CHAPTER XXXII. LOGIC WINS IN THE STRETCH

At seven o'clock we met again and several men made short talks opposing

the strike. Each fellow, when he got up, seemed to have a lot of ideas,

but when he tried to express them he grew confused, and after stammering

a while he could only put forth the bare opinion, “I don't think we

ought to strike.” This meeting was quite different from the other one.

Here every man was thinking for himself but nobody could say anything.

In the previous meeting the speakers had talked passionately, and the

rest had been swept along with them as a unit. In other words, the first

session had become group-minded instead of individual-minded. It is like

the difference between a stampede and a deliberative body. The second

meeting was calmly deliberative and it finally voted a reconsideration,

and the strike resolution was overwhelmingly defeated.

If this were a novel, it would be fine to record in this chapter that

the young orator who at the last moment turned the tide and saved the

day became the hero of the union and was unanimously elected president.

That's the way these things go in fiction. And that is exactly what

happened. In due time I found myself at the head of the Local, and

nearly every man had voted for me. I started negotiations for more

frequent paydays, and a few months later we were being paid on the first

and fifteenth of the month. Life is indeed dramatic,--at least it has

seemed so to me. Some men say that life has no meaning; that men are the

playthings of blind forces that crush them, and there is no answer to

the riddle. This is nonsense. I admit that we are in the grip of blind

forces. But we are not blind. We can not change those forces. If we

fight against them they will crush us. But by going with them, guiding

our careers along their courses, they will bear us to the port we're

steering for.

The mob spirit in man is one of those blind forces that so often lead

to shipwreck. The mob-mind differs from the mind of reason. To tell them

apart is like distinguishing mushrooms from toadstools. They look alike,

but one means health and the other is poison. Life has taught me the

difference between a movement and a mob. A movement is guided by logic,

law and personal responsibility. A mob is guided by passion and denies

responsibility.

I have seen meetings turned into mobs and mobs dissolved again into

meetings. Swept by passion we willed a strike. That strike would have

been just, and, yet, it would have ruined us. We were like a mob in

which every man forgets his own responsibility, The mob mind would have

rushed us to our own ruin. My speech called for individuals to stand up.

That set each individual thinking: “If I stand up, that crazy guy will

smash me.” Each man became responsible again. The mob was gone, and all

we had was individual men, each thinking for himself. That thinking then

went on and each man reached a verdict based on logic, sense and duty.

The meeting could no longer speak with one voice. It couldn't talk at

all. It stammered. The action showed that each mind stood apart, alone.

And yet the vote revealed that they were all together.

I have watched the long struggle of unionism in America and I know the

law that has governed all its ups and downs. Wherever it was still a

movement it has thrived; wherever it became a mob it fell. The one Big

Union was a mob. No movement based on passion finally wins; no movement

based on reason finally fails. Why then say life is a riddle and man

helpless?

When I became Secretary of Labor, one of the first letters I received

was from Mrs. Eli Baldwin whose coal oil I burned shamelessly, studying

far into the night. Mrs. Eli Baldwin wrote from Atlanta, Indiana, where

she now lives:

“When your roommates complained because your light kept them awake, I

knew what you were doing. I knew that you were studying their problems

for them, getting yourself an education so you would know how to get

them better wages and better working conditions.”

This letter pleased me more than I can tell. This kind old lady, now

eighty-two, had faith in me and feels that her faith was justified. Now,

then, can I believe that life is meaningless,--that there is no plan,

and that all man's efforts are foredoomed to failure?