WHY THERE IS NOT AN AMERICAN LABOR PARTY

The question of a political labor party hinges, in the last analysis, on the benefits which labor expects from government.  If, under the constitution, government possesses considerable power to regulate industrial relations and improve labor conditions, political power is worth striving for.  If, on the contrary, the power of the government is restricted by a rigid organic law, the matter is reversed.  The latter is the situation in the United States.  The American constitutions, both Federal and State, contain bills of rights which embody in fullness the eighteenth-century philosophy of economic individualism and governmental laissez-faire.  The courts, Federal and State, are given the right to override any law enacted by Congress or the State legislatures which may be shown to conflict with constitutional rights.

In the exercise of this right, American judges have always inclined to be very conservative in allowing the legislature to invade the province of economic freedom.  At present after many years of agitation by humanitarians and trade unionists, the cause of legislative protection of child and woman laborers seems to be won in principle.  But this progress has been made because it has been shown conclusively that the protection of these most helpless groups of the wage-earning class clearly falls within the scope of public purpose and is therefore a lawful exercise of the state’s police power within the meaning of the constitution.  However, adult male labor offers a far different case.  Moreover, should the unexpected happen and the courts become converted to a broader view, the legislative standards would be small compared with the standards already enforced by most of the trade unions.  Consequently, so far as adult male workers are concerned (and they are of course the great bulk of organized labor), labor in America would scarcely be justified in diverting even a part of its energy from trade unionism to a relatively unprofitable seeking of redress through legislatures and courts.[106]

But this is no more than half the story.  Granting even that political power may be worth having, its attainment is beset with difficulties and dangers more than sufficient to make responsible leaders pause.  The causes reside once more in the form of government, also in the general nature of American politics, and in political history and tradition.  To begin with, labor would have to fight not on one front, but on forty-nine different fronts.[107]

Congress and the States have power to legislate on labor matters; also, in each, power is divided between an executive and the two houses of the legislature.  Decidedly, government in America was built not for strength but for weakness.  The splitting up of sovereignty does not especially interfere with the purposes of a conservative party, but to a party of social and industrial reform it offers a disheartening