286 



^SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIX. No. 477. 



multiplied by the family feeling existing 

 among its members. The potency of the 

 feeling thus intensified is incalculable. It 

 must always be borne in mind in estimating 

 the power of the union. 



As this is one of the strongest bonds of 

 union loyalty, so it is the most serviceable 

 weapon of defense and attack. The social 

 expression of the boycott is the evidence of 

 this. So entirely are the currents of fam- 

 ily feeling identified with union loyalty that 

 even when the family is divided against 

 itself the stream often follows the union 

 branch rather than the family direction. 

 A mother whose son lay dead in her house 

 could declare without compunction that it 

 served him right to be killed for working 

 outside the union. The compvilsion of 

 family interest forces compliance where 

 personal interest alone would not avail. 

 This leverage, when possessed by the union, 

 is of mighty and varied application. 



Nor does the suffering borne chiefly by 

 the family in protracted strikes seem to 

 counteract this tendency. Those who have 

 been nurtured in the atmosphere of the 

 unionized family are likely to endure hard- 

 ship in the spirit of martyrdom, and the 

 blows of pain but weld a firmer bond of 

 sacrificial devotion. Whatever protest 

 there may be is absorbed by a loyalty tried 

 as by fire. 



Only the last pinch of necessity can 

 compel yielding for the sake of the fam- 

 ily, and such compulsion does not modify 

 the intense feeling which springs from the 

 amalgamation of the sentiment of home 

 protection with union preservation. 



The modifying influence of the family 

 in the conflicts of labor unions with em- 

 ployers is chiefly to be found in connec- 

 tion with non-union labor. When wives 

 and children ask fathers who have decided 

 that they have the highest right to the 

 exercise of industrial liberty whether their 

 lot is to be made unendurable, the answer 



is likely to be one that unionists will not 

 hear with indifference. 



What considerations specially warrant 

 the expectation that this modifying in- 

 fluence will be increasingly potent? 



The elevation of the family into a posi- 

 tion of central interest is a feature of the 

 times. The wider range of comforts with- 

 in reach of industrial families; the in- 

 fluences of refinement and culture through 

 public school education, through libraries 

 and by the press; the multiplied points of 

 contact between families hitherto socially 

 separate, of which the social settlement 

 work is a remarkable manifestation and a 

 sure prophecy; the stimulus to family 

 pride through the operation of the prin- 

 ciples of modern democracy; the intrinsic 

 purifying of the family ideal, of which 

 even its apparent contradiction in freedom 

 of divorce is partly an evidence, since in 

 spite of license and often by means of 

 liberty the welfare of the family does not 

 suffer and even improves so far as it is 

 given a natural rather than an artificial 

 root; the suggestions conveyed more im- 

 peratively through family influences than 

 by any other toward thrift, good habits, 

 and aft'ectionate ambitions ; these are in- 

 fluences which, when gained by independ- 

 ent industry, will work mightily toward 

 mitigating the constraints which hamper 

 true industrial development. 



They are influences of intrinsic primacy 

 and, while held in check by an arbitrary 

 and mechanical structure, which lacks some 

 of the essential elements of vital organiza- 

 tion, they will inevitably gain their legiti- 

 mate ascendency and compel reconstruc- 

 tion. 



Let the laboring man see the real pre- 

 eminence of the family, and value at its 

 possible worth his own fireside, let the 

 family be made by all the helps of civ- 

 ilization such that he must see its su- 

 premacy, and he will have a rallying cry 



