The Birmingham age-herald., 1913-08-03
UNREST AND BITTERNESS
BY HENRYR. SEAGER
oIiticaI Econ omy Columbia University

The federal industrial relations commits
sion, just appointed by President Will
son. was created to investigate the causes
of the prevailing bitter feeling between
employers and employees and to recon-
mend measures for its abatement.
/ A certain amount of antagonism be-
tween employers and employees is, of
course no new thing. Their interests,
when it comes to the division of the fruits
of their common thought and toll, are
necessarily opposed. So long as the share
of the employees depends on their ability
to make favorable bargains with their
employ yers-that is SO long as the wage
system itself endures-some sense of an
tagonism must continue.
There is. however, a. new element in
the situation, and this, in my judgment,
is a widespread sense of the injustice
of the conditions under which the wage
contract must now be made. BY this
do not mean that any very large proper
ton of wage-earners has come to accept
the doctrine which socialists teach-tFat
the whole product of industry is due to
labor and ought of right to go to the
workers. The revolt, as I interpret 1t, is
not against the wage system itself but
rather against the legal restrictions which
in practice hamper wage-earners at every
turn in their efforts to improve their coz
dition, without putting any corresponding
restraint on their employers.
few illustrations will make my mean
ing clearer. The injunction process has
been found a highly efficient means of
l.. Aa cd 1,1y am.
ployers against their employees because
they can nearly always persuade a court
that damage suits against these en-
ployes, after they have committed unlaw-
full acts which are destructive of prop
erty will prove ineffective. 1t can rarely,
if ever be turned against employers be-
cause it can usually be urged that they
will be able to respond in damages. and
that, therefore, there is no need for this
extra ordinary means of compelling them
to respect the property rights of others
A legal remedy which may be used by
one side in an industrial dispute and not
by the other naturally seems to the other
unfair.
Again, wage-earners know that to sue
ceed in strikes for higher wages or short
er hours they must control a sufficient
proportion of the available workers in
the trade to bring it home to the en-
ployer that they are necessary partners
in his business. From their point of view,
therefore. efforts to strengthen their
unions. through strikes to prevent the
employment of -unionists, or s''scabs'
are as necessary and proper as efforts to
secure higher wages or shorter hours di-
rectly. When the courts tell them that
they may strike for better conditions,
but If they strike to strengthen the union
they are guilty of conspiracy, thoy feel
that the law is illogical, arbitrary, anu
| designed, while seeming to concede to
them the right to united action really to
prevent their united efforts from being
| effective.
HI Another distinction the law draws,
| which seems to them unfair. is that be-
| tween strikes and boycotts. One way
in which the obdurate employer may
be made to respect the right of his
| men to organize is by inducing his Gus
toners to withdraw their patronage
! unless ne treats his employees in man
ner that soms to these customers fair
| Trade unionsts see no reason why,
feeling as they do in regard to the
right of wage earners to organize, they
Il should not refuse to patronize an en-
II
make such refusal effective they think
THAT they Should be allowed to publish
the names of unfair" or we don't
patronizei employers in their union
journals. The view that this consti-
tutes a conspiracy seems to them to
involve denial of their liberty to pat
ronize whom they choose. When this
view of the boycott crystalize in an
| injunction, for the alleged violation of
| which such widely revered labor lead
| er as John Mitchell Is threatened with
fine and Imprisonment, it becomes. TO
| their minds, an intolerable instrument
| of tyranny.
Finally, the application of the federal
/ antitrust act to labor combinations
strengthens wage earners in their be-
lief that for whatever purpose a law
may be framed the courts will be GER
tain to turn 1t against them. rather
than against their employers. Under
that statute the United Hatters are
liable to pay damages to the amount
of S24O,000 for acts which their con-
sciences fully approve, while the Stan
dard Oil company. the trust most fire.
quently referred to when the act was
under consideration in Congress, has
escaped with an order to dissolve, obed-
ience to which has served only, SO the
wage Garner argues, to enhance greatly
the value of its constituent properties.
1t is these anomalies in our law as
IL appileS TO wage earnerS winch are,
in my opinion, chiefly responsible for
the bitterness which American work
ingmen feel toward their employers,
and the readiness with which they
turn from lawful to unlawful and even
criminal means to secure their ends.
Nothing is so fatal to a law abiding
disposition as a conviction that the faw
itself is unjust or that its administra-
tion is unfair
Let the industrial relations commits
sion study sympathetieally our law
with reference to what wage earners
may and what they may not do to bet
ter their conditions. Let them compare
1T with the law of the United King
dob, from which we got the common
law principles which our courts are
trying to apply. Let them Investigates
the reason for the British Parliament
itself deliberately superseding these
principles, so far as they affect the
relations between employers and em-
Il ployes. by the trade union acts of the
seventies and the trade disputes act of
1905. and find out what have been the
results of this liberal legislation. Final
ly let them either show that our pres
ent laws are unfair in their operation