151 



THE ABUSE OF TRADE UNIONISM, 



AN IRRESPONSIBLE TYRANNY WITH POWER OF LIFE AND DEATH. 



The strike against the non-Unionist has long.been a 

 famihar and unlovely feature in the organisation of 

 labour. Kut it is only of recent years that this power 

 has been exercised with the ruthless severity which is 

 calculated to fill ail friends of labour with dismay. It 

 is regarded by many excellent men who are engaged in 

 the organisation of labour disputes as a perfectly right 

 and proper thing to compel working men, by fair 

 means or foul, to join the Union. 



But this, however serious an infringement it may 

 be of the liberty of the subject, is nothing to the 

 later developments of the doctrine that the Trade 

 Unions can do no wrong, which is to be witnessed 

 in its full growth in America, and is by no means 

 unknown even here. For the New Tyranny is no 



The dispute at .\ccrington as to the employment 

 of a man and hi= wife and of anotb.er woman who 

 were not members of the Union paralysed the cotton 

 trade of Lancashire for nearly three weeks. It is 

 estimated that the working classes lost a million 

 sterling in wages and the trade of the district was 

 diminished by seven millions sterling. The difficulty 

 was finally surmounted by the tact of Sir George 

 Askwilh, who arranged that work should be resumed 

 on the old basis, and that Unionists and non-L'nionists 

 should work together for six months, in which period 

 it was thought some permanent arrangement might 

 be arrived at. Xo sooner, however, did the owners 

 I'-open the mills than the workers struck work the 

 moment the three non-Unionist workers appeared in 



Miss Mar(jaret Bury. 



Mr. Riley. 



Cotton opcr.ilivcs wlio refused to join the Unions and precipitated llie strike 



Mrs. Riley. 



the mills. They pursued the unfortunate non-Unionists 

 with vituperation and abuse, threatening violence, 

 until finally they succeeded in driving them out of 

 the mill. 



It is an ugly incident and one which seems to 

 justify many of the worst things that are said as to 

 the lack of good faith which characterises Trade 

 Unionists. Indei-d, it .seems almost to be accepted 

 as an axiom that a 1 rade Unionist can do no wrong. 

 A Trade Unionist should be above the law, and a 

 Trade Unionist should never be expected to keep 

 his bargain. This is a sad descent from the old high 

 principle which animated Trade Unionists of the 

 last generation. It is difficult, however, to account 

 for the proceedings in Lancashire excepting on some 

 such assumption as that which I have just slated. 



longer exerted merely to compel working men to join 

 the Union whether they like it or not. It is employed 

 without scruple to doom working men and their 

 families to the slow torture of starvation, if, from any 

 causes over which tluy have no control, they are not 

 admitted into the Unionist ranks. Now it is one 

 thing to deprive a man, his wife and children of their 

 daily bread in order to comjiel the man to join the 

 I nion, but it is an altogether diflerent, and an in- 

 finitely worse thing, first of all, to decree that a man 

 shall not join the Union, even if he wishes to, and 

 then to refuse him any opportunity of earning his 

 living, because he is not a Trade Unionist. 



It is this tendency which fills many of the sincerest 

 friends of labour organisation with alarm. The 

 Roman Catholic Church in the days when there was 



