My Life and Work
identified sources, they are promulgated by easily discoverable methods;
and they are controlled by mere exposure. We have simply used the method
of exposure. When people learn to identify the source and nature of the
influence swirling around them, it is sufficient. Let the American
people once understand that it is not natural degeneracy, but calculated
subversion that afflicts us, and they are safe. The explanation is the
cure.
This work was taken up without personal motives. When it reached a stage
where we believed the American people could grasp the key, we let it
rest for the time. Our enemies say that we began it for revenge and that
we laid it down in fear. Time will show that our critics are merely
dealing in evasion because they dare not tackle the main question. Time
will also show that we are better friends to the Jews' best interests
than are those who praise them to their faces and criticize them behind
their backs.
CHAPTER XVIII
DEMOCRACY AND INDUSTRY
Perhaps no word is more overworked nowadays than the word "democracy,"
and those who shout loudest about it, I think, as a rule, want it least.
I am always suspicious of men who speak glibly of democracy. I wonder if
they want to set up some kind of a despotism or if they want to have
somebody do for them what they ought to do for themselves. I am for the
kind of democracy that gives to each an equal chance according to his
ability. I think if we give more attention to serving our fellows we
shall have less concern with the empty forms of government and more
concern with the things to be done. Thinking of service, we shall not
bother about good feeling in industry or life; we shall not bother about
masses and classes, or closed and open shops, and such matters as have
nothing at all to do with the real business of living. We can get down
to facts. We stand in need of facts.
It is a shock when the mind awakens to the fact that not all of humanity
is human--that whole groups of people do not regard others with humane
feelings. Great efforts have been made to have this appear as the
attitude of a class, but it is really the attitude of all "classes," in
so far as they are swayed by the false notion of "classes." Before, when
it was the constant effort of propaganda to make the people believe that
it was only the "rich" who were without humane feelings, the opinion
became general that among the "poor" the humane virtues flourished.
But the "rich" and the "poor" are both very small minorities, and you
cannot classify society under such heads. There are not enough "rich"
and there are not enough "poor" to serve the purpose of such
classification. Rich men have become poor without changing their
natures, and poor men have become rich, and the problem has not been
affected by it.
Between the rich and the poor is the great mass of the people who are
neither rich nor poor. A society made up exclusively of millionaires
would not be different from our present society; some of the
millionaires would have to raise wheat and bake bread and make machinery
and run trains--else they would all starve to death. Someone must do the
work. Really we have no fixed classes. We have men who will work and men
who will not. Most of the "classes" that one reads about are purely
fictional. Take certain capitalist papers. You will be amazed by some of
the statements about the labouring class. We who have been and still are
a part of the labouring class know that the statements are untrue. Take
certain of the labour papers. You are equally amazed by some of the
statements they make about "capitalists." And yet on both sides there is
a grain of truth. The man who is a capitalist and nothing else, who
gambles with the fruits of other men's labours, deserves all that is
said against him. He is in precisely the same class as the cheap gambler
who cheats workingmen out of their wages. The statements we read about
the labouring class in the capitalistic press are seldom written by
managers of great industries, but by a class of writers who are writing
what they think will please their employers. They write what they
imagine will please. Examine the labour press and you will find another
class of writers who similarly seek to tickle the prejudices which they
conceive the labouring man to have. Both kinds of writers are mere
propagandists. And propaganda that does not spread facts is
self-destructive. And it should be. You cannot preach patriotism to men
for the purpose of getting them to stand still while you rob them--and
get away with that kind of preaching very long. You cannot preach the
duty of working hard and producing plentifully, and make that a screen
for an additional profit to yourself. And neither can the worker conceal
the lack of a day's work by a phrase.
Undoubtedly the employing class possesses facts which the employed ought
to have in order to construct sound opinions and pass fair judgments.
Undoubtedly the employed possess facts which are equally important to
the employer. It is extremely doubtful, however, if either side has all
the facts. And this is where propaganda, even if it were possible for it
to be entirely successful, is defective. It is not desirable that one
set of ideas be "put over" on a class holding another set of ideas. What
we really need is to get all the ideas together and construct from them.
Take, for instance, this whole matter of union labour and the right to
strike.
The only strong group of union men in the country is the group that
draws salaries from the unions. Some of them are very rich. Some of them
are interested in influencing the affairs of our large institutions of
finance. Others are so extreme in their so-called socialism that they
border on Bolshevism and anarchism--their union salaries liberating them
from the necessity of work so that they can devote their energies to
subversive propaganda. All of them enjoy a certain prestige and power
which, in the natural course of competition, they could not otherwise
have won.
If the official personnel of the labour unions were as strong, as
honest, as decent, and as plainly wise as the bulk of the men who make
up the membership, the whole movement would have taken on a different
complexion these last few years. But this official personnel, in the
main--there are notable exceptions--has not devoted itself to an
alliance with the naturally strong qualities of the workingman; it has
rather devoted itself to playing upon his weaknesses, principally upon
the weaknesses of that newly arrived portion of the population which
does not yet know what Americanism is, and which never will know if left
to the tutelage of their local union leaders.
The workingmen, except those few who have been inoculated with the
fallacious doctrine of "the class war" and who have accepted the
philosophy that progress consists in fomenting discord in industry
("When you get your $12 a day, don't stop at that. Agitate for $14. When
you get your eight hours a day, don't be a fool and grow contented;
agitate for six hours. Start something! Always start something!"), have
the plain sense which enables them to recognize that with principles
accepted and observed, conditions change. The union leaders have never
seen that. They wish conditions to remain as they are, conditions of
injustice, provocation, strikes, bad feeling, and crippled national
life. Else where would be the need for union officers? Every strike is a
new argument for them; they point to it and say, "You see! You still
need us."
The only true labour leader is the one who leads labour to work and to
wages, and not the leader who leads labour to strikes, sabotage, and
starvation. The union of labour which is coming to the fore in this
country is the union of all whose interests are interdependent--whose
interests are altogether dependent on the usefulness and efficiency of
the service they render.
There is a change coming. When the union of "union leaders" disappears,
with it will go the union of blind bosses--bosses who never did a decent
thing for their employees until they were compelled. If the blind boss
was a disease, the selfish union leader was the antidote. When the union
leader became the disease, the blind boss became the antidote. Both are
misfits, both are out of place in well-organized society. And they are
both disappearing together.
It is the blind boss whose voice is heard to-day saying, "Now is the
time to smash labour, we've got them on the run." That voice is going
down to silence with the voice that preaches "class war." The
producers--from the men at the drawing board to the men on the moulding
floor--have gotten together in a real union, and they will handle their
own affairs henceforth.
The exploitation of dissatisfaction is an established business to-day.
Its object is not to settle anything, nor to get anything done, but to
keep dissatisfaction in existence. And the instruments used to do this
are a whole set of false theories and promises which can never be
fulfilled as long as the earth remains what it is.
I am not opposed to labour organization. I am not opposed to any sort of
organization that makes for progress. It is organizing to limit
production--whether by employers or by workers--that matters.
The workingman himself must be on guard against some very dangerous
notions--dangerous to himself and to the welfare of the country. It is
sometimes said that the less a worker does, the more jobs he creates for
other men. This fallacy assumes that idleness is creative. Idleness
never created a job. It creates only burdens. The industrious man never
runs his fellow worker out of a job; indeed, it is the industrious man
who is the partner of the industrious manager--who creates more and more
business and therefore more and more jobs. It is a great pity that the
idea should ever have gone abroad among sensible men that by
"soldiering" on the job they help someone else. A moment's thought will
show the weakness of such an idea. The healthy business, the business
that is always making more and more opportunities for men to earn an
honourable and ample living, is the business in which every man does a
day's work of which he is proud. And the country that stands most
securely is the country in which men work honestly and do not play
tricks with the means of production. We cannot play fast and loose with
economic laws, because if we do they handle us in very hard ways.
The fact that a piece of work is now being done by nine men which used
to be done by ten men does not mean that the tenth man is unemployed. He
is merely not employed on that work, and the public is not carrying the
burden of his support by paying more than it ought on that work--for
after all, it is the public that pays!
An industrial concern which is wide enough awake to reorganize for
efficiency, and honest enough with the public to charge it necessary
costs and no more, is usually such an enterprising concern that it has
plenty of jobs at which to employ the tenth man. It is bound to grow,
and growth means jobs. A well-managed concern is always seeking to lower
the labour cost to the public; and it is certain to employ more men than
the concern which loafs along and makes the public pay the cost of its
mismanagement.
The tenth man was an unnecessary cost. The ultimate consumer was paying
him. But the fact that he was unnecessary on that particular job does
not mean that he is unnecessary in the work of the world, or even in the
work of his particular shop.
The public pays for all mismanagement. More than half the trouble with
the world to-day is the "soldiering" and dilution and cheapness and
inefficiency for which the people are paying their good money. Wherever