Life — September 7, 1911 — page 8: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

“While there iz Life there's Ho No, 156 VOL. LVI, SEPTEMBER 7, 1911 Published by LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY JA. Mevonstt, Prest, AL MILLER, Sec'y and Treas, 17 West ‘Thirty-first Street, New York. ENCE DARROW ex- plains, in the September © American Mag- azine, Why Men Fight for the Closed Shop.” “The most vital issue of trades unionism,” says Mr. Darrow, the closed shop, and it is around this issue that capital and labor have gradually closed in.” He goes on to say why this is so, and expounds how the whole tendency of the day is toward co-oper- ation, that the workman has no chance as an individual against the great com- panies that employ him, that the pro- posal to limit aggregations of capi is utterly futile and mistaken, that the conditions of present business con- strain employers to get their labor as cheaply as they can, pressing them con- stantly to reduce the cost of it, and that the only effective resistance that the workingman can offer to this pres- sure is trades unionism, To prevent trades unionism from being conquered in detail, to gain the benefits it seeks, and keep its members from being thrown out through the open door, there is this perpetual fight for the closed shop, which will continue, Mr Darrow thinks, until the closed shop shall “become the open shop to the brotherhood of man.” No doubt the fight will go on, and doubtless it will be one of the forces that will shape the future, but it is the kind of a fight that can never be won, and in which complete victory would be immediately fatal to the vic tor. For the moment the closed shop universal it would either break down of its own weight or be destroyed by the inst its inevitable hecame revolt of society tyrannies and exactions It would be too much power for man to handle. Trades unionism must be. It is right, it is necessary, and it is entitled to fight for its own. But it cannot be more than a party in the field of labor, It cannot be the whole field any more than the Roman Cath- olic Church can be the only church, or the Republican party the only party in American politics. Its own safety and its own health demands an opposi- tion, and is sure to get it. Mr. Darrow seems not to recognize that, though if he does, it was no part of his present argument to say so. He has set himself to the task of defending men charged with promot- ing the prevalence of the closed shop by murder and destruction by dyna- mite. We sympathize with him in having shouldered so great a task, but the closed shop, like other institutions, will be known by its fruits, and where its fruits are dynamite and murder, it will be promptly damned. It will grow by good works, but surely it can never win by terrorism. Trades unionists tell us, as Mr. Darrow does, that before there were trades unions women hauled coal cars on all fours in mines, No doubt, but it is a mistake to attribute, as he does, all the improvement in labor conditions since then to trades unions. They are ready to claim it all, just as the suffragists are prone to claim as due to the woman su fragists every law passed or path opened to the advantage of women in the last sixty years. But trades unions are only one detail of the process that has removed women from coal cars in ‘mines, and is always at work to im- prove the conditions of labor. T Unions are the blossoms on the tree, but what is doing the business and making the fruit is the sap that runs up the tree's trunk out of the soil of mos- ern civilization, If the trades unions failed, the uplifting of labor would ave to Ko on by other means; if all the suffragettes broke down in the nerves and went permanently to bed, ades the enlargement of the liberties and privileges of women would go on much the same. Organization and agitation in these matters are only The causes lie far beneath universal education, them, in democratic gov ernment and the spread of the senti ment steadily growing, and directed with an intelligence that constantly in- creases, that every man is his brother's keeper and shares responsibility for his fate. Boo: N*S is a funny thing. We r on the front page of the issue for August 24 of that important paper, the New York Times, four-story headline, which begins: “Upton Sin- clair Says Wife Has Left Him,” and foes on to give some particulars of his deposition about it. There were five such heads on the page, and on the whole, this one about Upton more interesting than the “Fear That France Is Very Near War,” or those about the “Auto's Plunge,” the “ Gates’ ” or “ Atwood the Fly- ing Man.” Not but what Atwood’s performance is very interesting, and not but that if we really believed that France was near war, that would be news of huge importance, and not but that the size and destiny of the Gates estate interests lots of people, and not but that an automobile’s plunge and the resulting fatalities would bring a thrill if it did not happen every day. As for Upton’s domestic sorrows, we regret them. We regret all domes- tic sorrows, and wish that every hus- band had the gift of keeping his wife and all his children harmonious and happy. But it seems suitable to point out that our friends who are in the business of reforming society do not seem to have this gift in greater per- fection than fther people. As far a casual and incomplete observation goes, we do not notice that the lead- ers of the woman suffragists, for ex- ample, make a better showing of a to live in peace and mfatual forbear- ance than other folksl,- Probably tha is a job by itself and does not connect to advantage with advertised labors to reform society by legislation, But the successful maintenance of family life looks pretty. important, and though I in that may still be w, we people who good don t something else, someh t look with entire confidence upon the social panaceas that such persons happen to vend comicbooks.com