Jack London
Australian Star/January 14, 1909
Australia is so different from other civilized countries that a newcomer is hard put to orientate himself. Disregarding her various other unique characteristics, the man just landed on her shores is puzzled by Australia’s economic and political situation. It is not until one comprehends that capitalism has not been permitted an unhindered development that he can understand, say, the conditions that obtain at present at Broken Hill.
When I read in the daily press of the pickets granting safe-conduct to persons entering or leaving the Proprietary mine, and venturing, on occasion, to hoot and jeer, I am amazed. In the United States, according to the law as interpreted at present, the union picket is a negligible quantity. He has no reason for existence. If he dared to assume the function of granting a safe-conduct to a man entering or leaving a private property, he would be assaulted by the police, both foot and horse, be charged by soldiers, and be swept out of existence by the fire of magazine rifles and machine guns. Nay, in the United States, a picket may not even venture to address a blackleg in terms of most conciliatory speech. Moral suasion of that order is considered an incendiary attack upon the constitution of the land and the liberty of the people, and any picket rash enough to say “Good morning” to a blackleg is hustled off immediately to goal. And he is lucky, too, if the treasury of his union is not mulcted by due process of law of heavy civil damages.
Frankly and flatly, our police, private detectives, Pinkertons, and professional gunfighters, our constables, sheriffs, and United States marshals, our militia, regular army, and even our courts, fight the battles for capital against labor. Australia is so retarded in her development, or so advanced, if you please, that in industrial conflicts the function of civil and military authorities is the preservation of order merely. As a result industrial conflicts are carried on far more peacefully, and with much less disorder and violence than with us.
For with us a strike is practically civil war—a revolt against all the powers of government. Deny a union picket the right to attempt to exercise moral suasion on a blackleg, and he will the more readily hit the blackleg with a brick. Violence begets violence. Suppression causes explosion. Force is met with force, and when capital bombards labor with rifle bullets, court injunctions, and suits for damages, labor fights back with every weapon it can lay hands on. Primitive savagery takes the place of civilization, and the officials of the morgues and the emergency hospitals work overtime.
Australia is fortunate. The uniqueness of her development—which I, for one, am too new a stranger to attempt to formulate—makes possible a more peaceable and orderly solution of her industrial difficulties. On the other hand, while Australia is so different in many phases, there are certain underlying principles that are universal, and that are as true of Australia as of all other countries in the world. The law of gravitation still obtains in the Antipodes; two plus two is neither more nor less than four, and the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. Human psychology is very much the same all over the earth’s surface, and it is precisely the same where certain phases of the conduct of strikes are concerned. The average strike, in order to succeed, must have public opinion in favor of the strikers. This is true in Europe, in England, in America, and in Australia. Another general principle, equally true, is that the favor of public opinion is always lost when the strikers proceed to the destruction of property. Out of this has arisen the policy of labor leaders to avoid the destruction of property.
So I make bold to assert that in the matter of blowing up water mains and working railroad tracks at Broken Hill, the men who are conducting the strike have had no part. Tom Mann, for instance, is too wise a veteran in labor struggles to enter upon such a suicidal course. And I make bold further to assert that the capitalists of Australia were no more elated by the petty destruction of property that have taken place than was Tom Mann grieved by them. Every such petty destruction constitutes a point in favor of the owners and against the strikers. If time ever clears such matters up, it is safe to surmise that the guilt will attach itself to isolated individuals of the larrikin order.
Were the scene in America, where we are more advanced in industrial warfare, the odds would favor that it was the capitalists themselves who were responsible for the destruction of property. It is a way we have in the United States. I would not venture to charge the owners of Broken Hill with having a hand in the property destruction. It is true that such destruction is of signal benefit to the owners, insofar as it affects public opinion. But, on the other hand, I am a stranger in Australia, and I do not know how wise the employers are. Besides, I think they are such tyros in industrial warfare that they have not yet risen to the effrontery of destroying their own property in order to break a strike.
In America the capitalists destroy their own property as a matter of course. Mr. Carroll D. Wright, United States Commissioner of Labor, in his report to the government upon the great railroad strike, announced that the railroads themselves had been responsible for burning many freight cars. It is such a simple device. And so handy. It always turns public opinion against the strikers, and enables the authorities to call out the troops. In the labor troubles in the mining regions of the west, the owners blew up their mines, and, on one occasion, blew up a railroad station, killing a score or more of scab miners. This latter was not intended, of course. The explosion was intended to occur before the scabs arrived on the scene. But, as some poet has said, it is an awkward thing to play with gunpowder.
Another trick of the capitalists in the United States is to get the strike leaders in goal. This is equivalent to removing the general from the battlefield in the midst of the battle. In the A.R.U. strike, Eugene Debs was thus hustled away and put into goal for six months for contempt of court. It was like removing Wellings from Waterloo in the middle of the day. Naturally, the A.R.U. strike was broken.
In 1894, under stress of hard times, many thousands of the unemployed banded into “armies,” and marched to Washington to demand work from the government. The leader was one Coxey. It was a grave situation. But the authorities solved it. The day the great demonstration took place in front of the Capitol at Washington the police shoved Coxey on to the grass and then arrested him for trespass. I see that Tom Mann has been arrested for trespass at Broken Hill. This leads one to the tentative generalization that Australia is retarded in her development, rather than advanced, for our authorities in the United States worked that same trick fifteen years ago.
Why do we have strikes, anyway? The average man accepts them as uncomfortable but natural phenomena which must be put up with, but seems to be without any clear understanding of the underlying reason for the existence of strikes.
In order to get a glimpse of this reason, analyze any particular industrial process. Consider that here is a shoe factory. Raw leader, say, to the value of 100 pounds, goes into the factory and comes out as finished shoes, say, to the value of 200 pounds. What has happened? In some way a value of 100 pounds has been added. How was it added? Capital and labor combined to add it. Capital furnished the factory, the machines, the raw leather, and the running expenses. Labor furnished the labor. Thus, this 100 pounds of added value is the joint product of capital and labor.
Now comes the question of the division of the joint product. Capital takes its share in profits. Labor takes its share in wages. And it is right here, over this division of the joint product, that all the trouble arises. The laborers are men, the capitalists are men, and one of the fundamental traits of human nature is selfishness in the division of the joint product. Capital wants all it can get, and labor wants all it can get. Capital and labor therefore proceed to squabble over the division. When the squabbling becomes intense, there is a strike. Labor calls all the gods to witness that if it doesn’t get more of the joint product it will be blowed if it makes any more joint product. And capital says the same thing. And there you are, two kiddies quarrelling over the same piece of bread and butter.
And remember this, whatever is true of this particular industrial process is strue of every other industrial process. Capital and labor, combining to produce joint products, quarrel over the division of the joint products.
Many will ask the question: will industrial peace ever come? And the only answer is that it will never come so long as the present system of industrial production obtains. Human nature will not change. Capital will continue to want all it can get, and labor will continue to want all it can get. And on both sides they will fight to get it. No, the lion and lamb will never lie down together in vegetarian pastures.
“Then must we forever endure the irrational anarchy of strike and lockouts?” someone asks. Not so, is the answer. There are two ways by which industrial peace may be achieved. Either capital will own labor absolutely, and there will be no more strikes, or labor will own capital absolutely. And there will be no more strikes. Personally, I think labor will come to own capital. Every capitalist might die tonight, but the capital would remain. Labor could blow the whistle and go to work tomorrow morning as it did this morning. But if all labor died tonight it would take its labor-power with it. There would be no whistled blown tomorrow morning, for, alas! There would be no labor getting up steam in the boiler.
Furthermore, it is illogical to think of capital absolutely owning labor. It would mean chattel slavery, a trend backward to primeval night out of which civilization has emerged. And civilization has marked the rise of the common man, of labor, if you please. It would seem, from reading the past, that the future belongs to labor. And in the day that industrial democracy is added to political democracy, all will be laborers. There will be far vaster capital in existence, but there will be no capitalists. In other words, the system of production for profit will have been replaced by the system of production for service.
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