GROWLING FOR THE BOSSES' BLOOD
I thought I made a number of enemies among the men while I was head of the mill committee. When a man dissipated and afterward came back to work, trembling and weak, the boss would refuse to let him take up his tools, but would lay the man off for a few days.
The man usually thought this a useless and cruel punishment;and to lose a few days' wages would make him all the poorer.
The man thus laid off would come to me and ask that I get him reinstated.
"Tell 'em you'll call a strike," the man would say. "Tell 'em that if they don't let me work, nobody will work."I always refused to take such complaints to the office. I never approached the boss with a demand that I did not think was right.
Some of the men thought we ought to be vindictive and take every opportunity to put a crimp in the business for the owners. Ienvied the owners (we've all got a touch of that in our system), because they were rich and were making profits. I knew what their profits averaged. By calling fussy little strikes often enough Icould have kept the profits close to the zero mark. Thus the men would be making wages out of the business and the owners would be making nothing. But I declined to let my actions be governed by envy. The Ten Commandments forbid covetousness. The Golden Rule also forbade my practicing sabotage. And I have never tried to find a better guide than the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule. The test of my misconduct would have come when, having cleverly destroyed their profits, I found them quitting in discouragement, closing up the business and throwing us all out of our jobs for keeps.
I tried to point out these things to the men. Some of them felt as I did about it. Others couldn't see it. So I learned darn early in life that you can't reform 'em all.
I used to say to the complaining man:
"Look here, Bill; you're in no shape to work. Go home and lie down for a couple of days. You wouldn't last here two hours in your present shaky condition. You'd pinch the rolls with your tongs and probably get your neck broke. That's why they won't let you work. You can't work. So back to your bed, Bill, we will not call them out to-day."Bill usually went away cursing me as the friend of the "plutes"and the enemy of labor. "I'll get you yet," he'd say, "you black-headed buzzard."
And so while I was making enemies among many of the men who thought I wasn't standing up for their rights, I was making myself even more unpopular with the owners by sticking up too firmly for the rights of the men. They told me they believed Iknew as much about the tin plate business as any man in the trade. This knowledge would enable me to do better in the distributing end of the business, while as a worker I could only make the union wages that all the fellows were getting. This gave me an idea that has since become the dominating purpose of my life. Handicraft is the basis of the best schooling. By working with my hands as well as with my head I learned the actual cost of production of every kind of plate they put out. This was something that I could not have learned from books. Without such knowledge the business would have to be run partly on guesswork.
With a thorough knowledge of the production end of the business Ibecame a valuable man. The way was open for me to get out of the labor field and into the field of management.
But here is where my natural feeling of fraternity stepped in.
I liked to be among the men. I felt at home there. I was only twenty-two, and salesmanship was a field I had never tried, except for a season when I sold Mark Twain's book, Following the Equator. There were plenty of men who had the knack of selling.
My natural gift, if I had any, was to smooth the path for working men and help them solve their problems. I had learned that labor was the first step on the road to knowledge. It was the foundation of all true knowledge. I wanted to help the fellows take the next step. That step would be to learn how labor can enrich itself and do away with strikes and unemployment. That is a question that still fascinates me. I did not care to dodge it and become a manufacturer. I am the kind of fellow who, when he takes hold of a question, never lets go. The picture of Comrade Bannerman shaking his fist at the trainload of "plutes" lingered with me. I still heard the voice of the knock-kneed reformer who envied my husky limbs. The cry for bloody revolution was already in the air. When would the mob be started and what would it do?
When Comrade Bannerman had robbed the rich and piled their corpses in a Caesar's column, would not the knock-kneed uplifter break my legs in making all men equal? These men were moved by envy and they lusted for blood. I faced the problem with a thirst for accurate knowledge, and my passion was not for bloodshed but for brotherhood.
