ORGANIZATION OF EMPLOYERS AND EMPLOYEES 171 



the associations and protested in behalf of the suffering babies. They 

 paid no attention to his protest. The cry of the children was as nothing 

 to them. The bulletin of the Board of Health soon showed the effects. 

 The infant death rate began to increase at once and in a few weeks had 

 increased 40 per cent. 



The monopoly combination between labor and capital when once 

 adopted tends to strengthen each of the separate organizations. The 

 public will not have an avenue of escape from these conditions till a new 

 legal code is developed and adopted. In some way there is apt to be a 

 means of escape from conditions like these. However, there is no reason 

 to think that it will come about easily and of itself. Such an opinion 

 is nothing but the most blind and unreasoning optimism. None of the 

 great benefits of civilization have come without a severe struggle, and 

 so it will be with the destruction of the new extortion in the shape of 

 these monopoly combinations. 



When all trades are well organized, in fact so well organized that they 

 are able to keep up the prices of their services to a point beyond what 

 the community are willing or able to pay for them, it becomes a serious 

 matter as to how the problem may be solved. It is true that in some 

 industries this may be left to the ordinary economic laws, but in many 

 lines of work this is not the case. In the case of the coal-handlers of 

 Chicago, it is not a matter that can be left to competition and the laws 

 of political economy. It is true that new inventions would in that case 

 as in others ultimately secure for us some other means of heating our 

 houses and supplying the power we need in other ways, but we cannot 

 afford to wait, for before we could secure the benefits of the new inven- 

 tion we should probably all be dead. 



With the growth of civilization many things with which the public 

 had formerly nothing to do have now become things in which the public 

 has an interest of infinite value as it determines whether the population 

 shall live or die. Before the era of great modern cities it was of no 

 consequence to the public as to how milk was delivered. Most men 

 kept their own cow and in this way were protected from the trouble in 

 Chicago that has already been mentioned. The same may be said of 

 the delivery of coal. It was not then a matter of life or death to vast 



