Richmond times-dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1914-current, 1919-11-03
Unions and Contracts

|
| NJ oBoDY ever has given logical reason
Y why labor unions should not be incor-
[ porated and held by law to performance of
| their contracts. Those who undertake to
| oppose the idea invariably send up lot OF
| verbal fireworks and end in a splutter, in
! tended to cover the issue and confuse judg-
ment. The average workingman find in
his own conscience argument against his
liability to do whatever he has promised to
do directly or through those he has ap-
pointed his agents He knows, and con-
cedes. it to be entirely right that when he
buys goods from the corner grocer. or sends
his wife to buy, he shall be made TO pay. or
that if he borrows money he must return it
or have his wages garnisheed or his property
taken. The great majority OF him feels and
understands. really, that when he or his &C
credited agents sign a contract to deliver
certain amount of work at q certain price
he is bound in honor and should be bound
in law, to deliver. Yet whenever somebody
suggests regular Incorporation to fix re-
sponsibilty, there is storm OF opposition
and a flood OF oratory about ''enslavement of
the workingman. If an employer should
refuse to pay his help he would be sued
Immediately. and made to pay. If he is build
ing, the mechanics lien must be settled be-
fore anything else If he fails to pay on the
day fixed or tries to exact from his en-
ployees more hours than the law allows he
is subject 10 criminal prosecution. II is a
bad rule always that doesn't work both ways.
Lawmakers and all the rest of us must
sooner or later realize that modern condi-
tions make dependent on each other
make our mutual responsibility TO each other
so close and strong. that the law must recog-
nize it. We cannot divide by classes. The
labor organizations duty to the public
as we'll as to their employers, and as directly
as the corporations employers and capitalists.
If the pier workers in New York refuse to
unload sugar or to allow anybody else to
do it, the workingman's family in Richmond
suffers. and probably sooner and longer
than other families. When the coal miners
break their contract. stop work and pre-
vent everybody else from digging coal the
poor in the cities go cold first factories are
stopped for want OF fuel, and the workers
can earn no wages. 1t is plain as day, and
mas peen repeated thousand times, but
some Of us seem TO be unable to understand
1t. And the curious part of il is that those
who shout loudest against holding labor to
contracts, also shout for government owner
ship of the mines-for instance-under
which the worker would be a servant of the
government, his wages might be fixed by
majority 1000 miles away from him, and in
terested chiefly in cheap coal and he could
be made to work at the muzzle of gun
In New York the pier and dock workers
not only broke their contract but repudated
and refused to obey their own Off
GERS; first O'Connor of the Amsri-
can Federation of Labor, and then, Vac
carelli, whom they had chosen as leader They
refuse to acknowledge responsibility to any
body probably melted by the glib chronic
troublc-makers, who are everywhere, and by
Bolshevist and anarchist agents
A few more instances like that, few DAYS
of actual deprivation among the people be-
cause workers somewhere else refuse to keen
their own formal promises, and the labor or
ganization men will be eager as anybody to
accept the workingmans responsibility as
part of his proper dignity, as a citizen and
business man, and TO agree that he shall be
held 10 loyal performance OF his bargains
like everybody else.