United labor bulletin., 1909-11-12

reasons for this, certainly the effect of
| the organization of labor has been to
maintain a steady and high rate of
wages, making such a standard of liv-
ing possible
The effect of organized labor upon
such abuses as the employment of child
labor as the exposure of laborers to un-
due risk in dangerous employments. to
the continuance of unjust rules of law
exempting employers from liability for
accidents to laborers. has been direct.
immediate and useful, and such reforms
in these matters as have taken place
would probably be long delayed but for
the energetic agitation of the questions
by the representatives of organized
labor.
All advantages of trade unionsm,
great as they are, cannot weigh
feather in the scale against the right of
any man lawfully seeking employment
TO work for whom and at what price he
Will And | say this will all the empha-
sis possible, even though the fact is that
If l were a workingman l should prob.
ably deem it wise to join union for
the reasons given.
One notable defect which has been
pointed out has been in the disposition
of the majority of members in labor
unions to reduce the compensation of all
men engaged in particular trade to a
dead level, and to fail to recognize the
difference between the highly skilled
and very Industrious workman and the
one less skilled and less Industrious
l think that there is movement
among trade-unions themselves to cor
rect this leveling tendency, and nothing
could strengthen the movement more
than the adoption of some plan by which
there should remain among union work
men the impetus and motive to be found
in the greater reward for greater skill
and greater industry Taft.
The president recently paid a brilliant
tribute of the mind to the labor move
ment, alloyed though it was with the
inevitable concern for those who "pre-
fer" to remain non-unionsts and with
some criticism of tendencies of the
movement which are not Justly attribut.
able to it.
The legitimacy and worthiness of the
labor movement being freely confessed
the implication obtrudes itself that it is
a defective science that prompts tue nr-
titude of careful and complete restraint
of announcement and support at times
when these would be of material good
to the movement. Such an attitude is
not in the interest of the non-unionist
worker for he is not, as a class. non
unionist from choice. He is a non-union-
list because of his environments ana of
influences which he believes to be hos
tile to the organization of labor and fear
of these dominates him.
The interests of the employee can be
conserved only by organization. whether
it be in the form of the regularly estab-
porary form for a particular given and
purpose. as in some notable
examples which have been recently OBJ
served in an eastern state.
The non-unionist as such is NOT iree
agent acting in his own interest. hut is
rather an instrument of the employer |
who dominates him. A case now in the /
courts of the city where the president /
made his speech is highly typical of this /
condition. Here the Illinois Manufac |
turers Association applied for an in |
junction to restrain the criminal courts /
from enforcing the penal provisions of
the ten-hour law for women against en-
ployers To gain technical standing in
court the application had to be made in
behalf of working women, and two were
induced to lend their names to the suit.
who alleged that the right of free con-
tract was invaded by the law. They
made affidavits that. although one had
worked at her trade for sixteen years
and another for thirty-two years, neither
of them could earn enough in a TEN
hour day to live upon. That confession
is highly significant of the iniquity of
conditions which some interests seek to
perpetuate under false guise
AS between the employer and the en-
ployed, there can be no legitimate div
ision of the latter as unionists and non
unionists with seperate class interests.
There are only the interests of the en-
ployer and of the employed. of the iatter
of which the union must be accepted as
representative. In the circumstances
the solicitude for the non-unionist can
hardly be misunderstood as anything
else than in defense of the employer
who would exploit the employee.
The president falls into the unworthy
ana persistent error of charging the
union with leveling down wages to the
earning standard of the Indifferent work
man, and so discouraging skill and IN
dustry. The union wage scale is a min
;~,,,-. ,,aya ocoIa bavond which tho law