Labor's Broken Front

I

ONE basic fact must underlie any consideration of the labor problem: namely, that 40,000,000 Americans have been reduced to the poverty line because 10,000,000 men are out of work. This bitterly cold fact has stood practically unchanged during the whole of the depression and the recovery. It is beginning to take on the characteristics of permanence. It is being used as the justification for alterations in the character of American political and social institutions; it has already forced upon us a vast extension of the functions of government.

It is not easy for the average citizen to realize that at the present time the most absorbing business of the American government is relief. Most of the efforts toward recovery and reform are, in reality, relief measures. Every state, every county and parish and municipal unit of government, faces the single problem of relief. The objective has been stated crudely in the slogan, ‘One third of the American people shall not starve.’ Every agency of government, therefore, concerns itself directly with the personal problems of the 10,000,000 unemployed and their families. This forces the official mind in the United States to be more conscious of the worker and his desires and needs than has been usual in this country.

It is this fact of unemployment that makes any impartial and realistic analysis of the labor problem difficult. Constantly the spectre of starving millions causes capital and the consumer as well as labor leaders to forget that laws passed, moves once made, permanently affect the social and economic structure, that steps taken as emergency measures are rarely retraced.

For instance, the NIRA was a temporary expedient to be tried for two years. It was assumed, when it was passed, that recovery would be an accomplishment at the end of that period. Instead, under the NRA, a reorganization of the industrial and commercial structure of the United States has been brought about which is taking on the characteristics of permanence. There can be little doubt that the next Congress will be requested by the President and will agree to enact legislation for its continuance over a longer period and for perpetuating some of its organizations and institutions. Far too much has been done under its provisions to permit a hasty and sudden abandonment of it. Too rarely do we realize that, from the point of view of the social and economic structure, there are no temporary measures. Every tittle of change becomes a step in the process of evolution, progressive or retrogressive.

One of the steps taken by the government to deal with the problem of unemployment under the NIRA was the protection of the rights. of the worker to organize for collective bargaining. This measure, part of a temporary relief programme during a period of depression, has effected social and economic changes that are altogether different from the intention at the time, which was merely to protect employed workers against suffering the consequences of a glut of the labor market by surplus workers. These social and economic changes must be faced objectively. Current labor disturbances, for example, cannot be considered as a temporary upheaval due to anger at hunger and unemployment, but as a response of the worker to his newly found rights under the NIRA and as a strategic campaign of an organized minority among the workers to utilize national misfortune to seize the balance of political power in the state, and, by occupying this pivotal position, force the government to conform to its wishes. The phrase ‘organized minority’ seems to me to apply exactly to the A. F. of L., for here it is clear that leaders of about 3 per cent of the people of this country are seeking to determine the objectives of labor and the character and functions of government in every economic field.

A distinction must be made, for clarity, between the industrial worker as an individual, organized labor, and the American Federation of Labor. Most industrial labor in the United States either is unorganized or is organized in unions not controlled by the American Federation of Labor. The average worker does not function politically as a worker at all (compare RepublicanDemocratic vote with Socialist-Communist vote). He has no ideological basis for his demands, but pursues a bread-and-butter policy of trying to get more wages and shorter working hours with the least trouble. Again, a distinction must be made between organized labor and the A. F. of L., for organized labor includes the company and Communist unions as well as the A. F. of L. In this article, the three categories will, then, be made distinct — namely, the worker as an individual, organized labor, and the A. F. of L.

II

No group of workers, with the possible exception of the Communists, has a clearly defined programme. The average worker cares nothing about programmes; he wants to work and to eat under the most favorable circumstances. Both the company unions and the A. F. of L. are opportunistic, taking advantage of every occasion to strengthen their hold upon the newly created political agencies established by the government under the NIRA. The A. F. of L., however, has assumed a voice and a manner of leadership and responsibility which become increasingly dangerous as its leaders become increasingly muddle-headed as to principles and purposes. To this ideological confusion we shall now address ourselves.

Section 7(a) of the NIRA has undoubtedly afforded ample justification to the A. F. of L. to assume that the time has come when it should make, even by the use of direct actionist methods, an attempt to establish itself as the dominant political minority group in this country. The labor leaders naturally believe that this is their moment, for the government in Washington is bound by law to protect organized labor, not only against the capitalist, but against individualistic tendencies among the workers themselves. The law requires labor to organize, and the implication is that it would be preferable for it to organize into One Big Union. The A. F. of L. is conducting a campaign to make itself the One Big Union.

The Communists alone have a clearcut and unmistakable programme for labor and society. It is that the government shall become a dictatorship of the proletariat; that the means of production and distribution shall be taken over by a Soviet of Labor Deputies — by the workers themselves. From the Marxian hypothesis, this is an historical inevitability. American labor leaders prefer the term ‘National Unionism’ to ‘Soviet of Labor Deputies,’ but when the trend and the effort are viewed objectively the direction pursued by both groups is identical, because when once the proletariat is recognized as a distinct class in the political and social life of the country, and when it is required by law to organize as a class, then the Marxian class struggle becomes a positive factor in the relations between labor and the rest of the people of the country.

Even the undoubtedly sincere opposition of the A. F. of L. leaders to Communism does not change a pigment in the picture. The contest between the A. F. of L. and the Communist unions is a political conflict as to which particular group shall dominate the central organ of the workers recognized by Section 7(a). No matter how this particular contest may resolve itself, whichever group controls the central organ, the One Big Union can, under the circumstances, place itself in exactly the same pivotal position vis-à-vis government which Lenin and Trotsky employed when they represented a fractional minority with headquarters at the Smolny Institute. The opposition to Communism by Matthew Woll, Vice President of the Federation, cannot guarantee that the Communists will not seize control of the Federation if and when the One Big Union is successful. As long as the government recognizes the principle of majorities in labor representation, a Communist majority is as legal as an anti-Communist majority. Earl Browder, Secretary of the Communist Party of the United States, has, according to a press statement, announced that his party will attempt to gain control at the next convention of the A. F. of L. From a legal point of view, if he gains a majority, he has as much right to head the Federation as Mr. Green.

Whether organized labor functions through the A. F. of L. or the Communist unions, it faces the fact that in a country like the United States the industrial workers are a minority. To succeed in achieving the political force of One Big Union, it is necessary that they should be organized into a single, potent body, which can, if necessary, utterly cripple the means of production and distribution. Nothing is made; nothing moves. In pursuance of this objective, the Communists employ the proletarian revolution, the Federation employs the strike. The distinction, in practice, is one of intensity.

In a modern state, the destruction of the means of industrial production impoverishes both the ‘white-collar class’ and the farmers, because the curtailment of production of manufactured goods results in a rise in prices which serves to reduce the actual income of these classes. But the farmer is further affected by impediments, arising from railroad and trucking strikes, to the movement of his produce, usually perishable goods, to favorable markets.

Theoretically, then, industrial labor does not need the assistance of the white-collar class and the farmers to accomplish its dictatorship. It cripples, impoverishes, reduces both groups until they plead for mercy and are accepted into the dictatorship of the proletariat on the industrial worker’s terms.

This is Marxian theory. In practice, the real problem is to get the One Big Union — the worker’s soviet — organized, and to attempt by whatever means are available to gain control over the agencies of government. In the United States, the One Big Union idea has not yet taken sufficient hold of the imagination and will of the worker to accomplish this objective.

Organized labor has, however, been assisted by certain factors, particularly by the effort of the government to control the means of production and distribution through the NRA, the RFC, the AAA, and cognate organizations. This control of industry and of the means of distribution arose through a complex of forces: the depression, the psychological paralysis of American capitalism, the want of leadership in the Hoover Administration, the ballyhoo of recovery, the experimental efforts of the Roosevelt Administration. These gave to the A. F. of L., as the most articulate organ of workers, the opportunity to make demands which capital, the white-collar class, and the farmers could not resist in the circumstance of the distress which faced forty million Americans. Strategically utilizing this distress, labor strengthened its legal position until to-day, since the decision in the Houde Case to which reference will be made elsewhere, the One Big Union idea is implied by law.

Resistance to the efforts of the A. F. of L. should have come from the American capitalists. In the face, however, of national distress, capitalism adopted a conciliatory and opportunistic, nay, even a cowardly attitude. The American capitalists could only think of saving what they had accumulated, and capitulated over details in the hope that labor would at some point be satisfied. But it is axiomatic in situations of this type that organized labor is never satisfied. Compliance with one set of demands only encourages the presentation of another set. The fortyeight-hour week became the forty-hour week, and it is now the thirty-hour week. And this is true as regards wages and every other question.

Capital exists only because there are profits in the means of production and distribution. Remove the profit motive and capital has gone out of existence. There is a department store in New York which advertises that it will do business for a year on a non-profitmaking basis. If the advertisement is true, and I assume that it is, this shop is offering nothing that most enterprises in the United States have not done since 1929 — namely, operated on a non-profit-making basis. In a word, capitalism has hardly functioned during the depression. It is not functioning much more effectively to-day.

Capital becomes sterile when it does not replenish itself by profits. There can be no question, under the capitalist system, of producing goods merely because there is a social necessity for them. Capitalism does not operate on that yardstick; its yardstick is profit. When, therefore, the government, by controlling operations and prices and by excessive taxes, and labor, by increasing demands upon industry, wipe out not only profits but the prospect of profits, then capital withdraws from industrial enterprises. Plants are closed down and dismantled. But the government cannot tolerate non-productivity, because that imperils the existence of the state. It therefore must operate the plants to maintain the state. It moves from control to operation, from operation to ownership. The last stage is Communism.

Only now, as these processes assert themselves with more distinctness, is it becoming evident to the A. F. of L. and to the administration that the forces let loose by the NIRA tend toward the dissolution of the American economic and political system. They appear now to be cognizant of the fact that recovery without profits cannot be achieved under the capitalist system. But neither the A. F. of L. nor the administration advocates Communism; hence the current confusion.

For example, in the textile industry the wage struggle between organized capital and organized labor under the codes is over the division of profits. That is, capital maintains that it is unable to establish profits if wages are increased in a stagnant market; labor maintains that there is a maldistribution of wealth in the United States because an unduly large share of the profits of industry goes to capital and management. Organized labor seeks to effect a new division of profits. It is somewhat difficult to understand how this can be accomplished when actually there are no profits. The A. F. of L. does not face this problem realistically, for it does not believe that the American industrial worker will support the elimination of the profit motive; yet it must, for political reasons, continue to demand increased wages and shorter hours.

The pressure of this conflict falls upon the white-collar class, which cannot resist because it is a dependent class, getting its livelihood either from the capitalists, as vice presidents or clerks, or from the state, as officials or schoolteachers. Besides, the depression had the effect of lowering the morale of this class, which in the United States, as in France and Great Britain, provides the bulk of the investors in capitalistic enterprises. The fall in stocks and bonds, the reduction in salaries and personnel, caused persons in this class to lose their homes, their insurance policies, their sense of well-being and security. Many were reduced to relief or private charity. Objectively, the conclusion must be reached that on the whole this class was the principal sufferer from the depression, has been the least benefited by the recovery, and is, in fact, slowly becoming part of the proletariat.

It is significant that this class, which in the United States has usually represented the liberal democratic point of view, has whole-heartedly supported the New Deal and the objectives of organized labor. It is this class which has provided the intellectual façade for the Roosevelt Administration. It is this class which is now most frightened by the political ambitions of labor, standing confounded by the conflict between the emotion of liberalism and the necessity for security.

The American farmer has usually been antagonistic to industrial labor and to the effects of organized labor upon the price of manufactured goods. He was, however, given the opiate of the AAA, which, up to the drought, seemed to be of some value. Since the drought, the American farmer has been reduced to physical dependence upon the government. Whether demanding cheap money from Congress or relief from the administration, the farmer is in a sorry plight.

Organized labor thus finds itself in the powerful position not only of being protected by the government, but of being the only element which has the strength and purpose to fight for what it wants. It alone does not vacillate. It alone moves in a straight line, in the direction of One Big Union. Its weakness lies not in the politics of organized labor, but in its inability to bring the whole of American labor into One Big Union.

III

What is it, then, that the A. F. of L., as the vocal agent of the worker, demands of the country, so that it can gratify the wishes of all the workers and persuade them to join the One Big Union?

Quite apart from idealistic considerations, the leaders of the A. F. of L. must show results. Their popularity with the workers who pay dues to the unions depends upon constant successes. There can, then, be no limits to the demands of organized labor. The leaders cannot stop. If they stop, the unions lose their membership. From the standpoint of the A. F. of L., this is a correct view. The Federation is a service organization operating to win for its members tangible benefits whenever the opportunity offers. According to Marxian dialectic, this is the class struggle, the laborers forming a solid phalanx which may give way but never retreats.

Mr. Richberg, in his Report on the Progress of National Recovery, cites the following as the achievements of labor.

The work week has been reduced, from June 1933 to June 1934, approximately six hours for all industry. . . . Average hourly earnings have been increased about 26 per cent. . . .

Labor organization has shown a corresponding increase [to trade associations], more than 2,000,000 workers having been added to the A. F. of L., with large increases also in the number and memberships of labor organizations not affiliated with the A. F. of L. The increase of numbers and memberships of so-called ‘company unions’ (even though not regarded by the national unions as adequate labor organizations) marks at least an increase in mechanisms of labor association available for the collective bargaining contemplated in the act.

This much has been accomplished, but the labor leaders cannot stop and yet hold their gains. Hours must be further reduced, wages must be increased, and, to prove their strength, the ‘mechanisms of labor association’ must be brought within the Federation as the One Big Union. For the labor leader, as a salaried official of organized labor, must prove at the next convention of the A. F. of L. that he has done more in the period between June 1934 to June 1935 than he accomplished during the period to which Mr. Richberg addresses himself. And that will prove true for every succeeding period. It is the necessity for never stopping that makes organized labor such a sinister force in the community, if the community desires to remain capitalistic and democratic. For, should all the possible demands of labor be granted, then profits must disappear and Communism is inevitable.

It is the psychology of capital always to compromise, because capital hopes to find some way, some labor-saving device, some bookkeeping method, some amalgamation of overhead, which will make profits possible. It is the psychology of organized labor never really to compromise on essentials, because its goal is to transfer profits from capital to labor by any process which may at any time be available. Even when labor leaders most violently denounce Communism, the strategy of the labor movement is to give labor an increasingly greater share of the profits of industry, until no share of profits shall remain for capital. That is Communism.

IV

We have discussed theory and tactics; purposes and strategy; aspirations and conflicts. We now come down to the immediate effectiveness of the efforts of the A. F. of L., first, to dominate labor through the One Big Union idea, and, secondly, to form at least a partnership with the administration in controlling the economic and social policy of the government. In response to my two previous articles on this subject, I have received several letters asking for evidence either that labor as a whole does not prefer the A. F. of L. or that the workers in any industry prefer the company union. It has been contended that I have no positive data to prove either statement. And quite rightly, for no data exist on either side of this subject which can be accepted as scientifically accurate. Nevertheless, my conclusions arc not mere guesses; they are the result of objective analysis of all the factors in the labor situation.

These questions require definition. When I or anyone else suggests that labor as a whole in the United States does not prefer the A. F. of L. to the Communist or company unions or to unorganized individualism, he must accept a statistical definition of ’labor as a whole’ — namely, that if there are 28,000,000 workers in industry at the moment, and only 4,000,000 are in the Federation, in spite of open government support, then labor as a whole does not accept the A. F. of L. But we can analyze these figures further. If, in 1929, 38,000,000 were gainfully employed in industry, and 10,000,000 are unemployed owing to the depression, then 28,000,000 are gainfully employed in industry. If it were known exactly how many of those registered in labor unions as members are actually unemployed and that number were deducted from the total membership, it would make the ratio of the A. F. of L. workers to those not in the A. F. of L. more accurately comparable. In a word, the formula is the ratio between workers minus unemployed and A. F. of L. members minus A. F. of L. members unemployed. Such an exercise in subtraction would prove the figure of employed workers who are members of the A. F. of L. to be much lower than their statement of membership. That figure is unavailable.

This is a statistical method of reaching an objective conclusion. But there is another method. Since organized labor has assumed an aggressive attitude as to its rights under the NIRA, a number of strikes have taken place. Some of these strikes were started by Communists, but for all of them either the A. F. of L. or one of its constituents assumed responsibility. In the steel and automobile strikes, it was clear that neither the claims nor the demands of the A. F. of L., as a national union, were supported by the workers. For this reason the steel strike did not occur; for this reason the automobile strike was a failure. In San Francisco, it almost appeared that organized labor had achieved unity, but the general strike was a sham and even Mr. Green had to repudiate it. When I say that it was a sham, I mean that the A. F. of L. at first tried to take credit for a strike which Communists organized, and then got frightened when the Communists nearly succeeded in carrying it through. To prevent the success of a competing One Big Union group, the A. F. of L. temporarily went to the aid of the capitalists. The San Francisco strike, then, does not add to the evidence that the workers support, in any majority numbers, the A. F. of L.

The crucial test is the textile strike.¹ In that effort the A. F. of L. is adopting new tactics. In the first place, it is functioning on a vertical basis, which is against its stated principles — that is, an entire industry, instead of just one craft in the industry, is being called out. Secondly, related industries, producing competing goods, are also being called out. Altogether organized labor claims that it can withdraw 600,000 men from work, which is substantially the total employment in that industry. When the strike was actually called, not more than 50 per cent of the workers in the textile mills are reported to have responded. The labor leaders admit that they lack funds to carry through such a strike, but depend upon government subsidies in the form of relief for striking workers on the ground that they are unemployed. If the government provides this subsidy, then the strike takes on the aspect of a government-subsidized strike — that is, the government is paying men and women to strike, which will tremendously strengthen the A. F. of L., for it then becomes an agency of government in a struggle with capital. The problems here are obviously complicated and cannot be discussed objectively while the strike is taking place.

From this analysis it is possible to reach the conclusion that up to the textile strike, beginning on September 4, no major strike organized by the A. F. of L. during 1933-1934 proved that the majority of the workers favored the A. F. of L. On the contrary, in the two basic industries — steel and automobiles — the evidence points rather to the fact that the workers favor the company union. After a fortnight of the textile strike, available data and indications do not prove the solidarity of labor behind the A. F. of L. in this industry.

No one has ever polled the whole of industrial labor to determine whether the company union or the A. F. of L. or a Communist union is favored. Such a poll could only be conclusive if conducted by secret ballot under the most rigid control to prevent intimidation by interested parties. Without the results of such a poll for guidance, a conclusion as to the attitude of labor can only be reached by the processes which I employ in this article.

There are two considerations which assist in gathering all the threads together: —

1. The incontestable fact is that between the end of the war and the introduction of the NIRA the membership and influence of the American Federation of Labor steadily declined. The present membership of the A. F. of L., then, must be regarded not as wholly voluntary, but as accelerated by organized labor on the ground that joining is in line with the policy of the government. Men join on the supposition that if they do not they will be excluded from jobs under the collectivebargaining provisions 7 (a) of the NIRA. The present increase in membership, as small as it is in comparison with the total employment in industry, cannot be accepted as a normal gauge of the decision of labor as to national unionism. Nevertheless, national unionism may, under the NIRA, become the dominant labor system of the country whether the workers desire it or not.

Two decisions assist organized labor. One is the decision of Judge Samuel Rosenman, one of the original Brain Trusters and a friend of Mr. Roosevelt, that a plant cannot be moved to take advantage of cheaper labor. Of course Judge Rosenman’s decision is based upon the assumption that a company, having entered into a contractual relationship with labor and the government under the code, cannot commit a breach of contract. But he did not enjoin the government from giving a regional preference to a competitor, nor did he guarantee profits as he guaranteed wages. The effect of Judge Rosenman’s decision, if it can stand up in the Supreme Court, would be to invalidate the mobility of capital upon which profits often depend.

Mr. Richberg says, in his report, that failures in 1934 were 40 per cent less than in 1929, which is careless handling of statistical material, because from 1929 to June 1932 American industry and trade went through a period of deflation, amalgamation, and reorganization, so that by March 1933 it was possible to start at scratch. To analyze this situation adequately, it will be wisest to take June 1933 as a base — that is, the period when the NIRA became effective and labor began to make demands — and to wait until June 1935, when it should go out of existence under the law, to see what it did to industry and business. Even if the NRA does not go out of existence, this two-year period would form a reasonable bracket for a judgment. Unquestionably Judge Rosenman’s decision will play some rôle in the closing of small plants in higher-wage areas under the codes.

The other decision is that of the National Labor Relations Board in the Houde Case, that the majority, and not proportional representation, shall determine the organ for collective bargaining. In some industries, such as steel, motor cars, and some smaller units, the majority may be with the company unions, but in many industries organized labor and capital will vie with each other to win the majority. This decision, made at the tense moment of the textile strike, assures the country endless labor troubles. Labor leaders believe that it will, on the whole, strengthen organized labor as the vocal medium for collective bargaining. Capital plans to fight this decision in the courts.

2. A psychological factor may be employed in this general consideration of factors leading to a conclusion as to the will of the workers. Every strike is accompanied by picketing and rioting. Workers who would continue to work are intimidated by strong-arm methods. The first photographs in the textile strike showed workers outside a plant in the South preventing a motor truck from reaching the plant. Picketing is legal and rioting is unavoidable in labor troubles. Capital employs gangsters and private detectives, and there may be an element of provocation in all strikes.

From the point of view of mass psychology, particularly in areas where the plant composes the total population or a very large part of it, there ought to be no need for picketing or mass pressure if solidarity of labor is a reality. If the total or a majority of labor sincerely supported their leaders, there would be no scabs unless imported from outside the region. If the majority of workers supported organized labor, there would be no scabs to import. The fact is that scabs are always available for any purpose, not only among unskilled workers, but among the most highly skilled.

In other countries there has, at times, been evidence of such solidarity. In the United States, for reasons explained in some detail in my two previous articles, such solidarity does not exist. The American worker remains an individualist because he aspires to become a capitalist. The dominant American tradition, Puritanism, is individualistic. The dominant American psychological trait, coming down from the pioneer to the captain of industry, is individualism. It is this characteristic which confounds Mr. Green and Mr. Woll, who act in the direction of Communism and speak in the direction of individualism. Workers may at a moment join a labor organization for some immediate benefit, but as long as the profit motive continues to function the average American worker remains a capitalist. Such workers’ organizations as the A. F. of L. and even the Socialist Party fight Communism more bitterly than any organization of capitalists, because they are conscious of the average American worker’s repugnance to collectivism. This one psychological factor upsets all calculations as to the solidarity of labor. It is the fundamental impediment to the One Big Union idea.

V

Therefore, with all the cards stacked in its favor, organized labor has not won a single major strike since the NIRA went into effect. A few ‘facesaving’ devices have been arranged, but in each of the major strikes — steel, motor cars, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Harriman — organized labor has not succeeded in winning an unequivocal victory.

This failure has been demonstrated in spite of the reluctance and inability of capital to employ its most severe weapon — shutting down the plant — and in spite of active government support of labor.

Were there labor solidarity, the total of employed and unemployed workers would be in the American Federation of Labor, and the government would to-day be completely dominated by One Big Union. Even the Communists would enter the Federation and then try to seize the central organ. That, would bring the issue to a head and labor would find itself in conflict with a reducing capitalist class that would withdraw from industry and throw its plants into the lap of the NRA and the RFC, and with a fighting farmer class that would resist being reduced to peasantry and peonage to feed the city workers.

But that crisis has not arrived and does not arrive because the A. F. of L. cannot achieve labor solidarity behind itself. Nor is there any likelihood that organized labor will succeed, because its leaders have missed several crucial opportunities. One is the wording of Section 7(a), which from their point of view should have designated the A. F. of L. as the organ for collective bargaining. Another is the failure of labor leaders to pack the NRA with their own representatives. The third, which in my opinion is the most serious, is the inability of organized labor to develop enough statesmanship to realize that without the farmers labor cannot really dominate the country. To win the farmers to their cause, labor should have accepted a lower wage, so that prices for manufactured goods might be lower. Finally, although labor is beginning to realize that the day of the horizontal union is passing, the A. F. of L. fears the vertical union because it leads either to Communism or to the company union, both of which the Federation must oppose to survive as a political organization.

If this were a country like Russia, or even Great Britain, it would be possible to divide the people into two strict categories, labor and agriculture. But in the United States that cannot be done. We are more like China or Japan, where labor and agriculture are interchangeable. This tendency is growing increasingly marked as more first-generation immigrants take to the farms, the Poles, Czechs, and Italians following in the footsteps of the Scandinavians and Germans. Industrial workers, particularly away from New York and the Atlantic Coast cities, are more often than is generally supposed members of agricultural households. Such workers cannot be class-conscious in a struggle between labor and agriculture over prices, because their family livelihood is made up from returns from both activities, and the expenditures are affected as much by the losses in agrarian life as by the gains in industry through the activities of organized labor. To this must be added the factor of increasing taxation, which severely reduces the actual net income for living costs in agricultural as well as industrial families.

VI

Any attempt to appraise the attitude of labor must take into consideration all these factors. If the United States were passing through a proletarian revolution, they would have to be viewed differently, for then the entire population would divide over the single issue of the dictatorship of the proletariat. But that is not the issue to-day. For the average worker, the issue is more money for less work, and to that he says ‘amen’ until he discovers that more money does not mean more goods, or more clothes or a better house. Then he will turn on his labor leaders, and incidentally on the ‘New Deal,’ as he did after the Wilson Administration.

As the average worker is not classconscious, he has a measure that is surer than any wholesale price statistics put out by the government and banks. That measure is what happens to his dollar after his wife gets it. He knows when he is being told the truth, because his food and his clothes and his tax bill talk a language he can’t misunderstand when money begins to shrink in value. He is willing to follow his labor leaders as long as they can produce more food and clothing and better houses — and no longer. It is easy enough to lead men to strike for more money, but it is hard to hold them together when the money gets them nothing.

It is exactly this axiom that the labor leaders face, and it is that which stimulates more demands. If the labor leaders could hold their cohorts together now, they would stop their agitation and consolidate the gains they have made under the NIRA. They dare not stop, they cannot stop, because they are not sure of their following. And they are not sure of their following because they cannot carry their following along with them on ideological slogans, as in Russia or Italy, but must guarantee to the worker increasing income on the capitalistic basis of society.

Without an ideological basis, without an ideal other than bread and butter, it is impossible for the A. F. of L. to achieve workers’ solidarity. For each worker is an opportunist who determines for himself what his personal benefits will be in each situation. He does not function for a class; he functions for himself. He is not led over a long period; he strives to stand alone and get what he can. He wearies quickly of ideologies and mass tactics, and asks the eternal American question: ‘Where do I get off?’ It is this characteristic individualism that makes the One Big Union idea impotent; it is this that is responsible for the inability of the A. F. of L. to formulate a programme and plan for American labor.