IS DISS A SYSTEM?
Mayer, Milton
Is Diss A System? By MILTON MAYER MR. SEWELL AVERY, the sit-down striker, has been forcibly ejected from the plant, and I find myself pleased no end at his ejection. For I am opposed to sit-down...
...But diss is also a system with another, contradictory principle, namely, viz, and to wit, that it's every man for himself and to hell with the community...
...There have been some strikes going on in this country right along, and nobody seems able to stop them...
...The reason I favored sit- down strikes then and oppose them now is not that I am a man of no principle...
...Sloan's shebang...
...Are the soldiers striking...
...It does not occur to any of the parties to diss system that there should be neither hogs nor pigs...
...Let us see, in passing, who is doing the most of the striking, and why...
...Avery's, force on the foremen of the bosses...
...And that, as R. H. Tawney points out in The Acquisitive Society, is why the workers are never satisfied...
...And if he lost his job there too, it is safe to assume that he has laid by a little for a rainy day...
...So he is mad and I am glad, but my assignment, as a major prophet, is not to titter or moan but to look into the principles behind the cases...
...Not on your tintype...
...They are never satisfied because diss system is constructed on perpetual dissatisfaction...
...For the man hours lost by strikes have actually increased under compulsory labor in the tight little island of England...
...and if you're a soldier and you don't realize that diss is the system you asked for, you are liable to come back home and organize an American Legion dedicated to the single purpose of getting even with the workers...
...What maddens the workers—those pigs—is the preferred position of the hogs...
...It does not use force on the bosses, or owners, because they also own the force...
...We see at once why the soldier is mad...
...For I am opposed to sit-down strikes, including Mr...
...Avery, on the other hand, will not starve as the result of losing his job at Ward's, for, in addition to the hundred grand per annum he was drawing from Ward's, he receives a. small salary, probably another hundred grand, as president of the U. S. Gypsum Co...
...If he doesn't strike and get shot by the Americans, he stands a good ehance of getting shot by the Japs or the Germans...
...But he is operating under a Neanderthalic system, and he is understandably grieved when the system bites the hand—namely, Mr...
...Strikers And Soldiers On pure principles, however, I find it impossible to distinguish between Mr...
...the suckers, or sucklings, aspire to piggishness, the pigs aspire to hoggishness, and the hogs aspire to the increase of the total amount of swill, all of which increased amount they would like to have for themselves...
...But the soldiers aren't striking...
...Avery and the strikers at General Motors...
...Is diss—in the historic words of Louie Dot Dope— is diss a system...
...What is more, a man of his magnificent parts would be certain to land a job somewhere else...
...The hogs, sometimes known as the bosses, but more accurately as the owners, are swilling at a rate that makes the piggishness of the workers look almost human...
...If the soldier strikes, behind the lines, he gets put into stir...
...In Mr...
...First, to the facts...
...and the owners, or their foremen like Mr...
...In each case, the strikers were trying to protect their property rights in their jobs...
...Yes, my friends, diss is indeed a system, and you might as well face the fact that diss is the system you asked for...
...If you don't, you are liable to get sore as hell at the workers...
...The proposed compulsory labor act, now abandoned, would not have stopped them either, if we can judge from the British experience...
...In Mr...
...He is mad because he can not get at the trough...
...Avery's case, the property rights happened to be the whole shebang, under the system he espouses, while the boys at G. M. were claiming a very small property right in Mr...
...Why They Aren't Satisfied The soldiers are mad because they're getting none of the swill...
...That's the principle diss system invokes for the soldiers, and, if the war is indeed a community crisis, who's to object...
...Avery's, though I carefully refrained from expressing my opposition when the employes of General Motors sat down in Detroit a few years ago...
...the workers are mad because they're not getting as much of it as the owners...
...They're getting as much as $125 a week for safe and easy work, and they're striking for more...
...Two Contradictory Principles No, it's the workers who are striking...
...The fact is that I am the god-like man who always has principles and always applies them to cases...
...If he strikes in the lines, he gets shot...
...Avery, are mad because they're not getting all of it...
...Avery is an economic Neanderthal man, without, so far as I have been able to discover, any redeeming features whatever...
...It uses force on the soldiers, force on the workers, and, in a freak case like Mr...
...Soldiers working 24 hours a day at the deadliest kind of work are getting $50 a month—$21, you remember, until Bob La Follette went to the national conscience on the matter...
...In Detroit, the sit-down strike was the only resort of the workers...
...That's the principle the workers, from Mr...
...But what in the dickens makes the workers mad...
...Industrial workers putting in 8 hours a day in sunlit, air-conditioned factories are knocking down $60, $75, $100, and even $125 a week...
...Avery's—that is feeding it...
...The workers are striking against the hogs, who, after the manner of hogs, are keeping them at the shallow end of the trough...
...Diss is a system which holds, quite properly, that the community may, in a crisis, require the goods, the services, and even the lives of all its members, at no fee at all or at a nominal fee of $50 a month...
...And the next thing you know, if you do that, you will be fascists, and things will then be lousy indeed for everybody...
...I shall proceed to do so at once...
...Whether it's called "free enterprise" or "collective bargaining" doesn't much matter, except in the application to cases...
...The sitters in Detroit had to hold on to their jobs or starve, and there was no one to help them hold on to their jobs...
...Force on the bosses would be revolution, and I am opposed, as if anybody cared, to revolution...
...What matters is that the man at the gun and the man at the lathe or desk are operating under two contradictory principles, both of them basic principles of diss system...
...Avery down, invoke...
...I will tell you...
...Avery's case, the cards are all stacked in his favor, ultimately, by the system under which he is operating...
...And diss system will then use force on them...
...I won't tell you what the name of diss system is, but I'll tell you this much about the name of diss system: its name is not democracy...
...As long as some people get anything for doing no work, or a lot for doing a little, those who do an honest day's work will always want more...
Vol. 8 • May 1944 • No. 19
