354 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. VIII., No. 193 



for industrial evils really reach the root of the 

 trouble. We strongly incline to the belief that 

 they do not, and that the social, political, economic, 

 and ethical elevation of men at large and the 

 human nature that is in them is what is wanted, 

 and not either the regeneration or the extinction 

 of a class. 



Professor Ely's facts are very fuU, and, to the 

 best of our knowledge, generally accurate. After 

 a hasty sketch of early American communistic 

 societies, he takes up in detail the various labor 

 organizations of any importance, and pictures their 

 growth and present condition. Their growth he 

 divides into two periods, — 1800-61 and 1861-86. 

 During the first of these periods, " an increasing 

 number of local unions is formed ; at times unions 

 of artisans of various trades in a certain section 

 join hands for common action ; gradually the 

 skilled laborers, pursuing the same trade, form the 

 idea of national unions, urged on, doubtless, by 

 the increased facilities of transportation and com- 

 munication," which caused competition to become 

 national, and not merely local. Since 1861, of 

 course the growth has been much greater : in fact, 

 all the principal labor organizations have arisen 

 since that time ; the Grangers having been organ- 

 ized in 1866, the Knights of labor in 1869, and the 

 Federation of organized trades and labor unions in 

 1881. Professor Ely admits (p. 89) the impossi- 

 bility of even approximately estimating the num- 

 ber of organized laborers in the United States, at 

 the present time, but considers one million a con- 

 servative estimate. Admitting the accuracy of 

 this fig-ure, he cannot fail to recognize the fact, 

 so clearly and so frequently proven during the past 

 year, that their demands are not for the laboring 

 class at large, but for themselves, the small frac- 

 tion of the whole that is banded together. Further- 

 more, they have not infrequently trampled under 

 foot men quite as competent and quite as deserv- 

 ing as themselves, simply because they did not 

 belong to the ' union.' It is this selfish feature in 

 the labor organizations that has drawn down upon 

 them opposition and contempt where often they 

 would have had aid and sympathy. ' Individual- 

 ism run mad ' may be bad, but organization run 

 mad is worse. 



Professor Ely can hardly be willing to subscribe 

 to all the political aims of the Knights of labor, and 

 indeed expressly says (p. 159) that he is not. Yet 

 he tells us (p. 76) that they are organized for ' the at- 

 tainment of beneficent public and private reforms.' 

 Their financial programme would only be a reform 

 in the direction of disaster ; their denunciation of 

 convict labor is either pure ignorance or else an 

 invitation to the tax-paying population to support 

 criminals in idleness ; and the expediency of their 



scheme for government control of railways and 

 telegraphs is at least open to serious question, even 

 if not to be absolutely condemned. 



What Professor Ely means by his statement (p. 

 161) that it is not true that laborers work peace- 

 fully and contentedly until a mischievous agitator 

 comes along and stirs them up, we do not under- 

 stand. He certainly must know that numbers of 

 just such cases happened during the spring of the 

 present year. The case of the ' walking-delegate ' 

 from Troy stopping a silk-factory in Paterson, and 

 that of the Broadway car-drivers in New York 

 leaving work because an unknown individual 

 snapped his fingers, are perhaps the best known. 



We have taken pains to touch upon these seem- 

 ingly minor points in Professor Ely's book, because 

 it seems to us a book likely to be widely read, both 

 by the laboring classes and by the reading public 

 generally, and for that reason erroneous state- 

 ments otherwise minor become important. We 

 had marked several other statements for correc- 

 tion, but lack of space compels us to mention but 

 one of them. On p. 286 we read that our " labor- 

 ing population consists chiefly of men and women 

 of foreign birth or foreign parentage." This is 

 given as the reason why the socialistic societies 

 are composed principally of foreigners, and is pre- 

 sumably intended as a reply to the statement often 

 made, that socialism and communism have no 

 place in the United States, and appeal to very few 

 citizens who are not foreigners by birth. But, as 

 a matter of fact, the census statistics do not uphold 

 Professor Ely's assertion. In 1880 there were en- 

 gaged in twenty selected occupations 17,392,099 

 persons. Of this number, 13,897,452 were of native 

 birth, and 3,494,647 of foreign. Moreover, there 

 were only 6,679,943 foreign-born men, women, 

 and children in the country in 1880, and only 

 5,758,811 of those one or both of whose parents 

 were foreigners. 



While criticising these points in Professor 

 Ely's book, we can commend it as a good, clear, 

 and fairly accurate statement of what our labor 

 organizations have done and are doing. Its 

 account of their literature in this country is the 

 best we have seen anywhere. But it must be read 

 with caution ; for the author is somewhat of an 

 idealist and a doctrinaire, and often lets the de- 

 mands of his theory blind him to the true nature 

 and tendency of the facts of which he treats. 



His insistence on the necessity for an ethical 

 bond in society as well as an industrial one, and 

 for an ethical end toward which aU true progress 

 must move, and his sharp condemnation of vio- 

 lence and force in effecting social and industrial 

 changes, are two of the best features of the book. 



Somebody — whether author, publisher, or both, 



