Is it any wonder that under handicaps like these labor becomes
confused and flounders? It has been offered a multitude of
remedies--political reforms, wage legislation, statutory regulation of
hours, and so on. It has been invited to embrace craft and industrial
unionism, syndicalism, anarchism, socialism as panaceas for its
liberation. Except in a few countries, it has not attained to
aggressive power, but has been a tool for unscrupulous politicians.
Even with the temporary advantages gained by the wiping out of
millions of workers in the Great War, labor's problem remains
unsolved. It has now, as always, to contend with the crop of young
laborers coming into the market, and with the ever-present "labor-saving"
machine which, instead of relieving the worker's situation,
makes it all the harder for him to escape. Fewer laborers are needed
to-day for a given amount of production and distribution than before
the invention of these machines. Yet, owing to the increase in the
number of the workers, labor finds itself enslaved instead of
liberated by the machine.
"Hitherto," says John Stuart Mill, "it is questionable if all the
mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any
human being. They have enabled a greater population to live the same
life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an increased number of
manufacturers and others to make fortunes."
That, in a few words, sums up the greater part of labor's progress. We
blame capitalism and its wasteful, brutal industrial system for all
our social problems, but our numbers were vast and our bondage
grievous before modern industry came into existence. We may curse the
trusts, but our subjection was accomplished before the trusts had
emerged from the brain of evolution. We may blame public officials and
individual employers, but our burdens were crushing before these were
born. We look now here, now there, for the cause of our
condition--everywhere but at the one to blame. We fight again and
again for our rights, only to be conquered by our own kind, our
own children, our brother's, our neighbor's.
Let us carry to its logical conclusion the principle of limitation
which has been partially applied by labor unions. The way to get rid
of labor problems, unemployment, low wages, the surplus, unwanted
population, is to stop breeding. They come from our own ranks--from
our own families. The way to get better wages, shorter hours, a new
system for the advancement of labor, is to make labor's numbers fewer.
Let us not wait for war, famine and plague to do it. Let us cease
bringing unwanted children into the world to suffer a while, add to
our burdens and die. Let us cease bringing others into the world to
compete with us for a living. Let the women workers practice birth
control.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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