Between You and Me Part 25

Now, I hear a lot of talk from employers that sounds fine but is no better, when you come to pick it to pieces, than the talk of the agitators. Oh, I'll believe you if you tell me they're sincere, and believe what they say! But that does not mak' it richt for me to believe them, too!

Here's your employer who won't deal with a union.

"Every man in my shop can come to my office at any time and talk to me," he'll say. "He needs no union delegate to speak for him. I'll talk to the men any time, and do everything I can to adjust any legitimate grievance they may have. But I won't deal with men who presume to speak for them--with union delegates and leaders."

But can he no see, or wull he no see, that it's only when all the men in his shop bind themselves together that they can talk to him as man to man, as equal to equal? He's stronger than any one or twa of them, but when the lot of them are leagued together they are his match.

That's what's meant by collective bargaining, and the employer who won't recognize that right is behind the times, and is just inviting trouble for himself and all the rest of us.

Let me tell you a story I heard in America on my last tour. I was away oot on the Pacific coast. It was when America was beginning her great effort in the war, and she was trying to build airplanes fast enough to win the mastery of the air frae the Hun. She needed spruce for them--and to supply us and France and Italy, as well. That spruce grew in great, damp forests in the States of Oregon and Was.h.i.+ngton--one great tree, that was suitable for making aircraft, to an acre, maybe.

It was a great task to select those trees and hew them doon, and split and cut them up.

And in those forests lumbermen had been working for years. It was hard, punis.h.i.+ng work; work for strong, rough men. And those who owned the forests and employed the men were strong, hard men themselves, as they had need to be. But they could not see that the men they employed had any richt to organize themselves. So always they fought, when a union appeared in the forests, and they had beaten them all.

The men were weak, dealing, each by himself, with his employer. The employers were strong. But presently a new sort of union came--the I.

W. W. It did as it pleased. It cheated and lied. It made promises and didn't keep them. It didn't fight fair, the way the old unions did.

And the men flocked to it--not because they liked to fight that way, but because that was the first time they had had a chance to deal with their employers on even terms.

So, very quickly, the I. W. W. had organized most of the men who worked in the forests. There had been a strike, the summer before I was there, and, after the men went back to work, they still soldiered on their jobs and did as little as they could--that was the way the I.

W. W. taught them to do.

"Don't stay out on strike and lose your pay," the I. W. W. leaders said. "That's foolish. Go back--but do as little as you can and still not be dismissed. Poll a log whenever you can without being caught.

Make all the trouble and expense you can for the bosses."

And here was the world, all humanity, needing the spruce, and these men acting so! The American army was ordered to step in. And a wise American officer, seeing what was wrong, soon mended matters. He was stronger than employers and men put together. He put all that was wrong richt. He saw to it that the men got good hours, good pay, good working conditions. He organized a new union among them that had nothing to do with the I. W. W. but that was strong enough to make the employers deal fairly with it.

And sae it was that the I. W. W. began to lose its members. For it turned out that the men wanted to be fair and honorable, if the employers would but meet them half way, and so, in no time at all, work was going on better than ever, and the I. W. W. leaders could make no headway at all among the workers. It is only men who are discontented because they are unfairly treated who listen to such folk as those agitators. And is there no a lesson for all of us in that?

CHAPTER XXV

I've heard much talk, and I've done much talking myself, of charity.

It's a beautiful word, yon. You mind St. Paul--when be spoke of Faith, Hope, Charity, and said that the greatest of these was Charity? Aye-- as he meant the word! Not as we've too often come to think of it.

What's charity, after a'? It's no the act of handing a saxpence to a beggar in the street. It's a state of mind. We should all be charitable--surely all men are agreed on that! We should think weel of others, and believe, sae lang as they wull let us, that they mean to do what's right and kind. We should not be bitter and suspicious and cynical. G.o.d hates a cynic.

But charity is a word that's as little understood as virtue. You'll hear folk speak of a woman as virtuous when she may be as evil and as wretched a creature as walks this earth. They mean that she's never sinned the one sin men mean when they say a la.s.sie's not virtuous! As if just abstaining frae that ane sin could mak' her virtuous!

Sae it's come to be the belief of too many folk that a man can be called charitable if he just gives awa' sae muckle siller in a year.

That's not enough to mak' him charitable. He maun give thought and help as well as siller. It's the easiest thing in the world to gie siller; easier far than to refuse it, at times, when the refusal is the more charitable thing for one to be doing.

I ken fine that folk think I'm close fisted and canny wi' my siller.

Aye, and I am--and glad I am that's so. I've worked hard for what I have, and I ken the value of it. That's mair than some do that talk against me, and crack jokes about Harry Lauder and his meanness. Are they so free wi' their siller? I'll imagine myself talking wi' ane of them the noo.

"You call me mean," I'll be saying to him. "How much did you give away yesterday, just to be talking? There was that friend came to you for the loan of a five-pound note because his bairn was sick? Of coorse ye let him have it--and told him not to think of it as a loan, syne he was in such trouble?"

"Well--I would have, of course, if I'd had it," he'll say, changing color a wee bit. "But the fact is, Harry, I didn't have the money--"

"Oh, aye, I see," I'll answer him. "I suppose you've let sae many of your friends have money lately that you're a bit pinched for cash?

That'll be the way of it, nae doot?"

"Well--I've a pound or two outstanding," he'll say. "But--I suppose I owe more than there is owing to me."

There's one, ye'll see, who's not mean, not close fisted. He's easy wi' his money; he'd as soon spend his siller as no. And where is he when the pinch comes--to himself or to a friend? He can do nothing, d'ye ken, to help, because he's not saved his siller and been carefu'

with it.

I've helped friends and strangers, when I could. But I've always tried to do it in such a way that they would help themselves the while. When there's real distress it's time to stint yourself, if need be, to help another. That's charity--real charity. But is it charity to do as some would do in sich a case as this?

Here'll be a man I know coming tae me.

"Harry," he'll say, "you're rich--it won't matter to you. Lend me the loan of a ten-pound note for a few weeks. I'd like to be putting oot some siller for new claes."

And when I refuse he'll call me mean. He'll say the ten pounds wouldn't matter to me--that I'd never miss them if he never did return the siller. Aye, and that's true enough. But if I did it for him why would I not be doing it for Tom and d.i.c.k and Harry, too? No! I'll let them call me mean and close fisted and every other dour thing it pleases them to fancy me. But I'll gae my ain gait wi' my ain siller.

I see too much real suffering to care about helping those that can help themselves--or maun do without things that aren't vital. In Scotland, during the war, there was the maist terrible distress. It's a puir country, is Scotland. Folk there work hard for their living.

And the war made it maist impossible for some, who'd sent their men to fight. Bairns needed shoes and warm stockings in the cold winters, that they micht be warm as they went to school. And they needed parritch in their wee stomachs against the morning's chill.

Noo, I'll not be saying what Mrs. Lauder and I did. We did what we could. It may have been a little--it may have been mair. She and I are the only ones who ken the truth, and the only ones who wull ever ken it--that much I'll say. But whenever we gave help she knew where the siller was going, and how it was to be spent. She knew that it would do real good, and not be wasted, as it would have been had I written a check for maist of those who came to me for aid.

When you talk o' charity, Mrs. Lauder and I think we know it when we see it. We've handled a goodly share of siller, of our own, and of gude friends, since the war began, that's gone to mak' life a bit easier for the unfortunate and the distressed.

I've talked a deal of the Fund for Scottish Wounded that I raised-- raised with Mrs. Lauder's help. We've collected money for that wherever we've gone, and the money has been spent, every penny of it, to make life brighter and more worth living for the laddies who fought and suffered that we micht all live in a world fit for us and our bairns.

It wasna charity those laddies sought or needed. It was help--aye. And it took charity, in the hearts of those who helped, to do anything for them. But there is an ugly ring to that word charity as too many use it the noo. I've no word to say against the charitable inst.i.tutions.

They do a grand work. But it is only a certain sort of case that they can reach. And they couldna help a boy who'd come home frae Flanders with both legs gone.

A boy like that didna want charity to care for him and tend him all his days, keeping him helpless and dependent. He wanted help--help to make his own way in the world and earn his own living. And that's what the Fund has given him. It's looked into his case, and found out what he could do.

Maybe he was a miner before the war. Almost surely, he was doing some sort of work that he could do no longer, with both legs left behind him in France. But there was some sort of work he could do. Maybe the Fund would set him up in a wee shop of his ain, provide him with the capital to buy his first stock, and pay his first year's rent. There are men all over Scotland who are well able, the noo, to tak' care of themselves, thanks to the Fund--men who'd be beggars, practically, if nothing of the sort had existed to lend them a hand when their hour of need had come.

But it's the bairns that have aye been closest to our hearts--Mrs.

Lauder's and mine. Charity can never hurt a child--can only help and improve it, when help is needed. And we've seen them, all about our hoose at Dunoon. We've known what their needs were, and the way to supply them. What we could do we've done.

Oh, it's not the siller that counts! If I could but mak' those who have it understand that! It's not charity to sit doon and write a check, no matter what the figures upon it may be. It's not charity, even when giving the siller is hard--even when it means doing without something yourself. That's fine--oh, aye! But it's the thought that goes wi' the giving that makes it worth while--that makes it do real good. Thoughtless giving is almost worse than not giving at all-- indeed, I think it's always really worse, not just almost worse.

When you just yield to requests without looking into them, without seeing what your siller is going to do, you may be ruining the one you're trying to help. There are times when a man must meet adversity and overcome it by his lane, if he's ever to amount to anything in this world. It's hard to decide such things. It's easier just to give, and sit back in the glow of virtue that comes with doing that. But wall your conscience let you do sae? Mine wull not--nor Mrs. Lauder's.

We've tried aimless charity too lang in Britain, as a nation. We did in other times, after other wars than this one. We've let the men who fought for us, and were wounded, depend on charity. And then, we've forgotten the way they served us, and we've become impatient with them. We've seen them begging, almost, in the street. And we've seen that because sentimentalists, in the beginning, when there was still time and chance to give them real help, said it was a black shame to ask such men to do anything in return for what was given to them.

"A grateful country must care for our heroes," they'd say. "What-- teach a man blinded in his country's service a trade that he can work at without his sight? Never! Give him money enough to keep him!"

And then, as time goes on, they forget his service--and he becomes just another blind beggar!

Is it no better to do as my Fund does? Through it the blind man learns to read. He learns to do something useful--something that will enable him to _earn_ his living. He gets all the help he needs while he is learning, and, maybe, an allowance, for a while, after he has learnt his new trade. But he maun always be working to help himself.

I've talked to hundreds and hundreds of such laddies--blind and maimed. And they all feel the same way. They know they need help, and they feel they've earned it. But it's help they want not coddling and alms. They're ashamed of those that don't understand them better than the folk who talk of being ashamed to make them work.