Januaet 8, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



53 



violent interference with the rights of 

 others. 



These leaders did not even verbally con- 

 demn the use of the boycott for the purpose 

 of enforcing the new commandment: 

 'Without permission of the majority thou 

 shalt not work.' It was invoked to drive 

 the daughters and sisters of non-union men 

 from employment as teachers in the public 

 schools and in the factories, to prevent 

 medical attendance upon the sick and to 

 interfere with the interment of the dead. 

 Its most common use was to deprive fam- 

 ilies of the necessaries of life, and fathers 

 who sought work for the sake of their little 

 ones were sometimes compelled to see them 

 suffer from hunger because no one dared 

 to sell them food. From this expedient to 

 dynamite how short the step. No one need 

 be surprised that it was repeatedly taken. 



THE VOICE OF AUTHORITY. 



It still remains to be seen whether those 

 who have been most prominent in incul- 

 cating this new doctrine of the depravity of 

 refusing to join an organization and espe- 

 cially of insisting on the right to work on 

 terms which are unsatisfactory to others 

 will learn wisdom from the Anthracite Coal 

 Strike Commission and the President of the 

 United States. To appreciate the contrast 

 between their teachings and those of the 

 great, extra-legal labor commission and the 

 President who created it, it is necessary to 

 compare certain expressions of Mr. Gom- 

 pers and Mr. Mitchell with the later official 

 utterances of the commission and the 

 President. 



Mr. Gompers is the author of the follow- 

 ing: 



* * * The individual workman who attempts 

 to make a bargain with the directors, or the repre- 

 sentatives of such a directorate, simply places him- 

 self in the position of a helpless, rudderless craft 

 on a tempestuous ocean. If he did but himself 

 a wrong we might pity him and concede not only 

 his legal but his moral right. But for the workman 



who toils for wages and expects to end his days 

 in the wage-earning class, as conditions seem to 

 point, it will be a necessity, his bounden duty to 

 himself, to his family, to his fellowmen and to 

 those who are to come after him to join in the 

 union. 



Mr. Mitchell's expression is, perhaps, 

 still more forcible. He said of the non- 

 union man who works during a strike that : 



He is looked upon, and I thinlc justly, in the 

 same light that Benedict Arnold was looked upon, 

 or any traitor. He is a man that fails to stand 

 for the movement that the people stand for, and, 

 after all, the majority of the workers in any par- 

 ticular community reflect the public sentiment of 

 that community. It is the movement of the people 

 of that community, and if a man wants to desert 

 his fellow workers and wants to prevent them 

 from accomplishing good ends, then he is justly 

 looked upon with disfavor by those who are right, 

 because his working does not affect himself alone. 

 If it only afi'eoted himself, it would be a different 

 proposition, but the fact that he works helps to 

 defeat the objects of the men who go on strike. 



And then, answering the inquiry whether 

 the 'lives of the wives and children' of the 

 men he had thus condemned ought 'to be 

 made unendurable,' Mr. Mitchell declared: 



I think those wives and children had better ask 

 their fathers. 



Both of the foregoing declarations con- 

 stituted part of the record before the An- 

 thracite Coal Strike Commission when it 

 unanimously adopted a report containing 

 the following: 



The non-union man assumes the whole responsi- 

 bility which results from his being such, but his 

 right and privilege of being a non-union man are 

 sanctioned in law and morals. The rights and 

 privileges of non-union men are as sacred to them 

 as the rights and privileges of unionists. The con- 

 tention that a majority of the employees in an 

 industry, by voluntarily associating themselves in 

 a union, acquire authority over those who do not 

 so associate themselves is untenable. * * * It 

 should be remembered that the trade union * * * 

 is subordinate to the laws of the land and can not 

 make rules or regulations in contradiction thereof. 

 Yet it at times seeks to set itself up as a separate 

 and distinct governing agency, to control those 

 who have refused to join its ranks and to consent 



