The

American Employer

A MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE INTERESTS OF THE BUSINESS MEN OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA WHO HIRE LABOR Published by The American Employer Publishing Co., 404 Chamber of Commerce Building, Cleveland, O. J. H. SMITH, Pres. and Treas. J. W. EBERHARDT, Vice Pres. JOHN WEBER, Sec. A. S. VAN DUZER, Ed. and Man.

Vol. I

Price $2 a year. Single copy 20 cents.

September, 1912

No. 2

Editorial

Employers, Wake Up

Every living man of mature years can look back on dangers that he ignored until it was too late.

History is filled with instances of battles won from those who did not keep up their defenses.

Nations stand ready to pay fortunes for plans of the fortifications of other powers, that they may find the weak places.

Aggressors unite, but defenders defer union. This is the history of the world. Doubtless it is human nature.

There are reasons-not good ones-why men defer facing danger. Here are some of them:

It takes time-which cannot be spared.

It requires money-which can better be used in other ways.

It is disagreeable and makes a man unhappy.

Never has the labor situation been worse than it is today. The labor element does nothing but organize. The employer organizes only within his own trade and then devotes his organization to other matters than the labor situation-if he does not neglect his organization altogether.

The need of the day is for employers' associations in every city; associations made up not of employers in given trades, but of employers in all lines of business. These associations should be permanent; they should not be allowed to lag when there are no present labor troubles. Secretaries should devote their entire time to the business of these associations and be liberally recompensed, that good men may be obtained. The associations should devote a continuous and unflagging effort to maintaining such conditions in their respective cities as will prevent labor trouble.

Employers should awaken to these imperative needs.

The single employer should not be content with desiring an association. to help him when he has a strike and to help other employers when they have strikes; he should be active in making his city a place in which the spirit of the community forbids industrial warfare.

The

These employers' associations should be federated in a national organization with headquarters, also having a well paid secretary in charge. federation should hold annual conventions. It would be easy to hold them in connection with the conventions of some other national business organization, of which many of the employers would be members.

Such a union of employers as this is absolutely essential, if organized business is to successfully cope with the aggressions of organized labor.

Business, unorganized, cannot do it.

The Industrial Workers of the World are teaching the least educated and those most feebly grounded in character and morals; the riffraff of the labor world; newly on American shores and strangers to American institutions; syndicalism and sabotage. They are teaching them to destroy the employers' property, to waste his time and to strike in his employ again and again until, they say they hope, they get his business away from him and have it for themselves.

Back of the Industrial Workers of the World is a force; a man determined, untiring, remorseless, unscrupulous, daring a dangerous man. To perfect and strengthen his organization he will stop at nothing. He sneers at patriotism, belittles the church, teaches hatred of the employers and instills poison in the minds of those weaker and less educated and experienced than himself. He knows better, but many of them take his word as gospel. Be assured they listen to him. They are prepared to follow him.

He should be feared, watched and met.

Following the dynamiting of many structures, the brothers McNamara confessed to blowing up the building of the Los Angeles Times, wherein twenty men were killed. Officials of the American Federation of Labor disclaim responsibility. Nevertheless the crime was committed within the ranks of the American Federation of Labor.

Labor threatens and threatens grimly, on all sides and at all times.

The American Federation of Labor, the Industrial Workers of the World, the Knights of Labor and the other big labor associations are organizing every hour. The American Federation of Labor spends over $100,000 a year on organization. The other organizations spend great amounts of money. To be really on a parity with labor, the employers should do an equal volume of organizing throughout the country. As it is, the men strike, and that is the first the employer knows that anything is the matter. The organizing work that made the strike possible may have been done a year or more before. Were the employer in an effective national organization, he would probably have known all about it in advance.

THE AMERICAN EMPLOYER is not alone in its belief in the vital necessity of organization among employers. Many of the trade papers share it and say so; but inasmuch as the method of organizing is a big question, they have nothing direct to offer in the way of suggestions. THE AMERICAN EMPLOYER'S columns are open to the suggestions of its readers along this line.

Speaking of the centralization of labor unions, a recent editorial in the Wall Paper Journal says:

"Capital, on the other hand, is not organized in the same masterful way. The various industries, it is true, have their individual associations, whose powers of working in concert are limited by law, but they cannot act together without some sort of 'union' of the whole. Although a strike in the paper mills, or the woolen mills, or the rolling mills may affect but slightly, if at all, the business of any other industry, a strike in the coal mines or in the transportation companies hits all indiscriminately. Should not all have, therefore, some voice in the settlement of such troubles? There could be a congress of manufacturers and producers to be called together at troublesome times, in which each industry would be represented according to its importance, and where

labor questions could be adjusted, not necessarily after the difficulties had arisen, but before they had taken shape."

In this issue of THE AMERICAN EMPLOYER is an article by A. J. Allen, secretary of the Employers' Association of Indianapolis, and a short interview with A. C. Marshall, secretary of the Employers' Association of Dayton, O., both bearing on this subject.

THE AMERICAN EMPLOYER is impressed with the great urgency of an employers' association in every city and a federated organization of such associations nationally. We believe that the signs of the labor times call for it imperatively and that it is the most urgently important thing that the employer has to do.

Others Besides The Federation

A widespread impression prevails that the American Federation of Labor embraces all, or at all events all worth while, in the union labor movement. This impression was voiced in a recent issue of one of the best and most ably edited trade papers in the United States, which in a logical, convincing and well expressed editorial argument said that the men themselves had their strong central federation, and why not, therefore, the employers? Evidently even this well posted editorial writer saw nothing along the line of a central national federation of labor unions except the American Federation of Labor. It is safe to say that there are manufacturers and other employers of labor on a large scale who have been too busy to take notice of the fact that the American Federation of Labor does not by any means embrace all of the labor world.

Nothing could be more fallacious. To begin with, there is the Industrial Workers of the World that is beginning to have a firm foothold among the laboring people of the United States, especially among the unskilled, and which, under one name or another, is even stronger in European countries. This organization is not composed of associated bodies. It is all one big thing. Its basis is industrial unionism as opposed to craft unionism. It gathers together in one big union all the crafts embraced within a given line of industry, with the idea that if there is a strike in a factory the entire factory can be tied up by withdrawing from work every man, woman and child employed there. This organization does not even have a president. William D. Haywood, as an organizer, Vincent St. John, as secretary, and a few others, run it from Chicago. There is a branch of it in Detroit, with which the Chicago organization is at loggerheads.

The old Knights of Labor is by no means dead. Prior to 1881, when the Federation of Labor was formed, it was the big, powerful centralized labor organization of the country.. It is still in existence. T. V. Powderly, who was its general master workman when it was a power, is now an employe of the United States government. Its present general master workman is John W. Hayes. Headquarters are at Washington, D. C., where the organization runs an official paper. J. E. Chamberlain, of Denver, is the general secretary. He and Hayes, with J. C. Patterson, of Pennsylvania; Christopher Hill, of Brooklyn, and A. H. Horrigan, of New York, constitute the board of directors. Hayes claims a total membership for the Knights of Labor of 135,000. While he is conservative in talking about the character of that membership, it is understood that the Knights include at least two fairly large international or national. unions, one composed of boot and shoe, and the other of glass workers. At all events, the Knights of Labor have this summer been conducting strikes of shoe workers, one in Lynn, Mass., and the other in New York. There is a split in the Knights of Labor also. There is a branch in Boston, at 228 Tremont street, of which Thomas H. Canning is the head, but Hayes repudiates. this and says the branch in Boston is a spurious imitation.

Then, too, the big organizations of railroad employes must not be forgotten. There are the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, the Brotherhood of Railway Firemen and Enginemen, the Order of Railway Conductors and the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, and perhaps others. These brotherhoods are separate institutions, though all of the above except the Engineers have a federation agreement by which, upon vote, they may join in strike on a railroad system.

Besides, there are independent unions constantly springing up here and there when labor disputes occur. Ultimately these, when they last, merge with one or another of the big central organizations. As an illustration of this sort of thing the recent hotel strike in New York City was on the part of an organization that sprung up in a night, as it were.

The American Federation of Labor is the best known labor organization. among manufacturers and other large employers of labor. The organization is about 30 years old, maintains headquarters in Washington, issues the American Federationist, lobbies at Washington and keeps itself in the limelight constantly. It is composed of a large number of national and international unions, including almost every known craft, though its total membership is not so large as many suppose. As a matter of fact, the total number of laboring men not associated with any union is many times larger than the combined membership of all the central labor organizations.

Workingmen Might Read This

Surface philosophers are fond of saying that there is nothing more in life than sleeping, eating, keeping warm, and wearing clothes, and obtaining a roof over one's head. They are wrong. Any man who has really lived will give it as his judgment that the best there is in life is the consciousness of achievement by good, hard application-in other words, work.

Because this is so, the labor leaders are making a vital mistake in emphasizing an eight-hour day, not that any more than eight hours need be taken to a job that can be completed in that length of time, but that it is putting a premium on laziness and lack of ambition to educate men to the belief that the best they can get out of life is to do as little work as they can for as much money as they can compel employers to pay them. The trouble with such teaching is that it is inherently false. What a man gets his best pleasure out of is performing a piece of work as perfectly as he can, whether it takes him one hour or twenty-four hours.

In passing upon the legality of a proposed law, the supreme court of Massachusetts said: "It is obvious that many of the most successful men could not have attained the prosperity which they have enjoyed if prohibited from working for themselves or contracting to work for others more than a small part of the hours of each day."

There it is in a nutshell. Imagine Columbus limiting himself to eight hours a day in discovering the new continent, Morse knocking off work when the whistle blew while he was inventing the telegraph, or Edison insisting on working only from 8 a. m. to 12 noon and 1 p. m. to 5 p. m., with half a day off on Saturday, while perfecting his many inventions.

Carrying it still further, suppose that George Washington had fought the British on an eight-hour a day schedule, or that Abraham Lincoln and his cabinet had gone by the short day time schedule when they were directing the conflict that preserved the Union.

The absurdity of all this is so evident when it is reduced to plain black and white. The difficulty is that some men, who make a living out of working people by persuading them they are slaves when, in fact, they are well paid,