are impregnably entrenched in law. The circumstances however are these: under unrestrained competition wages inevitably trend to a starvation minimum. In proportion as employment becomes concentrated in the hands of a few this trend becomes dangerous. The organization of labor to resist it is the only possible remedy, and is absolutely essential against the degradation of mankind. Moreover it will organize to this end; and to recognize the just demands of such organization is equally indispensable to all future peace and prosperity. Recent occurrences have brought this home to the public so conclusively that hereafter it can scarcely be a matter of debate. Recognition of the unions is right, if their demands are right; right is paramount to the legal rights of any one; and the sole question now is: Are the demands and aims of the unions right?

I have said that if this maxim be accepted the real issues will appear. Let us examine some of these.

Labor organizations are among the giant forces of the times. They have come to stay. They will become more and more dominant. They are subject to human frailties as well as to reason. Already they betray tendencies only one remove less dangerous than those the unions would surmount; and these tendencies should be brought to the forefront of public recognition and debate for correction, rather than let them develop and fester while public attention is vehemently directed to false issues.

Most of these dangerous tendencies spring from real difficulties that are not easily surmounted without the hearty cooperation of employers; and they have some excuse so long as the entire efforts of the unions must be spent in fighting for their bare existence. But let this fighting cease, and let the employers and the public come forward with hearty good faith not only to remedy these evils but honorably to adjust those difficulties to which they are incident, and both objects will speedily find their accomplishment.

Let me instance some of these evils and the conditions under which they originate and thrive. At this moment a union is being formed among the janitors of Chicago. Under its rules

no one of them is to be permitted to case a door, mend a window cord, set a pane of glass, file a key, lay a stroke of paint, fix a stop-cock, clean a trap, or do any other small job that infringes on any one of "the trades." If a landlord calls a regular workman to do any of these jobs, rules are already prescribed by each particular union. A plumber must bring his assistant if it be only to solder a leak in a pipe. A mason must have a hodcarrier if it is only to carry two bricks to the roof. Trade rules are full of these tyrannies against economy and common sense. Yet they have had a certain and perhaps justifiable excuse. So long as these unions were forced to fight for their existence and recognition they were compelled to resort to every possible legal weapon of warfare. Continue to deny the unions what is right and this method of warfare with its wrongs will continue.

Let the employers and public opinion once lift the problem to the level of honor and justice and the unions themselves will be forced to the same high plane. No such silly tyrannies ever did or ever can continue in face of a public opinion that is resolved to have justice done equally and alike for all.

Again certain trade rules restrict the amount that a clever workman shall do in a day, and stipulate equal pay for good and bad workmen alike. This makes for depravity among the workmen, for deterioration of their spirit and skill, for disorganisation of good business management, against the supremacy of American industries, and against the welfare of all successful men of fortune. Yet it has its explanation with the other tyrannical rules-and the same remedy. These organisations are composed of men like other men. Continue to fight them, either blindly or unscrupulously, and these evils will continue. Recognise the unions, encourage their manhood, raise their issues to the plane of intelligent and fair debate, and the unions will respond on the same plane. There never was a body of intelligent men able to withstand continuously the invitation of public opinion to deal with them on the highest terms of manhood and honor-least of all, any body of Americans such as these unions comprise.

Another issue obscured under the blind frenzy about

"rights" is that regarding wages. Next to the establishment of their organization, the increase of wages has occupied the chief efforts of the unions. Yet, upon careful consideration, it is evident that this is a misdirected effort that works for the laboring man more harm than good. If wages rise the cost of living rises accordingly. It does not lie in the power of labor unions to prevent this. Some particular trade gets a temporary advantage which all the other trades pay for. And in the end the capitalist reaps the sole advantage; and reaps it for three reasons: first, because he always adds the same old percentage of profits to the new scale of wages; second, because every general increase of wages is slow and difficult of accomplishment, while the price of goods is easily and instantly increased; therefore, in every seesaw between wages and price the laboring purchaser always gets the worst of it; and, third, the constant change of wages and price creates a risk and uncertainty to business which capital always makes the laboring purchaser pay for. It is true that, in America, wages are higher in proportion to cost of living than in any other land, and higher now than fifty years ago. But the unions make a vast mistake if they credit this to their efforts to raise wages. Rather it is due to America's increased standard of living. In so far as the efforts of the unions have prevented wages from falling they have conduced to this increase in the standard of living. Yet this should not obscure the fact that this standard is chiefly due to the general advance of civilisation and industrial prosperity in a new and free country; that this prosperity will be greatest when its business conditions are both most just and most stabler; that increase of daily wages does not and cannot secure the end the unions have in view, but works with full force directly against it-unsettles business and chiefly harms the workman whose wages change less quickly than the price of goods.

One of the most serious faults of unionism at present is, that each trade thinks only of having its wages raised. This cannot be remedied until a federation of unions be formed having a common purpose for all. The sound purpose of all the unions should be to reduce the share that goes to private capital. This

can be accomplished only in one of two ways: in reducing its percentage of the profits, or in transforming private capital into public ownership. Every share of watered stock on which the laboring man must earn an unjust dividend is just so much money cheated from his wages. It may safely be said that, for the present, the chief efforts of the unions should be directed to the correction of this most gigantic of American evils; and in this task the unions will have the whole force of public opinion with them. But even here they must act carefully and wisely. For so long as the conduct of industry is in the hands of private capital, it must be granted a fair and stimulating profit.

No great permanent good can come to the unions in the future unless they have a common object. Public ownership, wisely and honestly administered, undoubtedly is the sole condition under which the profits of labor can be wholly secured to labor. But here there are two obstacles: the intelligence of the laboring man, and the lack of common, everyday honesty everywhere. Not that the amount of intelligence required of the average man for public ownership is very great. All that is required of him is enough to see that public ownership and his welfare are impossible so long as the enthusiasm of the mass of laboring men for honest administration is not sufficiently strong to enforce it. The power to secure their welfare is in their hands alone. Let the unions rise in their might for honesty everywhere, and against dishonesty anywhere—in the unions and out of them-let them make this the one main issue and the intelligence of the world will be at their service in securing and administering public ownership, and they will accomplish more than by a thousand years of manouverings for a deceptive rise of wages.

Next, in order of effort, the unions have endeavored to secure shorter hours of labor. Yet how much wiser it would be to contend for shorter years of labor. Forty-eight hours a week, certainly are few enough for any able-bodied and thrifty man to work. Rather than to shorten these the unions should aim to have their old men retired on a pension, and their children given more years of education and training, and the best

that earth can afford. This, continued from generation to generation, can alone raise the laboring man to such intelligence and equality as mankind is capable of, and give him that qualification for self-government, for economic independence, and for looking after his own welfare, upon which his prosperity must ever depend. Not shorter hours but shorter years of service for the great body of workingmen who constitute the main army of life; a perfected youth, a vigorous manhood, an enjoyed old age, this indicates the proper method of curtailing the over-production of machinery and of securing its advantages through equality of opportunity for the uplifting of all.

An actual incident may now bring this lesson in natural rights to forceful application. At the height of the strike frenzy, and at the moment when blood and devastation were very imminent, quite a number of well-intending people proclaimed the scab a hero. Plainly these people thought, in a narrow way, of the legal right involved, and gave but little consideration to what was morally right under the actual situation. The unions demanded recognition and arbitration. The coal powers refused both, with the avowed purpose of breaking the strength of the unions. As to recognition, the unions, under present conditions of competition, are indispensable-as much so to general welfare as to the laboring classes-and since their efficiency depends on recognition, their recognition is right. As to arbitration, the legal right of both parties not to yield was perfect, there was no legal means for resolving the deadlock, the whole land was in dire distress-arbitration was the only possible way of relief. Under such conditions for any citizen to fail to support the demand for arbitration by every moral influence in his power indicates either a deeply perverted moral sense or the lack of any at all.

But if so, how about the scab as a hero? Since the unions are indispensable to general welfare, every workman ought to join his proper union as part of his civic duty. He should do all in his power to make its deliberations sober and wise; all in his power to raise unionism to that high plane that can be and must be the bulwark of mankind. To fail to do this is as shameful as to fail in any other great and momentous civic