strikes of which 458 were won, 79 were compromised and 210 were lost. In early English and American decisions all strikes were held to be criminal conspiracy. Now it is lawful for unions to do anything which an individual may do. Fifteen states secure the right to strike by statutes. Thus in California (1903) the right of workmen to combine in unions and to strike was guaranteed by a statute that an agreement between employers or employes shall not be deemed a conspiracy if it would be legal if performed by individuals.2 Blacklisting by employers is forbidden in twenty-seven states. A few states have required that the cause of discharge be furnished to the employe in writing. The right of organization is legally sustained. It is made a misdemeanor to make membership in unions a bar to employment in several states, as in Kansas, Nevada and Oregon in 1903.3 Political intimidation is Political intimidation is a misdemeanor in some states. Most states legally recognize the "union labels" placed on manufactured goods for "fair work." Nevada and Montana require the state printing to have the union label. Partial rights are established by means of state conciliation and arbitration. At the beginning of the year 1905 twenty-four states had passed laws for industrial arbitration, the earliest being Maryland in 1878. National boards for voluntary arbitration (1888 and 1898) in disputes affecting interstate commerce have been ineffectual. The governors of the two leading industrial states, New York and Pennsylvania (1903) recommended compulsory arbitration. But the National Civic Federation has been influential in hundreds of conciliations through its commit 1 American Federation of Labor, 25th Annual Report. 2 N. Y. Lib. Bul. Leg., 22q15. 3 Ibid. tee of twelve influential men representing capital, labor and the public. Indirectly a claim is established on employment by the ability of unions to establish the closed shop; and also by the recognition and negotiation now general between industrial corporations and unions. Burns, former President of the Wall Paper Association, testified that combinations aid the unions in enforcing demands,' and the volume of testimony before the Industrial Commission indicates marked gains to labor through organizations. The influence of some of the leaders suggests the Roman tribunes, who by continued intervention in behalf of the populace, gained a veto; or shall we call the heads of the Civic Federation our tribuni plebis? Collective bargaining with the unions recognizes the right or at any rate the power of the voice of wage earners in determining the conditions of their labor. Both sides organize. National executive officers of the unions take up with the employers or organizations of employers the matter in dispute. Thus in Illinois the coal operators maintain a commission which with the executive of the miners' organization considers disputes not otherwise arbitrated. Employers' associations of another kind must be reckoned with as an institution tending to industrial classification in whatever may be the coming form of estate, and tending to the limitation of individual industrial ownership. There are 500 such organizations in the United States, most of them affiliated with the Citizens' Industrial Association of America (1903), which seeks, inconsistently enough, through offensive and defensive organization of industrial management, to maintain individualism 1 Industrial Commission Report, xix, 623. in industrial service; in their own words, "to loose the damnable steel manacles cruelly locked on the hands of the common man and his wife and children" by labor unions and to "protect the common people from the oppression of the labor trust." Associations for collective bargaining tend to industrial classification or estate by recognition; the fatuous employers' associations accelerate the same tendencies by antagonism. 1 Whether the union movement be viewed as cause or effect of the trend toward co-operation, its strength belongs to the last quarter of the century, the time of general limitation of ownership. The Knights of Labor, organized without reference to specific interests, naturally gave way in influence to the American Federation of Labor (1881) which is organized by trades and has nearly two million members. It is proposed to incorporate labor unions. In so far as this might increase economic responsibility and security it would enhance the partial right in ownership which is the virtual aim of such organizations. The benefit funds of the unions and their fraternal and insurance features must tend to economic security, or property. Thus in 1905 the international organizations of the American Federation of Labor paid $742,421 in death benefits; $582,874 in sick benefits and $85,050 in unemployed benefits.2 Perhaps the national classification into industrial estates is contributed to by the bureaus of labor statistics in most of the states and by the free employment bureaus of thir teen states. The extent of the effectiveness of all these limitations of corporate liberty must not be overestimated: corporate limitation is perhaps only incipient, and laws only prophetic. 1 Advertisement, Chicago Record-Herald, July 4, 1906. 2 25th Annual Report, Am. Fed. Labor. The Industrial Commission reports that very little of the anti-trust legislation has been effective.1 Laws at least indicate the height of the possible liberty of that at which they are directed. Thus of 318 corporations of the size known as trusts existing in 1904, 236 had been incorporated since 1898 with a capital of $6,049,618,223 as compared with a capital of $1,196,724,310 of those incorporated before 1898. Thus the anti-trust legislation preceded rather than followed the trust movement. The Attorney General of the Standard Oil Company said: "A modern federal law also exists which literally interpreted forbids business of any magnitude, but federal judges have thus far found it easier to dismiss proceedings under it than to guess at its real meaning." President Roosevelt says: "The interstate commerce law in the matter of rebates was practically a dead letter." Land commissioners who aid in fraud, inspectors who do not inspect, commissioners and investigators whose chief function is to shield the guilty are familiar phenomena. The labor laws also in many cases are unenforced and unsustained in the courts. "The percentage of reversals on appeal in master and servant cases when the verdict of the juries of the courts below had been in plaintiff's favor is perhaps larger than in any other branch of litigation." 5 However it is probable that the chief influence of reactionary decisions is to strengthen the dependence of labor upon its own defense. " 3 4 These direct modifications of ownership are supplemented 1 xix, p. 641. 2 ? Moody, Truth about the Trusts, p. 486. 3 Quoted in Ghent, Benevolent Feudalism, p. 35. 4 Letter to Secretary Morton, June 22, 1905. 5" Courts and Factory Legislation," in Am. Journal of Sociology, Nov., 1900. by various institutions and social movements in amelioration of bad distribution. The increase of population and the concentration of private property are attended by a rapid extension of public charities, public ownership, profitsharing, stock ownership, co-operative association, insurance, corporate provision for the welfare of dependents and private philanthropy-all charges on existing private property or limitations of its future possibility and content. These indicate drift to estate. These limitations may be classed according to their agencies, as public, corporate and private. Public limitations are public charity and public ownership. Pensions have increased from $15,525,153.11 in 1866 to $141,142,861.33 in 1905.1 In 1903 alone legislation provided for fifteen new state charitable institutions in twelve states including an insane hospital, institutions for the feebleminded, reform schools, an institution for the adult blind, a school for the blind, sanitoriums for consumptives, general hospitals, homes for miners, homes for orphans and an institution for the treatment of hydrophobia. In 1903 the total cost of maintaining public benevolent institutions was $16,263,958 or 29.3 per cent of the total expenditure for such institutions. Public charity is a charge upon property rather than upon affection. Such involuntary philanthropy is one of the costs of private opulence, one of the conditions of the quiescence of the indigent. Philanthropy in this giving is like the love bene of the serf to his master, which ultimately became a tax, or like the benevolence of King Charles, which became compulsory; only that now the sovereignty is popular. These customary benevolences become 3 1 Statistical Abstract, 1905, p. 603. 2 N. Y. Lib. Bul. Leg., 22r2. |