nt evidence to prove this. For not only are
weekly wages lower in the textile mills and several other industries
than they are in the steel corporation, but also employment year in and
year out is much more irregular. Here we see the unions adopting the
politics of the small capitalists, not only on its constructive or
"State Socialist" side, but also in its _reactionary_ tendency, now
being rapidly outgrown, of trying to restore competition, and actually
working against their own best interests for this purpose.

A writer in the _Federationist_ demands "a reduction of railway
charges, express rates, telegraph rates, telephone rates," and a
radical change in the great industrial corporations such as the
Steel Trust, which is to be subjected to thorough regulation.
Swollen fortunes are to be broken up, together with the power of
the monopolists, of "the gamblers in the necessities of life,
etc."[243] In this writer's opinion (Mr. Shibley), the monopolists
are the chief cause of high prices and the only important
anti-social group, and all the other classes of society have a
common interest with the wage earners. But business interests,
manufacturers, the owners of large farms, and employers in lines
where competition still prevails, would also, with the fewest
exceptions, take sides against the working people in any great
labor conflict--as the history of every modern country for the past
fifty years has shown. It is not "Big Business" or "The Interests,"
but business in general, not monopolistic employers, but the whole
employing class, against which the unions have contended and always
must contend--on the economic as well as the political field. Mr.
Gompers and his associates, like Mr. Bryan and Senator La Follette,
demand that the people shall rule, but they all depend upon the
hundreds of thousands of business men as allies, who, if opposed to
government by monopolies, are still more opposed to government by
their employees or by the consumers of their products, and are
certain to fight any political movement of which they are a
predominating part.

The American Federation of Labor, and the majority of the labor unions
comprising it, are thus seen to have a political program scarcely
distinguishable from that of the radical wing of either of the large
parties,--for it seeks little if any