Day Clarence
The Crow's Nest

The Revolt of Capital

Once upon a time all the large corporations were controlled by labor. The whole system was exactly the opposite of what it is now. It was labor that elected the directors, and the officers too. Capital had no representatives at all in the management.

It was a curious period. Think of capital having no say, even about its own rates! When a concern like the United Great Steel Co., was in need of more capital, the labor man who was at the head of it, President Albert H. Hairy, went out and hired what he wanted on the best terms he could. Sometimes these terms seemed cruelly low to the capitalists, but whenever one of them grumbled he was paid off at once, and his place was soon taken by another who wasn't so uppish. This made for discipline and improved the service.

Under this régime – as under most others – there was often mismanagement. Those in control paid themselves too well – as those in control sometimes do. Failures and reorganizations resulted from this, which reduced the usual return to the workers and made them feel gloomy; but as these depressions threw capitalists out of employment, and thus made capital cheaper, they had their bright side.

The capitalists, however, grumbled more and more. Even when they were well paid and well treated they grumbled. No matter how much they got, they felt they weren't getting their dues. They knew that labor elected the management; and they knew human nature. Putting these two premises together, they drew the conclusion that labor was probably getting more than its share, and capital less. President Hairy, of the Steel Co., explained to them this couldn't be true, because the market for capital was a free and open market. He quoted a great many economic laws that proved it, and all the professors of economy said he was right. But the capitalists wouldn't believe in these laws, because they weren't on their side, nor would they read any of the volumes the professors composed. They would read only a book that an old German capitalist wrote – a radical book which turned economics all upside-down and said that capital ought to start a class war and govern the world.

Discontent breeds agitation. Agitation breeds professional agitators. A few unruly loud-voiced capitalists climbed up on soap-boxes and began to harangue their quiet comrades, just to stir up needless trouble. When arrested, they invoked (as they put it) the right of free speech. The labor men replied by invoking things like law and order. Everybody became morally indignant at something. The press invoked the Fathers of the Republic, Magna Charta, and Justice. Excited and bewildered by this crossfire, the police one evening raided a Fifth avenue club, where a capitalist named M. R. Goldman was talking in an incendiary way to his friends. "All honest law-abiding capitalists will applaud this raid," said the papers. But they didn't. They began to feel persecuted. And presently some capitalists formed what they called a union.

It was only a small union, that first one, but it had courage. One afternoon President Hairy looked up from his desk to find four stout, red-faced capitalists pushing each other nervously into his office. He asked them their business. They huskily demanded that every capitalist on that company's books be paid at least a half per cent more for his money. The president refused to treat with them except as individuals. They then called a strike.

The results of this first strike were profoundly discouraging. The leaders were tried for conspiracy, those who walked out at their call were blacklisted, and the victorious labor men soon secured other capitalists in plenty, a private car-load being brought over from Philadelphia at night. The labor leaders became so domineering in their triumph they refused to engage capitalists who drank or who talked of their wrongs. They began importing cheap foreign capital to supply all new needs. But these measures of oppression only increased the class feeling of capitalists and taught them to stand shoulder to shoulder in the fight for their rights.

The years of warfare that followed were as obstinate as any in history. Little by little, in spite of the labor men's sneers, the enormous power of capital made itself felt. An army of unemployed capitalists marched upon Washington. The Brotherhood of Railway Bondholders, being indicted for not buying enough new bonds to move the mails, locked up every dollar they possessed and defied the Government. The Industrial Shareholders of the World, a still more rabid body, insisted on having an eight per cent law for their money. All great cities were the scenes of wild capitalist riots. Formerly indifferent citizens were alarmed and angered by seeing their quiet streets turned into Bedlam at night, with reckless old capitalists roaring through them in taxis, singing Yankee Boodle or shouting "Down with labor!" For that finally became the cry: labor must go. They still meant to use labor, somehow, they confusedly admitted, but capital and not labor must have absolute control of all industries.

As the irrepressible conflict forced its way into politics, Congress made statesmanlike efforts to settle the problem. After earnest and thoughtful debate they enacted a measure which made the first Monday in September a holiday, called Capital Day. As this hoped-for cure did not accomplish much they attempted another, by adding a Secretary of Capital to the President's cabinet. Conservative people were horrified. But Congress was pushed even further. It was persuaded to prohibit employing the capital of women and children, and it ordered all Japanese capital out of the country. On one point, however, Congress was obstinate and would not budge an inch. They wouldn't give capital full control of the railroads and mills.

The capitalists themselves were obliged to realize, gradually, that this could be at best but a beautiful dream. It seemed there was one great argument against it: labor men were a unit in believing the scheme wouldn't work. How could scattered investors, who had not worked at an industry, elect – with any intelligence – the managers of it? Even liberal labor men said that the idea was preposterous.

At this moment a citizen of East Braintree, Mass., stepped forward, and advocated a compromise. He said in effect:

"The cause of our present industrial turmoil is this: The rulers that govern our industries are not rightly elected. Our boards of directors may be called our industrial legislatures; they manage a most important part of our national life; but they are chosen by only one group of persons. No others can vote. If Congress were elected by a class, as our boards of directors are, this country would be constantly in a state of revolution politically, just as it is now industrially." That was his argument.

"Both those who do the work and those who put in the money should rightfully be represented in these governing bodies." That was his cure. If corporations would adopt this democratic organization, he said, two-sided discussions would take place at their meetings. "These discussions would tend to prevent the adoption of policies that now create endless antagonism between labor and capital." And he went on to point out the many other natural advantages.

This compromise was tried. At first it naturally made labor angry, labor having been in exclusive control for so long. Many laborers declined to have anything to do with concerns that were run by "low ignorant speculators," as they called them, "men who knew nothing of any concern's real needs." Ultimately, however, they yielded to the trend of the times. Democratic instead of autocratic control brought about team-play. Men learned to work together for their common good.

Of course capitalists and laborers did not get on any too well together. Self-respecting men on each side hated the other side's ways – even their ways of dressing and talking, and amusing themselves. The workers talked of the dignity of labor and called capital selfish. On the other hand, ardent young capitalists who loved lofty ideals, complained that the dignity of capital was not respected by labor. These young men despised all non-capitalists on high moral grounds. They argued that every such man who went through life without laying aside any wealth for those to come, must be selfish by nature and utterly unsocial at heart. There always are plenty of high moral grounds for both sides.

But this mere surface friction was hardly heard of, except in the pages of the radical capitalist press. There were no more strikes, – that was the main thing. The public was happy.

At least, they were happy until the next problem came along to be solved.

Still Reading Away?

 
Still reading away at your paper?
Still sitting at editors' feet?
(Clay feet!)
Oh, why do you muse on their views of the news,
When breezes are sweet in the street?
There's a bit of cloud flying by in the sky.
Tomorrow 'twill be far away.
There's a slip of a girl, see her dance to my song!
Tomorrow she'll be old and gray.
Come along!
There's music and sunshine and life in the street,
But ah, you must take them today.
 

Portraits
A Wild Polish Hero and the Reverend Lyman Abbott

The books a man likes best are those with somebody in them like him. I don't say it isn't a pleasure to read about others, but if he too is there it's still better. And when he is the hero – ah! It's like living a whole extra life.

But there is no drawing back, once you put yourself into some character – you must do all that he does, no matter how you hate his mistakes. I remember once identifying myself with a dissolute Pole, in a novel, who led me a dance that I haven't forgotten yet. I ought never to have let myself fancy that I was that fellow. He was moody, excitable, he drank more brandy than I was prepared to; he talked most bombastically. He made the most pitiful jokes. But what took my eye in him was this: he was sincere with himself. He was only twenty-five years of age, but though young, he was honest. When he was in love with two women he never dodged facing it squarely. He deceived the two women, I grant you, but most heroes deceive themselves, too. They tell themselves some pretty story in dilemmas like that. This Pole always saw through his stories. He questioned his heart, and listened with reasonable honesty to its responses.

Our capacity for analyzing and criticizing our natures is wonderful. When a man is without self-awareness, I feel toward him as I do toward animals.

I admire the animals. I am glad I am not one myself – life in the wilds must be awful – but animals are healthy and sound; and some are good, and intelligent. Men who can't analyze themselves may be good and intelligent also. But they are not advanced beings.

The test of a civilized person is first self-awareness, and then depth after depth of sincerity in self-confrontation. "Unhealthy?" Why, certainly! "Risky?" Yes; like all exploring. But unless you are capable of this kind of thinking, what are you? No matter how able or great, you are still with the animals.

Here and there is a person who achieves this in ways of his own. Not through brain-work alone, or most surely, can insight be won. A few have by nature a true yet instinctive self-knowledge. But that takes a pure soul. The tricks of self-deceiving are too many and ingenious for most of us…

Speaking of pure souls reminds me of the editor of the Outlook, good old Lyman Abbott, although his is unfortunately the kind that is tastelessly pure. He's as wholesome and good as oatmeal is, but the salt was left out. An excellent person but wingless; not stupid, but dull. Yet – there's something about him – he has an attractive integrity. He puts on no airs. He is simple, unpretentious, and he's so straightforward he makes me respect him.

Many people respect Lyman Abbott. Yet I was surprised to. Well, I had the Rollo books given to me, as a child; I had to read them on Sundays; and the author of those awful volumes was Lyman Abbott's father. He wrote books for the young. People who write books for the young are a tribe by themselves, and little did I suppose I should ever live to respect one.

Rollo was a Sunday-school boy. Lyman Abbott's a Sunday-school man. He combines in himself the excellencies and the colorlessness of the Sunday-school atmosphere. When it comes time to group us as sheep or as goats, I know this, there won't be any question that he is a regular sheep. No capers for him, except the most innocent capers. No tossing of that excellent head, no kicking up of his heels. There isn't the faintest suspicion of goatiness in him.

Yet it's strange he's so hopeless: he likes certain forms of adventure. He was a bill-collector once. And when Kansas was being settled so bloodily, in our slavery days, he felt wishful to go there. He once did some detective work too, and he greatly enjoyed it. But his tastes are all heavily flavored with moral intentions.

"My recreations," he says in his book, "I took rather seriously. I neither danced nor played cards, and after I joined the church very rarely went to the theater." He liked music, liked playing the organ. He implies that he played it however to add to his income. He was a lawyer when he first felt a call in his heart to the ministry. "Had my wife objected to the change I should have remained in the law." He has taken ale or porter at times, "under doctor's counsel," but in general he has been an "abstainer." ("From both fermented and distilled liquors," he adds.) He never has shaved, never smoked. On the other hand, he says, "I had no inclination to be a monk"; when not at work in the evening, "I was likely to be out, perhaps at a concert or a religious or political meeting, perhaps on a social call." His father kept a boarding school for girls, and that was where Lyman made most of his social calls, as a youth.

He never overdoes anything. "It is a wise hygienic rule to spend less strength than one can accumulate." (That seems like the perfect recipe for not being a genius.) A professional hypnotist once told him he was not a good subject. "I never have been," he writes: "I have passed through some exciting experiences … but I have never been swept off my feet. I have never lost my consciousness of self or my self-mastery. I wonder why it is. I am not conscious of being either especially strong-willed or especially self-possessed."

He reads with assiduity, he says, but without avidity. He seems to live that way, too.

His sermons, his book tells us, have had merit, but have always lacked magnetism. (You can't sweep other people off their feet, if you can't be swept off your own.) He likes preaching, however. It comes easily to him.

We are all of us so busy with the small bits of life we can envisage, that we don't often think of how much we all fail to take in. Lyman Abbott has been kept busy being a purifying influence. Certain other phases of life, accordingly, simply do not exist for him. If romance tried approaching the Reverend Lyman Abbott, at night, it would stand no more chance than a rose would against disinfectants.

Suppose that a Board of Eugenics were in charge of this nation, what would they do with the species this man represents? They would see his good qualities – industry, poise, generosity. It would be too bad to exterminate Dr. Abbott; it is plain we need some of him. "But," they would reflect, "this species is apt to wax numerous. We must remember Australia and the rabbits. This type might overrun the whole country. We might even have to put up barbed-wire, or shoot the excess, for us to stay human."

My own recommendation is to cross a few specimens with Poles.

 
Lyman Abbott, calm and dry,
With your conscientious eye,
Can it possibly be true
He who made the Poles made you?
 
 
In the forest, on the beach,
You have pondered what to preach.
Magic nights of piercing beauty,
You have lectured us on duty.
 
 
In your admirable heart
Lives a Yearning to Impart;
In your veins an earnest flood
Of listerine instead of blood.
 
 
Lyman, Lyman, do you think
If you gambled, took to drink,
Loved a Countess, lost your soul,
You could ever be a Pole?
 

Mrs. P's Side of It

So Prometheus, the Titan, seeing the great need that man had of fire, risked all and set out for Olympus, and brought thence the flame.

And warmth, comfort, art and inventions spread over the world.

But as to Prometheus, he was seized by the gods, in their wrath, and chained to a rock in the Scythian wilds, by the sea. There no ear heard his cries. There he raged on alone, year by year, with his eyelids cut off, while cold-hearted vultures with great beaks like horns tore his flesh.

It is an interesting thing that Prometheus, who is a hero to us, should have been regarded so differently his contemporaries. Some thought of him as merely a sort of social settlement-worker, living among men to improve them, in a sleek, earnest spirit. Some thought him a common adventurer. Others a radical.

As a matter of fact, he was really very much like the rest of us.

The records seem to indicate he was a well-to-do prominent citizen, who was active in getting the world of his day straightened out. I imagine him going around town, in the real-estate business, a substantial, respected man, planning highways and harbor facilities. Then he gets this idea, about bringing down fire from heaven. At first he dismisses it. But he thinks about the advantages of fire, and begins to believe he could get it. He starts talking to others about it. Every one laughs. It is a little too absurd, you know – this talk about fire from heaven! His fellow businessmen call him a visionary. He of course resents that. He defends his plan, and tries to explain why it's perfectly practicable, but he does it so warmly they begin to lose some of their trust in him. The word goes around not to elect him to the Chamber of Commerce. The solid men of the community begin to avoid him. A famous university silently changes its plans, and decides not to give Mr. Prometheus that LL.D. degree. And finally one of his friends pays him a call, after dark, and bluntly and worriedly warns him he's queering himself.

Prometheus goes upstairs, indignant, to talk to his wife. He doesn't tell her anything about his friend, or the community's criticisms, but he describes all over again what a boon fire would be to mankind. After an hour of this he has reassured himself, and forgotten his friend. His eyes shine. He looks almost handsome. His wife is quite thrilled. She says he is wonderful, and no one ever had such a husband.

But she says it sounds awfully dangerous.

"Well," he owns, "there's some risk, but we ought to look at it impersonally."

She says: "Looking at it quite impersonally, I think you had better not do it."

"What?" he shouts; "don't you realize what a tremendous help fire would – "

"Oh yes, dear," she says: "the plan's perfect. But you shouldn't go. You have such important work to attend to, here at home, without that. Some younger, less valuable person – "

"Ah, my dear," Prometheus laughs, "you're like every one else. You want to see the world helped, and wars won, whatever the cost; but you don't want either me or you to pay any part of the price. You think all dangerous work should be done by some other woman's husband."

Mrs. Prometheus purses her lips and her face becomes obstinate. "I don't think any married man has a right to take such risks," she observes.

"Well, you ought to hear what the single men say about that," he retorts. "It's pretty thick to expect them to die, they say, for other men's wives."

Mrs. Prometheus shrugs at the shallowness of those silly bachelors, and doesn't bother even to comment on their point of view. Instead, she says tactfully that she sees Prometheus has set his heart upon going, and she wants him to feel perfectly free to do just what he likes. Only there are certain practical matters that one must consider. There's the mortgage, and the laundress – unless he'd like to have her do the washing herself, which she'd be glad to do only he never took those stones out of her way, in the brook – and there's the bill for that last set of bear-skins that she got for the windows; and she doesn't see exactly how she can keep the home up by herself, if he is to wander around neglecting his real-estate business.

He says he won't be chained by his business.

She reminds him that she has already explained he's perfectly free. But she just wants to know how he wishes her to arrange in his absence.

"Very well, then," he blazes out, "I will give up my plan: let it go! let men go to the devil! I'm a prisoner, that's what it comes to. Like all married men. There isn't a damn one of us that's allowed to do what the world needs, or anything fine and unselfish."

She says that's unjust. She'd love to have him be a great hero, and she always has said so, but she doesn't see why he can't be one without leaving his wife.

Prometheus, with a groan at his bondage, walks out of the house, leaving her feeling injured and wondering at the hardness of men. And he stamps up and down the yard, working himself up into a state, and filling his mind with dark pictures. Must every married man sit at home with his wife in his arms, yearning for roving and achievement, but yearning in vain? Pegged down, with a baby as a peg, and a mortgage as jailer. Must every young fellow choose between a fiancée and adventure? Even when he does choose adventure, they won't let him alone. There will always be some girl at a window as he passes by, who will tempt him to stop and play dolls with her, and stay indoors for keeps, and wrestle with a mortgage for exercise, and give up the road. Prometheus swears. He tries to imagine what our epics would be like if wives wrote them: what heroes they'd sing. Tidy, amiable, hearthstone heroes, who'd always wind up the clock regularly, and never invent dangerous airplanes or seek the North Pole. Ulysses knitting sweaters by the fireside. George Washington feeding canaries…

Mrs. Prometheus sticks her head out of the window: "I'll say just one word. I had supposed we were partners, who had gone into the homemaking business."

He says what good are homes if they emasculate spirited men.

She says what good are spirited men if they make the world homeless.

"I don't intend to make the world homeless."

"No, only your wife."

Well, Prometheus gives in, of course, and abandons his plan, as millions of others have done, after talks with their wives. But ah, there is another great force besides wives in the world.

It happened, as you know, that Prometheus didn't get on well with Zeus. They had different ideas as to how the world should be arranged. Prometheus had more experience, but Zeus had the power. Rivalry, combined with dislike, – that is the great force I speak of. Zeus didn't wish men to have fire. That was enough for Prometheus. He told himself how incompetent Zeus was to manage the world, how selfish he was, how indifferent to men's need of fire. And that was what braced him, at last, to escape from his wife, and bring down an ember from heaven, and bestow it upon men.

"General Rejoicing on Earth," said the newspapers, when the deed had been done. To get anything from heaven seemed as remarkable then as it would now. Prometheus having accomplished something was immediately ranked as a hero. The Chamber of Commerce still privately thought he had been rather wild, but after a debate on the subject they gave him a dinner. He was also presented with a loving cup and the keys of the city. (He had no use for either, but those primitive men thought them honors.) And after the public reception Prometheus went home, and had another reception behind closed doors from Mrs. Prometheus, who had had to sell preserves and take in sewing while he was away.

Meanwhile everybody was using this new-fangled thing, fire, except old folks who were set in their ways and who said it was dangerous. And presently men found it was dangerous. It wasn't just a question of scorched fingers – it burned out two caves. It roasted the toes of a lady who went to sleep while cooking sliced elephant. And although Prometheus had warned them and warned them about being careless, and had shown them exactly how to use it, he was blamed for each burn.

Some citizens were sarcastic and wrote him elaborate letters, thanking him so much for the suffering he had caused them and wishing him lots of the same. Some were reasonable and patient, but said he ought to have perfected this thing, before exposing the lives of the community to a bungling device. Others were seriously angry. They wished him imprisoned. Why should a man who had caused so much damage walk about, free? They inquired where justice was, at that rate; and held a mass-meeting.

It was owing to this that the gods discovered what he had done. A volley of terrible thunder-claps at once shook the skies, and Zeus had Prometheus arrested. He was led off to Scythia – the Siberia of those times – without trial, and the police left him chained to a rock there, and hurried back home. And everybody sympathized greatly with Mrs. Prometheus, for having a husband who had wilfully disgraced his poor wife. And they tried to be nice to her, but of course she was under a cloud, and had to take in more sewing than ever, and was never asked out. And a year or two later some books were written, psychoanalyzing Prometheus; and a professor who had made a study of the economic interpretation of heroes wrote an interesting paper discussing his probable motives, pointing out that he must have had relatives who wished to sell fire-insurance.

So his great deed ended in confusion. Like other great deeds. All he got was a tumult of mixed praise and blame from the crowd; and in his dark moments he must have felt completely discouraged, and wished that he'd just lived along in comfort and minded his business.

His friend, who had warned him originally, thought of him at times. He used to sit at home and feel glad that for his part he'd kept out of it. Then he would stir up the fire in his grate and comfortably get into bed, and forget about Prometheus, facing the winds and the vulture.