The membership alone is no indication of the actual power of existing organization or of group action. The simple facts that organizations do exist, and that new ones may form at any moment, for purposes either temporary or permanent, create a potential force equal in ultimate results to the recognized accomplishments of the labor unions. The very rapidity with which one labor event has followed another is a measure of the potential power of organized labor. While the rapid succession of events is making history old before the events can be recorded, the comparative values of the principles and methods preached and practised, can be gaged as never before on account of their diversity and extended appeal. XI. ARBITRATION. XII. LEGISLATION AND THE UNIONS XIII. THE CONFLICT BETWEEN LABOR AND THE COURTS AMERICAN LABOR UNIONS CHAPTER I PHILANTHROPY AND LABOR UNIONS Philanthropic movement-Difference between the two movements, in aim and methods-No question of rivalry— Difference between benevolent and self-imposed measures -Reform movements not co-extensive with democracy but with bureaucracy. It is a policy on the part of the most liberal of social reformers to include labor unions as far as possible in their many schemes for general social uplift. They regard the movements which they initiate for labor and labor's own movements as common agencies for improving the material conditions surrounding industry as well as the lives of the workers themselves. The effort of the many agencies and the improved conditions constitute the forces of a "New Democracy" or are, rather, the new democracy itself.1 These agencies are, indeed, not confined to any class; they include employers, and they draw their moral and financial support from large and small capitalists. There are employers who are building sanitary workshops and developing elaborate schemes of welfare work; women's clubs and consumers' leagues are 1 For Notes, see end of volume. |