Organization, False and True.

The philosophy of Liberty is emphatically opposed to organization, as generally understood. We regard what is commonly recognized as organization as a great and serious obstacle in the way of true progress, and one which Liberty’s intelligent disciples should seek on every occasion to frustrate and oppose.

But we by no means would be understood as opposing any rational method by which large bodies of people, having a common purpose in a given sphere, may be brought to act in harmony. We are in perfect accord with the popular truism that “union is strength.” Our position is that the basis of popular organization is utterly unscientific, and is a certain source of disunion and weakness. We once heard a skilled parliamentarian, in the ante-room of a lyceum of trained debaters, offer a wager that he could step into that lyceum and break up an exciting debate, though every man on the floor wished to see the debate go on, and do it all under the sanction of “Cushing’s Manual,” with strict parliamentary rulings. His wager was accepted, and it took him just twenty minutes to accomplish the feat, in spite of the facts that the president of the lyceum was thoroughly conversant with parliamentary law and that the whole floor was united against the intruder.

The fact is that organization, as now conducted, is patterned after the State. The State is a conspiracy against Liberty and true social order, and the procedure which governs its representative bodies, known as parliamentary law, is simply an invented trick to enable the main conspirators to squelch damaging dissenters, and thus forestall the survival of the really fittest. We appeal to the common experience of our readers in asking if nine-tenths of the time and motive power of ordinary clubs, unions, leagues, and lyceums is not generally consumed in lumbering over parliamentary law and in getting out of the tangle of red tape.

The strike now going on in Lawrence presents a case where the friends of labor almost unanimously deplore the fact that there was no organization among the bewildered and undecided strikers. We also deplore the fact, if by organization is meant the presence of some master mind, or minds, to nerve the outraged operatives into intelligent unity of purpose. But if by organisation is meant the presence of a labor union, with an arbitrary code of principles, by-laws, rules of order, and all the paraphernalia of a legislative body,— the whole supplemented by threats, force, and compulsion,— then we say, No.

Now, there are doubtless master minds among the five thousand striking operatives of Lawrence. The “Irish World” alone has educated master minds on the land and labor questions in almost every community in America. But so enslaved are the people by organization that brave and level-headed men have come to think that they have no right to stand up and lead their fellows, unless authorized by some artificially equipped and officered machine. Authority, in some form or other, has its grip on everybody.

All organization which it is safe to countenance and defend rests on spontaneity, free agency, and choice. In the natural order of things the noble fellow who should post himself in the public square and there, in plain language, give his assembled fellow-workers sound advice as to ultimate ends and immediate measures, would do more effective work for Liberty and emancipation than the despotic fiat of a thousand labor organizations. That fellow is probably there, but, bright and brave as he is, still too servile to authority to feel that he has just as good a right to lead the people as has the grand master of the Knights of Labor, who boasts of his organized following of 250,000 strong. When men first learn to cast off the shackles of authority and office, then we shall see an organization, not founded on compulsion, red tape, and parliamentary hocus pocus, but on the irresistible inspiration that can alone come of intelligence and Liberty.