52 



SCIENCE. 



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



desire to strike, but because the men of the 

 other regions desired to do so, they con- 

 sented to attack the prosperity of the com- 

 pany which had brought prosperity to 

 them, and, with no grievance of tlieir own, 

 to strike a severe blow against American 

 industrial stability. This action is typical 

 of hundreds of instances in which the most 

 generous fairness on the part of individual 

 employers has failed to protect them 

 against sharing the penalty of real or 

 fancied unfairness on the part of the own- 

 ers of other establishments with which they 

 had no connection. In fact, with few ex- 

 ceptions, it is the current practice of Amer- 

 ican unionism to refuse any special protec- 

 tion to the employer who distinguishes 

 himself from his competitors by the liberal 

 treatment of his employees while, in a spec- 

 tacular manner and with unbending spirit, 

 visiting the sins of those who displease 

 them alike upon the just and the unjust. 

 Such a practice is destructive of the legiti- 

 mate ends to be gained by organization. 

 It places the generous employer at a greater 

 disadvantage than that resulting from the 

 ordinary competition of his rivals, and 

 utterly destroys the business advajitage 

 that ought to go with righteous methods. 

 The principle which requires the fair 

 treatment of fair employers must be estab- 

 lished as a part of the creed of unionism 

 before the latter can become a genuine 

 means of industrial and social betterment. 

 This would require the revision of some 

 very prominent features of the methods 

 now current among labor organizations; it 

 would abolish the sympathetic strike and 

 also the general strike which, in recent in- 

 stances that all will recall, has frequently 

 paralyzed the industry of entire sections. 

 It would leave labor controversies to be 

 settled by the parties directly concerned 

 and would pretty effectually deprive both 

 of the equally fickle support and opposition 



of public sentiment based on mere personal 

 inconvenience and annoyance. 



TREATMENT OP NON-UNION MEN. 



The attitude of many numerically strong 

 labor organizations toward those workmen 

 who refuse to join their ranks approaches 

 closely to a denial of personal freedom in 

 matters concerning which no liberty-loving 

 individual can submit to dictation. No 

 organization except government can, with 

 the sanction of the intelligent and far-see- 

 ing, be permitted to demand allegiance. 

 Yet many labor leaders declare that no 

 workman has a moral right to remain aloof 

 from their organizations, and compare those 

 who dare to do so with those guilty of 

 treason in its most repulsive forms. This 

 doctrine has its natural consequence, during 

 the stress of great strikes, in violence di- 

 I'.ected at the persons and property of those 

 who give practical expression to their inde- 

 pendence by retaining employment against 

 the wishes of their fellows or by accepting 

 positions abandoned by those on strike. It 

 would be absurd to expect any other result. 

 Idle men of somewhat limited culture, of 

 violent passions and possessing a strong 

 sense of the solidarity of their class, with 

 abundant oportunities for the development 

 of mob spirit, will always attempt to com- 

 pel obedience to what they regard as the 

 moral law when convinced that those who 

 violate it are doing so to the positive injury 

 of their class. Hence, when John Mitchell 

 and other leaders in the great strike of 

 1902 proclaimed against violence, in the 

 abstract, with one breath, and with the 

 next compared the men who were at work 

 to Benedict Arnold and to the tories of the 

 Revolutionary period, they laid a founda- 

 tion upon which it is not strange that other 

 men, whose opportunities to acquire self- 

 control had been more limited than their 

 own, should erect a superstructure of 



