Western Labor News
May 28, 1919
The workers have never liked to down tools. It means hard times for them. Many never have enough to live on. The strike takes away all their living. For this reason the strike only when they are driven to desperation. Why then, it will be asked, do unions that have no direct disagreements of their own walk out with others who have a disagreement? Why do they join in a General Strike? Others add the question, why should they put the whole community to a disadvantage because they take up the quarrel of others. To answer adequately this question would take a volume. But we can indicate the answer.
First, labor will not call a general strike on a question of wages alone. It wants a decent wage, but so far as we know, no general strike was ever called for this reason alone. It is when principles that cannot be arbitrated are involved and would be defeated unless there were a general stand made by labor that a general strike is possible. It is never possible otherwise.
That was the issue in this city a year ago. The right of the firemen and police to organize was challenged, and labor by a very gradual process brought out one union after the other until the unions concerned were recognized. This year the issue arose over the Metal Trades. The employers here were arrogant and defiant. They threatened to practically close up and the men might starve. Such was the essence of the matter.
In the case of the Building Trade workers it was the matter of wages. But not a mere matter of wages either. Their demands were acknowledged to be fair and reasonable. But the banking interests were behind the scenes, and the employers were not free to pay the reasonable wage.
Thus, labor was face to face with a wage crisis that had never before appeared. It was a straight demand on the part of our financial barons that the workers should work for less then a living wage, while they piled up more millions. That was why the men involved struck work. That is – they just stopped working on those terms.
A couple of weeks sufficed to demonstrate that the employers had determined that they would not run the foundries or erect buildings, and the workers were faced with the possibility of going on under impossible conditions or calling the whole force of labor to their assistance. They did the latter. Will those who oppose the general strike say theirs a better way? Will they say that labor had any alternative?
But others suffer besides the original parties, they say. That is true. But, is labor responsible for that? Is it not the financial autocrats and barons who are responsible?
The answer is clear. Labor has no choice. Moreover, for thousands of workers to stop work and lose their wages in the interest of others is the highest form of brotherhood. It cannot be condemned. Still further, it is wholly a negative method. It does not consist in destruction or violence, but merely in a cessation of work. It has no other phases. It is wholly a cessation of work.
If the general public is so considerably inconvenienced when labor ceases to work, is it not convincingly clear that it is the business of all the people to see that labor gets such a wage and such working conditions as tend to contentment and efficiency? Yet, when was the public interested in labor? When did they do a tap to help get justice for the worker?
To ask is to answer the question.
-Converted to electronic format courtesy of Heather Hall