University of Virginia Library

SOCIALISM AND LABOR

YOU have heard me talk about Elbert Hubbard, haven't you? I think he is the best writer in world, and the clearest thinker. I don't always agree with him, but then, I don't always agree with myself. I revere him because he says what sets me to thinking, and he has taught me more than any other man I ever read. Of course I understand the risk I run in admiring a man that 's alive and liable to go wrong; but I 'm taking that risk with my eyes open, with the sincere hope that Fra Elbertus will manage to keep straight till the Reaper comes. He publishes "The Philistine" and LITTLE JOURNEYS, every month, and I can make you a subscriber to these two for ten shillings a year. And the joke is, that when you pay your subscription, the Fra sends you a de luxe book that is worth the ten shillings. He is a wonder. He has a big place at East Aurora, New York State, and the next time I go home I must surely get that far to see the place. He employs about five hundred hands, under ideal conditions; he lives the life, and gets thousands of others to do the same. Now, I want to tell you something about the Fra.

THE Federation of Labor has declared The Roycroft Shop at East Aurora, on the Unfair List. And I 'm glad! They did that two years ago, but the Fra just found it out by an advertiser calling off, and declaring that the Union will fix him if he deals with a shop that does not use the "Union Label." I 'm glad the Fra has been declared a scab, because

first, the Fra is a friend of mine. I never met him, but you don't need to meet your friends at all. I have friends who have been dead thousands of years, and they are more real to me than many of the folks I meet every day. The Fra and I are friends, even if we never meet. I 'm glad they have boycotted him, because he is a man with the power of expression, with a soul to understand, with an eye to see, and with a heart to feel. The Fra is the best man in America to put on the Unfair List, because he can tell what has happened, and his story will appeal to thousands, aye, to millions. It is the best thing that ever happened to him, for as soon as ever I heard of it, I wanted to declare my friendship for him, and to say: "Buck up, ole man, I 'm your backer."

THE Fra says that the reason he is boycotted is that, "The Roycroft Shop is teaching trades to an unlimited number of boys and girls." He adds further: "Let it be said that The Roycroft Shop has never had a strike; that the wages we pay are above the Union Scale; that the conditions under which The Roycrofters work are better than any Union ever demanded or imagined." So The Federation of Labor has declared the roy craft (the king's workers) a "scab shop."

Good, so let it be! I want to say some things about Unions in general, and this levelling down business, in particular.

You will notice that I headed this gossip, "Socialism and Labor." I wrote that before I started, for I want to explain some things in regard to my views, as I promised "Australienne" last week. When a man asks me if I 'm a Socialist I answer him according to the sort of man I think he is. If he is a Christian Socialist who wants to level all men up to be the "Sons of God," then I 'm a Socialist. If he means—do I want to level all men down to the same stage, where we shall all be alike, then I say, "No, I 'm not a Socialist." But no two men mean the same thing when they use the same word. I 'm not going to set up a straw man for the sake of knocking

him down again. I may as well say, here and now, that you can't label me. No union label will fit me. I 'm a free man, or as near free as a foolish education and a silly world will allow me to be. But Labor is n't the same as Socialism. Is it. You see, I 'm a Labor man, if it means a man that labors; but it means something else. You will find that the difference between Labor and Socialism is but the difference between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum. But as very few men are accurate thinkers we are under the impression that they are different things. They are not!

THE aim of the Union is to make all men equal. That is a noble ideal. The aim of the Union is that there shall be no very rich, and no very poor, but that all men shall be brothers. That is also a noble ideal, but the aim of Socialism—or Labor, call it which you like—is to abolish all the mountains, and reduce us all to a dead level. It aims at the lazy people's heavenly ideal of eternal peace and idleness, and that means mental degradation. The law of the Overland is, "eat or be eaten." I think it is a hideously cruel law, but I 'm not responsible for it. It was there when the human race came into the world, and it will be there till the human race has had its day and ceased to be. We are what we were born to be, to an enormous extent, and the levellers are what they are, owing to their ignorance. Life itself is but a brief convulsion between two eternities, and we know not what it means, as a steady thing. Old Saadi, the Persian, remarked a few centuries ago—

THE Federation of Labor has declared The Roycroft Shop a scab shop, unless it comes down to the union label, and

gives itself over, soul and body, to the domination of the Union. That is the simple desire of socialism and labor, to reduce us all to the dead level of mediocrity. We are to be all of one blood, all brethren, and the Ape and the Tiger are to be eliminated by the union. God bless the union, merry gentlemen! Don't laugh at it though, for, mind you, the ideal is a lovely one. But there is no hope for it, because when one race is levelled down to the Union platform, a more virile race will come along and sweep it from off the face of the earth. If we level the mountains, we shall have very level plains, and Nature will not have levels for long. The volcano and the earthquake are forever at work, and eternal motion and movement is the law of the Universe. Nothing endures but change! Dead levels are unthinkable. Life itself is exploitation, dominance, destruction.

LOOK at all democracies, all forms of "united" workers. They object to paying for brains. If the wages of the men are eight shillings a day, they would refuse to give a man with brains a thousand pounds a year for supervision.

We are to be all full privates in the new democracy, and the cry is, "Down with all that 's up," but the law will not be contemned of any, and the fact that the Fra's shop at East Aurora has been declared a scab shop will open the eyes of millions. I am glad that my friend has been boycotted, for it will help us to understand what Unionism means. Listen to the Fra. He says: "A labor union may do good. I never ask a man whether he belongs to a union any more than I would ask if he belongs to a church. That is his business. I most certainly would not ask him to renounce his union unless the union were trying to throttle him. Even then it is his affair. But certainly we will not be dictated to by men with less intelligence, energy, initiative and ambition than we ourselves possess." Right, Fra, the men with brains and initiative must rule, and they will rule in spite of all unions! I have spoken.

-R. McMillan, in the Sidney, Australia, "Journal."