hours a day for $409 a year as the average wage. We have a Congressional report to back us up as to the facts. What are the facts in connection with the Iron Workers' International Union? In seven years during the administration of John J. McNamara the union increased its membership from 5,000 to nearly 14,000 members. They established an eight-hour day from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Texas to the Canadian line, and they established a wage scale of $4.30 as compared with $2.20

. I do not know, but I suppose that the McNamaras became convinced that no amount of pleading, no amount of argument, no amount of logic, no amount of Christianity, no amount of politics, would convince the steel trust that they could give eight hours and give them living wages. Labor would have to organize. The steel trust had what they called the National Erectors' Association, one of the tributaries of the steel trust, and the National Erectors 'Association had what they called the American Bridge Company, another tributary of the steel trust.

How long do they expect those 260,000 men and boys to work in the steel industry for $409 a year, twelve hours a day, without becoming imbued with animosity and despair? How do they expect it? If a man says to me McNamara should be condemned my reply is: All right, we will condemn the McNamaras; we will also condemn the Carnegies. If a man says to me that the Iron Workers' Union should be condemned I say, All right; we will also condemn the steel trust. If they say, We want light, we want justice; all right, light up the iron workers, light up the steel trust, light up labor and light up capital. Put on the searchlight for both parties and we are willing that our sins shall be compared with their sins. *

Any one who interprets these answers of labor as arguments in favor of violence fails to understand

the force of the reason or impulse which binds men together in unions. The conviction of union men is that violence does not meet the occasion, not that the occasion does not justify it. The occasion develops violence and unions stand by members who have been goaded by conditions to commit violence in protection of their purpose which is opposition to violence in industry. Violence is inconsistent with organization; it is its antithesis, and no people know this so well as those whose lives are spent in attaining organization.

The McNamara incident failed to convict the labor movement of violence. It served rather to bring out in relief the effort of the unions to protect life against the wanton disregard for life which characterizes the promoters of American industry.

In the chapter on "Strikes and Violence" it is shown that the violence of unarmed strikers pales into sickly effort before the authorized brutality of a wellarmed police force or militia. While society condones violence in industry and meets opposition to that violence with armed interference it will inevitably reap an occasional harvest of labor violence. As it undertakes to quell the opposition with its official force it places the labor unions in the lead in the fight against violence. The violence of the police in the Shirt Waist Strike in New York City advertised the thought of organization of women workers throughout the country and even in Europe, as the peaceful efforts of union officials had failed to do. And in the same

way the violence of the militia in the Lawrence strike carried the suggestion of rebellion to many thousand unskilled and apathetic workers. The violence of state officers quickens public interest and stimulates imagination. The community lines up and rebellious labor makes new friends and new recruits. While individuals surrender reason to the consuming forces of passion their militant acts in defence of a human cause kindle thought among the masses of men.

CHAPTER XV

STRIKES AND VIOLENCE

Value of legal rights to picket-Union position in regard to violence in strikes-Authorized methods-Conflicting elements on picket field-Paterson strike-Mass picketing-Lawrence strike-Outside testimony in regard to violence-Failure of law to protect picketing in New York-Order to regard pickets as vagrants-Story of Calumet strike-Strike of Colorado Miners-Citizens' alliances.

THE state laws generally recognize that strikers have a right to approach fellow workers and to peacefully persuade them to refrain from working. But the right vouchsafed a picket to walk up and down in front of a work-shop where the strike occurred, to speak to men and women on their way to work in the shop and to dissuade them if possible from entering, is not a particular right of a picket but of any man or woman. The withholding of such a right would be a clear case of discrimination against strikers.

The value of the right as a practical concession is constantly in review. The question centers around whether the speaking of a picket to others or his presence in the vicinity causes disturbance. Also questions of disturbance are questions of degree. And as an actual fact the simplest form of picketing is a disturbance. A striker, by speaking to a man whose in

tention is fixed on working, about the desire of others that he should discontinue his intention, disturbs the man and his would-be-employer. The purposes of the picket and of the other two are opposed. If the picket is effective, if he actually pickets, he must persist in spite of the annoyance. A vigilant police officer or a soldier, stationed in the strike field to maintain order and interpreting the order literally and in the interest of the struck plant, will arrest any active picket on the ground of annoyance. On the same ground he will be sentenced by a magistrate or held by military command for disorderly conduct. Such are the common interpretations of peaceful picketing. Innumerable records of such rulings may be found in magistrates'

courts.

Labor unions do not claim that strikers are never disturbers of the peace. But unions of all affiliations insist that: (1) rioting and violence are good for the cause of the employer and bad for the cause of the strikers directly concerned except in certain aggravated cases; (2) that the importation of thugs and professional strike-breakers into strike zones precipitates riots; (3) that the presence of militia is not conducive to order but to violence; (4) that "striker" and "rioter" are synonymous terms to the average judge.

The usual instructions given by union officers to strikers is to picket with hands in pockets, to walk singly or in twos, to watch closely for every possible strike-breaker, and to persuade, to persist in persuad