Thomas Wolfe, page 549
SCENE III
Enter chorus of natives singing the native song of lamentation. Chorus:
We never get to see the neighbors,
Since they ripped up all our streets, bejabbers.
And it’s us that’s telling yo’ we’re sorry,
That we let them fix our streets, begorry.
We sure did pull a big fat bone
When we let ’em do it, ohchone, ohchone!
(In the distance can be heard the hoarse, grating chuckle of Nemesis, followed by the high falsetto cackle of Asphalt.) The natives shiver and look at each other muttering: “I reckon we had better be getting along home, there’s dirty work ahead.”
SCENE IV
Forty-seven years have elapsed. During this time the audience gets tired of waiting and goes out. The curtain rises on the same street as in Act I. It is still raining. Nemesis, the steam shovel, has moved two blocks down the street. History and Father Time make their first appearance; they come in together and converse.
Father Time—I’m gittin’ tired of waitin’.
History—It took me twenty-seven years to write a history of the war.
To count the graves, the tombs and biers,
Also the near beers—but I’ll swear
In thirty-seven different lingos
There Durham streets have all the jingoes
Beat that ever jingoed. Now my song
Is something like this, “Oh, Lord, how long!”
Father Time (fiercely)—I’m an old man an’ I deserve some consideration. It’s all the fault of that young scoundrel there (he shakes his fist at Nemesis whose back is turned).
History—Let’s fix him.
Time—Done. (He pulls his trusty Smith & Wesson from his pocket. His gun coughs and spits fire. Nemesis falls, mortally wounded, shot through his waistcoat and with his suspenders cut to ribbons. With a joyous shout the chorus of natives [including students and police force] rush out on stage uttering noises of delirious delight.)
First Native (hoarsely)—At last! At last! We are saved. Drink! Drink! Strong drink! (The popping of corks may be heard and we gaze upon a wild debauch of intoxication as the natives reel from the effects of eleven bottles each of Pepsi-Cola. They continue their wild orgy of joy, putting pennies recklessly in chewing gum slots and laughing insanely as they stagger around. Finally two or three of the more sane ones come forward and sing the native song of Thanksgiving.)
Chorus—From the muddy lands with which our feet were shackled,
To this freedom, with hope’s brightest lamp imbued,
Is the farthest cry that ever roared or cackled,
Or one might say, farthest cry that ever crewed.
Come let us hence
To some point thence
To celebrate the death of dull Misgiving,
To crown our joy with feats of great Thanksgiving;
Yea, since the corkscrew’s lost its pull
Let’s open up a can of Bull.
(The natives scream with delight. They are still screaming as)
the curtain falls
[¬]
THE CRISIS IN INDUSTRY
[University of North Carolina. Pamphlet, 14 pp., 200 copies, 1919]
“Wars,” the philosopher says, “are the birth pangs of truths.” “Great wars,” he continues, “are the birth pangs of master truths.” We have just seen a great war come to its close.
If any truth has come from that war, it is the truth of modern labor becoming conscious of itself as a vital, breathing, compelling force. The industrial problem looms before us in an almost menacing aspect. We know today that the issue demands immediate settlement. Victorious in our war with the common foe we are today appalled by the mutterings of something far more dreadful,—industrial civil strife. Let us consider, for a minute, the viewpoint of the detached observer. One of Japan’s most distinguished statesmen, Count Okuma, looking across the world at the great war just closed, declared it to be nothing less than the death of modern civilization. Just as the civilizations of Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Carthage, and the Roman Empire have crumbled in succession, so, in his opinion, our modern civilization is even now going the same way. Whether this be true or not, it is certain that from the world struggle we may see the destruction of an industrial civilization which the workers will not want to build back. And the danger now is that at this period of crisis, it may be easier to pass into ruin than to move onward. There is the problem.
In the midst of all these volcanic outbreaks of industrial trouble in the different parts of our country, thinking people are asking each other, “What does labor want?” It is a puzzling question. The wages for which labor works are higher than ever before, the living and working conditions of the workers are almost ideal compared with those of even a generation ago,—the whole industrial scheme seems regulated on a more humane scale.
But it becomes evident, at this time, that these petty, paltry bickerings, for a six-hour day, higher wages, meal times, and all the rest, do not in even the slightest degree represent the fundamental nature of these men’s demands,—demands that became clearly defined during the war, and that now cry for answer.
On the other hand, I do not assume for a minute that the doctrines of Socialism or Bolshevism demanding the destruction of the capitalist system and advocating the conscious class warfare represents the attitude of labor in general, or that such methods as these are the motivating purposes of any large group of leaders and workers with the exception, perhaps, of one or two restricted areas.
No—the labor movement has nothing in common with this kind of doctrine. I believe it realizes the fundamental right of capital to a share in the business of production; what it protests against is the fact that under the present system, labor itself does not have a share, and it asserts that its right to an equal share is just as true, and just as fundamental as the right of capital.
The fact that the great body of workers have not defined sharply the nature of their demands does not, for a minute, indicate that they do not know what they want. The awakening of labor may not as yet be complete; its consciousness of itself may not be realized to the utmost. I do not think it is yet, but its newly gained knowledge is not obscure. The whole experience of the war has been to clarify its vision.
Labor today is in active revolt against the whole system whereby its labor, the product of its blood, bone, sinew, and brain is treated as a commodity—something to be bought at will, the price of which may be forced up or down, just as the price of flour or sugar. If labor is a commodity, then its demands that it have a directive power in the expenditure of its own labor, its assumption that it is engaged in a business with capital and that business is production, its statement that its contribution to that business is just as essential as the contribution of capital, and that, therefore, it should be entitled to the control of this business with capital on a basis of equal co-partnership,—if, I say, the assumption that labor is a commodity is correct, then labor is unjustified in these beliefs and demands. For a commodity, to my mind, is devoid of life, or, if it possesses life, that life is insensate and devoid of consciousness.
But I do not believe that labor is a commodity. Labor has life—in fact, labor is life. Remove life and there is no labor. No one would say that a machine labors;—it runs. The desire to work, to labor, is fundamental in a man, it is not a mechanical process; it comes from his inmost being, I sincerely believe.
There is a sacredness about labor, it is of a religious nature even—and religion is fundamental in the lives of men.
If, then, labor is life, and not insensate; if labor is possessed of an intelligent consciousness of itself and the workings of its life, it becomes manifest that labor itself, in the intelligent consciousness of itself, becomes its own unit of value, the directive force of its own working, the source of its own purposes and that, in short, it dominates its own existence, and cannot, by right, be forced to the obedience of any outward imposition.
What labor wants, as I see it, is its right to self-direction. Capital does not recognize this right. Whereas the swift, sure progress of labor consciousness is today well marked and may be, at all times, clearly defined, I am unable to discover a corresponding process on the part of capital. These capitalist folk, your owning and directing, and managing people, remain blind to the fundamentals of the problem. In a few isolated places, one perhaps catches a gleam, but, for the rest, they cannot understand the attitude of labor. The trouble is: Capital is now as static as it was fifty years ago. As some one has said, the chief difference is golf.
These men, for the most part, seem to have learned neither humanity or caution from the tedious times our nation has gone through. Instead of awakening to the new sense of values, they rather brand, as does a large part of society, the workers as “I. W. W.’s,” “Slackers,” “Bolshevists,”—workers who, becoming conscious of their social and human value, realizing their problem is a human one, are striving to carry that new sense into a reformed industrial system.
The capitalist class do not seem to realize that the “old order changeth,” that it is changed, God willing, for all time. The significance of the war seems lost on them. But—there can be no patchwork reconstruction now. I do not believe that now that the war is over, now that we have emerged from the holocaust, that what remains to be reconstructed is this or that bureau of government, this or that machine of administration. No—the meaning of the war is more fundamental, more vital than any of these. The whole society must be reconstructed. Labor sees this, in general capital does not.
Thus, as we have seen, the labor group is in active revolt against the old system. They know it must change. And they are trying to change it now, using as their method the so-called “direct action,” the strike.
But—here another problem arises. It is plain labor sees the problem, manifestly they are clear in their knowledge of what they want,—but, do they see the solution? Is force a remedy of the vast industrial problem?
The unrestricted use of force by both classes, capitalist and labor, is, I think, a dangerous sequence, the terrible reflex action of the giant strife that has been waged throughout the world. It manifests itself now in class warfare here. Inflamed by privations and suffering, it shows itself as civil war in Russia and Germany.
The war parallel, I think, is a good one. The neutral observer, which, in the industrial strife, is supposedly the citizenship without the two classes, may protest against the quality of a justice, which, acting from itself, is the judge of its own cause, and the vindication of itself through its triumphant force. It is the age-old idea of “Might Is Right.” But might is not right, and can never vindicate its cause. Force everywhere sweeps aside its moral obligations and runs its own course unmindful of the rights of others. Insistent on its own rights, it forgets that words “right” and “duty” are, or should be, inseparably linked. What of the duty to the neutral, if I may use the war parallel again? If two boys fight in the street a crowd gathers to watch them,—they are separated,—the crowd goes its way. In a class warfare waged between labor and capital, the crowd, which is the third group, the consumers of production, cannot look on with the detached viewpoint. No! The problem is so vast, it is so close to the heart of national life, that the whole body of the nation is affected deeply, powerfully. The question yet remains to be answered: Can any class, insistent on its own rights, obtain them with rampant force, at the expense of universal suffering?
This idea of force used in the interests of the class is the natural builder of its own rights, the satisfaction of its in-wrought cravings is expressed unconsciously, but masterfully, in the exclamation of the Frenchman, Pichon: “Has the victor no rights over the vanquished?”
I will answer the Frenchman that the victors have no rights over the vanquished because of their victory. I do not believe the use of force ever settled any problem. Class warfare is being waged throughout the country now. The strike—the direct action, the method of force is the common agency. Whenever the labor group obtains its demands or part of them, a shout of triumph goes up from labors ranks. Similarly, when capital is successful in hold-out methods, there is great rejoicing among capitalists. The victory of the moment has been won; these men do not pause to consider the fact that they are as far away from a solution, nay, further, than ever. When we consider this question reasonably, when we consider the fundamental demand of labor that it engage in business with capital on a basis of mutual responsibility, and mutual democratic co-partnership, a demand admitted in isolated cases by capital,—we see plainly that instead of being drawn closer together until they meet at a solution, the method of force has only served to antagonize the two classes, until now they face each other in separate armed camps, ready, at the provocation of prejudice, to wage blind, futile warfare.
The solution to the problem is, I think, fairly obvious. Intelligent people today admit, nor can any decent-minded person deny, in this day, that the demand of labor for democratic co-operation is unreasonable. Indeed, in a political democracy, the only natural parallel here would be industrial democracy. We feel today that capitalist absolutism must go, that any form of capitalist domination is hateful. Likewise, we know that a reversal of the system whereby labor would hold the dominant position would be just as undesirable.
There is, to my mind, but one adequate solution. That solution, broadly put, is industrial democracy,—a system of democratic co-operation in industry with equal rights and responsibilities for labor and capital.
It is significant to note that the first two methods depend on force for their maintenance—the last method depends on co-operation,—on the inherent willingness of men to listen to reason. Is there not a living hope for us that the principles of democracy and self-determination, which are being put to the test today in government, can meet the test in industry? It seems to me that there is a compelling parallelism here, that the success or failure in the one phase stands for a corresponding success or failure in the other.
It is too much, to my mind, to hope that the labor class will effect this desirable solution by themselves. They see, as we know, the problem, they have come into a realization of their right, but they do not see a proper solution.
The method of force is, I believe, a natural, but a distinctly menacing sequence to the war just ended.
If, in the fact of labor’s display of force, government misunderstands it, and retaliates with a rival and superior display of force, then let us say farewell to our hopes of democracy. Capital could, I suppose, conscript an army large enough to quell for the time rebellious labor. But, even if the strife which sets brother against brother should succeed, labor would still be alive in the flaming spirit of revolt.
We cannot consider labor a category; it is human—a mass of men and women workers. We may stigmatize the labor movement all we choose,—we may call it selfish, menacing, rebellious, thoughtless—any of these names, but the fact remains that labor has possession of a great truth.
Labor knows that the system—the blind system that treats man as an adjunct to the machine, has nearly crushed out the little lives of the workers. And it is making its effort to get this blind power in hand.
As I have said, I do not think labor has attained a full consciousness of itself; that will evolve. I think some phases of the movement are faulty.
Labor makes its mistake, I think, in making the same demands for the mass of the workers.
In this respect, it seems to be a mass movement. But it is evident that the capabilities of individual workmen must always be considered. The capacity of one individual for work may be either greater or less than those of another. Such a thing as real equality in this respect is, to my mind, hardly possible.
It is granted, perhaps, that individuals have equal opportunities for work under a reformed industrial system. It does not hold, however, that individuals have equal capacities for work, and labor today in its onward movement has manifestly not taken this into consideration.
This, however, is a natural mistake and one which may be remedied.
And now, how does the problem stand?
We see labor has come into a realization of its self as a body vital with the power of life, intelligent as to its workings, and sure of its function in industry. We realize that no reasonable solution to our problem will ever be obtained by the use of force—by the strike which breaks out sporadically at this time in various parts of the country. The solution to labor appears to be the strike, the use of force. That is no true solution.
Now, since this problem is one that affects the vitals of national life and unity, it is obviously the business of government to aid the workers to attain the true solution.
If the government sees only on the surface, and attempts to crush labor by a superior display of force, the result will be nothing less than terrible civil strife.
As it seems to me, the issue stands squarely before the government. Labor no longer has faith in government as a legislative remedy for their problem. Labor puts no dependence in the ballot today—this means is inadequate,—we have in its place the strike, the direct action.
Where lies the fault? Largely, I think, with government. A few months ago one of the most memorable sessions of Congress in the nations history came to a close. It was memorable not for what it had done but for what it had left undone. The industrial condition during the months immediately following the signing of the armistice grew and is growing, as I write this, continually more menacing. Congress, with great care, kept away from the industrial problem. The session, for the most part, was concerned by petty, party bickerings, back-bitings and partisan politics of a paltry nature. I say this with no attempt to be sensational, with no spirit of bitterness,—it seems an obvious statement of fact.
