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.

December, 1912

Editorial

Business Ought to Tell Its Story

No. 5

The unpopularity with organized labor and its sympathizers, influenced by the paid officials of organized labor, of men engaged in business enterprises is an existing fact. When one man works for another man and the character of his duties throws him in personal touch with his employer, the two ordinarily like each other. When they do not, it is because one or the other is personally disagreeable. When a body of men work for a man and do not come into personal touch with him, they do not like him. The dislike is impersonal, but it exists. More and more, every year, this dislike on the part of the employed for the employer is intensified and accentuated.

Why?

For this,

The man who labors with his hands is apt to be uneducated. commonly, he is not to blame. He is not such a man, ordinarily, as can be expected to put himself in another's place or to see another man's difficulties. His own troubles he sees clearly. He works very hard at manual labor. At night he is very tired. His pay is modest. His habits of economy are probably not systematic. If he has a family, he has a hard time to get along. If sickness enters his home, he has a still harder time. He often becomes embittered at his lot in life.

A man who makes his living by organizing labor into unions and whose living would be gone if there were nothing for labor unions to do, and who, hence, creates dissension in order that his job may hold good, tells such a man as has just been described that it is all the employers' fault. He gives the workingman to understand that the employers' life is a bed of roses, and that it is such because the employer wrongfully has that which ought by right to be the employes'. He tells the employe that a workingman's condition is slavery and that his employer is his master.

As apparent proof of this, the workingman sees his employer arrive at say 9 o'clock in the morning in an automobile, possibly wearing a fur coat and a gold chain or a diamond pin. He sees the automobile come for his employer at possibly 4 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon. He knows that his employer is often out of the city. He reads in the newspaper or is told that his employer is in the social swim and entertains at his home.

Nobody, last of all his employer, tells this man of the troubles of the employer, nor is the workingman himself, commonly, a man to realize that all men have their troubles, and that the larger the responsibility the man bears, the weightier are his cares. Nobody informs this man that possibly his employer is getting along on credit and that the bank is perhaps threatening to withdraw the credit. As a matter of fact, the ordinary workingman's idea of credit is limited to the transaction whereby his grocer sells him eggs and butter and waits for the money until pay day. The thousand and one vexations of a business man's busy day are a sealed book to the workingman. He does not know that his employer is struggling with this hard life and its problems the same as he is doing and on a much larger scale.

It has been and still is the policy of men in business, and especially so of the men in big business, to keep their transactions to themselves and tell nobody their troubles. The stockholders do not know the details of the working of the business; sometimes the directors know, often it is narrowed down to the executive committee. A questioner asking these details would be probably told to mind his own business and be shown off the place.

Labor, on the contrary, tells the whole world its troubles nor does it mince words in doing so. The employer, the stump orators say, is a robber and is grabbing everything in sight. Politicians of all parties, solely for vote-getting purposes, take up the cry and finally this is said so much and so often that people come to believe it and take it for an unqualified and undisputed truth.

Meanwhile business holds its tongue.

This is at the bottom of the so-called progressive movement in politics which bids fair, unless checked, to enact into law measures to take away from a business man almost every valuable opportunity he has and to place labor outside the pale of legal obligation.

All this is because business does not tell its story. Do not think that THE AMERICAN EMPLOYER is advocating for a minute that the books of private corporations or businesses should be opened to public inspection as to profit and loss or anything of the kind. We simply believe that inasmuch as the granting of rights and opportunities for business prosperity vests in voters, men engaged in business enterprises ought to inform the voters frankly of the difficulties they have in the transaction of their business and of laws contemplated, which would be hurtful if enacted, and why they would be hurtful. A gum-shoeing campaign does not appeal to the ordinary voter. He wants

to know.

If a man and his wife have trouble and the wife tells all about it from her standpoint and the husband refuses to say a word, everybody will believe the wife. Call the laboring man the wife and the business man the husband, and no wonder that the voter believes the former's story and thinks he, the voter, is progressive.

No harm can possibly result from taking the public into the confidence of the business world. For illustration, during the Ohio campaign for a new constitution, little, if anything, was said by the business interests through public speakers as to why a minimum wage provision would be a bad thing for the business interests of Ohio. Plenty was said generally to the effect that the business men did not want it, and that it would be unwise, but so far as telling the voters of Ohio the economic reason why a business man should not and could not be held to the payment of a minimum wage, this was not done on the stump, though the information was no doubt contained in some of the literature circulated to business men, who knew all about it already.

Especially when one considers that under the influence of leaders of labor, organized labor would rather do what the employer does not want done, it is at once apparent that merely to say that a thing is unwise and that the employer does not want it done, would be to defeat the purpose of the business men.

The voters want to hear plain statements; the labor people make such

statements.

Quoting from the November AMERICAN EMPLOYER, page 199, The National Rip-Saw calls the lumber merchants "accursed beasts", "beastly breed of perdition" and "debased brutes", also "blood-sucking vampires", "assassins" and likewise "greedy grafters" and "foul fiends".

Far be it from THE AMERICAN EMPLOYER to urge upon employers of labor, or anybody else, to make use of language of this kind. The language is referred to again only to show that so-called leaders of labor and their papers do not mince words. Business interests in a business way and in sober, moderate language should follow suit to the extent of plainly saying what its difficulties are and what bad effect certain legislation would have upon them. If a thing done or proposed to be done by organized labor, through the influence of its leaders, who assume to represent its rank and file, is vicious, the business community should tell the voters so and show them why.

Neither will the voters prove unreasonable. Organized labor, through its walking delegates and business agents, who for their own interests have been fomenting trouble, make such a noise that we forget that 90 per cent of labor is unorganized and with open mind to the merits of an argument. We also forget the great rank and file of the voters in professional and clerical capacity and in small businesses, all of whom work, but who are not commonly classed as workingmen. If these men were told wherein the best interests of the community lay, they would vote that way. If this tale is told, the business interests of the country must tell it. Politicians will not until they think it to their advantage to do so. They say the thing to which they think their hearers want to listen.

Peter Witt, Cleveland O., American-born, of German parentage, now forty-four years old, had a common school education and started to earn his living at the molder's bench. Witt early embraced populism and joined hands with the union labor movement in such an aggressive way that he earned the reputation of being an anarchist. Tom L. Johnson took him under his wing when he became Mayor of Cleveland and Witt was chosen city clerk, which position he held some years. When Newton D. Baker recently became Mayor, he made Witt Street Railway Commissioner of the City of Cleveland. If one public man in the city of Cleveland above another held pronounced views in favor of organized labor and against corporations, it was Peter Witt. Both in association and training his bias was in that direction. During October of this year, Witt was invited to address the Cleveland Chamber of Industry on the subject of "Tractions". The entire membership of the chamber turned out expecting to hear a red-hot roast from Witt upon the corporations in general and the Cleveland Railway Co. in particular, but when Witt was called upon to speak, he began by saying: "Gentlemen, you have asked me here tonight to talk to you about tractions. For the past eight months I have been suffering with lockjaw. I used to tell everything I had on my mind. Today I am listening."

Then in dignified and sensible address, Witt told the members of the chamber some of the difficulties under which the railway company and the city of Cleveland, co-operating with it, were laboring in running the street railway system of a city of 600,000 inhabitants.

Peter Witt is beginning to know the other side because he has to; because the character of his public duties require it. He says that he is listening. If Peter Witt will listen, who will not? Let the public hear the business man's side. When once the public has it, it will know that so-called progressiveness is nothing more nor less than cheap Socialism and vicious politics. The public supports business by its patronage; let the public understand the troubles and trials of business, not the least of which are the uninformed laboring man and his corrupt walking delegate.

Farmers Are Not So Stupid

The Painter and Decorator, the official organ of the Brotherhood of Painters and Decorators of America, in all seriousness asserts in its September number that farmers are lacking in intelligence.

The discussion in which the assertion is made, is upon the result in Ohio, in September, of the election upon a new state constitution.

Comparisons are odious, The Painter and Decorator declares, but the truth should be told and credit given where due. The amendments were carried by the city votes and the farmers would have defeated them. The reactionary attitude of the farmer * ** * * * is undoubtedly due to the fewer opportunities the farmer has for education and to his neglect of the opportunities he has. Instead of reading progressive magazines and papers, attending lectures and improving his mind, he puts his nose to the grindstone for sixteen hours a day, and is so weary when he gets through that he is fit for nothing but sleep. If the farmer is very anxious to learn anything, we must get him interested in the shorter work day. As long as he spends his life in working, eating and sleeping, we cannot expect him to develop intelligence.

It is with more or less profound regret that we are unable to agree with The Painter and Decorator in its estimate of the agriculturalist. It is true that the farmer works hard. It is also true that he lives in memories, very often, of the Civil war. He often wears strange whiskers beneath his chin and he has a habit of gazing up at the tall structures when he visits the city. We think, nevertheless, that the farmer has opportunities for self-culture and original thought that are denied to many of the workingmen who allow their walking delegates to think for them. The farmer lives in the open and nature is his teacher. He breathes in the fresh air and it makes for a healthy, strong constitution, which in turn, brightens his intellect. He has always been to district school. He is a merchant, for he sells his farm products and that makes him think ahead. While he has fewer opportunities than the workingman to listen to Socialistic lectures, he is a regular attendant at his church, as a rule, and hears his minister, a man of education, propound sound morality. He ordinarily has a pretty good library. He takes his county paper and almost always a city paper. The interurban railways keep him in touch with the larger communities surrounding his farm.

If we were asked to determine who constitute the more intelligent body of men, the farmers of Ohio or the rank and file of labor union members of Ohio, we would have to decide for the farmer, who thinks for himself, having no labor union business agent to think for him. While it is true he is a little tenacious of his opinions and perhaps a trifle slow in accepting new things, he is erring on the safe side and is a great deal sounder man than any city workingman who accepts what some walking delegate tells him.

When it comes to the new Ohio constitution, we will venture to prophesy that within a very short time the workingmen of Ohio, though perhaps not the editor of The Painter and Decorator, who lives in Indiana, will devoutedly wish that there had been more farmers in the Buckeye state.

Let Us Hope It's Not So Bad

The Miners' Magazine, which is the organ of the Western Federation of Miners, and is distinctly Socialistic in tone, is exceeding wroth about alleged conditions because one of its subscribers has discontinued the magazine, because: "I cannot spare the $1.00 now for the purpose."

The Miners' Magazine says that this was not the only letter received asking that the magazine be discontinued on account of the financial embarrassment of the subscriber. The editorial says in part:

Men eager to read, and anxious to know something of the class struggle and the industrial conditions that prevail throughout the nations of the world, must deny themselves the luxury of reading a publication that costs but $1.00 a year. A Vanderbilt

can tender a banquet to aristocracy that costs $175,000, but a worker whose labor produces wealth, cannot afford the trifling sum of $1.00 a year for literature. A dog can sport a diamond collar, and a monkey can have a feast, but a wage slave must forego the pleasure of reading a magazine whose editorial policy meets his approval. The degenerate sons of multi-millionaires and the workless daughters of a class of privilege spend countless thousands of dollars annually in dissipation, but a horny-fisted son of toil, the slave of a master, haunted by the fear of want and hunger, must strangle his inclinations to read to provide against his stomach being empty..

This is the civilization that is lauded by press and pulpit and upheld by hypocrites and parasites.

The editorial does not suggest in any way that The Miners' Magazine is willing to trust its subscriber for $1.00 a year until his circumstances are improved, although the subscriber distinctly states that he cannot afford the $1.00 "now". The Miners' Magazine is patronized, to some extent, by advertisements for cigars, shoes, overalls, stationery, home builders, beer, clothing and the like. On page 12 of the same number of the magazine that contains the account of the man who cannot subscribe because it costs $1.00, is a statement that the circulation ought to become 50,000, and the membership of the Western Federation of Miners is urged to boost the magazine to the largest circulation of any official organ in America by January 1, 1913. It is very apparent that The Miners' Magazine is designed to be a money-making institution, with which no fault can be found, but if the magazine objects to the oppression of workingmen in such a strenuous way as it appears to do, there might be no harm in extending credit to the extent of $1.00 to the subscriber. It is often the case in all publications that a few subscribers drop out at the end of the year, and they are very apt to drop out in a polite way. Let us hope that the former subscriber to The Miners' Magazine is neither in want or hungry, and that his withdrawal of his subscription is not the result of such stringent economy as the editor seems to think he has to practice. At all events, if The Miners' Magazine is being run on a business basis, it ought not to be severe upon business success.

It is, however, true that ostentatious display of great wealth is irritating to poor and hard-working men, nor is it possible for men of limited education to comprehend in the least the legitimate acquisition of a fortune. Labor agitators are quick to see this, and to fan the flame, as in the present instance, for the purpose of making men unhappy and discontented.

Gompers On Lawrence

Samuel Gompers, too, as well as Phillips Russell in The New York Call, who was quoted in the November AMERICAN EMPLOYER, has evidently predetermined that the business men accused in Massachusetts of dynamite planting are guilty. He argues that the alleged transaction confirms "previous criminal conspiracies of merciless and unscrupulous capitalist antagonism to organized labor".

In the October American Federationist, Mr. Gompers reviews the Lawrence dynamite discoveries in a nine-page article under his own name, entitled "The Lawrence Dynamite Conspiracy", in concluding which he says:

"As contrasted with this great, grinding money power, these men of high political, social and 'moral' position and influence was a group of underpaid foreign workers, without organization, hence without influence or means of making known their distress and hardship-unprotected strangers at the mercy of a protected and specially privileged power.

"The results of the investigation no one can predict. An indictment is very different from a conviction, but when the story of financial greed, heartlessness and determination to disrupt labor organizations shall have been established, the world will have confirmed previous criminal conspiracies of merciless and unscrupulous capitalist antagonism to organized labor and will have a new viewpoint from which to judge the work, methods and policies