing aspirations, wants and demands of
the most moral and intelligent of its classes.
From its dawn it has been semi-religious,
semi-political and industrial. Its religious life
has been and is a protest against the mam~
monized interpretation of religious truth, yet
through all times holding to those principles
and superstitions that were protective to the
interests of the many.
The idealist who promised future rewards.
and blessings, and the practical reformer who
promised immediate relief or remedy, found
many followers, and of Him who united the
idealist and the practical reformer it is said:
"The common people heard him gladly."
As the ranks of the labor movement are
composed of the controlled classes they neces-
sarily are opposed to their controllers. This
fact explains the reason for the political side
of the movement, whether under monarchial or
republican forms of government.
The political phase is more distinctively
emphasized where the opportunity for the ex-
pression of idealisms on political economic
lines is suppressed and because men are more
early united against political tyranny than
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they are against the more dangerous power of
economic oppression. Political systems are
national; the wage system is universal. The
industrial phase is the ground work, the prime
factor. In every division of the grand army
of labor its motto and war cry, everywhere
and at all times the same, "More! More!
More !"
In religion more heaven, in politics more
power, in industry more wealth; but it is al-
ways bread first, not that by bread alone men
can receive the fullness of life, but that by
bread first the other good things are more
easily obtainable.
"Give us this day our daily bread," is the
universal prayer. The labor movement insists
not only upon daily bread for the future, but
bread for this day, now.
The laborers say, we want the kingdom of
Heaven (of equity and righteousness) to come
on earth, but we want an installment of that .
heaven now. In these days they are not cry-
ing for the "manna from heaven," but they do
protest against the withholding of corn from
the poor and the robbery of those who toil.
A strike for more wages, more leisure and
for greater happiness is not a phenomenon to
be investigated in the study, or by congres-
sional committees, as a comet is investigated
by astronomers.
The strike is a part of the wage system just
as much as the brake is a part of the necessary
equipment of a railroad train. There are three
kinds of strikes, the "why," the "how" and
the "when." The first asks why do you seek
to reduce wages; the second, how is it you
are making so much money, and we are not;
and the third, when shall we have an advance
in wages and a reduction in the hours of labor,
and a fuller, freer life?
A strike is a suspension of business for the
discussion of those questions, and it is the
only way to compel a careful consideration
of the question. The brakes stop the produc-
tion of wealth that better speed and safer
progress may come through the increased
power of the many.
The want of more and the demand for more
is the active motive of human advancement;
material civilization is high or low in the ratio
of the satisfaction of this demand. Enlight-
ened civilization is dependent upon the right
direction of the aspirations, wants and de-
mands of the many.
Material civilization rests upon the want of
more, regardless of the wants of others, and
the demands for more at the cost of another's
sacrifice. This civilization gave us Egypt,
Rome, Greece and Athens.
It gave us the slave trade, chattel slavery
and the civil war. It gives us to-day this
wonderful exhibition of a labor-robbing pros-
perity, magnificent buildings, time cost, labor-
caving machinery and processes, club palaces
for idlers and hovels for workers. It makes
vice profitable, rewards gambling enterprises,
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stultifies the moral sentiments, laughs at relig-
ious restraint and mocks at political rectitude.
The industrial system rests upon the devil's
iron rule, "Every man for himself." It is
an unexplainable phenomenon that those who
suffer most under this rule of selfishness and
greed should organize for the overthrow of
the devil's system of government.
The organization of laborers in Trade
Unions recognizes the fact that mutualism is
preferable to individualism; that the golden
rule, "Do unto others as you would that
others should do unto you," means a greater
return of happiness to each through the co-
operation of all.
---.
Examined by the light of all past history,
individualism as a factor in the progress of
civilization is a failure. Millionaire prosperity
is short-lived; institutions resting upon such a
base must fall.
The labor movement is a self-evident fact;
it sprang from human needs and aspirations,
and grew in power as animal needs developed
into social needs. So it will grow until the
needs of the diviner man become the potent
factor in the development of the full measure
of man's highest possibilities.
A new interpretation of the old truth, "That
the chief end of man is to glorify God and to
enjoy him forever," reads that the glorifica-
tion of God is in the reinstatement of man
the likeness of God; that to enjoy God forever
all things must be directed toward the se-
curing for all the largest measure of happiness.
Economically considered, the labor move-
ment is the operation of the law of God
through the ages. The earth is the Lord's
and the fullness thereof, and God gave com-
mand over all things of the earth to man,
not to a man or class of men, but to all men.
A man's time is for his use with others for
the subordination of nature to his and their
development, and human development will
always be limited or handicapped by the fail-
ure to develop the poorest equipped mortal.
Men who are compelled to sell their time
are slaves to the purchaser. Men who control
their time to the good of others are free men.
Freedom means ability to serve others with
others for the good of all. Slavery means the
service with or without others to the pleasure
of a class or individual.
Tracing causes to the depths of human ex-
perience, the labor movement rests upon the
truth of the universal sovereignty of man over-
his environment.
The man who produces anything that is for
the good of man has a natural lien upon that
product and a social lien upon the product of
all, as all have a social lien upon his product.
The law of the labor movement may be
stated to be:
1. Appetite.
2. Hunger.
3. More appetite and
4. More hunger,
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Inordinate appetite begets savagery and
will commit any crime to satisfy its lusts, even
temporarily; but as the satisfaction of lust or
inordinate appetite finally destroys the appe-
tite and the pleasure of its satisfaction, so any
system based upon the motives or activities of
inordinate desire must be and is self-destruc-
tive.
Appetites directed and governed not by
others through force, but through others by
love, always increases the pleasure of satisfac-
tion and the power of the renewal of desire.
The labor movement is the directing power
over the natural tendency toward inordinate
lusts, and its cry for more and more is the
evidence of the renewed appetite that gives
life.
In the progress of the movement of the
army of manual laborers toward the promised
land of peace, plenty and good will all hinder-
ing and opposing forces are contended with
and removed. The overflowing streams,
whether of humanity or of water, will sweep
all before them.
Laborers restrained by chains of iron or of
superstition, or of ignorance, or by social
ostracism, or political or industrial depend-
ence, are simply a pent up force that may
break loose with unrestrained, destructive
power.
The appetite of to-day is for better food,
better houses, better clothes, better pleasures,
in the ratio of the wisdom of the direction and
power of membership of the organized labor
movement.
China has organization, oath and supersti-
tion bound, but no organized labor movement.
Hunger has been stultified not satisfied, com-
pressed not expressed.
The labor movement of Germany and
France is now emerging from force repres-
sion. If its expression is at some times fan-
tastical and fanatical, it is but the natural re-
sult of the rebound.
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In England and these United States we find
the highest development of the labor move-
ment on practical lines of idealistic promise.
Parliaments and congresses have bent their
ears to catch the sound of its advancing tread.
Religion that once assumed the dictator's
garb now gives promise that some day it will
assume the attire of honorable service with
and for humanity.
The potent influences of moral sentiment
are active. Labor organizations are broaden-
ing and advancing on historic Trade Union
lines.
The movement will be manifest by new
phenomena; student observers will see the
relation of the new phase to the old law.
From raw to cooked food, from nakedness to
clothing made of skins, from caves to tents
marking the first era-the lowest condition.
Then the cultivation of food products, the
making of clothing from fibre and the building
of houses, marking the second.
The congregation of the people brought
about by permanent residence led to organiza-
tions on lines of mutual interests, and the
order of civilization commenced.
The production of clothing and shelter
awakened new aspirations that broadened the
wants and stimulated the demands for the
higher degree of happiness.
In the towns where the processes of produc-
tion entered the order of division of industry
in crafts so acted and reacted in the multipli-
cation of wants that steam came as naturally
as rain falls to speed the processes, and then
the modern labor movement commenced.
In the transition from hand to machine
methods laborers were displaced and demoral-
ized. The home gave way to the factory.
The ponderous loom could not be worked
save by strong muscular effort, but the power
loom and its adjuncts found work for infants
of six and eight years of age. The obstructive
and destructive force of organized laborers led
to legislative interference and partial relief.
The conflict of aggregation against aggre-
gation, competitor against competitor, interest
against interest, locality against locality now
becoming manifest will solidify laborer with
labores, Union with Union and soon for the
first time in history the wage laborers' organi-
zations will obtain industrial power and find
in the farm owners some common ground of
agreement.
The diversity of opinion as to the results of
the movement, and as to the methods and
measures by which results are to be reached,
will not divert the labor movement from its
historical, natural course.
The cry for more is the eternal cry, yester-
day and to-day. It is, with many a moan of
sorrow, with many a bitter cry of anger, with
some the natural wish. To-morrow it will be a
cry of joy.
The animal man first, then the social man,
next the moral or truly religious man. So
long as the wage system shall continue the
labor movement will progress along the lines
of more wages, more leisure and more liberty.
The power of an increased common wealth,
or wealth equitably distributed with increased
common intelligence and enlarged moral per-
ception and devotion, that comes through
organization for mutual protection, will result
in organizations for transportation and pro-
duction. The organization for mutual trans-
portation and production may and in some
enterprises will be general or national.
The philosophy of the labor movement
teaches us that the rule of a common father-
hood and brotherhood that Christ proclaimed
is God's law; that the wisest self-interest is
not in self-aggrandizement or self-abasement,
but in mutual advancement, and that the
movement that seeks more leisure and more
wages will continue until methods and inter-
ests shall unite in maintaining, sustaining and
enlarging human happiness.
WHAT DOES LABOR WANT?
A PAPER READ BEFORE THE
INTERNATIONAL LABOR CONGRESS
CHICAGO, ILL., SEPTEMBER, 1893
By Samuel Gompers, President American Federation of Labor
A legend of ancient Rome relates that while
the capitol was building there came one day
to the tyrannical king, Tarquin the Proud, a
poor old woman, carrying nine books of
prophecies of the Sibyl, which she offered to
sell for three hundred pieces of gold. The
king laughingly bade her go away, which she
did; but after burning three of the books she
returned and asked the same price for the re-
maining six. Again treated with scorn, she
retired, burnt three more of the volumes, and
then came back demanding the same sum for
the three which were left Astonished at this
conduct, the king consulted his wise men,
who answered him that in those nine books,
six of which had been lost, were contained the
fate of the city and the Roman people.
To-day the marvellous Sibyl, who grows
the grain, yet goes a-hungered; who weaves
the silken robes of pride, yet goes threadbare;
who mines the coal and precious ores, yet
goes cold and penniless; who rears the gorge-
ous palaces, yet herds in noisome basements,
she again appears. This old, yet ever young
Sibyl, called labor, offers to modern society
the fate of civilization. What is her demand?
Modern society, the most complex organiza-
tion yet evolved by the human race, is based
on one simple fact, the practical separation of
the capitalistic class from the great mass of
the industrious.
If this separation were only that resulting
from a differentiation in the functions of di-
rections of industrial operations and their exe-
cution in detail then that separation would
be regarded as real, direct progress. But the
separation between the capitalistic class and
the laboring mass is not so much a difference
in industrial rank as it is a difference in so-
cial status, placing the laborers in a position
involving a degradation of mind and body.
This distinction, scarcely noticeable in the
United States before the previous generation,
rapidly became more and more marked, in-
creasing day by day, until at length it has
widened into a veritable chasm, economic,
social and moral. On each side of this seem-
ingly impassable chasm we see the hostile
camps of rich and poor. On one side, a class
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;
in possession of all the tools and means of
labor; on the other, an immense mass begging
for the opportunity to labor. In the mansion,
the soft notes betokening ease and security; in
the tenement, the stifled wail of drudgery and
poverty, the arrogance of the rich ever mount-
ing in proportion to the debasement of the
poor.
From across the chasm we hear the old fa-
miliar drone of the priests of Mammon called
"Political Economists." The words of the
song they sing are stolen from the vocabulary
of science, but the chant itself is the old bar-
baric lay. It tells us that the present absolute
domination of wealth is the result of material
and invariable laws, and counsels the laborers,
whom they regard as ignorant and misguided,
to patiently submit to the natural operations
of the immutable law of "supply and de-
mand." The laborers reply. They say that
the political economists never learned suffi-
cient science to know the difference between
the operation of a natural law and the law on
petty larceny. The day is past when the
laborers could be cajoled or humbugged by
the sacred chickens of the augers or by the
bogus laws of the political economists.
The laborers know that there are few his-
toric facts capable of more complete demon-
stration than those showing when and how the
capitalists gained possession of the tools and
opportunities of labor. They know that the
capitalists gained their industrial monopoly
by the infamous abuse of arbitrary power on
the part of royal and federal potentates. They
know that by the exercise of this arbitrary
power a well-established system of industry
was overthrown and absolute power was
placed in the hands of the selfish incompetents.
They know that the only industrial qualifica-
tions possessed by these incompetents was the
ability to purchase charters giving the pur-
chaser a monopoly of a certain trade in a
specified city and that the price of such char-
ters, the blood money of monopoly, was such
paltry sums as forty shillings paid to the king
or a few dollars to congressional (mis) repre-
sentatives. They know that by the unscrupu-
lous use of such monstrously unjust privileges
CENTRE INTERE
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5
competent master workmen were deprived of
their hard-earned right to conduct business
and were driven into the ranks of journey-
men; that the journeymen were disfranchised
and that the endowment funds for the relief
and support of sick and aged members of the
guilds and Unions, the accumulation of gen-
erations, were confiscated. They know that
thus did the capitalist class have its origin
in force and fraud, shameless fraud, stooping
so low in its abject meanness as to steal the
Trade Union's sick, superannuated and burial
funds.
The laborers well know how baseless is the
claim made by the political economists that
the subsequent development of the capitalist
class was spontaneous and natural, for they
know that the capitalists, not content with a
monopoly of industry, enabling them to in-
crease the price of products at will and reduce
the wages of labor to a bare subsistence, also
procured legislation forbidding the disfran-
chised and plundered workmen from organiz-
ing in their own defense.
The laborers will never forget that the
coalition and conspiracy laws, directed by the
capitalists against the journeymen who had
sublime fidelity and heroic courage to detend
their natural rights to organization, punished
them with slavery, torture and death.
In
short, the laborers know that the capitalist
class had its origin in force and fraud, that it
has maintained and extended its brutal sway
more or less directly through the agency of
specified legislation, most ferocious and bar-
barous, but always in cynical disregard of all
law save its own arbitrary will.
The first things to be recognized in a review
of the capitalistic system are that the posses-
sors of the tools and means of labor have not
used their power to organize industry so much
as to organize domestic and international in-
dustrial war, and that they have not used the
means in their possession to produce utilities
so much as to extract profits, the produc-
tion of profits, instead of the production of
honest goods, being the primary and constant
object of the capitalistic system. We have a
waste of labor appalling in its recklessness
and inhumanity, a misuse of capital that is
really criminal, and a social condition of cheer-
less drudgery and hopeless poverty, of sicken-
ing apprehension and fathomless degradation,
almost threatening the continuance of civiliza-
tion.
The state of industrial anarchy produced
by the capitalist system is first strongly
illustrated in the existence of a class of
wealthy social parasites those who do no
work, never did any work and never intend to
work. This class of parasites devours incomes
derived from many sources, from the stunted
babies employed in the mills, mines and fac-
tories to the lessees of the gambling hells and
the profits of fashionable brothels; from the
lands which the labor of others has made
valuable; from royalties on coal and other
minerals beneath the surface, and from rent of
houses above the surface, the rent paying all
cost of the houses many times over and the
houses coming back to those who never paid
for them.
Then we have the active capitalists, those
engaged in business. This number must be
divided into two classes, the first consisting of
those legitimately using their capital in the
production of utilities and honest goods; the
second, those misusing their capital in the
production of "bogus" imitations of luxuries,
of adulterations and of useless goods, the
miserable makeshifts specially produced for
the consumption of underpaid workers. With
this "bogus" class must be included not only
the jerry builders and the shoddy clothiers,
but also the quack doctors and the shyster
lawyers; also the mass of insurance and other
agents and middlemen. Coming to the labor-
ers, we must regard them not only according
to their technical divisions as agricultural,
mechanical, commercial, literary and domestic,
with numerous subdivisions, but also as
economically divided into three classes, those
engaged in the production of utilities, those--
engaged in all other pursuits and those con-
stituting the general “reserve army" of labor,
the first economic division of laborers con-
sisting mainly of agriculturists, mechanics
producing utilities and a very limited portion
of those engaged in commerce. Upon this
moiety devolves the task of supporting itself,
the parasitic capitalists, the "bogus" capital-
ists, the workers engaged in ministering to
the demands of the parasitic capitalists, the
workers employe in the production of
"bogus," and the immense reserve army of
labor; also the army and navy, the police, the
host of petty public functionaries; also the
strugglers from the reserve army of labor, in-
cluding the beggars, the paupers and those
driven by want to crime.
-
We have seen that the possessors of the
tools and means of industry have failed in es-
tablishing order in their own ranks, as evi-
denced in the class of parasitic capitalists and
a class of "bogus" capitalists, miserable coun-
terfeiters, who rob the wealth producers of the
just reward of honest work, while they
degrade the workers by making them accom-
plices in their fabrications, then rob them by
compelling them to buy the worthless goods
they have fabricated, and finally poisoning
them with their adulterations.
While failing to protect society in its con-
sumptive capacity, the capitalist class has
shared and degraded society in its productive
capacity.
It has accomplished this result by establish-
ing alternating periods of renovating idleness
and debilitating overwork by undermining
the very foundation of society, the family life
6
of the workers, in reducing the wages of the
adult male workers below the cost of family
maintenance and then employing both sexes
of all ages to compete against each other,
"Our fathers are praying for pauper pay,
Our mothers with death's kiss are white;
Our sons are the rich man's serfs by day,
Our daughters his slaves by night."
and finally by refusing to recognize the work-
ers in a corporate capacity, and by invoking
the collusion of their dependents, the judges
and the legislators, to place the organized
workers outside the pale of the law.
Nevertheless, in spite of all opposition, the
Trade Unions have grown until they have
become a power that none can hope to annihi-
late.
To-day modern society is beginning to re-
gard the Trade Unions as the only hope of
civilization; to regard them as the only power
capable of evolving order out of the social
chaos. But will the Sibyl's demand be re-
garded or heeded before it is too late? Let
us hope so. The Trade Unions, having a thor-
ough knowledge of the origin and develop-
ment of the capitalist class, entertains no desire.
for revenge or retaliation. The Trade Unions
have deprecated the malevolent and unjust
spirit with which they have had to contend
in their protests and struggles against the
abuse of the capitalist system, yet while seek-
ing justice have not permitted their movement
to become acrid by the desire of revenge.
Their methods were always conservative,
their steps evolutionary.
One of the greatest impediments to a better
appreciation by the capitalists of the devoted
efforts of the Trade Unions to establish har-
mony in the industrial relations has been the
perverted view taken by the capitalists in
regarding their capital as essentially if not
absolutely their own, whereas the Trade
Unions, taking a more comprehensive and
purer view, regard all capitalists, large and
small, as the fruits of labor's economies and
discoveries, inventions and institutions of many
generations of laborers and capitalists, of
theoreticians and practitions, practically as in-
divisible as a living man.
Another impediment to the establishment of
correct industrial relations has resulted from
the vicious interference of the political econo-
mists with their unscientific analogy between
commercial commodities and human labor.
The falsity of their analogy was exposed in
1850 by a Parisian workman who was being
examined before a commission appointed by
the French government to inquire into the
condition of the working people. One of the
commissioners took occasion to impress upon
the witness that labor was merely a mer-
chandise. The workman replied, "If merchan-
dise is not sold at one certain time it can be
sold at another, while if I do not sell my
labor it is lost for all the world as well as my-
self; and as society lives only upon the results
of labor, society is poorer to the whole extent
of that which I have failed to produce."
The more intelligent will, however, before
long begin to appreciate the transcendent im-
portance of the voluntary organization of
labor, will recognize the justice of the claims
made by that organization, and will become
conscious that there is nothing therein con-
tained or involved that would be derogatory
to the real dignity and interest of all to volun-
tary and frankly concur in.
In order to understand the wants of labor it
is essential to conceive the hypothesis upon
which the claims are based, hence the neces-
sity of presenting the foregoing.
What does labor want? It wants the earth
and the fulness thereof. There is nothing too
precious, there is nothing too beautiful, too
lofty, too ennobling, unless it is within the
scope and comprehension of labor's aspira-
tions and wants. But to be more specific:
The expressed demands of labor are first and
foremost a reduction of the hours of daily
labor to eight hours to-day, fewer to-morrow.
Is labor justified in making this demand?
Let us examine the facts.
Within the past twenty-five years more in-
ventions and discoveries have been made in
the method of producing wealth than in the
entire history of the world before. Steam
power has been applied on the most extensive
scale. The improvement of tools, the conse-
quent division and subdivision of labor, the
force of electricity, so little known a few years.
ago, is now applied to an enormous extent.
As a result the productivity of the toiler with
these new improved machines and forces has
increased so many fold as to completely over-
shadow the product of the joint masses of past
ages. Every effort, every ingenious device
has been utilized to cultivate the greater pro-
ductivity of the worker.
The fact that in the end the toilers must be
the great body of the consumers has been
given little or no consideration at all. The
tendency to employ the machines continuously
(the worker has been made part of the ma-
chines) and the direction has been in the line
of endeavoring to make the wealth producers.
work longer hours.
On the other hand, the organized labor
movement, the Trade Unions, have concen-
trated all their forces upon the movement to
reduce the hours of daily toil, not only as has
been often said to lighten the burdens of
drudgery and severe toil, but also to give the
great body of the people more time, more op-
portunity and more leisure in order to create
and increase their consumptive power; in other
words, to relieve the choked and glutted condi-
tion of industry and commerce.
The prosperity of a nation, the success of a
people, the civilizing influence of our era, can
7
always be measured by the comparative con-
suming power of a people.
If, as it has often been said, cheap labor and
long hours of toil are necessary to a country's
prosperity, commercially and industrially,
China should necessarily be at the height of
civilization.
Millions of willing heads, hands and hearts.
are ready to frame and to fashion the fabrics
and supply the necessities as well as the desires
of the people. There are hundreds of thou-
sands of our fellow men and women who can-
not find the opportunity to employ their pow-
ers, their brain and brawn to satisfy their
commonest and barest necessities to sustain
life. In every city and town through this
broad land of plenty gaunt figures, hungry
men and women, with blanched faces, and chil-
dren having the mark of premature age and
emaciated conditions indelibly impressed upon
their countenances, stalk through the streets
and highways. It does not require a philan-
thropist nor even a humanitarian to evidence
deep concern or to give deep thought in order
to arrive at the conclusion that in the midst of
plenty such results are both unnatural and
wrong. The ordinary man may truly inquire.
why it is that the political economist answers
our demand for work by saying that the law
of supply and demand, from which they say
there is no relief, regulates these conditions.
Might we not say fails to regulate them?
The organized working men and women,
the producers of the wealth of the world, de-
clare that men, women and children with hu-
man brains and human hearts, should have a
better consideration than inanimate and dor-
mant things, usually known under the eupho-
nious title of "Property." We maintain that
it is both inhuman, barbaric and retrogressive
to allow the members of the human family to
suffer for want while the very things that
could and would contribute to their wants and
comforts as well as to the advantage of the
entire people are allowed to decay.
We demand a reduction of the hours of la-
bor which would give a due share of work and
wages to the reserve army of labor and elimi-
nate many of the worst abuses of the industrial
system now filling our poor houses and jails.
The movement for the reduction of the hours
of labor is contemporaneous with the introduc-
tion of labor-saving machinery and has been
the most faithful of all reformatory attempts
of modern times, since it has clearly revealed
the power of the working people to realize an
improved industrial system and raises the hope
that we may yet be able to stem the tide of
economic, social and moral degradations, rob-
bing those who work of four-fifths of their
natural wages and keeping the whole of society
within a few months of destitution.
Labor demands and insists upon the exercise
of the right to organize for self and mutual
protection. The toilers want the abrogation
of all laws discriminating against them in the
exercise of those functions which make our
organizations in the economic struggle a fac-
tor and not a farce.
That the lives and limbs of the wage-work-
ers shall be regarded as sacred as those of all
others of our fellow human beings; that an in-
jury or destruction of either by reason of neg-
ligence or maliciousness of another shall not
leave him without redress amply because he is
a wage-worker. We demand equality before
the law in fact as well as in theory.
The right to appear by counsel guaranteed
by the constitution of our country is one upon
which labor is determined.
To prescribe narrower limits to the wage-
workers and urge as a special plea that right
is accorded before the courts is insufficient.
The counsel of the toilers have earned their
diplomas by sacrifices made and scars received
in the battle for labor's rights rather than the
mental acquirements of legends and musty pre-
cedents of semi-barbaric ages. The diplomas
of labor's counsel are not written on parch-
ment; they are engraved in heart and mind.
The court our counsels file their briefs in and
make their pleas for justice, right and equality
are in the offices of the employers. The denial
to labor of the right to ard by counsel—
their committees is a violation of the spirit
of a fundamental principle of our republic.
And by no means the least demand of the
Trade Unions is for adequate wages.
The importance of this demand is not likely
to be underestimated. Adam Smith says: "It
is but equity that they who feed, clothe and
lodge the whole body of the people should have
such a share of the produce of their labor as to
be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and
lodged." But the Trade Unions' demand is
for better pay than which Adam Smith deemed
equitable. The Trade Unions, taking normal
conditions as its point of view, regards the
workman as the producer of the wealth of the
world and demands that wages, as long as the
wage system may last, shall be sufficient to
enable him to support his family in a manner
consistent with existing civilization and all that
is required for maintaining and improving
physical and mental health and the self-respect
of human beings.
Render our lives while working as safe and
healthful as modern science demonstrates it is
possible. Give us better homes is just as po-
tent a cry to-day as when Dickens' voiced the
yearnings of the people of a generation ago.
Save our children in their infancy from
being forced into the maelstrom of wage slav-
ery. See to it that they are not dwarfed in
body and mind or brought to a premature
death by early drudgery. Give them the sun-
shine of the school and playground instead of
the factory, the mine and the workshop.
We want more school houses and less jails:
more books and less arsenals; more learning


8
and less vice; more constant work and less
crime; more leisure and less greed; more jus-
tice ani less revenge; in fact, more of the op-
portunities to cultivate our better natures, to
make manhood more noble, womanhood more
beautiful, and childhood more happy and
bright.
These in brief are the primary demands
made by the Trade Unions in the name of
labor.
:
}
TRADES
These are the demands made by labor upor
modern society, and in their consideration is
involved the fate of civilization. For-
There is a moving of men like the sea in its might,
The grand and resistless uprising of labor;
The banner it carries is justice and right,
It aims not the musket, it draws not the sabre.
But the sound of its tread, o'er the graves of the dead,
Shall startle the world and fill despots with dread;
For 'tis sworn that the land of the Fathers shall be
The home of the brave, and the land of the free.
ALLIED PRINTING
{UNION}
LABEL
WASHINGTON
COUNCIL
PUBLISHED BY THE
}

AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR
423-425 G STREET NORTHWEST
WASHINGTON, D. C.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
3 9015 03257 8968
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