736 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the employing class : not prescribed terms and working arrange- 

 ments only shall be conformed to, but none save those belonging 

 to their body shall be employed nay, in some cases, there shall 

 be a strike if the employer carries on transactions with trading 

 bodies that give work to non-union men. Here, then, we are 

 variously shown by Trades Unions, or at any rate by the newer 

 Trades Unions, a determination to impose their regulations with- 

 out regard to the rights of those who are to be coerced. So com- 

 plete is the inversion of ideas and sentiments that maintenance of 

 these rights is regarded as vicious and trespass upon them as 

 virtuous.* 



Along with this aggressiveness in one direction there goes 

 submissiveness in another direction. The coercion of outsiders 

 by unionists is paralleled only by their subjection to their lead- 

 ers. That they may conquer in the struggle they surrender their 

 individual liberties and individual judgments, and show no re- 

 sentment however dictatorial may be the rule exercised over 

 them. Everywhere we see such subordination that bodies of 

 workmen unanimously leave their work or return to it as their 

 authorities order them. Nor do they resist when taxed all round 

 to support strikers whose acts they may or may not approve, but 

 instead, ill-treat recalcitrant members of their body who do not 

 subscribe. 



The traits thus shown must be operative in any new social 

 organization, and the question to be asked is What will result 

 from their operation when they are relieved from all restraints ? 

 At present the separate bodies of men displaying them are in the 

 midst of a society partially passive, partially antagonistic ; are 

 subject to the criticisms and reprobations of an independent 

 press ; and are under the control of law, enforced by police. If 

 in these circumstances these bodies habitually take courses which 

 override individual freedom, what will happen when, instead of 

 being only scattered parts of the community, governed by their 



* Marvelous are the conclusions men reach when once they desert the simple principle, 

 that each man should be allowed to pursue the objects of life, restrained only by the lim- 

 its which the similar pursuits of their objects by other men impose. A generation ago we 

 heard loud assertions of " the right to labor," that is, the right to have labor provided ; and 

 there are still not a few who think the community bound to find work for each person. 

 Compare this with the doctrine current in France at the time when the monarchical power 

 culminated ; namely, that " the right of working is a royal right which the prince can sell 

 and the subjects must buy." This contrast is startling enough ; but a contrast still more 

 startling is being provided for us. We now see a resuscitation of the despotic doctrine, 

 differing only by the substitution of Trades Unions for kings. For now that Trades Unions 

 are becoming universal, and each artisan has to pay prescribed moneys to one or another of 

 them, with the alternative of being a non-unionist to whom work is denied by force, it has 

 come to this, that the right to labor is a Trade-Union right, which the Trade Union can sell 

 and the individual worker must buy ! 



