W

E ARE not all inveterate partisans in our public activities nor immovable bigots in our mental and moral make-up. Some of us are tired of being worked by the propagandists. One may in fact imagine nowadays the prayer of a sincere inquirer in sociology to run somewhat in this manner: "Please do not try any of your social cure-all volumes on me. I am not seeking a panacea, ‘a sure way out.' And spare me the infliction of your party leaflets. I have no need to start with the elementary teachings of any school of economists or so-called radicals. I have something more than a smattering of all such primers. But it would be pleasing to have, from a sober pen, a summary of the progress of the more or less tried-out practical propositions, and of the trend of helpful thought, relative to at least the major phases of the social unrest. Put me in communication with a philosophical spirit fresh from a studious survey of our social system. Let me read his best conclusions on that broad subject. I shall be the better pleased if he has considered the proposals and methods of the venturesome radicals and of the cautious conservatives alike and summed up his estimate of the values of their work in their separate lines. Give me something not too sketchy nor yet over-elaborate; something not reflecting the authority of a high-priest orating from a throne; something stamped with simplicity and sincerity; something that will save me from the dabbling and groping and squabbling that come with so large a part of the economic literature of the time; something that may possibly suggest fundamental workable social principles."

I have in mind such a prayer in reading Walter Lippmann's "Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest." Nothing has come from the press recently better suited to respond to the requirements of a fair-minded person seeking sober guidance in the wide field-one might almost say the wild waste-of "social reform." In short, Mr. Lippmann's book is to be recommended alike to beginners in the task of tackling the great knot of social problems and to veterans who through the help of its pages may run a parallel to their labors

in reaching their resting-places in th relative to radicalism or reformism.

What Mr. Lippmann has to say regar labor organization illustrates his styk method. Subjoined is his chapter on. condensed through indicated omissions

The fact is that nothing is so stubbornly as the attempt to organize labor into unions. Yet it is labor organized that al stand between America and the creation manent servile class. Unless labor is: enough to be respected, it is doomed to a de servitude. Without unions no such possible. Without unions industrial dem is unthinkable. Without democracy in that is where it counts most, there is no su as democracy in America. For only thro.. union can the wage-earner participate in trol of industry, and only through the union obtain the discipline needed for self-gover Those who fight unions may think they are its obvious errors, but what they are real's is just this encroachment of democracy up

cies the guardian of ther integrity, their ch The picket-line is to these little economic de tection from foreign invasion.

As long as the unions have to fight : existence, their immense constructive pas will be obscured in the desperation of the s The strike-breaker, then, is not only a per union, he is a peril to the larger interests nation. He keeps workingmen from ther organization, deprives them of the stren union brings, and thwarts all attempts: men for industrial democracy. Instead pline and preparation for the task of th instead of deep-grounded experience in co-› effort, we shall get, if strike-breakers an legislators and brutal policemen and pr judges and visionless employers prevai and hate and servile rebellions.

There are certain preliminaries of av which the great mass of workingmen have won. They have not yet won a living wi have not yet won anything like security of. ment, they have not yet won respect from: ernment, they have not yet won the right to sulted as to the conditions under which they Until they do it is idle to talk about ing of difficulties. peace, and folly to look for "reasonable" adju Reason begins when m enough power to command respect; a co-ope*

tion of industrial problems is possible only when the partners to the co-operation must listen to : other. Until labor is powerful enough to compel tit can not trust to the benevolence of its mas-it has to be suspicious, it has to cling to the weapons left it, for labor is right in supposing no national conscience and no employers' connce yet exhibited are adequate.

here are certain occupations where workingmen e won these preliminaries of civilized life. The t notable example is in railroading, where the therhoods have become a real part of the intrial structure. They are so powerful that they the left out. More than that, they are so powerthat they don't have to flirt with insurrection. s the weak unions, the unorganized and shiftworkers, who talk sabotage and flare up into a dred little popgun rebellions. Guerilla warfare he only tactic open to weakness. But where ons can meet the employers on a real equality, as oad workers can, there you will find very little rrectionary talk.

Ju will meet in these powerful unions what cal labor leaders call conservatism. That is a interesting accusation. The railroad men have wages and respect far beyond anything that the V. W. can hope for. They have power which tes the I. W. W. look insignificant. If the I. W. could win for the unskilled anything like the posiand responsibility that railroad men enjoy, uld have achieved something that might well called a social revolution. The fact is that the road men are "conservatives" in the labor world, as the Swiss are conservatives among the ins. They have won the very things the lack of ch makes rebellion necessary. For if men are and down in poverty, if the rights of assemblage free speech are denied them, if their protests are fective and despised, then rebellion is the only sible way out. But when there is something like emocracy where wrong is not a matter of life and th, but of better and worse, then the preinaries of civilization have been achieved, and re deliberate tactics become possible.

syndicalists and anarchists half recognize the fact t only a small minority of the workers can be used to bitter revolt. So they have begun Sing the praises of a "conscious minority." other words they have abandoned the path of nocracy, because it is incompatible with the per they most admire. Workers who were ly effectively organized would produce great anges in our social structure, but they would ve to act with a deliberation that no temperamenanarchist can stomach. This is the paradox of = labor. movement, that those who can't overHow society dream of doing it, while those who ld don't want to. If there is one occupation ere syndicalist tactics might work, it would be on railroads. A small minority could paralyze country and precipitate a general strike. at American railroad men are not likely to do this ause, they don't need to. They have a stake the country, a genuine representation in public tion, and they can at all times secure a respecthearing. If that were taken away from them, if eir unions were disintegrated, they too might ke to conspiracy.

It is a commonplace of radicalism that power makes for peace. It is deeply true of the labor movement that the alternatives before it are powerful peace and weak insurrection. Thus if the I. W. W. should succeed in organizing the unskilled on any extensive scale, the I W. W., as we know it, would have abolished itself. For the unions which were created would inevitably seek a different type of leader, men of administrative capacity who can wield power without exhausting it. The extreme weakness of the unskilled workers has made them listen so eagerly to the large hopes of men like Haywood, Ettor and Giovannitti.

So the real peril to the nation from the side of labor is the existence of great masses of unorganized, and perhaps unorganizable, workers. From them will come most of the street-fights, the beatings and the sabotage. They have no share in the country, they have "nothing to lose but their chains." But with the tactics open to them they haven't "a world to win." They can parade and shout, call the police "cossacks," and talk revolution. But they have to put up with the pettiest gains.

When these prime conditions are achieved, labor's demands tend toward an increasing share of control. The right of summary discharge is the issue in many a strike. For unions will encroach more and more on matters of discipline; they are seeking to raise themselves to a partnership in the management. It is no idle guess to suppose that they will come to demand the right to choose their own foremen, perhaps to elect some of the directors, and to take not only wages, but a percentage of the profits.

In this movement to eat into economic absolutism, very perplexing questions, of course, arise. What is the proper structure for a union? Shall it be organized by crafts, or occupations, or industries? With amalgamation, or by federation? How shall the unions be governed; by representatives or by direct vote? In fact, there is hardly a problem of constitutional government which doesn't appear in acute form among the workers. And in passing, one might suggest that scholars who wish to see sovereignty in the making can not do better than to go among the unions. They will find the initiative and referendum in constant use. They will find all phases of corruption and misrepresentation: the disappointments of indiscriminate democracy and the blight of officialism.

You think of the powerful organizations ready to combat every sign of unionism, of the congestion of immigrants in the labor market, of the hostility of courts and newspapers to the preliminaries of industrial democracy. I don't know, no one knows, whether labor can realize its promise. The odds seem to be overwhelming..

The unions are struggling to give the wage-earners representation, and that is why the hopes of democracy are bound up with the labor movement. Bound up, not with words and dogmas, but with the purpose which animates it. Labor needs criticism, needs inventive thought, needs advice and help. But no one can given any of these things who has not grasped with full sympathy that impulse for industrial democracy which is the key to the move

ment.

MODERN TRADE UNIONS

We have already shown how, with the growth of opulence among the employing craftsmen, the system of domestic manufacturing prevalent during the Middle Ages was gradually extended and enlarged; and how this served to divide the employers and employed into separate classes with distinctly diverging interests.

As soon as this extension proceeded to a point where numbers made it possible, the process of manufacturing a certain article was divided into as many parts as were convenient; and the men employed were made to specialize in performing certain parts of the work. This had the effect of making each workman more adept at perfoming his part of the work, but at the same time it tended to diminish his general knowledge of and efficiency in the whole trade and made his employment monotonous.

The introduction of water power for manufacturing purposes intensified this specialization of work and prepared the way for the invention and installation of other laborsaving machinery.

But since "labor-saving" machinery is essentially what its name implies, its introduction enabled the manufacturers to dispense further with the services of skilled and experienced workmen and in their stead to employ women, girls, and boys to do the work theretofore done by men. The proposition that the working people ought to benefit by the introduction of labor-saving machinery was entirely too novel to receive any consideration at that time. The introduction of labor-saving machinery did not better the social conditions surrounding the working people, neither did it improve their material position. It is a historical fact that the introduction of the factory system lowered the social and material status of the English working people, and impaired the standard of national health and morality to no other purpose than to bolster the profits of the employing class. In addition it

created a feeling of hostility and unreas able spite among the workers against the ther introduction of labor-saving machin that led to very serious disturbances.

The workingmen saw nothing in the duction of labor-saving devices excep lessening of their chances of employment offset this threatening danger they fom secret combinations whose purpose it wa destroy machinery and to prevent its fur installment. Their efforts resulted in a ber of serious riots, and in the destruction a lot of valuable machinery. But their peal to force was met with the strictest prisals on the part of the government.. utter failure of their attempt to destroy make the operation of machinery imposs and unprofitable to the employer me served to demonstrate the futility of irascible impulse as a means to better condition of workingmen.

In order to prevent a recurrence of simi disturbances the combination laws refem to in the preceding chapter were given i force and effect by the government.

This is the saddest period in the annals England's industrial history. At war w her neighbors on the continent and with! American colonies, her working pe at home discontented and suffering from t inequalities of a system of manufactur that hoarded great wealth in the hands comparatively few persons, while the grea number of working people were paupera and by law prevented from helping the selves by means of organizations of la unions to obtain better conditions of ployment and a fairer division of the ceeds of industry.

The Duke of Argyle, in his book, Reign of Law, describes the conditions p vailing in England at that time in such ch and concise language that an excerpt the from is here inserted to illustrate and e phasize more fully the subsequent change policy of the English law-givers towards establishment of trades union as a gally recognized tution. After obse