JUDGE GARY.

Hokitika Guardian, 3 January 1920, Page 4

JUDGE GARY.

THE LEADER OF AMERICAN CAPITALISM.

(By F. A. McKenzie). America is heading straight to-day for the greatest industrial conflict the world has ever seen. The man who made the conflict inevitable was Judge Elbert Henry Gary. Ho is head of one of the greatest, industrial organisations in the world, the United States Steel Corporation. Ho is in many respects an efficient administrator. He represents benevolent despotism at its best. But American Labour to-day has made up its mind that despotism, benevolent or otherwise, must cease.

He is a farmer’s son who has made his own way in life. He studied law at Chicago University, started at £2 10s a week, served for a time as a county judge, and afterwards became attorney for various steel corporations. Next, the judge came to New York at a salary of £20,000 a year as head of the Federal Steel Corporation. When the United States Steel Trust was formed he manipulated the doals. In his quiet office in 61, Broadway, lm spends his days receiving visitors, presiding over committes, and “putting it over” diverse interests. But lie will have nothing to do with organised Labour.

The United States Steel Corporation, with its industrial army of over a quarter of a million men, its own railway systems, its own fleet of a hundred steamers, its own mines, and its vast in dustrial plants, has been the leader in the refusal to recognise trade unions or trade union methods. It has deliberate ly substituted a plan of mutual cooperation between employers and men. It has established a Bystem of 00-part-

nershipi by encouraging employees to subscribe for shares on which special bonuses are paid. It spends £1,400,000 a year on welfare work to improve the health of the men employed by it. Last summer the American Federation of Labour at its great convention at Atlantic City resolved to challenge the Steel Trusts position. The Federation of Labour has greatly risen in American public esteem during the last few years because of its sobriety, moderation, and statesmanlike conduct of affairs. Its organisers reported that in some steel towns their agents were not even allowed to hold public meetings. It was determined to bring the matter to an issue. “This is notice to the autocrats of the steel industry,” the Federation stated, “that their autocracj must remove itself from the face of the earth or he removed. As political au tocracy has gone, so must industria autocracy go. Steel in America mns! be demoralised,”

The American Federation sent a deputation to New York to interview Judge Gary. The judge refused even to see them. The steel kings and the financiers behind them believed that trade unionism had delivered itself into their hands. I discussed the situation at the time with many representatives of capital. They scoffed at the idea of the trouble being serious. “Only a small proportion of the men are trade unionists,” they said. “Thp Steel Corporation has done so much for its people and treated them so well that they will never go out at the order of any union. The American Federation will meet its Waterloo.” As one financier put it to me: “There’s got to be a fight with Labour. The sooner the fight comes the better. We’ll have it right now.’’ They admitted that there must be trouble in the coal trade. That fact Wall-street regarded as serious, but the steel strike would be the biggest fiasco in hi'story. So the employers thought. They have been wrong.

Rut it would be a mistake to put all the blame of the present situation on men of the type of Judge Gary. Labour, like Capital, is heady at tire present moment. The working man in the United States lias had such amazingly good times that he has lost his sense of perspective. Despite the increased cost of living, lie is better paid than he has ever been before. He lives in a condition of greater comfort. He has more leisure and he can save more. The New York mechanic accounts it an average when he makes £ls. One has ceased to be surprised at office boys earning £3 a week, (which is about the equivalent of £1 a week in England). The six-hour day or 'thirty-four hour week has already been talked about. The forty-hour week—that is eight hours a day for five days a week of labour—is now considered a reasonable programme. The men who are content with it are surprised at their own moderation. Labour demands recognition and authority. It refuses to recognise any inferiority.

Judge Gary represents an extreme as dangerous to American peace on the' one hand as I.W.W.ism—industrial revolutionism—on the other. We have yet to see whether moderate arid sane men like John D. Roekfeller jun., for Capital, and Samuel Gompers, for Labour have influence enough to save the situation. If not, we are face to face with a war so far-reaching that effects can only at present lie imagined.