Further, the more work they do in one day, the fewer men will be needed to do the work.So the unions place a day's stint upon their members, beyond which they are not permitted to go.In "A Study of Trade Unionism," by Benjamin Taylor in the "Nineteenth Century" of April, 1898, are furnished some interesting corroborations.The facts here set forth were collected by the Executive Board of the Employers' Federation, the documentary proofs of which are in the hands of the secretaries.In a certain firm the union workmen made eight ammunition boxes a day.Nor could they be persuaded into making more.A young Swiss, who could not speak English, was set to work, and in the first day he made fifty boxes.In the same firm the skilled union hands filed up the outside handles of one machine-gun a day.That was their stint.No one was known ever to do more.
A non-union filer came into the shop and did twelve a day.AManchester firm found that to plane a large bed-casting took union workmen one hundred and ninety hours, and non-union workmen one hundred and thirty-five hours.In another instance a man, resigning from his union, day by day did double the amount of work he had done formerly.And to cap it all, an English gentleman, going out to look at a wall being put up for him by union bricklayers, found one of their number with his right arm strapped to his body, doing all the work with his left arm -forsooth, because he was such an energetic fellow that otherwise he would involuntarily lay more bricks than his union permitted.
All England resounds to the cry, "Wake up, England!" But the sulky giant is not stirred."Let England's trade go to pot," he says;"what have I to lose?" And England is powerless.The capacity of her workmen is represented by 1, in comparison with the 2.25capacity of the American workman.And because of the solidarity of labor and the destructiveness of strikes, British capitalists dare not even strive to emulate the enterprise of American capitalists.
So England watches trade slipping through her fingers and wails unavailingly.As a correspondent writes: "The enormous power of the trade unions hangs, a sullen cloud, over the whole industrial world here, affecting men and masters alike."The political movement known as Socialism is, perhaps, even less realized by the general public.The great strides it has taken and the portentous front it today exhibits are not comprehended; and, fastened though it is in every land, it is given little space by the capitalistic press.For all its plea and passion and warmth, it wells upward like a great, cold tidal wave, irresistible, inexorable, ingulfing present-day society level by level.By its own preachment it is inexorable.Just as societies have sprung into existence, fulfilled their function, and passed away, it claims, just as surely is present society hastening on to its dissolution.
This is a transition period--and destined to be a very short one.
Barely a century old, capitalism is ripening so rapidly that it can never live to see a second birthday.There is no hope for it, the Socialists say.It is doomed.
The cardinal tenet of Socialism is that forbidding doctrine, the materialistic conception of history.Men are not the masters of their souls.They are the puppets of great, blind forces.The lives they live and the deaths they die are compulsory.All social codes are but the reflexes of existing economic conditions, plus certain survivals of past economic conditions.The institutions men build they are compelled to build.Economic laws determine at any given time what these institutions shall be, how long they shall operate, and by what they shall be replaced.And so, through the economic process, the Socialist preaches the ripening of the capitalistic society and the coming of the new cooperative society.
The second great tenet of Socialism, itself a phase of the materialistic conception of history, is the class struggle.In the social struggle for existence, men are forced into classes."The history of all society thus far is the history of class strife." In existing society the capitalist class exploits the working class, the proletariat.The interests of the exploiter are not the interests of the exploited."Profits are legitimate," says the one.
"Profits are unpaid wages," replies the other, when he has become conscious of his class, "therefore profits are robbery." The capitalist enforces his profits because he is the legal owner of all the means of production.He is the legal owner because he controls the political machinery of society.The Socialist sets to work to capture the political machinery, so that he may make illegal the capitalist's ownership of the means of production, and make legal his own ownership of the means of production.And it is this struggle, between these two classes, upon which the world has at last entered.
Scientific Socialism is very young.Only yesterday it was in swaddling clothes.But today it is a vigorous young giant, well braced to battle for what it wants, and knowing precisely what it wants.It holds its international conventions, where world-policies are formulated by the representatives of millions of Socialists.In little Belgium there are three-quarters of a million of men who work for the cause; in Germany, 3,000,000; Austria, between 1895 and 1897, raised her socialist vote from 90,000 to 750,000.France in 1871 had a whole generation of Socialists wiped out; yet in 1885there were 30,000, and in 1898, 1,000,000.
