All over the world the labor movement suffers grievously from unscrupulous, self-seeking leaders, but nowhere so much as in the United States. Here we are infested with breeds of them entirely without parallel anywhere else. Only in Amrica can be found known crooks and convicted criminals functioning as labor officials, many of whom have become enormously wealthy through robbing both employers and workers. This condition is a world scandal; the active unionists of other countries simply cannot comprehend it. They have their reactionaries a-plenty. But such open thievery is peculiar to the United States alone. It is a drastic proof of the low level of our labor leadership.
But worse even than the plain grafters are the large body of leaders who, destitute of all idealism and real proletarian feeling, look upon the labor movement simply as a convenient means to well-paid jobs of power and influence. They kill all life and progress in the workers’ organizations. Mr. Gompers is the undisputed king of this type. He is the champion office-holder of them all. The way he has hung on for forty years is a world marvel. And the labor movement has paid dearly enough for it. Mr. Gompers has never considered any movements of the workers from any other angle except what effect they will have upon his tenure of office.
Like all other labor politicians, but much more pronouncedly, Mr. Gompers shirks responsibility. No matter how burning the need for vigorous action to save some critical situation, he will initiate nothing. The labor world may tumble about his ears, but to protect his own interests, he stands pat. With him everything is all right so long as he does not have to assume responsibility that may breed him enemies. His philosophy is, better to lose a thousand strikes and organizing opportunities through inaction than to risk one aggressive movement, the failure of which might enable someone to "get something on him." He moves ahead only when pushed. This negative attitude, this habitual refusal to initiate anything or to assume any responsibility caused the failure to organize the workers generally during the war; this it was that made Mr. Gompers sabotage the steel campaign from beginning to end, when it got under way in spite of him. And this do-nothing policy it is which constantly paralyses the labor movement in its brain and heart and reduces its vitality to the vanishing point. It is a policy fatal to Organized Labor; but it is good for Mr. Gompers' own personal ends, and that to him, is of course supreme justification for it.
