is contrary to conscientious and intelligent conviction and therefore wrong; they have no more right to do it than they have to organize a mob and destroy homes.

Courts may be powerless, may feel compelled to hold men have the legal right to strike and paralyze industry and commerce, but in their reasoning they should carefully distinguish between a legal right, which is a very human and uncertain proposition, and the purer, higher, more abstract theory of right which, law or no law, must finally guide men in all their actions and relations.

XIX

CLASS LEGISLATION AND DISCRIMINATION

I

We come now to the most discreditable and, take it all in all, the most disheartening chapter in American history; discreditable because the facts it relates are so opposed to all our ideals of freedom and equality; disheartening because the tendencies disclosed lead straight toward the arraying of class against class in bitter conflict, and the dissolution of democratic institutions.

Not that this country will proceed to such extremes and be wrecked on the rocks that have wrecked every attempt heretofore made toward popular government-let us hope we have too much good sense to run blindly into disaster, but that is the way we are heading at the moment, and no impartial observer doubts it.

The anarchist, the communist, the radical socialist, observe the trend of events with undisguised satisfaction, they say, “We are nearing the crisis," and stand ready with torch and bomb.

The average American looks upon Russia as the hotbed of anarchy and revolution, yet there is probably far more dynamite systematically used in the United States than in Russia for the destruction of life and property in conflicts between classes; and certainly far more than is used in any other two civilized countries taken together.

Three presidents slain in forty years is a record no

disappear entirely long before the prevailing rate of wages is reduced or rates advanced.

As things now are both wage controversies with employees and rate controversies with shippers are settled in the dark.

This class or that class of employees demand and finally get increases in wages regardless of the fair claims of other employees and regardless whether the stockholders of some of the roads affected have ever received any dividends.

Likewise the Interstate Commerce Commission settles rate controversies for all the roads in vast sections of the country with no accurate data regarding the actual investment in any one of the roads and, consequently, with no information whatsoever whether the stockholders of any particular road are justly entitled to the benefits of the rates demanded.

All questions regarding both rates and wages are now adjusted from year to year in haphazard fashion, with no attempt to reach a scientific basis that will attain lasting results.

XII

What would be some of the consequences of the course suggested?

Take the demand of the engineers; the fifty odd roads affected could not pursue a wiser and fairer policy than the one outlined in the ten numbered suggestions.

The demand made by the engineers involves a large amount, estimated at $7,500,000, added to the cost of operation.

That additional amount could not be paid without absorbing certainly with many of the roads-a large portion, possibly the entire amount available for making in

creases in the wages of other classes of employees, hence all classes have a right to be heard before any award is made.

There is the further possibility that the amount asked by the engineers could not be given without crippling some or all of the roads, unless they are permitted to advance rates, hence shippers and patrons are interested.

And there is, of course, the possibility that to add the amount asked to cost of operation would, if rates are not advanced, affect improvements and extensions, hence the public is keenly interested.

In any event and under all circumstances every dollar paid out by a railroad comes out of the public directly or indirectly.

A demand for increased wages is as much a demand upon the public as a demand for increased rates-except where increased wages or shorter hours mean such increased efficiency of service as to counterbalance the costthat would be one of the questions for arbitrators to consider.

But when the engineers of one road who are each making two hundred or two hundred and fifty dollars a month demand 42 cents a mile simply because the engineers of another road get that amount, no question of increased efficiency is involved.

XIII

The roads involved have proceeded to arbitrate the engineers' demand with the certainty that no sooner is that arbitration over than another union will present its claims, and another, and another, and so on in endless chain.

The agitation is constant, systematic, and shrewd; the unions "play the game" incomparably better than the roads; the latter are timid, the former daring; the roads are

afraid of public opinion, of the press, of adverse legislation of their own shadows-partly because their shadows have been rather black in the past.

If in the present emergency1 the roads should adopt the course outlined, the Brotherhood of Engineers would hardly be in a position to object to the invitation to all other classes of employees to present their claims, since the move would seem to be a big step in the direction of the federation of labor, the dream of the ardent unionist and the nightmare of the average railroad official.

But the ultimate result would be the partial disintegration of labor unions along present artificial lines and integration in the normal vertical line.

Public opinion would certainly support the roads in the fair and reasonable requirement that all employees who intend to make demands shall do so at the same time so that the sum total may be known by roads, shippers and the public generally, and so that whatever amount is finally allowed by arbitration or by some tribunal shall be equitably distributed among all employees entitled to increases, and not absorbed by some one or two classes to the exclusion of others.

Public opinion would also support the proposition that if the amounts demanded foot up to an absurd total, the employees themselves, without troubling either the companies or the public, should scale down their demands until the total is a figure they themselves seriously contend the roads should pay.

Again, public opinion would certainly support the proposition that after a gross amount has been awarded, the employees should distribute this amount among themselves without troubling the roads or the public; but if the proposed distribution is unfair to a class or an individual, ar

'Referring to 'the controversy with the engineers which will probably be settled by the time this book appears-settled only for the time