50 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIX. No. 471. 



which American trade unionists as a class 

 adhere. Among their leaders, there is 

 every shade of belief from the strong in- 

 dividualism of John Mitchell to the social- 

 ism of Eugene Debs. Even in the prin- 

 ciples to which the various unions of the 

 American Federation of Labor adhere, 

 there is no uniformity, for we find organ- 

 izations, like the United Mine Workers, 

 which desire a monopoly of all labor en- 

 gaged in certain kinds of production and 

 move toward it by waging destructive war- 

 fare upon existing unions of more modest 

 ambitions, side by side with others which 

 admit only the journeymen workers of 

 single highly specialized trades. Theoret- 

 ical agreement is probably confined to the 

 propositions that the share of labor in the 

 products of current industry should stead- 

 ily increase at the expense of the share of 

 capital, and that this can be accomplished 

 by the enforcement of collective bargain- 

 ing. It is less surprising that the first 

 proposition should be pressed by some to 

 the extreme of denying the validity of the 

 claim of capital to even the smallest share 

 in the benefits following production than 

 it is gratifying that the socialists, whose 

 philosophical system rests upon this view, 

 have made so little progress in their efforts 

 to turn the labor movement into an organ- 

 ized demand for the socialization of all 

 industry. 



DIVERGENT UNION METHODS. 



Even in the current practices of unionism 

 there is little uniformity. At their best, as 

 exemplified in the recent history of some 

 of the brotherhoods of railway employees, 

 these practices tend to increase the dignity 

 of labor and to simplify the relations be- 

 tween employers of large bodies of labor 

 and the workingmen composing the latter. 

 On the other hand, there have been in- 

 stances in every great city and in most in- 

 dustries in which organized labor has been 



made the means of denying to American 

 citizens some- of the most fundamental 

 rights of industrial liberty; of intolerable 

 interference t^th public order, and of op- 

 pression, falling with equal injustice upon 

 representatives of capital and of labor. 

 What more significant contrast could there 

 be than that offered by American unionism ; 

 one day paying tribute at the grave of P. 

 M. Arthur, the conservative leader of a 

 conservative organization, and, on another, 

 parading under the leadership of a creature 

 under conviction for using his position in a 

 labor union as a means of blackmail and the 

 grotesque figure of the man whose infamous 

 name has became a synonym for the un- 

 speakable vileness of the lowest period in 

 the political degradation of the chief city 

 of this country. Yet how short the interval 

 between the funeral of the late Grand Chief 

 of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engi- 

 neers and the Labor Day parade led by 

 Parks and Devery. 



CONDUCT THE TEST. 



I do not bring these facts to your recol- 

 lection without a purpose. They are sub- 

 mitted as conclusive evidence of the gulf 

 which separates the best organizations from 

 the worst. Between these extremes are un- 

 doubtedly to be found representatives of 

 nearly every intermediate degree. In fact, 

 the same organization will not infrequently 

 appear, within a short period, to be guided 

 by utterly divergent ethical and economic 

 principles. Such a lack of stability is of 

 course unfortunate, but it is attributable to 

 a cause that operates in all voluntary asso- 

 ciations, and at times even in the state it- 

 self ; absence of interest on the part of those 

 whose influence, if exerted at all, would 

 usually fall on the conservative side. The 

 conclusion to be drawn from these facts is 

 an important one. They establish the prin- 

 ciple that every labor organization and 

 everv demand of a labor organization must 



