Show PEIISOAAL POWER 4 The curse of the labor movement of the day is personal power This influence is i becoming as paramount as it is baleful It is rapidly working labor disintegration Tie loss of cohesion in labor organization in process of daily development can be ascribed as-cribed almost solely to the desire for personal per-sonal power The grand coalition of labor la-bor which was to redeem and regenerate the condition of the American working classes pivots on the man instead of the men There is a constant scramble in progress for individual authority au-thority This scramble reaches from the highest to the lowest Grand Workman Work-man Powderly essays to rule by persona dictation A branch is organized and it i immediately becomes a selfassertion It must have a Grand Workman Powderly on the reduced scale commensurate with its scope of action This branch grand workman at once apes the dictation of the great Grand Workman The branch rapidly develops the idea that it is tin only true labor organization and that its Grand Workman is the only Grand Workman These pretty labor potentates when they are not quarrelling among themselves raise their united clamor against the big potentate poten-tate at the head of tho general organization organiza-tion Thus it goes The labor leaders believe in dictation but each man must do the dictating All other dictation is t an infringement on personal perogatives To this system of individual dictation can be traced all of tho many false moves made lately by the labor organizations organiza-tions It is a system which is necessarily irresponsible Irresponsibility Irresponsi-bility leads inevitably to lawlessness and lawlessness as inevitably leads to violence Violenca is reactionary and the cause of labor suffers Thus the dictator of DIstrict Assembly 49 in New York City involved the Labor Knights S in a violent and lawless struggle in which labor lost both sympathy and prestige This same individual domination h domina-tion has just driven a largo number omen o-men from the Knights of Labor into the ranks of a rival organizxtion called the t American deration The labor organs organ-s ization of America has degenerated into the feuds and vendettas of petty leaders the only idWof unity Ol action left bein the combining of these same petty lea 1 1 ers against those higher in authority |