The Daily Worker Newspaper, October 31, 1925, Page 9

‘, errr est “the capitalist class. The A. F. By WILLIAM F, DUNNE. € first attracted my attention in particular because HE SET HIS ACE AGAINST THE EF- FOR THAT WERE BEING MADE TO BRING ABOUT A GENERAL STRIKE OF ALL THE TRADES IN° SYMPATHY WITH THE AMERICAN RAILWAY UNION STRIKE IN 1894. (Second sentence in the speech of Secretary Frank Morrison to.the memory of Samuel Gompers delivered to the Atlantic City convention. Emphasis mine, W.. F. D.) have seen the spirit of class collaboration materialized and dolled up for public display by Spen- cer Miller, Jr., theoretician-in-chief for the labor agents of imperialism at At- lantic City. That spirit, embodied in a cartoon by Robert Minor recently, is indeed the spirit of Samuel Gom- pers as we learn from the lips of no less a personage than Secretary Frank Morrison. According to Morrison, Gompers’ first gained his attentive approbation -by treason to the whole American working ‘class in one of its historic struggles. Gompers then, gained tcau- ership by an act of wholesale treach-. ery. O intelligent worker will be sur- prised then, if a convention which endorsed the belly-crawling to American capitalism indulged in by Spencer Miller, Jr., in the field of edu- cation, and which spent a day deifying the kind of an individual described so well by Morrison, gave practical ex- pression to its desire, in return for a modicum of the spoils, to act as chambermaid for the captains of in- dustry and lords of American finance. This is exactly what the Atlantic convention did. One will go blind if he strains his eyes for any sign in the resolutions of ‘the Convention that it°‘has ever heard anything of the class nature of so- ciety—the exploitation of one class by another which gives rise to the class struggle. N the contrary, the A. F. of L.‘of- ficialdom has adopted and now glibly mouths such phrases as “group production,” “personnel relations,” “sustained industrial progress,” “in- terdependence of the interests of all groups,” “co-operation of employes in production”—all of which is cribbed from_the gibberish of the new school of adding machine social research ex- ponents turned out by Rockefeller en- dowed colleges. These phrases are designed to veil the conflict of interests that exists, in spite of all attampts to gloss it over, between the working class and They have the additional purpose of furnishing a pseudo-scientific justification for all: the class collaboration schemes which are being foisted upon the labor move- ment. UCH a scheme is the “Baltimore & Ohio Plan,” differing only from the outright company unions in that the machinery of the A. F. of L. unions is placed at the disposal of the bosses and the speeding-up of labor given the sanction of the union officials. More than that, production experts - employed jointly by the union and » the bosses, deluge the workers with statistical data proving that they can and must “hit the ball,” for the honor and glory of the union—and the pro- fits of the bosses. “For,” say the exponents of this class collaborationist school of thot, “how can the boss pay wages if he doesn’t make profits?” HE following was adopted on the report of the executive council dealing with new economic develop- ments: PRODUCTION IS A GROUP UN- DERTAKING. IT INVOLVES FIND- ING THE. BEST WAYS FOR THE GROUP TO WORK TOGETHER. This is the field of personnel rela- tlo sarch. It is of the utmost im ance that the trade union should be adequately represented in this field in order that technicians and research workers may at all _ stages have their attention called to the functions of the trade union | utive council’s report which said in and that this necessary agency may be taken into consideration in the development of policies and not have to contest for a place after conclusions are formulated, TRADE UNIONS, WHICH REPRESENT THE CUMULATED EXPERIENCE OF MANY WORKERS AND MANY YEARS HAVE A MOST IMPORT- ANT CONTRIBUTION TO MAKE TO THIS DEVELOPING FIELD. Here is the theory of the role of the trade union as one of the produc- tive units of the modern industrial system—the other two being “capital” and “management”—baldly stated ac- cording to the gospel of Spencer Mil- ler, Jr. , HE premise with which the A. F. of L. bureaucrats and their statisti- tal advisers begin is that modern ma- chinery makes industry more produc- tive—more and more commodities are turned out with less workers. The conclusions they draw is THAT THE ORGANIZED WAGE EARNERS SHOULD AID THIS DEVELOPMENT but not struggle to seize the produc- tive machinery and the state power. This amounts to complete abandon- ment of struggle. The theory is that Mhly those unions which can prove their value to the capitalists as speed- ers-up of production will survive. It means in practice a mad, soul and body wrecking race for “efficiency [us is the third of a series of articles on the proceedings of the A. F. of L. convention, which deal with “The A. F. of L. and International Relations,” “The A. F. of L. and the Unorganized Workers,” “The A. F. of L.-and the Class Struggle,” “The A. F. of L. and the Left. Wing,” “The A. F. of L. and Militarism,” etc. This is the second installment of “The A. F. of L. and the Class Struggle.” the satisfaction expressed in the principle of the Baltimore and Ohio development and recommend the pamphlet Union-Management Co- operation by B. M. Jewell and O. S. Beyer, Jr. to the study and con- sideration of all trawe unionists, We also approve the recommend- ations that our national headquart- ers keep in. touch with technical experts and engineers in order that the experience of management- cooperation with trade unions may be put at the service of all concern- ed with production problems. The “B. and O.” plan is now part of the A. F. of L. bible. The endorse- ment of this practical application of the anti-class struggle education spon- sored by the officialdom is extremely interesting in view of the slight re- servation in the opening paragraph above: : Efforts to improve production methods and eliminate waste must be accompanied by REASONABLE assurance of regularity of employ- ment. (Emphasis mine.—W. F. D.) HE dues-paying membership ought to be allowed to work a few days more per year if they look, upon the interest of the boss as their own—this is the sole consideration asked by the A. F. of L. convention for its mem- bers who are being delivered to Am; To Anita Whitney By HENRY GEORGE WEISS. Brave womanhood in chains! America, Hast thou not reason to be proud, be proud, Of this wild, mad bloodlug@s\steria *, ° That* bids''hér limbs’ be shackled, head:-be bowed Beneath the burden of thy tyranny? Hast thou not reason, Land of Liberty, To prate of Freedom, Justice, the whiles she, Who dared to stand for freedom, goes not free? O Culture, Worth, hold out those slender hands That dared to clasp the roughened hands of men, So that they may be cuffed with iron bands! O Love and Truth, go to your living grave For, daring to espouse the serf, the slave— This land has no place for you, save the “pen.” in production” for that section of the workers who are deceived by such schemes. HE “new economic developments” which indicate unerringly the nec- essity for great struggles of the work- ers, such as the huge mergers in steel, coal, railways and automobile manufacture, the extension of the control of finance-capital oyer indus- try at home and in Europe and the colonial and semi-colonial regions— these revolutionary factors are ignor- ed because they do not square with class collaborationist motto that “pro- duction is a group undertaking. It in- voives finding the best ways for the group to work together.” Gary, Schwab, Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, Weyrhauser, Robert Dollar—are going to work together in this “group undertaking” with the mechanics and unskilled laborers. The obvious fact that the captains | of industry can get all the coopera- tion they need at any time by the simple process of shutting down part of their plants and thereby increasing the competition among their “assist- ants,” is something that the statistical advisers of the labor movement have not dwelt upon at any length. UT regardless of the merits of the -” question the Atlantic City con- vention unanimously endorsed the re- port of the comimittee on the exec- part: it Efforts to improve production methods and climinate waste must be accompanied by reasonable as- surance of regularity of employ- ment, ‘ We recommend endorsement of. erican capitalism. This reservation itself in an admission that class collaboration cannot eliminate indus- trial crises. i come now to a series of pro- nouncements which probably have caused more comment than any other part of the proceedings at Atlantic City—the widely heralded “new wage policy” of the A. F. of L. As finally adopted by the convention it reads as follows: We commend endorsement of the statement of the executive council on wages. We hold that the best interests of wage-earners, AS WELL AS THE WHOLE SOCIAL GROUP, are served, increasing production in quality as well as quantity, by high wage standards, which assure sustained purchasing power to the workers and therefore higher na- tional standards for the environ- ment in which they tive and the means to enjoy cultured opportuni- ties. We declare that wage reduc- tions produce industrial and social unrest and THAT LOW WAGES ARE NOT CONDUCIVE TO LOW PRODUCTION COSTS. i We urge upon wage earners everywhere: THAT WE OPPOSE ALL WAGE REDUCTIONS, AND THAT WE URGE UPON MANAGEMENT THE ELIMINATION OF WASTE IN PRODUCTION IN ORDER THAT -SELLING PRICES MAY BE LOWER AND WAGES HIGHER. To this end we recommend co-oper- tion in study of waste in produc: tion, which the assay of the Feder. ated American Engineering Soci- etles covering important industries of L. and the Class Struggle a I I RT has: shown to be 50 per. cent, at- tributable to. management and only 25 per cent attributable to labor, with 25 per cent attributable to other sources, principally manage- ments in industries producing com- der consideration, SOCIAL INEQUALITY, INDUS- TRIAL INSTABILITY AND_ IN- JUSTICE MUST INCREASE UN- LESS THE WORKERS’ REAL WAGES—COUPLED WITH A CON- TINUING REDUCTION IN THE NUMBER OF HOURS MAKING UP THE WORKING DAY, ARE PRO- GRESSED IN PROPORTION: TO MAN’S INCREASING POWER OF PRODUCTION.” 2 hd the intelligent reader this state- ment will at once appear as a queer mixture of sound trade union policy and the most abject sort of servile truckling to the capitalists. And this is exactly what. it is, And it is a document .of contra- dictions precisely because of the, con- tradictions in A, F. of Li. policy; pro- duced by the which force the workers into struggle in spite of the attempts of the bureau- erats to evade these struggles. I have tried to point out some of the more glaring of these contradic- tions by emphasis in the above quo- tation but a better guage of the ex- tent of these contradictions is given us by an examination of the comment emanating from the “intelligentsia,” the middle class papers and the real- istic upper section of the capitalist press. . HE liberals are jubilant, particular- ly that section referred to previ- ously which in view of the magnificent and munificent opportunities afforded for “research” and “statistical ob- servation” accompanied by huge stacks of beautiful graphs, curves and charts, sees itself firmly established as a serious rival to the lawyers as ad- visers of the labor movement. Says Evans Clark, in the opening paragraph \> of) \an)-cartiel®’ ceatitied “Union Labor Takes**New “View “ot Wages”: hy OG. TA VOSS american labor enters a new epoch. The trade unions of this country have now officially rung down the curtain on irresponsible warfare and militant warfare and Set the stage for collaboration with “the employers of the nation in solv- ing the problems of industry for THEIR MUTUAL ADVANTAGE. (Emphasis is mine\—w. F. D.) Some of the federation officials are likewise jubilant. Says President Green: This action places American ta- bor in a most advanced position on wage theories. It is a position far in advance of any position we have ever taken before. UT Matthew Woll is not so san- guine. In some things, where a sort of furtive cunning is required, he is.much more astute than the rest of the officials. So during the debate modities for any. single industry un- external conditions © ‘ which preceded the adoption, of the statement on wages as the only official with any pretensd to scholatship, John “P. Frey Molders’ Union, Wolt ‘said: oe “s+... f am led to believe that the less we have to do with theory in these matters the better off we are, because we find ourselves con- fronted with all sorts of conditions, circumstances and environments, and we find oftentimes that theory will lead us nowhere, while our crude judgement expressed in trade union activities has gained more for us, Woll is a worthy pupil of his Jate master—Samuel Gompers, Like all really cunning fakers he wants nothing in black and white un- less it is entirely meaningless. It is extremely doubtful if under the lead- ership of the veteran Samuel the A. F, of L, officiaidom wouid have been jockeyed by fell cirumstances into the “anhappy position,” to quote the well- known phrase of John Fitzpatrick, in which they have been placed by pressure from above, below and by reason of their own avariciousness. i ITH fears of the wary Woll have been justified, The A. F. of L. of- (Continued on page 6) remided | by | — of the! |