30,000 locked out : $b the great strike of the building trades in Chicago — John Locke — John Shaqi
30,000 locked out : $b the great strike of the building trades in Chicago
John Locke · en
But, because these conditions exist with one class of people, it is no
justification for an unreasonable, or exacting demand by another class;
or, that they should be permitted to reverse the order of things and
inaugurate a system of oppression that partakes of a spirit of revenge,
and that one burden after another should be piled up until the exactions
of an element of labor become so oppressive that they are unbearable.
When this is the case, the individual who has been advocating the cause
of freedom--and who has been striving for the release and the elevation
of the laboring classes--becomes, in turn, an oppressor of the worst
kind. He stamps upon the very foundation on which he first rested his
cause. He tramples upon the great cause of individual liberty and
becomes a tyrant whose remorseless system of oppression would crush out
of existence not only the grand superstructure of freedom, but would
bury beneath his iron heel the very germ of his free existence.
The laborer is a necessity. If this is true the converse of the
proposition is equally true--the employer is a necessity. Without the
employer the laborer would be deprived of an opportunity to engage in
the avocation to which his faculties may have been directed. Without the
laborer the employer would be in no position to carry forward any
enterprise of greater or less magnitude.
All cannot be employers.
All cannot be employes.
There must be a directing hand as well as a hand to be directed. In
exercising the prerogative of a director the employer would be powerless
to carry to a successful termination any enterprise if liberty of
action should be entirely cut off, or his directing hand should be so
fettered that it could not exercise the necessary freedom of action to
direct. At the same time, if the employe should be so burdened that he
could not exercise his talents in a manner to compass the line of work
directed to be done, it would be unreasonable to expect from him the
accomplishment of the task to which he had been assigned. There is a
relation between the two around which such safeguards should be thrown
as will insure that free action on the part of both that will remove the
possibility of oppression, and at the same time retain, in its fullest
sense, the relation of employer and employe. The necessity of the one to
the other should not be forgotten.
That the employer should have the right to direct his business in a
manner that will make it successful, and for his interest, none should
have the right to question. The successful direction of an enterprise by
an employer results, necessarily, in the security of employment by the
employe.
A business which is unsuccessfully prosecuted, or which is fettered by
the employe in a manner which prevents its successful prosecution, must,
of necessity, result in displacing the most trusted servant, or the most
skilled artisan.