Again and again, Mr.Brooks reiterates the danger he sees in harshly treating labor."It is not probable that employers can destroy unionism in the United States.Adroit and desperate attempts will, however, be made, if we mean by unionism the undisciplined and aggressive fact of vigorous and determined organizations.If capital should prove too strong in this struggle, the result is easy to predict.The employers have only to convince organized labor that it cannot hold its own against the capitalist manager, and the whole energy that now goes to the union will turn to an aggressive political socialism.It will not be the harmless sympathy with increased city and state functions which trade unions already feel;it will become a turbulent political force bent upon using every weapon of taxation against the rich.""The most concrete impulse that now favors socialism in this country is the insane purpose to deprive labor organizations of the full and complete rights that go with federated unionism.""That which teaches a union that it cannot succeed as a union turns it toward socialism.In long strikes in towns like Marlboro and Brookfield strong unions are defeated.Hundreds of men leave these towns for shoe-centres like Brockton, where they are now voting the socialist ticket.The socialist mayor of this city tells me, 'The men who come to us now from towns where they have been thoroughly whipped in a strike are among our most active working socialists.'
The bitterness engendered by this sense of defeat is turned to politics, as it will throughout the whole country, if organization of labor is deprived of its rights.""This enmity of capital to the trade union is watched with glee by every intelligent socialist in our midst.Every union that is beaten or discouraged in its struggle is ripening fruit for socialism.""The real peril which we now face is the threat of a class conflict.
If capitalism insists upon the policy of outraging the saving aspiration of the American workman to raise his standard of comfort and leisure, every element of class conflict will strengthen among us.""We have only to humiliate what is best in the trade union, and then every worst feature of socialism is fastened upon us."This strong tendency in the ranks of the workers toward socialism is what Mr.Brooks characterizes the "social unrest"; and he hopes to see the Republican, the Cleveland Democrat, and the conservative and large property interests "band together against this common foe,"which is socialism.And he is not above feeling grave and well-contained satisfaction wherever the socialist doctrinaire has been contradicted by men attempting to practise cooperation in the midst of the competitive system, as in Belgium.
Nevertheless, he catches fleeting glimpses of an extreme and tyrannically benevolent feudalism very like to Mr.Ghent's, as witness the following:
"I asked one of the largest employers of labor in the South if he feared the coming of the trade union.'No,' he said, 'it is one good result of race prejudice, that the negro will enable us in the long run to weaken the trade union so that it cannot harm us.We can keep wages down with the negro and we can prevent too much organization.'
"It is in this spirit that the lower standards are to be used.If this purpose should succeed, it has but one issue,--the immense strengthening of a plutocratic administration at the top, served by an army of high-salaried helpers, with an elite of skilled and well-paid workmen, but all resting on what would essentially be a serf class of low-paid labor and this mass kept in order by an increased use of military force."In brief summary of these two notable books, it may be said that Mr.
Ghent is alarmed, (though he does not flatly say so), at the too great social restfulness in the community, which is permitting the capitalists to form the new society to their liking; and that Mr.
Brooks is alarmed, (and he flatly says so), at the social unrest which threatens the modified individualism into which he would like to see society evolve.Mr.Ghent beholds the capitalist class rising to dominate the state and the working class; Mr.Brooks beholds the working class rising to dominate the state and the capitalist class.One fears the paternalism of a class; the other, the tyranny of the mass.
