Page:George Soule - The Intellectual and the Labor Movement.djvu/10

 but it may also have kept his membership because it has proved itself capable of raising his wages twenty-five cents a day or shortening his working week from fifty-two to forty-eight hours. He may have joined it just as many business men join a prosperous church—because it contains most of the prominent workmen of his trade and is able to lead him to a job. It may mean to him the sort of vested interest represented to many others by an insurance company. The officials of the union may be idealists, but they may be practical men as well, who think not merely about the ultimate interests of the rank and file who elect them, but also about the amount and regularity of their salaries, and hence about the conservative type of policy which will insure a continual flow of "per capita" into the union treasuries.

To a common or carnal mind such motives and details appear proper and reasonable, the essential texture of any large fabric, but to a man looking for a marching army of sacrifice, which is on its way to create a new heaven and a new earth, they often seem so petty as to be nearly criminal. The intellectual who actually works with the labor movement is a bit inclined to scoff at the unions' emphasis on more wages and hours. He may oppose insurance funds and similar projects on the very ground that they are likely to lead to conservative policies. He may think every great strike is "the" revolution, and may be bitterly disappointed when it is compromised on the basis of half the gains which he thinks it might have won. He watches the indomitable expression of resolution in the speeches, followed by a weakening of the rank and file and the temporary satisfaction with small victories. He may discover scattered instances of graft and other dishonesty. He sees what looks like ingratitude on the part of the crowd, their susceptibility to meaningless factional struggles, their supineness in the face of intolerable outrages, their unwillingness or inability to think, their