Mr. GOMPERS. It is a hypothetical question, and I can scarcely conceive of myself occupying that position. As a matter of fact, my whole life's work has been that of divesting the executive officer of the American labor movement of power. I have said, and I repeat, that if I can not win in a controversy with a man or in an organization by persuasion, by argument, by appeal, I do not want to win at all.

Senator CUMMINS. My question is purely hypothetical. I put you in the stead of the President, Congress, and everybody else.

Mr. GOMPERS. The reason I mentioned that, sir, is because of the difficulty of my imagining myself in a position of power. And yet I do not want to evade the question. I will try to answer it the best I can. Whether that be me, or whether it is the Government of the United States, as a unit

Senator CUMMINS. That is what I have in mind.

Mr. GOMPERS. It is the same thing; that is the idea. Well, now, of course every man's opinion may differ from another's. On my honor as a man, I believe that if the Congress had not enacted the Adamson law, and the men had taken their hands from the throttles of the engines and stopped work, not one hour would have alapsed before the managers would have conceded the eight-hour day, and would now.

Senator CUMMINS. That, Mr. Gompers, is controverting the hypothesis, which may or may not be true. I quite agree with you that

Mr. GOMPERS. If my comprehension is correct, I think that would have been true.

Senator CUMMINS. I think some of the apprehensions were very much exaggerated, but I am assuming now that the strike has taken place, the strikers do not attempt to interfere in any improper way with the operation of trains, but the railroad companies are unable to employ others who are competent to run their trains. Now, I am putting you in the place of the Government, with all the powers of Government. What, if anything, would you do under those circumstances?

Mr. GOMPERS. I would not interfere, sir, and I give you this for my position. I say this as an American, with the concepts of America, if I undertook to overturn the system of government, then I could do it, and then would do it, but if I had the conception of human rights and human liberty, I would not interfere. Either the public, in its essence and in its spirit, must be maintained, or we will revert, or we must revert, back to the conditions of compulsory labor. There is no middle ground, and if the power of government was vested in me, as stated in the hypothetical question, with the concepts of and the love for Americanism, American institutions, American freedom, and American hope, I would not interfere, even though there would be great inconvenience and some suffering.

The people of this country, the railroad men, are not barbarians. There is some consideration felt by them and held by them for the rights and the interests of the people. I assume, while I am not personally acquainted with all the railroad managers, I imagine that they, too, are not barbarians, and they have some consideration for 74873-17- -18

the rights and the interests and the convenience of the people, and taking my lesson from the experiences, not only of my own time but of all the times of men's lives, I have not the slightest doubt that within 24 hours there would be an adjustment of this matter in controversy.

I said only briefly a moment ago, and I want to emphasize it, so that I may be clearly understood, and perhaps I have no right, I am sure I have no right, to quote my authority, and I believe it to be absolutely true, that if there had been no Adamson law enacted, and it was understood that on the 7th of September, unless the managers had conceded the eight-hour day in principle, there would not have been a strike, for the managers would have conceded it. And let me say this, to show you how I feel upon this subject, that the convention of the American Federation of Labor-I will be open and frank with you, because I do not want to veil my mind and my conscience by any cloud at all--the chiefs of the railroad brotherhoods, four of them, came to our convention and delivered addresses, and stated their position, and in response I took occasion to review the situation somewhat in elucidation of the report which the executive council submitted to the convention upon that subject, and I said then that the American working people looked to the brotherhoods to live up to their declaration of the eight-hour workday, and carry with it anything that any one may desire to stigmatize me. I am free to say to you that if I had had an influential voice with the brotherhoods, I should have stood by the declaration of Congress that on the 1st of January, 1917, the eight-hour workday would go into effect, under the declaration of Congress, under the law of Congress, or if not, then the eight-hour day by the concerted action of the men.

Just look what occurred! I do not know whether it has escaped your attention or not, but it struck me very hard. Judge Hook, in the Middle West, had brought before him a case upon appeal by the railroads, so that the Adamson law should not be enforced, and without argument, in order that the case should come immediately before the Supreme Court of the United States, he heard little or no argument, and the court reversed Congress and the President. I do not know much of law, but I do know something of fundamental principles, and my judgment is this, that the practice has been that when a case has come before a court as to a controversy upon which the court itself does not want to express its own judgment, it allows the case to stand in status quo, to be determined by the highest court in the land, and not to declare the law unconstitutional, and make the Government the appellant rather than the railroads.

Senator CUMMINS. Mr. Gompers, just what do you mean when you say the eight-hour day in principle?

Mr. GOMPERS. It has been explained by the railroad men that by reason of the uncertainty of traffic and climatic conditions it is impossible to definitely state that there shall be no work beyond the eight hours in any one day. Hence their proposition was to establish the eight-hour day as a recognized working time for each day, and to penalize overtime, so that, in so far as ingenuity can devise improvements, the work shall be performed within the eight hours of the day, rather than in a fairly slip-shod manner.

Senator CUMMINS. That was the proposition of the men?
Mr. GOMPERS. Yes, sir.

Senator CUMMINS. To penalize overtime?

Mr. GOMPERS. To penalize overtime; yes, sir.

Senator CUMMINS. Which would have tended to shorten hours, at least: but when overtime is not penalized, what does it mean to say an eight-hour day in principle?

Mr. GOMPERS. There is no such thing as an eight-hour workday, if work may be performed after the eight-hour day, and there is no increase in pay for that overtime; in other words, to penalize it. Senator CUMMINS. That is what I thought.

Senator ROBINSON. Or some other penalty.

Mr. GOMPERS. That is, of course, if you stipulate by law, you may be able to do that, but I am speaking of the voluntary action of the workmen and the management.

Senator CUMMINS. But if a man should proceed to work after eight hours elapsed, and get no more per hour after that period than before, that is not an eight-hour day in principle, is it?

Mr. GOMPERS. It would not be, sir.

Senator BRANDEGEE. It is not immediately before this committee, but have you any views that you care to express as to the wisdom of Government ownership of the railroads of the country?

Mr. GOMPERS. I have views, but if I may be permitted to coddle them to myself for a while, I would like to do so.

Senator BRANDEGEE. All right. Have you stated them publicly heretofore in a general way, as to whether you favor Government ownership or are opposed to it?

Mr. GOMPERS. I have.

Senator BRANDEGEE. Publicly?

Mr. GOMPERS. Yes, sir. But I should prefer, if I may, not to discuss that just at this time, and open up another big question.

Senator BRANDEGEE. I did not want you to discuss it, but I did not know whether you would object to saying yes or no, as you have heretofore.

Mr. GOMPERS. I can not do that very well. Of course, I want, if I can, to be of some assistance to the committee, but I can not say yes or no without qualifying and without giving my reasons.

Senator BRANDEGEE. You are here to say what you want to. I do not want to ask you anything that you are not willing to state.

Mr. GOMPERS. I was going to say, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, that for, oh, now, nearly 100 years there has been this movement of the workers all through the world-in the civilized world, at any rate by which the old laws governing the relations between master and man, employer and employee, have become modified. Why, in Porto Rico-there is a gentleman right here in this room, now president of the Free Federation of Workingmen of that island, a part of the American Federation of Labor, who, with about 16 others, were arrested and put in jail, under the old Spanish law, which charged him and his fellow conspirators with robbing their employers of their labor. They were tried and convicted and sentenced to several terms of imprisonment, some a month, some 4 months, some 6 months, some 18 months, and some 4 years. That is Mr. Santiago. He is here representing the American Federation of Labor and the Porto Rican working people in the interest of the Jones's bill for full citizenship and nondeprivation of the right of suffrage. It was necessary, out of our poor means, to put up bonds

for the release of these men and to appeal to the Government of the United States.

Senator CUMMINS. You mean this has been done recently?
Mr. GOMPERS. About five years ago.

Senator CUMMINS. Since we acquired the

Mr. GOMPERS. Since the United States acquired Porto Rico.
Senator BRANDEGEE. Is that law in force now?

Mr. GOMPERS. It is not, sir; but the only reason I brought this in is that that was the concept of the whole world; that two or more workmen who discussed wages, hours, and conditions of employment, and who would stop their work, robbed their employer of their labor; and in the old time it applied to the individual-the individual workman. If he wanted to leave the estate, he was brought back and was branded with a red hot iron on his forehead, indicating that he was a villian, an escape. If he attempted it again, he was branded with a red hot iron with the letter S," condemning him for life as a slave; and if he repeated it he was hanged to the gibbet. That was in the individual cases of men.

Now, there has been this movement that has found its lodgment in the conscience of labor-loving men, who declared that such a state of affairs can not exist and civilization progress, and there has been a constant effort away from such a judicial and governmental situation and relation, until there has come the declaration, enacted into law by the Government of Great Britain and the governments of our several States, and the Government of the United States, that conspiracies shall not apply to the associations or the activities of the working people in the effort to improve wages, hours, or conditions of employment. We have gotten away from that element of the concepts of conspiracy, until it found its expression in the higher and broader labor provisions of the Clayton Act, and there is this one declaration in that act-the first sentence of section 6, the author of which in that law is Senator Cummins, of this committee that the labor of a human being is not a commoditiy or article of commerce. That declaration is a repudiation of all the old concepts of the superiority of the master and the inferiority of the workers. It is a repudiation of the old doctrine of the law of supply and demand, as it applies to human beings. It is an affirmation of human liberty and the rights of the workers.

The individual liberty, secured through centuries of effort, and culminating in the enactments of this last three-quarters of a century, have been to extend the rights of individual liberty to collective liberty. The workers own nothing; I mean as workers they own nothing, they control nothing, they are interested in nothing but their own creative power, that of their minds and their hands. The difference between a slave and a free man is that a slave must work when his master so directs. The free man owns himself, and works, or refuses to work, at his own will, and at his own risk. That right we endeavor to give intelligent and moderate expression through our organized efforts. The more powerful that a labor organization becomes, the more careful and considerate does it become. It is the unorganized and I am not saying this in approbrium to them, but they have not any avenue or means of mutual understanding or expression; they have no experience; they have no one to lead them, no one to advise them, no one to counsel them, and these great erup

tions that we see occasionally are due to the unorganized condition of these workers. But you will find that as men become organized and maintain their organization and have fealty and loyalty to its purposes, some common desire to serve the rights and interests of their fellows as well as themselves you will find them becoming constantly more careful and guarded.

But the truth of the matter is this, gentlemen, in regard to the railroads and the managers. The railroads have viewed their own position, from the time of their organization, as in the old time. They were operating their railroads in the nineteenth century, but the mental condition of the managers toward the workmen was that of the old master and servant. Now, in the early days of these brotherhoods, when they were comparatively weak and unable to do very much, there was a strike in 1877. I am 67 years of age, and I know something about these things; I have lived through them and know them. The strike came really because of two things. I remember very, very distinctly that the managers of the railroads, at the time, told the representatives of the men that so far as their argument went they were right, but how were they going to achieve it, and the men inaugurated the strike of 1877. The chiefs could not influence them otherwise.

Now, the A. R. U. strike is another important instance. The A. R. U. organized in a great big hurry, in rivalry to the brotherhoods. They won a strike on, I think, the Great Northern, and it gave them a prestige among the railroad employees. The brotherhoods declared these laymen, declared these men in the brotherhoods and out had been so conservative that they had not secured anything for the men in the time they had been organized, and they were willing to risk anything in order to get some little improvement. Through the instrumentality of brotherhoods, through the instrumentality of the American Federation of Labor, in cooperation, we saved the day. There are many men who talk about the injunction gotten out by the Attorney General at the time as having been an injunction with shotguns in it. If I may be permitted to use the term, it is rot, tommy-rot. It was the influence of the brotherhoods and the American Federation of Labor which prevented, that strike, or the extension of that strike, for it would have been a movement without responsibility, it would have been a movement not evolutionary but revolutionary and directly against the permanent interests of the men. But there were thousands and thousands of the railroad men who joined the American Railway Union in the effort, contrary to the wishes and hopes and actions of the chiefs of these brotherhoods.

Now, that was in 1894. Since that time there have been some demands made by the brotherhoods on the companies, and some little improvement here, and some little improvement there, some little here and some little there, and then, whenever the opportunity came, there were minute thieves, and there were money thieves, imposing all sorts of obnoxious conditions upon the men, and the railroad chiefs seemed to be in the position that they wanted by every means in their power to prevent a rupture, and the men, impatient at the slow progress made, or the lack of progress made, simply instructed