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Show Labor in the United states Is Better Paid Than Labor Anywhere Else By SAMUEL GOMPERS, in New York Times. MOT in any country in Europe is there a trade union movement as free from internal discord, as free from bitterness and disappointment, dis-appointment, as united and confident of the future as the trade union movement of the United States. The condition of labor in Europe is not all due to post-war confusion. Labor in the United States is better paid than labor anywhere else in the world. It lives in better homes. It wears better clothes. It has more leisure. It enjoys better food. It has a wider margin of choice in determining how and where it shall live. It has more essential freedom. Finally, it has a better trade union movement with which to achieve more progress and improvement. What is of interest "to every one is the striking strik-ing fact, attested by every competent 'authority, that American labor i the most skillful and productive labor in the world. Of what avail are the programs of Europe if their concrete results are inferior to the results of the efforts of American labor? It is notable that the labor movements of Europe run strongly to programs and formulas. They make formulas for everything. They embellish them, decorate them, punctuate . them nicely, capitalize them freely, make speeches about them endlessly, gaze upon them worshipfully and no doubt thus please employers immensely. But the American workers prefer an increase in wages, with all the resulting opportunities, to a pleasing formula framed on the wall. We have great distances where there is no industry whatever. In point of population our country is still almost half rural and agricultural In addition, we have in our land all of the nationalities and races of the earth. In Holland there are only Hollanders, in France only Frenchmen, in England only Britishers, in Germany only Germans. We must meet and reconcile all of the prejudices of the world, bridge all the chasms oJ habit, language, thought and psychology, and employers have constantly taken advantage of that fact. There is slight similarity of any kind between the problems of labor in America and Europe, though European doctrinaires, intellectuals and superior persons generally, feel free to tell us how to order our affairs and how to enter the promised land which is yet so very far from their own shores. .152S25l525H5s525H5I52S25K25E5'S5E5 |
