The Value of Labor
Producerism is an economic concept that says the hard work of the laborer creates a society’s wealth, therefore the producer of a good or service is more important to society than a non-producer. Feeling entitled to the full value of a person’s labor is not a radical idea. Today, it is ideal, recognized by very few elite entertainers, athletes and entrepreneurs. The connection between labor and income is not direct in most businesses and corporations. Workers have come to accept, if not approve of it. As the basis for the American economy changed, so did the value of the worker. The concept of producerism developed into a class struggle over human rights incorporated into the populist, socialist and communist movements as well as collective labor associations and unions.
Thomas Jefferson’s vision for America wherein every citizen could develop a craft or own a small farm did not materialize. During the nineteenth century, farmers, family businesses, small proprietors, tradesmen, artisans and apprentices who produced tangible wealth found it difficult, if not impossible, to maintain an acceptable standard of living alongside industrialization, the rise of big-business, increased international commerce and indifferent political positions. These struggling members of society believed that they were more valuable to society than those who would not work or the aristocrats and capitalists who had and controlled the money and property without earning it through their own labor. Producerism is the ideology that labor creates all wealth. These producers had envisioned a permanent free-labor system where those who produced could expect independence and a level of security. Through their efforts, wealth would be distributed throughout society from the middle outward.
The world changed, the economic system went through booms and busts and the nature of work in America changed along with it. The producer was often forced to give up control of his future and sell his land or business. Permanently working for a wage was an unpleasant prospect. The worker was now dependent. Producers gave up freedoms of self-direction, economic security in the present and future, individualism, creativity and even space. These virtues were not given up easily. Workers and their families faced many additional and ever increasing hardships. Their hearts lay in the expectation of a wage equal to the value of their efforts. The American Constitution provided the goal of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Everyone in the country, citizen or not, expected to reap these rewards. The virtue of the fight for freedom during the American Revolution and the risk of following ones convictions experienced during the Civil War inspired workers’ willingness to act. They expected loss and understood the value of resilience.
Anger toward individuals who became wealthy from the products of their labor increased with the workers’ hardships. It became a class struggle between the common laborer and elite, capitalist owners. The concern for the actual value of their labor gave way to the value of the worker’s human rights.
Populism is the belief that the laborer is exploited by the wealthy elite. The populist movement began after farmers from the South and Midwest became fed up with the government due to the lack of interest in their well-being and their belief that labor reform was possible. Farm activism came in the form of the Grange Movement, which lobbied for rural co-ops, greenback currency and railroad regulation. The Farmer’s Alliance, a political organization, also addressed the farmer’s grievances about cost, debts, profits and other perceived abuses. The movement resulted from many years of poor crops, increasing debt from sharecropping among many others. Without the Farmer’s Alliance, there would be no populist movement. They saw themselves as small businessmen, which was how Populists aligned with the modern economy. In 1892, James Baird Weaver ran for president under the Populist Party, also known as the People’s Party, and received one million votes. The death of the populist movement can be contributed to the involvement of Tom Watson in the Leo Frank case. Frank, a Jewish factory worker who was accused of raping a factory worker, was lynched after Watson broke into the cell in which Frank was held.
William Jennings Bryan could be looked at as the face of the Populist Movement. He was a firm believer in greenback currency, or paper money. While running for congress as a democrat in 1890, Bryan takes up the issues of the Farmer’s Alliance. He wins his seat in 1890, bringing a “populist’ into congress. He is reelected in 1894. After his thirty-fifth birthday in 1895, Bryan decides to run for president and fuses the ideas of both democratic and populist parties, which leads populists to do something quite radical; support a “democrat” while supporting their own agenda. Bryan lost the election to William McKinley, a supporter of big business that populists viewed as a threat.
The workers constant uncertainty had them turned toward anyone who would appear strong for help against the capitalistic owners of industry and those that they control. Socialism, or the government redistribution of wealth, looked like only the hope for some embattled workers. The elite would be pushed aside. In 1928, Norman Thomas wrote in “Why Am I a Socialist?” that the American civilization was failing as a “natural consequence of economic principles and their corresponding ethical ideas… (Radical Reader, 318).” He proposed that neither individual liberty nor the brotherhood of men could exist in the present system. Class struggle would slowly end when the working class took their position to enact change. The Socialist Party was concerned with the laboring class as a whole and not the problems of individual workers.
Communism finds a home where there is discontent. Common ownership of the means of production sounded like an answer to a worker’s prayer. The workers (Communist Party of America) fought on behalf of the oppressed industrial workers for the purpose of pointing out the capitalistic society’s inability to take care of their own worker’s valid grievances. William Z. Foster states in his 1928 acceptance speech of the Worker’s Party of America’s candidate for President of the United States that the communist party’s “aim must be to arouse the class’ consciousness of the masses in a political sense and to mobilize them for struggle on all fronts (Radical Reader, 321).” Foster planned to assist the workers with a permanent solution to their feelings of exploitation. He claims that there will be little reform from the government for the worker. In response, the working class must “build a new state, a new government, a worker’s and farmer’s government, the Soviet government of the United States (Radical Reader, 321).” The Working Party viewed the laborer as a working class and not an individual.
Individuals such as Huey Long and Jacob Coxey were not traditional laborers or elitists. They believed in capitalism and the human rights for workers. Long, a former lawyer and Senator, responded to the Great Depression with his vision of a movement to “share our wealth (Radical Reader, 324)” with the displaced masses. Long recognized a surplus discrepancy between the haves and have-nots. He proposed a plan to organize society in order to provide a “fair chance to life, liberty and happiness… (Radical Reader, 325)” and no longer need charity. Revenue for the plan would be raised by taxing the wealth and supporting public works projects. Coxey, an Ohio businessman, lobbied congress for assistance for the unemployed by promoting public works programs. During the Great Depression, he led a march from Ohio to Washington D.C. This group was called an “army” of the poor and unemployed as their march got attention for their cause and encouraged others to form other “armies.”
The Knights of Labor was a secret group, primarily in the 1880s that protested for rights for the working man, most notably the eight-hour work day. The group was unique in the fact that the elite was unable to join. The Knights of Labor believed in producer co-ops, which would eliminate the middle man between producer and consumer. They also believed that wages would be set by the laws of supply and demand.
The American Federation of Labor, also known as the AFL, was founded by Samuel Gompers in 1886. Gompers’ ideas resembled those of Karl Marx, a prominent opponent of capitalism. After the Haymarket Riot of 1886, Eugene Debs organized the American Railway Association after the ideas of AFL and Knights of Labor. However, creating a union was very risky due to no laws protecting them.
The International Workers of the World, also known as the IWW, was founded by “socialists and trade unionists (Radical Reader, 281)” in 1905. Their goal was to unite everyone, under the socialist banner, in the fight against capitalism. During the work shortage of the Great Depression, the IWW provided solidarity for those without work until jobs became more available and also was the first gilded age organization to unionize women. William “Big Bill” Haywood became the first leader of the organization during its foundation and Joe Hill became the musical face before he was framed on a murder charge in Utah. Socialist Eugene Debs did not agree with the ideas of the IWW, but admired them.
The National Labor Relations Act, also known as the Wagner Act, was passed in 1935 and recognized labor unions legally for the first time. Under this, companies could no longer infringe on the rights of groups to unionize (Solidarity & Survival, 81). The act was drafted by Robert Wagner, a New York Senator, who was dedicated to raising “the living standards of the lower-income groups” of society at that time (There Is Power in a Union, 448).
The capitalistic economic system has always been complex and relied heavily on the producers of goods and services. The producer’s individual value has been too often places on the supply and demand of the number of workers available instead of the collective value of the goods that they produced. Producers became measly and undervalued workers. The pursuit of life, liberty and happiness that was proclaimed in the Constitution was unavailable to them while the business owners appeared to have much more than they needed. Class struggle was inevitable. The government did not assist and protect the rights of American workers. Unions, made up of producers, fought for themselves with guidance from populists, socialists and communists.