The weekly examiner., 1894-05-19
DUE TO THE UNIONS.
HOW LABOR ORGANIZATION HAS IM-
 PROVED CONDITIONS.


 Its Existence Amply Justified by the Rec ord 1t Has Made-The Great Work of a l Few Years - Words of Commentator | From an Unusual Source.
 l While attention all over the indus l trial and commercial world is occupied with the conflict of opinion between Judge Jenkins and Judge Caldwell con- corning rights of men in organized bod ies following @ given occupation, 1t is ! timely to note the growth of organiza- 1 tion of labor and the speed with which, in comparatively short span, it has attained to power in the two countries ! most affected by industrial progress, Great Britain and the United States. Although organization in labor was not strictly novelty in history, trades ! unions, as we know them today, are the l children of this century. They are part of the large progeny of an age distin- guished by unprecedented diligence and ingenuity in mechanical invention. With substitution of machines for hand labor in textiles came the factory sys- ! tenn following streams, not the naNural trend of population, ill order to get pow CT, and out of the social conditions en- gendered by factory life and it's subdivi- sion of work by which trade in its en- tirety became the privilege of only @ few in a given multitude grew that struggle between capital aRd toll that caused the medieval associations of
 craftsmen and employers, the guilds, %o Sno tions of workingmen alone to become 8 phenomenon of civilization.
 It is hard to believe, when reading the radical deliverance of Judge Cald- we'll, that organized labor is the equal of organized capital before courts-that within 8 few years organized labor was not only an outlaw but on its face @ felon. Until 1878 in Great Britain trades unionism was still subject to pains and penalties merely for being. Men were not indeed still subjected to penal servitude and transportation, as those who, prosecuted under the unlaw ful oaths act, had been, but courts were forbidden to recognize the unions as law full and statutes remained unrepealed subjecting members of such bodies to
 prosecution wherever local sentiment became sufficiently heated against them. Acts of parliament by the score were di- rected toward their extirpation. It was necessary as late as 1867 to pass law
 making even permissible appointment
 of councils of conciliation or arbitra-
 tion. One of the acts that now reads
 like archaeology begins with:
 Whereas, Such combinations are injurious to trade and commerce, dangerous to the tran quillity of the country and especially prejudi- cial to the interests of all who concerned in them, etc.
 While excess has at times character ized organizations of trades, it will be
 admitted by fair observers that the in fuence of organization, when kept with in logical limits, has been salutary. While it is true that sanitary and mor
 al reform of factory and mine life was inaugurated by @ manufacturer-thef fa-
 ther of Sir Robert Peel-legislation
 shortening the hours of labor and amel- iorating its burdens has been duo for
 the most part in all countries to organ
 ization of the people directly affected. So long as the workingman was with out political influence in France, in
 Prussia, in the United Kingdom, re-
 form was impossible. Because he had
 political influence from the start in this country we never were disgraced by the
 brutishness common in the middle of
 this century in the foundries, forges,
 collieries and factories of other lands,
 the worse phases of degradation-de
 basement of women and children-lin-
 gering in England until organized la-
 bor compelled politicians to pass acts
 that made it penal for greed of capital
 to put women into collieries or for pov-
 erty or vice of parents to send children
 to work before they were old enough to
 go to school.
 If organized labor had done nothing
 but revise the laws relating to toll by
 the weak and the dependent, it would
 have amply justified it's existence. But
 it has done far more. When machinery
 was first introduced into mineral and
 textile production, ignorance among
 workingmen led them to fear that they
 were to be reduced to chronic starva-
 tion. "Luddism m''-destruction of ma-
 chinery by revolted artisans-is almost forgotten. It was one of the transitory
 expressions of industrial friction which
 labor organization ended by diffusion of
 intelligence in the ranks of the en-
 ployed. The cheapening of production resulted necessarily in competition.
 The workingman himself became able
 to buy better clothes, to have better home and to acquire enjoyments impos- sible before machinery took the place of hands. With increased intelligence came demand for more privileges of education. Statistics tell the wonderful tale of reduced illiteracy all over the world, due in great measure to shorten ing of hours of labor, to restriction on labor by children, and to pressure upon political power to bring schools into in- dustrial centers.
 Judge Caldwell has made 8 radical deliverance concerning the status of or ganized labor before government as ex- pounded through courts. Judge Jenkins has reaffirrned one reactiOnarv in his-