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The wisest and most substantial men of affairs have but recently realized what organized labor has learned, and what has been its marvelous progress, and they have profited thereby. This advance in the labor movement is shown by a doubling of the membership of the unions since 1899, and a strengthening of their sense of responsibility. The best token of the latter change is seen in the numerous conferences and agreements now common between organized capital and organized labor. The demand most urgently presented by labor in the event of a controversy is that of recognition of the union. Capital is prone to reply to such a demand that it is meddling with matters of individual business, in which labor is entitled to no voice. A well known instance of this demand and response was a feature of the anthracite coal strike of 1902. This strike caused nearly $200,000,000 of loss to mines and miners. President Roosevelt brought to bear a power that resulted in arbitration and showed that all this expense and misery could have been prevented. Strikes are now commonly deprecated by the more conservative unions as bad, and as justifiable only in extremities. No longer do unionists cry against new machinery. Gradually scales of wages are being regulated by concessions on both sides. Sympathetic strikes, even in extreme cases, are less often countenanced than formerly. Public opinion has tended to modify the unions' insistence that non-unionists be excluded from employment with their members, and most labor leaders are crying out against violence. It can be stated truthfully that, in the majority of instances where riots accompany strikes, the assaults are committed by other than union men. So dangerous to the common good are strikes and labor difficulties which tie up industry that legislatures and public spirited bodies on all sides have appointed boards of arbitration to settle disagreements. While many of the labor leaders in times past have been mere agitators, the time has now come when the man who stands at the head of a great labor organization must be a man known for wisdom, integrity and strength of purpose. There will be a feeling that unions are not responsible just so long as good men do not lead them. Many strikes have been needless and have resulted in no good. This has been due largely to poor leadership. There has been a constant strife between capital and labor, an extraordinarily destructive one, and labor demands the best brains and absolute honesty in the men who direct its counsels. This only will wear down the prejudice against it, brought about by the traffic of dishonest demagogues. Such a man as the late P. M. Arthur furnished the true ideal of a union leader whose guidance was beneficent. Statistics of the Department of Labor will show the terrible expense caused by labor disturbances in 15½ years from January 1, 1881. The open struggles cost more than $285,000,000 and threw 3,714,406 persons out of employment by reason of strikes. Each striker lost on an average $44, and 366,690 persons lost an average of $73 each by lockouts. Of the total loss of $285,000,000, two-thirds was borne by the employes and one-third by the employers. The losses in the anthracite coal strike of 1902 are appalling. The strike lasted over five months, during which time 183,500 miners and others were thrown out of work, and 105,000 women and 285,000 children were involved in suffering. Capital amounting to $511,500,000 invested in the mines lay idle without return. The mine owners daily lost, in price of coal they could have mined, $443,500. The loss in miners' wages was about $30,000,000 the loss to operators $69,000,000; that to merchants in mining towns, $23,000,000. The loss to mills and factories closed for lack of fuel was over $7,000,000; that to merchants in outside districts, $16,000,000; to railway lines, $34,000,000; the loss of business permanently abandoned amounted to $8,000,000; the cost of troops in the field was nearly $2,000,000; the cost of police to patrol the mines was $3,500,000; the amount lost in railway men's wages was $275,000; the cost of keeping and protecting non-union workers at the mines amounted to $545,000; the damage to mines and machinery by fire and by the flooding of mines was about $5,000,000. The total cost of this one disastrous strike in money alone was about $200,000,000. And this cannot account for the lives lost in the riots. In most cases a strike causes only bitterness on both sides. Forty-four per cent of strikes succeed, the same number fail, and the other 12 per cent are "draws." In the whole course of strikes the employes have gained considerable advantage in wages and hours; but wisdom is now leading men away from this means of adjusting grievances and beckoning them toward peaceful agreement and arbitration. TRUSTS AND TRUST METHODS Much condemnation has been heaped upon trusts, their methods, and the men that control them. A great deal of this adverse criticism has been of an unintelligent nature, and is the result of an inadequate knowledge of what trusts really are. That corporation, body of men or society that monopolizes an industry or controls the great part of it, and puts restraint on legitimate competition is illegal, and has come to be known as a trust. Against these soul and body crushing organizations, political parties have fought, legislatures have enacted laws, and competing business men have turned their heaviest argument and ammunition. It should go without saying that a monopoly is not necessarily detrimental to the best interests of the general public. It must be admitted that large corporations which have cheapened methods of production, and even control every channel of trade in their particular line, can be just to the consumer. As a matter of fact, such corporations generally abuse their privileges, and for that reason the public mind has come to consider every capitalist, every big corporation, as a blot on the economy of the universe. After having warned the reader to beware of prejudice against capital simply because it is capital, and is powerful, let us examine the workings of the so-called trusts—the evil monopolies. Economists have said that monopolies could not live were they not granted special privileges, such as the right to lay gas or water pipes in a city's streets, to string wires, lay railway tracks, build pipe lines from state to state, and construct tunnels for pneumatic tubes, etc. The power of the monopoly lies in the rights it possesses to the exclusion of competition. If only one gas company has the right to pipe a city, unless precaution of law is taken, it might be possible for that company to charge its patrons any price that would not be prohibitive of consumption. To-day we see much of the supply of every-day necessaries controlled by trusts. The tendency of the age is towards consolidation in order to mince expense of production. When there is only one company in a country using material for an article of manufacture which it controls, it may refuse to pay more than a price which suits its convenience, yet it can also refuse to sell its commodity unless it gets its own price. In order to bring about a perfect monopoly of its trade, legislatures are frequently bribed to pass favorable laws. Tariffs that will favorably affect commodities controlled by the trust are secured in congress, as are bounties to foster infant industries. When all the separate companies in a certain industry are brought together, the capital thus consolidated is immense and can wield almost unlimited power. Take, for instance, the Standard Oil Company, with its enormous wealth. Rapidly has this concern seized upon, practically, the output of every oil well in the world. Through its immense business interests, it has been able to secure freight rebates, to control railroads, steamships, mines and banks, and to regulate the price of oil at will. If a small oil concern starts in business independent of the trust, oil will be sold by the trust so cheap that, eventually, the rival of the trust must either succumb to the ruinous competition and fail, or else become absorbed in the trust. Much comment has been made recently on the beef trust. Several big packing industries in Chicago, with their branches in other cities, control the meat trade of the world. This trust is almost the only buyer of the live stock of the United States. Railroads discriminate in its favor in freight rates, and so compact is the alliance that, if an independent butcher attempts competition, he is undersold until forced from business. Cases are known where, in order to kill competition, the members of the trust have sold meat at 1 cent a pound, until the individual competitor was ruined. In the same way this meat trust often refuses to take live stock at the prevailing market value, in order to glut the market and secure stock at very low figures. Occasionally a monopolizing company conducts its business in a legitimate manner, simply buying in the market at fair prices, and by economizing allowing the public to share in its prosperity by selling goods at reasonable rates. Such good trusts do not fear publicity, and are a great blessing to business. More often, however, where a trust really controls its product, as in case of the hard and soft coal trusts, great harm may come to the public from its bad methods. The action of the hard coal trust in its stubborn refusal to arbitrate the strike of its miners in 1902 wrought much evil. Some trusts, not content with controlling the business of a certain line in one country, form international concerns, and influence the commerce of the whole world. At present there are railway combinations controlling lines from coast to coast. The steel trust, capitalized at nearly a billion dollars, commands the situation in the American steel and wire trade. There is a shipbuilding trust, an egg trust, cereal combinations, a sugar trust, a tin-can trust, a carpet combination, a cattle-growers' combination, a grain growers' trust, a harvesting machine trust, as well as numerous others, the capital of which amounts to many millions of dollars. THE SPECULATOR'S TRAITS AND METHODS |